Sarah Graduated!!!

Sarah graduated from the 6th grade today. WooHoo!!

She also won a special academic award. It came with a little pin. She has worn the pin all day. :)

Okay, going to cut this short. I just had a breathing treatment and I think I'm going to lay down. Have a great day/evening.

I Love Good Huggers

It's a been a long week. Max is finally feeling better, I'd say he's kicked the pneumonia, but he had hard to work pretty hard at it. It concerns me that he got that sick so soon after the last time. (Last Winter).  I think a lot about pulling him from school, but they have so much more in terms of position equipment there. And his teacher is truly wonderful. Plus I met a couple of her friends who have "adopted" the class and one of them says that Max is her favorite. She was talking to me about working with him at the tea party, not sure if I mentioned this before, and her eyes teared up. She seemed embarrassed, but I appreciated her affection and caring for my boy. I'm the kind of person who tears up easily, as well. There's nothing wrong with strong emotion. And my son is a special kid. I want him to be spend his life with people who love him.

I ended up sick, too. On Sunday night, I felt like I could not get a good breath and it scared me. I wasn't getting any work done, because I felt so unfocused - lack of oxygen will do that I guess. I decided to go to the Dr in the morning and he said I had sinusitis that turned into Bronchitis. He gave me a shot in the hip, a breathing treatment, antibiotics, and prednisone. He wanted me to take something for the cough and a pain pill, but I don't like to load up too much on that stuff. By the afternoon, I felt so much better, I could breathe a bit and I could think. I was able to drive for the first time in a week. Thank goodness.

This week I've been talking to a couple of men. Well, a few men, actually. Feast or famine, that's how it goes with me. I decided to switch my photo at one of the online dating sites and all of a sudden things got active. One man sounds almost too perfect, which scares me a little. We have a lot in common and for the past few years, the men that I've dated have been good guys, but not men that I had that much in common with. I suspect they found my way of looking at things frustrating. Too positive, rainbows coming out my butt, crazy California-dreaming.........okay, these are my words, not theirs.

One called me "quirky." One of my quirks - good dental hygiene. What the........?? It's now considered quirky if you brush regularly and actually use floss?  Hey, I  can't afford the dentist. I want to keep these teeth. No quirks involved.

I've also been talking to an old friend who is going through a rough time. He thought he was on his way to marriage, a growing family, but suddenly it's all gone. It's hard to watch/listen to a friend in pain, but to be a good friend, I've got to give it a try.  I keep trying to remember how I felt lately, out of sorts, lonely, sad. What helped me? What made things worse?  I don't want him to feel that he has to be up for me, because I'm trying to cheer him, so I'm trying to avoid putting pressure on him to "have a great day," although I'm sure I've said that, it is on old stand by of mine.  I'm trying to follow his lead. He's a strong man, he's been through a lot, and he always makes it through.

Why do some people end up getting more than their share of the challenges life likes to hand out?

I'm looking forward to being able to give him a big hug soon. He's one of those great huggers. I've known him since he was about 10 years old - he was a classmate of my younger sister. I was older, an 8th grader and he was one of those jr flirts. Pretty funny. We were talking about that the other day. Funny kid.

Back to the hugging....... he has a lot of friends, one of those people whom every body loves. Some years back, I was out with a group of old girl friends from high school. I can't remember how I ended up with the group, I was a young mom and never went out....... Anyway, there were about 6 or 7 of us and as we ran into him on the street, he put out his arms and we each automatically went in for our hug, taking turns. We only talked to him for a few minutes in passing, but he had time to give each of a us a good, strong hug. He's a very sweet man.

I love hugs. Especially hugs from men. Getting hugs from the kids, they are wonderful, but there is something about getting a hug from someone who is bigger and stronger than me, it's so soothing and comforting, as if for just a few seconds I can hand over the reins of being The One Who Protects to someone else, just briefly.

I better bring this to an end. My kids want to eat......and hopefully give me a hug. Here's my latest 365 Project photo. I got so behind when I was ill.

Max Is Sick & I'm Sick of Facebook

My boy, Max, is sick. He had a low-ish fever this weekend. I am determined to get him well or well-er today. I'm hitting him with the breathing treatments, the percussion, I'm planning to kick that illness's butt, if it had a butt, of course.

Do you have a Facebook account?  I do and it was fun for awhile. I enjoyed catching up with old friends, seeing how they turned out, hearing about their interests and their families. Lately, however, it's not as much fun. I get tired of reading about politics (about how wrong mine apparently are)  and about how this or that group is over-stepping their bounds in one way or another. More pictures, more little league updates, and movie quotes please. Less anti-Obama, anti-immigrant, anti-whatever. Or maybe I am the only who has a problem with the negativity. Maybe I'm in the minority. I keep hiding people - pretty soon my feed will consist of 5 ladies, my crush, and my daughter's friends. 

Okay, back to kicking that illness's butt. I think I'll hit it with a little Vitamin C.

Happy Birthday Sarah!

Happy birthday to my wonderful daughter, Sarah!!

She is 12 and only a couple of months away from jr high. Dang, where did the time go?  It seems like it was only a year or so ago that I was giving birth to a 9 lb 14 oz baby girl, who was so big that she broke her little collar bone on the way out. (Don't worry, she was fine.)

Jack Johnson Makes Me Smile

Okay, I'm going to try to embed a YouTube video on here, something I've never tried in my blogger blog, so hopefully it works. I love this song. It makes me feel happy, plus Jack Johnson - with or without hair - is lovely.

One last thing, if you get a chance, please enter one or both of my Lubridern Advanced Moisturizer with SPF 30 giveaways at Gadabout Media or Girl Looks Swell. I want to give this stuff away and for some reason I'm not getting much response to this particular giveaway. It's good stuff and it's FREE.

Okay,  on to Jack, but first, go to the bottom right of the right column there and pause my plalyist. By the way, I've been thinking about taking the playlist off, but one of my friends says she really likes it. I haven't updated it in forever. Do you have a Askew To You Playlist opinion?  Please share it with me, if you do.  Okay, now, Jack..........

I'm In Charge Here

I woke up feeling sort of blue this morning. Ugh. Enough of that.

I realize that my mood, my point of view, I'm in charge of it. If I don't want to feel sad, it's up to me to get my shit together and turn myself around.  It's that simple. Right?  Okay, not simple, but do-able.

I need to get my mind back to where I was a few years ago.  I had a good life and I was happy.  I was focused on my kids and my home. I was organized and on track. Then, I got a peek at something else and I went sort of nuts.

It's okay to dream, it's okay to work toward a goal, but it's also important to find peace and some sense of satisfaction in where you are.

It's the Mary Englebreit idea of  Bloom Where You Are Planted.

Here's how I plan to get back on track...

*Lay off the dating for awhile. Just put it on the shelf. If someone wonderful drops into my lap, okay, I'll go for it, but I'm not seeking it out for now.

*Pare down some of my writing projects. I'm going to focus on a few key blogs and step away from the rest. I've been freaking out about money since the end of Splendicity. It's been fairly terrifying. Time to stop scrambling. I will focus on marketing what I enjoy most.

*I'm going to get back to work on my book.

*I'm going to spend more time with my camera in my hand.

*I'm going to stop thinking about moving and instead make the place where I live, my home for 6 years now, feel like the place where I want to stay.

Okay, there are my goals. Do-able. All of them.  Happy days, here I come!!   Happy Mother's Day to you, if you are a mom. :)

Stress Breeds Stress

I have trouble writing when I'm stressed out. I do it, because it's my job, but when I go back to edit, I realize that I've used the wrong word in some places or the wrong version of a word. My brain short-circuits.


I feel like that right now. Sometimes I stress myself out on my stress. Stress breeds stress. For example, I get upset and I feel like my heart is racing. I think, oh yeah, that heart attack that I fear is right around the corner. Or I worry that the surges of hormones caused by adrenaline are powering little tumors in my body, making them powerful, mowing down healthy cells. My stress is killing me.

It's crazy, I know it is, and it's pointless. Worrying about stress only makes me more stressed out.

She's Focused On the Boy

I had to pick Sarah up early from camp this week. She had a fever - at one time it was almost 103 - and they have a policy, plus that's pretty darn high. She's feeling a little better, but still popping up with a low-grade fever off and on. She is usually asleep.

Even sick, she had a wonderful time at camp. She has already told me about a few of subjects they covered at Environmental School including Salmon spawning and mining for gold. She went down into a mine (with a guide) and  the kids panned for gold. She loved the experience.

It was a beautiful drive up there and back. Whiskeytown Lake is jsut minutes from the town of Redding. I took my camera up there with me. I started thinking, hhmm if I moved to this end of Redding, I could be at the lake all the time.......  I'm a dreamer and I think about moving all the time.

I have had a challenging week in terms of running. Wednesday I had horrible heartburn and after a practically sleepless nigh,t I skipped running today. I seriously doubt that I will get my entire 20 miles in this week. I have 14.1 so far. I'm thinking about walking the last 6 instead of running it. Or maybe running only a couple and walking the rest. I feel exhausted and stressed out. (I hope this makes sense. Like I said, operating on very little sleep here).

Raising a teenager is so much harder than I ever imagined it would be. I spend a good deal of time feeling heart-sick. Did my mom feel this way? Did my grandma feel this way?  I don't see any sort of success or parenting awards in my future. I'd really just like to survive this time, I'd like us both to survive it. I think a lot of what I see comes from my daughter being fearful about the future. She said today that she did not want to grow up anymore.

I try to remember what I was like at her age. I didn't fight as much with my mom, (Mom agrees with this), but I'm not sure I had any sort of plan other than to marry my boyfriend in a year or so and then move to the Bay Area. It was all very vague - I was focused on the boy only.

I was talking to Bay today about not focusing totally on your relationship. I said it's a lesson that you learn with age, that I didn't get it when I was first married. She agreed, but knowing something and changing a pattern of behavior are two completely different things.

The future, it's all very vague to her right now. She's focused on the boy only.  She will figure it out.