Spinning so fast it seems to stand still

Holy cow it has been crazy busy around here!

I’ve been working feverishly on the business.  Daughter and I met with an advisor from the small business administration to review our business plan, loan options, what ever other help the SBDA will send our way.  That was interesting.  She’s very nice, and she has a ton of experience with everything except kids.  Kids have quite a lot to do with our new business so we spent tons of time trying not to roll our eyes at her outdated and inappropriate ideas.  We meet again next week so I have been feverishly drawing, painting and writing up the details of no fail business and why we’re fabulously qualified to run it.  Trademark stuff is still not back, and it’s just killing me not to post the pictures and details.

Baby Preslie has gurd.  Apparently that is a intestinal problem she will eventually outgrow.  In the mean time, she cries after every bottle and that is only when one of us can get her to drink a bottle.  Poor little thing.   But here she is, looking so much healthier than she looked at birth. She’s up to a whopping 8 pounds, most of it to her sweet little cheeks.

Boys, A Business and Wicked Good Fun

In 2012 Pap and I will gain two new grandchildren.  The first, Preslie, you’ve already met.  She’s doing smashingly well, by the way, growing and changing every day.  This summer, another daughter will be having …drum roll please…our FIRST grandson!! Holy cow, 7 grandgirls and now a boy??? Who the heck will the poor little guy play with at family functions?  I’m completely obsessed with shopping for tiny trucks and dinosaurs, button up shirts with khaki shorts.  Pathetic.

In addition to writing a new Christmas play, working on a cemetery tour and finishing up my friends books for his ice cream truck…I’ve been assembling a business plan.  Have you ever had in your life one of those moments when somebody says “Hey, you should….” whatever, and the cartoon light bulb pops up over your head?  A suggestion that instantly starts your imagination racing, an idea that becomes so obsessive you sit up at night crunching numbers and making lists of people that might be able to help you?  This is one of those times for me.  A full circle experience.  A business that will work better for me than anyone else simply because I’ve never been able to do just one thing because I was raising kids.  Eight years as a non-commissioned officer in the Air Force – works.  Twelve years in finance-works.  A lifetime around community theater-works.  Sew, knit, paint -works.  Construction through our old house of perpetual remodeling-works. Freelance writer-works.  Daycare operator and mother of many-WORKS!

Eventually I will write about this business but today I’m huddling under “if it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.”  Usually, only you dearest blog neighbors drop by and visit.  If I were to post all the details of my new business before I finish the trademark and patent work, some internet fluke would land my post on “freshly pressed” or you tube or something and the opportunity would be gone.  So…care to guess how I’ll be making my living this time next year?

Preslie Grace Just Couldn’t Wait for New Year’s

This should be an interesting day.  Preslie made her entrance into the world last night before midnight, at 4:30 my phone is ringing.  Hysterical daughter “can you or Dad come”.  Apparently my son-in-law collapsed from exhaustion and is now in the emergency room.  Katie is recovering from the c-section and Preslie, since she arrived a month early, is hooked up to a variety of machines, gadgets and other hospitally things.  Pap is most experienced with hospitals and I’m most experienced with toddlers, so he’s dashed off to boss all the nurses around and I am home with Makenna, Katie’s almost 2 year old.  Ugh.

Worry…worry, worry, worry….

As I type this, my youngest daughter (the one I usually call Princess), is having her second child.  With complications.  It’s maddening to sit at home waiting for news from her shy, beleaguered husband when every cell of my body is calling for action.  But this is the way she wants it.

Her real name is Katherine, she’s a type A as you might have figured out if you’ve read this blog since I started it in 2006.  She had no interest in filling her labor time with friends and family as is the modern custom.  She likes that time to be spent quietly, with her husband, like we did in the 80’s.  Toxic and ill through most of this pregnancy, after two days in the hospital they’ve now rushed her off for a c-section.  Preslie Grace is six weeks early.

It isn’t unusual now days for babies to come early and show no side effects from the experience.  I haven’t heard of anyone dieing in childbirth for many decades.  But I can’t stand not knowing what’s going on in intimate detail.  What’s going into her IV?  What is her blood pressure?  Let me see that read out from the fetal monitor….without the intimate details, I’m definitely worrying myself into a headache.

 

Repercussions

When Pap and I took custody of the oldest two grandgirls over a year ago, removing them from the nightmare our oldest daughter had created through alcohol, drugs and men who treat her like a punching bag…I commented to him that I was concerned that the girls were not exhibiting the anger, fear, frustration, or angst I thought they should considering what they’d been through.  They settled into my house with very little problem.  They laughed and giggled all the time, had good grades at school and really enjoyed their visits with their mother as she got her life back on track.  When Children’s Services cleared my daughter’s case and the girls moved back in with her, they were excited to reunite their family.  Happy to be back with Mom.   Most of the family thought we’d dodged a bullet…call me pessimistic, but I knew the gavel would eventually fall.  Nobody goes through what they did without getting totally and royally pissed.

My daughter is finding out that nobody exists in a vacuum.  Everything we do or say affects somebody else and results in repercussions.  If you’re sending out good – that’s what bounces back.  If not – you get the ten year old daughter from Hell.  Now that the pressure is off and life at her house looks like it did at my house, Jazz is thoroughly and completely furious at her mother.  From screaming tantrums to name calling to open rebellion on chores and curfews…she’s giving it back.  But the worst part of this ugly scenario, is Jazz doesn’t know why she’s angry, she’s just mad all the time and usually out of proportion to the situation at hand.  What’s saddest to me is seeing the light seeping out of this child that occupies such a piece of my heart.  Counseling is forthcoming, and my hope is that the psychiatrist is successful, because too many of these pictures keep showing up on my camera. 

**sigh**of relief

It’s Sunday, usually my sleep until I wake up day.  My piddle about crafting, painting, writing day.  My one day of the week that I’m totally indulgent and do only what I want to do.  But this Sunday I woke up at 5:00 to this face yelling for “Nana”.  I could hear the TV blaring in the living room which meant that “Grap-paw” (Juliette’s version of Pap’s moniker) had left the idiot box on for one of these faces.  All of this combined reminded me that this particular Sunday was not my own…at least this morning.  Its been a hideous and rather enlightening few days.  I’ve learned a few things about domestic violence and a system that doesn’t work.  I’ve seen the frustration of law enforcement trying to live by the law instead of its spirit and the callousness of the judicial system.  I’ve seen first hand that Children’s Services isn’t the monster agency so often portrayed in books and movies, and even by me, but just a bunch of struggling civil servants trying to have intimate knowledge of too many kids and too many parents. 

On Tuesday night my lost daughter was nearly strangled to death by the dirt bag she’s been living with for the last five years. The noise was so frightening a downstairs neighbor called the police.   She fought him and locked herself and my grandgirls in the bathroom.    The officers arrived as he kicked in the door.  The baby was screaming, Jazz, Bri and Juliette were crying.  They explained everything to the officer who took them away from their mother to question them.  The neighbor came up and explained she’d called because she feared for my daughter’s life having witnessed this consciousless perversion of humanity knocking her friend around nearly every day.  The landlord came and explained that there were never any problems unless “he” was around.  The cuffs came out and the officers arrested my daughter. 

Did you just stop reading and go “what”?   I know that’s what I did when the phone call came to tell me she was in jail, I couldn’t bail her out but would I come get her kids.  I still can’t wrap my head around how she was the one they arrested.  She’s 5′ tall, 120 pounds.  He’s 6′, 190.  Who could imagine that she could ever cause any real damage to him?  Apparently the police who responded to the call were looking at my angry, frightened, screaming, swearing daughter and the scumbag who knows how to work the system… he had scratches on him and the world savvy to know to keep quiet.  Her bruises didn’t show up until later.  So they arrested her.  It gets worse (or better depending on your viewpoint), he not only wouldn’t tell the police the truth, he asked, and received, a protection order against her.  If it wasn’t so pathetic it would be funny. 

A long story to explain that stuffed into my apartment are now four more little bodies (the smallest of which never sleeps and found, in under fifteen minutes, everything I should have already baby proofed).   I will probably do more lurking than commenting or writing for the next week or so.  Today’s update was courtesy of an understanding Aunt that has toted the four noisy little love bugs off to a BBQ.  Hence the ***sigh*** of relief.

Motherhood – Round Two

Its very odd raising young kids again at my age.  I deliberately had all my kids in a lump, when I was young.  Pap and I thought we’d do a better job of parenting if we took it on while we were brimming with youthful vitality.  That was pretty much true.  I certainly got through the mountains of laundry, taxi service and tutoring with energy to spare when my kids were Jazz and Bri’s ages.  I’m not yet 50, so its not exactly like I’m toddling around on my walker to take care of these kids, but it definately feels odd.  The world has changed so much since the last time I was waiting on afternoon announcements and the cannon ball attack of a small kid just set free from classes. 

During round one, taking care of my own kids, everyone was about my age in the lobby at school.  We were picking up kids in our suits and high heels, mentally ticking off the number of minutes it would take to shove some macaroni and cheese down their throats before we ran off to gymnastics, karate or dance lessons.  We were 80’s Mom’s – bringing home the bacon and frying it up in the pan.  That’s how I learned to multi-task.  Back then I could supervise homework while I cooked dinner, planned a birthday party,  called around to organize a car pool and prepared the agenda for the next day’s meeting.   

Here in round two, everyone in the lobby is still my age.  In fact, we’re pretty much the same people.  We’ve traded in our business suits for wind pants or jeans, there are more grandfathers than grandmothers hanging out waiting for the little darlings… but there are many of us on round two of parenting.  I wonder if this new generation will come out better than those 80’s kids.  We grandparents are a smart, savvy group.  We know stuff and are not easily fooled. 

The Perfect Secretary

Jazzmin didn’t have school today, the third grade teachers were all attending a seminar, so she went to the day job with me.  If you ask my oldest grandgirl how old she is, she’ll tell you “8 years, 11 months and 18 days.”  Apparently the need to count things down is genetic.  After spending a day at the office with her, I’ve decided all office jobs should be done by third graders. 

Who else but a third grader finds joy in punching the holes in the payroll sheets, or running the mail through the postal meter?  Everyone likes third graders, so she didn’t have any office dramas today.  We needed to go to the bank twice, a trip too short to drive the car and too far to walk comfortably in this freezing weather.  Unless you’re a third grade girl.  She alternately hopped, skipped, trotted, strolled and sashayed her way up the street and back, taking time to perform an entire gymnastics routine on the railroad ties beside the park.  I was exhausted just watching her. 

Jazzmin kept busy today sorting out the paper clips, pens, and misc. flotsam that lives in this plastic thing on my desk.  She ran messages between offices and watered every plant in the building…whether they needed it or not.  She drew a picture of our street (complete with the pet that lives in every house on the street) on my extra desk blotter.  She kept the used paper torn off my adding machine.  When I told her it was time to go home she said “Oh Nana!  I was just getting started!”  All office jobs should be held by third graders.

Unfit for Human Habitation…

…. the new name of my home formerly known as the house of perpetual remodeling. Decorating eight rooms of my house for Christmas is a labor of joy. Taking it all down and packing it up usually is too. When the kids were small, Pap would load the kids in the car and spend three days at his mother’s while I returned order to the house. As teenagers, my crowd learned to make themselves scarce or be recruited into pack mules. This year, they’ve all gone insane and I’m one piece of tinsel from insuring that I will end my life as a childless widow.

The two grandgirls that live here still have Christmas toys scattered hither and yon that they swear will not fit in their room. Evil Isobelle has finally lost interest in the tree ornaments and favors instead the small pieces of all three doll houses. There are Bratz feet, pony brushes and Tinker Belle herself popping up in every room. As if this isn’t enough mess, Princess decided to sand and restain her bedroom floor and tear out and retexture her ceiling on a whim. The materials for all this work are stacked in the library; the plaster dust is mingling with the regular dust from her room down the stairs to the dining room where she’s set up the circular saw. Her furniture and junk has been relocated to MY bedroom, the hall and stair landing. Pap has cooked enough casseroles and soups to feed a third world country and left the cleaning up for me. The chaos has reached such proportion that my dog won’t even stay inside. He’s curled up on a bench on the porch.

Attacking this problem with a bucket and mop would make more sense than writing about it, but I can’t even do that. On Friday afternoon, Grandgirls Mom and her sister, Michelle, showed up with Juliette and Brendolyn to plead for my babysitting services. My daughter Michelle and her husband are teachers. Those that teach know it isn’t the highest paying job in America, especially when you’re young and trying to raise a family. To make a little extra cash, my son-in-law started a t-shirt business. He makes and sells team shirts out of their home and at tournaments. An ambitious fellow, when he saw how much money he could make at one tournament, he decided to schedule himself into two tournaments every weekend which means Michelle must take care of one of them. Worked fine until she got pregnant, now she can’t carry the press or buckets of shirts…hence, the recruitment of Grandgirl’s Mom. So into the insanity strolls the very busy and sneaky three-year-old and the baby. Brendolyn, who between Christmas and today has decided she has quite a lot to say and isn’t happy unless you’re in her face yakking it up. Like a dog, Brendolyn doesn’t care what you’re saying as long as you say it in a pleasant tone of voice.

I’m not a neat freak, but this kind of disorder gives me eyeball ticks. Somebody send the Health Department, if they’ll condemn it now, I’ll be able to get some sleep before New Year’s Eve.

425 days to freedom…. One year, two months until I’ve completed the term of my day job, finished and mailed the annual report of my last year to the state auditor and strolled home to write full time. Thank you for asking.

Whirl Plates! Whirl!

Things are happening fast and furiously around this joint!  Due to popular demand, tomorrow I will update you on my haunted nutcracker… the dog gone thing just insists on being a nuisance, I took nine pictures of him and none of them came out…maybe I should hold him in front of a mirror??

Regarding all of you that also dream in color:  When I was in the Air Force, that was one of the questions on the psychological tests they made us take, whether you dreamed in color or black and white.  In my flight of sixty, I was the only one who dreamed in color.  I was also the only creative one in that batch of 60 girls.  Judging from the response I got here from a bunch of writers… I think it must be an off shoot of being left (or is it right?) brained.  Who knew?

Here in my little town we’ve had a conundrum.  Ohio is an anti-gambling state with the exception of the lottery, scratch offs and what is commonly known as the Chuck E. Cheese law.  A ridiculous piece of legislation written to cover the fact that the Chuck E. Cheese pizza places have had “games of chance” forever and some whahoo decided that was gambling.  CEC is a kids place, human sized habitrails, skee ball, and grown adults walking around in animal costumes.  Anyway…. they pass this law allowing “skill games” to cover CEC.  Of course it didn’t stop there, other people looking to make a buck used this law to open game parlours all over the place using those game machines that spit out tickets when you win which they trade for prizes or cashiers checks (which is supposedly less like gambling than just giving them cash- jeesh).  At first, we just had one of these places open up on Main Street.  Then the City next door abolished them and took the issue to court. So they all moved to my little town.  There are a number of reasons this bugs me.  The first being they’re taking up space that could be occupied by a business with actual employees so the town would get some tax money off the endeavor.  The second is they’re fleecing our elderly citizens who go there for an opportunity to socialize that they don’t have outside of church.  In opposition to these game parlours is the Apostolic Church.  They’ve opened up business on Main Street too and painted a mural of hell on the front window, complete with a lake of fire full of screaming people.  They may have stopped short of putting fistfulls of tickets in these burning sinners hands, but they do have all of them facing the game parlour next door.  What’s not to love about small towns?

Distressing news that has a happy ending regarding the two oldest grandgirls.  Since their Dad moved them out of his father’s house and into his mother’s house with a flock of other people, their grades have dropped and the court has denied his application for shared parenting.  Since Tiffany is not yet settled in her own house and its the middle of a school year, they will be coming to live with me.  The girls are excited, they like staying with Pap and me.  They have their own room, their own toy closet and their own shelves of books and games in the library.  Pap has been teaching Jazz to cook, which they both love and Bri writes with me.  It will be fun and help them get back on track before they have to move again with their mother. 

Down to the last few presents to wrap up Christmas Shopping, how’s everyone else doing?