Do you ever have one of those days which is a lot like living the movie "Tale of Unfortunate Events?" I'm sure all of you have, and true to the pattern of life we all must experience the unfortunate events.

The only problem is sometimes those events are just so lame that we are left wondering and wishing we could just turn back time... just a little, like say 24 hours!

It started yesterday when I set out to cut out material. Ken's lap top was sitting on the floor near his chair where it always sits. Not wanting to step on it I moved it. Looking around for the most logical place to set it I choose the sub woofer that sits behind the chair. To me it's just another piece of furniture. Note to self: NEVER EVER EVER NEVER EVER place a laptop on a sub woofer or speaker. Why??? Well, if you are a woman, most likely you would not know why. If you are a man you will, because most men come into this world somehow already knowing about things such as engines, electricity, and speakers. There is this phenomenon about placing a laptop on a speaker. Underneath all that pretty fake wood over the speaker lurks a magnet the size of your dinner plate. Magnets and laptops do not mix. In fact magnets like to mix up a laptop. After sitting on a speaker for about 8 hours, Ken's laptop entered the realm of laptop heaven, gone, zippo, dead, unusable, has ta la vista baby. In layman's terms: magnets will erase anything and everything usable on a laptop, the memory, motherboard, operating system, the whole shebang. It will not even turn on.

I felt sick to my stomach when I realized what happened. The only redeeming thing of this whole story is how Ken handled it. VERY VERY patiently, lovingly and with forgiveness. I know the horrors of loosing data. The only thing Ken said calmly and quietly was "haven't you ever taken a part a speaker?" Uh, no I thought, I don't think that was offered in Home Ec. class (Of course NOW I want to take our speaker apart just to see the evil magnet). The picture above is of a sub woofer that is see through, OURS is not see through. Ours looks like a box of nice wood. Maybe if I could see in the speaker I would have noticed the huge magnet. Seriously though, Ken was so kind about it even though I knew he must have been wanting to pull out whatever is left of his hair.

It gets worse. I think we were both more worried about what was lost from the laptop, that we didn't even think about the fact that Ken is on call this week. We were reminded of this at 1am in the morning when he got a call from work. Normally this would require dialing in on the special software on the laptop to fix the problem. UNFORTUNATELY this time, with Mr. Dead laptop, Ken had to drive in to work a nice 26 miles one way in the middle of the morning, just to find out it wasn't his problem but another groups problem. I was already feeling small, real real small. By morning I was feeling almost invisible. It was like that airplane commerical "wanna get away?" Ken did not complain. He is amazing.

So this morning my visiting teaching companion and I headed out first thing to help a lady we teach pack up her belongings. The unfortunate events continued on. We never did get to help her pack because somewhere between here and there I got in a auto accident with none other than Ken's truck. FORTUNATELY no one was hurt. The other driver was able to drive away. Ken's truck was not able to drive away. FORTUNATELY we were near Ken's work. UNFORTUNATE that I was already feeling lousy about destroying his laptop, now I had to call him and tell him I crunched his truck. Because he takes the bus to work he had no vehicle so borrowed a co-workers and came to our location. UNFORTUNATELY we had a officer in training, so 2 1/2 hours later we finally got to leave. FORTUNATELY a friend drove 26 miles to come pick us up, Ken included, as he now had to take the rest of the day off to get a rental car and deal with the details. The truck was towed to a repair shop. If we are fortunate it will be repairable. If not, well, I am always telling the kids to not worry about the "what ifs" so I'm going to try and "not worry". We are fortunate to have insurance and I am now unfortunate to not have a clean driving record.

So to say the least, my day was less than desirable, although I continue to remind myself of the blessings, like no one was hurt, it was near Ken's work, he was able to help, our friend was able to pick us up, we were able to get a rental car, the tow truck guy was very nice and gave us some helpful tips. By the time I got home I felt like crawling under a rock. Again, amazingly Ken was very calm, loving and helpful. I don't know how he does it, I'm sure I would be on the war path if the shoe was on the other foot. I'm so glad he balances things out and is willing to "forgive".

I can't wait for tomorrow....another day...I hope it's better. :o)

Well, I’ll tell you how fast at the end of my post.

This school year is just as good as any and seems to continually provide learning opportunities for me as a parent and for my kids.

I learned a very interesting and valuable lesson last week. Let me explain. I always believed that a lot of my “struggles” and “baggage” stemmed from my parents divorce. I believed that I wouldn’t have had to deal with emotional struggles had they not been divorced. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s not a child in this world who will come out of a divorced situation without extra baggage and the cycle of its effects. Even in the most solid of families we will come out with strengths and weaknesses.

Let me continue…

Here’s the first story. Daria is doing fine academically in school and even emotionally she seems to be evening out. As I mentioned previously, the first few weeks of school Daria was one big ball of emotions. She worried that the bus would take her to the wrong place, or drop her off at the wrong place. What if I didn’t pick her up? What if I didn’t meet her for lunch? What if she forgets what the teacher says? The list goes on. Here is the lesson I learned. I thought that in order to have those behaviors one would have had to have experienced situations that reinforced that worry. The bus has never taken Daria to the wrong place. The bus has always dropped her off at the right place. I’ve never missed picking her up, nor have I ever not come to lunch when I said I would. So why was she worrying about this?

Here’s the second story. As a child I worried about everything. I worried that others knew something I didn’t know. I worried about what others were feeling, thinking and doing. I worried about being left behind, forgotten, abandoned (rightfully so as all three of those are effects of children in divorce). I grew up with those feelings along with a lot of “unpredictability”. Add to that negative experiences thus reinforcing my fears. Unpredictability, equaled “pain, fear, loneliness”. There was a lot to worry about in a family that was rocked by divorce. What you knew no longer existed, unknowns, lack of a stable foundation. I could not control my situation so I clamped down hard on the things I could control. I would not try new things because doing so would require one to face the “unpredictable outcome”. One would rather choose the pain of predictable because you knew what to expect while making any changes would be “unpredictable” which was a much worse.

With that said, I found myself perplexed and analyzing this behavior in Daria. She has a very stable predictable family, school, and church environment. So far in her short life Ken and I have never left her behind, abandoned her, or forgotten about her. We validate her feelings and have good communication. Her day to day routines are pretty predictable. So why all the worry from Daria??

Then for the first time ever I realized something HUGE. Our personalities come pre-packaged. Those personalities have strengths and weaknesses. Both of which can be exaggerated and blown out of proportion under certain negative or positive circumstances. Here I was feeling so guilty trying to figure out what I had done to Daria to make her a worrier. But it wasn’t me, it’s just who she is. I believe she has natural tendencies to worry, and I also think this is a normal stage for most children her age. Put that together and you get a huge explosion of extra worry.

I had never before thought that I came pre-packaged with a worrisome personality, fear of failure, and need to control my surroundings. I recognize now that I came with an “A” type personality and unfortunately the circumstances of divorce affected my personality traits in a negative way. This would explain why my siblings and I all came out of it with different repercussions. Our personalities, strengths and weaknesses were different and effected differently. The downside to this knowledge is the realization that one cannot blame their parents forever because part of who we are is who we are and the other part is the outcome of our parents actions. Not to justify any divorce or negative parenting of course, but this realization almost made me laugh out loud. All these years the things I didn’t like about myself I thought were the outcome of my parent’s decisions. Now I know that their decisions just affected my personality the way it did. Now I realize that well, unfortunately we are all born with some personality traits that we’re not to fond of. Mix in any challenges from an imperfect human family and wow! Look what you get!

Now the positive side of what I learned is that fortunately for Daria she does have a stable childhood. So with these personality traits that she has I know that I can work with her and teach her coping skills, thinking patterns, and tools for overcoming. For me this is a more desirable situation than trying to re-train a child who has been traumatized by things out of their control.

So with all of that said, let me get back to my macaroni story. On Friday I had committed to go to lunch with both kids. Dustin has lunch at 10:30am. I usually just sit with him since I’m so not ready for lunch at 10:30 in the morning. Daria’s lunch is at 12:15pm. Today she wanted me to bring macaroni and cheese. At home I was quickly working on some projects, steadily keeping my eye on the time. Then my sister called and we talked and talked and talked. I didn’t think a thing of it. I kept looking at the time. About 12:03 I began to think I should wrap the conversation up so I could head to school. Then in about a mili-second later as I’m still on the phone walking down stairs I spot the box of macaroni on the counter. I had strategically placed it on the counter to remind me to make it for her. Panic struck! I’m supposed to be at the school at 12:15! Do I make the mac & cheese and arrive late? Or do I just go and say I forgot to make the mac & cheese and buy her lunch there? Oh the anxiety!!!! Why? Because it almost seemed like Daria’s worry actually coming to reality. WHAT IF I’M LATE???? Then she will confirm in her head that it’s ok to worry about mom missing her lunch!!!!! AAAAHHHHHH.

Well, I will tell you that the box of mac& cheese says you can cook it for 5-9 minutes. That is of course if your water is already boiling. I decided that I needed to show up on time with the mac&cheese because I didn’t want to slide on either commitment. I said a quick prayer and I think that water boiled faster than any water I’ve ever seen boil. I tried not to stare at it because everyone knows that if you stare at water it won’t boil fast (LOL). About 12:13 I threw the mac&cheese, grapes and some dogs in a bag and flew out the door. Unlucky for me the parking lot was full. I parked on the street and ran. Funny that as I was running through the parking lot I pass my good friend Jenni who was also going to lunch with her son. She wasn’t in a hurry. I was on a mission to prove my daughters fears wrong! Fortunately my badge from my earlier lunch with Dustin was already printed out and waiting for me, so I grabbed it and headed to the cafeteria. Daria’s class had already arrived and she was sitting staring at the door with anxious eyes. I do believe she had faith that I would come. I did not say a word about my dilemma, but I did warn her that she needed to be careful, the mac&cheese was VERY hot. She opened up the bowl and all this steam came billowing out. I think it was still cooking. She told me later that she wondered just a little bit if I was coming. I told her she should always give me about 5 minutes, depending on finding a parking space, how many other people are in line waiting to get their badges. These are all possibilities. I left content that everything worked out fine. If we hadn’t gone through this huge worry stage lately I may not have reacted so dramatic about it, but I was NOT going to let her fears be re-enforced.

Anyway, even though times like this can be stressful, they are some of my favorite times because I end up learning so much about myself that I never knew before.

Oh the saga of motherhood! You’ve got to love it!

I really don't have anything to blog about. No funny stories from the kids, no exciting adventures, no strange encounters. Life is.. well, quite normal. A good friend of mine mentioned that sometimes reading blogs makes it look like we have these exciting lives. I think we all do in a way, but the blog is just a accumulation of experiences and events. But the majority of the time, life is just as mundane as the next family. Up early, breakfast, backpacks, piano practice, walk to school, cleaning, errands, projects, cooking, helping kids with homework, showers and baths, bed time scripture reading, playing, complaints. I think we can all relate. Still, I love to blog and I'm VERY dutiful about checking all of my friends blogs everyday, and sometimes twice a day just to see if they posted. It's quite an addiction. I always look forward to reading about each of your lives and the day to day musings of being a parent, mother, friend, sister, daughter. It gives me the boost I need sometimes.

I read a book one time about how women are relationship beings. In our day and age we can find ourselves so busy that we tend to have more acquaintances than close friends because we don't have the time to nurture them (rightfully so, our time in life right now has many priorities). I realized that for me, my friends blogs have become a great way to get back in touch with my closest friends (who if I lived near them, would be going to lunch!), when there is no time for a phone call or e-mail.

So with that said, thank you for your blogs where you share your life, family, and thoughts.

Here is a cute video that I think each of us could totally appreciate. It just sums it all up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uISuvTiTYJA

There are some weekends that are busy and exhausting. This weekend was busy but not really exhausting. Everything just fell into place. Friday night, even with a booming headache we were able to play a game of Settlers with our good friend Ashley who is visiting. The fun part was staying up until 12:00am talking. That same night Ken surprised me with an early birthday present. A nice sleek new lap top. It’s a very long story regarding the laptop. Especially since I have never liked lap tops…until a few weeks ago when Ino did some kind of salesman circus trick showing me what I could actually do with a laptop side by side with a bigger screen monitor. I was sold. (I’m such a visual person. If you want to sell me something you have to “show” me its benefits). Ken, who is the master of finding good deals found some guy on Craig’s list who won this computer bundle and didn’t need it so sold it for a crazy low price. Ken couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I love how good he is at that.

Saturday morning was our turn to clean the church building. We are the team captains. We are also very lucky as our group always shows up. So it only takes us about 30-40 minutes tops. We went from clean up to Ken refereeing the young women’s volleyball games. I cleaned out the deep freezer. It needs a deep cleaning periodically as ice builds up on the insides. The kids squandered the ice and played with their Playmobil figures on the ice and snow. Very creative. I cataloged what was in the freezer which makes meal planning so much easier. Amazingly even with the cool air hitting my face I was hotter than a frying pan. The joys of living here. My main purpose for cleaning the freezer was not to produce snow for the kids, but because we were getting another order of amazing fruit from Bithel Farms. This is a berry company out of Oregon. I believe they will drop fruit anywhere as long as they get enough orders. So ladies, if you know a bunch of other ladies who want fruit it’s a great deal. I usually always get the red raspberries, individually frozen. Twenty Nine dollars for 14 pounds (it came out to about 12 quarts bagged). Not a bad deal. This time I also ordered dark pitted cherries. For the next 6 months we will have fresh fruit for our breakfast, snacks, and deserts. Yum!

Saturday night I attended an interfaith concert at our church commemorating service men and women of the military, law enforcement and firefighters etc. This is the 3rd year in a row our church has hosted it. After last night I wished I had gone to the previous 2. It was phenomenal and very well put together. I don’t know how to explain it but I become so teary eyed and weepy when participating in events that honor those who serve our country and cities. It’s the same feeling I get when we sing our national anthem or America the Beautiful and Battle Hymn of the Republic. Maybe I’m just a sap. One of the last songs commemorated each of these arms of service and the people were asked to stand when their portion was being sung. Tears were in the crowd as first you would see the police and firemen stand up, then the Navy, then Army, then Marines and Air Force. Very moving! Many in attendance were decorated soldiers, old and young. What a treat!

Sunday the Young Women put on a beautiful Sacrament program. Kat sang a beautiful solo portion of one of the songs. What a powerful voice she has, it was very moving (Kat I know you are reading this so WAY TO GO! You really shined up there and it brought tears to my eyes!) The spirit was so strong. So I would say it was a good day.

We spent a small portion of time this evening at the children’s hospital visiting a friend of ours from church whose daughter was bit by a snake Friday night. She’s only 4. It amazes me that we can transplant hearts, make tissue grow, and do a myriad of procedures but for a snake bite it’s a painful, scary wait. Unfortunately in this situation they did not know what type of snake it was. So no anti-venom could be used. What happens now is the poison just sits, travels, and swells in the body. Her leg is extremely swollen but still has a pulse which is a good thing. As a mother, I recognize the fear and anxiety that would come from worrying and watching over your young child hoping that your child will be ok. Fortunately, I think the visitors made her day and from what we are told that boosted her spirits. We are hoping for a good outcome.

Hey! Good news, we finally have BYU tv. And we didn’t have to go through Dish or Direct TV to get it. We are pretty stoked about that. (Celeste, add that to your 50 reasons why you should move back here)

Here we go with another week of school. Daria seems to have evened out now and is pretty happy about class. She has learned all that crazy information about “addends and subtrahends” because my friend Jenni, who as her husband says “could teach a rock to talk” sat down with Daria and Logan and did some really cool teaching techniques. She really does have a gift of being able to teach anyone something in a way that they will understand.

Dustin seems to live and breathe for school right now. He’s only 5. Here’s how excited he is for school. He picks his clothes out the night before and lays them on his bed. When I wake him up in the morning, he gets dressed and makes his bed (without me asking) and gets everything ready for the day. He complains that I make his lunch for him, he wants to do it himself. It really cracks me up (the making of the bed that is). Could it be that my son has inherited some of my “a type” personality?? Who knows how long it will last but I will enjoy it while it’s here.

Daria: "Mom you’re the best mom in the whole university." Apparently I’m still in the schooling phase of motherhood. I’m glad I’m the top in my class.

Dustin finally rode the bus today. I think he was more excited to ride the bus than going to school. It was painful for him to wait. He’s asked every day. We have a long tradition of walking to school, which the kids love. Sometimes they walk, sometimes they run. Sometimes they pick berries, other times they play games. Most parents like to get their kids on the bus the first day of school to get them used to it, I wasn’t falling into that trick. The first week of school is always a crazy bus schedule. This year proved no different. I had friends whose kids weren’t getting home until 5pm! That’s par for the first week of school. Dustin felt the wait to ride the bus was unbearable. I reminded him that he will be in school for about fourteen years. He’ll have plenty of opportunities to ride the bus. This idea didn’t help. I did however remind him that most of the day he is sitting and that riding the bus is just more sitting. Walking gets the wiggles out. Our plan is to actually ride our bikes but I have yet to go buy another bike lock. It’s on my list.
When he arrived home today (at 4:20p, as opposed to 3:43 when I can pick him up) he jumped off the bus and did some sort of jiggly dancing yelling hooting and hollering jive, to show me how fun it was to ride the bus. Good for him!

Dariator…..I’m borrowing that nick name from a friend (you know who you are). Daria is such a loving sweet caring, fuzzy wuzzy little girl….usually. Since starting third grade she is Dariator. In fact starting third grade has been an experience sort of like visiting a different planet. She’s been a big blubbering ball of tears, worries, “what-if”, “school is hard”, “what if the bus doesn’t drop me off” you name it. It’s caught me off guard to say the least but I’m sure this stage will pass. Luckily she came home today in a great mood (as opposed to the tears this morning)

I don’t blame her. Kindergarten through 2nd grade is a breeze here. Third grade is intense compared to three years of learning your letters and colors (ha, ha). Thanks to the No Child Left Behind, Daria’s already taken one pre-test for TAAS (I think that’s just for the teacher to see where she is at) and 5 days into school and she’s already received another “practice” test for next week. So teaching to the test has already started! Tell me why a third grader needs to know what a “minuend” and “subtrahend” is already? Hello people IT’S THIRD GRADE!

Dustin is well, slightly over prepared for Kindergarten. That’s ok, it will all even out. Last night at orientation we were given the Kindergarten site words to work on with our children. There are 30 of them. Dustin already knows 28 and the other 12 he can already sound out. I did not teach him the site words, I had no idea which ones they were. I did however teach him how to read which makes all the difference. Ooops! Well, as soon as he turns those in he will be working on the 1st grade site words. It doesn’t seem to bother him. In fact he has no idea he’s ahead of the game and I’m sure not going to tell him. He’s so stoked for class that no matter what he’s asked to do he loves it.

There are a lot of fun things about growing up, most of which I’ve experienced as a parent. There are a lot of things I missed out on as a kid, mainly due to my lack of self confidence or motivation. In this case my huge aversion to balls, or any sport that includes balls. I dislike them and the balls dislike me. When it comes to sports I think of things like mountain biking or figure skating. No balls! I can’t remember a time where I’ve played a ball sport and not been clobbered by the ball. Fast forward 20+ years. The ladies in the Relief Society at church have a volley ball group. Once a week starting at 8:30pm and they play until they decide they don’t want to play anymore. My friend Mary encouraged me to go. This made me laugh. Of all the ball sports volleyball is the one that I really try to avoid. But being an adult now I have a slight sense of control and figured I would try it out. She promised me it was just for fun, no competition. True to her words it was fun. There are a few ladies who played volleyball in college, very good players but they are there for the fun of it. The rest of us are not very good at it but it was worth it. We played until about 11pm. I think we laughed ourselves silly, and all of us got a great workout. For the first time of my life I didn’t run or duck from the ball (well, except when Tia was serving) and I actually scored about 8 points total. The best part about it was the other ladies are so encouraging. They gave me pointers and would always tell me when I did well. Being an adult is much more enjoyable than being a teenager. I like that I can re-live some of those spots from my childhood and live it without all that peer pressure to perform.

Ok, not really. I’ve intended to blog almost everyday this week but just wasn’t motivated enough to get to it. Each time I got close I hesitated because I felt a bit aloof with wanting to share my feelings about this week.

So exciting news! Dustin started Kindergarten. As usual I go through changes and stages with bags of mixed emotions. I’m almost afraid to admit it for fear of other mothers feeling guilty for “Oh My, feeling different!” (as we mother’s are so good at comparing ourselves and beating ourselves up for having different opinions or feelings), so just know that I admire all of you for who you are and how you live your lives, and especially how you parent. I mean come on, if I didn’t admire you, we probably wouldn’t be friends. With that said this week has been one of extreme excitement and a sad longing for a stage now done. I admit I’m one of those insane mom’s who dreads it when the school year starts. I enjoy having the kids at home, and somehow when I see them walk into school, my lack of memory skills makes me forget all the fighting, whining, complaining, and wild behavior that comes along with having kids at home, and then I become overly sentimental.

I don’t remember going through these emotions when Daria started school. Undoubtedly because she was my “first” and everything is so exciting. In fact I only remember getting sad for Dustin who painfully realized that his constant playmate was now gone all day. He would sit on the stairs with his chin in his hands, elbows on knees and say “I miss my Daria”. I still had Dustin at home to keep me occupied and my mind off of the fact that Daria was at school.

I am excited for Dustin. There was a sense of thrill as I watched him proudly enter his new classroom. It’s always fun to watch your kids face the new stages of life. Right before school started I started to worry, you know the long Guilt List of Motherhood: “Did I do enough with him?” “Did I teach him enough?” “What if he doesn’t do well because he didn’t attend pre-school?” The list goes on. Daria never had any problems starting school. I had her in a little pre-school co-op with some other mothers and home schooled her successfully teaching her to read. She was prepared and confident. I hoped for the same with Dustin. I chose to home school him for preschool which also turned out to be a lot of fun. It’s something I like to do and I recognize it’s not everyone’s bag of tea. I love teaching my kids, for those of you who know me you know I’ve always waffled on the decision to home school or public school. Both I think are great options. Because Dustin was a bit older before going to Kindergarten I had to step up my game and lesson plans, and include experiments and field trips. For us it worked out.

I was pleasantly surprised at how confident he seemed going to school the first day. All my fears kind of washed away. He’s so completely excited he can hardly stand it. On Tuesday he said “Mom, yesterday I liked school, but now I love it”. It is so fun to see him so excited and interested in learning.

With all that excitement I am also left with the residue of gracefully (or trying to at least) moving on to a different stage of motherhood (yeah right). Sure there are a lot of exciting options but I’m still accepting and dealing with my feeling of “missing the kids at home stage of life”. In time it will change but I’m all about validating feelings. I’m not the only one. I think Ken was just as sad as I was. His comment after walking Daria to her class was “they are growing up so fast”.

Monday after walking the kids to school I went to brunch with the girls at Panera, complete with the 50 pack of German chocolates that Betsty brought to celebrate. I abstained of course but enjoyed the aroma. That was a lot of fun. Coming home was odd. I’m so used to getting this routine going with Dustin. So I spent the day digging through closets and preparing things for a garage sale.

Now that my kids are in school I’m finding out a lot of things.

1.I’m still as busy as I was before. I just don’t have the extra dimension of integrating a kid into my lists of “to-do’s”
2.Of course I enjoy being able to do some things without kids, or having a babysitter, but the quietness in the house is deafening.
3.I miss the rustling of kid noises.
4.I like being able to do some things without finding someone to swap kids with.
5.I’m not a very funny person. In fact Daria and I are so much alike. We are very serious people. This can be a negative quality at times. Dustin on the other hand is a lot like Ken, trying to be funny all the time. Dustin is our “glad” boy, no matter what happens he is almost instantly glad or happy afterwards. This is a good quality. So I find that I miss the “positive” vibes that he would spread through the house. I think it was his daily goal to make me laugh. At times it would irritate me (some things he thinks are funny are just not funny to me).
6.I can actually look at my lists of projects or “have to do’s” and create some sort of schedule and feel like I’m accomplishing something.
7.I totally miss putting together school lessons. I’m a sucker for shopping at the teacher’s supply stores.
8.In the past the hours after school were the most harried. My hope was to get things prepared enough to spend some time with the kids when they got home. I’m finding that I don’t function well without a schedule. So far this week (are you ready for this….this comes from me and the kids who can literally go a week without watching TV), when the kids got home we went through backpacks, talked about their school days and then watched Little House on the Prairie….every day. I felt so off balance thinking there must be something I’m supposed to be doing. But I was doing something, enjoying time with the kids.
9.I am totally excited to be able to volunteer at the school more this year. I love that!
10.I’m finding that once you have your kids in school you start getting all sorts of advice or comments like “So what are you going to do now?”, “you are going to be so bored”, “you better get involved in this or that or you’ll go crazy” “now you can live your life!!” (As if I wasn’t living it before?)
11. I’m finding that you get a lot of questions that make you feel like you’re from another planet like “what in the world do you do all day?” “Why aren’t you going to get a job?” “you must love having all that time to yourself” (as if I’m spending all day pampering myself! Yeah right)

At any rate, it takes all of us mother’s to make the world go around, so I’m just going to keep going forward!