Going For It!

Well, I'm going to make an honest attempt at NaBloPoMo.

(That's National Blog Posting Month for those of you not in the know.  Which I assume is anyone reading my blog.)

The goal is to post a blog every day for the month of November.  Why the hell anyone decided on November is beyond me.  Aside from December, it has to be the busiest month of the year.  But, I managed to do it last year, and I know I felt really proud of myself at the end of the month, and much more confident in my ability to write.  So, here I go again.

I'm not really sure this is going to be possible, so I'm not going to beat myself up if I miss a day here or there, but I am going to try to make an honest effort to at least blog more, even if it's not everyday.

At the moment I have a lot on my plate.  I'm working Monday through Wednesday at my 9-5 job in Portland.  It's not really 9-5.  I don't actually know anyone that works 9-5.  But I'm there 8-4:30, which is close, but not so catchy sounding.  But you get my point.  On Tuesday nights I have class in Wells from 5:30-8.  Thursdays I stay home with Ben and cram in homework for one of my two online classes, then I head to work at the Bar from 5-11ish.  Fridays I generally have off, though occasionally my schedule gets switched up and I end up working at one place or the other.  If I'm not "working" then I'm trying to squish in more homework, more housework, and bookkeeping for my "other" part time job.  Ben's here too, so I'm definitely not relaxing.  Saturdays are usually spent either cleaning or shopping until I head into work at the Bar at 5.  Sundays are usually hit or miss.  Some days I have an extra Bar shift, other Sundays I'm home for the day trying to soak up some family time.  That's usually followed either way with an evening trying to get things ready for the upcoming week.  Menu planning, laundry, baking, cleaning, homework, whatever.

So when I say I'm kinda busy, I'm not kidding.  Hopefully I can force myself to take a few minutes each day to write something, even if it's just a little recap, or something cute my kid did.  I guess we'll see what comes up this month.

Happy NaBloPoMo!

My Scary Pumpkin!

Halloween was Wednesday and Ben did a little trick-or-treating!  For the last month he had decided that he was going to be a Scary Pumpkin for Halloween.  I was sure he'd want to be a train or a race car, but nope, pumpkin it was.  No complaints, a pumpkin costume is waaaay easier to assemble than a train!

I decided once again to take a stab at making his costume instead of buying one.  Until he reaches the age where he has to have a certain costume to look like his friends, I'm going to try to make his costumes.  It's way more fun, and I get to pretend I'm super mom.

So, for Scary Pumpkin I bought an orange t-shirt a few sizes too large.  I opened up the hem at the bottom and threaded a string through so it would have a drawstring to tighten.  I bought black iron on patch material and cut out "scary" eyes, nose and mouth.  Because I'm a slacker, I actually ironed it all together Tuesday night at 9:00 after accounting class with my iron plugged into the generator.  Ooops.  I picked him up black leggings (FYI-no one makes green leggings) and a little pumpkin flashlight and treat bag.  His grandmother had knit him a pumpkin hat when he was an infant and fortunately his big old noggin still fit in it.  I also scored some pretty adorable jack-o-lantern galoshes at TJ Maxx on clearance to complete the ensemble.

The end result was pretty damn adorable!

 



We got our power back about 10 minutes before we left to go trick-or-treating so I was able to snap a picture in the light! 

The nice thing about taking an almost-three-year-old trick-or-treating is that he has no idea what to expect.  As a result, we were able to walk to the six houses right next to us and he thought he made an amazing candy haul.  He had such a good time and said "trick-or-treat" at every house we visited and "thank you" which is pretty awesome for a two year old!  After we had been to two houses he was marching down the road holding my hand and said "Mom, I love you!"  What a goober!  He had such a good time!

 

The "Big" Haul

 

Yeah, that's a full size Hershey's bar.  And Yeah, Mom's going to eat it.

 

His Halloween Treat: Nerds.

 

 

Yup, I have the cutest kid ever.

Oh Sandy Baaaaby

If you did not just read the title of this blog as though you were John Travolta singing to Olivia Newton-John please stop reading and start over.  Thank you.

So we had a hurricane.  And as I hinted at in my last blog post, I went above and beyond preparing for it in hopes that it would end up being less of an ordeal.  Well, it didn't end up being a very severe storm, but that didn't make it any easier.

We lost our power (as expected) around 11:00 on Monday night.  That was actually much later than I anticipated us losing power.  We are usually out as soon as a stiff breeze picks up.  Unfortunately, my little community in Waterboro tends to be last on the CMP priority list.

So imagine my surprise when I got word that the neighbors down the street had their power back early Tuesday evening!  I thought sure that we would be next.   So I went to bed Tuesday night fairly confident that our power would be back before I had to get up Wednesday morning and get ready for work.

Nope.

Despite the fact that the house on the corner of my road FIVE houses down had power Tuesday evening, we waited until shortly before seven on WEDNESDAY before we got ours back.  (Um, thanks to Bangor Hydro, by the way, for actually making that happen.)

We've lost our power for much longer, and at much colder times of the year, but I can't tell you how annoying it was to see lights at the end of the road but still have to get up in the morning and take a damn sponge bath.

So yeah, that sucked.  But it wasn't the suckiest part.

Monday night, during the storm, I was sitting on the couch doing homework.  And by homework I mean I had an open text book on my lap and I was asleep.  At about 10:00 an extremely loud crack and thud occurred DIRECTLY outside the widow behind the couch where I was sitting.

I know that as a mom I've always been curious about how I would react to an emergency involving my son.  Would I instinctively put him first like I'm supposed to, or would that fight or flight instinct kick in and I would act instinctively to save myself?  Well, I can safely say, I would be all over my son.  I jumped off the couch and ran towards his room so fast I actually fell before I got to the stairs.  My husband picked me up and told me to slow down, that Ben was fine.  I think I garbled something out at him about not being awake and not caring and I hauled it up the stairs.

He was stretched out on his bed and snoring.

I thought I was going to have a heart attack.  At the time, we thought the tree had just come down right next to the house, narrowly missing our pellet stove vent.  Nope.  In the morning we discovered that it had fallen on the roof, broken apart, slid down the wall, cracked up our siding and then landed just a few feet away from our pellet stove vent.  Awesome.

 

 

 

 

The damage is relatively minor and should be inexpensive to repair.  We were pretty lucky and will probably be doing some dead tree removal later this fall or in the spring. 

So that sucked.  Now do you want to hear the suckiest part?

Waking up Wednesday morning without power knowing that the neighbors all had power was pretty damn frustrating.  Having the generator not start was REALLY frustrating.  Discovering that your cars had been broken into, well, that was just miserable.

We live in a pretty quiet country neighborhood.  We don't keep much in our cars, and we don't lock them at night.  We've never had a problem.  But, apparently someone decided they needed to take advantage of us unfortunate folks without electricity and steal from us.  Fortunately we really don't keep anything in our cars, so nothing was taken from mine.  Don had his GPS in his car that was taken, it was rather old and not really worth anything, but it is something he uses often.  He felt pretty violated.  The thieves were also poking around our shed, so we were actually very fortunate that they didn't try to run away with our generator, snow blower or lawn mower.

We did call the police and I guess it had happened to several cars on our road during the course of the night.  Needless to say, our house has become Fort Knox.  Don has instituted a locked door policy at all times, the car doors are locked, the shed is locked, and he's on a mission this weekend for security lights and new door knobs.  We're also going to look at getting the generator wired into the fuse box so we can keep outside lights on when the power is out.  (It will also give us hot water when the power is out...so I'm totally ok with that!)

So, while Hurricane Sandy may not have been the strongest storm up here in Maine, and we may not have been without power for that long a period of time, it was still one of our worst storm experiences.

And it also left me with that damn song Sandy from Grease stuck in my head.  It's not even one of the cool songs.  Uggggh.

Getting Ready for a Hurricane

Kyla's Hurricane Preparedness Check List:

-Find Flashlights
-Test Flashlights
-Put Flashlight Batteries on Shopping List
-Wash Hair
-Shave Legs
-Pick Up Generator from Mom's House
-Go To Walmart
-Wish No One Else Was at Walmart*
-Buy More Batteries
-Buy Lamp Oil
-Buy Chips
-Buy Extension Cords
-Set Up Generator
-Buy Gas for Generator
-Buy (more) Gas for Car
-Buy (more) Chips
-Consolidate Freezers
-Add Bags of Water to Freezer to keep frozen food cold longer
-Wash Dishes
-Load Dishwasher
-Vacuum Floors
-Wash 8,000 Loads of Laundry
-Curse Small Child who keeps making more laundry
-Give Husband and Teenager Hair Cuts
-Do All Office Work
-Print Out Homework for Week
-Eat All Sweets in Fridge that could go bad without power
-Blog, because the power is going to be going out for a while...


*Just a thought Walmart: perhaps if you had a smaller "lounge/sleepwear department" less people would actually wear "lounge/sleepwear" while shopping at your store.  I have, in fact, seen a woman wearing two piece pink floral pajamas while shopping at Walmart.  With slippers.  And a purse.

A Quiet Little Wednesday

Well, I did some counting.  And I'm not going to make my goal for the year of reading 100 books.  I was off to an amazing start, but the addition of a second part time job and then school has crippled my ability to read anything.  Which is very frustrating.  I also set the goal to read five Jane Austen books.  I've done three so far, and while I probably could read two more, I'm not exactly sure that's how I want to spend my precious reading time for the next couple of months.

So frustrating. 

I spent the day at home today with Ben who has a cold.  He's not that sick, but I didn't want to send him to daycare to cough on all the other kids.  Plus I don't like it when he's sick, and I want to be the one taking care of him.  Since it was a very laid back day, I managed to get quite a bit of my homework done.  So much, in fact, that I've found time to write this blog and contemplate starting a book.

Unfortunately I still have roughly one million things on my to-do list for today, so starting a book is probably not going to happen quite yet.  But while I've been thinking today, I've also been thinking about my blog.  Next month is NaBloPoMo, (National Blog Posting Month) which I participated in last year.  I really, really enjoyed it last year.  But last year I was only working one job and I wasn't in school.  I just don't know if I have enough hours in the day to devote a piece of each day to writing on my blog.  I know I'd like to.  Last year I felt pretty proud of myself after making it to December 1st having written something each day.

So I don't know, I'm still thinking.  Should I do it, should I skip it?  I just hate to add one more thing to my list of "Didn't quite happen this year."  But then, is it better to add something to that list than to the "Man I wish I'd tried that list?"

Hmmmmmmmm.

How Did the Dog Turn on the Shower?

Today hasn't been a stellar day.  Ben woke up too early and didn't feel like going back to sleep so laid in his bed yelling MOM until I came in and unearthed his special blankie from beneath the covers.   Five minutes after that, he had to pee.  I gave up on getting him to go back to bed and hauled him in bed with me to snuggle and watch cartoons.  Well, he snuggled and watched cartoons.  I passed out and felt like a horrible person when I woke up later to realize that I had been ignoring my kid.  Oops.

After an argument over underpants with the little guy I made the amateur mommy mistake of letting him go commando under his jammies since he'd already pooped.

You know where this is going.  He pooped.  And I had to clean to floor.  And the kid.  And the jammies.  Damn it.

After successfully completing the large list of chores I had lined up for the morning, Ben and I celebrated with a picnic lunch.  It was PB&J in the middle of the driveway, not exactly glamorous, but it was so nice out!

After lunch I dragged Ben in the house, up the stairs and to his room where I had to wrestle with him to get a diaper on so he could take a nap.  He didn't seem to think he needed a nap.  He was wrong and I'm bigger, so I won.

While wrestling him back into his pants I heard a strange noise.  How did the dog turn on the shower? I thought to myself.  FYI: Dogs can't turn on showers.  They can sound like a shower as they pee while walking down the (carpeted) stairs, through the dining room to the front door. 

Who doesn't love a urine trail?

So I kissed my kid, stuffed him in his bed and used half a roll of paper towels to soak up what must have been 5 gallons of dog urine from the carpeting on the stairs and the rest of the trail leading to the front door.

Like I said, it hasn't been a stellar day.

Blabber Mouth

Have I mentioned lately that my kid is adorable?  He's turned into quite a chatter box (wonder who he got that from...oops!) and as a result is pretty damn funny to listen to.

He talks to his trains:

"Uh oh Thomas, Percy bump you!  CRASH!  Oh no!  Don't worry Thomas I save you!"

He talks about his friends:

"Mom, Baby Logan loves me."  "He does, why?"  "Because I'm his friend, Mom."

He talks about monsters:

"Mom, there's a monster on the house."  "There is?"  "Yup, it's a green-blue-red one.  It's a red one."

And then he just talks:

"Mom, don't worry about me, I ok."

"WAIT A MINUTE!  I forgot my vitamins!"

"WAIT A MINUTE!  I show you something mom."

"Ben it's time to eat dinner."  "Mom, I caaannnn'tttt waaaannnntt to eat me dinner."

"Mom, it stinks in here."  "I know buddy, it's a bathroom, shhhhh."  "Mom it stinks."  "Shhhh."  "Mom, you pee?  GOOD JOB!!  You want a jelly bean?"  (This conversation took place in a very PUBLIC bathroom.)

"Mom, I'm not handsome.  I'm Ben."


Ok, so I understand if you don't find all of the above the most hilarious things you've ever heard, but I'm telling you, my kid is a riot! 

Yesterday we took him to the Fryeburg Fair to see the animals.  He was pretty excited and pretty impressed.  He loved the cows and the draft horses, he liked the sheep and goats, thought the chickens were cool, but noisy, and loved the little bunny rabbits.  Then we waited for a very, very long time in the line to go in and pet the baby animals.  Which was probably the high light of the afternoon:

 

As you can see, he had a great time!