Hey! I did it!

Last week, I knew the husband's dreaded graveyard shift weekend was coming up! I hate his weekend graveyard shift! I don't let the kids go to bed too late because he gets home at around 7am ish and they have to get up because he sleeps downstairs in one of the girls beds. I drive myself crazy with every noise made whether it be big or small, thinking this will wake the husband and make him grouchy....yeah right, cause waking up happy from graveyard shift has happened so so so often! So I make it my obligation to be out of the house (preferably with fun activities to do) as much as possible so that he will not be disturbed. The husband, however, tells me not to worry about it and has explained to me that sometimes he sleeps like a log and doesn't hear a thing and other times when I am not even at the house he hasn't slept a wink! Sleeping during the day just isn't a natural thing for some people or I should say MOST people! Speaking from personal experience, I was only ever able to sleep 4 hours and would have a nap around 10pm before going back to work! ...I so do not miss working in hospitals! So knowing his lovely graveyard-shift-weekend was coming up I came up with the idea of going to our cabin alone with the kids for the 1st time. I asked the husband what he thought of this and he said he loved the idea...I wanted him to be clear, was "loving the idea" because he would be alone and at peace for the weekend and he said "no, I love the fact that you would want to go out there alone". Oh great, that is a good reason! So friday morning off I went, 4 hours drive to our cabin, knowing all the neighbors would be there or I never would have gone! It was great! The kids had fun, went to bed late and slept until almost 8:30 9ish. Got to see a fireworks show cause the neighbor had brought a box. I am very proud of myself! I remembered all the important things, turning on the propane and how to make a fire and and understanding certain new noises over my head mean that there are squirrels in the attick and telling the husband to bring poison up on his next visit up there.

The summer festival

The husband and I enjoy going to the summer festival out here. You pay 35$ for a pin that you have to wear to get you into the shows for 10 days.

We have seen Van Halen, Scorpions, ZZ top, Simple Plan, Styx, Twisted Sister, Live, Stone Temple Pilots and last night KISS!

Wow, what a show!! The best visual show I have ever seen. Seriously!!

Sure the costume are humerous to see. There were fireworks all throughout the show. Even the guitar player Tommy something or other made them come out the end of his guitar during his solo. The were enormous jets of fire coming out the scene too. Platforms of the stage going up and down. The group started up in the air on a platform that brought them down. Gene Simmons got hoisted up by cables to a platform for one song after his spitting out fake blood show. And then Paul Stanley grab a poll hooked up to a cable and swung over top of our heads to another platform to do a song and swung back and more fireworks and more fireworks.

They played for almost 2 1/2 hours!!! Very generous! I think the groups have a contract to do minimum 1 hr show and ZZ Top did their 1 hr show, barely said hello to us and no encore and took off. KISS was incredible and my husband was such a happy man!

There was a mom and dad with their 13 year old son beside us and poor guy could only look at the screen and couldn't see the stage and the husband offered with the father to have him on top of his shoulders and so they did for the last 1/2 hour. The husband then looks at the boy and says I was your age when I bought my first KISS album! From my big guy to a 13 year old boy! They both had the same amazed expression on their face from participating in this great show from 4 over 50 year old men with make-up and costumes and high heel boots on!!! Got to love it!!

Animals in our house

So, the only animals we have now are fish! A stupid agressif Gourami that scares every other fish I will try to put with it into having a heart attack after eating off the end of their tale...and a gold fish (2 different aquariums).

We have had hermit crabs too. They are interesting. We had cats too! We got rid of them while I was very pregnant with #3 and I caught my 2 daughters (they were 3 and 2 years of age) emptying a very dirty cat litter with their hands and sticking it all inside my dryer! After I screamed, I grad them both (1 under each arm) ran up the stairs and washed them in the tub from head to toe (yes, I agree, quite an overreaction) and then phoned the health line to make sure they shouldn't get some kind of vaccin shot and they nurse tells me there is no danger for them only for me because I am pregnant. Being a nurse, I already knew that part but I was always very safe with the cat litter. The cats left the house on that day!

The husband being allergic couldn't believe how much better he could breathe after a week without cats in the house. So we have agreed to no longer have animals with fur!

But of course, we miss having cats or dogs of our own!

So the option we (well, I) came up with is to babysit animals. Here today and gone in a week! It is a fun compromise!

So far we looked after a 6 month cat (Mousseline) for a week and Margot the pug.

We had Margot in April for 5 days and now we just got her again last night for a week. Back in April, everything went pretty well except for the sleeping part. She is use to sleeping under the covers with her owner, so this was not an easy pattern to break. She would whine all night if we left her in her cage. We tried letting her loose in the house and she ended up on my sons bed which was a scary thing for him. We tried letting her sleep ON our bed but she would non-stop try to get under the covers and finally on her last night I put her bed in our room and she finally had a good night...

So I was looking forward to her coming back last night thinking this will be easy. She is a great dog and great with the kids and now the sleeping thing would be all worked out, so no worries! right?

Well, The second daughter and I took her for a walk to go and meet up with the eldest daughter and son at a friends house (they were doing a little skateboarding show thing) and the Margot found this very fascinated and wanted to get closer and closer and was really tugging at her leash and sure enough....GOT THROUGH THE COLLAR!!!!

Over an hour later and having about 15 people trying to circle around her and grab her and a very controlling man just drive me crazy (I actually told him twice to just go back in the house and I would look after it, we were on his lawn though, so he never left, and he is in the army, so he pointed out how we just were not following proper protocol very often!!) I finally decided to follow my 1st instinct being: Just walk home and Margot will follow...and sure enough. The husand and son were on bikes and she took off after them and went straight home and my son opened the house door and she ran right in!!

Oh man, can I tell you that this morning dogsitting has a totally different meaning to me! I don't know now that I want this extra responsability!

Did I mention that she slept not too badly after waking up the son a couple of times. His door does not have a handle right now...but that is a whole other story!

Respect...consultations...

It is so essentiel to make time for yourself. Either time alone with only yourself present or time with your soul mate, best friend, lover and husband. And in my case they are all the same person.

The husband and I were given the chance to get away just the 2 of us by a very sweet sister-in-law. She stayed with the kids for 2 days so we could go to the cabin. Just to have the time to talk alone and appreciate eachother without being interrupted. Which is something that happens, oh lets just say all the time! I try to ignore the child that wants to talk to me while they repeat non-stop the "mom" word and keep talking to the husband or I put up a hand in the stop motion but usually this doesn't work either. The youngest sometimes has tried pushing me to look at him and I try to concentrate only on the husband to finish our conversation. Yes, we have tried locking ourselves in our room to try and discuss something important but you will get the knocking at the door and kicking and yelling through the door....aaaahhhhh!

The husband has a lot of difficulty trying to stay focused and will forget the goal and give in to the child! It is frustrating!

They (the kids) try to make us feel guilty for going away to the cabin without them! Oh please give me a break!

I am trying to put something new in our house into practise...consulting the husband alone before trying to talk something out in front of the kids. To discuss and make a decision alone with him and then present it to the kids so that they don't influence the decision. It works but I have to constantly remind myself to do it. Practise makes perfect, I hope!

So respect yourself as a couple and make that a priority! Time with eachother!

VAMPIRES

I just don't know what my problem is....I really have a thing for vampires! Not that I want to be with one or want to BE one, I just find them, I guess fascinating!

I was a late bloomer, sort of. I only found out about Buffy when I was in my 30's. I have someone in the family that lent me all the DVD's of all 7 seasons of Buffy and of course you have to watch the Angel series as well and she had all 5 seasons of Angel as well. So I watched them all....twice! I really got into the caracters and enjoyed certain story lines, others I did find stupid. Buffy is light and more adolescent and Angel is more dark. I am a real whimp when it comes to horror and certain things from Angel did scare me enough to have trouble sleeping. Maybe I should be ashamed to admit that...

I have also read books on vampires. I found Christopher Moore a funny read. Charlaine Harris' books are now a series on TV "True blood". The books are good! They changed the series a lot in my opinion but it is very good! I just finished her 4th book, I little on the long side. And I have just started to watch the second season of True Blood.

Of course you can not talk about vampires without mentionning the Stephenie Meyer books (the Twilight series). I am now half way through the 4th book and loving it. I loved the movie too and thought it was very much like the book! The special effects aren't that great but it is still good and hey Robert Pattinson is really not that hard to look at during 90 or so minutes!!

I don't know really where the fascination comes from but it is interesting. I have never been a comic book reader but feel very ashamed to admit to buying the 8th season of Buffy which is now only available in comic books...sad but true!

It's good for us to have a little way to get OUT and AWAY! Healthy! Right?!