Advice For Men Bloggers

Now that I have all this extra time on my hands, I decided to make good use of it. I randomly starting viewing profiles. I want to spread my blogger wings, and hopefully make some new friends. I did a search for all bloggers in my state. So this research is limited only to the Tennessee men. To be honest, I am such a homebody that it is difficult for me to make new friends. I rely mostly on my many family members.

Unfortunately, they seem to have their own lives going on. I am looking at profiles of men and women. Women list such interests as writing, sewing, literature, exercise, you know, stuff like that. I discovered something appalling about the men bloggers. They list beer as an interest. I am not kidding. Look for yourself. BEER. B-E-E-R. Fellas, I hate to tell you this, beer is NOT an interest. It is a beverage. A vile and disgusting beverage at that. How can you list that as an interest? Do you sit on your couch and watch the beer can to see what it will do? Do you take long moonlit walks at night with your beer? Maybe you share quiet conversations together. Do you tell the beer all your hopes and dreams? I confess that I love an icy cold glass of Coke. But I can't fathom listing a beverage as an interest. One blogger wanted it to be known that his top interest is beer.

I know I can't speak for all women, but surely some would agree with me that beer is not an interest. I am not hating on beer drinkers. I have had beer before myself. I think it tastes like pee personally. Well, not that I have first hand knowledge of what pee tastes like, that's just what I think of. Pee. With carbonation.

I say this only to help you. I don't think there are any men who are bloggers who read my blog. If by chance, one of you happens upon this here blog, please take my kindly given advice. If you drink beer that is fine and it's your business. Just please, please, don't list it as an interest. This is what it looks like:
Favorite Music: blah, blah, blah
Favorite Books: blah, blah, blah
Interests: hunting, beer, fishing, football.

See, that just doesn't even look right I tell you.


I also found a surprising number of men who list video games as an interest. I am going not to go off on a tirade about that. To each his own I always say. It just surprised me that men my age and older still love video games. Nothing wrong with that. Just a little surprising...........

Rambling On and On and On

As the day draws to a close I find myself thinking about being busy. Being busy all the time is the modern way of life. Some people use being busy as a way of measuring success and importance. Their lives are so jammed packed full of activities they barely have a moment to breathe. Relaxing is a precious commodity that is hard schedule into a day. I know people who have told me they don't go to bed until close to midnight. Every night. Not me. In all honesty my life has sort of been that way for the last three years. Not because I was trying to cram my days as full as I could, but because I was in college. My house was a mess and I was tired all the time. I never felt like doing anything and I couldn't understand why. Of course now I can see why I never felt like doing anything. The little bit of free time that I did have, I didn't want to spend it cleaning up. That just seemed like a hideous way to spend free time.

I am getting back into the groove of a regular life. Well, what regular life is like for a single working mother. I came home tonight and greeted the girls and asked them about their day. I started dinner immediately. This is a must in my house. While dinner was cooking in the oven, I started a load of laundry and cleaned the bathroom. I stopped long enough to eat. Then I threw the clothes from the washer into the dryer, unloaded the dishwasher, made lunch for all of us, got out meat for tomorrow night, wiped down the counters, folded a load of laundry, meanwhile instructing Keri on a couple of things she needed to do. The fact of the matter is that I don't HAVE to do all the things I do. I could wait until the weekend to do a lot of the cleaning. Then what I would have is laundry piled up to the ceiling, and I would have to spend my whole weekend cleaning. I choose not to do that. I would rather have my weekends free. Free to do what I not exactly sure of yet.

I have been asked many times how I do it. Being a single mother that is. The fact is that it was not a choice I made willingly. I HAVE to do it. There is no one else to do it for me. I don't feel sorry for myself and I don't expect anyone else to either. In all honesty, the first couple of years of being a single mother were the worst. For several different reasons. Keri was at difficult age. Her father and I separated when she was 11 months old. Also I was working very hard and barely making ends meet. I was forced to move into a mobile home because it was all I could afford. This was a major blow to my pride. I had lived in a couple of mobile homes growing up, but this was my first time as an adult that I had to live in one. When I was married we lived in a nice townhouse that had a nice park and a very secluded swimming pool. When people say things like, "I don't know how you do it". It really cracks me up. It's not like I woke up one day and said, "God, I would like to be a single parent. It seems like a lot of fun to raise kids alone. I think I want to give that a try". I couldn't just lay down and give up. My kids needed me.

I have been very blessed the last four years or so. I have a bare minimum of drama in my life. My children are well behaved and do well in school. We have a close relationship and I like to think that we all know that we are in this together. It's not a perfect life by any means. We have our problems just like anyone else. Emotionally, being a single parent is a lot easier than it used to be. There were many nights that I lay awake in bed and cried because I felt like such a failure as a parent. Because of all the material things I couldn't do for my children. There was a time when I didn't know if there was going to be any food on the table. Or if our electricity was going to be cut off. I was one emergency away from financial disaster. That is not an exaggeration. I was alone with no means of emotional or any other kind of support. My family all lived in Tennessee and I was in North Carolina at the time.

I did eventually hit rock bottom emotionally. I knew I had to make a change. I turned in my notice at my job, packed up my stuff and moved to TN. My sister Dejah let us move in with her until we got on our feet. We shared a two bedroom, one bath house at the time. There were two adults and four kids. The kids were 2, 4, 6, and 12. Many nights Dejah and I would be so exhausted from trying to keep up with all the kids that we would fall asleep sitting up. Melissa was the hardest hit by the move. She was at an awkward age anyway. She felt like I had taken her away from all her friends and she resented me for it. She started getting into trouble. I was really worried about her. Eventually she got expelled from school. That was a turning point for her. My only legal alternative was to enroll her in the alternative school. This is school for troubled kids. They put all the troubled kids in one classroom. I thought this was a horrible idea. Why would you put a bunch of kids who are having problems in the same room together? This just gives them more trouble to get in. I told the school counselor that MY daughter would not be attending this school. She stayed home for the rest of the school year.

That snapped her out of it. Kids think it would be fun to not have to go school. The only problem is that it gets boring really quickly. Six months after we moved here, we moved into the house we are living in now. This was a turning point for Melissa. She got away from the hoodlums she had been hanging around. The next school year I enrolled her in school again. She has been doing well ever since. She wants to take classes over the summer to help her catch up to where she should be. The irony is in the state of Tennessee, by law you HAVE to be enrolled in school if you are under age. I am not sure how we slipped under the radar but we did. I really think it would have been more harmful for her to go to the alternative school.

When I was going through all that with her, it seemed like the end of the world. I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake moving us here. I was really scared for our family and for Melissa. The difference was that my family was here. I had people to help me deal with the emotional side of what I was going through. That made all the difference.

Now Melissa and I are very close and I truly appreciate the relationship I have with her. We have so much fun. As a parent(single or not) you will go through hard times with your kids. I know Melissa is just 16. I truly hope I have been through the worst with her. Then there is Keri....her teenage years are not too far off.

I was supposed to be blogging about being busy. I am so easily sidetracked. So anyway, I like not having a full plate all the time. I don't want to have so much to do that I can't enjoy watching TV, or browsing blogs. If my measure of success and importance is based on me having a ton of things to do, I was would rather be unsuccessful and unimportant. I am not saying it's bad to have a full life. I just have no desire to send myself to an early grave. I have no desire to not enjoy my life. The Bible says that we are supposed to enjoy life in abundance until it overflows. Tonight as I was running around doing chores and getting ready for tomorrow, I ENJOYED it. I loved having the time to do a load of laundry and get lunches ready for tomorrow. It made me feel happy. I told Melissa I was on a cleaning high. The reason I enjoy doing those things is because I couldn't for so long. Poor Keri would say things like, "Mommy, I don't have any clothes to wear, when are you going to have time to do laundry?"

I do these things because I WANT to. Not because I have to. That makes all the difference in the world. I guess what it took this ENTIRE blog to say is that I am SO HAPPY to be out of school. I am happy that my kids have their competent mother back.

Note: Because I typed this, tomorrow everything will fall apart. Mark my words.

The Final Results Are In

If you are a regular blog reader, then you know that I recently sat down and took a good long look at my finances. I decided that I really needed to get a handle on my spending habits. I have decided that it is very difficult to make it in the modern world on one income. Even if you go to college. For three years. I am not ashamed to talk about this because I make good money. I don't make wonderful money. But it could be worse. About a year and a half ago, I got a big raise. A two hundred dollar a week raise. Even though I hadn't gotten my degree yet. My employer knew I was working on it. We didn't dramatically upgrade our standard of living as a good deal of people do when they get a raise. I didn't buy a new car. I didn't add 200 channels to our cable. I didn't change anything.

At that time, I really thought this big raise was going to be life changing. However, when it was all said and done it didn't. It allowed me to do a few more things than I had been doing before. Since that time, the walls have slowly started closing in on me. Gas prices went up, my daughter started driving, you know, life happens.

I have been on a mission for about a month now to spend my money more wisely. I saw a rerun of 'Jon & Kate Plus Eight'. In this episode, Kate revealed that she is able to feed her family of ten for around 150 bucks per week. INSANITY I tell you. I am spending about 100 bucks a week to FEED THREE PEOPLE!!!!!! What is wrong with this picture? I thought to myself that I really need to see if there is any way I could save some money on food. Why? She is a nurse after all. While I have a friggin accounting degree! Also because unfortunately, my contacts at the oil companies are not returning any of my phone calls requesting that they lower gas prices. I find myself unable to ditch the cable or internet either. If I let those go, then what do I have I ask you? They are the poor man's entertainment. (Or woman)

I had never really gotten serious about saving on groceries before. I have gotten better at it in the last month. See, I don't think it ever occurred to my mom to teach us kids about saving money. I am not casting blame, just stating facts. Which means I have had to teach myself. I started by getting a Sunday paper and clipping coupons for anything that I use. I am smart enough not use coupons just because I have one. If I see a coupon for something I don't use, I don't clip it. I started making a grocery list and planning meals. These might seem like simple things to some of you pros out there, but keep in mind my humble background and complete ignorance. Then I took it a step further and even began including the snacks that I will purchase for any given week. Will I buy yogurt this week? Fruit? Snack cakes? You get the idea. I also try not to buy the exact same things every week. This way, we won't get burnt out on our favorite snacks.

I make a game out of trying to stick to my list and stay within the budget. My original plan was to try to shave 10 bucks off our grocery bill. A couple of weeks I had to shave even more. By giving myself a realistic goal, I wouldn't be disappointed. I actually discovered that sometimes the coupons are not worthwhile. I had a coupon for one product and when I got to the store, another company had the same product for less. Even with the coupon. I didn't use the coupon, I bought the other brand and saved even more money. I have been going through this process for about 4 weeks now. Imagine my horror when last Sunday there were NO coupons in the paper. I was so upset I marched right back to the store where I purchased the newspaper. I went in and yanked a paper from the rack, went completely through the newspaper and realized that none of the papers had any coupons in them. I was devastated. This from a woman who until a few weeks ago, had NEVER clipped a coupon in her life!

This week I had a coupon for my beloved Scrubbing Bubbles(I used an entire can between the two bathrooms this week) some frozen veggies, hand soap, body wash, yogurt. I was so excited. Clipping coupons is really starting to make a difference. Every Sunday I buy a paper, go home and make my list. Then I clip my new coupons and pull the ones from previous weeks that I haven't used yet. I pull out all the coupons that I will be able to use for the current week. The final result as of this week is that I am averaging about 75 per week on groceries! That is even better than my original goal. That includes healthy foods and snacks and the items needed for me to pack my lunch and Melissa's. We are not having to go without anything. Since I started really paying attention to the cost of things, I notice when there is a price increase. I noticed this week that milk was 20 cents higher this week than it was last week. Now the only remaining question is......what to do with my savings?

Reflections

My sister recently gave birth to her third son. As I spend time holding and rocking the new baby, I think to myself how wonderful it would be to have another baby. They are so tiny and precious. So sweet and cuddly. Little Taylor looks just like a little baby doll. He has the sweetest little newborn cry. Every time I go over there, I make a fool out of myself by talking nonsense to the baby. I say things like, "Who is the sweetest little baby boy? Aren't you Aunt Susie's sweet little boy? You just love your Aunt Susie don't you?". That kind of thing. I need to get on with the business of remarrying and maybe have another baby. After all, I am only 32, not too old yet.

Fast forward to a day or so later I am talking to my closest friend who has a 2 1/2 year old. The thing with me is that I had my girls pretty young. I was 16 when Melissa was born, and 23 when Keri came along. Many people my age are just starting out as parents. So while I am dealing with 4th grade drama and high school, my friends and family are dealing with poopy diapers and midnight feedings. I digress. I am talking to my friend and she is trying to entertain her little one. I told her that seeing my new nephew really made me want another baby, but talking to her was the most effective form of birth control I can think of. Her child is not bad or anything, she is just a typical 2 1/2 year old. She tells me how her little girl got on her bed and threw all her folded clothes in the floor. I listen to her take away a toy baseball bat her daughter just hit her with. I listen to her try to convince her daughter that yes, she will eat the snack that was prepared for her, she asked for it after all.

Yes, it's fun to have small children. They are cute and they say and do really cute things. Now I am having flashbacks of when Keri was a baby. A colicky baby. A baby that for the first four months of her life, cried ALL the time. Everyday. All day long. The only time she didn't cry was when she was eating or sleeping. I walked the floor day in and day out. Some nights I would be falling asleep sitting upright on the couch. At 7pm. Thankfully she outgrew it after a few months. Then she was so much fun! For a while. She didn't really have the "Terrible Two" syndrome. She had the "Terrible Three Through Four" syndrome. She threw fits like I had never seen. She would throw herself in the floor kicking and screaming. It was quite a sight to behold. I have never been the kind of parent to cave when a fit is thrown. Let me tell you I was sorely tempted. Especially that one she threw at Chuck E. Cheese. At first, I would spank her. This only made her scream louder. Eventually I came up with a new idea. Every time she would throw a fit, so would I. I would get on the floor and kick and scream just like she was doing. The first time I did that, she looked at me like I had just landed on Earth from another planet. But she stopped throwing a fit. After I did this for a while she stopped throwing fits all together. I think when she saw how silly it was, and that it was not going to get her what she wanted, she just gave up.

I am skipping around my story telling but that's OK. After all it's my blog. Mine.Mine.Mine. When she was two, I let her go on a trip to Michigan with her dad to visit relatives. Up until this point, she slept in her crib, by herself. No rocking, or anything. I even shut the bedroom door. I think her dad must have had her sleep with him on this trip. When she came back, she would NOT go back in her crib. I let her sleep with me. I pick and choose my battles. At that time, it just wasn't worth it to me to have her scream for hours on end. I was a single mother and I was working very hard.

This lead to her sleeping with me from the ages of 2-5. Part of the reason I had so much trouble getting her to sleep was because she was in daycare. Daycare requirements in NC mandate that children must lay down for two hours. She would sleep for the two hours, and not be able to sleep at night. Also, I was single, so her sleeping with me was not really a big deal.

Right before she started Kindergarten, I began telling her that she was a big girl, and when she started school, she would not be able to sleep with me anymore. She would have to sleep in her own room, in her own bed. I prepped her for several weeks before school started. I knew that the two hour late afternoon naps would be a thing of the past when she started school. It worked like a charm. The very first day of school, I put her to bed in her room. She was so exhausted, she fell asleep immediately. That ended her sleeping with me. School wore her out so much, she didn't have the energy to pitch a fit about having to sleep in her room. She would usually be asleep within ten minutes.

Melissa was such a good baby, it never dawned on me that my next baby might have colick. I knew Keri was going to be a handful when I was pregnant with her. I could just feel it. I just thought she would be into everything. I guess the point of the story is this question-Do I REALLY want to go through all that again? The answer to the question is no. H-E double hockey sticks no!!!!! After all, who would entertain my two readers if I had a baby to chase after?

I will enjoy the thrill of being able to hold and cuddle and play with the little babies, and then go home. AAAHHHHH.......the thrill of just being an aunt!

More Exciting Vacation Adventures

OK-What should one do on one's fourth day of vacation? Be awakened by a freakin flippin cat at 6:30 am. Go back to sleep and wake up at a more reasonable hour of 9 am. Drink coffee, check email, then tackle teenage daughter's bathroom. Now that took stamina. Discover while in teenager's bathroom that eye seems to be pretty red, and burns too. Go to own bathroom, remove contacts immediately, put on glasses that are practically worthless, resume attacking teenager's bathroom. Which takes hours. I am not kidding. Not to say that Melissa NEVER cleans her bathroom, well-she just doesn't have my mad skills.

Eat a ham and cheese sandwich with Extreme Dill Pringles for lunch. Finally around 2pm in the afternoon, take a shower. I really feel it defeats the purpose to take a shower, then clean a nasty bathroom. Completely backwards if you ask me.

Go vacuum out car as Thursday has been dubbed "vacuum out car day". Return home, sit on couch and do nothing except type this here blog. Whether or not I get anything else done remains to be seen. I have really enjoyed this week off. I thought I would get bored, but I have so many things that have been neglected that I have been able to keep busy. I can lay around for a little while, but I have discovered that I am not one to sit around doing nothing for very long.

Keri got to go to the Ripley's Aquarium with one of her friend's overnight. She came home this morning and is already planning her weekend activities. I miss the little squirt. Melissa had one of her friends over here for a couple of days, but I made her take the girl home yesterday. She must not have realized that she was ready for a break. When she got home, she went to her room and stayed there for a couple of hours. None of this really has a point other than for it to be recorded. I wish blogs would have been around when the girls were smaller.

I have left my poor sister Dejah alone for the last couple of days. She has three boys now since she brought the baby home from the hospital, and I don't want to wear out my welcome so to speak. I do hope that she calls me today. I do so love going over there and holding that sweet little boy. I lived in another state when the older boys were born, so it's a real treat to have a new baby who just lives a few miles away.

I went to the IRS website to get some info on this whole stimulus payment deal. I have some interesting information. If had your 2007 tax refund direct deposited, your stimulus payment will also be direct deposited. The direct deposit dates are based on the last two digits of your SSN. The payments begin May 2 and the last round of direct deposits will be processed on May 16th. If you opted for a paper check for your 07 refund, you will receive a paper check for the stimulus payment. Payment amounts vary based your 07 tax return. There is a calculator on the IRS website that will guesstimate how much your payment will be. Beware of the rumor mill. Based on the official IRS website, married couples will receive between 600-1200 dollars plus 300 for each qualifying child. You will not automatically receive 1200 dollars, it's based on your tax return.

Check out the IRS website for further details. Here's the link.

Day Three of Continuous Thrills

Prepare yourself for the most exciting blog of the week. If you have a heart condition, read at your own risk. It may be too much excitement for you. Fasten your seatbelts and hang on.

Having rid myself of all children for the moment, I tried to think of something relaxing for me to do. After pondering this for minutes on end, I decided that soap scum is the project of the day. What could be more relaxing, yet exciting for me to do? I have confessed on previous blogs about how I let things slide while I was in school. Not to say that I NEVER cleaned anything, but well sometimes I had to put certain chores on the back burner. Like cleaning the soap scum from my shower.

Little did I realize that by letting the soap scum slip under my radar, that it would be twice as hard for me to clean. I scrubbed and scrubbed until I was breathless, heaving, and hot. I still don't think I quite got it all, but I couldn't take it anymore. I think I was getting high from the cleaning fumes. Note to my fellow bloggers: If you let the soap scum build up, it is darn near impossible to get it off. I used a various assortment of cleaners. Scrubbing Bubbles first. I think this is a good product. If you don't wait weeks months to clean.

Next on my list of ever-so-exciting things to do on vacation is getting all the laundry caught up and begin sorting through outgrown clothes and begin the spring transitioning. My huge master closet is filled to the brim with an assortment of summer/winter clothes. A few months ago, my sister Marlette came over and cleaned Keri's room for me. It was that bad. She washed all the clothes and hung them up in the closet. I have yet to sort through them. So there are sweaters mixed in with short sleeved shirts, that kind of thing.

The weather patterns are pretty crazy in Tennessee. Monday it was 44 degrees, and yesterday it was 63 degrees. You see what I mean. What I like to do is pack up most of the winter clothes but leave a few warm articles unpacked. This way if there is an unusually cool day, Keri and I will both have something appropriate to wear. I promise you, if you pack up all your winter things prematurely, there will be chilly weather just to spite you.

I usually donate all of Keri's outgrown clothes to Goodwill or someone I know who might be able to use them. This year, she denounced all sweaters. She WILL NOT wear them. She has some brand new sweaters that she never wore. I am thinking of taking them to a consignment shop and trying to get a few bucks for them. I could use the money to help update her spring wardrobe. Or add it to my TV fund. (We need a new TV because when you press the volume button, it makes the TV cut off. I fear it is on it's last legs)

Speaking of which, has anyone gotten their letter from the IRS yet? If so, what are you planning to do with your money? Save it or "boost the economy". If I have any of mine left after taking care of a bill, I am adding it to my TV fund.

The Second Day of Vacation

What should one do on one's second day of vacation? Have your nephews come spend the night. What is more relaxing that entertaining a 6 and 8 year old boy after all? After returning from Nashville yesterday and taking Keri shopping, I went and picked up the boys. When I got home, I had a total of SIX children in my home. Only two belong to me. This actually worked to my advantage because they had each other for entertainment. They played hide and seek in the house. Then they played computer games. Eventually Keri and her friend left and I was down to four kids.

Of course Melissa is sixteen so it's not like I have to really entertain her. As it got later, the boys were content to watch TV in Keri's room. They fell asleep on their own when they were tired. They let me sleep in this morning until 9:30. It was heavenly. We watched a movie then the boys went out in the backyard to play.

I tackled Keri's room because it was shameful. For a girl, she is really messy. I can clean her room and she will trash it in ten minutes. When it was time for lunch the boys wanted salad. Which I let them make by themselves.


After lunch they went by outside to play. If you want to be a good aunt, you should be sure to give them red soda with their snack. This makes for great photo opportunities.


Stayed tuned for more exciting escapades of my fabulous vacation.