very busy lately!

Summer always brings on the fun adventures!!

We went to Barnegat Lighthouse in July.....see the photo fun here.

And caught a monster truck show at Englishtown....see the pix.

I took Milo to see some Batmobiles in Asbury park....gaze upon their glory.

Me and Mr. Don went to Monster Mania in Cherry Hill to meet the Ghosthunters, some of the cast of the Walking Dead, Cary Elwes from the Princess Bride and Chris Sarandon (Jack Skellington's voice) and spend random money on doodads and memorabilia.

And last but not least, went to a few fun places on our journeys.

the coolest thing EVER!

Corey and I were sitting around and mulling over things to do yesterday. We had several choices and settled on something new and exciting: the Balloon Festival in Readington NJ at the Solberg Airport there. We had no idea what to expect...and it turned out to be one of the most fun things we've ever done. I don't know about those two, but when all the hot air balloons took to the air, I was overcome with awe, something that doesn't easily happen to me, as I am one of the world's biggest cynics. To say the experience was impressive or majestic is an understatement!

Corey and Milo also took a helicopter ride while we were there. I could not participate as small planes make me vomit. I like my horizon to always be straight, thank you. However, Milo and Corey thought it was AWESOME, and I'm sure it was, for those who enjoy being way up high.

Included in the festival's ticket price was lawn seats to their evening concert, which was the Barenaked Ladies, a regular straight up family friendly rock n roll band. They had a string of hits a few years ago. Milo loooooved it!!  We would have stayed till the end of the concert and closed the joint but for our old people fear of being stuck in traffic for hours. Good times were had by all.

I took zillions of pictures, but condensed them down into a few good ones. See them here.

Backyard Fun!

We've been intending to build Milo an awesome sandbox/play yard for a couple of years and finally got around to doing it. My genius husband built the box frame out of landscape timbers and then we got a very exciting 2-ton sand delivery from the local landscape supply place. A few hours of shoveling (Corey took the first ton, I did the second) and voila! New and improved play area! Before the area surrounding the climber was just all dirt and icky...now it is good and sandy. Excellent for sticking to every inch of your body and tracking into the house. As soon as Milo got done playing in the sand this afternoon, I took a look at his very sandy shoes and jeans and remembered "Oh crap. I forgot that sand gets everywhere!" The sand box rules got extended from "Don't throw sand. Keep the sand in the box and not in the yard," to also "Take off your shoes before you come in!" and "Take whatever you're going to play with in the sand out there with you so you're not in and out of the house." We'll see how well all that goes. The important thing is: Milo loves it!! and it was a relatively inexpensive and easy project that was totally worth the effort. (despite the sandy aftermath)

Milo's sandbox play yard. Good thing we already had a ton of 'dirt friendly' toys hanging around!

 Another thing we did recently is revamp Milo's tire swing. We used to have it hanging by one chain, so you sat in the tire and busted your buns on the hard ridges of the tire edges. It hurt Milo's butt so he didn't play on it often. Corey and I talked about taking it down, but then we remembered that we could flip it on its side and turn it into a whirligig swing. Who doesn't love to spin around in circles until they're dizzy and about to barf?? Apparently Milo looooves these sensations as he spends a lot of time on the swing now!

wooo hooo! i'm one dizzy boy!

T-Ball!!

T-ball has officially begun and I find myself swept up in the hysteria of being a sporty mom. Okay, not quite :) Though I am enjoying Milo's t-ball practices and games a lot more than I ever thought possible! And...gasp! I even talk to other people while I'm hanging around waiting for Milo to get done. Who woulda thunk it?
Milo is also thoroughly enjoying his t-ball...mostly for opportunities to look for rocks and flowers in the outfield. When he is playing first base or up at bat, Milo is doing his best to learn how to actually throw, catch and hit the ball with some control. He's already farther along in all of those skills than I ever will be. We are so proud of him for even wanting to try!

So color me a 'sports mom,' it's against my will, but I kinda sorta like it.

a typical Milo-moment while playing t-ball...

Only our kid

This could only happen in our house. Being the juvenile delinquent at heart that I am, I went after Milo with my (freshly washed) hands curled into claws and said "Aaaaahhhhh Milo I have poop on my fingers!" Instead of screaming and running away like he was supposed to do, Milo turns around and says "Lemme feel it."

Needless to say I collapsed in hysteria. So much for that practical joke! Corey's reaction to the whole episode? "You guys are gross. Stay away from me."

Well, color me a hypocrite

So. The other day I broke my own vow and dropped Tuckerton off at the animal shelter near our house. Do I feel shitty and cowardly about unloading the cat? Yes, absolutely. Do I know that we did the right thing to save our sanity? Yes, absolutely.

It pretty much came down to a decision of how much more cat pee and puke we wanted to clean out of Milo's bedroom carpet. Answer: none. The situation would only worsen as Tuck gets older, and we don't have the cash to fix whatever the hell ails the old beast, so he had to go. I desperately wanted to send him to a fostering program rather than a shelter, but the fostering program wouldn't take direct surrenders. The next best thing was to take him to the shelter and hope that the fostering program chooses to help him out. The only other option would be direct euthanasia, and there was no way I could bring myself to do that. It was hard enough for me to summon up the courage to load the old guy into the carrier to take him to the shelter, and then actually go through with the process. At least this way, Tuck might have a chance of finding a better home.

How is Milo taking it? Not great. We explained to him (as well as you can to a 5 year old) that Tuck is not healthy and needs a place where he will be taken care of by people that want to clean up pee and puke all day long, a place with no dogs and no other cats. Milo said "I vote no!" Since Tuck was his bedtime buddy and spent most of his time in Milo's room, Milo was (and remains) understandably upset that we wanted to send away his bestest friend ever. We miss the old coot too actually, but don't miss cleaning up after him and definitely do not miss being woken up in the middle of the night by the nonstop yowling.

If you are thinking "how could you?" about us right now, and are all aghast and up in arms about this very necessary and difficult decision, well, just put yourself in our place and think about it from our perspective. If you need more details, just read the post prior to this one. It wasn't easy, and we're not proud of doing it, but it was the best solution to a stressful and messy situation that was only going downhill.

Bad Kitty!

If you ever want to see what evil looks like, come on over and have a gander at our cat Tuckerton. That cat is the devil himself.

He must be. What else would drive him to...

1. Puke repeatedly on Milo's formerly beige carpet, only inches from the very cleanable hardwood floor?

2. Turn into a goddamn howler monkey at 5:09 am every day because he wants his canned food, NOW bitches? You ain't heard a cat moan and grown and howl until you've heard Tuckerton, who stands in the hall right outside our bedroom door and bellows at the top of his lungs whenever his internal timer goes off, which is usually either in the middle of the night or inexplicably, at 5:09 am.

3. Pee in my good winter boots? How the heck am I supposed to get that particular stink out?? I even threw them in the wash, and it still didn't come out. This is a good story, actually...I generally keep my boots neatly stored in a corner of the dining room. Corey and I had been catching whiffs of cat pee in the dining room off and on for a few weeks. Finally I got tired of randomly smelling it and went on a hunt with the black light. That didn't turn up anything, which was odd, because we could definitely smell the pee. I shrugged it off as being an odd nose-ical illusion, since the area we were smelling pee (and where my boots also happened to be) is directly above the place in the basement where the litter boxes are. Well. I had to wear my good winter boots to work one day a week or so ago, because it had snowed a lot and I needed to clear off the truck before I left. As I was driving to work, I kinda smelled cat pee, but then again, I smell all sorts of weird things all the time on my way in to work, so I let it go. When I got to work, I traded out my boots for my sneakers, and left my boots in the employee area. When I walked in a few hours later to get them, the stench of cat pee was overpowering. (Many apologies to everyone I work with. Yes, it was me that stunk that day. I didn't know till I was leaving, I swear!!) I sniffed my boots. Yep. It was emanating from them. Particularly the left one. GROSS. I guess the stench had gotten reactivated from getting damp in the snow. At any rate, that stink isn't coming out despite the aggressive washing machine abuse, and I have come to the conclusion that I will have to throw those boots out and get new ones. By the way, since the boots have been relocated to the basement, the cat stink in the dining room is gone.

4. Shed everywhere, constantly, even when he's not moving? The cat is half bald because we clipped him short right after Christmas, and still his hair is everywhere. For one little cat, he makes a ginormous mess. Milo's bed has to get vacuumed regularly because Tuckerton spends 99% of his time on it.

5. Jump on the tables and get into our food if we leave it unattended for longer than 20 seconds? More than once we've walked away from the kitchen only to come back in a few minutes later and see Tuckerton up to his ears in our drink or happily munching away on whatever food was left out. You oughta see him when I bring potato chips to bed for snackin's. That cat is a sucker for sour cream & onion potato chips....he gets right up in my grill and won't leave me alone till I give him one.

6. Bite us randomly for no good reason? Don't look at Tuckerton sideways, you'll lose some blood for it.

So, at this rate, (he's been here just over a year) Tuckerton is making Monet, our little girl cat, look like an absolute adorable angel. I used to rate her as my number one enemy because she is the sort that vindictively poops in my shoes and shreds the crap out of the furniture just for fun. Lately though, she's been able to sit back and laugh in my general direction because I didn't know how easy we had it before Tuckerton came along. Just about the only good thing Tuckerton has going for him is that he is declawed, so at least he can't maim any one of us too horribly. Although if he thought about it long enough, he would figure a way.

And yes, I brought this cat here, as he needed a home because his family was suddenly "allergic" to him. (Me and my big dumb compassionate to about-to be-homeless-animals heart.) Yep, allergic, that's a good word for the way Tuckerton makes people feel about him. Now I fully understand the extent of the "allergies." I think I'm feeling a really big sneeze coming on....

* note to self: Seal point Himalayans are definitely just a pretty face...don't be fooled by those big blue "innocent" eyes!

PS: Tuckerton isn't going anywhere anytime soon, for those of you that think I would give up so easily. He's a major pain in the ass, but he has a home here, for better or for worse.

what to do with a sick kid....

Milo was under the weather yesterday and today...a fever, a headache and generally feeling blah. But not blah enough to slow him down! We skipped ice skating lessons and social events because I thought the kid might get worn out (and infect others with whatever he has). But nope, he was raring to go all day long. In an effort to keep Milo's boundless energy somewhat reined in, we made home-made play dough together. Most of the fun was in the making, as it created a huge mess. Milo had a good time playing with it and making stuff and then smashing it. Why is home made play dough so much more fun than regular play dough? Ohhh  that's right...because you can EAT it and your mother won't yell at you (as much).

The simple pleasures that come from mixing flour, salt, water & food coloring!

Our Lil' Ninja

Milo has come up with his own super hero alter ego called Ninja Storm. His costume includes a ski mask, earmuffs, a boy scout belt and a superman cape. The only essential ingredient that is missing is the "silent" part...that kid can't keep his mouth shut for more than 20 seconds at a time! Ninja Storm is often hard at work protecting our home from intruders, random chocolate treats and the occasional loose potato chip. 

Milo as "Ninja Storm"

this winter pretty much sucks

need I say more?

I took this during one of the recent ice storms. That poor sunflower is so dead and burdened with ice, when it used to be so beautiful and full of life.

Maybe one day soon we'll see sunshine and grass again. But for now, the snow is here to stay.

and now for something completely different....

in what he probably thought was a devilish and excellently evil move, today Tuckerton barfed in....one of the dog's dishes! I discovered it when I went to feed the dogs this morning. As I squinted down at the unidentifiable blob in the dog's dish I started laughing my butt off. Heck, if the cats' gonna barf, this is the best place of all to do it...all I had to do was pick up the dish and dump the vom in the garbage, give the dish a rinse and it was all cleaned up. Tuckerton was probably lurking in the corner thinking "Drat. Skunked again." I know that cat is trying to drive me crazy. But. It. Just. Won't. Work.

One down, four to go

Milo and I started ice skating lessons yesterday. Hopefully he is not too emotionally scarred by the experience. We thought they were going to be fun, which they were, but the events surrounding the actual lesson, not so much.

We got there early, and got our skates and our id tags and were ready to go out on the ice. Someone somewhere was making unintelligible announcements over the loudspeaker system so we just went on the rink, and asked where to go for our lesson. We were unceremoniously told to get off the ice, that it was figure skating freestyle time ONLY and to go wait inside. We did that and then it seemed like people were grouping up (again with no real direction, it was just sort of people congregating) so I asked more questions. I found out where Milo had to go and took him to that area, and then went and found out where I was supposed to be. My group of adults was rather large and the woman giving the instructions was not loudspoken so I couldn't hear a damn thing...except I heard my kid crying. I left my group and went looking for him; somehow Milo had wandered away from his group and didn't know where to go. I got him re-situated and went back to my peeps. I had no idea what was going on but followed them out onto the ice, and checked on my way to make sure that Milo was where he belonged, which he was. Whew.

Our lessons were for half an hour, in which I learned how to stop (yay! this is a useful skill that I did not previously possess. my method just involved running into the wall) and go backward, and the right way to push off. When we were done, I expected that the teachers that were with the younger kids would stay with the little kids until a parent showed up to collect them. No dice. They just turned the kids loose. By the time I got to him, Milo was freaking out because he had no idea where I was among all the people that were mobbing up the joint. That was a bit traumatic for both of us. I got him calmed down and we discussed what to do next time so he doesn't panic, now that we know there isn't going to be any help from the teachers. (First of all, I couldn't believe how irresponsible & dangerous of the teachers, to just let four, five and six year olds go unsupervised into the mass of grownups that were around the rink. And second, the release of the group lessons was so frickin disorganized. I would have gotten to Milo a LOT faster if they let the classes go one at a time, instead of all at once so we bottle necked up at the door to the ice. There were at least 75 kids on Milo's half of the ice, and 40 or more adults on my half, so you have all of us trying to get off at once, plus all the people coming out to get us. It was rather awful.)

While Milo & I were sitting down and calming down, we talked about what he learned, which was amazing. The kid went into the lesson not knowing how to skate at all, and came out skating on his own. They showed him how to get moving and how to stop, how to fall and how to get up (quite useful, at this stage) and even how to bunny hop on his skates. Aside from the emotional distress of being lost twice in the crowd, Milo lost all of his fear of being on ice skates. So the lessons are valuable, if only they were handled better organizationally.

Milo also told me that his toes ached and he didn't want to skate anymore. I had rented skates for him that were the same as his sneaker size, which was evidently the wrong thing to do. His feet were all smashed up in the skates; no wonder his feet were killing him. I traded up to the next bigger size and talked Milo into going back out onto the ice to show me what he could do. (Our lessons include an extra hour of practice time.) I was blown away when we "raced" across the rink and Milo got all the way across without falling down till the end. He said it was a lot easier to skate when his toes weren't crunched. I'll bet.

Unfortunately, we couldn't get going fast or for long distances because apparently our "practice hour" also includes other people's lessons so they had half the rink roped off. We could cross the lesson area at our own risk, but it made for a lot more crowded conditions. This sort of pisses me off, considering that the freestyle figure skaters have the whole rink to themselves, while us untalented dweebs are forced to be all clogged together and in each other's way when it's our turn to practice. How are we supposed to practice if we can't even frickin move?? I suppose it's good practice if you're learning to dodge a zillion falling down little kids and wobbly adults.

So, on the upside, the lessons are worth it for both of us, in terms of learning new things, both about ice skating and what to do in a crowd if we get separated. On the downside, the atmosphere and organization of the situation could be improved 100% just by simply giving people some direction of where to go and what to do when lessons are beginning and when they're over. Milo and I came up with our own solution to the issue and found a place to meet that he is to go to immediately and wait for me. He knows now that I will be there within five minutes to get him, because I'm getting off the ice the same time he is. Argh. Who would think that something so fun could be so much work??

To top it all off, after we got home yesterday, Milo was playing with Tuckerton and Tuckerton chomped Milo's nose. No blood, just fang marks, but it was just the cherry topping on Milo's day!

Other people seem to have helpful elves

yet all the spiteful ones live at our house. Seriously, do three people really make that much laundry? Get the bathroom that dirty? Use that many dishes? Do we really have that many shoes that need to be put away? Do two dogs really make that much poop on a daily basis? Do two cats really fill up their litterbox within 12 hours? Do those animals really shed that much hair?

Why can't we have nice, cheerful elves like the ones that work for the shoemaker? Instead we get the ones that are sadistic. It figures.

yes, I am a pirate, 200 years too late....

And you know how I know? Because I have the mouth of a very salty sailor. This is not something I'm proud of, it's just an innate gift. Much like the dad in the Christmas Story, I can weave a web of profanity that hangs in the air for hours, and lots of times I make up my own unique combinations of four letter words. Since Milo's been around, I have learned to squelch a lot of what wants to come out of my mouth, but sometimes it's just uncontrollable, especially when I'm frustrated (this usually occurs when I'm driving). Perhaps I have cussing Tourette's?

Anyway, Milo generally knows when something slips forth from my lips that he shouldn't repeat and will tell me "Mom. That's a bad word." The guilt trip alone is enough to shut me up for like, five whole minutes. We've been having some issues with Tuckerton, our elderly gentleman cat, barfing for the past few days. I wouldn't care if the cat threw up on the hardwood floor or down in the basement where I could easily clean it up, but he always, and I mean always, throws up his nasty puke in Milo's bedroom, on the beige deep pile wall to wall carpet. It's literally the only carpet in the house that I can't clean easily, and that cat is determined to turn it into one giant vomit stain. Yesterday was a really bad day; Tuckerton threw up a couple times in the night and I had to clean it up in the morning before work This was irritating enough, but then when we came home yesterday afternoon, four new piles of nasty orangey cat-food-esque barf were waiting for us in Milo's room. Before I even registered what I said, I said this: "Tuckerton: you assbag," right in front of Milo.

Milo looked at me, looked at the puke, and said in a tone of total derision, "Mom. That's barf. Tuckerton's not an assbag, he's a barfbag. Duh." and walked away with his hands up in the air. You could totally hear him thinking "Jeez, if she's gonna say mean things, they should at least be right."

PS: Not to worry about Tuckerton, I gave him his hairball medicine for a few days and he has finally stopped throwing up. He also got a nice haircut, courtesy of the kitchen grooming salon, so he is sporting the lion-mane look for a month or two.

Christmas 2010

Photos will be forthcoming, when I get around to it. My current project is printing all the unprinted photos we have backlogged from 2008 through 2010. So give me a few months to get caught up!

Christmas was good. The usual hullabaloo during the day, but we enjoyed a nice evening at home, and had an excellent turkey-in-the-crockpot dinner. Milo had the attention span of a gnat, flitting from one exciting new toy to the next and Corey and I were able to just...relax. Unheard of, I know! It was amazing. Until we heard on the radio that a blizzard warning was posted for the next day and I had to run out to the gas station at 7:30pm to gas up the truck, so Corey could use its awesome four wheel drive-ness in the snow. Thank goodness the gas station was open, or I don't know what we would have done.

My favorite things about this Christmas were...
Getting the Christmas tree early! We go to the spruce goose christmas tree farm every year, usually mid December, but this year we had the tree by the 8th, as it was really the only week we had time. We all look forward to the annual tree hunt event.

Decorating the tree with Milo. He has his own pizzazzy decorating style, which employs burdening certain branches with up to five ornaments while leaving other branches naked. It makes for a nice cluster effect. Milo was so proud of himself for helping with the tree that I didn't have the heart to move any of the ornaments around. He even went and got a stepstool so he could reach higher branches.

And of course, Milo's face once he figured out that Santa had come. This Christmas morning was quite different than last year's. I was awake before he was, and had the coffee on and the Christmas music going and had fed the dogs, when Milo came grouching out of his bedroom and said "Could you quiet down, Mom? I'm trying to sleep!" I actually had to say to him, "Milo. Do you know what day it is?" His answer: "No. But I know that I'm tired."

Skin update

No, this isn't some weird porno post. I thought I might mention that I had to go back to the dermatologist to get the icky scar on my back checked again because it felt like one lonely, very itchy, stitch was still left in it. It had pretty much healed over but itched like crazy and that stitch kept catching on my shirts and making me nuts.

So I  show the dermatologist and she says "Yep, we can pull that out for you." The nurse person gave it a good hard tug with the tweezers and this loooong pile of white twirly stuff came flying out. EWWW. I thought it was goop from inside the scar. Nope. It was all the internal stitches. My body had completely rejected them and was trying to force them out. Hence the stitch that was sticking out and kept getting longer. Leave it to me to be the weird one that doesn't accept dissolvable sutures. The nurse said she had never seen that happen before. No wonder the boo-boo didn't heal right, if my skin wasn't holding itself together properly. I just wonder what will happen if I ever have to have a major surgery?Will I have to be stapled back together? or perhaps crazy glued?

On the bright side, my back doesn't itch anymore! and there are no more snags in my shirts!

so long, 2010! Hello...2011.

Thank goodness that year is over and done with. It was a long, somewhat irritating one around these parts. Of course there were many bright spots, but the bad days were rather memorable too.

The year of Itch 2010 in quick review:
Flood!!
Broken washer!
Broken dryer!
Kitchen sink quit draining for-ever!
Water softener broke!
Milo started school!
We refinanced into an awesome low rate mortgage!
We got a great camera!Tuckerton came to live with us!

May 2011 bring us all lots more smiles and many less piles of crap to clean up :)