Mother | Olympus High School Class of 2000 Alumni Website

My day off

May 10th, 2010 Classmate Blogs No comments

Today was a nice day. Mark and I went to lunch with my mother for mothers day and when we came home and found our cute nephews (who are our neighbors) in our backyard. So we snatched them up and spent some of the afternoon building forts and enjoying laughing with them.

For Shelly…

February 13th, 2010 Classmate Blogs No comments

This was one morning last month. I couldn’t get enough of this hair. He is too much fun. (For those who are particularly observant you will notice Todd’s geographic tongue. What a proud moment for me.)

The same hair just from a little bit different angle. It was glorious.

He also went through this phase about the same time. Lean-over-to-the-side phase. It was pretty funny.

And yet again…

Last but not least, a big cheeser. I think this is the only real smile we’ve ever gotten a picture of and hopefully it isn’t the last. My smile did not come easily as a child and I remember vividly my mother coaching me in anticipation for my school picture every year. I must say he does have the squinty eyes down already, a personal trademark.
I guess I’ll try to go get some sleep.

Thanksgiving

November 27th, 2009 Classmate Blogs No comments

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with lots of family. Scott’s parents, my aunt Davina, my uncle Roger, his boys and his mother Mimi were all out at Roger’s Beach house.

All of the ladies had a hand in preparing something for the dinner which was sooo scrumptious. Then we had a massive bonfire that the guys took care of that night.

Of course Logan was enjoying every second of the attention he was receiving from the family.

As you can tell by the hoodies and fire that it actually does get cold here. We all were FREEZING and then realized it was only 55 degrees outside! You really do become weenies once you are actually here, TRUST ME!!

Tomatoes Anyone?

October 27th, 2009 Dan No comments

So with the birth of Tallie, we kind of forgot about our garden until my dad went and looked at it and came inside and said that we had a bunch of tomatoes in our garden still. We had no idea how it avoided getting frozen, but nonetheless, our tomatoes were still thriving!

Because we knew the storm was on it’s way in, we decided to pick all of of our tomatoes and hope they ripen off the vine.

Here is the end product!!! Can you believe it? We still have two boxes of tomatoes and it is almost November! Anyone want any tomatoes, just let me know, I think we can spare a few…

This is not even including the huge bag of tomatoes we gave our neighbors!

I am thinking next year, we may plant some other things besides 16 tomato plants!

If you can't do anything for me, can you give me my money back?

October 27th, 2009 Dan No comments

I’d like to thank all my wonderful friends who commented, emailed, called, and text me after hearing about my grandpa. I am truly blessed to have such wonderful and thoughtful people surrounding me.

In other news, I am sick today. I feared I had somehow manged to be infected with the swine flu… Oink! Oink! and so I called my mom because who else does a grown woman call when she is sick? My mother picked me up and took me to InstaCare where I was forced to put on a face mask and sit in the waiting room. In my sicken mental state, I didn’t think to have my mother take a picture of me. It would have been a pretty one, I assure you. Next time I’m in distress I’ll have someone take my picture so you too can witness my pain.

But the good news is, I don’t have swine flu. Apparently, a mild case of bronchitis is what I have. Thank you doctor for telling me that you can’t do anything for me. BUT, what you could do is give me back my $35 co-pay and I think we should be good. Mmmkay?

Categories: Blog Postings Tags: after-hearing, grandpa, mother, mother-picked, news, picked, picture, sicken, truly-blessed, wonderful

Nick

October 14th, 2009 Dan No comments

In the last few days…

I have cried 3 times

And prayed a lot more than that.

I’ve been swung at

and kicked at

and yelled at

and whined to

I’ve comforted meltdowns

and had some of my own

I’ve cleaned up thrown food

and toys

and dishes

and thrown food

and toys

and dishes

I’ve taken temperatures

and given medicine

and reassured and held and kissed

I’ve threatend and yelled more than usual

And I think he might have spent more time

in timeout yesterday than out of it

I’ve contemplated child psychologists

and therapists

and some[more]good self-help parenting books

I’ve felt like a failure

and I’ve questioned myself

and what I’ve done to this kid

to make him act the way he does sometimes

And I’ve wondered why in the world I thought it was okay to live

so far away

from my mother and Katie

And while the moments seem few

I’ve also read books

and cuddled

and played with toys

and taught valuable life lessons (right?)

and instilled responsibility

that actions have consequences

I’ve smiled

and laughed

and felt proud

that he is mine

And I have hope

that this is just a phase

that this too shall pass

And it will all be worth it.

The Well-Documented Life

September 3rd, 2009 Dan No comments

First, thank you to everyone who left comments or sent notes yesterday. Although I was not intending to hold a roll call of all remaining readers, it was nice to see that so many of you stopped by. Thank you for all the kind words! And I completely agree with the comment left about the fact that my blogs still aren’t linked very well and I’m hoping to fix that in the next couple of days.

Although I enjoyed the love fest that ensued, yesterday’s post was just a continuation of my rambling search for purpose and meaning, etc. (I am so the main character of Avenue Q.) After I blogged yesterday, I went downstairs and set myself up on the couch, since I still don’t feel that hot. I spent the day catching up on season two of True Blood and scanning a bazillion photographs into my computer in an attempt to save them from my mother.

This is the part of the blog entry that my mother will later call “that part where you threw me under the bus”, but my mom is terrible about photographs. She’s gotten better, I’ll admit, now that everything she takes is digital and she knows how to get them off the camera, but when it was all 35 mm film, it was every man for himself. Pictures would be taken, the film would be developed months or years later, and then the occasional snapshot would end up in a frame somewhere in the house. The rest of the pictures would go into the vacuum of pictures-never-to-be-seen again, a place that ultimately condensed itself into a giant rubbermaid tub in the basement. You know, the kind you use to hold sporting equipment.

(…little do my brother and I know, but we won’t see this photo
for another fifteen years…)

Funny thing, but my mom was not always like this. All of the photos from before 1990 are in albums, along with clippings from my parent’s days in junior high and high school and all the little paper scrapbook type things associated with their existence. My mom saved everything and carefully organized it into books and even had little captions and headings for special vacations, etc. I don’t know what happened to her…it’s like she woke up one morning and gave up and the next twenty years went straight into the tub.

I wonder, sometimes, if my compulsiveness about photos and documentation has to do with being afraid of the day that I’ll wake up and give up, because my grandmother has the same pattern. She has lots of neat, tidy albums with baby pictures of my mom and her sisters…and then she has slightly less neat albums about their adolescence…and then she managed to get most of the 80s into albums, although the pictures aren’t always in the right order…and now she has baskets and folders and boxes and stacks of pictures that are from who knows where and who knows when.

(…my mom and my Aunt Carole, both destined to a life of
not being able to keep track of their photos…)

If my mom is the person that makes you want to go “why is an entire decade of pictures missing?”, my grandma is the person that makes you want to go “why am I looking at this stack of pictures of someone’s garden and someone’s feet and why did you think you needed to get doubles of this particular roll?”

So yesterday I scanned in about 500 pictures. I scanned in pictures from when I was a baby, when Randy was a baby, when my sisters first moved in with us, when my stepfather was in the army, when my stepfather was in the seventh grade…it was pretty comprehensive. And as I sat there scanning and sorting and labeling and vowing to always keep my photos under control, I realized that it’s not going to be any great victory if my photo albums are always up to date and in the right order if I don’t do anything in life worth taking pictures of. Between the blogging and the journaling and the photographs and the ticket stubs, my entire life is going to be mapped out for anyone who cares to look. But what am I doing?!

Am I in some sort of quarter-life crisis flow chart? Why do all activities lead back to the question of “what am I doing with my life?” and “is that enough?”