I just received this in my email. This had me close to tears at the end. Amazingly, it was supposedly created by a 15 year old girl. I wonder if she's a military brat? If you haven't seen this, you need to check it out... Maybe I'm just sentimental after all the time I spent in the military? Let me know what you think...

Hi! I'm back! I hope to be posting regularly now, things have started to settle down again. It's been such a long time I have to admit I'm surprised to see my blog is still showing correctly. Hooray!! I figured I'd have to start all over with a new template and the whole nine yards! Instead, all I have to do is remember all these silly html tags.

So bear with me for a few days while I get the kinks sorted out, and then I'll be off and running. Talk to you soon!


I read this today in the Sunday Times (London). Any parent out there should be able to relate to this annoyed, but ingenious, woman.

Strict Mother of the Week

Frustrated mother Tasha Henderson, tired of her daughter's bad exam results, lateness and backchat to teachers, decided on drastic action. She made her 14-year-old stand at a busy junction in Oklahoma City with a cardboard sign that read:
"I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are
perparing me for my future. Will work for food."

Bravo! I'm saving that one for my arsenal.


I'm feeling pretty bitchy right now. I had appointments yesterday and today--nothing like getting poked, prodded and tortured two days running! Yesterday was a consultant anesthesiologist, he's supposed to come up with a non-pharmaceutical method of pain control for me. After his exam he told me that he thinks my nerve endings have become tangled up in the mesh they used for the first surgery--and that's what's causing all the pain.

But he won't touch me until I see a colleague of his, a uro-gyn, to see if there are any other surgical steps they can take to fix the problem. That will probably mean a laparoscopy, and more time off work--and then potentially another surgery, bringing me to a total of 8 in 10 months. Yea.

The anesthesiologist said he can do temporary or permanent nerve blocks to relieve the pain, but they might make me pee my pants all the time and not even know about it. I'm still debating--do I want to pee my pants sometimes and be stoned from narcotic pain meds, or do I want to feel fine and pee my pants all the time? What would you choose? Hmm.....decisions, decisions.

Today was the urologist. Another set of cystoscopy, urodynamics, and some other fun and painful torture. So I'm not feeling very good and I'm whiny. At least I'll get some new drugs next week that will hopefully work better.

The bottom line? I'm finally going back to work next week. I mean, it's only been 5 months this time around, that's not too bad, right?! Seriously though, I'm going back for half-days for the first month and we'll play it by ear after that.

I'm not actually doing any better, but I haven't gotten much worse either. It doesn't seem like staying home and taking it easy is helping anything, besides keeping me more comfortable, so it's time to give it a try.

I really had to work to convince my doctor to let me go back--he didn't want me to because I'm having problems with my pain meds again---ie they're not working--and I'm still peeing all the time when I don't mean to. I've developed a tolerance to the meds again, and it's time to move on to something stronger.

The dr. didn't think it was a good idea to give me stronger meds then send me back, and it may not be, but I'm doing it anyway. I think my exact words were, "At this point I don't care if I pee on the general's feet, I have to go back!

My reasoning is that it's just been too damn long. I need to get back before they decide they don't need me anymore. But my feeling was justified when I found out that they're "right-sizing" my paygrade--that's a euphemism for "Oops, we fucked up and got too many new people a couple years ago, so now we're going to kick a bunch of them out". Nice, eh?

I probably don't have to worry about anything--I'm ranked 2 of 13 in my peer group even though I haven't been there (I was pretty impressed!), and also because they can't kick me out until they fix me or have exhausted all options and all hope of fixing me. Either way, I really don't want to lose my job, not after 15 years and a whole lot of really hard work. Another 5 years and I'm set for life once I can retire. I'm NOT going now.

Sorry for the bitchiness--if it's any consolation, I feel a lot better now! Thanks for the venting opportunity, and I hope ya'll are feeling better than I am! :)

Julie out.



My 4 yr old, Liam, can be quite a handful. His angelic smile and cuteness disguise a devious little soul. He insists on doing everything by himself, and hates needing help for anything. He also, like any other little boy, likes getting into things he's not supposed to.

My 11 yr old helps us out a lot with him--I didn't realize quite how much until she slept over at a friend's house Friday night. On weekend mornings, Amelia gets up with Liam, gets him breakfast and plays with him for a couple of hours until it's a decent time for us old folk to get up. He'd been having lots of nightmares lately, so we put him in bed with us to cut out the bed transfer at 2 am.

In the morning my little angel managed to sneak out of bed (he was in between us) without waking either of us up. He went downstairs and apparently decided he was all grown up and didn't need us for anything.

I guess Liam still felt a bit sleepy and so wanted a cup of coffee--just like Daddy. He poured a cup (!), added cream and sugar, then figured it would be fun to mix the two together. So he poured the sugar into the creamer, and then poured that back into the sugar bowl.

After that job, he was hungry. He made microwave popcorn for breakfast--and burned the crap out of it. I have no idea how long he put it in for, but I'm really really glad he didn't burn the house down.

He got into just about everything he could--and did it all very quietly so he wouldn't wake us up. I have no idea why he eventually decided to come and get us up--maybe he was lonely?--but thankfully he did before anything really disastrous happened. It did make me feel like the bad mom of the year, though.

So we've now made taking care of Liam on weekend morning an official chore for Amelia. Not sure if that adds to the bad mom designation or not, but I don't care. He's being looked after, Amelia gets money, and mom and dad get to sleep in. Win win. Works for me!


I'm back! It's been an awful week. I've had an infection, plus loads of other stuff going on. I haven't even turned my computer on for the last four days--let alone get on it for anything.

It started off with my stepson coming for a visit. He used to live with us and caused lots and lots of problems (story for another time), and so I wasn't exactly looking forward to the visit. It turned out ok in the end, and the worst part was the time DH had to spend driving back and forth cross-country to pick him up and drop him off.

Friday was my daughter's Halloween party. It turned out really well and all the kids had a great time. I made toooo much food, though, and overdid it so much on Friday that it took several days before I could walk "normally" again. Then while I was still recuperating from that, DH had to take stepson back across the country.

Anyway, so I'm over the infection now and getting back to normal. I'm still sleeping like 14 hours a day, but I should be back online regularly now. Is anyone still reading?? :)


Yesterday my son decided to be Santa Claus. Or, more specifically, Daddy Ho Ho Ho as he so quaintly calls Santa. It's a bastardization of Father Christmas, which is what my English husband has taught him to call Santa. Anyway, he sat on a kiddie rocking chair in our living room, put on his most solemn face, and had everyone in the house "sit" on his lap and tell him what they wanted Daddy Ho Ho Ho to bring them for Christmas. It was positively adorable.

But it got better when my DH said he wanted "Mommy to get better" for Christmas. (I've had lots of medical problems this year--if you're interested, click here) Liam furrowed his brows, thinking hard for a minute, then disappeared into the games room. He came back several minutes later with all the plastic tools from his Craftsman kid's work bench.

Liam came over to me on the couch and told me I had to go to sleep. He then proceeded to "operate" on me---with a hacksaw, a hammer, a screwdriver, some pliers and a wrench. He "opened me", did some work, then "put me back together" and woke me up. When I opened my eyes he gave me the biggest smile, full of pride, and told me I was all better!

I learned a couple important lessons from this little "operation". First of all, my medical problems have affected my kids more than I thought. It's obviously limited what I can do with them, but I didn't realize how much even my 4 yr old had been troubled by it. Secondly, I learned that my littlest one has a heart of gold.

That's all I want for Christmas.