I took my 11 year old daughter shopping this evening. We had a wonderfully 'girly' time looking at make-up and clothes and shoes, etc. We had stopped to sniff some scented candles when Shea said "Mom, that guy's looking at you" I looked up to see the back of a tall, dark young man disappearing around the end of an aisle. (I have to sideline a bit here. When I say young, I mean young, like late teens to early 20's. I'm 34...so anything under 21 is young to me!) " You sure?" I asked ...

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I'm going to certifably insane by the end of the summer. The madness in this house has already begun, and it's not even June yet. It's my boys.  A prime example of sibling rivalry at it's finest.  One always has to be better than the other. One always has to be 'top dog', and if it means physically beating the other into submission then so be it. Every evening for the past week they've got into a fist fight.  Every evening I've separated them and admonished them for thei...

I don't know why I do it. I must have had a momentary lapse in my reasoning, a few seconds of madness...but I invited my son's friend to sleep over with us tonight. I usually don't mind the kids having friends over to stay, if Dave's here...at least then I have some back-up when things get rough. But, as we all know, he's gone..and I'm in the house with 4 children, 3 of them boys aged 9, 8 and 7. My eldest son morphs into someone else when he has friends over. He gets really cocky,...

2 of my kids aren't speaking to me. It's because of the piercing. My son, Davey, initially had a cow and told me I needed to take it out. He's calmed down some, but is still a little reserved. I'm not surprised, I kind of expected that from him. My daughter, however, is a different matter. Of all of them, I thought that she'd be a little more accepting of it. Shea is 11 1/2, and is a practicing Buddhist. She latched onto it a couple of years ago after watching and listening t...

Today it snowed. And snowed...and..well, you get the point. Then the wind picked up and blew not only the falling snow around but the snow that was already on the ground around too, resulting in a white-out situation. I can't see the cars parked across the street. I can't see my own trashcan..! So, we've all been cooped up in the house together....all day......and I think that I am losing my sanity. My total repertoire of words today has been: "stop it" "leave your brother alone...

...is my two front teeth!  (well, one front tooth) Jacob Solomon, September 18th, 2004. *sigh*...I do love that little ol' boy.....

Jake lost his upper front tooth today.  He lost a lower one last week, so now he looks like a pro hockey player when he smiles. He's pretty proud of his gap..and school pictures are coming up at the end of the month, so we'll have a permanent record of how he looked when he lost his teeth.  I'm a bit sad about it - he's my little guy, the baby of the family, but he's growing.  He's the last kid I'll get to see lose his teeth ... it's just kind of poignant. In other news from ou...

I'm mean, and my kid hates me. Why, I hear you ask?  Am I forcing him to get shots?  Am I making him shave his head? Pulling his teeth out with pliers? Could I be taking all his toys and games away on a whim because I feel like it? None of the above. I'm making him put his socks and shoes on and go to school. Yes, I the meanest mom in the whole world. *sigh*...welcome to Monday morning, Karen.

My almost 12 year old daughter saved up and bought herself 'The Sims' for PS2 a couple of weeks ago.  I watched her playing for a bit this afternoon.  Her characters were being retards...one of them overflowed the toilet, then slipped in the water on the floor and hit their head, and the other one caught themselves on fire whilst using the stove.  She didn't try to save herself, she just stood there and burned to death. I asked Shea if her characters were..."all there".&nbs...

....I was laboring with Jake.  Right around this time in the afternoon I was at 7 cm still, I had been stuck there for most of the day it seemed.  My doc had agreed to turn down the pitocin whilst he went off to a wedding (I encouraged it, don't worry), and when he came back at 4ish he turned it back on again.   About an hour later I declared I wanted some more morphine, so the nurse checked me.... and I was at 8 so they couldn't give me any more.&n...

I'm pathetic. I have no kids at home tonight.  My daughter is sleeping over at a friend's house, and my boys are sleeping over with their buddies across the street.  I have freedom, more importantly freedom on a summer Friday night. I could go downtown to a bar, I could go to a movie, I could call my friends and go drink and dance at a club...the small town of Rapid City, SD, is my oyster.  I don't have to be home at a certain time, I could roll up at 7 am and no-one would k...

I wrote an article a while ago about my retirement dreams ( Link ). Lonesome and I have talked about my dream extensively since then.  He wants to do it too! He said that he'd like to go into town once a week or so for supplies, but apart from that he'd be happy living in the sticks.  I said that I wanted to 'get away from it all' every day, not just on vacation.  He even agreed to keeping chickens and hasn't put up much opposition to the pig idea either.  He suggested th...

My neighbor is a retard. A straight up idiot. Between out 2 houses there is a strip of grass that's about 20 ft wide.  One end of it leads out into the street, the other to a huge playground and open field area behind the houses.  Our houses are split level, which means that the bedroom windows are at ground level along the side of the house where the grass is. This moron is out there, on the strip of grass between the houses, golfing.  Hitting golf balls out into the street...

I have a mole in my yard. He's burrowing all over the place.  It seems like there's a new molehill every morning.  I don't want to kill him, I just don't want him in my yard.  Unfortunately, there aren't many effective deterrents for moles. Castor oil, dried fox pee, cayenne pepper, mothballs...all old wives tales, apparently. So, the base entomologist is coming out today to set a trap for him.  I'm asking for a live trap, so they can just re-locate him.....but I th...