havocandmayhem.com

One that began two days before we left when I learned that Amtrak has not joined the 21st century. You cannot buy valid Amtrak tickets online. Oh you can ORDER them online but then, get this… they MAIL them to you. MAIL them to you!  No printable ticket, no emailed ticket. Nothing. You have to have an official printed by Amtrak ticket. If you order them 4 days before departure you can pay an additional fee to have them rush delivery. Our local station is an unattended station- meaning no ticket booth. And for reasons we don’t understand, no ticket kiosk either.  You MUST order online or by phone to get tickets. DH ended up calling their customer service & explaining the situation. Turns out we can reserve them on the phone & then pay the conductor on the way up for that part.  However we MUST purchase the return ticket to get home because Union Station has a ticket office & the conductors won’t take payments. I feel Amtrak is not only not tha...

I had an hour & half long visit with Dr. Sleep yesterday. She’s a great lady & I feel hopeful she can help me solve this problem.  If it comes to the worst case scenario, she studied at Duke, where apparently they have a world renowned sleep program & she can get me into it. I’d have to go to NC for who knows how long but we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. There’s a good sleep program ‘locally’ though so that’d be a last resort. Why ‘locally’? Well…as with everything other medical thing in my life, the good docs (or in many cases, like this one, the ONLY special docs) are over an hour away. (My regular doc is 25 minutes away to the south & is part of a group based around a specific hospital 35 minutes away from them, with specialist scattered around that city. If I went to a doc 20 minutes to the north, they would send me to specialists 35-45 minutes further north. We drove over 90 minutes in an ice storm when I went into labor with Mayhem)   ...

See more days here. www.shimelle.com/paper/1005/myday-in-photos/ .

Spring Break began at 4pm Friday. We celebrated by going to IHOP for dinner. Kids eat dinner free all month at IHOP. I don’t recall what we did on Saturday. No, really. I have no recollection of Saturday at all. DH worked on the roof, I’m guessing, since he was working on it Sunday & Monday too. The boys did…  while I …. I got nothing. I’m fairly sure we didn’t all just sit around staring off into space but I’d be hard pressed to prove that from my own memory. Oh wait! Dr Who was on that night! So that’s something anyway. Moving on to Sunday, aka Easter, DH did more work on the roof. The back soffits of the house were never entirely sealed properly (rolls eyes) & there has been a persistent drip appearing on a ceiling tile in the boys room for years. At first we thought it was the result of condensation on a pipe over the spot, but it turns out it was actual water coming in down the pipe (which is a vent). This was discovered when DH decided to rearr...

Some from my monthly photo project. We had a hostage situation with the Legos Ashes enjoyed the outdoors and I did some grocery shopping For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom Thanks for stopping by!

Scrapping is coming hard to me so far this year. I  see all this wonderful inspiration in the forums & on blogs & then I open up my software and… Nothing. I’ve got nothing. Over and over again. I have been regularly dissatisfied with my scrapping efforts for months now but every now & then I do manage to pull something off I like This was inspired by my Girlie Moments post a week or so ago. The kit is a new one by Eva Kipler (I am on her CT team and she has been amazingly patient with my lack of mojo lately) & Kate Hadfield. It’s called Me, Myself & I and is available at Scrap Matters

Sometimes on Fridays I repost really old post of mine. Posts from back years ago before I had readers. This one is from 2005 but apart from the age reference, is still entirely applicable today. Woman nearly suffocates herself trying on Ren bodice! TINY TOWN - A 38 year old woman, who refused to give her name out of embarrassment, nearly suffocated herself while trying on her Ren bodice at naptime today. She says she has not worn the bodice in 5 years, preferring her looser fitting Irish style dress & chemise. But a desire for a new outfit led her to try on the bodice out of curiosity. She admits she should have just stopped when she looked at the size tag. "It was a medium" she said ruefully. "I haven't been a 'medium' in a long time. But it is a 3 part bodice so I thought it might have some wiggle room" A 3 part bodice for those who don't know is a bodice made of 3 parts - one piece goes across the front chest & stomach & ...

I was finally able to make the pretzel rolls yesterday & they are wonderful!  Havoc has already declared I need to make them more often. I’ve made them a few times in the past with various recipes none of which thrilled me. This time I used one from Pioneer Woman’s Tasty Kitchen site. This is the printable page http://thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/recipes/breads/pretzel-rolls-3/?print=1# But let me tell you a few things about it 1-½ cup Warm Water (110°F) – does it feel warm, but not hot to your finger? yes? then it is fine 1 package (1/4 Oz. Packet) Active Dry Yeast (not Quick Rise Yeast) – this is 2.25 teaspoons if you do yeast in bulk 2 teaspoons Sugar 4-½ cups Unbleached All-purpose Flour  2 teaspoons Kosher Salt 4 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter, melted ¼ cups Baking Soda 1 whole Egg, Lightly Beaten Pretzel Salt, To Sprinkle On Top I used regular sea salt instead of Kosher & large grain sea salt instead of pretzel salt because I ...

Next week the demons are on Spring Break & it’s looking good that we will spend one of those days down in DC on the Mall.  Visiting the Natural History museum is a given plus probably hitting up the Air & Space. We went to the Mall a few years ago with the boys & they loved it. But… Mayhem was/is so eager to see everything that he runs from thing to thing without really seeing anything. His goal is to see the next thing, not look at what is in front of him. Left to Mayhem we would have run through the whole Natural History museum in about 45 minutes. He’s less intense about it now, but ‘what’s next?’ is still his driving force. What I need help with is how to make him slow down & look. I almost want to give him a 6 page questionnaire about the exhibits & insist he complete every question before his is allowed to leave the building. But I want this to be a fun trip too. I am no good at making up games to make learning fun or to make a tedious ti...

This takes the cake. Or, actually, it eliminates the bread. We all know I am a lazy slacker when it come to cleaning out and/or rotating the food in my house Much to my mom’s intense embarrassment I have shared the results of this particular failing numerous times on this blog The freezer The fridge The pantry The surprise Milanos So no one will be  at all shocked to learn I have done it AGAIN! And I outdid myself rather spectacularly this time. You might recall the 3 year’s expired bag of tater tots in the freezer last year, or the 3 year’s expired bag of pasta from the pantry back in January. Pshaw! 3 years? A mere 3? Amateur effort. Ladies & Gentleman I present my greatest find to date 7 years expired yeast! Go me! I switched over to bulk bag yeast around the time this expired & I keep that in the fridge rather than the baking cupboard like the packaged stuff. This must have fallen behind the baking soda or the Karo syrup or something ...

Possibly the highlight of my weekend. I went from these bushy things: To these much more trimmed & shaped things: Please note the grey hairs remain unchanged despite getting a hair cut as well. Why is this such a big deal? I am 43 years old and this is the first time in my life I have had my eyebrows professionally done. Usually the same person does my eyebrows that does my nails. That’d be me. And not being a.. um… (sadist or masochist…I always get them confused initially as I do with anything that is a choice between two things. I’m so used to guessing wrong that I guess differently even though I’m fairly sure I do know the difference. I am wrong often enough to doubt myself constantly in this sort of situation. I’d be a lousy bomb diffuser because I’d be seconding guessing whether I remembered the wire to cut color right. red? blue? I think it’s blue but maybe it is red? Was it red?) ... anyway… not being into giving or receiving pain (so I suppose terminolog...

I thought I was too late to sign up for it because I was a couple days behind on reading Mel’s blog, but then she contacted me and asked if I could do a post about punctuation. Punctuation? Yes. Punctuation. or perhaps I mean: Yes…punctuation. The first response is clear cut. Yes. It is about punctuation. The second is slightly less certain.  Yeeessss. I suppose it is about punctuation, of all things. It’s kinda rambly & disjointed but still, you must admit punctuation is the focus. Punctuation is very important when communicating on line – we have no sarcasm font or snarky response font – so punctuation helps fill in the gap. At least for me. I use ellipses … all the time. Sometimes they mean “and yes, here is the punch line” or “here is the sarcastic bit”. Usually they just express a general dubiousness about the whole thing, such as in my example, which is in line with their accepted use to suggest faltering or fragmented speech accompanied by confusion, ...

Again with the hating on me. I wish I knew what ever it was I did to technology…probably back in the 70s sometime. I suppose I did reject the 8 track cassette player in favor of albums. But I was 9! That was 34 years ago! And 8 tracks totally did not last! I’ve owned every other musical format since! I have a smart phone! I have a Kindle! I had an iPod when they came out! I’m typing this on a laptop, with a second flat screen monitor! I used to work in IT! I love databases & spreadsheets & computer games! I own a Nintendo DS! And a Wii! I really wish technology would forgive me my lapse in judgment & like me again. The latest hating is from the aforementioned smart phone. It decided it’s internal memory was full & no matter how much stuff I deleted off of it (3GBs!) it continued to claim the memory was full. Sometimes it would play Everything I Do (I do it for you) by Brian Adams on an endless loop in the music player even that song was not include...

I am not a girlie girl. I’m not a tomboy either. I’m a geeky girl. A nerd. Not for me things that are pink & frilly, or floral or covered with hearts & I am no fan of glitter, hair dodads, makeup, most jewelry, high heels & rarely will you catch me in a dress. I prefer jeans, sandals & black tee shirts with obscure references to sci fi shows on them. I’d be a teensy bit more girly if more of my communication was done with a paper & pen. What you don’t realize is that whenever I mention Nathan Fillion on this blog you are spared the ‘I’s dotted with red hearts and the puffy flowers & hearts drawn all around his name with a pink glitter pen. If I had to write his name down with a pen, that is what it would look like. Probably their would be a “Mrs” in front of his name too & there would be a lot of giggling as I did it. I get all girlie and 11 years old when I think of my crushes. But I get geek points because he starred in a relatively obs...

That is how the weekend was spent by us all. Granted, not camping is pretty much my default state 24/7/365 so it’s hardly worth mentioning that I continued to maintain the status quo right? But there was supposed to be camping this weekend. Originally the plan was for me to try out DH’s latest idea in camping accommodations, involving a twin mattress & a mini van. (it has potential) But then a friend of mine invited me to her 40th birthday party which happened to be the same night as camping. Anything short of a root canal trumps camping in my book. And if I am in enough pain, so does a root canal. So the males were still going to camp, just without me. Then Saturday morning the weather was about 45 chilly & damp & the plans to sleep outside were again revised. The males went up to the campsite, played around the river all day, had a cookout & then everyone drove 2 hours home where Mayhem slept in his own bed & Havoc badgered DH into sleeping in a ...

After two weeks of visits to various medical & dental providers the final tally is one cavity, one booster shot, one referral for speech therapy testing (AGAIN), one referral to sleep specialist (AT LAST) and 3 long conversations about things that are probably TMI to share with the internets. Plus $70 in co-payments, with further billing no doubt to follow. Mayhem, age 7, 47.5 inches and 54.6 pounds. The poor kid has been 47.5 inches for a year now. That is half an inch too short to ride all the good rides everywhere we go.  He has a cavity (his second) and currently is missing 3 of his front teeth. The doctor recommended we get his speech tested again as we’ve seen little improvement in the past year. His “L”s are more clear but the Rs & Ws are as bad as ever. “Wed” could be red, read, bread, led or even wed. And that is not even considering how lispy he actually sounds with 3 missing teeth.  Last time we were told he was within the normal developmental range, ...

but the sentence itself made no sense to me whatsoever. “A good use for old toothbrushes is to clean out the tracks of sliding glass doors” Now, I don’t have Mel’s dislike of housework but I’m no real fan of it either. (Back in the early 70’s when I was a little girl a woman & her son moved in up the street aways. Mom & the other wives found her very fascinating because she was divorced , said in a whisper with a hand half over your mouth as if to avert a bad omen from yourself while naming the evil aloud & I always imagine Mel doing the same thing when she says housework ) I sweep. I mop. Sometimes I dust. I do lots of laundry. I clean windows fairly often. Twice a year I get down on my hands & knees and scrub the hell out of my slate tile and then dry the hell out of it as well. I wipe down surfaces. I move things from being ‘in the way’ to being in other places. Often those places are whatever random basket has room for them, but still… things ar...

Havoc is over his  illness. This was confirmed at his doc appt on Friday. No suggestions were made as to what the illness might have been. Only that “it’s going around”. We got a notice from school that some federal program or other has picked our little county for a study involving getting free sealers on the teeth of second graders (with select ones being monitored over time & will get new sealers & some other stuff if needed) & if we want this we just fill out this form & send it back. The letter was dated March 11. It was sent home March 30. I sent it back April 1 and the substitute teacher gave it back to Havoc saying she didn’t think she should have it. So I am sending it back today & assuming that the deadline for acceptance was around March 20 & we’ll be rejected. I hope not. It’s $150 to get that kid’s teeth sealed at the dentist. Mayhem has another cavity, which is also $150, so anything that saves  us a $150 dental payment is ok by ...

Some from my monthly project Groceries Boba Fett & Cad Bane are so engrossed in bagging one dino, they fail to notice the danger behind them. My most recent manicure And a self portrait For more Weekly Winners please join Lotus at Sarcastic Mom Thanks for stopping by!

I finished 11 new books in March, plus some re-reads. I checked out & finished from the library Third Degree (Murder 101 Mysteries) This is the 5th book in this series with Professor Alison Bergeron as sleuth. It also features her NYPD detective boyfriend. I enjoyed it, not quite as much as the others though. I think I’m having the sustainability issue I often have with modern mysteries. There are really only so many ways a professor at a small college can keep coming into contact with dead bodies. Even in NYC. And after the first couple of them I really start to wonder why the cops just don’t arrest her outright at the scene. No way someone stumbles across 5 bodies (one an ex husband) in what appears to be a less than 12 month period, unless they are somehow involved in the deaths. I think this book seemed a bit of a stretch for me. The reason for seeing the body is clear enough, could happen to ...