Blah, blah, blog!

Perspective

This photo did it to me:

My dear, and obviously so-close-she-lives-inside-my-head friend Korie nailed it.  It has been far, far too long since I have photographed my own kids.  I've been running on this hamster wheel and justifying it as "all for them" while missing a lot of the Big Picture stuff.

It ends now.

My Facebook status a few days ago read: "Carrie is

Is totally at peace with my decision to hang up my camera professionally and focus on my family and my new professional direction with Oxford Prep Charter School. I have three more client projects to wrap up then I will put a take a nice long break and return to being a Mom With a Camera (MWAC;)

A few weekends ago, I took a group of sixth grade girls and their moms,  to Santa Monica for a customized portrait session.  These girls have known each other since they were five.  The girls had a ball!  They loved having their pictures taken and I think we captured some really great shots. 

As I began the editing process, it hit me over the head like a brick that I have not taken the time to document the little days of my own children for far too long.  I have been so busy trying to keep up with the editing and the orders for my clients of my little photography business, I am putting my own precious memories on hold.  My poor babies aren't even on the memory card that gets left in the camera for a year.  Nothing. Nada.  No portraits.  I suck.

If it wasn't for my friends and neighbors booking my 6th Grade Promotion Special, I am ashamed to admit, I would not have had a chance at capturing this beautiful girl.  Did I tell you how much I suck?

So with that, I quit.  I have three client project to wrap up, then I'm hanging a digital Gone Fishing sign on my website, downgrading my plan and saying "Thanks but no thanks" to any client inquiries.  I hate to say this, but as soon as I say I quit, interest starts up.  Stay strong Carrie.  Stay focused.  Your kids deserve memories too.

Zumba just might put me in an early Tomb-a

This morning I laced up my shoes and trotted off to the gym.  I was super excited to try the Zumba class.  I sat up last night, fastidiously entering all of the fitness class times into my iPhone calendar (that calendar is color-coded turquoise). 

I got the kids to school and went right to the gym as I've been doing four times a week since I joined two weeks ago.  The music was pumping, the energy high, I was a little clumsy, but having fun.  This class is great!  All of the sudden, right in the middle of some fancy footwork , I felt a "POP" then "RIP".  I managed to finish the class--minus any jumping or heroic moves (I mostly waved my arms and looked foolish).  Then I walked my hobbled ass out the door.

I've been to my acupuncturist.  I've been icing my foot.  I'm on crutches.  I've been popping anti-inflammatories.  I'm 99% sure I've torn the fascia.  The pain is hauntingly similar to the plantar facsitis pain of yesteryear.  There is no pain anywhere near joints or bone.  Time to bust out the Granny Mephistos and Danskos.  Rest and sensible shoes should make me whole.

I will return to pilates and yoga and daily stretching.  Goodbye trendy Zumba with your supercharged Latin beats and funky belly dancing charmed hipscarves.  I guesss I'll be deleting that turquoise calendar from my iPhone:(

When kids outpace their folks by a few IQ points...

Last night I went to the video store to pick up some movies (Atonement & Rendition).  I parked my car in an appropriately marked space and walked to the entrance. There is a sort of over-sized concrete entrance/ramp that serves as a walkway to the video store's double door entry.  Somebody decided to create a parking space on this walkway and left their car there.  I figured they probably ran in quickly to return a video. I walked around it and went in.

I started with the New Release wall.  I walked around a father and son.  The dad was about 35, puffy, unshaven, and sloppy in his pajama pants and slippers. It was 5:30 pm. The son was about six. Maybe seven.  This was their dialogue:

Dad: "How about this one: The Murder of Michael M...."
Son: "Naw...."
Dad: "This one then. This one is a zombie movie."
Son: "Naw Dad, that is YOUR kind of movie."
Dad: "Oooh...how about this one...Listen to this:....After a brutal attack on a young girl, a couple relocates to a deserted area where, unknown by them, they are target by a group of murderous cannibals." Explaining here, "Cannibals are people that like to eat other people".
Son: "No Dad, I want to see....."
Dad: cutting him off, "Well I want to watch a Zombie movie".

I considered for a moment that I was being secretly filmed by Dateline or Punk'd. You know, when they have actors display behavior and a hidden camera watches how the public reacts. Or fails to.

I failed. I wanted to walk over to them and ask how old the son is, then support the kid in his desire to see something like Underdog or The Game Plan. At one point, I did hear the dad shoot something down as being "a baby movie".

Now don't get me wrong. I've enjoyed my share of pointless celluoid murder and gore. Why just last week, I sat through No Country For Old Men. But I'm 38 and I feel my synapses have matured enough to understand reality vs. fiction, good vs. bad.  I don't believe my seven, or even my nine year old can benefit in an form from watching murderous cannibal zombies.  Even if it does involve a large tub of extra butter popcorn and sour gummie worms.

I kept my mouth shut. I got my movies and walked out to my car. The moron's Corolla was still parked on the sidewalk.  I went home and immediately shared the experience with T. His thought was exactly mine: Sure it is none of my business. It is not my kid.  That kid, however, will be in school with my kids. That kid's mind and even his poor little body (quickly following Dad's great example I could see) isn't getting the best of what this dad could give.  Or maybe it was the best this dad could do.

As I left, I saw the kid wander down the Kids Section aisle. His dad was over  in the blood/gore/murder/action/thriller section.  I wonder who won?

Stick a Fork in Me

I'm feeling pretty done.

I had a Room Mom meeting today to discuss our school Silent Auction which we be held in two weeks. After school, my mom took P to physical therapy for me because I had to take J to baseball practice. Tomorrow I meet with a neighbor to plan the silent auction decoration scheme, then an "emergency" school site council meeting to approve our emergency procedures, then a two hour shift at the little league snack bar.

All of this would be fine, but we are seeing a real fall out from the last few weeks of multiple minimum days for teacher training/staff development. The teachers literally were not in the classroom to teach. We've had WAY too many subs, extended recess, minimum days and late nights volunteering.  J's teachers (he is in a 2/3 combo class) sent a letter home expressing their  "disappointment" with the poor performance on last week's vocabulary test. The entire 2nd grade in this class failed. J scored a 40%.  I did homework with him until after 9 PM tonight.  My husband was angry and ranting about sports, but truly the problem is the pace of activities taking the teachers out of the classroom and parents (ME) away.

I am exhausted. I need to step back and focus on taking care of business at home.  J will be fine. He is a good student and one low test score has us all shaken up.  I guess it is a good signal to step down the pace. Baseball season takes so much out of all of us and I need to be extra careful that school is taken care of so he is able to play sports.

I have committed to  and will follow through with helping to decorate the silent auction. T said tonight that he doesn't want to attend.  Fair enough. The school depends on families to donate the basket items, assemble said baskets, work for weeks and ALL DAY prepping the event, buy $70 per couple tickets to attend, the turn around and buy said baskets, and leave our husbands sitting at the tables while the committee works all night running the event.  Throw the cost of babysitting on top of all of that and I can completely understand why he isn't excited about going.  So that is that. We're not going.

It seems my time would be better spent working though second grade vocab exercises anyway.  Oh, and to my surprise, I learned that we have three minimum days this week. 

Thank God my mom offered her best friend's villa in Palm Desert this weekend. P's orthopedist said that she needs to spend as much time as possible in the water. Her physical therapy is going great, but swimming will do wonders to help her tendon and muscle strength. Palm Desert and a heated pool are waiting for us. We are so outta here....

And the hits just keep on coming...

I promise this is the last "things that suck" post for 2007.  It has to be.

Someone stole my kids' Christmas presents!

I am so frustrated, I could spit.
My mom wanted to give our three kids a computer for Christmas. I ordered a desktop from Dell on 12/4 and given an estimated ship date of 12/28. I was confident they would ship early and this was to be the only gift for all three kids under the tree from my parents. 

I got an email on 12/12 telling me my Dell had shipped. I glanced at it, thinking it meant the system had shipped on 12/12. Reasoninig that FedEx ground service would be at least 5 business days out, I didn't think too much about it until yesterday. I read the email in detail and saw that it said the system had been delivered on 12/12.

I had it shipped to my parents' business, in an effort to avoid missing the delivery. Our business closes at 5PM. Any regular FedEx driver knows our store and how deliveries here work. My parents have a home in front of the business (five acres, rural area). Sometimes packages are left on their doorstep when a new driver delivers.

I tracked the shipment through FedEx today and it states two boxes were delivered on Tuesday 12/11 at 6PM and signed for by a J. Mastis (the actual signature scan is a scribble). No one by that name either lives at that address or works for my parents. In fact, P had surgery on 12/10 and I know for a fact my mom, dad, brother and grandma were all at MY house on Tuesday evening, 12/11, visiting her. There is no way anyone answered their door and signed for those boxes.

I've called FedEx and they said they will start the claim process but not to expect any kind of resolution for 10 days.

Dell is awesome.  After sitting through the 57 minute wait time on hold, they have offered to build a new system and ship to to me. It will take 5 to 7 business days, so the kids won't have it in time for Christmas. I know they will be fine, we have other small gifts, but my mom is beside herself because that was the ONLY thing she has for them.

Dell will investigate it with FedEx and resolve the case. I absolutely cannot imagine a FedEx driver releasing the boxes, clearly marked "Dell" to someone that happens to walk up in the driveway. Too odd. Like I said, there is absolutely no way anyone that belonged to the stated delivery address could have signed for it.

****Deep cleansing breath in......deep cleansing breath out.......*****

The Great Flood of 2007

You know what they say about the best laid plans...

About a month ago, my husband I bought flooring and he started with the kids' rooms upstairs.  He did all of the work: removing the carpet, prepping the subfloor, laying the floors, moving furniture and more.  He won't take a day off of work to do this project, so he has been trying to work at night and on weekends.  It is a huge task.  He removed the carpet in our master bedroom and bath about two weeks ago.  He got 1/2 of our bedroom floor done and we've been on plywood since.  He left town this weekend for a long planned hunting trip and I thought it would be a nice surprise to hire a guy to finish the job.  Besides that, I caught my foot on a nail Friday night and I'm convinced my jaw will start locking at any moment.  I've had enough of this.

I hired a guy who worked all day Sunday.  He did a beautiful job, even pulling and replacing the toilet in our master bath over the new flooring.  He left about 6:15PM or so.  I got busy downstairs, making dinner, helping with showers, doing dishes, helping P bathe.  I walked into my kitchen about 7:30 PM and noticed water pooling on the floor...dripping from my A/C vent on the ceiling.  WATER WAS COMING THROUGH MY CEILING!

I ran upstairs to see that my entire master bath and half of my bedroom was under about 1/2 inch of standing water.  The valve behind the toilet was spraying water like it had blown the seal.  I shut it off and ran up and downstairs for the next hour pulling out every single towel we own, desperately trying to soak up the water.  The weight of wet beach towels made lugging the laundry baskets downstairs a soppy, soupy mess.  Running a spin cycle to try and squeeze the water out of towels to reuse them didn't work...I'm afraid of breaking my new washer with the pounding of an unbalanced tub.  The towel pile above is roughly HALF of the towels I used to soak up the water.  I've been washing and drying.

To top off the evening, T called from Arizona about 8:15 PM and Baby D insisted on grabbing the phone.  She babbled on about "there was a guy, and he broke the toilet....and water is everywhere....yeah...a guy was here....and he broke our floors....and there is lots of water...."  She totally ratted me out.

I, of course, went on the offensive with him and wasn't going to let him give me grief about hiring someone to finish the job. I truly wanted to surprise him and hoped he would be happy that he didn't have that job waiting for him upon his return.  As it turns out, I probably created more work because I see our downstairs kitchen floor warping in two spots right now.  I just hope the walls don't have water damage. 

Ahhhh....the best laid plans....

Waving "Hi" from the dark ages

I feel so out of sorts.  I have no laptop.  No access to my contacts, or files, or music or bookmarks.  I can't easily jump on the net to research or upload photos to share.  Checking email is a cumbersome task, as I have to log in to my ISP web-based email server on the kids' clunker. At least I have that option.  I noticed the mailbox store sells an hour of computer time for $12 and the public library never seems to have an open system.

This time without my computer just might be productive if I play it right. With the short days (why do we bother with Daylight Savings Time anyway??) I want dinner done at 5:30. Last night, the kids were ready for bed by 6:30 (they stayed up watching footage from our camcorder and cracking up until 8). I retreated to my office and completed six layouts. No computer journaling or borrowing memories from old blog posts, but I went Old School and busted out my 'ol black archival ink pen.

I'm only 48 hours into my 10 days....I hope those Mac guys can work some magic...and fast!

Migraines

I don't know what is worse: the actual pain of a migraine or the anticipation of just how bad it is going to hurt.

I started getting regular migraines in May of 2006.  I've always been prone to headaches, but the "bouncing light" in my bottom right peripherol vision, which turns into zig-zagging light that soon cuts off half of my vision was new to me at the time.

I seriously thought I might have a brain tumor.

If you are a migraineur, you know what I'm talking about.  Once that bouncing light starts, I have about 45 minutes to get where I need to be: a dark, quiet room with no disturbances.  It sucks.  It hit me in the middle of the grocery store yesterday.  I blame the flurescent lights and dour smells of the old Stater Brothers market, but really, it would have found me no matter what.

I've tried to read and understand what causes the migraines and how to prevent them.  I've learned there are three main causes:
- Hormonal-estrogren drops can trigger monthly migraines
- Nutritional- MSG is a big trigger
- Environmental- barometric pressure (like before our Santa Ana winds, which we have today) triggers migraines

I've read up on migraines meds and the idea of taking an anti-seizure drug that alters left lobe activity in my brain just scares me.  Topomax is heavily marketed, but the side effects include slurred speech, fatigue, mental and physical slowing and delays.  A big red flag for me was reading Ana Nicole Smith's toxicology results (as reported by People Magazine)   Ummm, I'll take the headache, thank you.

My not-so-brilliant general practioner suggested a return to hormonal birth control pills to stabilize the estrogen drops and prevent migraines.  I guess she hasn't read the research on the elevated risk of stroke in women with migraine aura who take the pill.  Terrific.

So, it looks like I cannot control the barometric pressure, I cannot control the hormones, but I can avoid MSG (and do).  What else?

I'm on the hunt for one of those bean-filled lavendar-scented satin eye pillows that help with pressure points.  I used to have one, but gave it to a girlfriend who used to go to the ER for shots when her migraines got bad.

Acupuncture sounds good, but I have no idea of the success rates.  I tried acupuncture for several months with back and hip pain and it provided no relief or benefit.  Five months of physical therapy, however, changed my life.

Ginger is supposed to an elixer for headaches.  I drink a good amount in our Green Lemonaid almost everyday, so I'm not sure it is doing it's job as a preventative.

Why do we get these?  And what can be done?

If you have any theories and especially if you have any remedies or solutions, please post a comment and share them. I'd be really grateful.

The Hot Zone

Few things suck more than trying to comfort a feverish, vomiting, crying child as you are running back and forth from the bathroom.  The double fun of holding their hair back while trying to balance the trash can as they simultaneously perch themselves on the toilet is quite a feat.  They should give awards for this.  Oh wait they do.  The awards are usually in the form of folded paper and have a small Hallmark logo on the back. Quite popular in mid-May.

We are two for three in our home.  It started Saturday night, the very minute I returned home from my mini-vacation all-day crop.  D was the first man down.  P was second man down and up most of last night.  I slept downstairs on the couch with her and woke up feeling like a truck had hit me.

Where is my biochemical protection mask when I need it?

In her own way

P has been working on a portrait of Diesel for Eric.  She wanted to involve several mediums: sketching, gel pens, watercolor and oil pastels.  She pulled out her I Can Draw Horses & Ponies book and went right to work.  Every once in a while she will recall a detail of his face and start to cry.  Last night she told me a few times that it doesn't seem real and that she keeps thinking she'll see him today and then she remembers.  This is all confusing for her.  She has asked me to take her to the ranch today.  I will.

I love that P has her art.  I offered art classes to her this summer (paid classes, not by me) and she gave me a blank stare and said, "Why in the world would anyone need art classes?"  I explained that there are many techniques and styles of art and that it might be fun to learn and expand her ideas of art.  She shot back simply, "Mom, I know how to make art. It is my art, no one can teach me that."

Well ok then.

P's third grade teacher has offered to treat P and I to a day at the Getty as a thank you for my work as her Room Mom all year.  We are hoping to go next week and are really looking forward to it.  P's teacher is a wonderful, interesting well-traveled art lover.  She was a perfect fit for Peyton this year.