The Big Plan

This is PD's and B's first day off for Easter Break. The are already nitpicking at each other like it's the middle of summer.

V has a guitar she doesn't know how to play. Nibs found the guitar pick and was playing with it. B had the audacity to take the pick away from Nibs. Well, PD caught B with the pick and threw a conniption, charging at him like a bull with her hands like claws. I'm not sure what happened to whom after that, but she got a time out.

So, a couple hours later -- just to add a little spice to his life -- B sneaks up on PD and shouts, "Boo!" to scare her.

This, of course, takes place immediately after I put Nibs down for a nap.

PD immediately freaks at B, shoving him around and screaming in his face at the top of her lungs. During her tirade she says, "You make me want to run away!"

Being no help to her at all, I had to ask a bunch of practical questions like where she'd run to, what she'd eat or drink, and how long she thought she could survive on her own. Based on the answers she gave, her plan is surprisingly simple: She'd live in the back yard, eat nothing, and last about a week.

Oh, my. She's only nine. What will life with her be when she's 13?

Together Again

We said goodbye to our Chessie on Saturday morning.

Catching up

Hi. Remember me? Neither do I. Author's note: Blogger isn't putting in my paragraphs despite repeated attempts at editing them back in. Sorry for they eyeball pain! ---- I'm still working midnight shift at the convenience store. Work has gotten much easier since one of the cashiers on my shift left and they hired a new person in the deli. I get to spend a fair amount of time on register now. I am just as busy, but the tasks themselves are easier. I also like switching between deli and register. ----- Her Nibs walks and talks and is so stinkin' cute I can't stand it. I've forgotten how much fun toddlers can be, and we're all drinking up every bit of it. She loves her puppy and her blanket and doesn't go anywhere without them. She loves to color and loves books. She says "please," "thank you," and "you're welcome" on a consistent basis (way more than her siblings do), and she uses them appropriately. She loves to dance. The minute she hears music, she's bouncing to the rhythm. She still tries to use the potty. She lost interest for a little bit, but she seems to be turning back to it. She loves frozen peas, chicken thighs, pizza, meatballs, apple slices, grapes, Peppermint Patties, and Dots. Orange juice is her #1 beverage choice, with chocolate milk holding the #2 spot by only a few points. If I let her, she'd drink those two things all day long and skip food completely. ----- Mighty B's Cub Scout troop organized a weekend trip to Washington D.C. I was really excited to go, since my few visits there were short and I didn't get to see much. The Oracle and I have learned that we still can't travel long distances with our kids and stay in hotels because they are still uncivilized banshees. Nibs was the only one who behaved herself, but sleeping in a strange place stressed her out, and, despite utter exhaustion, she had trouble sleeping. ----- Mighty B. started drum lessons in January. In spite of the fact that we have to stand over him with a whip to get him to practice, he seems to be really good at it. His latest obsession is Mario Kart on the Wii. If I let him, he'd play video games all day long. ----- Precious Daughter's latest obsession -- although she won't admit it -- is a boy in her class. She's already feeling the pressure of the jealous girls trying to interfere with that, too. From the evidence brought home, the boy likes her as well. Fortunately, he's a nice kid. While I'm not excited over the fact that my nine-year-old daughter wants to have a "boyfriend," I am comforted by knowing that having a boyfriend in fourth grade simply means you chase each other at recess, and once in a while Mom needs to pack an extra sweet to share with him at lunch. ----- Another dance recital is coming in June as well, and after homework is done I get to hear PD's tap shoes pounding away in the kitchen. I found a pair of tap shoes in Nibs' size at the consignment shop for five bucks so she can properly interfere with PD's practice. Heh-heh-heh... ----- I am passively looking for a dog. It's not an all-out search, just some poking around on Petfinder to see who's available. The Oracle is warming up to the idea. He doesn't want another German Shedder (yet), so I may have to stop being so narrow minded on the subject. He wants an English Bulldog. Well, he'd also like a dachshund or a corgi, but my size requirement is not negotiable. If it's below my shins, I'm going to trip over it. At least if I trip over a bulldog, I won't kill it. ----- Really, though, the Shedder is the perfect dog. They're smart, playful idiots with big teeth and enough of a bad reputation to make strangers think twice about approaching our house. ----- My MIL turns 88 today. Her physical health is amazing. Her mind is slipping some more. She remembers me and the kids with little problem, unless my FIL is giving her a refresher before we arrive. Last night, she was confusing The Oracle with her brother. In her defense, she has always claimed that they looked alike. Anyway, she told The Oracle that he had a nephew that looked just like him, but she couldn't think of the nephew's name. That made me really sad. ----- And now, I must sign off. Her Nibs must be in the midst of a growth spurt. She's been sleeping for 11 hours now, and if I don't wake her up she'll soak out the diaper and wreck her bed.

Time Flies...

Wow. I haven't posted since December 9? I'm sorry! Here's a quick recap of notable events over the last month and a half. They're in no particular order because I have a craptastic memory and little concept of time. Asking me to put it all in order would be cruel, and my post would never make it up to the blog if I tried.

Most recent and most sad is the passing of my great uncle, the last and youngest of my grandmother's 12 siblings. (Most tragic to note is that of 12 children, only seven made it to adulthood, and one of those seven was killed during WWII. Seeing how awful it was for my mother to lose one child, I can't imagine what toll those statistics took on my great grandmother.) Uncle John hit the lifelong lottery. At the amazing age of 94, he maintained a sound mind and good health up until this latest illness.

Mighty B. has been a mighty challenge. This year, Santa gave him his presents but also gave him a stocking filled with coal instead of goodies. B. wasn't the least bit upset by it, at least on the outside. Santa has been waiting for a day of outstanding behavior to give B. his stocking stuffers, but there hasn't been any. *sigh*

Precious Daughter confessed that she has a crush on a boy in her classroom. I haven't mentioned this tidbit to The Oracle, mostly because I forgot to tell him. He was working late when she told me, and I tend to nap when he's around because I can. Midnight shift can really suck sometimes.
Her Nibs is going to be two in just a few weeks. I can't believe it! She is trying potty training on for size. For the last couple months, she has intermittently peed in the potty. It's not consistent by any means, but she knows what it's for and isn't afraid of it, so I anticipate it will be easier than it was with the first two. Mighty B. was (surprise!) just stubborn about it, and Precious Daughter was afraid of the flush. (Wanna send an almost potty-trained three-year-old into an absolute panic? Take her to an echoey department-store bathroom with auto-flush toilets at lunch time. To this day, she hates auto-flush.)

It's snowing today. We've had snow just about every week since Christmas, and I'm loving every inch of it. Yeah, shoveling sucks, but snow just makes the winter world look so much brighter. I guess it's easy for me to love it when I'm sitting in my living room and looking out the window. I can honestly say that even when I had to fishtail my way (in my '72 Duster) along the seventeen-mile trek to work, I still loved it.

Hey, does anyone have a '72 Duster for sale, one that hasn't been modified for racing?

I just learned that my kids are getting out early today, so maybe I won't have to shovel! Haha!!!!

If People, Like Cats, Had Nine Lives...

..I just saw someone torch four of them in less than twenty seconds.

The glare of the morning sun is quite vicious today.

I drop The Oracle off at the train station and make my left turn to head homeward. Just as I start accelerating, a puny Honda Prius makes a left turn directly into my path. I wasn't even coming out of the glare; I was heading into it. She should have seen me. I had to mash the brake into the floorboard to avoid slamming into her (Life #1). It's a miracle that I wasn't rear-ended.

Then the Prius runs its passenger-side wheels over the fog line and into the grass, narrowly missing a telephone pole (Life #2). She swerves to avoid the pole and misses a car parked at the nursing home by inches (Life #3).

Prius oversteers again when she swerves back onto the two-lane roadway directly into opposing traffic, forcing two cars off the road into the gravel and someone's driveway (Life #4).

So, in addition to four of her own lives, she also took one from at least three other drivers, myself included. I was just about to call her license plate in to the police when she hit the shade and miraculously straightened herself out. Until then I sincerely thought she was drunk.

Add in the road-rage factor, and she may have burned five.

Yup. I'm Here

My badly-neglected blog is probably going to run away from home and join the circus. All is well in PB and Bacon land. I've just been really busy and haven't had the time. Well, I did have the time a couple weeks ago, spending the better part of an hour on a Halloween post, but Blogger misbehaved and I lost half of the post. I signed off in a snit and haven't been back.

I'll try to get something together by Christmas, okay?

Memory from Court Reporting School

I spent seven l-o-n-g years in court-reporting school. I had classes three nights a week. To graduate, you have to reach speeds between 180 and 225 words per minute depending on the type of writing you're doing.

Now, I didn't want this to become a lesson in court-reporting how-tos, but to briefly break it down, a court reporter is tested for five minutes in three different aspects of writing. Testimony, or Q&A, has to reach 225 words per minute in order to graduate. Jury Charge (instructions to a jury by the judge) must reach 200 words per minute, and Literary, which is simply text from any source (speeches, essays, magazine articles) must reach 180. The killer is that you have to pass your tests with 95% accuracy. It's the only school in the world where a 94% is a failing grade. (If you know a court reporting student, don't DARE to ask when they're going to graduate, not unless you want a black eye.)

Once we were writing at roughly 100 words per minute, every speed class had an "opportunity" at the end. We weren't allowed to call them tests. They were called "opportunities" because it was an opportunity to move on to the next speed level if you passed. I guess some wanna-be psychologist at the school decided it would be less stressful on the students if you didn't call a test a test.

"A rose by any other name" can still make you sneeze.

One of the most unrealistic aspects of court-reporting school was the pin-drop quietness of it all. If there was any greater lie perpetuated by court reporting school (other than, "you'll graduate in a little over three years"), it was the insistence on absolute quiet during perfectly-metered, annunciated, and grammatically-correct dictation by our instructors. Noise of any kind during a test was frowned upon and cause for much whining and complaint by a student who felt they didn't pass a test because so-and-so's steno paper didn't fold properly and riffled out of the tray and onto the floor or somebody sneezed or there was laughter in the hallway.

Once a court reporter hits the real world, they learn a very different thing. Not only do some people speak so dreadfully it sounds like a foreign language, attorneys chew ice or crunch on biscotti during depositions. If words aren't misprounounce or misused, they're sometimes made up on the spot. Add to that the shuffling of papers, coughing, nose-blowing, clattering briefcase hasps, scribbling pencils, cell phones, squeaky chairs, and the birthday party in the room next door, and you'll discover that there's a world of distraction and noise to affect a court reporter's ability to focus on the task at hand.

Well, anyway, during one particular "opportunity," the instructors are reading the test, and the room is silent except for the dictation and the hum of flourescent lighting. As soon as the instructor stops speaking, I am jolted into the "real world" by the entire classroom of 15 women erupting into screams, including the instructors.

LJ and I look at one another. For a split second, she is as bewildered as I am until one of the shriekers yelps the phrase I manage to understand: "IT'S CRAWLING TOWARD HER STENO BAG!"

Well, now, I didn't know for sure what "IT" was, but on the seventh floor of a city building, that crawling thing was either a rat or a roach, and neither was going to hitchhike a ride home with me.

Chairs and steno machine tripods are scraping across the floor as some students scurry out of the room and some of the students take refuge by standing on chairs. LJ and I hop out of our chairs too, but we're the only two that don't lose our heads. I see a hefty-sized cockroach scuttling under a chair, and she and I go after it. One of us eventually crushed it, but I don't remember which one of us did it.

This is NOT normal behavior for me. If there's someone around that I know will kill it for me, I'm more than happy to be the one standing on the chair. The fact is, I didn't trust anyone in that room to do the killing, and if that bug wasn't positively DEAD before I went home, I wasn't going to sleep that night for fear of having it stow away in my bag or my purse. *gurk!*

(And I'm suddenly reminded of the time I dropped a fat rubber cockroach in my sister's purse a few years ago. Heh-heh-heh. I don't even know why I did it.)

I later learned that LJ and I were the only ones in the room who finished taking the test. One by one, all the other students saw that bug and lost their concentration, and not one of them made a peep during five minutes of testing. If I'd been the one that spotted the bug, I couldn't have remained so still or silent. Nope. No way. I suspect that even if I were in a deposition, I'd have to go off the record and kill it before I could resume writing.

Suddenly, I'm all itchy...