havocandmayhem.com

From my 365 set Doing dishes A walk in the woods Dino tech support. I was having trouble with my mouse. Clowning around For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

Everybody has them, usually a few. That time you wore those thigh high stiletto boots & mini skirt out bar hopping & were the most popular girl in every bar you entered and never paid a dime for drinks all night long & came home with 15 phone numbers. Or, that time you did all those beer bongs at a tailgate, passed out before the game even started & woke up at half time in the driver’s seat of god only know’s whose car wearing a fake beard and a bra on your head. Not that either of those have happened to me….just by way of example. So you can say to your friends when they ask you about a recent experience “Remember the time with the stiletto boots? Like that, but less booze” An everyone knows what you are saying. Well… About 5 years ago I paid a repairman $60 to plug in my stove. That was all that was wrong with it – loose plug. But only the oven wasn’t working. The clock & the burners still worked. Maybe that would lead normal people to check the pl...

6:40 – when I wake up 7:30 – when I go back to bed 9:30 – when I wake up again 8 – years I have struggled with insomnia 3 – years I took Lunesta 10 – months I have been off of it 43 – nights I have had more than 3 hours of sleep in a row 22 – days I have been congested in my chest 20 – giant horse pills of amoxicillin I have taken for bronchitis 8 – containers of pro biotic yogurt I have eaten 4 – times I have served spaghetti for supper this month 1 – times I have actually eaten it myself 6 – pounds lost while ill 7 – pounds regained in the past week ?? – cookies eaten since my appetite returned 8 – games I already owned & played this month 3 – games I have purchased this month from Big Fish Games 0 – times I have made it to the gym this month 5 – new books read so far this month .25 – crochet projects completed since school started 3- episodes of The Tudors Season 4 I have viewed so far This post inspired by Day 2s prompt in Shimelle’s Tr...

We bought the mini van 18 months ago. It’s a 2006 & currently has about 48,000 miles or so on it. This week I have to take it in for the first real repairs it has needed. The brake rotors need milled or something. They stutter when you hit the brakes, the brakes still work just fine but you can feel the stuttering in an alarming “Good God the brakes are going to fail sooner rather than later” sort of way. Though I am told if it takes me 9 months to get the job done mostly I’ll just need new rotors & the brakes themselves will continue to work. But nevertheless it is alarming. I was told that about 3 months ago & for various reasons have been putting it off. The dealership, who told me I needed the milling, quoted me a price that seemed really high to DH who once had rotors milled back in the 20th century. So he’s been sporadically calling around looking for lower prices. It appears the costs of brake repairs have in fact gone up in the past 2 decades. Should we be w...

Misty morning Fall colors Waiting for the bus   Me & my Kindle For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom Thanks for stopping by!

This is the interior of my house, click for a larger view. Every room but the junk room has a sliding glass door, or a French door. This is why there is a security system. Not to keep people out so much but to keep boys in. They could, in theory, go out their bedroom door and up the atrium steps and we’d never know they left unless we went in their room to find them. Bad enough when it is just them at 7 wanting a little adventure. Fast forward a few years to friends with driver’s licenses, who could drive part way up the driveway and pick up or drop off the boys at night, again, without us having the slightest clue because sound does not carry through dirt. So fully armed alarm system with keypad in parents’ room it is! Fortunately it is right off the kitchen so it is an easy dash to disarm when you get home. The junk room’s window opens onto a shaft in the hillside. It looks like a wide chimney from the outside but it’s just a shaft to an underground window. I suppose it’s ...

You know how you always get asked that as an ice breaker? Some people just bang right on it. They can always think of something. They can turn their tongue inside out  or they were downhill skiing national champions in college. Me? I end up sitting there trying to come up with something unusual that isn’t down right odd (certain food combinations) or too much information (no on needs to know about my underwear) and I usually end up muttering something about Tudor England, the subject of my Master’s. Which always makes people who do know me in real life roll their eyes and exclaim something like “Jesus Stacey! That’s it? That’s all you can come up with? What about your house?” Which. um. yeah…my house.  But see, it’s *my* house & it’s normal to me. It’s just my house you know. Yeah it’s sort of out in the middle of nowhere but apart from that, it’s a house. I never give it much thought unless prompted to do so. But ok, it is odd.  This is the back view. ...

People recovering from bronchitis cannot be expected to compose whole paragraphs, let alone entire blog posts. So, my scrapbooking sisters! Who has signed up for Shimelle’s new class True Stories , which begins Oct 25? It focuses on journaling & I am hoping to get a bit of a jump start on Journal Your Christmas with it. Since this will be my 4th year of JYC I’m hoping to go with more journaling & less scrapping for it this year. Mayhem’s handwriting sucks. Pretty much our entire conference with his teacher focused on that. The problem is that most of the time no one can read his homework or his writing assignments so he doesn’t get full credit. But since that is all that is wrong with him he doesn’t get special writing time, so we have to do it at home. The nice part is the teacher thinks she can get some writing workbooks & things from the special assistance teachers & send them home for us. Havoc is doing fine. They want us to work on his reading comprehension. ...

From my 365 photos this week. Last weekend I developed a nasty chest cold So I took some standard meds and thought staying in bed a couple days might help Mayhem sent these guys in to keep me company. They like being scratched between their plates But the bed rest didn’t work. The cold became bronchitis & serious meds were called for I spent a lot of time in bed playing computer games Turns out, these guys were Hidden Object Champion Gamers of the Late Cretaceous era. For more Weekly Winners, please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

So it seems walking into the living room is exerting myself. Not from walking but from being unable to ignore the legos and dinos and empty bowls and blankets and crumbs and toy cars and oh yeah balled up socks. I have to tidy them! Cannot ignore mess! So I am staying out of the living room this weekend, which means no internet. My SITS tribe sister, Jia has stepped in for me to keep you entertained in my absence. Check out her blog, her sister just had a baby! =========================================== Matt and I were playing Scene It last night, the video game about movie trivia. Normally, Matt kills me during this game, but somehow, I completely lucked out last night. Question: Kate Winslet starred in Sense & Sensibility, true or false? Matt : False. Me : True. (Correct) Question: Who was the lead actress in the Pride & Prejudice 2005 remake? Matt : What? Me : Keira Knightley (Correct) Question: Who had Tom Cruise at Hello? Matt : I don't ...

1. Officially it’s bronchitis! This is a blessing because me & bronchitis go way back & once it is officially bronchitis, I am given the SERIOUS drugs. 875MG of amoxicillin! An inhaler, some heavy duty expectorant. Plus all the pro biotic stuff I have to take to offset all the the meds. I know I’ll probably be feeling better by Monday & if I am not the docs have already got SERIOUS drugs 2.0 lined up for Tuesday. (I have issues with chronic bronchitis) 2. DH, who got a new boss Monday, is still employed! Today is Friday, and payday & if they were going to fire him soon, today would have been the perfect day. But they didn’t. And they reinstated direct deposit! 3. I get to lay in bed all day in my pjs and everyone say ‘oh poor you.’. Not ‘get your lazy butt out of bed' 4. The kids are in school all day, so I can actually STAY in bed most of the day. 5. Lack of appetite has led to a 4lbs weight loss this week 6. There is lots of time to read when you lay in ...

So, yeah, I am still sick. Not as sick as this weekend, but still not well. So I am stuck not exerting myself for a few more days I seem to have turned a corner early Tuesday morning. You know that feeling you get when you have been sick awhile & have a fever & spend all night sweating & at some point the fever breaks and while you feel very weak, you feel better that you had? Like the worst is over? I had that Tuesday morning. Though I never had a fever, I did sweat buckets that night & woke up feeling like it was an improvement. I thought one short gentle trip into town would be ok. I went to Hallmark and bought our new ornaments for this year One for each of us, plus the Father Christmases that I collect when I like the look of them. I think this guy is 7th in the series and I have 2-3 others. These bring our Star Wars collection of ornaments up to 12.  Getting closer to my goal of one year having an all Star Wars tree. 4 are minis and are for th...

Where to begin…? I’ll pick Saturday afternoon. It’s as good a place as any. Saturday afternoon DH took the kids in town to see the airshow & pick up stuff for the sleepover camp out we were having as Havoc’s birthday party. They left around 1. I had a slight cough. They returned about 4:30. I was in bed with a heating pad & steamer dealing with a body that was trying to remove my lungs & tonsils by coughing them out. The sleepover boys arrived at 6. I hauled myself out of bed long enough to put frozen pizzas in the oven and help DH set up the tent. There after I made random appearances throughout the evening whenever the coughing slowed down, leaving everything in DH’s hands. For which I apologized profusely and hoarsely . At some point I lost a filling that had been loose for ages. That’s $125 I hadn’t planned on spending. Sunday I slept until noon. If you can call dozing between bouts of long jagged coughing fits sleeping. The guests were gone by...

I’m late today but I do have some self portrait dino bin Thor Clone meets shark attack! But is rescued by t-Rex The lego people brave the shark & pirate infested waters   And I am almost finished with a new scarf For more weekly winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom Thanks for stopping by!

The boys’ 6 week report cards came home. If I said they got all Ps and Ss what would you think? Except for the things Havoc got 100% in, which is not an available option for Mayhem so don’t hold it against him that he didn’t get 100%. Apparently actual grading with the established A-F scale or 0-100% scale doesn’t happen in the primary school. Not sure what system is in place in the elementary school but I know know the middle & high school do use A-F so I will finally understand their report cards starting in 6th grade at least. We’ve been a couple years with this P & S system so I do have a general idea how they are doing. And I know the one thing you should never ever do is compare children. Naturally the first thing I did was dig up Havoc’s 1st grade report card and compare it to Mayhem’s. I can’t help it. Havoc is the only frame of reference I have for 1st grade. I don’t do it to say who is ‘better’ at something but to be able to say “Oh ok, Havoc had Ps in that an...

He was 8 days old in this photo. 8 DAYS! Look how tiny he is! He weighed 7lbs! SEVEN POUNDS! And he somehow sensed that his parents were boring people who were incapable of entertaining him.   Not just boring parents, but odd parents.   Easily amused by babies in sunglasses And toddlers in them as well   not to mention hats He wore lots of hats until he was about 3 and decided hats were passé. This child never slept. Oh there are dozens of photos of him sleeping, but that is because it  was such a rare occurrence I felt the need to document it. His waking up at the crack of dawn was a source of serious trouble in our house and probably he watched more TV than recommended because at 5:30am all his parents were capable of was turning on Sprout and drowsing on the sofa. He only just this past year decided things other than tacos, pizza and goldfish crackers might possibly be food he could enjoy eating. All the ye...

Havoc gets his artwork posted so I feel I need to talk about Mayhem for a bit since he is not as into drawing or writing as his brother. Havoc talks non stop. All the time. Constantly. And since school started and he’s had to keep it in during the day, it comes out in a flood when he gets off the bus. And Mayhem can’t get a word in. But he persists. Whenever Havoc pauses for a breath Mayhem speaks up “You know I…” but Havoc just keeps going. Mayhem is persistent though. He just keeps interrupting and interrupting until an adult intervenes and makes Havoc let Mayhem talk. (I let it go so long because I keep hoping Havoc is about to get to the point, but he never is) Then Mayhem says his one sentence and is done. Mayhem has his own personal sound track. He goes about his day and occasionally he accompanies himself with a little tune which I cannot replicate because it sound like do do do do do do do do do. But with specific timing & emphasis. Sometimes he just walks around Targ...

I have this problem with laziness. Imagine, for example a lamp in my living room had a bulb burn out. Say, just to pick a lamp at random, it’s the lamp by DH’s chair. It is one of 4 lamps in a sort of lamp triangle lighting arrangement so it’s light is useful but not technically necessary to normal living room activities, like reading a book, watching tv, playing with legos, surfing the web, etc. You can still do all this, it’s just less bright. It could be days before that bulb gets changed. Even weeks. Partly it never happens sooner because I only notice it when I am in the middle of something else & I never remember it later. Partly I put it off because I am sure we have no bulbs and I’ll have to remember to buy them. Partly I am thinking “It’s by DH’s chair, surely he’ll notice & change it” But that never happens. (nor does he say “Honey we need light bulbs”, so I know he hasn’t attempted to replace it & been stymied by an absence of them) . I have a phobia of s...