I Serenade Elly with a Halting Version of Love Me Tender

For Christmas I got my darling Olive a ukulele, a tuner and a cutesy ukulele kids book. She didn't touch it once except to take this photo:


So I started messing around on it and voila! I became an uke addict in several weeks. At first it was difficult because although I can read music I have never played any instrument and aside from watching Jeremiah play classical guitar wasn't really sure how you played/strummed etc.

I learned though and loved it.

Now my friend Elly who plays ukulele like nobody's business is sick and I guest uke'd for her 'cause she's got the unholy shingles from hell. Let's all wish her speedy recovery!!!! HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER SWEET ELLY GIRL!

Regardless I posted a video for her and am on her site today.

If you promise not to make fun of me either publicly or privately I will link you. OK? Promise? Uke Me Tender at Buggin Word

Well Check Up's My Ass

I don't like to take our children to the doctor that often because honestly 'well check up' seems like an oxymoron when you're in fact taking the children to a hot bed of illness for essentially no reason.

So I skip lots of check ups and once about every two years, other than in the case of the multiple cases of strep throat and ear infections our children are blessed with every year, I take all four children together to get weighed, measured, vaccinated and eye exam'd <---- I just made that up. So clever.

Regardless I made this maneuver the other day with Rose, 11, Olive, 9, Maxine Jane, 6 and Elijah 4 with a reluctant life partner Jeremiah in tow. Every year I think it's a good idea to get everyone's check up just done and over with and although Jeremiah reminds me of the horrors of the previous years I still do the same thing.

First Max had to change her clothes four times before she felt comfortable enough to go on the short walk to our doctor's office.

This is her waiting in the waiting room with Jeremiah:


Then each child had to be told over and over and over again on the walk, in the waiting room and in the exam room that we had no idea which children were going to get which shots and how many. All I knew is that Rose was missing one required chicken pox vaccination and so as far as I knew she was the only one getting a shot. It took forever for the nurse to weight and measure my lovely giants and then even longer to take a history and ask pertinent growth/milestones/health questions about each child.

Not to mention the excruciatingly long eye exams where Maxine decided she didn't 'want to be tested right now!' and could only read the top line on the chart. She also told the nurse she didn't really know her alphabet (she can read) and that she had to do the symbol part that toddlers do instead. She is a joy.

After all that madness it turns out that all the children are wonderful and exceptional and although Max doesn't know how to tie her shoes and Elijah can't write his name they seem to be doing just fine.

The room seemed so freaking small:


Then the shot tally came. Rose was getting three, Olive two, Elijah four and Maxine not a one. She then began to taunt her siblings and shake her butt at them, "All right now! Shake yo booty, shake yo booty!" in front of the doctor and when we admonished her for this she locked herself in the hall bathroom and screamed for ten minutes.

Our doctor happens to be a very young actually kind of strange yet cool woman (when I say very young I mean my age of course) and she agreed to guard the bathroom so that Max couldn't make a run for it. Then Jeremiah and I split up the remaining three kids and I went in one room with Rose and a nurse while he stayed in the other with Olive and Elijah. It turns out he lucked out because his two were tough as nails without any tears and Rose was a mother fracking mess.

"NO! No. Mom I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this. MOM! No! Oh my Gosh! I can't do this, tell them no! I can't." Nothing like a shaking, sobbing, normally tough 11 year old to top off an exceptional doctor's office visit.

I wonder if next year I'll do the smart thing and split the visits up over several days/weeks.

Probably not.

Updates and Surprisingly Enough...A Puppy

You might have read my short fiction piece Ezra that I had submitted to several short fiction contests and which was still in the running when I posted it here on Blogging is for Dorks. If you did you may have been of the opinion of the three editors that sent me lovely and helpful emails about how they felt although I have as one editor put it, 'an incredible and undeniable talent' and that I may be as the other put it, 'wasting my time in such serious and potential shock for shock value content' my work is not ready for publication on their sites and thus not in the running for the contests' prizes. I can roll with that.

You might have also read my whining about my Grandmother's death AGAIN.

But what you don't know is after much more than a year in the making Jeremiah and I have adopted a puppy which our children named Blueberry Bertha (after the aforementioned dead Grandma). I have always said I wanted the perfect puppy and would even pay an arm and a leg to make sure I got the perfect one.

In the end it turns out that was me being an asshole because we all know just like there is no such thing as the perfect baby, there is also no such thing as the perfect puppy.

Because my children are completely and totally dog obsessed we made a list of our favorite dog breeds and then saved them on a search list on Petfinder.com in order to get email updates if any of these breeds came into our area.

And there she was, Blueberry is half Wire Haired Pointing Griffon and half who knows what because the Puppy Mill that was probably breeding Blueberry's purebred mother into an early grave got pissed when she became pregnant with an unknown father's puppies and promptly dumped her at a pound in Ohio, pregnant. This particular pound has had problems with this particular breeder in the past but say there is nothing they can do about it. I have no idea why they would do this but hey, that's how the asshole crumbles. That sounded much better in my head, by the way.

Regardless Blueberry and her siblings showed up on Petfinder and by the time Jeremiah, Elijah and I made the two and half hour drive there Blueberry and her brother (I like to think of him as Huckleberry) were the only two of her litter left. Her mother had also been adopted earlier that week. The women at the shelter told us that all the families that had came in didn't want her or Huckleberry because they were the most wiry of the bunch. Really?

We adopted her right then and there and took her away from that sad, horrible and over crowded place which very much changed my mind about shelters and adopting dogs instead of buying from breeders.

The girls met her on Monday night after coming home from their Dad's house and shit a proverbial brick. They have all been excellent, as has adorable Blueberry who is already well on her way to being house trained and likes to nap on Honorable the giant stuffed lion.

Here she is, revel in her adorableness:




If you are in the Ashtabula Ohio area and want to adopt a very, very nice puppy AKA Huckleberry you can find him here: http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/22334557