Woke up past the alarm clock this morning, got the kids up , then wrestled with them to get dressed , make beds and downstairs.

Jump into the car , me in my pajama pants and a white t-shirt , hair like a scarecrow.
Look into the rear mirror and see one with hair sticking up everywhere and the other with a chocolate smeared face ( which he had stolen out of the fridge and hidden the wrapper moments before). We will have to do , off we go , after all, it’s a five minute drive.

Kids dropped off after scrambling for bags , a lost shoe and a hot wheels removed from little sticky hands. Oh where is that cup of coffee ?

A bright twinkle caught my eye ….low gas. What to do? In Scotland when I had my wee mini , E on the gauge meant ‘enough to get home’ , here in my gas guzzling SUV it really means ‘exit the freeway now’!
I look like a disheveled hot mess but I know I’ll have to get fuel, and not later.

I never wear pajamas in public , the only other one time I dared to , I had a car accident taking the kids to school. Funny enough the other mom driver had hers on too. Anyways , I don’t feel comfortable.

I stop at the nearest gas station and try to pick my pump so as not to expose myself more than I have to. The one farthest from the store front I think. I put on my dark sunglasses , so what if it’s a cloudy day, and I hope to high heaven that no one sees me. I start the gas pumping and I feel the stares from the fully dressed customers , hop back into the car until the pump clicks , and sneak out to replace the handle.

This particular gas station is well known in town for trying to rip off your credit card so I always have a receipt printed at the pump. I press ‘yes’ for a receipt and the words ‘receipt available inside’ scroll by. Crap.

I have to do the walk across the whole forecourt wearing pajama pants , a white t-shirt and no undergarments on, hair like a crazy person and I see people looking at me as if I am looking for spare change or a cigarette.

Never have I felt so embarrassed. The heat rose from my toes to the back of my head , curling around onto my face. My arms wrapped around my chest so as not to be the next Internet meme of lost virtue. Then I had to walk back to the car for my second walk of shame.

Scurrying home , I disrobed , had my shower , put on my make up and vowed that I will be the mommy all dolled up to take the kids to school each morning.

Pajamas will never cross the front door ever again. Lesson learned.

My little girl usually ends up with a single ponytail as it’s quick and the only style I’ve mastered. I’ve had 17 years of only combing and gelling boys hair.It hadn’t prepared me for ten inches of ratty , tangled morning hair. She cries when she sees the brush coming towards her.

Last night I had her shower , sprayed detangler on her golden locks, and twirled four sections into little knots held with hair ties.

This morning I unraveled them and suddenly Goldilocks appeared! It’s very disco hair and I love it, as does she!

I have long loved Doris Day. As a young girl I watched her movies and thought she was the most adorable actress I had ever seen , along with her beautiful voice and shiny coiffed hair but best of all , she had freckles ! I was not happy with mine at the time as a teenager. Copious amount of foundation being used to cover them, with lines of black eyeliner and permed big hair….well , it was the 80’s.
Anyhoo back to Doris.
My favorite character she portrayed was Calamity Jane. I just loved that she was a rough and tumble tomboy and transformed into a gorgeous female deliriously in love with Wild Bill Hickok, singing about her ‘secret love’ in the movie.

Recently we were in the Sierra mountains of California and I picked up a book called ‘Soiled Doves’ by Anne Seagraves in a recreated cowboy town of Columbia.
In it there is a chapter all about ‘Calamity Jane’ being a camp whore , a liar, swindler and a drunk! This rocked my senses like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I thought she was a misunderstood , uneducated masculine like female , without any female guidance. Which in hindsight , she still was. But she’s not like my Doris! I wanted her to be pure and yearning for Bill Hickok.
This article is extensive and shows her as a woman who didn’t have parental guidance, ran with the boys and wasn’t really a menace to anyone but herself. Eventually leading to a fairly early grave.

http://m.infobarrel.com/Wild_Western_Women_Calamity_Jane

She was still a very interesting individual , and in talking to my father , he reckons it’s a great screenplay waiting to be written. I agree and will be first in line at the movies .. or accepting my Oscar statuette for the script and direction !
The true calamity that was her life.

Technology has come a long way in my 46 years on Earth. Not as much as my grandparents though, who went from the horse and cart , to seeing space travel and Internet in their lifetimes.

When I was little (in Scotland) we had the color television in the living room and a small portable black and white one in the bedroom. It was great! The aerial often gave us a fuzzy picture and we had to readjust the rabbit ears inside or hit the side of the unit in the hope something would jolt into place.

My siblings and I were the remote control , getting up to twist the knob to change to one of four channels available. We laughed at slapstick old black and white comedies like Laurel and Hardy, and cartoons on a Saturday morning. The channels ended at midnight after the blessing from the religious minister and the TV went dark. That’s all there was , and no one made a fuss. There was no argument as to what to watch and everyone had watched the same programs the night before. No 500 channels available.

When we wanted shows on demand, my father had a movie projector that played reels of film and often burned the film in a white and brown bubbling mess on the screen as it ran through! Loud boos and despair from all involved.

The next big thing for our family was a video recorder ! How on earth could we record and watch our favorite shows? Incredible. It really was. Until someone inadvertently taped over your unwatched episode because they covered the little tab thingy.

Mini cassette players like Walkmans were for the cool kids and better yet a game system! We lived our teenage years with vinyl LPs changing to CDs and we bought a microwave!!! Scrambled eggs in 2 minutes….must be magic or something. I wondered if it was radioactive for the first few weeks I avoided using it and watched from afar. Over-cooking soup and having it boil over seemed more work having to clean the inside of it than putting it into a pot on the stove.

DVD players and cellphones came into my possession and then every home had a computer. The internet took over the world in my eyes.
Everything seemed to shrink in size.

My children now have tiny tv screens in the palm of their hands with no cables , rechargeable batteries and access to the Internet. Movies at the touch of a button. Calculator, encyclopedias, books, a camera , a telephone all in a 4 inch long contraption. Very space age.
Don’t get me started about trying to talk to a teenager with ear buds in constantly.

Snail mail has all but been replaced with a text message ,no more mail dropping on the mat and holding the handwritten words from a loved one in your hand. There are less telephone calls made as a text will suffice. A quick ‘happy birthday’ is written on social media instead of mailing a card. Very little personal effort involved but does it still have the same emotional connection? I don’t think so. And yet, I personally don’t like excessive use of paper and always feel bad throwing away greeting cards I’ve received , even if it does go into the recycle bin.

I do like not having to wait on replies. I’m not a patient person. My irritant is knowing someone has read my text or email because of an electronic time stamp , and does not reply for a week , but still continues to post on Facebook , etc.

My favorite piece of technology is obviously my smartphone and I’ll admit I feel lost without it. I write all my emails, blog, social media, texts and manage my calendars and shopping through it , preferring it over my laptop. Yes , I have one of those too.

I do enjoy my kindle also because I love to read and having access to thousands of books in the size of a small paperback book is mind blowing.

My grandparents are gone now , but I wonder what they would have made of these advances in electronics and wonder would I have seen my granny with an iPad watching her favorite soap operas ,or my grandad looking up his plants on the Internet ? I don’t think so somehow. They were simple folk who weren’t keen on changes.

I wonder what will be next ? Micro processors embedded in our heads ? Hope not, I like my thoughts to be my own, silly as they may be.

ADHD is real and alive in our house like a little mischievous monster within our second oldest. Born under unfortunate circumstances , it started to present itself by the time he could walk, pull down drapes, rip off wallpaper and destroy most objects in his path like a cartoon Tasmanian devil.
He once ran away when I was attending to his baby brother by actually bursting through a screen door. A frantic call to 911 and a search of the neighbourhood found him crouched in a doorway of a nearby house. He just wanted to explore. He had no restraint.
The doctors dismissed us at each well baby appointment by saying he was ‘curious ‘ and ‘ just being a boy’. No intervention was ever offered or suggested. I did have them document my concerns though and I knew it was more. I needed a paper trail.

Daycare was difficult as somehow most child care providers weren’t trained or missed the class on how to deal effectively with hyperactivity , and kept suggesting to me to ‘change his diet’ . I’m a registered nurse and I had already done this to no avail. If it’s a chemical imbalance , his little brain was rewired in utero , and nothing I could do would change that , including no artificial sweeteners or red candies. Someone suggested Mountain Dew or coffee in the mornings to stimulate him ( as medication alternative). No joy or results came from that.

One episode at daycare involved him finding a stash of paint, running down the hallway pouring purple paint all over himself ….and the carpeting and walls. I still have the report from that day to show him when he’s older ,as he’d never believe me!

From then on, he was known to all staff. Cameras and extra security measures were put in place though when asked , they denied it was just coincidental . He was an expert escape artist and would run away when we went to pick him up, not wanting to leave.

Kindergarten was traumatic with his teacher practically begging me to remove him from class and re enrolling him when he was more mature. ADHD isn’t a maturity issue, it’s an any age issue.
We had him evaluated through the school district and he was too intelligent for special education classes , but did qualify for a 504 plan which allows his classroom to be modified for his behaviours. It will protect him throughout his school years from being ‘punished’ for behaviours that he genuinely cannot help himself doing. He will get in trouble when he gets home though!

Once he cut a little girls hair as she sat in front of him , and on another occasion took an egg to school, only being caught because he dropped it on the schoolyard. He has hidden the egg the night before behind a cushion and snuck it into his backpack in the morning. Now, I’m not sure it was the ADHD that made him do this or his determined personality , but there are many more instances of him doing things like this than any average child.

I try to go into his classroom and as I have previously written about, have wrestled him to the floor to stop him running around the classroom brandishing a pencil!

He is now medicated and the difference was immediate. It took him turning 6 , and a sympathetic paediatric doctor who actually believed us enough to have him fully tested , including a psychologist and written testing to get the medication prescribed.

From a child who could not sit still long enough to write a sentence or complete one math problem , to a boy who wrote pages and pages of essays as he just needed to get it all out!

Many parents choose not to medicate their ADHD child due to the stigma or embarrassment or even shame , but for our boy it has been the remedy to many tears of frustration , his and ours.

Mornings are still tough as his medication only lasts his waking hours and we start again daily. Positive reinforcement seems to work part of the time and threats of losing privileges , the rest.

He’s our son and we love him and want the best for him, but boy it’s been a struggle and there is more ahead.

Don’t judge that parent whose kid is going off in the supermarket , give her a sympathetic smile as you step over her child lying in front of the baked beans. Better yet, ask if you can help, just for a moment, she’ll have a glimmer of hope that all is not lost.

Everyone that has lived in a first world country has heard of Costco. A large warehouse shopping experience that will set you back hundreds of dollars buying bulk items that you never really knew you needed!
I shop there every two to three months spending an average of $200- $300 per visit.
It’s not the sort of place you pop in for a pint of milk and a loaf of bread. Nothing is sold in that small quantity there. Often that loaf of bread will turn into a full size mattress and the milk ,well, you probably bought a cow. Hence the hundreds of dollars per visit. I do believe they even sell the proverbial kitchen sink!
After my bulk shopping experience , as I was putting away my treasures I started thinking about how there should be Costco tips about shopping there.
So here go my ideas.

1. Try not to take all of 4 your kids…and definitely not your husband. Mine adds a 100 pack of socks each time we go. That’s about 600 Pairs of socks per year!
2. Eat something before you go in. The samples stations are not a buffet. Some people are actually there to shop.
3. Make a list, and tear it up.
4. Same for the budget, double it.
5. Consider how much freezer space you have and whether or not your mother in law has space and hers for those extra purchases.
6. Calculate just how many toilet rolls and paper towel rolls will actually fit in the trunk of your car.
7. Always put your photo order or ink cartridges order in before you start shopping and most importantly ,remember to pick them up at the end of your shopping.
8. Have your husband drop you off before he gets in the congested lane of traffic for fuel. You could have half your shopping done by the time he comes into the store.
9. Wear a fleece, those walk-in freezers are cold.
10. Buy the thick porkchops and cut them in half when you get home, wrap in cling film and aluminum foil, and freeze 4 to a portion.
11. Remember that many more things that we buy can be put in the freezer. For example; butter and cheese.
12. Carefully select your checkout cashier. This could mean the difference between five minutes, or 15 minutes and a dozen broken eggs!
13. Put your groceries into the insulated bags that you remembered to bring with you, not left in the trunk of your car.
14. Pick up those photos that you forgot about handing in when you got there.
15. Put your shopping into your car and come back to buy that slice of pizza or hotdog. That way you don’t have to worry about anybody stealing your $300 worth of groceries as you search for more napkins.
16. Drive home quickly, you don’t have any money left.

One suggestion I’d love to make to Costco executives is a new label suggesting ways of creating portions out of your huge packets that you are lugging home. For example, I know that 2 of their jumbo muffins fit neatly into a quart bag for freezing. There must be thousands of shoppers who could use that shortcut and extra time when they get home without trial and error and wasting storage bags??
Wait, what’s that? Costco sells jumbo packs of storage bags so I needn’t worry. Oh well then , point taken.

IPhones are fun to use.

Making telephone calls and texts, playing games and taking photos , FaceTime and Viber all excellent uses.

My favorite though is messing with Siri. My sister is too grown up to annoy anymore , and this little robotic voiced Siri is in my pocket all of the time, just ripe for the picking!

Ask her (or him ) anything and he might just come up with a very funny answer or even a song!

http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/iosapps/58-funny-things-ask-siri-on-ios-2016-mac-3633686/

My favorite answer came when I asked what is zero divided by zero?

I think he is judging me by the end.

 

I have had this set of patio furniture for about three years.  It has faded ,and degraded, in the sunshine since then.  The fabric was worn, torn and downright sad.

There was nothing wrong with the frame or the cushions inside ,  so buying a new one was out of the question.  I did look for new cushions but each one was upwards of $30 and I needed eight!  You do the math. Too much.

Walmart had this upholstery fabric for just under $4 a yard. I figured a yard per cushion and I was right. I can sew, but am too busy fixing toilets that a certain darling daughter flushed her panties down today .

Youtube came to the rescue and an idea for a no sew cushion cover. Perfect.

I cut out a yard of fabric and wrapped the cushion up like a Christmas present. Hot glued all of the seams and it looks amazing.

 

 

One thing I was able to do,to save a little fabric on the bottom seat cushion , as I didn’t think anyone would see that, was to not wrap it fully. In hindsight I should have, to allow me to flip them over should the need arise. Sticky wee fingers , spilled drinks, doggy hairs and dirt, the list goes on and makes me regret it more and more by the minute.

Well anyways , that saves a little money for summer , perhaps I’ll buy a string bikini! Hahahahahahaha.

Yup,nope.

I bought these little wooden cubes at a local discount store for 99c and didn’t know what to do with them at first. Then, whilst the kindergartener and 2nd grader were doing homework, I started to write letters on them.

No rhyme or reason, just repeated the alphabet often and made a few more vowels. I also left a few blank just in case and added punctuation marks too.

After dinner we passed the container around and each person made the funniest phrase they could.

We all had a giggle and actually sat around the table longer after our meal. No one was pressured and no one asked to leave.

Simple game, very cheap, and fooled the kids into a spelling game too!