Oh dear...

I've decided to rename the group of months known as July, August and September. I am no longer calling them "summer"; they are now to be known as "Swearing Weather". As in, "Yes, it certainly is swearing weather today."

If you walk out the front door and spontaneously take the Lord's name in vain, it must be...


Oh yeah mama. Damn it's hot.

The (temporary) end of the world as we know it...

What to do?! It's raining in Florida! And we're not talking about the "if it's 2:00, it must be thunderstorming" kind of rain -- it has been raining for hours with no end in sight!

The kids have resorted to a dump-and-spread sort of activity that involves singing "Get Along Cow" and accidentally dumping half of a bookcase. Maybe you had to be there to understand. Heck, I was there, and I don't understand. But my 11-year-old daughter is now reading a big ass book entitled "Biblical Literacy". (Somehow that one didn't get exactly dog-eared from repeated readings.) They're now carrying the books through the house, and I'm not stopping them. Why?

One reason. I've lost the will to live. Remember the phrase, "A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine?" (Okay, if you're under 35, just nod and smile.) See, in Florida, a day without sunshine is a Big Deal! We lose the will to live without at least 8 hours of sunshine a day. Sure, we curse it all summer, but it's still there, giving us a will to live.

Now the kids are searching the house for The Boy's DS. It's small, dark, and glossy. Yeah, they'll find it. Reeeeeeal soon. I've suggested cleaning his room first, but he just looked at me like I was nuts.

What I want to do is make a roadtrip to Lowe's. The Girl "needs" a ballet barre, and I've figured out how to make one with saw horse brackets, two 2x4's and some PVC. I'll post pictures if I can get it to work.

But alas, it rains still. Can't breathe. Reaching for the light... Rose... Bud...

It's official...

The Boy is headed into teenage-hood. Last night when I put him (forcibly) into bed at 12:30 am, my son asked me, "Mom, why do you have to ruin my life?" I told him, of course, that I couldn't ruin his life until he was 14, when children usually start claiming this. Then I took all his electronics and turned out the lights. Check. And. Mate.

In case you're curious,

if you (or your freakin' father) upgrades your Internet Explorer to version 9, you will not be able to post using blogspot. You will need to remove the upgrade. From ask.com:


Open up your Control Panel from the start menu and click on "Uninstall A Program", in the bottom left corner. On the left side of the window, click on "View Installed Updates". When it gets done loading, simply click on "Windows Internet Explorer 9"(or something like that that's obviously IE 9), and click "Uninstall". Once it's gone, remember to restart(there will be a prompt saying this also). When your computer restarts, open up Internet Explorer, and voila! It'll be back to IE 8, and all your favorites and such should be there. I'd go through and check various setting you might have set just in case, but everything should be the same.


Because you (or your father) were so proud of upgrading everything to make it so much better. 'Cause we all know that newer is better. ;)

Testing, testing. Is this thing on?

Just checking -- because I just can't get posts to freaking publish.

Team Verge (GO TEAM!)

I'm sure I've mentioned Team Verge before. My father coined the phrase years ago when the kids were babies. He was referring to the way The Husband and I work together on jobs, never overlapping, always interlocking. It's a beautiful thing -- it refreshes my belief in marriage.

For example, let's say a child vomits at 3am. Who gets up? Everybody. I carry the child off to the bathroom to let him finish throwing up, clean him up, and re-dress him. While I'm taking care of the child, The Husband strips the bed and remakes it, rinses the sheets in the kitchen sink, and starts the washing machine. In under 10 minutes, everyone's back in bed, some of us with a barf bucket, some not.

Everything we do is like that. I dig weeds; he bags them. I elevate wallpaper; he navigates. I clean; he tidies. I cook dinner; he makes salad and gets it on the table. I wash laundry; he folds it.

So anyway, half of Team Verge is out of town for a few days this week, learning how to fly around in a hurricane. (Yes, I DID let him. He looked so pitiful.) And I'm on my own, trying to remember who feeds the cats, who takes the trash to the curb, who collects the dishes from the living rooms at the end of the day.

Enter (wait for it) The Boy! I swear, if anything were to happen to The Husband, he'd just move into the master suite and take over. He's emptying the dishwasher (for pay) and feeding cats. He keeps me company (despite my best efforts) until nearly midnight when I'm finally ready to pack it in for the night. He's my Mini Me.

I'm not sure this is entirely a good thing, though. I mean, I want him as part of Team Verge, but I'm just not sure where he fits in. And I'm not sure I want him sneaking into my bed while I'm asleep. I love him but I need my space. And The Husband and I need our space.

But, it's time to make room for an apprentice on Team Verge. All hail Team Verge!!

Now, what onerous chores can I offload while he's still excited about it... ;)

...and the living is easy.

Yup. Still alive. Lacking drama, but still alive.

We survived vacation, but The Girl is still stimming like a crazed, rabid badger. The Boy enjoyed it immensely. Lots of Wii with the cousins. We did some laundry at my sisters on the way home, and arrived here with clean clothes. Ahh, the luxury...

The home owner's association met with me this week to assess the disaster that is my yard. Turns out that my evil neighbor (the one that tried to trap my cat) turned me in to the HOA. Yeah, real classy. Anyway, we're on track to remediate the wreckage, so they're cool with it. Looks like I'm going to have to buy another pallet of sod, but that's another sad, sad tale.

The Boy went bowling with a buddy last weekend, and he's still buzzing. I was naturally skeptical, but if anyone could handle whatever The Boy dishes out, it was this mom. It all went well, with the exception of a radio-station-related coup attempt in the car. She straightened his butt out. No prob. I've always hears of heartstrings, and I swear I could feel them strain and stretch as I drove away. *sigh* I know that's the goal, but it's still hard for me.

We're still schooling but only halfheartedly. Okay, The Girl is going gangbusters, but The Boy is running out of work pretty quickly. It's a good thing. If only I could keep him awake during the day and asleep at night. I swear that kid has been bitten by zombies. And I'm turning into the walking dead.

Nothing else is new. I'm still keeping the house pretty well. Okay, at least I'm catching up by the end of the week, but that counts, right? I think I'm supposed to be cleaning the fridge today, but apparently, it's not getting done until... later, okay?!

And it's summer. In Florida. Yuck. The Husband is trying to enforce "beach night" on Thursdays, and I just can't get into it yet. It's hot, salty, jellyfishy, and dirty. It's why God created swimming pools. That said, there can't be anywhere lovelier than the beach in the evening. Oh well.

So, that's why I haven't posted. It's summertime, and the living is easy.