Just Jeri

Today is my youngest daughters concert.  I ironed her dress and then went on the hunt for a cute little sweater or jacket from her sisters room.  She is 14 going on 30, or at least that’s what SHE thinks.  I walk into her room and it’s so nice and tidy.  I smile.  I open the door to her closet and…..”HOLY SHIT!”  I almost have a heart attack!  The little shit has been shoving crap in that closet for what looks like decades!!!  Well, you can only imagine what happens next.  Yes, I forget about that cute little sweater or jacket that I was originally looking for and begin to go through the closet like a bull dozer gone mad!!!  Now….sitting down to begin the calming process I realize that I have destroyed her room.  She gets home from school in….um…32 minutes.  Eeeek.  Oh well. Such is life.  What was she thinking?  That I would NEVER find it? That garbage dump in her closet?  I mean why???? Why do kids keep garbage?  I found ho ho wrappers with chocolate stuck to it at the bottom of that mess.  Ewwwwwwwww!!!  Do we have bugs living in there? Probably!!  Why do they keep garbage?  I don’t understand.  I don’t understand why she thought she could hide that.  My kids know what kind of a fit of rage I go into when I see stuff like that.  If I had a mom like me I would keep my room spotless!!  What is wrong with them?!!!  I need to come up with something different.  Boarding school?  Summer camp instead of vacation?  Take away her cell phone!?  Maybe I need to take all the T.V.’s out of their rooms.  Then they can’t lay around on their asses when they have messy friggin GOD knows what living in their closets!!  New rules.  No T.V.’s, no computers, no Nintendo DS….things have got to change around here!!!!!  Her bathroom is a mess too.  I think she just throws the cat food on the floor and pretends to hit the cats dish!  Well, a shock is fixing to come over her when she walks in the door to her room today!  Fun, fun, fun!  Someone is not going to like me very much!  25 minutes and counting…..

Once upon a time ago when we moved to this remote property here in Idaho we decided to purchase a BB gun for my son.  We set the rules in place..blah blah blah.  Last summer (2007) he was out shooting his BB gun and I happened to look out across the field and saw him shooting it straight down into the ground.  I thought to myself…”Hmmm…that doesn’t look healthy. He is going to hit a rock or God knows what and it’s going to bounce right back up and take his eye out.”  So, I go outside on the deck and start yelling at the top of my lungs to him.  He of course pretends not to hear me.  Which he does often and believe me I am not one of those “Can not be heard” people.  Ask anyone!  Everyone!  You can hear me when I yell!  Well, I finally get his attention and he slowly makes his way towards me while I impatiently get more and more pissed off that he isn’t RUNNING like the wind to get to me! (HA!) When he gets fairly close so I don’t have to scream, I tell him not to shoot straight into the ground, in fact not to shoot into the ground at all or he will get hurt.  He mutters “Ok, mom”.   I mean, what the hell did I buy all those damn targets for him to shoot at for?!!!About an hour later he comes inside and I made the comment, “done already?”  He said “yeah” and went into his room.  I find out later from Brian, who was outside all day, that Billy had continued to shoot into the ground and a BB bounced up and hit him on the forhead.  Now, can you believe it?!  I was so mad but opted to not say anything (not one of my strong points!).   So, yesterday Brian and my brother Bill were out working on our shop (finally after two years it might get done!). Billy decided to go out and shoot his BB gun.  I didn’t even know he was outside as I was laid up on the couch with a bad cold/sore throat.  Brian comes storming in the house saying “WHERE IS HE?”  I say “Who?”  He said “Billy! I just yelled at him and he must be off sulking somewhere. He was out there shooting his damn BB gun into the friggin’ ground again and I’m up on the ladder 12 feet in the air and all of a sudden I get smacked right above my eye with a damn BB!!!!”  I tell him to calm down, his eye is still there and go back to work, I will take care of Billy.  I find him outside sitting on his half-pipe with his head hanging down to his chest, indeed moping quite obviously, of course!  I asked Billy “Do you remember last year when we had the conversation about not shooting your BB gun into the ground so that someone does not lose an eye?”  His answer…  “no”.  Well, now I am ANGRY.  I told him if he can’t remember simple rules of safety then I guess he is too immature to have a BB gun, or any other gun for that matter and sent him to his room to think about it. 

I don’t know.  Raising kids is not an easy task.  Everyone that wants them should think about that.  I think about when a kid does something wrong you always hear someone saying “It’s the parents fault”.  I cringe everytime I hear that.  If I don’t get him a BB gun then I shelter him too much, if I do get him one and someone loses and eye, it’s my fault.  I don’t know….should we be parents?  To B or not to B….that is the question!

Jen and Adam came to visit for about 10 days.  Adam is so funny.  He loves hunting.  I mean he is really into it.  He wanted to take Billy out and get a goose so bad! They went out and sat in the blind and hoped they would come.  But, they didn’t.  In fact they never came.  That is until Adam and Jenny left.  Now ..our fields are full of water and the geese have flown over on a daily basis.  Adam complained about it not raining ever when he comes to visit.  He was right too.  But no sooner then he left, what did it do?  Yep. It rained.  It hasn’t stopped raining.  Not ONE day since he left.  They even said on the news the day after they left “The rainy season has arrived”!  I thought, oh nooo.  Now..I am so sick of the rain.  It just keeeeeeps on coming.  But…there are geese flying overhead.  I will tell them to come back earlier next year so that Adam can say hello.  Sorry Adam. 

Visiting someone who is incarcerated is a joke.  The visiting hours suck and you don’t get to actually “see” them.  You have to look on a video monitor screen at them and even that is crappy.  Most of the time you look at their forhead.  The phones don’t work properly so you can barely hear them.  You only get two visits per week and if someone else is visiting someone in their area and they arrive first, you miss out on your visit until the next session.  It SUCKS!  Soooo…tell everyone you know not to do anything wrong.  It’s heart wrenching to see them in jail, even though you know they screwed up and have to pay their dues.  It SUCKS! 

I hate the people that work at the jail.  They think they own you too.  They treat you like crap and tell you where to sit and when to sit and they scream at you over the intercom if they can’t see you.  I mean, WTF?!!!  I didn’t do anything wrong! I am just visiting!  You can’t say anything bitchy to them for treating you like shit or they will take your visit away!  Who the hell do they think they are anyway!  I’m just visiting!  I am not a criminal!  Don’t treat me like one! No wonder we don’t respect them!  You can’t bring anything in but your keys and your ID.  AND WHY NOT???  It’s not like you can slip anything through the damn video monitor!!!!!  Arrrrg.  Ok I’m done.  Just had to get that out of my system!!!

You have no idea how difficult it is to try and RE-train your child to talk without using the word ‘like‘!!!  My son is worse than anyone I have ever heard.  It’s just plain weird.  None of my girls do this.  Just my son!!!  Sometimes he uses like’ 5 times in one sentence!  “Like today, Jimmy like told me to like, and like…like….”  He even DOUBLE uses it!  LIKE-LIKE, THIS!  Arrrrgggg!!!!!  I can’t control myself over this word.  I want to remove it from the english language!  If anyone has any suggestions…I’m game to anything!  LIKE REALLY!!!

I love my daughter Jessica.  She absolutely makes me laugh almost on a daily basis.  She does the dumbest things!  Don’t get me wrong..she is not dumb by any means but her brain just absolutely gets lost somewhere in the middle of her task pretty much regularly!  Every time she calls me she has another one of her “dumb blonde” moments to tell me about.  For instance, this morning she called me because she was at work an hour early (they forgot to tell her they were switching to winter hours today, so this one was not her fault) and she was bored.  She was sitting on the step outside her work and there was a little cat hanging out by the dumpster meowing.  She felt sorry for it and wanted to feed it, so she went to Albertson’s to get a can of tuna.  She was chatting away with me while trying to find the tuna.  She couldn’t and finally asked someone who guided her to it.  I reminded her to buy one with the pull top because obviously she did not have a can opener.  We hung up when she went to pay for it.  She called me back within about 45 seconds and said “I’m so dumb!!!” I said “Uhhhh, what did you do this time? Forget to grab the bag with the tuna in it and you have already driven away?” (because this is something she WOULD do!  Like the time she went in to pay for her gas and then drove away without pumping it!!!  Too embarrassed to go back she just let the clerk have 40.00!!!Baaaahhhhhh!!)  She said “Nooooo….I forgot to buy the can with the pull top!! What should I do now!!?”  I just busted up laughing ..again. She just cracks me up.  I had just told her to get the pull top can!  Jeesh!  She of course was too embarrassed to exchange it so I told her to just go in and buy another can and go to a different checker.  HAHAHA!  DUHHHHhhhhhh Jessie!  If it wasn’t for Jessie and her funny quirks my life would be boring.    Yesterday she microwaved tin foil!!! 

Why is it that I always have these brainy ideas?  I seem to always have something to do to improve things around the house.  It’s like I am never happy with what I have.  I know that is how Brian feels!  If you know me..you know this is MY way of cleaning a room.  You see, when things get so fu**** up around here I plan the attack!  This time it is my bedroom.  Brian is very messy.  You have no idea.  I don’t even want to go there.  Anyway, our bedroom looks like a bomb went off in it, so…I’m moving it! HAHAHA I am so damn smart I scare myself!  Not only will we move our room, but it will be freshly painted and we will get rid of half our crap that has been lying around for years too!  (I am going to throw out all my fat clothes too! That way if I put weight back on I will have to go naked! SCARY!)

Since Karsen has moved out and gone to college, I have decided to move our bedroom into her bedroom and make ours a family/game/tv room/guest bedroom.  But of course…we have to paint her room first.  So, I move everything out and think it will be painted in one day.  HAHAHAHAHAHA!  Yeah right!  I don’t think about the prep work, I just assume all I have to do is clean out the room and Brian can paint it in a matter of minutes!  Well, NOT!  So now I am sure it will take about 3 weeks for it to get painted because it will only happen on his days off (which I understand completely).  I could paint…but ewwwww…I hate to paint.  I don’t mind painting my nails, but that’s about it.  Now…I just wonder, would it have been easier to just clean our room in the first place????!!!  Naaaaah!

Brian and I both quit smoking.  He also quit drinking.  It’s been almost two months since he had a drink.  That is a friggin’ miracle!  My last conversation with him when I returned home from the wedding was pretty…let’s just say truthful. Probably my most important talk with him ever.  I guess it worked because he didn’t have another drink from that point on.  And he definitely had a drinking problem.  I won’t get into that now. Maybe a book one of these days.  It might help others in the same situation.  Anyway, we both quit smoking as well.  Brian had to use the patch.  I just quit, full stop.  He went from the stonger patch for two weeks to the lesser one the third week.  Well, that didn’t work and now he is smoking again.  How do I know?  Well, I just happened to go upstairs to look in the bathroom to make sure it was clean (I haven’t been up there in ages!) and it smelled of smoke so bad I almost puked!  I confronted him and he said NO WAY! hahahahahahaha…when will he learn he can NOT pull the wool over my eyes!  Jeesh!  He finally admitted it. He tried fooling himself by saying he only smoked 3 or 4 a day because the patch was half the nicotine and it wasn’t enough to help him through the day.  Hmmm… Well, now he is smoking a pack a day.  Better than two packs a day but I can’t seem to get him back on track again.  I absolutely hate the smell of cigarettes now.  I mean, REALLY HATE it.  So when he smokes in the garage and I go out there, I am gagging.  Now..should I bitch?  I would much rather have him stop drinking and not even be complaining about the smoking issue.  Right?  Ok then, someone needs to gag me because I can’t help it!  Arrrrg!  Should I buy him the stronger patches again?  I just don’t want to buy them and then find out he is using the patch AND smoking too!  Not good.  I think I will just shut my mouth-for now.

Well, the diet is working.  I admit I definitely have been cheating, but I am better than I was before I started.  I am now 10lbs down! Woohoo!! I even went for a bike ride with the family!  We went on a 6 mile ride (totally enough for me! I was dying!). It was nice and I actually enjoyed it. Well most of it. HAHA!  I have not gotten on a bike in years. Like 20!  Well, one time about 10 years ago I got on one but was soon off it and walking the bike! 

Soooo…another…30 to go for this first half of my diet!  Then of course, I will want to lose more.  But, this time…slow but sure.  None of that rushing to get it off in a hurry so that I can put it all back on!  I want to lose 10lbs a month.  If I can do that I will be my own hero!  Oh..and I fit back into my jeans.  Granted, they are my fat jeans, but hey..they are NOT stretchy with no zipper.  Which by the way, I have not put back on since I got into my “normal” jeans!

How does one know when they are depressed?  Ever since my mom died I have not been able to get back on track.  I’m trying, but the motivation is just …well ..zilch.  I have done some things around the house.  My house.  Not my mom’s.  I need to clean out her whole house and sell it.  It just seems endless.  I have only cleaned out her fridge and some of her food cupboards. Donated some of her clothes.  That was not easy.  Thank God my daughter Sara was there to help me do that.  Lots of tears.  So, now everyday when asked by my husband what I’m going to do for the day, I say “Work on mom’s”.  Yet…everyday I do nothing over there.  I put some boxes over there.  Woohoo.  How long does it take to be able to deal with stuff!?  It’s weird.  I don’t want to do anything with it.  Yet, I don’t want anyone else to do anything with it either.  I feel protective of her things.  I miss her. Terribly.  Still crying on almost a daily basis.  Yes, it’s getting better but….it’s not.  I miss my friend, my thrift store buddy, my gambling buddy, my hang out and watch reality tv shows buddy, my mom.