As you wish he said....

My heart breaks a little when I look at the side of this blog and I see my explanation of who I am "Mother to 3 amazing children, wife to one amazing man...as you wish he said". This is how I defined myself, and my marriage. My wants and my needs and my husband true to form was there. I did feel like a princess. Cared for and coddled.
"You don't want to drive to work tonight?" he would say.
"No it looks like snow, I don't want to drive in the snow" I would say.
"of course I will drive you" he would say.
And it sounds sweet and lovely that a husband would do that for his wife. Looking closer at it...my husband had worked all day, he would come home and start supper because I needed to sleep for the night shift. He would see the kids for 5 minutes and then drive all the way back into town. Then he would come home and get them off to bed. I never stopped to consider what an inconvenience this was for the rest of my family. I never stopped to think that maybe he missed the kids after having worked all week and that he just wanted to spend time with them. I never took into consideration his thoughts or feelings on the matter because "as you wish" was what I heard.
He never said no to me. My wants and needs always came first. But I said no plenty of times emphatically, loudly NO! Looking back I am hard pressed to find a time when the situation was reversed. In fact looking back I can see how easy it was for me to let him take care of me and my wants and needs and to deny his.
My husband is leaving me for another woman but I am soooo culpable in the demise of my own marriage, I can't breathe sometimes. I don't like the person I became and I can't believe how easy it became to dismiss someone else's feelings, someone that I loved so very much.
In the beginning his level of love for me was off the charts as was mine for him. He was my best friend and my soul mate. Somewhere a long the way we lost sight of each other. We stopped seeing the other person whom we had originally fallen in love with. I trusted that he would always be there while he was silently having hurt after hurt piled on top of him and never saying a word.
This marriage ending is sad because it could have been something beautiful and wonderful. We could have been a forever marriage but we let the reigns go. I let the reigns go. I did not tend my marriage or show my husband compassion when he needed it most. He is walking away and for the first time I am not saying "No". I am letting him go. I am putting his needs above my own. I am being the person I use to be.
"As you wish" is a fairytale. It is not real life.

Overprotective Mom or Normal?

So after the baseball game tonight seems that myself and a lot of other parents had the idea of going to the playground with the kids, get out that last little bit of energy. So I let Turtle and Sean go. As I was standing there watching the kids play I noticed a group of boys headed for the spiral slide. You know the big one in the middle of the playground that has three loops before they get to the bottom. These kids were not taking turns they were going one on top of another...with cleats on.

I am all for horseplay and I get the whole boys will be boys thing but doesn't this scream "accident waiting to happen to any other parent out there" apparently no on the playground. Not one parent said a word. I saw Turtle at the top of the slide and realized it was too late he had to come down and down he did with some kid right behind him cleats in his back. So I had a little come to jesus moment with the three boys that were behind Turtle. It didn't work. I pulled Turtle and Sean off the slide and played with them on everything else. Not 2 minutes after I told them no more slide. A little boy was coming down and one of the kids behind jammed his cleat against his head. The kid started howling and then all of a sudden about 10 parents realized how dangerous the situation was.

Why do I feel like I am the odd ball? How was I the only parent (besides my Mom...hehe) who saw this for what it was? Am I to protective?

Hmmm....thoughts to ponder as the kids get a little older.

The mouse

I have 3 cats. 3! It is not like this is a small amount of feline in my house. You would think that with 3 I would not have any mice and guess what? You would be wrong.

There is a mouse in my garage. He has been there all winter, toasty and warm. Two of my cats like to sleep in the garage but they certainly do not bother with the mouse. Rascal thinks that the mouse is his friend. Just another animal to play with and Bigglesworth is Garfield incarnate only gray. I think he would make an attempt at the mouse if he thought that we were watching and then quietly let it go when our backs were turned. I think that he is probably our animal rights cat. He would never really hurt another animal although sometimes he thumps Rascal really hard on the head. Then there is Jazzy who can leave all manner of dead reptile, bird and rodent on the the front steps but cannot go into the freaking garage and catch a mouse. Are you kidding me?

My better half and children say they are pets not hunters (yes well tell that to the two pairs of work shoes that I have ruined stepping in Jazzy non-hunt) ...

So it will be me and the mouse. I am really hoping that I can outsmart a mouse.

Parenting

One of the great things about being a parent is that we all have those moments where we believe that we are the best parents on the planet. (minus the time that I put my younger son in the older ones underwear because said younger son had accidented through to many of his) (not one of my stellar moments and accidented is a word)but more often then not it is judging the other parents around us and believing that our parenting had to better than theirs.

Like the numnuts recently that got in her car and drove high with her kids in the back. Yeah...not what I would call genius. But I am not talking about the glaringly obvious stuff I am talking about I would not let my kid out of the house with snot rockets hanging from his nose waiting to become weapons of mass destruction. I would not let my kids out to beat the crap out of each other on the front lawn with the whole neighborhood watching. Why? Because it screams heathen all over it.

There are just some days when I feel like I have the parenting thing down and I am amazing and then there are other days were...yeah, well I am sure the neighbors talk about me too.

It has been a long time

It has been a long time since I have posted on here. It is not that I did not have anything to say, it is just that taking classes and working and being a mother and wife have not left a lot of time for other things. That and nothing happens in the winter. That is my own perception of winter because I cannot stand it.
Here is the summer now and I feel like a new girl with time on her hands and so back to writing, every once in awhile, certainly more then every 6 months.

Scrapblog...fun to play with

The mini van part 2.

So yesterday we did go to the beach and had a wonderful time. I would have to say that the one low of the day was that the minivans check engine light had come on. I was not really worried about it because I had done some light reading of my minivan owners manual (Haven't you all?).
So after the beach we all piled into the minivan for the ride home. About a mile down the road a high pitched alarm starts going off. I pull over to the side of the road to check things out. Have you ever had a car trouble with a 4 year old in the car...then you know my pain. He kept asking questions and to tell you the truth I had no answers. I was trying to be calm but he was also repeating everything that Julie was saying to me....example: Julie says "Joanna, did you check to make sure that your gas cap is on?" Sean: "Mama make sure your gas cap is on...Mama is the gas cap on? Mama did you check the gas cap?" and so on.
So I am trying to remain calm, I start the van back up and in park it is fine, when I put it in drive it starts to chime and when I press on the gas the alarm from hell starts spewing from every port on the van. This is a very sophisticated vehicle, it tells me when I am going to hit someone, when I am going to run out of gas, on board monitors, for temp, lights and air pressure in my tires....but do you think that it could tell me why this alarm was going off. So it is about 4:50pm my garage closes at 5:00pm and we are 10 minutes away. I decide that I can make it and that the alarm will be fine and nothing drastic is going to happen. (I do not recommend driving your own vehicle with crazy bells going off but I never make wise choices in crisis)
So we got to the garage and I explain alarms...engine lights and all to this very confused garage guy. (Who was totally sweet and decide to check the car even though by the time we got there they were closed) We unload all the children and I go to pull it into the bay...would you believe that the alarm did not go off? The garage guy asked me if anyone else had heard the bells...good thing there was a psych nurse in the van who had heard them too or else I think I would be having someone take a look at my hearing and my head. You know cause maybe I have munchausen by proxy for my vehicle...I make up all these weird diseases that my van has and then look for sympathy from the garage people. I feed it diesel instead of regular and then plead ignorance....hey it could happen.
So in the end no one knows why my car alarmed while I was driving it for miles. On a happy note though they did reset my check engine light.

A day at the beach...

So this pretty much sums up the day, the happy little smile. We went with our friends the fabulous Jules and her son Alex to the beach. The kids played all day and had sooo much fun. They are getting less weary of the water and by the end of the day were a little more fearless. It was a blast and they came home tired and spent. It was nice to see them drop off to bed with nary a complaint.

the quirky ryan boys

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The Minivan

It is fixed, my ultimate Mama cruise mobile is ready to take the road once again.  Not that there were not a few bumps in the road getting there.  Napoleon (it's the minivan name, you will get over it) had been sitting in our driveway for I think 3 months with 38,000 miles on her. (yes Napoleon is a girl, you will get over that too) We have been driving the "other" car.  It is a trash heap with 172,000 miles on that when you turn it on sounds like it is going into a death rattle (trust me people I work at the hospital I know what that sounds like).  I have even taken to parking on a different level then I usually do just because I do not want people to know the car with all the trash, trailing smoke and rattling every time I turn it on is me.  Anyway back to the plight of Napoleon.  You must know that the windshield cracked, the brakes failed and the tire went flat all in the matter of a few weeks and you may remember a while back we were very short on cash...well yes this all would have occurred around the same time.  So we let the car sit, until Dubya sent us our stimulation check.

Getting it fixed though was a little strange.  We could not drive it because now the inspection was expired.  I called the garage to come and tow it.  This was Thursday and they told me that they would be around on Monday to pick it up...they do not do windshields.  Called the windshield guys and they said they could come on the following Thursday (weather permitting)....I waited all the following week for something to happen...anything.  No one showed.  I called the garage on Friday and she said that they would be out the following Monday....(deja vu) I called the glass guys and you guessed it they said that they would be there on Thursday. 

Monday morning the tow truck showed up in my driveway and I gleefully helped (they let me drive) get Napoleon onto the flatbed.  I had just gotten off a 12 hour shift so I duct taped my children to the television and headed to bed.  (for all you purist Mike really entertains them while I sleep and there really is no duct tape involved)  At 3pm I received a call from the glass guys they are on their way to fix my windshield...uhm no you are coming on Thursday...guess there was a change in plan, but the van is not here it is at the garage.  Windshield guy says he knows it is at the garage he already called them....what?   So anyway I called the garage and sho'enough they have all been talking to each other.  My only gripe being that they told the garage they would be there at noon (so the garage did not start on my car) and they did not show up until 3pm.  The lady at the garage was pretty sure that now because they were not be able to start they would not get to my car unti next week...great!!!

Tuesday around 1pm Chris is home from job#1 my phone starts ringing.  I look at the number and think it is familiar and realize it is the garage.  They are calling to tell me the van is ready...Woow!  Do any of the businesses have a sense of time?  I mean not that I am not grateful to have Napoleon back but ....has anyone heard of a real timeline.  Anyway, I beg to Chris to be a few minutes late to job#2 and we rush out the door small children in tow to pick up our beloved van, that has a/c and a Cd player and a DVD player...and a whole bunch of other amenities that are so nice to have with small kids.  I am so excited we drive around town , we get gas and we head home.  Mike comes out to help get his brothers out when we get home...he says "Mom, What is that awful smell?"  I am thinking new brake smell, glue from the window...don't know, don't care have van back.  Then I hear him "Mom, are the tires suppose to be smoking?"  "Smoking?"  I look and yup, one of my back tires is smoking...big, piles of black smoke.

I call the garage in hysterics sure that at any moment my van is going to do a movie style blow up in my driveway.  The lady at the garage calmly informs that I live close enough I can just drive it back.  I am not sure why in my hysteria I thought this was a good idea at least I had the thought to leave all children home. Right before I get off the phone the woman says "and you may not want to step on your breaks hard...or at all" I got back into the van...black smoke still pouring from the rear tire and drove it all the way back to the garage...over 5 miles, I watched the odometer.  I pull in certain that by now there are flames shooting out.  I get out and there is nothing...nothing...no smell, no black smoke.  Now I look like a crazy lady.  The mechanic comes out I explain it to him, he takes the van for a spin....nothing.  They put it up on the lift...nothing.  He decides that because I let the van sit so long that some piece (no I know nothing about cars/trucks/vans or SUVs) in my brakes rusted into place and because that was the first time I drove it all that I was doing was creating friction and bad smelling smoke.  He thinks that it must have worked its way loose while I was driving it back and that it should be ok.  (I feel so relieved, don't you?)  NO, NO, NO...tell me that is not going to happen again.  No mechanic will tell you that something will never happen. 

So here I am folks, I have my minivan back.  She is in the driveway and whenever I take her anywhere I have my review mirror cranked all the way down the side to see the tires.  So if you are at Hannafords and you see me pulling out of a spot, give me wide berth, I do not see you, I am checking my tires in the mirror and if my head is stuck out the window like a dog...I still am oblivious to the fact that you are there, I am just sniffing the air for foul smoke.

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