Cell Phone + 12 year old = Expensive Bill

Today I got my cell phone bill. Strangely it was $100 more than it usually is. Since we have a plan that gives us more than enough minutes every month, I went in search of an explination. What I found was that my 12 year old had downloaded 50 or so "premium text messages" at $1.99 a piece. I didn't know such a thing even existed. I'm still not entirely sure what they are. What I do know is that after a pleasant call to customer service her phone is now blocked from receiving them. I also know that she's going to be babysitting for free for the forseable future.

Updates

I was reading through my older posts just now. I like reading what I write. I crack myself up. Hopefully lots of other people think I'm as funny as I do. In reading my old posts I came across a couple of posts that I felt required updating. So here you go.

Remember when I told you that Lizards Can't Swim? Kimberly fished a dead lizard out of the pool and then decided it needed to be buried? I even included a nifty picture of the burial? Well about a month ago I found a box in my garage labeled "Do not open. Lizard inside" Yup, you guessed it. Apparently after the burial, Kimberly decided she wasn't done playing with the dead lizard and robbed his little lizard grave and played with him some more. Then she decided to stash him in the garage for safe keeping. Well let me tell you, by late June it's a nice 110 degrees here, and it probably gets up to like 130 in the garage. Not the best place for keeping a 4 month old dead creature. Eww. I threw the whole box away and didn't even peek.

On another note, remember in March when I proudly told you I had finally sorted the sock basket. Well, I can now, not so proudly tell you that it hasn't been touched again since. In my defense we haven't had much need for socks in the last two months with the kids out of school and all, but I'm still pretty ashamed.

Lastly, remember when I told you about our 504 meeting. It went so well. I was so encouraged. Well by the time I got the actual printed version in my hands I was not happy with how things were worded so I sent it back asking for certain things to be corrected. The teacher then countered my corrections and refused to sign off on it. We ended up needing to have two more meetings with the District 504 supervisor on hand to mediate. Of course she understood where I was coming from and the fact that I was 100% right on everything I was asking for. As a bonus, she even suggested some really cool shit I hadn't even thought about. The end result was, the day before school ended we finally had our 504 plan in place. It only took all year. The teacher still wasn't thrilled with the fact that she had to sign off on it, and I wanted to say "Why do you care? It's not like you are going to have to do any of these things since there is only one day of school left", but I didn't. I think maybe she was worried about the other teachers kicking her ass when they found out about it.

Things that aren't cool

First would be my refrigerator. It's on, but everything in the freezer defrosted and my milk was warm. It's no longer producing that wonderfully cold stuff that keeps the food from going bad. Basically it's just a box with a nifty light inside now. Luckily it was the spare fridge in the garage, but it still sucks. I'm still waiting to hear from my landlord on whether or not she's going to be able to get caught up on her payments and keep the house I'm living in, and since most houses don't come with fridges, I may have to buy a new one soon. Do I have money to buy a new fridge? NOPE. I don't even have money to fix this one right now. I called the repair people at SEARS and they told me it would be $70 to come look at it and then more for the parts and labor to fix it, OR I could buy their maintenance plan for $250 and it would cover any repairs up to $500. They won't let me find out what's wrong with it before making the decision. The way my luck goes if I go with the $250 service plan, it will be a $5 part to fix it, and if I go the other way it will need $500 worth of repairs. Since it's a spare fridge, I decided to wait.

The second thing that is not cool is the comment spam I've been getting. Random people are leaving me comments hawking things like stickers. Really??? Just because I mentioned that I liked the show Ace of Cakes doesn't mean that I want comment spam that some company now has stickers based on it. What in the world would I do with them? Yesterday I got another one, but I deleted it and don't remember what they were selling. I didn't think much of it until I got the sticker one today. I know I haven't been posting in a while so maybe this has been going on for a couple of months and I'm just now falling victim of it, but it's not cool. My blog is for people who are interested in what I have to say. Not a forum for some company to hawk their stickers. If someone wants to advertise on my site, they can pay me to do it, or they can bite me.

Way overdue recipe

Ok, Ok I know. I had been wowing you with weekly recipies when I first started blogging and lately there haven't been any. I realized after awhile that I had a few killer quick and easy recipes, but after I posted them all here, I quickly ran out. I didn't have the time to constantly be on the hunt for new ones and try them before posting, so my recipe segment died.

This summer while I've been stuck at home, my friend Alisha turned me on to the Food Network. I've always avoided this channel because I thought that watching other people cook was about as exciting as watching grass grow. Not to mention that Emeril guy yelling BAM all the time is just about the most annoying thing ever (well after Dr. Phil anyway). Come to find out they actually have some pretty cool shows. I love Good Eats, it's very educational even for the kids and I love the sock puppet bacteria. Challenge is another good one. I like the cake ones the best. Speaking of cake Ace of Cakes is super cool. All of their cakes are beyond amazing. During this time my oldest has been inspired to become a pastry chef. This is the same child that not long ago wanted to be a doctor. Not that there is anything wrong with wanting to be a doctor, but I think it might be more fun having her make us desert, than having her diagnosing everyone in the house with things like Scurvy. Not to mention the school is a little more in my budget.

As exciting as all this is, I bet you are thinking "Hey she promised us a recipe" about now. So here it is. One night a week or so ago, I really wanted to make a chicken pasta with alfredo sauce. The only problem being, I didn't have any ready made alfredo sauce in the house, and didn't have any heavy cream on hand to make homemade. So it was off to internet land to find an alfredo sauce recipe I could fudge with what I did have in the house. This is what I found.

Quick and Easy Alfredo Sauce

1/2 cup butter
1 (8oz) package of cream cheese
2 tsp garlic powder
2 cups milk
6 oz grated parmesan cheese
1/8 tsp ground black pepper

Melt butter in non-stick saucepan over medium heat. Add cream cheese and garlic powder, stirring with a whisk until smooth. (I seriously recommend using a silicone whisk so you don't scratch your non-stick pan. Teflon flakes are not a yummy addition to any meal. Also I'd like to note that it doesn't exactly get smooth. Once the cream cheese completely melts it looks kinda curdled. Fear not, it totally starts looking normal again in the next step.) Add milk a little at a time, whisking to smooth out lumps. Stir in parmesan and pepper. Remove from heat when sauce reaches desired consistency. Toss with hot pasta to serve.

Along with this sauce I prepared 3 cups of penne pasta, sliced 2 chicken breasts into bite size strips and sauteed in a little butter and garlic, and steamed about 2 cups of broccoli that I had chopped into bite sized pieces. When everything was ready I tossed it all together and added the sauce. Totally easy, and totally yummy. Enjoy.

Insomniac Rambling

It's 2:30 in the morning and I can't sleep. Might have something to do with the three hour long nap I took from five to eight p.m. but maybe not.

I've got a lot on my mind. In the last 12 hours I almost decided to move my family to Michigan, and then talked myself out of it. Talk about a whirlwind. I'm slightly impulsive. Have you figured this out yet?

A lot has been happening since I last blogged. I've been recuperating from my seizure incident and am happy to report that I appear to be in perfect health. I haven't been able to drive though, so my activities have been limited. Being cooped up in the house with kids all summer is about as much fun as a root canal.

Remember a while back I blogged about quiet time, yeah, there hasn't been any of that here for the last two months.

So I've been thinking a lot about how not fun it is being a pseudo-single mom. You see my husband works out of town so when he is working he is gone. We need him to work eight or nine months out of the year to be able to pay for nice things like a roof over our head and something more nutritious than top ramen to eat every night. Not that top ramen isn't yummy.

Single moms have my utmost respect. I don't know how they do it. On top of everything I do, manage the house, pay the bills, cook, clean, taxi the kids to soccer and other activities, oversee homework, make appointments and actually remember to deliver the kids to the doctor, dentist, orthodontist, and eye doctor, they actually have to WORK to make the money to pay for every thing. On their own!!! Not that I don't work. I have a fun little job that I do during the day while the kiddos are in school which allows me to contribute a couple hundred dollars to our monthly budget. I don't have to worry about making enough to pay for the roof, food, and other essentials. My hubby rules in that department.

With that said, living apart from your one and only true love for any amount of time blows chunks, so I keep trying to figure out how to fix it. If my hubby worked only in one state it would be simple, live in that state, but life isn't that simple. His latest job is taking him to Michigan and it appears that it might be for longer than his usual 3 month stint. It might be 6 or 9. So the plan was hatched to move there for a year. For a girl who grew up in sunny California and then moved to even more sunny Arizona, living somewhere with snow sounded kinda fun. Think of the blogging I could have done about the evils of snow shoveling. Everything was on hold waiting to get the call that he was going for sure.

Today that call came. He leaves Friday. All of a sudden we had to figure out how to make our plan a reality. But after much deliberation, u-Haul rental quotes, input from the children, etc. the hubby and I decided it made more financial sense to stay put. Damn finances. Can't I win the power ball already? So here I am getting ready to face another several months being the one woman show.

Which brings me to gratitude. People are always asking me how I do it. My biggest secret is I always try to think about how lucky I am. I have many friends who have spouses in the military. Many of them have dealt with their husbands being gone for a year at a time. The most my husband is ever gone is three months and nobody is shooting at him or trying to blow him up. In comparison to them I have it easy. When I start to feel sorry for myself having to manage the kids and the house alone, I think of the single moms that have to bring home the bacon too. No matter what comes my way I can always look at it and see that even though it might seem terrible on the surface, I'm still quite fortunate. Sure I might rant now and then (my blog might be boring if I didn't), but after the ranting is over I always find a way to be thankful.

I don't wanna

If it's not one thing, it's another. How's that for a cliche. After having such a fabulous (insert sarcasm here) year, hubby getting hurt, me getting sick, etc. Now I find out that my landlord is having issues paying the mortgage on the house I'm living in. Another victim of our souring housing market. So after living here for a year, I'm now faced with having to move. AGAIN. Grr.

I don't like moving. I don't like finding boxes, packing all my stuff up, and lifting those boxes to move them somewhere else. I have a lot of stuff. I suffer from being a pack rat. Moving forces me to go through all my stuff and face the reality that I probably don't need all of it. I have a whole car space in my garage filled with boxes of stuff that haven't been unpacked since the last move, but I know that the minute I get rid of something I will then, of course, need it.

Then there is the fact that we really like this house. It fits us. It's got a great layout, and a pool! What are the chances that we will find another house to rent as teriffic as this one. The whole thing just makes me sick.

Puppy Luv

This is the good thing that has happened lately. My good friend Alisha took me out for some garage sale fun last weekend and this is what I found.

Not your typical garage sale find, but still a treasure. She is a chihuahua weenie dog mix and is only about as big as a monster energy drink can. We named her Roxy. She's so adorable and is going to be a good buddy for our other dog Max.

Don't ever say "I'm not dead", not even joking

Do you beleive in karma, or fate, or jinxing things? I don't know which this actually falls under, but two days after writing the last post that I jokingly titled "I'm not dead", I actually almost died. Creepy. That would be the reason for my absence the last 3 weeks. I've been recuperating.

Did you know that you can actually drink too much water? It's true. Although there were a couple other things that contributed to the seizure I had, that was the biggie. Apparently drinking too much water too fast seriously alters the amount of potasium and sodium in your blood, and those things are pretty important to your body functioning properly.

Then after the seizure there was too much of some kind of enzymes in my blood. You know how after you exercise you feel that burn in your muscles. That is this enzyme that is released by your muscles when they are torn. It's toxic. Well just imagine exercising every muscle in your body all at once. There was so much of this stuff in my bloodstream they were worried that my kidneys were going to shut down from the strain.

Through this whole ordeal I lost 3 days of my life. They had me so sedated that I don't remember them at all. That is the weirdest feeling for me. I'm a little bit of a control freak, a little OCD. Never in my life have I gotten drunk and blacked out or in any way done anything I didn't remember later. The closest I had ever come to that was that driving on auto pilot you do sometimes when you make the same boring commute every day that it becomes so routine and one day you arrive at work (or home) and think "I really don't rememeber driving here".

The whole thing has made me realize a few things. First, I have the most awesome husband in the world. Yes he may act like an overprotective as*#%@e sometimes, but it's only because he loves me so much. He actually told someone in the hospital that he would take me home in a wheelchair, drooling on myself, and still love me forever. It's making me cry again as I type it. Second, I am blessed to have the friends that I do. From the ones that stepped in to take care of my kids so my hubby could stay by my side in the hospital, to the ones that brought us food when we got home so he wouldn't have to cook, to the ones that have given me rides everywhere I need to go since I can't drive. Third, I realized that I need to stop taking life for granted. I need to stop acting like I can do anything and everything without consequence.

For years I have tried to do it all, work, volunteer, PTA, Girl Scouts, dance class, gymnastics, swim team. Trying to be the best mom and give my kids everything had me so run down that I was putting my health at risk. The doctor said that being over tired put me at risk for a seizure. The fact that my potassium and sodium levels were already skewed because of my diet soda habit probably contributed too, but I needed that caffeine to be able to get through my hectic days. Of course in the hospital nobody gave me 6 sodas a day, and luckily I probably slept through the caffeine withdrawl headache, but I came home cured of my caffeine addiction as well as with a new outlook on my life. I realized that I have three beautiful girls that need their mom. I still have a lot to do to raise them to be the people I want them to be, and I'm not going to be able to do that if I don't take better care of myself. I'm not done here yet.

I'm not dead

Sorry to all of you my faithful readers. Some of you that know me in the real world have told me you miss my blog. I apologize. Life just kinda got turned on it's head there for a while.

To answer the question about what happened with the meds. That's an interesting story, one that brought me full circle back to where I started from.

I started taking Adderall. The first three days were interesting. I felt a little more aggitated than I normaly do, but definitely more focused, and even though I was only sleeping about 6 hours a night I woke up feeling completely rested. My friends said I seemed calmer, and more relaxed. If it stayed like that it would have been cool, but unfortunately it went rapidly downhill from there. Within a week I was so exhausted by 4 pm that I had to take a nap daily. Not so cool when I have three kids that need to get homework done around that same time. It also cut into my blogging time. Then the foot cramps I get about once a week started happening about once or twice a day. Sometimes in the middle of the night and waking me up, and sometimes lasting as long as 30 minutes, even while walking around. I had my next appointment with the doctor at three weeks and after I told him what kind of stuff was going on he decided to try me on Strattera.

Strattera has a tendency to make you sleepy, so it's usually recommended to take it at night before bed. I took the first pill that night and woke up sooooooo depressed. It was not cool. I was crying for no reason other than I was crying. I couldn't get out of bed and just wanted to sleep all day. Either that or cry some more. My husband was out of town and I called him for support. The conversation went like this:

him: why are you crying?
me: I don't know
him: well you have to be upset about something
me: no, I'm really not
him: then why are you crying
me: I don't know
him: that's the craziest thing I've ever heard

Needless to say, I didn't take any more of that stuff.

I was also seeing a therapist during that month. I left most every appointment feeling like all he said was "you already know what to do, you just need to do it". He told me I needed to keep a detailed calendar, I do that. He told me I needed to have systems and routines in place so that I don't forget things, I already do have a lot of them. The rest of the things he told me I should be doing are things I have been doing with Kimberly for years. He told me to transfer that knowledge and make it work for me. There were a few nuggets of wisdom I didn't have already, but the majority of it was "you have managed to be quite successful thus far, and have developed some rather ingenious coping mechanisms, you just need to expand on those".

So after all that I have this realization. Yes, I have ADD, but just like I have been telling myself for the last few years, I manage it pretty well without meds. Sure I drink a 6 pack of soda a day, and sometimes forget where I parked my car, but in general, I'm not too much of a screw up.

So thank my friend Bethany for starting her own blog and sending me a link to it for getting me signed back onto blogger. Once I was here, it wasn't hard to write something. I'm going out of town for the weekend, but hopefully I'll remember to sign in on Monday and tell you about it.

Through the looking glass

Today was a big day. We finally had the 504 meeting, and it went better than expected. Kimberly's teacher came to the meeting with a list of accomodations that she has been providing and seeing success with in the classroom. Could this be the same woman who told me a few weeks ago that she didn't think Kimberly needed a 504? Now I have to wait for them to actually write up the plan and review it, but I think (finally) the worst of it is over.

As for myself, today was the day that I started my ADD treatment. I finally decided, after several years of speculating that I had it, to go and get myself diagnosed and see if it didn't make a difference in my life. It took quite a lot to get to this point. It's hard to admit that there is something wrong with you, and that you don't have control over yourself. I've spent the last few years believing that if I got this far without treatment I didn't need it. But just as I tell my daughter that she needs to take her pills to help her do better at school, would the pills not help me to do better in life? Am I setting a good example for her by not getting myself treatment? So I made an appointment and went. Even on the way there I debated whether I really wanted to take this step. After speaking to the doctor and going over the list of reasons that I felt I was most likely ADD, he agreed. He gave me a prescription and encouraged me to make an appointment with a therapist. This was already the next step in my plan because now I realize that I am not the things I have thought I was for so long. I'm not lazy, I'm not a procrastinator, I can finish what I start, but I needed the proper tools.

This morning was surreal. As I opened the bottle and took out the pill I thought about the consequenses (and the Matrix). Take the pill and know the truth. Take the pill and truly be awake for the first time. Take the pill and realize my potential. It was scary. There is something very comforting about what is already known. If I didn't take the pill my life would go on as it always had. I would continue to do the things I always did. I wouldn't have to re-learn how to do anything. I wouldn't have to admit I was less than perfect. I wouldn't have to face the world as an adult with ADD. I could go on being the quirky girl that my friends, husband, and kids love who can't ever remember where she left her car. In the end I chose to take the pill. We will see what happens now.