Grief

REFLECTION

I learned something last night.

I learned that there are times in my life that are over where I have not finished going through the grieving process and they still hang over my head. I continue to wonder what I did wrong or why it’s not the same.

It was interesting to come to this realization when I did. I had called a friend with whom this situation exists, I wanted to get together and talk. She is a party consultant and had a party scheduled so she invited me to go and then we would go out after. So I went. There I was, in a room full of strangers with whom I ended up having a lot in common. One gal was describing how she had known several of the women that were there from a really good time in her life, and although she had grieved when that time ended, she still valued the friendships in their new way. BINGO! I was right where I needed to be to hear what I needed to hear.

It was exactly the words I needed to tell my friend what I have been through in the past few years with her. Not like it’s her fault, but I just hadn’t moved through the grief process with our relationship and that’s what I needed to hear and what I needed to tell her. I miss what we used to be, but it is (has been) time to move on to what we are becoming.

And if that’s the only thing that comes out of this week's vacation, it was so worth it. But I don’t think it will be. God’s not done with me yet. He gave me a whole list.

School daze

First day of school.

well, sort of. Wednesday was the official first day of school, but for Kindergartners it was just an orientation day. 1 hour to find the classroom, recess line-up place, bathrooms, meet the teacher, stuff like that. But TODAY, now today was the real first day of school.

I took Bubba to school, we were met by hundreds of kids yelling and running all around the playground. He was in heaven! "Look, they're playing with the ball that wraps around the pole, and basketball and.. and.. and.." it was great. When his Best Buddy found us it was all over. They ran off and played. It was so nice. Best Buddy spent the whole day at school yesterday because he is 1st grade so he knew the ropes. They ran off and played soccer and basketball.

AND THEN THE BELL RANG.

I haven't seen Bubba that excited about something in a long time!! His whole face lit up, his eyes got wide open, he ran to his class room line-up-place and that was that. Down the hall they went. Into the Kindergarten unknown.

And that's that so far. I don't have an after school report because hes not home yet. Punkin Head and I have a couple hours to do what ever. So we went and got an oil change, hit the farmers market and we're home already. With 2 more hours to kill. I could clean, do some laundry, but why? I'm on vacation. Oh yeah, did I mention that? 9 more days off. And yes, I am leaving town. Either a couple nights in Bremerton, Sequim or some unknown location yet to be determined. I would really like to go camping, but its been years and I don't think I even know how to start a fire anymore.

Scammer

Don't mess with Dispatch.

One of our Dispatchers answered a call the other day from a man with a very thick middle-eastern accent, who said he had a delivery for her. She asked who the delivery was addressed to, because we often receive calls for other agencies through our center. He said that's why he was calling, he needed her name and address to make this delivery. Smelling a scam, she played along. She fished for all the information possible from this man including the name of his business, the number he was calling from and how he go the number he was calling.

He wasn't forthcoming with information (imagine), but she persisted.

He told her that he had some prize money for her to claim (although he didn't know her name or address) and she would have to get him a cashiers check for $200 to claim her 1.2 MILLION dollar prize. She was so good. She told him nothing personal, asked if she could have some time to think about it and could he call her back in a few days?

Fast forward two days - he called back! She laid into him. Told him she thought he was scamming her, that he should be ashamed of himself for taking money from innocent people and that she would never, under any circumstances give him any money or her name.

The best part of this whole scenario is that all the phone calls took place on recorded lines in our dispatch center. She made a CD of the whole thing, took it to one of our friendly Detectives who is going to use it to warn others about this potential scam. He has already taken it to a local talk-radio show to play it and to the Senior Center to let them have a listen so they know whats out there!

The moral of the story is NEVER give out personal information on the phone. Ask for a name of the person you are talking to, a business name and a call back number if what they are offering sounds legit. If they are legit they'll provide all this for you and allow you to call back. If its not legit they'll start to tell you things that don't make sense. Things like, this is a special offer, you have to decide now, you can't call back because I won't be here, the phone number goes to a large center or something like that.

Be smart. She could have been out $200. And then I bet they would have called back and asked her for more and more. Don't let it happen to you.

Sweetness

Its my "Friday". I am going to spend the next two days tagging, organizing and selling all our useless junk at a yard sale. Unfortunately it looks like it will be yucky weather, but I guess at least we won't be too hot. ("Yucky" means a little cloud cover, cooler temps, you know - 70's)




If she hadn't been up until 2am I might think she was so cute. (The picture is from over the weekend, not at 2am)

On and on

"Is this real . . . or has this been happening inside my head?"
"Just because it has been happening inside your head doesn't mean it isn't real."

I just finished the 6th Harry Potter. I like how the author tied all the books together in it. There were several of us at work reading it, but we started at different times so we all had to wait until the last person had finished to talk about it. It was kind of funny, those that finished first were using the new IM to talk to each other about it.

The new IM is one of the (few) good things from the upgrade. We can now IM anyone on duty, signed into their MDT/MDC. (Quite a discovery nightmare for those on the legal side of things.) At least it passes the time. One of the deputies and I were making up a story the other night line by line. It was actually fun and kept me awake until 1am when I finally got off work.

Hopefully the 1 am stuff is over soon. The person out on sick leave causing the 2 hour hole in the schedule is being checked off for duty this week. Yay! I just can't seem to get caught up on my sleep even when there is the opportunity. Like last night, I finally drifted off around 11:30, then the dog started to bark at midnight, Bubba had a nightmare around 3am (which brought him to our bed) and then Punkin Head woke around 5. So much for a good night sleep. And tonight is a possibility, but Bubba is talking about dinosaurs and what happened to the cavemen ("did they get eaten?") so I have a feeling it could be another nightmare night. I think that he's stressing about school.

We went for his Kindergarten assessment on Thursday. The school district where he will attend was using an assessment test to determine if kids would be in all day or 1/2 day Kindergarten classes. The "low-level learners" were being put into a full day class and the other were being put into the 1/2 day classes. Guess what Bubba will be in? Yeah, 1/2 days. The assessment went something like this:

"Hi I am Mrs. A and I will be doing the assessment for (checks her clipboard) 'Bubba' "
The first thing they assessed was his recognition of letters. They had a piece of paper with rows of letters on it and he had to point to and identify as many letters as he could in 30 seconds (I think). So off he goes. He gets to the end of the second row and says "Hey, why were there 2 H's in that row?" (So much for full day classes)

The next 20 minutes are a blur of questions like "What is another word for vehicle?" "How are a boat and a car different?" and "What rhymes with mat?" Some copying shapes (not letters) and then number sequencing. Mrs. A said a number and Bubba had to repeat it back to her. She added a number up to 5 in the sequence. When it reached 5 he says "I can't do that many." And he was done.

They were rating the kids 1 or 0. 1 meant they answered the question correctly, 0 meant that they didn't. Bubba might have had 10 zeros out of maybe 80 questions. Pretty sure he's going 1/2 day. Last year I wouldn't have minded, this year I think he's ripe for a full day experience. Oh well. (Maybe I will send him back to Montessori for the second half of the day? hahaha).

And then there's Punkin Head. She's . . . I don't even know how to describe her right now. Growing? I took her a bottle at 7:30 this morning thinking she would drink it then get up since she went back to sleep at 5 without any trouble. Apparently I was wrong. She slept until 11:30!! I could hardly believe it. She then took a nap from 3-4:30 and back to bed at 7:30. So I wonder what tonight has in store for me? She won't eat, she won't poo, she won't behave nicely.

Everyone seems to be going through a transition. Its making me crazy and angry. Nobody listens to Mom, they all just insist on disobeying. If this is the way the next few months is going to go, I am going to ship them out until they are better. The only thing they are doing nice is trying to play together. For about 5 minutes. But at least they are trying.

So that's the last week. I think. It was a long work week. We did get to take the boat out though. That was a highlight, how could I forget? We invited some friends of ours to go along. They were single and didn't have kids when we first started to boat together. Now they have been married 12 years and have 3 kids. It was a good time!

Today we took down the pool. It got, well, lets just say I could have sustained a pond with the water. It was a nice shade of green. So its all cleaned up, put away for next year. And soon the top will be on the jeep too. That's a sad day. Maybe we can get away with the soft top for a few months? Its so nice to have the top off, just the way a jeep should be driven right? Maybe we could take it off road once this season? Just to say we did. There's still Labor Day Weekend.

Kiss me Kate

Back in the day, a very dramatic, Shakespeare-loving actress/mom started a children's acting troupe for her kids and others that were interested. She called it "The Short Shakespeareans". I was one of the original kids, 29 years ago.

Last night we went to see the Short Shakes perform "The Taming of the Shrew." My first play. It was pretty cute. The actors and actresses range in age from 6 to 12. They memorize the whole play in the language of the times and everything. My sister and I took our 5 & 6 year old kids. The did pretty good until the last hour (turns out the play went until 10:30). Its a great experience. Bubba's favorite was the "guy that kept coming in falling all over the place" and my nieces' favorite were the horses.

I'd really like to share more but I am so tired. (Still)

He

Weeks ago I bought some new shorts. They're men's shorts so they come past my knees, and they are probably one size too big in the waist, but they're comfy, oh and they're camouflage print.

I came downstairs wearing said shorts and a cool new black t-shirt designed by and for the SWAT team thinking they would go together. Camo shorts, SWAT t-shirt, how could you go wrong?

My son takes a look at me and sort of laughing says "Mom, you look like a He."

I wore the outfit anyway. (over and over again)

Trip details

That was a rough week. We left town on Thursday afternoon, 4:30 ish maybe for Issaquah. It was a pretty rough ride. I need to invest in some how-to-spend-time-in-the-car-without-going-crazy-books. The kids were rotten, I was tired, it was a bad combination.

Issaquah was so nice. The weather was mild, you know 70's instead of 100's, the folks were great. We were staying one night with them, then an adult night in Seattle for us and then one last night with them. It was very nice. The adult time in Seattle was good. We stayed with some friends at the Seattle Hilton downtown which was nice. We ate at a yummy Indian restaurant, shopped, had dinner at a good seafood place (unfortunately they hadn't prepared the lobster recently, I ended up sick in the morning) and did the market the next day. It was a lot to squeeze into 24 hours, but we did it.

Back in Issaquah, we visited stayed one more night and then came home Sunday. Another rough ride. I really, really need to find/make/research car games. We travel often enough that it would be time and money well spent. It really wasn't as hard with one kid. For some reason it really sucks with two. No wonder my immediate family never traveled - there were 4 kids, and back then we didn't have to be restrained either, we could crawl all over the back seat and beat on each other.

Interesting note: my 21 year old step-brother is living there for the next month before school starts. He had a couple friends spend the night - a boy and a girl - on Saturday. Now, call me old fashioned but what kind of an example is that setting for a 15 year old? A 15 year old that just spent the weekend with her boyfriend and his family in Oregon. I guess, well. I shouldn't judge that's what I guess. I'm just jealous. I couldn't even go with friends to concerts when I was 15.

couldnt even get a post done

This week didn't get any better. I was scheduled to work 2-12 hour shifts, well that turned into 4. IN A ROW. Then I worked my regular 10 hour shift until 11:00 and came back at 5am for a 2 hour overtime shift. I am so so so tired. Hitting a wall.

** update: I hit the wall, couldn't even finish the post. **