Hi all you people out there! How are you doing this wonderful evening? It's beautiful here in Illinois. It's breezy and cool, yet not cold, and doesn't quite feel like fall yet. I love fall; it's got that feeling of crisp in the air, yet it's got this incredible feeling of yearning and melancholy, too. Maybe that's just me. I love the smell of woodsmoke, too. It's one of my favorite memories from childhood. Bright moonlit nights with the moon reflecting off every visible surface covered with snow. Absolute quiet except for the crunch of snow underfoot. A few moonlit clouds in the cold black sky. Your breath puffing out in a white mist. The smell of pure snow, like when you're in an igloo. It's like you're the only person in the world, and then you smell woodsmoke and know you are not alone. It's just a sublime mix of senses that only people in the country can get, cause you don't ever get that still and sense of complete loneliness in the city or suburbs.

So if this isn't the darnedest thing. I went in to get new glasses, cause my old ones got so scratched up that it made my eyes film up and water just trying to see through them. As I'm getting tested for this and that, I get my blood pressure taken. Now, I don't know about you, but I hate going to the doctor. I haven't been to see my GP in like 2.5 years. I need to go in for an exam, etc., but I didn't want to go until I had a chance to lose weight and get in better shape. You know I did some interesting research that even doctors who are supposed to be advocates for you when you are overweight, a LARGE majority hold their patients who are overweight in contempt. Isn't that a sad revelation. So my feeling of...dislike, let us say... that I felt from my doctor, really wasn't in my head. Anyway, I have derailed a bit. So I get my blood pressure taken and find out it is incredibly high. I mean, I thought the machine had messed up it was so bad. So a few minutes later, I had them take another reading,it was marginally lower, but still sky high according to the medical profession. Ok, so maybe it's a bad day. I go to one of those blood pressure machines scattered throughout various stores and take my blood pressure again, a few days later, and it's still incredibly high. So now, completely by accident, I have found out that I have high blood pressure. I still don't want to go to the doctor. I know if I talk to my family, they'll all tell me to go and get on BP medication, but I just don't want to start the slide down that slippery slope already. And I'm thinking to myself, "What about all those people, in worse shape than I am, who have much higher blood pressure? There must be tons of them with it."

Now I'm trying to find ways to lose weight and cut down on cholesterol and lower blood pressure. I know it can be done naturally, right? Any suggestions out there from anyone?


And then today, I tried signing onto Yahoo mail, which is the email provider I've been using now for several years. I've had some issues with it in the past couple days, slow logins, cannot connect error messages, etc., I figured with the hot weather, maybe it's just something with the service. Well, whether it was something with the service or not, all of a sudden, my Inbox is completely empty! I had some 1800 messages in my email (ok, I should clear it out more often, but I was still only using a fraction of the available email space...) and in the blink of an eye, they are GONE! OH MY GOSH! How am I ever going to get them back??? AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!! All my ever-important Facebook notifications, my yahoo news alerts, my alerts when my favorite stores send out new flyers, all GONE. YIKESS!

But then, I discovered something today. If I click on the 'read mail' button that is located on the menu bar that pops up whenever I go online, there is all my email. Wow, was that ever a great feeling! I wasn't lost in email message limbo, forever doomed to not know what essential life-changing emails I had missed! I was a whole person again!

Now, if I could just remember my passwords...

Wow! So I finally found my blog again! It's about time, isn't it?
Sorry, if anyone has been checking for new posts. It's been, what, like 3 years???!!!! Unbelievable! Thank you to Bonnie over at www.boutiquebybonnie.blogspot.com for having such a great blog and jewelry site that I had to subscribe to her blog, and then found out that my blog has been residing somewhere in cyberspace as well.
Well, enough incredulity. Here's what new with us now.
We now have more room, because we moved to a house in a beautiful suburb about 50 miles out of Chicago (well, it might be too far to be called a suburb, though some do). It's a great city, with 2 totally different areas; one is the "old city", which has an old downtown area where people have businesses within their homes, and there are hand-painted signs in front of these homes advertising the business inside. It's so neat. Then there's a new-fangled section of this same town, about 5 miles away, where it's completely lined on both sides of a 3-lane highway with wall to wall big name businesses. Well, some of the businesses are not doing so well; the Circuit City, Fashion Bug, and the other innocent victims of this economic "downturn" are encountering difficulties, but the remaining businesses are still providing one heck of a tax base to keep the city alive. This city even has 2 post offices and 2 libraries. The smaller ones are by us, but one is better than none. There's a river running through the middle of the "old city", which unfortunately has flooded the past 2 years, which hadn't happened for like 50 years prior to that, and we live about 1/2 mile away from the river, but way up on the hill so flooding from the river is not a concern.
The kids adjusted well to the move. It was hard for my girl at first, because she was so popular and had so many friends in her old school, but the new school district is much better than where we were, and the housing is way way more affordable, as well. Plus, she's made some good friends, and even has a 'boyfriend' of sorts. She even has her own cat whom she absolutely adores; she needs all the affection she can get, so having her own cat is a good thing. Yes, it should now be 4cats, 3 kids, 1 pig and HIM, but I won't bother changing the name.
I find it really amazing how much people move around nowadays. Maybe it was always that way, but I don't remember it as such. I went to the same school district my whole life, from K-12, and our family only moved after I reached college age. It seems like having a kid in my class move or show up was a real rarity. I only mention this because one of my daughter's really good friends is going to be moving at the end of the school year, and she's too sad to talk about it yet, my kids have kids showing up and leaving from their classroom pretty regularly.
Well, I still have the online business. It's been slow for a while; it's starting to pick up marginally. I need to, as always, get way more items listed again. It's harder now, though, because I am going back to school for my Bachelor's degree finally in Organizational Management with a concentration in Psychology (Yay, me!). It is online, and I know, when I was first thinking about it, I was like, how in the heck do I know if this school is legit or not? So I went the easy route and picked an online school that already had a real brick and mortar location and had branched out to online. Therefore, I picked Ashford University, in Iowa. The courses are pretty rigorous, each one runs only 5 weeks, and participation is mandatory. There's also a major 8-10 page paper due at the end of each class. That one is the real pain in the butt. But it's a legit school, and, supposedly, more affordable than most online schools. That I don't know for sure, but if I get my degree and it's real, that's all that matters. I've still been at home with the youngest. We moved very close to the school, so we are classified as walkers, which means I have to actually drive the kids to school each day and pick them up each day, which is really more of a pain than you can probably imagine. Perhaps, when they get older they'll be able to make the trip on their own. That makes a job harder too, because of the way we have to be home for them before and after school which means I would need a very flexible job. Economics are becoming pretty tight, though, so alternatives are going to have to be explored, and quickly.
I have become way more interested in alternative healing, so I have taken a Reiki class, with the intention of continuing my studies and taking Reiki II and III as well. Reiki is a way of channeling ambient energy for the purpose of healing of mind and body. I was a little skeptical when I took my first class, too, but subsequently actually felt the transfer of energy, and realized that it is a real phenomenon, which makes it Way Cool!
I've been trying to become more attuned with positive energies around me, and I love this area, cause there is a lot of positive energy here, I feel.
Well, enough for now. I will return to this place later, because it's really cool and I realize I have my blog again!

Oh, and I just got back from an expensive trip to the vet. Believe it or not, our cat, who hasn't been doing so well lately, has a yeast infection in her ears of all places. She's a young cat (not even 2), and I was treating her for ear mites, and it wasn't doing anything good for her, so I bit the bullet and brought her into the vet. Kind of like going to the dentist. Try putting it off until it can't wait, and then go after most of the damage has been done. A yeast infection. Go figure. But I guess it can't be all that uncommon, because they have medication for it! Let me tell you, having 2 young children try to remain calm for 1/2 an hour when there's no television and nothing for them to get into except what they shouldn't is really a picnic (NOT!!!) Within the space of the 1/2 hour, while I was trying to talk with the vet while the exam was going on, the little one crayoned all over their chairs, they ran back and forth between the cat & dog waiting area at least 5 times, and managed to almost get bitten by the canines who were waiting for their appointments. All this while the cat is flailing around like a windmill with claws, the vet is trying to show me how to give the cat the medication, and I'm trying to keep the boys from tripping the vet because they've decided it's the newest and best game to run between the waiting room and the exam room, between the legs and around the table at breakneck speed.

ok, now the little ones are into mischief again. Must go and separate the warring factions.

Ok, so now I've somehow misplaced my cell phone. Or my kids have misplaced it for me. I hate when that happens. That, and the remote controls (of course, it doesn't help that there are like 10 remote controls in the house and I need a mini-catalog just to keep track of which remote works what device.) But my kids (and the cats too, I'm sure) love to knock things off of surfaces and shove them under couches, or behind or under the cushions, or just carry them off to the most unlikely places imaginable, especially the boys. And you know what's even worse? I can't even call my phone to have it ring because the darn thing is out of charge. Man, we really need a bigger house. And some organization. OH, and like a million bucks would be really nice too.

But seriously, all kidding aside. I was reflecting today how lucky we really are. Even though our bank balance is usually hovering right near zero, and it's a struggle a lot of the time to not have it go under (God knows those banks love their overdraft fees!!!), we have a roof over our heads, clothes, food and transportation. And we have our health. And health insurance. And even though sometimes it seems like everyone else must have it better, it's all relative. They say that even millionaires have their problems, and sometimes they're even bigger than the ones we have (though I wouldn't mind the opportunity to find out, hey what.) I guess that comparatively speaking, we're pretty darn well off.

Well, I'm off to get ready for the weekend. You have a good one. I'll try to, too.

Ok, I have to lay off the bad words. My 7 year old is imitating me.
Just read that now they think the chemical in hot dogs that makes them so bad for you (sodium nitrite), may actually be really good for people in oxygen-deprived situations, like sickle-cell or after a stroke. Something about the nitrite makes the blood more oxygen saturated. Neat.
And now coffee is supposed to be good for you too. How great is that? It's supposed to have like 4x the antioxidants found in green tea or dried beans, which if you keep track of stuff like that, were like the top antioxidant-rich foods before coffee was tested. Of course, in a short while, they will be found to be really bad for you in some way or another, but it's interesting to see how medical research keeps uncovering new information about all the stuff in our world.

I find it amazing how much of a stinker a 2 year old can be. I've forgotten since the last one. This little guy is crazy. Drawing all over himself and the house with markers as soon as his brother abandons one; jumping from the back of the couch onto his sister's head while she's reading; deliberately trying to harass his brother. I mean, this little guy can't really talk yet, but man is he ever a character. And what makes it even worse is that he's just about the cutest little guy you could ever see. Almost as cute as the baby on the Quizno's commercials. I wonder what it's going to be like when he gets a little older and Really figures out what buttons to push to get people mad at him. Seems to me that he doesn't care even now, and I could imagine it's only going to get worse.

Ok, so now I'm officially a member of the blogging community. How neat! And to think I got here thanks to LazyTown. That's a tortuous route I won't go over with you. And now I've got stage fright. This is going to be read by HOW MANY PEOPLE???? (probably none, actually. I feel better now.)
Specifics:
the name says it all. I'm the 'mom' in this household of 3 kids (7, almost 5, and almost 2), 2 cats, 1 guinea pig & 'HIM', the all great and almighty 'HUSBAND', otherwise known as the breadwinner of the house, though not necessarily the one who wears the pants. Actually, life for me isn't all that bad. It's just not what I envisioned for myself 15 years ago while still in college with unlimited vistas for my future.

What a 'never saw this one coming' life. I thought I would be a famous medical researcher who would discover the cure for cancer, or a professional musician, or a great psychologist, or almost anything else but a 'mother & homemaker'. I guess it's why I never became any of them; I had too many options & couldn't decide, which makes it pretty hard to graduate with a Bachelor's in nothing. Well, that and not having enough money to pay for rent without working 30+ hours a week on top of the full time college schedule. But that's water under the bridge. The road not taken...

But enough self-flogging, oh whoops, I mean Blogging! Ha ha ha.

I just told my husband that I'm officially a blogger. He was pretty impressed, but didn't understand the mechanics of it. I don't really myself yet either. Only time will tell. That's a great song by Asia, BTW. I'm not as hip on the abbreviations as most, but I guess that will come with practice and experience, as does anything, right?

So the newest gizmo for kids on the brain sucker is some kind of car that chases after a line drawn on a mat with a special pen. Didn't they have something like that years and years ago? The concept seems familiar.

My day is spent with 2 little boys who watch Nick Jr. & PBSKids & Noggin every day. I'm trying to now turn the tv off during the day a few hours. Which is fine and what I should do, except then my time is spent breaking up their fights and rescuing them from somewhat hazardous situations instead of TRYING to keep the house reasonably neat & making meals for them and getting some time to do what I really like to do once in a while. Six one way, half-a-dozen the other.

Well, dishes are singing their siren song. Later.
Wow, I just remembered that this is a very important and tragic day for my husband and his family. Will have to get in touch with some of them.