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 & ...