Susiej

Today, is my blue-eyed Dad’s birthday. He comes around here every once in a while. He has a gift for words, as evidenced by his toast, here and this post here. Most of my great memories of my Dad center around the times he had the courage to say the thing that I needed to hear, but didn’t want to hear. When I was about 8 years old, I was sick in bed, and I just wouldn’t snap out of it. I think, at that point, I was just relishing in the moment of not having to go to school, laying in bed, etc. He came to my side, and said, “You know, as a woman, you’re going to have to face a lot greater pain than this, so you better get yourself better and get used to this.” Oh, how right he was.

Once, when I was in labor for this guy, 72 hours of it, I called my Dad, just because I needed to hear his voice. I said Dad, they think that maybe I’m scared, and that’s why I’m not delivering the baby. He said, “Well, that’s because you probably are scared.” I can’t tell you what a revelation it was to hear those words.

When, Pumpkin Lunar Baby was born, so close to his own birthday, my Dad drove the 5+ hours to visit him, and spent several hours alone with me and baby in the dreary hospital. It was a great memory.

So, Happy Birthday Dad. Can’t wait to see you at the lake.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under: birthday by SusieJ - 11 Comments →

I had the coolest dream. I was at the lake house, and I was giving my Mom a tour of the place. She kept asking me to take her to the places that I normally bypass … like the attic. It’s a crawl space. So, at her insistence, I took her, and found that my lake house has 9 floors!!! Who would have known!!

Each floor was a different theme — one had rocks carved into the wall, another had a lodge-feel to it, another was a modern disco — and the details are getting fuzzy, but I think there was some pink princess theme too. Each room came with some kind of gadget my boys would have loved. One had kid-sized coin-operated John Deere tractors lined up, another had rocking horses, there were pinball machines, one had an Easy Bake Oven. (Can you believe it?…)

Over the last two days I’ve had to think about the dream, I think this dream is related to that dark thought I could never quite finish as I sent my boys off to school on the first day; the one where I was trying to imagine how empty the house will feel when they’ve all moved away.

1. I think my Mom was trying to show me that even though we all move and transition into different places in life, it’s really just a change of scenery. And the change will transform our relationship into good things — things I had no idea that were there under the surface, all the time. We won’t explore those places on our own … life pushes us into these rooms. And these “rooms” can be quite amazing. And the seeds of these relationships are already here, so it’s nothing to fear, it’s just a natural progression. It’s the same thing as discovering that my lake house had all of these rooms I didn’t know existed. They had always been there, and discovering them transformed the lake house into something more. Moving into them didn’t “subtract” anything from the lake house, it merely added.
2. I also realized this: Even death does not stop a mother from teaching her child.
3. I can’t wait to go to the lake house this weekend and check out the attic, and use the Easy Bake Oven.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under: Life, Tears, boy by SusieJ - 8 Comments →

Today is a total lunar eclipse, called the Pumpkin Moon, as it turns the moon into a

beautiful ball of orange. It is red because, believe it or not, the Earth’s shadow is filled with red light. The red light comes from the rim of Earth itself, which is aglow with sunlight filtering through our planet’s atmosphere. But according to this chart, I think we missed it. (How to convert Universal Time to your time zone, here.) But, here are some gorgeous pictures and amazing links here.

So, it’s your birthday, and I’ve been reading up on this eclipse, and what it could possible mean about you, and I read this: In ancient times, people realized after watching several eclipses, that the Earth cast a round shadow. This helped them to figure out that the Earth was round long before there were spacecraft and astronaut pictures.

When you were born, you, like the moon, helped teach me something very important too. You were a surprise, and while I was pregnant, I had my hands full with 3 boys, and I just didn’t have time to be pregnant. I never had time to rest, eat right, or stay calm. So, I wondered, how would I have time for you, if I didn’t even have time to be pregnant? I soon learned….

This is hard to explain. But when you were born, I looked into your eyes, ready to do my best to calm and comfort this new little infant. However, I saw something in you that I didn’t expect. You were calm — almost giddy–and you had this look of far-off wisdom and “knowing,” as if you had been waiting to meet me. Yes, I know you were just a baby; but you came from somewhere — and I caught a glimpse of this place. Your eyes were so full of love, wisdom and joy, and it was almost as if you were here with a message for me. I had no choice but to learn to let go, and let be. I can’t put it into words, but basically I learned, when it comes to love, 3+1 does not always equal 4. Love is boundless. And you saw that I could do this before I saw it in myself.

I remember coming out of the delivery room (you were breech, so, it was surgery), to see my Mom and your brothers, and they were in awe, of course. But my Mom, who loves babies, and can’t take her eyes off them, couldn’t take her eyes off me. With tears in her eyes, she kept saying, “I’m so proud of you.” I’m so, so, so, grateful for that moment, and it was all I could think of 2 years later, when she left us in that same hospital.

So that is your birth story.

And here you are, your first day of school, for your brother’s show-and-tell.

Your brothers could never keep their hands off you…

And here’s that adorable smile you always have…

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under: Life, birthday, boy by SusieJ - 20 Comments →

For 11 years, we’ve used Microsoft Outlook as our family message and organizing center. But, Outlook has one very big limitation. It’s only available on one computer. (Unless you have a “network,” which I did consider…) So, every time my husband wants to schedule an evening event, he has to call me to check the calendar at home. This must stop. I can’t be bothered with this stuff. I’m, kind of BUSY - doing absolutely nothing. (Ha!) I can’t tell you how many times we overbooked things, with both of us working from memory on the dates. And, while I was at the lake, I had nothing. No calendar, no phone numbers — everything was stored on the computer at home.

Now, with kids in 3 different schools, and don’t-even-get-me-started-on-the-sports-schedules, we truly are running in 16 different directions. So, I need an organizing system that can follow us wherever we go, instantly.

So, today I created a gmail account that fit our family’s name, and exported everything from Microsoft Outlook, and imported it into the google calendar, and gmail. Easy. It took less than 15 minutes to do the whole thing. You can learn to do it here, or here or here.

Now, we can all log onto google from any computer, and everything’s there on the google desktop. All of our friends phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and even appointments from 11 years ago. So now, we can check our calendar on:

• the laptop I take to the lake,
• my husband’s office,
• the computer my oldest uses at middle school

And, I don’t have to spend money upgrading the latest version of outlook — I’m using google!! Constantly updated, refined, with all the latest gadgets. Free!!

Now, about letting everyone know about my new e-mail address… Thinking aloud here — you know, that’s not really critical. That can happen over time. I still have Outlook to use for e-mail, and I can always forward messages to google. The important thing is getting that family calendar synchronized. Done. So now, I’m off the hook — check it yourself!!

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under: Life by SusieJ - 9 Comments →

I admit it. Actually, I love male babysitters. Boys don’t sit around and talk on the phone, they don’t bury their head in novels, and they don’t grab the remote and watch a movie — about horses. Boy babysitters build scavenger hunts, make duct-tape wallets, make peanut butter milkshakes, and play hide-and-seek with the family dog. Am I stereotyping girls? Or am I merely describing what happened with one girl babysitter?

An article by Jeff Zaslow, Moving On, “Are We Teaching Our Kids to Be Fearful Of Men,” (Aug. 23, 2007) points out that John Walsh, host of TV’s America’s Most Wanted, advised parents to never hire a male babysitter. Zaslow reveals a picture of the state of Virginia’s Department of Health’s new ad campaign for its sex-abuse hot-line:

Billboards featured photos of a man holding a child’s hand. The caption: “It doesn’t feel right when I see them together.”

I won’t post the photo, because I find it so disturbing. Sadly, I think, we’re not only teaching our kids to fear men, but we’re teaching men to stay away from kids. Is that healthy? Are kids safer?

I was at a party Saturday, and talked with a man who loved baseball. He heard about a group of 13-year old boys who wanted to play baseball, but they weren’t good enough to get on a team. So, he formed a team and coached them. He wasn’t married yet, and had no kids. Soon, the talk started: Why is this guy, who doesn’t even have kids on the team, so interested in these boys?

Use common sense of course. But not just when it comes to males — but when it comes to ANYONE who you are trusting with your children. Stereotyping and building bias never really solves problems. It takes us away from the bigger issues. In this case, we should focus on tuning into our kids, listening, and getting to know them. Because, danger can come from anywhere. We need to get close enough to our kids so they feel safe talking to us, and learning how to sense if something just isn’t right. All men are not the source of our abuse problems. Zaslow interviewed Benjamin Radford, managing editor of the science magazine Skeptical Inquirer, and who also researches statistics on predators. He says, according to Zaslow:

“The number of men who will hurt a child is tiny compared to the population…” Virtually all of the time, if a child is lost or in trouble, he will be safe going to the nearest male stranger.”

Found recently after returning home and relieving male babysitter of his duties:

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under: Life, Science by SusieJ - 12 Comments →

We got hungry, so we went back to the Amish blueberry patch. But this time, I took my camera so I could show you just how tucked away this place really is:

So, now that you know the rules, you can come in here to pick up your bucket to hold your blueberries:

And, don’t forget a belt to tie your bucket on, so that you can pick with two hands:

The branches were loaded:

This is 19 pounds:

And this was the scale we used to weigh them:

Total cost? $9.50.

Here’s the recipe for blueberry cornmeal pancakes.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under: Life, Make Something, the lake house by SusieJ - 6 Comments →

The wait is over. This just in from our Uncle: The trampoline still appears to have air in it. We lost one oak tree (out of the 22 trees on our property.) This was a big one — the kind that you put your arms around, and your hands still can’t touch. I can’t really imagine a storm that could topple a tree like that. An Oak. It fell on the power lines, took out some power, but no major damage. No broken windows. NO skunk. So, next weekend, we’ll be cutting some wood.

We just got word from our Uncle, (who is not at the lake, but a neighbor at the lake called him), that a terrible storm hit the lake. Our faithful trampoline is all the way out of the lake, up the hill, and on the road, two houses down. It had been tied down with a cinder block. Tree limbs are down, and the power is out. That’s all we know. I’m trying not to think that windows are broken and our brave skunk is sleeping in my son’s bed. It’s in a small town, so nothing is on the news. The boys have sports stuff scheduled this weekend, so we’re just waiting to find out if it’s bad enough to cancel everything and take the 3-hour trip to take care of whatever needs taking care of.

But, I remember this, as we wait…No one is hurt. My family is safe. Despite the storm, and all its mysterious damage we have yet to determine, all is well.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under: Life, the lake house by SusieJ - 7 Comments →

Dear Mini Van,

I know you’re good to us. I know you’re reliable. And thank you for that. And I know, with four boys, that there really is no other suitable vehicle better than a van. But, really, I just wish you were just a little more fun. Sexier. I know you’re red - and that’s great. But, this is more along the lines of what we have in mind:

The Bat Elephant

I guess I’ll just have to Ask Patty it such a vehicle exists. To find out what others think of their vehicles (and include an essay of your own), go to the Parent Bloggers Network.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under: Laugh, Life, reviews by SusieJ - 7 Comments →

Sending my kids off to school has always been for me, a kind of inner celebration. Now, you know that I do tend to get very sad years and months before I need to be sad. But when the day finally does arrive, I’m pretty satisfied. “You did it kid, [Read more →]

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under: Life, Tears, You Tube, boy by SusieJ - 7 Comments →

The driver was swerving to keep from hitting the deer, when the car crashed into a telephone pole, splitting the car in two.  All 6 of the high school kids riding in the car lived. My cousin’s son, however, who had been riding in the backseat, was severely injured.  He was thrown from the car, the seat belt cut an artery in his neck, and a tree went through his knee. Still, thankfully, no one was killed.When he was conscious, and the surgeons were still busy working on him, his mother leaned over and said, “Were you just praying to God the whole time?”

His response? “Yeah. I was praying, God, please don’t let me die a virgin.”

The surgeons had to back away from the table because they were laughing so hard. A few days later when the boys was feeling better, the surgeons came in with a hat, with some money inside. The said, “We felt sorry for you. So, we took a collection, and now we just have to find a nurse who’s willing.”

Yes, it’s really true.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under: Laugh by SusieJ - 11 Comments →

School hasn’t even started yet, but I’m regretting my decision to do afternoon instead of morning kindergarten. I’m picturing this:

He would go to school in the morning with his brothers, then I’d take the little one off to preschool. I’d have two hours, [Read more →]

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under: Life by SusieJ - 2 Comments →

Shelly, is holding a raffle to help Jessica the Rock Chick soar to A list blogger status. You can help Jessica, and enter the raffle by posting this picture, and linking to her with this tagline:

Bookmark to: