I Want to Watch…

Sometimes (when my house is full) I wish I had a Slingbox (it works in tandem with my satellite so I can use the tv without the satellite hookup). There are two teenagers here, a restless man and a preschooler. All of them want to watch something else. Since I’m not feeling well I would love to be able to watch what I want to watch. Apparently, so does everyone else. It’s a beautiful thing.

At any rate, I’ve decided that I’m going to use my MT installation for a gardening blog. I’ve got sooo many ideas but don’t want to put them here. My MIL gave me a “Birds and Blooms” book and I LOVE it. It’s got a lot of interesting information and I want to try some of the tips. That would make a pretty decent niche blog, I think. Plus I’d have somewhere to put my flower photos.

See? That’s one of my problems. I get all these ideas and have to implement the right now and everything has to be perfect and then… See? I have been doing well with my Drama TV gig though. Writing a niche topic just once or twice a week works well for me apparently. And I get the practice. Hmmm. Yes, I’ll do well with a small niche blog.

Saying “No” Takes Practice

Grandparents are apparently supposed to spoil their grandchildren with many toys. I happen to not care one way or another about certain grandparents spoiling their grandchildren like this. With Pee Wee I was always able to say “Well, I’m not Grandma” and be done with it. With Mags I can also shrug it off- except for the “throwing fits gets me what I want” phase she seems to be going through.

Mags can’t seem to understand that I won’t respond to tantrums. She assumes that I’m like her grandparents (and/or her father). She will look me straight in the eye right before she begins with an angry tirade as if to tell me “Oh yeah? Well watch this!” I am super-mom, though, and am able to tune her out quite well. When she’s exhausted herself she’ll stop and peek out at me to see if she’s getting a reaction. When I’m still not paying her any attention she’ll finally get up and go about her regular business. This behavior has escalated since her cousin (a little tyrant, if I may so say) was up and was quite good at the throwing tantrums mode of getting what she wanted. Mags seemed to like it that way and has been testing Grump and me. Grump, sadly, doesn’t have to ability to tune her out and most of the time will get >this< close to giving in. When I’m not with him to put my foot down, he does actually give in.

Just a few minutes ago she and Grump came home from “just getting a pack of hot dog buns”. Mags was happy to show me her new horse figurines. Seems that Grump couldn’t resist buying her these toys because “she was just going on and on”. She’s got a lot of these little figurines (they’re nice quality and slightly expensive) and, what do you know, she’s already got the ones Grump broke down and bought her today. *sigh*

He’s a hard one train, my dear husband. I’m thinking maybe I should go along from now on because it doesn’t bother me at all to say “no” when the occasion warrants it. Mags is slowly learning that about me, but I’m pretty sure she’s also learning how to properly manage her father. Good luck to him when she becomes a “needy” teenager.

Working Outside

I’ve been spending a lot of time outdoors. For some strange reason, my illness seems to have gone into remission and I don’t get sick from the sun anymore. As a matter of fact, I don’t even get the rash on my face anymore. I’m not complaining though. I’m thrilled. I love being out in my yard planting flowers or playing or just writing. The writing part is doing a lot better now that it’s done out among the trees¹.

I get a couple of cheap pens, some loose-leaf paper and go to work. As long as I’m not interrupted I can really churn some stuff out. Right now I have a couple of articles in rough draft and those are destined for BellaOnline, but I’m hoping to start putting some gardening articles up on my other blog soon.

I love to garden. I’m not an expert by any means, but I don’t care. I love to plant stuff and watch it grow. So far I’ve only killed one thing, I think, and it was almost dead anyway. Last summer my poor flower beds were horrible. I couldn’t get out to them because I was so sick. Not so this summer. Except for the vegetable garden. Sadly, since it’s been raining so much, the weeds are gaining ground at there. In my defense, that’s supposed to be Grump’s spot in the yard. We say that, but we all know that it’s Lizzie’s job to keep it up. At any rate, my mother brought me a couple of things that she can’t plant at her house and I’ve determined that it’s time to build another bed. I’m hoping I’ll have enough beds soon that I won’t have to mow such a huge patch a grass anymore.

So, back to what I was saying about writing. We have a couple of tables in our yard and I plop myself at one and go to work. Mags will usually find something better to than bug me, but occasionally she’ll sit right with me (trying to get me to identify various insecti). Grump will randomly come over to attempt to start up a conversation about something that makes no sense to me (when he thinks about things he forgets that the conversation was in his head and I wasn’t privy to the first part of it). I don’t mind the small interruptions, though. It’s nice to be able to write like that. This is why I want to move south. So I can have more seasons of warmth and always feel this good.

1. My yard has a lot of trees. [↩]

Going to Pittsburgh

We went to the Pittsburgh zoo last week. One thing I’ve learned about Pittsburgh is that anyone not from there can seriously benefit from using gps fleet tracking. We tried to follow the Google map directions, but ended up way south of Pittsburgh before we realized we’d missed a pretty important turn. So, we stopped at a rest area and luckily they had free maps (no free maps at Ohio rest stops, of course, so this was a welcome surprise). We realized we were almost twenty miles from where we needed to be. Well, when we got to the exit we needed to be at we found out that route was detoured. The detour took us another 30 minutes. I was ready to just throw in the towel and head home before we even got there.

When we did get there, it was raining. No surprise there. I think it’s been raining for about two weeks straight now. Anyway, a lot of the animals were inside or otherwise hiding from the weather. Still, Mags and Pee Wee seemed to really enjoy themselves. Pittsburgh has a small walkthrough that features white-tailed deer and kangaroos. The deer were happy to oblige us by walking up to us and letting us pet them. They didn’t seem to mind the weather a whole lot. One deer decided that Mags’ shoes were tasty, so it spent a couple of minutes licking her toes. Mags got a real kick out of that.

They have a pretty awesome aquarium there. I think everyone enjoyed that (and it was out of the rain). The big tank, which housed the sharks, some other tropical fish and a humongous grouper, had live coral and anemone in it, so it looked like a real reef. I’m comparing this zoo to Cleveland, by the way, which has a huge tank, but that tank is less than clean and has no decoration (very disappointing). So, we spent a lot of time just watching the various colorful fish swim by. There was also a fresh water tank with a lot of different fish and flora, but it wasn’t nearly as interesting as the salt water. What can I say? The pretty fish won the day.

Mags did get to pet a couple of stingrays, which were in a shallow tank all by themselves. There was a small tunnel for kids to crawl through and watch from under water, but Mags was too afraid to go all the way in. A little ways in we had to turn around and come back out. At any rate, even if she was afraid of being in the tunnel, she had no qualms about touching the rays (or a python or blue-tongued skink at another exhibit).

All told, the zoo was pretty nice. Except for the weather. We left soaked.

On our way home, we almost got lost again. We went over a bridge that was under another bridge and the road signs were attached to the beams. Well, we didn’t see the signs until we were right up on them and then had to dash over three lanes. I’m pretty sure the engineers that built the Pittsburgh roads were laughing their tails off knowing that the roads would drive travelers mad. Needless to say, we won’t be traveling to Pittsburgh again anytime soon. That ruined the whole thing for us (moreso than the weather, if you can believe that).

Back

I’m back. I’ve decided that limited Internet activity is probably the best medicine for me right now. I was completely surprised that my 5 days without Internet went by so well. I actually had a really nice time away. And the weather held up- mostly. That was a plus. Nice weather, happy kids, and lack of online interaction was amazing. I’m completely up for re-prioritizing right now. It feels good.

I have, unfortunately, gained some weight in the last week. I think it’s because of my medication, because I wasn’t eating more and swimming is supposed to be really good exercise. So I’m going to look at some diet pill reviews to see if I can find anything that won’t cause heart failure or something similar. I realized something was up when I could fit my swimsuit on Sunday, but on Wednesday the damned thing was almost too tight to put on. That alarmed me in a lot of ways. I don’t know what’s going on with that.

As I sit here writing this, my daughter- Pee Wee- is doing everything in her power to irritate me to the point of murder. She really, really wants to check her myspace. I told her “when I’m done!”, but that just makes her more determined to irritate me away from the PC¹. It might work to the point where I shut down the computer and refuse to let her on.

On a lighter note, I’m off to get myself a replacement cell-phone. For some reason the keypad on mine refuses to work and I’m eligible to have it replaced for free. I love it! I hate this phone with a passion and secretly wished to smash it with a hammer. No, I didn’t smash it. I think it knew it was hated and committed cellphone suicide. Hopefully, they’ll fix the ugly thing and find it a home with someone who loves a phone that turns itself off at the most inopportune times.

1. I refuse to buy a second PC so my teenage daughter who is a mother can spend more time on myspace. [↩]

Out of The House

I’m taking a few days away from the tubes for a while. I’m overdoing it and my health is really suffering. I’ve taken on too many projects on top of what’s going on in my offline life and it wasn’t a good idea. I’ve really got to learn to pace myself when it comes to jobs. I mentioned in my last post that I’m only able to keep two jobs right now and that’s all good for me. Neither one of those jobs is full time so I can get away for a few days to regroup.

I was walking around town today and noticed a lot of commercial real estate for sale. I thought that was really odd. But I asked a friend who’s a realtor if that there are more properties on sale than usual and she looked into it. Seems that it’s about steady for right now. I’m secretly wishing I had an office away from home so I could actually leave to go to work and still be self-employed. How nice would that be? I could leave all this craziness here while I did the “normal” thing and went out into the world to work. Ha!

I didn’t think that was my goal. But who knows? It’s possible. Not now, of course. Maybe some years down the line. At any rate, there’s a website production company setting up downtown and I was thinking of submitting my resume to them. Part-time out of the house work would probably do me some good too. Too much together time makes for a crazy Flynn household.