Small Successes

After posting the blog address to Jill's wall on Saturday morning, there were over 160 hits for the day.

There was also a prompt call from Jill at 6:54am Pacific time on Saturday cussing me out for posting it. I mean she was a little bit hollering at a kid to be getting ready for something or another too. But the other part had her cussing at me and saying OH MY GOD a whole lot. And the way she can convert my name into totally different syllables depending on what level of OH MY GOD she is at. SHAROOOOLLLL was the most frequent version applied during our conversation. And eventually she got to the OH MY GOD giggling though. Eventually.

The thing I think I miss the most about Jill is seeing her laugh. Not hearing, but seeing her. When she starts laughing uncontrollably and then starts crying because she can't stop laughing.

That giggle showing up whether she is sad, mad or happy has been the same forever though. Really.
-Sheryl

It Isn't Raining Today

It does rain alot in Seattle. But when it's beautiful... it's really, really beautiful. This pic is from tonight, from an impromptu trip to the beach that is about 15 minutes from where we live.

-Sheryl

Rain,Rain go away, come back NEVER

Guess what rainy days are full of? Insane drivers, wildy hyper children, cranky mamas and wet shoes. I hope it's sunny tomorrow.
~Jill

Things I Love......

1) When Annoying Dog jumps on the couch full of newly folded clothes, ferociously wrastling a toy, and messes everything up.

2) When it starts raining mid-baseball practice, so 2 sweaty, smelly & now muddy tweenie boppers invade my car.

3) listening to my 2 older children fight over the most inane things for the 500 millionth time.

4) Scraping dried strawberry baby droppings off the dining room floor.

5) listening to More Annoying Dog scratch inscesintly at the floor because she wants food or water or to go outside or to just be super annoying. Hence the name More Annoying Dog.


Obviously, I don't really love these things. Sarcasm seems to be my thing today, so i'm just rolling with that.

~Jill

False Alarm

The burning smell was a lightbulb smoldering a lampshade that was knocked whackadoodle by Mr. Noah. Naturally.

Saved again.

-Sheryl

Close Calls

I had a major presentation this week at work. I realized the pair of black pants that I needed to wear was in the laundry because I had gone straight from work to Joshua's baseball game... so those suckers were filthy. I opened the laundry room door and was bowled over with smoke and a burning smell. My head sometimes screws with me so I went to ask Al if he smelled the smell and he said yes. But. That's all he did- he just kept washing dishes. I bolted back in the kitchen to ask him to come LOOK at the smelly smoke coming out of the laundry room.

Yep. Something was hosed up with the dryer and it wasn't going to be running any time soon. Now I needed some place that would have pants for me. It was 8pm. We were out of juice boxes and milk too so the emergency store trip wasn't too out of line with the needs of the moment. But seriously- this was a mammoth sized presentation to the most senior of any level of anyone I've ever pitched to and I didn't want to be screwing this up. But knowing my life events are typically stamped with some degree of nonsense, a burning dryer was minimal and something I could work around.

I got pants. I presented. Issues averted.

But then I was at Joshua's baseball game and late, late into a long game, he was waiting for his turn to bat and turned around holding up a bloody, bloody hand. Not a little bit of blood, but a-what-the-hell amount. I started screeching for him to come to me- he was furthest away in the dug out amongst a pile of boys who were just done with sitting still. I was definitely worried about his hand but- it was also crossing my mind that he needed to keep his hand 30 feet from his white jersey shirt because he still had a game tomorrow morning and I still don't have a dryer... my priorities were a touch idiotic but it had been a long week.

It turns out he had a tiny skin rip that was aggravated by screwing around with a mitt for 5 innings. But he also simultaneously had a freak bloody nose that was adding to the blood output volume.

It was so ridiculous. But again another close call for the week.

This morning took the cake however. Noah was begging me to get up and get him breakfast but then decided he needed to watch at least one Caillou cartoon before heading downstairs. I grabbed my blackberry while he was watching and I was deciding if I had any pants to wear (I have a dryer now... just need to execute the laundry part...). There was a 6:40am missed call... from my mom.

I had to be out of close calls for the week. I already imagined what it was- she was locked in her bathroom again or she was feeling strange and was on the verge of a heart attack and wanted me to tell her what to do from 2000 miles away and I missed the call or she was laying in a gutter and made a single, miserable call to her daughter for help and I missed it.

I sit up hardly breathing and dial as fast as I can on the blasted phone trying not to alarm Noah from his Caillou watching pose. And then somebody answers that doesn't sound like my mom so I start deciding that I'm right, she is hurt and a friend of hers has her phone while they are evaluating her in the ER. I'm hoping that she has chosen to go to Genesys instead of Hurley and I am already estimating flight costs... And then... she says something else making it clear that THIS IS my mother, she's just on a walk up a hill and is out of breath.

And she had dialed the wrong number. Which is a problem when it is an East Coast vs. West Coast thing because the time zone blows everything to hell and will strike a vast amount of confusion from unsuspecting daughters.

Yet another close call is averted.

Not sure if I should just beg for the shoe to drop that feels like it is dropping or if I should be glad it's Sunday and that means that karma is starting over and I'm done with close calls for a good long while...

However. As I SIT HERE TYPING, I'm smelling a burning smell.
-Sheryl

One of the best mom's I know gave this to me...

Thank you Jill...