baseball…

is a constant at my house, i love it and the boys love it and it is something that we can do together pretty much anywhere and anytime. i do not think that any of the other parents that i sit with during the games actually catch for their kids on the off days or can beat them in a game of Out! i think i have to credit my dad with my love of the game, and i also credit him with making me a tigers fan. my little dilemma is that both the boys are huge yankees fans, and both, well more so nick than kevin, like to talk trash about my tigers. i grew up in michigan and remember loving the ’84 world series when the tigers beat the padres (at that point in my life i was just happy that my “team” had beat the other team with the really ugly uniforms). then i got older the tigers started to really stink, so much so, that the summer we moved out here, my friends and i (all tigers fans) were desperately trying to get tickets to the last regular season game just to say that we were there when the tigers earned the worst record in major league history. luckily, they won and have been improving ever since, so much so that they have beaten the yankees out of the running in very very recent memory. but i don’t gloat, partly because i do not have the kahunas to brag about something that i am not certain about and partly because i cannot stand being proven wrong or when my bragging has been proven wrong, so i generally keep quiet. last night was the series opener for the tigers v yankees in new york. my sister was at that game, we watched the third and fourth inning, at which point the tigers were up by 4. then mysteriously the channel was changed, i didn’t say much (i know how frustrated kevin gets when the yankees are loosing, and i am sure it would have been worse to watch that game with me next to him) we went to bed and this morning, when nick was watching sports center, i just happened to be in the room when the highlights from last nights game came on, and very calmly i read that DETROIT WON 6 to 4! Oh Happy Days! nick said the yankees suck, he is already developing the love hate relationship all yankees fans have. i didn’t say anything, but on the inside i was doing a gig! way to go tigers, if the hat that i got for christmas wasn’t so big, i would be sporting it proudly when we go to pitch tonight, i would also like to add that the red wings are up 3-0 in their series and i think the pistons are still in it, that and the lions are the two teams i really do not care about. add that victory to the post positions being drawn today for the derby and i am one happy sports nut, thankfully there is not much going on at work, i do have a report to do but have plenty of time for that. happy hump day!

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attack of the worry wart…

part 2… my worries

i worry that i will not be able to raise a decent person, i worry that said little person may just hate me because he could never hate his mom or dad. i worry about my sister, she has to resign her state job in order to get promoted (i guess that logic only works with the great state of new jersey.) i worry about mags and hope things are alright with her in michigan. i worry that my parents may never be able to sell their house, but i also worry that something terrible will happen as soon as their move is permanent and i wont know what to do, maybe i am a worry wart. i worry everyday that something has happened to my boys, i worry that i wouldn’t know how to deal with that. i worry that the politics that go into little league may ruin the experience of little league  (i vaguely remember my dad complaining about them when we played, that’s why he got out of coaching) i worry about not getting into grad school-and may worry more about telling everyone that i didn’t get accepted. i worry about people i have never met and really hope that everything works out for them. i also really want a kentucky derby pie, and after doing exhaustive research i can get the authentic kentucky derby pie (it has been patented) at honey baked hams. at the bargain basement price of $34! i have seen recipes, they all seem the same but not quite like the one i had in louisville. i worry that $34 is a bit much for a pie (i don’t even like pies in the traditional sense) i worry that one morning i am going wake up with gray hair (how petty is that?) i worry that my 1999 malibu will just up and die and i have no way of replacing her at the moment i also worry that i may never be able to afford $4 a gallon and may have to come up with an alternative way of hauling my happy ass to work! i worry that the young lady that i mentor is making the wrong decisions with her boyfriend i worry that at times she has no clue as to how the real world works, but she is at the age that soon she will be on her own, that is scary at least to me. i am now feeling much better, kevin just told me if i had gray hair he would still love me, that was all i needed to hear! got to start the countdown for the derby, maybe i will even make mint juleps and wear a ridiculous hat! ahh happy monday!

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holy awkward batman…

have you ever been in a situation that you know is just off? i have been fortunate enough to be in more than one this past week/end. first awkward situation, friday, i am working at a science expo, lots of school groups come around and look at what the museums/clubs/schools have to offer and take anything they can get their hands on. we were handing out buttons, very popular actually. but thats not the awkward part. earlier on in the week i had recieved an email from a former co-worker, informing me that another co-worker had just lost his only daughter in a drowning incident. now i didnt know him all that well, but he was always very nice and rather quiet. i am not sure when exactly this happened but it must have been over spring break. i read about the memorial service and just felt really bad, i could never in a million years imagine loosing a child or even begin to know how to deal with it. back to the expo, i am sitting next to my co-worker, who was in the office when i recieved the email, and i notice someone who looked very familiar, it was the gentleman who had just lost his daughter, he was with his wife and i just wanted to give him a hug. i said hi,  (i hadnt seen him since i had left the job) and he introduced his wife, but looked lost. i just wanted to give him a hug but i didnt because i had no idea how to even broach the subject. when they moved on i mentioned to my co-worker that was the man i used to work with and we both just had dumbfounded looks on our faces…

Awkward moment number two…direct from the little league field (and let me tell you that place is FULL of drama!) one of nicks team mates broke his ankle in feb. while snow tubing. no big deal except this was the teams big player…you know six feet tall, pitcher and hitter extraordinarie. (oh and he is 12). well i know both of his parents, i am usually sitting next to his dad during the games, nice enough guy, his mom is a social butterfly and will be visiting everyone at the field. they seemed happy. NOT! the dad was so disappointed that his son couldn’t play at a game that he left the game saying he just couldn’t watch, well i mentioned that conversation to the mother and i said it was kinda funny. she looked at me with a blank look and said “i don’t” then proceeded to perform verbal vomit about how they were just snow tubing and accidents happen and its not her fault and she didn’t take baseball away from her son and ending the tirade with court is may 8th. i had a blank look of holy shit! again didnt really know what to say, thankfully i havent been sitting with both since, not really sure how to handle that situation either.

great weekend though, and i did touch the snake, thats all, touched, then cringed.

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i hate snakes…

hate them! they way they slither, their beady little eyes and those forked tounges. my parents live way out in the boonies and when i was living there an anaconda (no joke) slithered between me and my car, i. flipped. out. ran back into the house and told my dad about it. in his very dad way he said “now jenny (he is the only person who can call me that) anacondas are not native to ct.” then he told me it was just a garter? snake and that it would be fine. i had to disagree and tell him that not only was it between me and my car, but now it KNEW where i was going. needless to say, it took more than a few minutes and tentative openings of the side door to build up the kahoonas to get to my car. but today i have to go to a science expo with millions of kids and demonstrate a snake. i like to try something new everyday, and feel its important to overcome my fears, but snakes? nick said he wanted a pet snake and i very calmly informed him that he could certainly have one, but i would never go in his room again. he thinks i am joking. i am not. i even have the best route worked out here at work so i NEVER have to walk by them, i know they are in tanks, but they send chills down my spine and make my toes curl. and not to be too extreme, i have seriously contemplated moving to ireland for the simple fact that they do not have snakes and i would never have to experience an anaconda coming between me and my car again. so wish me luck and call me the snake charmer because i am either going to swallow my fear and handle the damn thing in front of millions of kids, or you will all read about a crazy museum educator who flipped out and caused mass hysteria on the six o clock news. Happy Friday!!

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thursday thoughts…

• my funk from yesterday is gone, i am convinced that i have an overly active imagination and every once in a while need a swift kick in the ass to bring me back to reality.
• i haven’t heard from mags all week, i do hope she is alright.
• i am slowly learning/accepting that raising a kid is defiantly a team effort and i am on the best team ever!
• i have a morbid fascination with all this polygamy stuff going on, i just read an article about Centennial park in Arizona, reading about those families and especially about the wives make me know that i certainly do NOT know how to share.
• we are now the proud owners of two fancy emeril frying pans, one skillet and one sauce pan, why on earth we haven’t just bought the set yet, is beyond me!
• I am trying to grow herbs, i forgot to label them (sorry gillian) so i have three spouts, what looks like little chives and something else green, i know i do not have a green thumb most likely its brown and will become black very soon.
• i do not know what to get kevin for his birthday, i know he wants a bonsai tree, but with my lack of gardening skill and little knowlege about those trees i am a little hesitant, maybe i should get him a fishing trip…
• i thought this joke was funny, i went through my old emails yesterday

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holy funk batman…

its sunny out but there is a cloud, i have no idea where or what is is and why its here. i am just bored.

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cause for concern,

my dear dear friend mags. the first time i met mags was second semester freshman year of college. i had just had my tonsils out and she had just transferred from a community college in chicago. i was making my rounds of the fourth floor, when amanda and i went to see sarah and her new roommate. they were both unpacking their things and moving the furniture around. just as sarah said hi to me and started to introduce me to mags, mags started jumping around the room screeching. she had just found a pregnancy test from the previous tenant. used mind you. it hurt for me to smile let alone screech but that was when i met mags. from that point on we were pretty much attached at the hip. we both had a love for dave matthews, she was impressed that i knew all the words to “ants marching.” i was impressed with her amazing red hair! her family was practically off the boat irish immigrants from chicago, the one thing that made me doubt it for just a minute was that her dad was not a cop (but have no fear, her sister works for the fire department). that first semester was a difficult one, but through it all i had mags and she had me, and we were able to make it work. that summer we both went home, me to kalamazoo and her to chicago but we kept in touch with incredibly long phone calls and lots of letters, remember those? i could not get back to school fast enough and sophomore year we were roommates. we lived through the wrath that was molly giddly, the nazi ra. and manged good grades and the ability to rely solely on each other, whether it was monitoring the use of the bathroom when the water main broke or how to remove puffy paint from the desks (if anyone is curious, we just stripped the desks and refinished them-we also spackled and then repainted the closet door because of all the holes from the dart board) mags went home again that summer, but i stayed near school. that summer was our first dave concert and a great “sorority retreat” and i use the term retreat very loosely. junior year was a blur because we had both declared majors. senior year we rented a house. when we graduated, we had certainly made a mark and were so ready for so much more. mags was a bio major and wanted to “play” with big cats, instead she met tony at a factory job she had landed from a temp service. he was nice and clearly doted on her from the beginning. they started dating, then mags got a job in kalamazoo. she moved out in feb or march i don’t remember, i was going through some crazy crap at the time and really could not handle any type of change, but all through that and beyond it, mags kept me together. shortly after i moved back to kalamazoo and we were able to spend more time together, still tony was in the picture. he was fun to hang out with, but at this point he had stopped working and showed no ambition to work again. his main source of income was his mother (more on her later) and trading various car parts. he had practically moved in with mags and exposed his patterns. a year or so later mags finds out he is a dad, something he denied until he was forced to take a paternity test. i was with mags that night, she was devastated, and drunk. very. very drunk. another year goes by and tony has not changed, but they had moved into a bigger house. mags knew they would get married, just not sure when, and always had a nagging feeling in her gut that she didn’t really share, she didn’t have to with me. i ended up moving out to ct. i knew mags and i would still keep in contact, we had before, but something changed. she would still say how things were going, but she seemed to try to keep the relationship conversations very short and not at all detailed. i found out she was engaged by an email she sent to her whole address book, and to make matters worse her story about the engagement left a lot to the imagination. she said that tony just handed her the ring, she had to make him ask the question. i was still hurt that i had to find out from an email. they were engaged for a long time and the wedding plans ran the gamut from getting married in the church maggie grew up in (for the record tony would not step foot in a church and his mother couldn’t possibly travel all the way to chicago) to getting married on a beach on lake michigan. mags asked me to be the maid of honor and any one of those choices would have been fine, but i always told her not to sell herself short, she deserved to walk down and aisle and wear a beautiful dress. they settled on getting married at the house that mags grew up in, her parents were going to sell it, the house had been in the family since her father was a child. they set a date and made the right plans. i had my plane ticket out there. a small side step, i was supposed to go to the wedding with my ex boyfriend, two nights before we were to get on a plane he looked at me and said he didn’t love me. i needed mags as much as she needed me. that little tidbit made me not the best brides maid. the ceremony was presided over by a justice of the peace, mags mom had forced mags to wear a white dress and it was just family and close friends. well mags’ family and close friends, tonys overbearing mom and step dad and tonys kid were there. tonys mom i think had been dreaming of this day for years! considering she had every single tacky wedding kitsch ever invented and some that i think she made herself. mags didn’t pick colors, or what flowers she wanted, the cake cutter was this plastic (i hate to say it) white trash monstrosity complete with fake babys breath accents and pens that when you clicked them they said “i do” and various other wedding related lines, but most of them were malfunctioning and would get stuck in between phrases. it was a nice setting, very small and it was great to see her family, but i was probably a bad drunk at some point in the evening, i think it was when tonys mom had to go to the hospital for some “illness” and i may or may not have said something along the lines of well that doesn’t surprise me, how on earth could she go an entire day without being the center of attention. whoops. that was two years ago. i haven’t heard as much from mags, she is working like a dog, of course, she pays all the bills, the mortgage is in her name and who knows how many other things. i think tonys disability check still goes to his mom. is that weird? we would still keep in touch, talk once every other month but not nearly as much as before. then last weekend i saw a missed call from mags. she never calls at that time of night and didn’t leave a message, i grew concerned that something had happened to her parents. that family has known its fair share of tragedy, mags closest bother died before i met her when he was only 30 or so, then the next oldest brother died of a drug overdose. i sent her a quick email the next day saying hi and hoping all is well. she sent me back an email that i was stunned to get. in a nut shell she said all of the things she thought she could just live with tony are starting to turn out that she can’t, she wants to leave but is scared to make a huge mistake. after i picked my jaw up off the desk i just emailed her back that whatever she does i will support he 100% and that i loved her. this is one of those huge life altering events that i feel i need to be there for her and i am not. i got to talk to her on saturday and it was the depressed mags from the nights when she was talking about her brother, but something was different, i think it was she is in a place that she does not want to be in. part of me feels so bad for her and another part of me realized that i am in a great place right now. maybe i should just bring her out here. she said she was 95% ready to walk out the door, but then she also said it is so much easier to talk that way when tony is not right in front of her. there is nothing i can do, but wait for her to call. she has always been there for me and i will always be there for her. it is just crazy to think that we are now at this age… well she is a few years older than me… but still this is all very adult.

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ahh parent teacher conferences…

so just a quick update, we are working and hopefully stopping the exposing behavior. that being said we got to go to conferences today. they do them differently now, the student will evaluate themselves on the past marking period as well as goals that were set up at the beginning of the year. kevin nick his mom and i all sit around a table and talk about his grades, effort and conduct in school, what needs improving and how to go about that. as a kid i would think this would be a nightmare, but nick handles himself very well. minus the fact that his mom brought along his little sister, who is 15?? months old and is a MAJOR distraction to nick, and then his mom and i think finally nicks homeroom teacher, who towards the end was looking a little more than frustrated with the distractions she was causing to nick and to his mom. the whole time his mom sat there and played with nicks sister, not really caring what was going on with nick and his teacher. the little girl was running around the room, throwing bottles out of the recycling bin and really looking for nicks attention. meanwhile, nicks teacher and kevin and i are trying to get nick to focus on what he was saying, absorb what his teacher was telling him and work out strategies for the final marking period. periodically his mom would just walk away, mid sentence, to go get the kid and bring her back. the add thing really is the apple not falling far from the tree! we have had nick full time for the past seven months and there have been some major improvements. his grades have been steady and for the most part his effort and conduct. he has only had two detentions this year compared to i do not even know how many last year, and for the most part he enjoys school. but to have his mom just disregard the conference so much that even nick picked up on it was really annoying. i know i am not perfect in any sense but i really felt bad for nick and can really understand where he is coming from when there is just a lack of something (i cannot really figure out what it is) from his mom. i have to say i am really proud of nick for doing so well in school considering the first day of school was the day after he saw his mom beat by her drunk boyfriend and had to call the cops. not to mention he was removed from that situation that day and has not gone back, except for weekend visits. i know i wouldn’t have handled the situation that well at that age. he just does not give himself enough credit which i guess is where i come in? not sure, but now it is a beautiful afternoon and all i want to do is go someplace quiet with a good book, maybe one that i ordered over two weeks ago will show up in my mail box and completely make my afternoon!! one can hope.

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exposed…

oh what an afternoon! i have refrenced my hate for lying before and yet it continues on and on. we picked up the boy from his grandfathers this afternoon, and when we got home, dustins mom came out in the hall way. apperntly when she was in 7 eleven with dustin, a woman came up to her and said “oh is this your son, well he and his friend (ahem NICK) have been mooning everyone on willard ave” oh and by the way the other one, not dustin, has been seen peeing in front of the apartment building” REally? nick was slightly behind us at this point and didnt hear what was being said, she added that nick was exposing himself out his bedroom window to dustin as well. not sure about that last part. so kevin confronted nick about it, and he lied right to his face. now i was proud of kevin for not blowing up, he very calmly told nick that lying is not acceptable and that this split personality thing has got to stop. we know that nick wants to act one way around us, the way we expect him to, but then he goes to school or his moms and he is a little punk, kevin told him that and i think it is starting to strike a chord, well i can only hope. i have a hard time living with liers. tomorrow is also conferences! who hoo! as far as the exposing thing goes, i guess boys will be boys, i am sure there are numerous articles out there about the early development of boys and how being curious and blah blah blah are all acceptable, but i am not a psychology major and ask for very few things 1. don’t lie and 2. be a good person. not to tough right? everything else is great, i went grocery shopping again, because munchie mcsnakerson struck sunday night and monday night and ate all the sandwich stuff and all the other lunch stuff. but he is still great! happy hump day!

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just some thoughts…

• today was the due date for all the information for grad school, they contacted me last week and said they hadn’t received my letters of recommendation yet, one overnighted it yesterday and one was sent last month and emailed again this morning, whats up with that? not cool because i am really anxious and now even more so!
• it did not put my mind to ease when i called the office and they lady that i have been talking to is not in today and instead i had to speak with someone who did not have a great grasp on the english language and never really understood what i was talking about, i am seriously thinking about chewing off my nails.
• my parents are still looking for a place and hoping to see the one in ct and it already feels like they are just gone, they went to new jersey last week and never even told me they were going, not that they have to check in but i talked to both them and my sister the day before and nothing was said, that was weird.
• it is way to quite in my office right now, gillian is on vacation and the phone isn’t ringing and there is nothing funny to google, or to joke about, or to just talk about, i haven’t even gotten a weird parent email this week, granted it is only tuesday. i think our weirdest one was cocktopus69@aol.com. it was a mothers email…makes ya wonder!
• we are trying to get nick to not sleep with a blankey anymore, he is 12 and kevin has it in his head that sleeping with a blankey is not “little manish” i agree but also have met adults who still have that one thing they sleep with, i never had that problem growing up, when it was time to get rid of the pacifier my mom told me to give it to the easter bunny, and i bought that! no tears.
• the young girl that i mentor now has a new boyfriend, i think i have mentioned that i have no words before about this young man, however i think i have found a few since my last conversation with her. not only does he drive to different states with out a license he sleeps with a gun under his pillow. k seems to think this is fine, she figures its none of her business, sometimes she is wiser beyond her years and other times she is so much younger than she really is. i told her that since she is already dropping the “l” bomb with this guy, don’t you think that there are things you should know and have opinions about? but then my words ran out again and now i am stuck with a sick feeling in my stomach, i am not really sure if this is something that i should/have to report to the powers that be…
• did i mention it is too quiet in my office?
• i have to go grocery shopping again this afternoon, because we are already out of the essentials, kevin made fun of me the other night because i know exactly how many sandwiches can be made from the amount of cheese i get, and he ate some extra cheese wondering “if i eat this, will the whole count be off” thats just funny!

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