We've moved!

Yep, it's official now. Not Quite What I Had Planned has jumped ship and gone here.

I hope you'll mosey on over and join me.

PS. And if you've been kind enough to add me to your links over the years, or recently, or at any time in history, please make note of the new address and update your blogroll .... I don't want to lose any of you! www dot notquitewhatihadplanned dot com

Thanks!

*Maybe* Elvis has left the building???

"AGH! Can you post the entire url, I cannot access the link you gave. :( "
>>>>>>>>>>>

Oh, ok.

Try here.

Or just go to www dot notquitewhatihadplanned dot com directly.

And then leave me a message letting me know it worked.

Because I haven't gotten a single comment since I made the switch.

Not one.

Even my most boring posts EVER usually warrant a comment or two, even if its to tell me how boring they are.

So either the new site is de-funct, or everyone hates it --- which would really suck for me.

Or maybe my mic is not working ... hello? Hello?

Is this thing on????

Updated to add:

"the site is working but there is not a comment section.....it says no comment in fact."

Well, what *should* happen is that you can click on "no comment" and then you get the opportunity to leave one. Then once one person does, it should say "1 comment" .... etc. Hopefully someone will leave a comment and we can see if its working properly! :)

Updated again to add:

"I sent you a comment yesterday and it told me that it was awaiting moderation.??????? Love the new site."

Oh. Em. Gee. I. AM. A. MORON!!!! I didn't even KNOW I had to approve the comments!!! Ha!

See, here's where I'll confess: my feelings were a teensy bit hurt that I didn't think anyone was going to the new site, or that no one even noticed I had changed things over. I kept thinking, "I know I've been neglecting the blogger site and not posting as regularly, but wow, people just dropped off like flies! I'm ready to start posting regularly again, and nobody even noticed???"

Now I go over and realize I have 23 comments waiting on me -------- how funny is that? How funny am I? And by "funny", I mean "incredibly stupid" :)

Well, excuse me, I'm off to approve some comments. :)

Ladies and Gentlemen, Elvis has left the building

Well, I've got news. And I've got more news. And I've got hopeful news.

The Not Quite party has moved.

To here.

I sincerely hope you'll join me. And then bookmark the new site, and visit again.

Things I learned on Fall Break this year

(In no particular order .....)

1. I am really friggin' out of shape.

1a. There are a lot of stairs at Great Wolf Lodge. Most of them go up, which is unfortunate for people who are really friggin' out of shape.

1b. Don't complain about lines to get on water slide rides, because that might be the only chance you get to catch your breath in between the exhausting treks up the stairs, over and over and over.

2. You should check to see if your swimsuit bottoms have a hole in them BEFORE you wear them on vacation.

3. The weight of four ("well-fed", in the words of one of my friends) adults on the Tornado makes an AWESOME difference in the amount of sweet air you catch in the funnel.

3a. Remind me next time I go to Great Wolf to only invite people who are much larger than me ..... its a tad embarrassing for the skinny-minnie lifeguard to place you in the "fat" seat in the tube each time, and put the tiny children on either side of you to "balance out the weight of the tube" ......... whatever.

4. If you get thirsty enough, you will drink regular Dr. Pepper instead of diet, and not even bat an eye at the extra calories, because you know you will burn them off on the stinking stairs.

5. After leaving Great Wolf Lodge, and driving to visit friends in Dallas ..... A friend who has two boxes of Milk Duds waiting on your pillow at her house, and a case of Diet Dr. Pepper in her fridge, is a true friend, indeed.

6. Texans take 7-yr old football very seriously.

7. 8-yr old, too.

8. But when your friend's sons both win their games, and the sun is shining and the temperature is perfect, it is an awesome way to watch a football game. And although I realize the coaches take it very seriously (and maybe some of the parents, too, I'm just saying) and I doubt they would agree with me, I still say at that age, "cute" is the appropriate adjective to describe the game. Although "undefeated" is a nice adjective, as well.

8a. Much better than being at the Cotton Bowl yesterday, anyway.

9. Don't kid yourself that "who cares what I look like on the drive home, it's not like I'm going to see anyone I know."

9a. When three young men stop you at a gas station on I-35 and comment on your sweatshirt, telling you that they graduated from the same high school, that will be cool.

9b. Then they will tell you that they graduated in 2004, and you will abruptly and hurtfully realize that you are older than dirt and be quite depressed about yourself for a while.

9c. Then you will eat the two boxes of Milk Duds and not be so depressed anymore.

10. Halogen headlights should be outlawed.

(I realize that number 10 kind of came out of nowhere, but my gosh, those things are obnoxious shining into your eyes on the highway ---- obnoxious!!)

11. "I Love You, Man!" is just as funny the second time around.

(Yeah, number 11 kind of came out of nowhere, too, but who doesn't love Paul Rudd?)

12. More than Paul Rudd, I love mini-vacations. How many days until Fall Break 2010? And who wants to join us at Great Wolf Lodge?

And you thought the melting of the polar ice caps was slow

Blaine, the kids, and I, are happily ensconced in our room at the Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine, Texas. This is our second annual "Fall Break at Great Wolf Extravaganza", and we've got five (six?) other families meeting us here tomorrow morning. We drove down the night before on purpose, so we could have a relaxing, soothing evening in the hotel and then hit the water park first thing in the morning. If your definition of "relaxing" involves me getting angry with my children in the parking lot because they didn't want to help schlep the suitcases into the hotel, then our evening has indeed been that.

Further inspection revealed they only sell diet Pepsi products at this hotel. Help me.

And, do you remember how slow the aol dial up of years gone by used to be? Like, dinosaur slow? Well, it appears the free wi-fi service provided by the hotel is run by a provider called "Stayonline", who is apparently the younger, slower, more frustrating step-cousin to aol dial up.

Connecting, logging on, loading this page, and sending this update has taken almost twenty minutes. I haven't been able to access my e-mail at all. I clicked "connect to webmail" and went to the bathroom to change into my pajamas and remove my makeup. When I returned, the page still had not loaded. It's almost enough to make me flash back to the days of "You've got mail!"

It's ok, though. Blaine didn't get to visit Great Wolf with us last year because he was having radiation, so tomorrow morning we have the fun of introducing him to the infamous "toilet bowl" slide. I will call my sister and beg her to bring me some Diet DP, we will spend all day playing, and all will be right with my world again.

At least until I try to get online tomorrow night. Then, if the service isn't any faster than today, I will quite possibly have a stroke.

SPT October 13

Continuing in my October Self-Portrait Challenge Theme of "4 Random Things About Me" ..... I present Random Item #2:

Of all the places Blaine and I have ever been stationed, the one I loved most, and would most consider returning to, was Ohio. In fact, Blaine and I agree that if we didn't have family here in OKC, then Ohio is the place we would most likely have retired.

Reasons?

It is the farthest northeast we have ever lived, and therefore was the most beautiful during fall, my favorite time of year.

It is the place we lived when our children were babies (and one was even born there, becoming a Buckeye for life!) and had pinchy-squeezable cheeks and I was still the boss of their social schedule. The three years we spent there were an enormously happy time in our lives. (and hey, no one in my family had cancer yet!)

Hands down, it had more family friendly activities (farms, pumpkin patches, public parks, festivals, etc) than any other place we have ever lived.

It was the most similar to OKC, so we felt at home there.

And most importantly, for this reason:


(please ignore the fact that they are all dressed and I am still in my pajama bottoms. It was perhaps not my most productive weekend ever .....)

Some of the best girlfriends in the entire world, most of whom I met in my mother's club, while living in Ohio. They supported me in my "young mother" days, introduced me to scrapbooking, and became the best adult-women friends I have ever had. Almost all are military wives; almost all have since scattered to the wind since our time there, like me. We have been meeting, all over the country, to scrapbook together, since the year 2000. We laugh, we talk, we eat chocolate, and we make the most killer amaretto slushies you have ever tasted in your life. Our friendships extend beyond scrapbooking. We care about each other's marriages, children, and families. We watch each other's kids grow up through pictures and stories. We e-mail, we call. We share news; we ask advice. We vacation together. Two of us were unable to attend this year ...... the rest of us were sad.

I am beyond blessed to be a part of this amazing group of women.

And this year, our annual get-together was in Ohio. Really, could I ask for any better?

Panorama

Different people, I believe, are touched and comforted by different panoramas. Have a space down deep in their soul where calm and peace are available, based on what the eye can see, and what is soothing to their psyche.

Some people enjoy an ocean view ..... some people love snow-capped mountains. For others, a city scape is what makes them happy.

Me? It's farmland. I LOVE the rolling pastures; miles and miles and miles of wheat and hay bales and hard amber duram, as far as the eye can see. White farmhouses, red barns, grain silos. Throw in some horses, or cows, and I'm even happier. I can BREATHE when I can see for miles; I feel calm; it is soothing to me .... the midwest* makes me happy.

That's why I was so excited for my drive to Ohio yesterday. Eight hundred and sixty five miles of farms and ranches and pumpkin patches and corn fields. Even better is this time of year, with the turning leaves and beautiful red wildflowers (weeds?) on the side of the highway. I was ECSTATIC to make the drive yesterday and enjoy the bucolic farmland and rolling plains and open-ness. I love that view. Love it so much that in my next life,** I want to come back as a farmer's wife,*** and sit on the porch and drink coffee **** and soak in the beauty.

Guess what? On my drive to Ohio yesterday, I didn't see a single thing. Because it RAINED the entire 865 miles. The entire drive, there was never a moment that my windshield wipers were not on. Sometimes intermittently, for drizzle, and sometimes for a steady rain. And for about four hours of white-knuckle, torrential blinding downpour. I could barely see to stay in the highway, let alone enjoy the beautiful fall view out the window. And the bad weather, and slower driving speeds, stretched the drive out to almost fifteen hours. Fifteen hours of rain.

Quite frankly, I felt cheated.

I guess the good part of the day was the fact it was still fifteen hours of listening to the music **I** wanted to listen to (guilty pleasures -- Meatloaf, Bowling for Soup, Caroline's Spine ....) and only stopping according to my own potty break needs, and not listening to anyone whine for snacks, or argue in the backseat.

So yeah, despite the rain, it was still a good drive.

But I *am* hoping for sunny weather on the way back home. I have some corn fields and horse pastures to gaze over.

*Why is it called the mid-west? Does anyone know? Oklahoma is not "west" of half the country, why is it not called mid-mid? And Indiana and Illinois and Missouri and Ohio are less "west" than that. Is it because it is west of the Mississippi River? Because before the western part of the country was settled, and before California actually became a state, we were west at the time? Can anyone answer? Because honestly, these are the questions that keep me up at night.

**For the record, I don't really believe in a next life. But if I DID, I would want to come back as a farmer's wife.

***You know what? Scratch that. Wouldn't I have to work really hard as a farmer's wife? Churning butter, and tilling vegetables, and washing our clothes out in the stream? That's way too much work. I think I've decided that in my next life I would rather come back as a very wealthy person, and I could just BUY farmland and pay incredibly good looking men to work shirtless, churning my butter for me.

****I don't actually drink coffee. But if I had enough good looking shirtless men working for me, I could sit on the porch and drink me an eyeful of THAT.

Clearly I cannot tell teim (or spell)

According to Facebook, my site is "down for maintenance, and should be available again in a few hours." Facebook is "sorry for any inconvenience this has caused."

That note has been on my Facebook page since last Sunday. It is now Wednesday. According to MY mental math, that is way more than "a few hours." Facebook is also "aware of this problem and our technical team is working hard to correct it."

You would think, since I cannot waste as much time farting around on Facebook like I normally do, that I would be getting tons more stuff done around the house. Which would be a good thing, since I am leaving at 5am for a five-day scrapbooking retreat in Ohio. (Hello, beautiful autumn colors, I cannot wait to see you again .....)

But, no. Instead I am obsessively checking my computer, possibly even more than normal, to see if Facebook is "fixed" yet. Because I cannot bear that the lives of my "friends" are going on as usual and I do not know what they are doing. (Nosy, much? Why yes I am.) Thank goodness I don't play farmtown or mafia wars, because at this point my crops would have withered and died and my mafia gangsters would have .... would have .... well, whatever abandoned mafia gangters do.

Facebook, come back to me. Or at least teach me how you tell time, so I can know when "a few hours" will be.

SPT October 6

Continuing on with Lelly's Self-Portrait Challenges, the month of October is dedicated to "100 Things About Me." Well, not about Lelly, of course, but about ME. And the "100 Things About Me" list that I am supposed to have completed, and to have posted on my sidebar, because everyone knows that every blogger on the planet is required to have completed the list, and posted it on their sidebar --- pretty much everyone already has. In fact, I think it's probably a law by now.

Thankfully, however, not an enforceable law, because I alone am the solitary blogger in the world who has NOT completed my "100 Things About Me" list and posted it for all of you to read. (Um, yeah, note to self: "alone" means pretty much the same thing as "solitary", so you're kind of just rambling now ..... Maybe that could be thing #1: I don't make much sense when I speak.)

Quite frankly, I'm not sure I could come up with 100 Things About Me. I know for an indisputable FACT that I couldn't come up with 100 interesting things .....

So instead, for the four Tuesdays in the month of October, I'll give you Four Random Things according to what I've done recently.

Week #1:

One random fact about me: I have an almost pathological devotion to certain sentimental things ..... and some things, not. My wedding dress? Sold it just a few months after the wedding because I would rather have the cash. My kids' artwork? Some, I keep. But most, especially if it has any kind of paint or glitter or macaroni or shell or bead or feather or any kind of 3-D crap on it .... in the trash it goes. Old toys and clothes? Gone. I don't normally even have enough stuff to have a garage sale because I pass it on to Goodwill too quickly.

The few things I keep ... pictures, of course, hence my obsession with scrapbooking. Books that I love. I have a hard time getting rid of books that I know I will be willing to read again. Old calendars. Just seems a shame to throw out a yearly account of our life as a family.

And, I'm extremely sentimental when it comes to my hometown, memories, traditions, and old friends.



This photo was taken last weekend at our high school homecoming football game. Since it was also my 25th class reunion year, a few of us from our class met up at the stadium to watch the game together.

I am one of the obnoxious people who actually enjoyed her teenage years. Because I loved school. In large part, because of the people you see in this photo. Many others, who also mean a great deal to me, couldn't make it, of course. But in this photo .....

I see Michele, my first ever "best friend". My next door neighbor when we were in elementary school, classmate for twelve years, fellow band and Drill Team member. And still one of the ones I look forward to seeing most because she is silly and goofy and makes me laugh the entire time I am with her.

I see Jani, another friend since kindergarten. We played french horn together for years, and were also in Drill Team together. Jani is one of the few people who kept in touch with me (remember, this was in the days before cell phones or e-mail) the entire time I was moving around the country with Blaine. And now she lives three blocks away from me and our girls go to school together, and are themselves developing a friendship that I dearly hope they will cherish as much as I cherish mine with Jani.

I see Lisa, yet another friend I went to school with from kindergarten on. Head cheerleader, star athlete, brainiac .... and used to be, a little intimidating to me. As adults, I've gotten to know her better than when we were young, and realized I was silly to be so intimidated. Not because she wasn't all of those things -- she was -- just that she is also kind and honest and funny, as well.

I see Marla, my comrade in arms in junior high. Who knows how many hours she and I spent on the telephone in junior high??? Her family took me on vacation, and for several years I considered her house my home away from home. We discovered boys about the same time (although truthfully, boys discovered her way before they discovered me!) and now our kids go to school together --- Kendrie even played soccer on her daughter's team the first year we moved back here. I don't spend as much time with Marla as I would like now, and I miss her.

I see Carla and Mary and Jerry, more friends from high school ....

I see Louis --- well, no explanation needed for Louis, who I've known since the sixth grade, and who has been one of my best friends for over 25 years. Many a lunch break, and many a phone call, has been spent catching up on each other's news and lives; many a Sonic drink was consumed in high school, trying to decipher the teenage relationships around us; and many an Amaretto Sour has been shared as adults, for no other reason than we enjoy one another's company more than just about anyone else on the planet. (Oh, wait, I just explained him anyway, didn't I?)

I am sentimental when it comes to these relationships .... in a fierce, almost possessive way. And I probably don't tell these people as often as I should how I feel about them, but make no mistake .... I am grateful. Sentimental and grateful, at the same time.

Updates

1. Big changes coming. Thanks to people willing to help (shout out to Scott in Utah!) and the beauty of independent web design ......

2. Honest mistake on the credit card. I had put the wrong card in the ATM machine and when I entered the {wrong} pin number, it flagged my account as suspicious. I appreciate the vigilance of my credit card company, but it would have been good to know I had been flagged, and deemed unable to use my card, **BEFORE** I was standing in the check out line of the commissary with $690 in groceries. That's all I'm saying.

3. The contractor never showed on Thursday. Two thumbs down. But he called on Friday and apologized, and said he would start on Saturday. Two thumbs up. He never showed up on Saturday. Two thumbs down. But he called on Saturday night and apologized and said he would start on Monday. I'll wait until tomorrow morning to see if I should give another two thumbs up. Or not.

4. Camera started working again just as mysteriously as it quit working. Bizarre. Frustrating. Worrisome. I am helping to photograph the 2nd annual "Go, Mitch, Go" Golf Tournament Fundraiser tomorrow and it will be BEYOND embarrassing if my auto-focus simply quits in the middle of the tournament.

And in other news .....

5. I was able to spend some of this weekend scrapbooking with a group of ladies at a local church. It was a lot of fun and there was chocolate and all was well. I stayed up until 2:30 am organizing my photos, in preparation for my annual get-away this upcoming weekend, and then realized the only place left to sleep was in the sanctuary. On a pew. And my body is wider than a church pew, I discovered. So if sleeping in the sanctuary, on a pew, during a scrapbooking getaway, isn't sacrilegious enough, I'm pretty sure cursing when you get a cramp in your leg at 4am is.

UPDATED TO ADD:

6. "Account Unavailable
Your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience." .... the status of my Facebook account. Going on 24 hours now. Clearly, *my* definition of "a few hours" is not the same as Facebook's definition!

A freakin' awesome day

1. I made it as far as step ONE in fixing my blog before running into a glitch and having to ask for more help.

2. My credit card was declined at the grocery store today.

3. The contractor cashed our $1000.00 deposit check and then never showed up to work today, nor did anyone in his office answer the phone all day, nor did anyone return our calls.

4. Half-way through Kellen's football game tonight, the auto-focus on my camera quit working.

So, you got anything? Anything at all you'd like to throw at me? Locusts? Famine? Plague? Because really, the mood I'm in, I can take it.

Bring it on.

Still ...

PS. If you have a second, send up a positive thought for Blaine this afternoon. He's going in for a root canal on a tooth ..... in a location that the dentist told him previously "they could never get to, in a million years". He can't open his mouth wide enough due to scar tissue and radiation for them to reach this tooth easily, and short of the doctor using a crow bar and dynomite, we're a little curious how they're going to make it happen. Promises to be a fun day in the dentist's chair for Blaine!

********************************************

Still cutting.

Still pasting.

Still dragging archived links and photos over.

Still working up my nerve to attempt this fancy search and replace script that one of my readers was kind enough to force her computer-savvy husband to write for me .... (I feel pretty special about it, to be honest)

Thanks for not giving up on me ...

In the meantime, if you're just dying for something to read (which I highly doubt, what with, you know, you guys have LIVES and everything ....) here is an old update of mine that will, at the very least, give you something to pass the time for ten minutes ...

Long Lost Art of Letter Writing (at least how it applies to Kendrie on treatment ...)

Lunch, anyone?

Sept. 28 is a good day to head to Chili’s and have a margarita, some fajitas and maybe even some molten chocolate cake.

That’s because Chili’s restaurants across the U.S. will donate 100% of their Monday profits to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The date is also the culmination of Chili’s Create-A-Pepper to Fight Childhood Cancer campaign, which runs through the month of September.

Chili’s has raised more than $25 million so far in its 10-year, $50 million pledge to the research hospital. The donation will be the largest from a single partner campaign in St. Jude’s history. The 2008 campaign raised more than $6 million for St. Jude.

Throughout September, Chili’s patrons design chili pepper coloring sheets for display at restaurants; buy T-shirts and customized keys; and make online donations. The program started in Memphis in 2002 with seven Memphis-area Chili’s, but the chain took the promotion nationwide in 2004.

Chili's and St. Jude opened the Chili's Care Center, a seven-floor, 340,000-square-foot facility, in 2007. It is the first medical building on the St. Jude campus to bear the name of a corporate partner. Chili's is the flagship brand of Dallas-based Brinker International (NYSE: EAT).

Based in Memphis, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is a leading pediatric treatment and research facility focused on children's catastrophic diseases. It employs about 3,300 in Memphis.

So very cool

I'm sure it will be her favorite of all time:

Purple Rock and Roll.

Well said

Extremely well-written .....

The Savages

I would comment more, but I'm too busy cutting and pasting.

Sacrifice the limb to save the life

I'm going to be MIA around here for the next week or so.

I received a reminder yesterday that due to my old photo storage site shutting down, the first five year's worth of my journal entries will become the internet equivalent of a boat anchor in about four weeks. That's when the storage site (that I have faithfully paid for, every single month, since November of 2003, not that I'm freaking BITTER or anything) is being shut down and all my photos along with it.

I thought I had dodged this bullet by upgrading my storage site, but I found out this week I had not.

The photos have actually been saved, but they will disappear from my blog forever if I don't manually change the url addresses of almost two thousand photos ... one by one .... by hand .... individually .... manually .... yes, I know you know what the word "manually" means, but I feel the need to drive home the point. Do I really want to spend several hundred hours poring through my archives and changing each address? No, no I do not.

So at this point, I feel my options are threefold:

1) Accept that the blog entries themselves aren't going anywhere and learn to live with almost two thousand little red x's, where the photos for the last five years should be.

2) Accept that this blog has run its course, do nothing, and shut down the site. Then spend the time I normally spend writing here doing other things (Blaine: "Kristie, let me introduce you to the vacuum cleaner!" .... and relieving myself of the anxiety I feel when I have nothing to blog about.

3) Accept that I need to be a little more proactive about transferring my content over to a site of my own before it is all deleted. This is the option I am most seriously considering, but I have to get all my ducks in a row, so to speak, before I can move forward with this plan.

So excuse me while I spend the next few days (FINALLY! This is what I get for procrastinating .....) transferring the remainder of my blog archives over from Caringbridge. And hope that the web design team I'm consulted can really and truly save everything as easily (although not cheap ...) as they say they can.

I don't want to quit blogging. I enjoy doing this. I consider it my personal journal and love the fact my children's childhoods are being documented in this way.

But I have to be realistic about the time and money I'm willing to put into this. This is not a business blog or a blog for money or a blog for ads or a blog that really accomplishes anything besides for my own pleasure .... its just my silly little personal blog. For now, I'm sacrificing the limb (updating for the next week or two) in the hopes I can save the life of the blog.

Please excuse the absence.

I can tell a lot of time and thought went into this

Kellen: "Mom, for Halloween, I need you to get me a belt and a sword."

Kristie: "Um, ok. What are you going to be?"

Kellen: "A dude with a belt and a sword!"

It is done. And I feel better now.

We attended our high school's first home football game of the season last night. It was a fun night, seeing old friends, cheering for our team .... they had a Hall of Honor presentation ... fireworks .... Brayden sang in the school-wide choir .... marching band ..... marching band ........ marching band .......

With the new "band instructor helper person" there ...... who caused me a knot in my stomach every time I looked over at him. I think this is a perfect example of karma, and how what goes around will usually come right back around and bite you on the butt.

After the band finished up the national anthem before the game, he was standing by himself in the band section of the stadium, a mere fifty feet from me. And I could easily have avoided him, ignored him, just gone on my merry way. But, he was like a shiny distraction, in the corner of my eye, and I couldn't get past it. I kept looking over, wondering, "Would he recognize me? Would he even remember me? Would he remember what a jerk I was to him?"

Have you ever walked around town with a stain on the boob of your shirt, and it bothers you? Even though nobody else notices, and nobody else cares, it's all you can think about? And you can't even concentrate while you're having a conversation with someone because all you can think about is the giant stain on your boob and how you're wondering if they're noticing but they're just too polite to say anything and in the meantime you're missing the entire conversation because you keep telling yourself nobody cares but you know and YOU care and its soooooo uber-distracting????

Yeah. It was EXACTLY like that. Only not at all.

Finally I gave up, and walked over to him. Held out my hand, re-introduced myself, apologized for being such a jerk (also known in many circles as "immature, self-absorbed teenager") in high school, and told him I was happy he would (possibly ... clearly, the plans for his place at the school are not my business) would be teaching my son in beginner's band.

He looked at me, smiled, and hugged me. We chatted for a few minutes.

He was so much more gracious than I ever would have been.

Thank you GOD that it is done, and I can move on without being embarrassed to run into him again. Because its highly likely, and (repeat after me) I just LOVE living in a small town!

Because I am the best football mom EVER!!

I am so proud of my son.

Here he is, catching a pass to make a two-point conversion in tonight's game:



It's really a shame not all boys are as lucky, to have a parent like me, to take such awesome photos of their accomplishments. Truly, have you ever seen such wonderful photography skills????

No, I didn't think so.

On second thought, that might be my son. Or it might not. It's so blurry, who would know?

Can anyone even tell??

No, I didn't think so.

"I think it would be cool to learn an instrument"

Updated to add: Jeanette, you're right ... I don't even let my kids drink out of public water fountains, so the thought of them sharing a mouthpiece on a rental instrument makes my heart stop. :)

Its a brand new instrument, on a rent-to-own basis. Kellen is the only person who plays it; he carries it to and from the school each day. Which is a bit of a hassle since we walk, but maybe the money we save on gas can go towards the saxophone ... who knew they were so expensive??? I shudder to think what bigger instruments must cost!
***************************************************

I'm not sure if I mentioned previously, but Kellen quit piano after a year and a half of lessons.

It liked to have killed me.

Not because I think he was any kind of prodigy, but because, as you might remember from when I blogged about it here, music was such a big part of my life growing up, and then I quit, and have regretted it ever since.

I played for seven years before quitting, and Kellen had only been at it a year and a half, but I know that at some point, at some time in the future, he will regret it too.

Typically, like thousands of parents before me, I got tired of the "practice or else!" routine. I tried reason, I tried begging, I tried demanding, I tried bribing. Nothing worked.

What bothered me even more is that Kellen actually loved playing the piano, and would have happily continued lessons as long as I would have let him .... he just balked at practicing. So I balked at paying for the lessons. Clearly, a lose-lose situation, so after several months of fussing and arguing, we agreed he could quit after the spring recital last May.

Kendrie is plugging along, but is also starting to be pretty lax about practicing, which discourages me. But again, the choice is hers --- if she wants to continue lessons, she has to do her part, which is the homework.

Anyway!!

Last May, shortly after Kellen quit piano, he brought home the "elective" form for middle school this year. He had already filled it out with the classes he was interested in taking and needed me to sign it so he could turn it back in.

Although I have talked to the kids about my experiences in junior high and high school band, and how much I loved it, until this happened, I was still surprised to see that he had selected Beginners Band.

"Really?" I asked, "You want to take band?"

"Well, yeah," Kellen replied, "I think it would be cool to learn an instrument."

WHAT THE HELL WAS THE PIANO?????!!??

Deep down, I'll admit, I was thrilled. Maybe he really loves music, and piano just wasn't his gig. Hopefully the year and a half he took lessons will give him a wee bit of a foundation for band. If we're lucky, it will be a great group of kids, with a great director, and this will be the beginning of a wonderful, lengthy hobby/skill/talent.



Or, maybe he'll quit after one year, and all that instrument rental money will be in the toilet, who knows?

But school started, and band started, and so far, so good.



I had gone in on "Instrument Rental" night and met the director. I mentioned to him that I had played in this same school band twenty-five years ago ....

He knows my old director, the one that I loved so much.

I got excited, talking to the current director. He seems like a nice guy, and I started imagining Kellen doing the same things I did so many years ago, in the same band, and loving it as much as I did.

I imagined him practicing on the same football field, and marching in the same stadium. I imagined him having early morning practices, just like I did. I imagined him marching up and down the streets of our small town, just like I did.

Man, I LOVE living in a small town!!!!

Every day after school I ask Kellen "how was band today?" and the first two weeks of school, he had a good report every day. Then apparently the director had an illness in his family, then had some health issues himself, and missed quite a bit of school. Kellen started saying, "We had a sub" way more than I liked, and a few days were "free time" to read or visit or whatever. I understand these things happen, but I couldn't help but hope something would change. I want Kellen to love band just as much as I did ....

Then, Kellen came home last week and said, "We had a new sub today who knows a lot about music. He's going to be a sort of helper for us."

And I thought, "Oh, good! I'm glad to hear that!"

"How did it go? Did you like the helper?" I asked.

"Yeah. In fact, he said he used to teach at this school and he might know you." Kellen stated.

"He might know ME???" I asked, wondering who on earth ............

"Well, that he might know some of our parents, if any of our parents were in the band ...."

I sat for a minute, thinking ....

Wondering .....

Realizing ......

Aaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwww, no. HECK, no.

Yep, it was the same director who took over for my beloved director when I was in high school. The director who I was such a little obnoxious shit towards, and am ashamed to this day of how I treated him. I have not spoken to him since high school, but have oftentimes envisioned the apology I will make if I ever encounter him again.

Looks like I just might get my chance.

Man, I HATE living in a small town.