Test Post

Is it me, is it blogger, or was it because I was trying to put the fabulous cookie day slide show into the post. (check the sidebar to see it - or go to my myspace blog to see it bigger!). I'll blog some more in a bit...trying to work this bug out and, believe it or not, I'm actually busy at work. YIKES

Is This Week Over Yet?

Lord, what a stressful week it's been! No basketball to be running around for, but just a whole bunch of stuff piling up at one time creating tension beyond belief. The posts below (yesterday, Wednesday) describe the stress the whole Santa thing has placed, not only on SmallBoy, but on the rest of us...and here, I thought I was doing a GOOD, POSITIVE thing. My computer at home decided to, quite literally, take a dump. Just shuts down, all my memory is taken up...YO! JH! I NEED YOUR HELP!!!!! Thankfully, I managed to save all - most - of my pictures before that happened. I didn't get them cleared out of the computer to see if it was memory thing, but at least I have them saved this time.

To add on to that, we're trying to get all of the Christmas things going, purchased, wrapped, YIKES - craziness all in its own right. Then there are all of the things that go along with the holidays: school programs, parties for this group, that group, and the other group, secret santa, our own family traditions - Cookie Day. You know, of course that trying to cram all of these activities into just a few short weeks, on top of all of the OTHER things that are already on the schedule, creates massive havoc and more stress. (Kyra, I really think your solstice idea is a great one. Too much with Christmas. I can't find the link to the post, but if you want to read Kyra's solstice post, click on her link, then go look in Nov. 2006 for the "Lanterns" post).

Last night was the school's annual Christmas program. The 1st-3rd graders sing, the orchestras (varying age groups 1 - 8) play. SmallBoy was not in the concert this year since he's in 4th grade and does not, YET, play an instrument (viola or violin for Christmas), but Girl played her last Christmas program (Hopefully I'll be able to post some pics for you later - or tomorrow). It was lovely. We had no OT yesterday since J the Fabulous OT was sick, so I was quite relieved when SmallBoy said he wanted to stay home and have some "brother time" with LargeBoy (I know, that sounds awful, but I know you all understand). Tonight we run to get a Secret Santa gift for Girl's Girl Scout Christmas Party, which is tonight, because we haven't been free to do it any OTHER time. Tomorrow, I THINK, all we have is Girl's game and taking LargeBoy shopping and driving. Sunday, though...is insane.

Sunday - our annual Cookie Day. This has been a tradition in my family for, probably 25-30 years. As many of us are available, and we are a LARGE family on my mother's side, get together for a day of baking, decorating, and eating cookie dough (yes, we're bad). Everyone brings a batch or two of their favorite cookie dough and we make gobs and gobs of cookies - all day! I made it a point to not be singing at mass this weekend so that I can get there early and maximize cookie baking & decorating. This will be the first weekend in about 7 that I haven't had to cantor mass. Well, as it turns out, Girl's string quartet is playing at a breakfast for the parish that morning. Granted, it's only 45minutes, but she won't be done and ready to roll until about 11:00, but then we don't get to mom's and in the swing of things til 11:15/11:30.

In the middle of all of this, SmallBoy has a scout meeting. 2:00. Smack in the middle of the day. Sunday meetings usually run about 2 hours. I thought about having him miss the meeting since he's been looking so forward to cookie day, but after talking to his den leader, who knows SmallBoy very well, we decided that it would be best if SmallBoy goes to the meeting. The boys will be earning a badge, practicing a skit that they'll be performing at the Scout Christmas party on Thursday night, having a uniform inspection (guess what I'm doing tonight - sewing badges, UGH! Laura, how fast can you do this for me - LOL), and doing something else that requires his presence. Cookie day can be a bit overwhelming, though, so it's probably a good thing for SmallBoy to take a break in the middle of the day and go hang out at Scouts with PC, more bonding time for them, too. I just worry that SmallBoy will be spending the entire time at scouts thinking about what he might possibly be missing at Cookie Day - will all the good cookies be decorated already? will all the good decorations be used up already? will somebody take home (or worse, eat) the cookie that I decorated especially for me? JUST a little much for me. I suppose, though, that if I dwell on it, he probably will, too. So, I won't. I'll just trust that I'm making the right decision.

After all of that is said and done, we go back home, take showers, make lunches, pack backpacks, go to bed and start the next week all over again. I think I need a glass of wine (or a cup of coffee) now.

Ok - Switching Now

Somehow, I managed to make the switch to beta. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get all of my cool stuff back - you know my slide shows, my links, all that jazz. In the meantime, bear with me. The kids are at their dad's this weekend, so I only have to work around everything else we're doing today in order to get computer time.

Stick around. I'll figure it all out soon!

Lord, Help Me Make the Switch!

THIS is how I'm feeling right now. I've been trying to make "the switch" to blogger beta, since, whether we want to or not, we all will ultimately have to either make the switch to blogger beta or to another host. Simple enough process, I figured, since Blogger pretty much walks you through everything. It's geared towards severely technologically impaired people like me who either like to do things simply, without worrying about formats, codes, and all that stuff or those, me included, who just don't get all the mumbo jumbo with html and blah blah blah. Sure, I'll make the switch tonight, and tomorrow I'll have this great new blog.

Not so, my dear friends. It keeps asking me to create a user id and password...which do. Then it tells me that my password is incorrect (not that it's too short or doesn't meet their specifications for a password). Ok, fine. I created a different password. Then it tells me that my email address is missing the @somewhere.something part. Ok, fine! Since it didn't tell me what to put as the @somewhere.something part, I just used my regular email address (because it said it had to be an existing email address). Nope. Not good enough. Guess why. Come on, I dare ya. "That email is already in use by another user." Yeah! ME!

I'm stressed. I'll try again tomorrow. Sadly, though, this has totally blown my post for today...and it was a good one, too, though I don't remember what about. GRRRRRR - oh, yeah, that's right -- HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAMA!!!!!! TE AMO!!!

Creamed Corn

I had this beautifully moving and extremely cathartic post going last night which, of course, I was just writing and writing and writing, moved by a song that brings me to tears every single time I hear it, when my mouse froze, my screen went dark, and another screen - a blue one this time, popped up and told me that my computer was about to start to auto-dump its contents. Well, LargeBoy streamed into the room, unplugged, yanked the battery and stopped that process from happening - THANK GOD! Unfortunately, though, I hadn't thought to save the post as a draft while I was composing through the tear drops (ok, streams). Yup. How 'bout that for a big ol' dose of Post-Be-Gone. I'll post that post another time, it's sad, but sweet. So instead of yesterday being a two-post day, it was just the one. Today, however, I'm going to post about something funny.

Word of the day - Creamed Corn. My niece, Princess, despises creamed corn. To her, it is the AntiChrist. For me, it is a happy comfort food memory, I ate it all the time with my grandparents. My grandfather always thought it funny to challenge us to eat it with a fork (where's the fun in that?). Princess would rather bleed from her eyeballs than to look at, breathe near, hear or utter the words "creamed corn". This, in our family, means large quantities of ribbing and an endless supply of jokes and pranks that could, very likely, carry over through the holidays in many very evil ways. Yes, we are evil when it comes to practical jokes, we all have very wicked senses of humor. Mainly we focus on each other, but every once in a while, one of the kids gets brought into the loop - because, well, it's his or her turn in the rotation, as we like to say.

ET plays this game with her, taken from the esteemed Pee Wee's Playhouse (long before that meant a dark movie theater). He'll establish a word of the day and every time one of them uses it, the do something goofy. The favorite word, so far, has been "armpit", which is usually said while smothering the other in said armpit (UGH). Now, I'm not certain as to how creamed corn came up, probably while ET was planning a meal, but Princess voiced her complete and total disgust at the idea. She was quite insistent that creamed corn was gross, sickening, and Blehechkbluhr (how does one spell the sound of wretching?), and went streaking from the room letting out a scream. You have to know our Princess to know that the scream is almost always accompanied by hysterical laughter, rolled eyeballs, and some other comic facial expression, completed by the wild waving of the arms over the head. As she ran, she left the door to PrankLand wide open.

ET's first prank was to buy a multitude of cans of creamed corn and line the cupboard shelves with them, hiding the rest of the contents. He called Princess into the room, casually, and asked her about what they should make for their meal together. You can imagine the shock when she opened the cupboard to all of the cans staring at her, taunting her. Again with the screaming out of the room, followed by the maniacal laughter of her father. From then on, the more common "armpit" word of the day, frequently was replaced with "creamed corn," evoking similar responses. Keep in mind, of course, this is all in good fun, and Princess plays along with us (perhaps humoring US).

Last week, and over the weekend, ET spent quite a bit of time at our house helping us with the many many Herculean tasks that needed to be completed in order to host the giganto family party. As he retold the creamed corn story, flashes of light appeared, on a regular basis, over PC's an my heads, and then again over ET's. We decided that, indeed, we would drag this out until Christmas. The only catch is that we have to let it die down enough that she begins to forget about it...and then bring it up again before it's a "been there/done that" kind of a thing. Ideas, ideas, ideas: for the Thanksgiving feast, let everyone else be served whatever the vegetable dish may be....give her creamed corn (we'll all eat it when she won't, don't worry, no waste involved), stuffing of her stocking with creamed corn, complete with a note from Santa saying that he understood her deep affection for this delicious dish and wanted to make sure she had a nice supply of it, wrapping her Christmas gift from PC & me in a smaller package, but then giving her a nice big heavy box all wrapped beautifully, with a big red bow - only for her to discover when she opens it, that it's ....yep, you guessed it...creamed corn!

Oh yes, you're right. We certainly are awful, but the fun thing about Princess is that she'll TOTALLY play along, and quietly plot and plan about how to retaliate. All of this, and she's only "7, duh!" Yes, yes, we're grooming her well. Heh heh heh heh.....

Am I Crazy or Am I Needing Motivation? (oh yes, and I need HELP!)

Yup. I'm crazy. I haven't been writing much lately, so, with a good swift kick in the pants in the form of a nice little challenge, and a little encouragement from Kyra and my family, I've decided to participate in NaBloPoMo this month. For those of you unfamiliar, it is a challenge to post on your blog every single day for the month of November. It doesn't have to be anything profound, it can be simple, short, or you can babble on and on, which, I find, I have no trouble doing. I don't think I'll have too much difficulty with the posting part, it's the uploading of the logo that is challenging me.

I'm not certain if it's me or if it's blogger or if it's a little of both...it took me all day just to get the photo into THIS post...and I KNOW how to do THAT. Well tonight we trick or treat, tomorrow we embark on the post. In the meantime, I need HELP!!!!! Kyra and I have been, as she put it, the blind leading the blind when it comes to figuring out how to get our friend Yoda, here, into the sidebar. There are many logos for the NaBloPoMo challenge on the page. This is the one I chose to use. However, I am terribly challenged in the area of doing anything to the blog except actually posting. If you know anything about adding these little tags to blogger, any knowledge you'd like to share with me would be MUCH appreciated! Send it through my email - in my profile! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Unpacking begins

Following, or previously, I should say, will be some of my favorite articles from our previous site.

by mommyguilt on April 25, 2005 03:20PM (CDT)

SmallBoy is making his First Holy Communion this Saturday. LargeBoy is graduating from 8th grade this June. To keep from driving myself, and my family, crazy I've decided to combine the two celebrations into one party. Woo-hoo! Less cleaning! Oh. No. Wait. There's still going to be a party....

...and it's going to be
......THIS SATURDAY !!!!!!

Ok - first things first: STOP PANICKING. This shouldn't be too difficult of a task. The front porch project is, for the most part, done and successful. All we need for that, now, is for the weather to cooperate, so that our guests can enjoy our front porch. The kitchen cabinet project is complete. The back porch project is underway. Mom helped tremendously with that this weekend. There are flowers in a couple of the pots on the front stairs and some coming up in the garden in back. What's left?

OH YES! The scary scary projects - cleaning up all the CRAP that's IN the house! That Crap encompasses mail, homework papers I can't bear to throw out, LargeBoy's graduation pictures, report cards, sports schedules, hot lunch menus, books, shoes that do not have a home, stray socks, sports equipment....ok, so the sports equipment's on the back porch. I suppose I could put all of this crap in the laundry chute and just hide it for the day!

Perhaps when I leave the office today I should have a cold, frothy beverage to help me decide. It may sway me to throw most of the crap in the garbage!

BY GEORGE, I THINK I'VE DONE IT!!!!

With the exceptions that I don't have any fun fonts or colors or sizes when using my computer here at work as opposed to my laptop at home, I think I have managed to figure out how to use this site. I've managed to put in links - which is more than I could on the other. My next attempt is photos. The computer system here is too ridiculous and I can't sneak enough "work" time to upload all my photos to the site that helps you with photos when working on a mac. I will try them from home tonight, though.

Attempt from Work

Through my computer here at work, I can only type in whatever font the computer wants, no colors, no links, the size is predetermined by the computer, etc...so I'm back to boring. I still cannot seem to find a way to link to other sites, but I will not give up. I'm going to attempt a few photo loads today too and see what happens. Wish me luck!

Address Change!

Mommy Guilt has moved. We love our new home. We won't be able to publish as frequently, because our computer at work is ridiculous and won't support blogger, but I can do this at home. We moved from our previous site to this site just tonight. I hope you will spread the word. The topics won't change. Until I get the hang of this new site, I may very well be importing articles from my previous site. Right now, I'm having some major mommy guilt as I sit here next to SmallBoy as he tries to do a Spanish Word Search. I have only my Sesame Street Spanish to rely on and cannot help him with much. I should really close this up so that he can focus on finding abrigo on the word search instead of reading over my shoulder, BUT I'm enjoying what I'm doing. PC is upstairs reading this wonderful book now because I'm working on the computer. Do I feel guilty? YES! But you know, as Girl said to us once,

"You guys really need your own space and your own time every once in a while. We'll be fine."