Krafty Kitten

So, preparing for the holiday season is well underway.  I have Big Guy all shopped for and we’re working on Little Guy. I have a major weakness when it comes to Christmas shopping though.  I like to keep going.  Big Guy gets upset with me every year and tries to limit how much I can buy for him.  This year, when I made my first purchase, he immediately got irritated and told me I spent too much, even though it was under $25.  I think it’s because he’s somewhat flustered, having a wife who tries to dote on him on the holidays.

I have to figure out what we’re getting everyone else for the holidays and work from there.   It’s a different type of holiday than last year.  It will be our first Christmas without the kids.  Luckily, we have Little Guy to focus on and we can work to make it good for him.

Right now, I am also trying to plan my Christmas Eve dinner and breakfast.  For breakfast on Christmas day, I am strongly considering a meal of “Night Before French toast” (recipe to follow), sausage, bacon, coffee, and biscuits.  But dinner the night before is usually a good meal.  My mom comes over and we have our Christmas Eve family gift exchange.  This year, it looks like I am making a turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, sweet potatoes… I’ll have a few finger food snacks and we’ll have a wonderful night.  I am excited and looking forward to it.

The big meal the night before enables me to play around the next day and not have to worry about meals.  And Christmas Day is one of my favorite things to do.

Night Before French Toast

1 loaf Texas Toast
lots of brown sugar
about 1 stick butter
4 eggs
2 cups milk
1/2 tsp cinnamon
dash nutmeg

Directions:

Melt butter and brown sugar together stirring frequently.

Spray a 9×13 pan (important!) with cooking spray. Pour mixture on the bottom so it’s about 1/8 inch thick. Lay the bread slices on top of it.

Mix together eggs, milk, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Pour egg mix over the bread. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, preheat the oven to 350 and uncover the baking dish. Bake for 30 min. You can serve with toppings of your choice.

Well, Big Guy’s job situation was finally clarified and his hours were cut.  Down to practically half.  He’s now on contractor status but can only work a total of 24 hours per week, no benefits.  So, we’re implementing some serious budgeting measures.

We’ve gone back to ordering from Angel Food Ministries and I am going to prepare weekly menus.  Angel Food Ministries is an excellent source for good cheap food.  $30 and you get an order of food that is billed as “enough to feed a family of four for a week”.  This month’s order comes with steaks, chicken, pork chops, ground beef, veggies and fruit, eggs and a dessert.  It’s pretty well balanced and you can come up with ways to stretch it.  We order one box at a time and can generally make it last the whole month.

I’ve also got a running tally of our funds on an excel spreadsheet to keep track of our budget.  We’re going to run into some issues because what we’re bringing in is less than what we need per month.   If we’re careful with the payout for his vacation time, we may be able to limp along until he either gets another job or they decide they need him full time.

He is looking for another job, both full and part time, and I’m working on teaching.  If we can keep it up, things should be OK.

It’s been a busy week. I have to admit, I am glad it’s almost over.  For me, it really is.  I don’t have class tomorrow because they are moving to the new building and that means no teaching at all until Monday.  What a break!

Now, aside from grading, I really have time to focus on some other things…  Like writing in my blog and working on my OMGSOSUPERSOSECRETPROJECT and working on my novel. It’s been a rough summer, and it is probably only just beginning to hit us exactly how rough a summer it was.  I am going through, getting rid of clothes and gathering up toys, now that the house is mostly empty.  We’re still trying to adjust to life without the kids and it’s beginning to hit me exactly how much I put into the kids.

When Big Guy and I got together, I was determined to be the best step-mom ever.  I read books, made sure I didn’t overstep my bounds, and tried to follow the best, most rational advice available.  I offered support and guidance to my husband when he tired of the games his ex was playing and really devoted a lot of time and effort into both the battle and making sure the kids had the best chance at sanity that I could provide.

So, for six years, I threw myself whole-heartedly into being a step-parent, to the exclusion of many things that I really should have been doing for myself.  And this May, when that effort was revealed to be useless, I really felt betrayed and destroyed by it.  But, through June and July, other things occupied my thoughts and time.  And now, I’m left with myself, Big Guy and Little Guy.  And it’s leaving me feeling a bit jittery.

So, where do I go from here?  Well, I work on something else.  I focus on the things that are important, like Big Guy and Little Guy.  I work on my projects.  And I sit back and breathe, take stock of where I am and figure out what I am feeling (aside from the surface emotions).  This is a new chapter in my life, let’s see what it says…

The heat and humidity of summer seems omnipresent now.  I have the AC set in the house at night to prevent my waking up panting and sweating.  I can handle it during the day, while I’m awake.  When I sleep, though, I need the cool air.  And, because we have air conditioning, we’re hosting the neighbors overnight because we have AC and  Neighbor Girl is worried about her young ones overheating.

I finished my second and third pink granny squares and am working on the fourth and final pink square.  I’ve tried to make them all different, or contain the same pattern but slightly different.  For example, I have the first ping and fuzzy granny square and then another wone crocheted in the same pattern, but with different types of yarn.  So, once this last pink one is done I will work on blue, black, and white.  It’s not like I don’t have enough yarn.

Tomorrow is the final day of classes for the month and then I have a week off.  The first full week of July, it’s back in the saddle though.  I have another Comp class to plan for.  No rest for the weary indeed.  Especially since the week I start class is the last week of Big Guy’s employment.  I would really like a chance to NOT have to worry for once.  On the bright side, once his employment ends, it will give us a chance to look at where we’re landing.  And we have a lot fewer people to worry about.  It goes to show that everything DOES happen for a reason.

Today, aside from being the longest day of the year, is also Father’s Day.  Which is one of the reasons why I’ve been away from my computer for a few days.  Both Friday and yesterday, I spent very little time at home.

On Friday, Mom, Little Guy and I went to her house and sat out the furious thunderstorms that ripped through the area.  He fed the “shickens” and we had a cook out with Big Guy and Dragon and my mom.  Saturday, Big Guy and I ran errands prior to our game.  He also got to open his last Father’s Day gift.  The boxed set of the original trilogy of Star Wars.

Big Guy loves Star Wars and I have been slowly getting him the movies one at a time, starting with the Prequel Trilogy. I finally bit the bullet and ordered the boxed set for him because I wanted it to be a great Father’s Day, even knowing it was going to be bittersweet.  However, he’s been playing the video game, Civilization Revolution, I got him pretty much nonstop.

Today was definitely a lazy day.  I cooked a breakfast (brunch) of bacon and eggs, and Little Guy and Big Guy played around.  Right now, Big Guy is playing his video game while Little Guy watches “Pan Da Bear” (Kung Fu Panda) in the front room.  We had Smoked Sausages for dinner and we’re just relaxing together.  Tomorrow is another day, beginning of the last week for classes and another week closer to the lay off, but for now, things are quiet and good.

Today promises to start a busy, yet relaxed weekend.  Tonight, Sister-in-law is bringing the neices over for “movie night”.  Tomorrow, Mom is heading up to Detroit to watch my cousin graduate.  I am hoping to have a few friends over for a cook-out and margaritas.  Sunday, I might get to see my former fellow office prisoner, I mean secretary.

Tonight is “popcorn night” for my sister-in-law.  I offered for them to come here and I would make some real popcorn.  (I don’t go for the microwaved, cancer-inducing, junk.) I think she’s bring Robin Hood: Men in Tights.  I remember when that movie came out in the theater.  I was spending time with my grandfather that summer and we went to see it.

Big Guy and I talked about my “Jon and Kate” blog post yesterday.  We both recognize that the therapy we had only strengthened our marriage.  And, ironically, we owe it to his crazy ex.  She put so much pressure on the kids and on us in some sort of effort to break us, that it revealed that we did need to work on communication

So, we went to therapy.  It actually showed us h ow well off we were before we started talking to the therapist.  We had a series of intake forms that said things like: “Do you wish your spouse would beat you less?” “I wish my spouse would stop having sex with other people True or False?” “I wish my spouse wouldn’t call me names True or False?”

When we compared notes after that first intake meeting, we agreed that maybe we didn’t have nearly the work we thought we did.  We did learn better ways to communicate and we learned better times to communicate.  Pouncing on a problem immediately after work, bad.  Wait till there’s been time to relax.  Take turns talking and enforce the turns.  Repeat what you heard and make sure that was what was said.

Some of it seemed so common sense, but we weren’t following it and now that it’s been reiterated to us, we make sure to stop when things are getting heated and take stock of our communication.  It enables us to get on the right track if we aren’t and gives us a cool down time.  And, cool down times are important too.  But one thing we discovered was REALLY important.  We couldn’t be afraid to argue with each other.

We definitely got THAT out of the way! 

So yesterday, while I was folding clothes, I watched the season 5 premiere of Jon & Kate plus 8 .  The advertisements had showed that they were going to be responding to the uproar that had been surrounding them recently.  Watching it, I felt incredibly sad for this couple.

Jon admits he made a mistake and put himself in a compromising situation where he hurt his wife and his family but that nothing happened.  Kate says she’s very angry, which I can also understand.  If Big Guy pulled a similar stunt, I would be beside myself with fury.

Watching them, one thing that struck me was how ALONE they were.  Even when they sat on the same sofa and talked to the camera people together, their body language just screamed at how alone they were.  They didn’t touch each other, they didn’t really look at each other, they didn’t acknowledge the other person’s presence.  If they don’t find a way to get around the pain and reconnect, their marriage will be over.

I told Big Guy, I will drag him back to therapy if it looks like we’re heading in that direction.  You have to figure, at one point in time, they loved each other very much.  Enough to have 8 kids in a very short period of time.  Kate mentioned how she looked at the divorce rate for parents of multiples and was sure they were going to beat that…

When you take into consideration that 50% of ALL marriage end in divorce and include in that number that 80% of all second/subsequent marriages end in divorce, Big Guy and I are fighting some pretty huge odds.  Luckily we took steps a couple years ago to ensure the strength of our marriage and have managed to keep up our communication skills.

At the time, we were not only interested in  keeping our marriage strong for each other, but also showing the kids that good relationships were possible.  At the time, their mom had bounced her second husband in and out and was dating another guy on the side and the kids were aware of all of it.  Now, I’m glad we did it because after this horrible experience with the kids, it would break a weaker couple.

That’s not to say we don’t still have arguements from time to time, but Big Guy says the fact that I have ADD seems to actually improve the relationship because I’ll forget about my annoyances 15 minutes later and be happy again.  To a certain extent he’s right, if it’s something little, I can let go of it.  Right now, I’m obviously dealing with some anger in regards to the kids, but I have been very careful to try to keep it seperate from our marriage.

In any case, I wish the best of luck to Jon and Kate in figuring out if they want to continue their marriage or not.  I hope they do figure it out and do stay together, if only because the kids do love both of them and I’ve seen how horrible divorce can be.  But if they cannot come back together, don’t fight in front of the kids, don’t let them know you dislike the other parent, don’t make them pawns in the emotional game divorce turns into.

Today’s been a good day.  I’m making plans and have great ideas on reclaiming my life.  I’m selling some of the excess clutter in our house.  We have two flutes the girls never touched and are not likely to use now.  I have to go through the clothes and start labeling them for the garage sale in a few weeks.

I’m going to connect the three mini-gardens in the front yard and make them one long flower garden.   I’ll plant the snapdragon seeds, the bachelor button seeds and a wildflower packet in the new, bigger garden.

In the meantime, our vegetable garden will continue growing and we’ll have some wonderful vegetables.  I finally got a bunch of them planted on Sunday.  Carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, cantaloupe…  My berries are planted.  My mint and basil are planted.  Little Guy is trying to help mommy do planting too.  His gardening tools are fun for soft dirt and the sand box.  Plus, as he helps me plant, I tell him about each plant.  What it means, what it is used for, what it looks like.  We planted a few snapdragons for him and he ran around yelling: “SNAP-dwagons!  SNAP-dwagons!”

I think that this weekend, I shall have to pull out the pool and fill it up.  Fun times!  Little Guy LOVED the pool last year.  Looks like another good year for swimming.  We’ll start making other plans for summer as well.  I’m going to have a lot more free time.  I’ll be able to teach classes.  We’ll be able to go places.  A trip to Redamak’s, the beach, and maybe even Oink’s up in New Buffalo.  Going to see movies together.  Going out by the lake.  We’ll make some wonderful, happy memories.

Now is the time for my family: Little Guy, Big Guy, and I, to not only survive, but thrive.

Big Guy and I are making plans.  Growing up, I lived on a rather large section of rural land.  The opportunity has come for Big Guy and I to carve out our own little niche in the woods.

We’re looking at houses to move out there.  And trying to plan what we would need done before the house could be placed on the land.  We’re deciding what we need to have since once we move out there, we ARE NOT moving again.  (Have I mentioned that I hate moving?)

What we’ve decided thus far is that we need at least 3 bedrooms, 1500+ square feet, and a fireplace.   Whether or not things work out with his kids, that’s the bare minimum.  Some of the places that sell modular homes include different things in the price of the home, from full service installation to house only.

Big Guy and I were talking about the difference between getting a house this time and when we searched while I was pregnant with Little Guy.  Before, we were looking for a place that was good enough until we could do better.  With this, it needs to be what we want until we win the lottery and can own a house in Tennessee as well.  I’m sure you’re laughing, but the mountains have always been a goal of mine.  In any case, this will be our home for the long term, not just 5 or 6 years.

Moving back home is a great and  exciting idea.  I look forward to being close to my mom and sister again.  It’s actually rather funny, though, when I think about it.  It so typical of my family to do something like this.  When we went pack to Pennsylvania many years ago for a family reunion, mom pointed out all the houses that family members had lived in.  People lived and built houses right next door to one another because that’s what family did.  It happened when the family moved to Michigan, and to a certain extent still does.  The family up by Detroit still hangs out together, sees each other regularly, calls each other.  (Though I am very bad about actual person-to-person contact.)

It is something you don’t see enough of in the current world.  If I can find my way back to it, surely others can too.

I’d love to be able to go out and plant but this week has been pretty heavy on the condensation from the sky.  In addition, Little Guy’s developed a runny nose (due to allergies, we imagine) and my leg is still bothering me. We’re also staying close to home and away from people for a while thanks to the swine flu panic.  Someone actually contracted it in town so Big Guy and I are becoming somewhat isolationist, especially since a toddler in Texas died from it.

Big Guy and I celebrated being together for 6 years on Monday.  Most people probably consider it pretty silly that we still celebrate our dating anniversary along with our wedding anniversary, but I would imagine it contributes to keeping the romance alive in our relationship.  I got six roses and we drank flavored coffee, watched some TV, and played video games.

It’s important for us to make sure we express the love we have for each other on a regular basis because our life can be difficult.  It would be easy for us to get lost in the difficulties; the finances, fighting for the kids, etc.  But, because we want our relationship to last and remain as strong as it is, we try to focus on the other person.  We have to come up with cheap and creative ways of doing so and I think it’s become a competition to find the cheapest and most creative way of showing our love.

We had two House M.D.  episodes recorded that I was interested in seeing, House’s Head and Wilson’s Heart.  It lead to some serious discussions between Big Guy and I due to the fact that Wilson’s girlfriend dies over the course of these episodes.  House bears some responsibility in her death and Wilson holds him accountable for it.  Big Guy and I are one of “those” types of couples.  You know, the ones who do EVERYTHING together and whose names are always tied together as one word.  We discussed what would happen if one of us died in an accident and how we would cope.  We really need to sit down and decide how things would be distributed to family if there was an accident.  And who would take care of Little Guy.

I am a big fan of House and also Law & Order: Criminal Intent, in particular Detective Goren.  I blame my mother for this.  Both House and Goren are based on a very famous, very old detective: Sherlock Holmes.

Growing up, my mother taught me to read from whatever she was reading.  So, the first book I ever really read was “The Annotated Sherlock Holmes”.   I have always had a soft place in my heart for eccentric, logical types.  And this has become apparent in my love for House and Goren; both of whom are based on Holmes.  It will be interesting to see if the new detective on Criminal Intent, played by Jeff Goldblum, turns out to be a Holmsian character as well.

On Monday, I begin to teach a Composition class at a local community college.  It’s using a new book, so I’ve been trying to buckle down and get a lesson plan going for next week.  It’s going to be interesting for me because it’s not as easily laid out as the old book.  I’m going to have to have them do a lot of bit reading to get through the papers they need to do.

I love English.  That’s why I majored in it in college.