Happy Father’s Day!!

Y’all may not get the hype Moms do, but you deserve that and much more!!!

Still, it doesn’t mean I can’t poke fun 😉

Hope y’all have a wonderful day, and make sure to treat the dads like the Sith Emperors they wish to be!!

Shopping for Daddy

In one phrase: it’s hell.

My dad is happy with a gift card to Barnes and Noble™. DONE!!! My father-in-law? Cooking stuff. DONE!! But Hubby? He doesn’t want anything. He has stacks of gifts still in boxes for which he has no use. One year, I gave him a miniature Stonehenge for his desk. It’s in a drawer, along with the Leonardo Da Vinci 3D Vitruvian Man. Oh, and yesterday I found his stash of plush microbes.

Yes, he has some of those. He is a pathologist, after all!

It’s sweet that he always tells us he doesn’t want anything, but it’s difficult to make Father’s Day special for him. This summer he was invited to return to Hungary to a medical school there, and I’m seriously thinking of packing him up and screaming “HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!!!” as he passes through TSA checkpoints. It would be a lot simpler!!

What are y’all’s plans for the dads in your life?

The Best Gifts

This morning, a local radio personality posted a photo of an early Mother’s Day gift made by her young son. He made and decorated a cake, just for her. I fell in love with it, because it is so simple and and loving a gift for his mom, and because he thought of doing this just for her.

I remember growing up, we kids didn’t have much in the way of spending money, but we went out of our way to learn how to make Mom’s coffee (thick enough to stand a spoon in it, and strong enough to make the spoon disintegrate), and picked flowers from the field (not from her garden, since she probably would have had a cow), and make her cards in our very questionable artistic abilities. To this day my mother still has some of my sister’s cartoon characters displayed on her refrigerator.

 

I still have my kids’ hand prints, and their hand made cards, and ornaments. I love the thought they put into the items they make, and the sentiments they write. Motherhood is a very bumpy road, but I have never regretted the path taken. I am blessed every day, even when taxed by growing pains of every eventuality, and thank the Good Lord for the blessings He has given me through my children. I look forward to opening my cards this Sunday, and laughing and crying over them, as I always do.

I also look forward to hopefully not cooking, but I’m not holding my breath for that 😉

Bearing a Sadness

No, I can’t say that I am depressed. I have seen friends who have suffered from depression, and I can honestly say I’m nowhere near that. For that I am grateful. I don’t think I could write a post if I were in such pain.

I am, however, feeling very sad. It sometimes happens to me. It’s not cyclical, or even predictable as some hysterical maladies can be, if you get my drift! It just happens. The timing of this sucks rocks, though. I am used to keeping a cheerful face for the kids, but this time the whole family knows I am not myself. Trying to allay fears and lessen the impact is difficult, though. Usually this passes after a few days, and I hope that this time it will pass a bit more quickly than that. I am not one to wallow in self-pity. Unless I spill my coffee. But I am having a tough time keeping it under wraps. So, forgive me friends for my absence at your blogs. I promise I shall return eventually, as caustic and sarcastic as ever.

It’s just going to take me a little time 🙂

Back in the Groove

Some of you may be familiar with what I’m typing about. Hubby is deployed for a certain amount of time, and upon return, we need to re-establish our habits once again. Last time he was deployed, I pretty much left him alone for the first few weeks, letting him acclimatize to his surroundings again. It makes for a weird living arrangement, but it seems to work.

This time I figured on doing the same thing. After all, the Sinai is not exactly the most stable region in the area. But I get a vibe that some things have changed in the weirdest ways. Yesterday he told me he was ready to get rid of his old clothes, since “that’s not his wardrobe” any more. And he told me he needed to go shopping for shoes. SHOES!!! Yeah, that tripped me up a bit, until I saw his Timberland boots. They are almost ten years old, pretty torn up and need replacing. I did heave a sigh of relief. So today, WE SHOP!!

But not for long, for obvious reasons. He has Mass Effect 3 waiting 😉

GUESS WHAT????

HUBBY IS HOME!!!!!

I had to keep quiet about because the kids read the blog, and couldn’t spoil the surprise!

Of course, my sister and my Mom were upset that I didn’t tell them, because had my mother known he was coming she would have prepared a feast.

In retrospect, maybe I should have told her. Nah!! My jeans fit now, and I don’t need the temptation of her food to challenge the bounds of denim 😉

Heavy Hearts Again

I’ve been lacking in content around here due to a family get-together that has taken up my week. Sadly, today it comes to a close. My sister and her family travel back to their home today, and my brother is toying with the idea of leaving, as well.

I’m trying to convince them to stay, so I can at least stay up late drinking and carousing enjoying their company without a schoolnight intruding! I have enjoyed having them here so much, and they have helped me with my loneliness and the monotony of my life. Hopefully, we’ll get to visit them once they are settled at their new duty station.

But here is something to cheer y’all up.

G00000000gle map of Parkland High School in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I think it should be renamed Millenium High School, and their mascot should be either the Falcons, or the Wookies 😉

Y’all have a great Friday the 13th!!!

Taking Some Down Time

As y’all may have noticed, I try to post something daily. Ok, maybe some of y’all didn’t notice, but it’s true. Yesterday I took a much needed break from the interwebtubenets. And by “taking a break”, I mean “ran errands for my mom”. Having family around is not conducive to productive posting. It is conducive to plenty of stories, especially when your siblings sit around telling stories from our childhood.

And having your parents laugh at the crazy stuff we did.

And my brother, too!

So today finds me visiting with my nieces and helping my mom cook, and maybe this weekend I’ll be back to my regular groove, posting all the latest gossip from Casa de Aggie.

Who am I kidding?? I’ll probably do that tonight 😉

An April Fool

I usually don’t prank people on April Fools Day. Actually, I never do. I understand that it’s all in fun, but I am too soft-hearted to trick someone like that. That makes me a prime target for pranks and jokes, and that part is fun, too. Trying to out guess the prankster keeps me sharp. That’s not to say they don’t fool me, but at least it helps keep me sharp.

The best prank ever played on me was done by my sister. And it wasn’t even on April 1st. When we were very young, I think she was in Kindergarten and I was in First Grade, we would go to my grandmother’s house after school to wait for our parents to pick us up after work. We liked going, because our grandma would serve us cafe au lait and slices bread with jam for an after school snack, not to mention sometimes there would be fresh cherries from the tree out back. A tree that we were forbidden to go explore, because it was too high up.

Anyway, one day there were no cherries, and my sister, who is younger than I am, suggested we sneak out back to get some while my parents were visiting with grandma. So off we went, and looked around for the cherries. As we went around the house, we spied a small bush with semi-round red berries. She ran to it, and started plucking the berries off, though I hesitated, telling her the berries didn’t look right. The were not as red, and were not as round, and are they not supposed to be on a tree?? But she knew best, and told me they were cherries, and so, like a fool, I partook.

Only to scream as I felt my mouth be set on fire.

We ran back in, screaming and alarming the folks, and since we were unable to speak, they correctly deduced what had occurred: we had eaten ajíes, a common chile found in Puerto Rico. Many glasses of sugared water later (we didn’t know we could use milk for the heat), and sporting beards of my grandma’s Pond’s Cold Cream™, we left for home. My mom was still upset, but my dad laughed the whole time, which didn’t make my mom any happier.

This did happen in Spring, but not on April 1st. Even the Fates are not that unkind. As for my sister, I never got back at her for the pranks (yes, there are more). She is a best friend, just like the others and my brother, and has been there for me always. Besides, she ended up having and raising five kids, and that was enough Karma for me 😉

Eighteen to Life

It’s a funny title, because it’s our anniversary today!!!

And he was sweet enough to send me this:

Yep, and Edible Bouquet! I’ve never received one before, so it was quite a novelty. And Hubby was considerate enough to call them and ask that they NOT cover the strawberries in chocolate…

….but there was a slight miscommunication, and most of the strawberries were covered in chocolate, which made the girls ecstatic, but at least I got the plain fruit, so it was all good.

Eighteen years, going on eighty. This past year has been hard, but soon enough it will be over, and then we can both eat chocolate covered strawberries while sitting on the couch, watching some really awful movie on SyFy™ and laughing at the carnage.

What can I say? We enjoy the little things in life 😀