In The News . . .

We haven't had an update around here in a while. Let's catch up, shall we?

In, homeschool news, this week we've been doing a little end of the year review. Baby Boy will be taking his college entrance exam in a week or so. (We'll take some positive vibes aimed directly at his brain, please) I'm trying not to think about the fact he probably won't need me to teach him next year. (I'm not really teaching now, just sort of facilitating) If all goes well, we'll probably start next semester with one class at the community college and the rest here at home, although a greatly modified schedule.


In just plain old growing up news, Baby Boy can drive like nobody's business. Now I get to ride shotgun everywhere we go. He drives me to his tae kwon do classes. He drives me to the library. He drives me to his Ultimate Frisbee games. He drives me anywhere he or I need to go. He can drive. I think after he passes (remember positive vibes) his college entrance exam, I'll take him to trade in that provisional driver's license for a real one.


In hallelujah news, it looks like Mom is on her way to moving out. Not right away, but definitely in a few weeks. She can't really live alone or work right now, but it turns out that she has two daughters, not just one. I do have a sister, I'm not sure if you all remember, she's just a little, you know . . . selfish. I'm not sure how this happened, but my sister decided to move from a 2 bedroom apartment into a 4 bedroom apartment and she is going to let Mom move in with her so she can have 2 rooms instead of just the one that we can offer her over here. I can have all of my house back. Yah!!! I think it's financially beneficial to my sister because Mom will be splitting expenses out of the alimony that my Dad pays her (she never ponies up a dime around here, but I digress). Whatever. If she knew what I know, she'd give up that money and keep her sanity, but I'm not going to tell her. Mom has moved all the way out of her apartment and put all of her stuff in storage for now. It took a long time to get her to accept the fact that she won't be working or living alone anytime soon, so these are great leaps. She still has to see her therapist twice a month and her psychiatrist once a month, and I'll be the one accompanying her to those appointments, but my family can really use a little breathing room. This is one concession I'm willing to make. I haven't figured out how I'll monitor her to make sure she's taking her medication daily, maybe I'll install a nanny-cam. Who the heck knows?


In gardening news, we had our first harvest this week. Green beans. Too bad Mom #2 is too lazy to update her gardening blog . . . see her blog way down at the bottom of my blog roll to the right . . . because the green beans are just the beginning. We have lettuces, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, cucumbers and lots of other goodies on the way. Maybe I'll get some photos later. Maybe not.


Well . . . I think that pretty much sums up everything that we have going on around here. I hope you are all having a great week and planning a fabulous weekend coming up. It's already hot as Hades here, so I'm planning my entire weekend around air conditioning!


Take care!



Until next time . . .

Thump on out of here!

Early this morning just as the sun was rising . . .

. . . I found this adorable little intruder dining on some of Mom #2's romaine lettuce in her garden.

By the time I wiped the sleep from my eyes, got over my shock, ran in and found my camera, and came back out and focused it . . . Thumper was done dining and just wondering how he could safely get the heck out of dodge.

In case you're wondering, he's inside the chicken wire surrounding our garden, and I'm outside.

He's so cute, but something is definitely wrong with this picture, LOL.

Maybe Mom #2 needs to get some cute-little-bunny-rabbit-wire. ;-)


Everyone have a great holiday weekend!


Until next time . . .

Has it Been a Year . . . ALREADY????

Well, a certain Grand-Baby-Girl turned one year old last week and she had a fun filled pool party with about a hundred of her closest friends and family (If you're familiar with the Hispanic tradition of First Birthday Parties, you'll know I am NOT exaggerating).

She had so much fun being the star of her birthday party!

She kicked the festivities off by lounging in the pool . . .

. . . Then she graced us with the opening of the gifts . . .

. . . The blowing out of candles . . .

. . . And finally, eating her delicious birthday cake!

A great time was had by all!


Oh, just in case you noticed a slight swell in her Mommy's tummy, yes, she is pregnant again . . . with twins. After the initial shock, we've all decided we're very happy, although I've been really researching lazy-teenager-friendly forms of birth control. Feel free to drop me a line if you know of any. ;-)


Until next time . . .

Clankety Clack!

Who would have thought that a cup of coffee could drive a person insane? Listen up. I'll tell you how it most certainly can.

I have never drank an entire cup of coffee in my life. I have tasted it on a couple of occasions, but I just don't like the taste of it . . . so no coffee for me. None. Ever. No coffee. I stick to my morning orange juice for my pick-me-up.

Sometimes Mom #2 will drink a cup of coffee or two during the winter, if she's working outside, as we Texans require adequate warmth from the inside out if the temperature ever dares to dip below 40 degrees. This doesn't happen too often and I don't like the way her breath smells after she drinks coffee, so she usually just sticks to her delicious homemade Mexican hot chocolate. That's a whole different post, so enough about that.

For the most part though, during the decade or so that we've been together, there's been no coffee in this house.

Enter my Mom.

She loves coffee. She usually drinks about 10 cups a day. Due to her new prescription cocktail, she's been put on decaff, but she's making up for that by just having 40,000 cups a day. I'm sure it's terrible for her, but it keeps her from harassing me all day long somewhat sane, so we're just letting her drink herself into oblivion have as many as she likes.

It's not the actual drinking of the coffee that bothers me. It's the coffee preparation ritual. She is so LOUD! Here's the rundown:

• She makes a big pot of coffee three or four times a day and then microwaves single cups all day long. . . so she slams the microwave door shut and yanks it open a hundred thousand times a day.
  

• She has become addicted to one specific coffee mug, so she has to rinse it out not to mention waste gallons and gallons of water a million kajillion times a day.

• She has to measure her cream and sugar just so, so she has to drag out, open, close and shove back the ceramic canisters across my counter tops fifty-eleven times a day.

• Don't forget the stirring. She has to use a metal teaspoon against a glass mug and stir stir stir a bazillion stirs for each of her cups of coffee (I think we've already addressed how many that is.)

• And finally . . . and I know you knew this was coming . . . the slurping! Yes the slurping! OH THE SLURPING! All day long and all night strong: slurp-slurp-slurp-slurp-slurp! If it's that darn good, JUST DRINK IT! She has about a hundred million gazillion slurps per cup.

Did I forget to mention that my bedroom is directly outside of the kitchen?

My Mom keeps extremely odd hours. So several times a night, after I've fallen deep into sleep, I am awakened by this coffee-preparation ritual. That's actually fine. It gives me a chance to go to the bathroom a few gagillion times a night so that I never have to worry about stretching out my bladder ever again in this lifetime.

What really gets my goat is that she has to get up and do this same clankety-clack ritual at about 6:30, 7:00 and 7:30 every morning. I hate being awakened by noise. I like to wake up peacefully and quietly at 8:00 every morning. I know that's not early to a lot of you, but it's early enough for me. And it's quiet. It's the specific time of day in this house when no one else is doing anything. I require peace and quiet or I wake up and instantly become mean as heck and proceed to take it out on my entire family all the live-long day. So everyone except my super self centered Mother usually goes out of their way to keep the morning routine quiet and drama free.

So if you wonder why I've been so sporadic in my blogging lately, it's because I've been in an extremely bad mood for 10 or 12 weeks.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. I'm not quite counting my chickens before they hatch . . . but . . . it has been rumored that someone may be moving out in about 30 days. I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm keeping quiet until I have more details, but I will go ahead and take those good vibes now. In case my point is being lost in my subtlety, I said NOW!



Until next time . . .

Delicously Dead-On!

Kitten had this cute little funny over at her blog and I thought that since I'd neglected to post anything of any real interest this past week . . . I'd give it a try.

What's so funny is how accurate it is. It just took a minute so go on over and try it for yourself.

Seriously, what flavor smoothie are you? I'm blueberry, by the way.

You Are a Blueberry Smoothie

You are original and expressive. You have a strong, vibrant personality. You tend to be attracted to the unconventional and obscure things in life. You have strong opinions and preferences, even if they do tend to change a lot. You are not particularly artistic, but you have an artist's temperament.

What Flavor Smoothie Are You?

Until next time . . .

Happy Mother's Day!!!!!!!

To all the Moms who have made cyber-blog-land the fantastic place it is to visit. Here is a virtual bouquet from my heart to yours. In appreciation for the toughest yet most important job (with the worst pay rate) on the planet.

Happy Mother's Day!!!

Take the day off, relax and put those darn kids to work cooking, cleaning, making dinner and most importantly . . . washing those after dinner dishes!


You deserve it!!!!



Until next time . . .

He's Got the Cutest Little Baby Face . . .

Baby Boy reached another milestone this past weekend.


Mom #2 and I couldn't bear one more moment of having to look at that long Christmas tinsel growing underneath Baby Boy's chin.


So we had to resign ourselves to the fact that it was time for . . . his first shave:

How'd that get in my house?

We have no experience with this. Thank goodness for You Tube University.

Enjoying his mom's pain just a little bit too much!

He's growing up. Which naturally means that I must be getting old.


WHHHHAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!


Nothing more to say. *SIGH*


(Oh, yeah, and have a great week!)



Until next time . . .

With a Song (and a scalpel) in His Heart

I know some of you were pretty grossed out by the eye dissection photos, so I tried to put a warning in the title this time. If the warning was lost on you and you find yourself to be the squeamish type, this is your last chance:

GET OUT NOW!

I hope y'all don't find these dissection photo essays boring. This is a (supposed to be) a homeschooling blog, and I am raising a future surgeon after all . . . so it's a formality that simply must be done.

Let me say again, in advance, all intelligence is courtesy of Baby Boy. Proof positive that you don't have to be smarter than your children to teach them . . . otherwise everyone over here would be in big trouble.

He labeled the points of interest on each photograph. It looked pretty good on my computer, but once I uploaded them, I noticed how small the text is. Since going back to redo them simply will not be happening today, you can always click on any photo to see a larger more detailed version.


So . . . without further ado . . . The Cow Heart Dissection.

Intact Cow Heart in Baby Boy's Hands

View of Open Main Ventricles of the Heart

Bisected Heart

Open Pulmonary Trunk

So, there ya go.

In other news, we are all doing well here.

We had a super busy week, but since it's Friday, we aren't even going to worry our pretty little heads about it anymore. My Mom had to go out of town for the weekend to a funeral and I sent her with my Dad, so I'm off duty as the nurse de jour this weekend. We're all so excited about having the house to ourselves for a couple of days (although we love Mom and she's more than welcome to stay as long as she wants )

Baby Boy's taking next week off from school work, so you can probably hear him bouncing off the walls from wherever you are. I have some work to do that will keep me very busy, but hopefully we'll have a little time for some interesting, educational and exciting field trips. We'll see!


I hope you all had a great week and have a wonderful weekend coming up!


Until next time . . .