The last few weeks have been…busy.  That’s the only real word to describe it.  Busy.

For Spring Break, the BoyChild and I went to Grapevine, Texas to visit LegoLand.  We had a good time, but I was a little disappointed.  I thought it was an all day, Six Flags, sort of place.  Instead it an hour and a half of Lego excitement and then the BoyChild was ready to go.

So, I got on the inter-webs to figure out what else we could do.  There was actually quite a bit but because it was Monday, several of the things we’d have chosen to do were closed, i.e. the Train Museum, the Farmer’s Market.  Instead, we went rock climbing.  And while there is no conclusive proof *I* strapped on a harness and actually climbed that wall, REALLY I did!

I did have the forethought to take a picture of the BoyChild while he was rock climbing:

And despite all appearances to the contrary, the BoyChild had a good time!

We’d never done that before.  The BoyChild and I off somewhere by ourselves.   It was fun.  He was wanting to be helpful.  Wanting to do things by himself.  I let him go get ice.  Let him go get a cinnimon roll for himself and a coffee for me in the lobby.  He wanted to be independant. And I’m working on letting him be.

We returned home safe and sound.  No breakdowns, no melt downs and no flat tires.  David stayed home because he had to work.

Later that week we went to the Museum of Osteology .

Did you know it it legal to buy human finger bones?  And the going rate for them is $10?  Neither did I.  Though I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want such a thing.

The next week I ran in my first 15k race.  It was.  Honestly.  The 10 most miserable miles I’d ever run.  It was in El Reno which is the start of the Great Plains.  And it was HOT.  Miserable hot.  I’d just had the fabulous Dr. Tom put puffy stuff in my shoes and I didn’t put any moleskin in my shoes or on my feet.  Miserable.  The great plains are noted for being FLAT but they are really rolling hills which never end.  So I’d think, I’ll walk when I get to the bottom of this hill, but it just never seemed to stop.

After that race I got into the car and drove to Roaring River State park in Missouri for the memorial service for a friend’s father.  My friend Jessica drove us their, because I didn’t think I’d be able to drive myself.  And despite being in horrible pain, exhausted and having horrible blisters, it was fun.  Roaring River is a beautiful place.  It was great to be with my friend and offer her emotional support.  Jessica is a great traveling companion.

Then the next week I ran 11 miles on my long run.  And it was o.k.  No new, or overly painful blisters.

The BoyChild and I continue to get along well with our new normal.  We are talking about getting someone to help me with him over the summer, and I think I’ve found someone, but it makes me a little sad because we’ve enjoyed our time together with our new normal.

My FIRST half-marathon is the 29th!  I’m nervous and excited at the same time.  I’ve worked hard and last weekend ran 12 miles.  I think I’m ready.

So if you don’t hear from me again this month, think good thoughts for me on the 29th.

Last weekend my friend and I ran in the Run Lucky 5k race.

We didn’t make great time, but we did o.k.

That’s us near the finish line.

While we were there, the BoyChild and I went into the running store. I’d been there before buying shoes and stuff, but that day I was on a mission to find some shoe laces that he didn’t have to tie.

Among the BoyChild’s various problems are his fine motor skills. He CAN tie his shoes but he is painfully slow at it and doesn’t always do a good job of it so they don’t stay tied long. As a result, he never ties his shoes, walks around with them untied and ultimately we have to replace them because they become so torn up they look worse than they do when they are just untied.  This is a battle I had chosen not to fight and I bit my tongue every time I saw him shuffling around in his shoes looking like a street person.

The woman at the running store showed us a product called Yankz.  It’s a system whereby you don’t have to tie your shoes but can still tighten the shoe laces easily.   Among the BoyChild’s other problems are that he doesn’t like crowds.  And this place was crowded and busy.  The BoyChild and I left David to buy the new shoelaces while we skedaddled out of there.  After we met up with David again he said, “the girl offered to put them on Jacob’s shoes because it can be a little complicated.”  So back into the store we went and she started working on his shoes.  The BoyChild was obviously uncomfortable so I said, “can we move over there to get away from some of these crowds?” But instead she took us into the back of the store, where there were no people, but lots and lots of shoe boxes and proceeded to fix the BoyChild’s shoes.

I was so excited about this that I wrote to the Vice President of the Parent Student Group to tell her about them.  They are always asking us to let them know if we find something, or someone, or a program that might help our students so they can share the information with all the other parents.  She wrote me a lovely note telling me that they had had the same problem with their child who is at the BoyChild’s school, that she thought a lot of the kids have this same problem and thanked me for letting her know.

In the spirit of friendliness and happiness I sent a copy of my e-mail to the VP of the PST to the store where we purchased the shoes and thanked them for their employees lovely help and the recommendation of the lovely product.

Well by the middle of the week, there was a problem.  The BoyChild had managed to lose a part of the shoelace system that was integral to keeping them tied.  I sent Yankz an e-mail asking if it was possible to get that one small piece replaced.  I think I did this on Wednesday morning.

TODAY.  Friday.  Two days later.  I had a package in the mail from Yankz when I left my house to head to work.  It was another pair of  laces as well as the small piece we were missing.

I think I too will be wearing Yanks shoelaces on my running shoes because man I love GREAT customer service!

Full disclosure.  This was not a sponsored ad.  I did receive a free pair of Yankz shoelaces and the little triangle piece we lost but it is only because they have great customer service not because they promised to give them to me in exchange for a raving blog entry.

I’ve been following Anna’s voyage as she and her family navigate the roughwaters following the death of her son.

In a way it reminds me of my own situation with my GirlChild though she is just unavailable to me due to her various problems.

Anna has all these great pictures of her and her family.  I use to be good about taking a lot of pictures and when I miss the GirlChild my pictures give me a lot of comfort.  But I was looking at some pictures this weekend and I realized that I’ve not taken as many pictures as much lately.  I really need to do that.

We have a zillion cameras around the house; from a really nice DSL to disposable.  I’ve just not gotten as much joy out of taking pictures as I use to.  I will rectify that.

Herewith is a picture I took of the BoyChild on Sunday on the way to the Lucky Run.

Yeah I know I need to work on my photo skillzs.

Yesterday I ran in the Run Lucky 5k race.

This is how I looked before I started:

I felt a little ridiculous but was trying to get into the spirit of things.

This is me at the end. Not really caring that I looked ridiculous.

Funny story: My running partner and I got to the first “marker” and were so impressed with our time. We got to the second marker and were high-fiving one another at how fast we were going. At the third marker we said, “we’re almost finished!” And then we got to the fourth marker and realized it was the kilometer markers and not mile markers. We weren’t doing especially well on our time at all.

It was for a good cause. My knees hurt almost not at all. And my time didn’t completely suck. A good day by anyone’s estimation!

Remember when I posted this?  Cause I thought someone in my office was screwing with me.

I just noticed this today:

I guess someone else was having trouble figuring out which was decaf and which was regular.

I’ve not been doing a very good job of writing in my blog.  I have all kinds of excuses but I’ve been floundering around trying to find our new normal.

You see my husband, after spending most of the last 17 years staying at home taking care of our kids (with a few years of employment mixed in here and there) has gone back to work.  It’s a temporary position, so if anyone has a full-time job for a 55 year old, over-educated, hard working, good man, let me know.

I’ve had to begin doing things I haven’t done in…awhile.  Things like laundry and dishes and cooking and just stuff.  Which along with my running.  Has been sucking the life out of me.  I did 8 miles on Saturday;  go me!

Now, instead of just getting myself up and out the door, I’ve got to get myself AND the BoyChild up and out the door and to school.  All on time.  This has been a bit of a challenge as I’m not always my best in the mornings and neither is the BoyChild.

I’ve not done too badly.  There was the morning I hit the snooze bar on the alarm and awoke at 8:30 when the BoyChild was suppose to actually be at school.  Not my finest moment.  I was so embarrassed I seriously thought about just calling us both in sick and staying home that day.  But I got up with my shame and he made it to school at 9:15.

And then there were the three days last week that the school was closed because 1/2 the teachers and 1/3 of the students were sick with the flu.  We did not (knock-wood) succumb to that particular illness.  Though we’ve had our own version of the plague running rampant through our house.

We’ve set up some new systems.  Three laundry baskets in the hallway.  Pretty, I know, but necessary; one for whites, one for darks and one for pinks/reds.  The dark and the white basket has it’s own little washable bag just for socks and there is another bag for my bras.  Almost every day we do at least one load of laundry.  I often wonder (especially since about half my clothes go to the cleaners) how three people manage to make so much laundry, but we do.  Our solution is the new system.  It seems to be working pretty well and isn’t dramatically different than what we did before.  Before we each had our own laundry baskets and David would gather clothes from each.  This new method saves time.  The bags for the socks are to try to combat the problem of the missing socks.  If we can get them into a washable bag and wash them together maybe they won’t disappear as dramatically as they seemed to before.  It’s worth a try; right?

We’ve been more diligent about making menus for the week.  We try to make enough so that we can freeze half and have two meals.  This is not only economical, but it is a huge time saver when we have something to do in the evenings.  We’ve been using the crock pot ALOT.  Throwing the meal into the crock pot the night before, putting it on in the morning and coming home to dinner that all we have to do is make rice or noodles or a veggie is heavenly.   We clean the kitchen before we go to bed and David unloads the dishwasher while he’s waiting for the coffee to make in the morning.

I’ve been having to make the drive to all the doctor’s appointments, dentist, orthodentist, allergy shots and the like.  I try to group those appointments as much as I can.  So today for instance, while I couldn’t get a late afternoon orthodentist appointment, I did set it on the same day he has his allergy shots.  That way I only have to make one trip instead of two.

On days he doesn’t have appointments, I pick the BoyChild up from school at 3:15, we go back to my office.  He does his homework, eats a snack from my desk and then gets to play on the computer until it’s time to go home.  On the days I run, David comes and picks him up and takes him home after he gets off work.  On days I can’t pick him up at 3:15, we have the option of sending him to after-care.  This all works pretty well for us because the BoyChild’s school is relatively close to my office and David’s job isn’t far from our home or my office.

The BoyChild and I seem to have settled into a routine. It seems to be working for us.  David seems to be having a little more difficult time of it.  That he doesn’t get to spend as much time with the BoyChild as he did seems to be the hardest on him.  Now a lot of things have to be done in the evenings when we would be watching tv or playing Uno or something.  Before, he would say, “let’s leave the dishes until tomorrow and I’ll do them so we can do X.”  Now, we have to do the dishes or tomorrow will turn into a nightmare.

I managed to get my clothes to the dry cleaners this week.  David said he could pick them up when they are ready.

I’m going to find someone to clean house ever week or two.  I think we can keep up with the day to day cleaning but I’d rather not spend my weekends doing the heavy stuff.

We are working on our new normal.  It’s not been horrible but it has been different.

The BoyChild is going for a sleep over tonight. That means to me that he will leave school with his friend, go to his friend’s house where he will spend the night and we will pick him up about noon tomorrow.

For most of you with young children, this is probably a normal sort of activity.  For us, it is BIG, HUGE, a big step. . .somewhere.

He’s not really been at a place where I would feel comfortable sending him to spend the night somewhere else before.  He was prone to angry, violent, meltdowns.  He was defiant.  He didn’t like to be touched or bumped or brushed which could easily lead to an angry, violent meltdown.  Those have mostly stopped.  He is quiet, gentle and cooperative most of the time these days.

He takes three different medications some twice a day and some only once a day.  That’s assuming he’s not in allergy season taking two or three different allergy meds.  He’s not old enough, or mature enough, to manage them himself.  I sometimes have a tough time remembering which ones he takes when.  I’ve not had anyone offer to take on that burden before.

The BoyChild has never been invited to spend the night by another child.  It isn’t something that kids at his school seem to do.  There are so few of them and they live in different parts of the metro; and when I say “the metro” I’m not attempting to be clever.  As near as I can tell, the kids come from about a 30 mile radius of the school.  Not exactly conducive to running next door to play.

The BoyChild doesn’t seem very comfortable inviting others to our house.  As we were leaving Ash Wednesday services the other night, the BoyChild pointed to another boy who was also leaving and said, “that’s so-and-so from Religious Education.”  When I inquired whether he liked so-and-so he said, “sure.”  When I asked if he would like to invite so and so over to play after RE one day he said, “nope.”  But he couldn’t really articulate a reason why not.

He has gone to other children’s houses to play for the day, or the afternoon, but he’s always come home.  This is a new beginning for us.  But it’s scary for me.

David and I have been watching the Netflix original series, Lilyhammer.

The show is about an American Mafia guy who agrees to testify against his old gang in exchange for witness protection and relocation.  He choses Lilyhammer, Norway having seen in while watching the Olympics.  My husband tells me the star, Steven Van Zandt was in “The Sopranos,” but I didn’t watch that show, so it doesn’t mean much to me.

This is a quirky little show that I will watch more of if they decide to make more.

Most of the dialogue is in Norwegian with English subtitles.  I had the volume low because “hey I don’t understand Norwegian!”  My husband reached out to turn the volume up.  I asked him if he was doing that under the theory that if you speak louder and slower a foreigner will understand better.

Last week the BoyChild had a social studies project due.  My husband and I have four degrees between us (2 each) and WE weren’t entirely sure what the project called for.  We made the BoyChild do most of the work, but with us telling him what to do, i.e. “google the President and download a picture.”  We made him do the cutting.  We googled stuff and I made him write some of it down and then type it up.  We cleaned it up for him and then he cut out the pictures and the words and pasted it to the poster board.  I STILL don’t have any idea if it is what the teacher wanted.  I feel like we did more of the project than did the BoyChild and god knows I don’t want to go down that road.  But I really don’t think he could have done it without our help.  The instructions said we were going to have to be “actively involved” in this project.  So maybe it is what we were suppose to do.  I feel a little uneasy about it though.

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We adopted the BoyChild a dog this weekend.  He’s still trying out names, but I think he’s settled on Bugsy.  We’ve got our dog, Tandi, and the Lab Rescue’s dog, Chester, but they are big and old and lazy.  The BoyChild wanted something small, friendly, playful and His.   He really wanted a puppy.   I just didn’t want to do that puppy thing again.  I was also a little concerned that it would become my dog or David’s dog because puppies require so much care that the BoyChild wouldn’t be able to give a puppy.   I’m hoping Bugsy will become “his” dog.  I’ve had two or three dogs in my lifetime that filled some void and were “my” dogs and I cried when they died, or had to be put down, and will still cry if I think about them too much.  I want the BoyChild to have that kind of dog.

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I did six miles on the treadmill yesterday.  I have come to hate working out on the treadmill.  This is new for me.  I used to love being on the treadmill in the safety of the health club.  Now, I’ve gotten use to dealing with traffic, people, the sidewalks and all there other dangers outside.  I also hate the cold too.  The cold beat me yesterday.  My average pace was 15:10 min/mile.  Not bad for a nearly 50 year old woman who smokes and has bad knees.

Yesterday I called the cable company and cancelled my cable and my home land-line.

We did it.

We took that plunge.

We’ve been talking about it for awhile.

I’ve been an advocate of getting rid of the land-line for a long time.  David wasn’t.  We’d had that telephone number for a very long time.  More than 20 years anyway.  But we weren’t using it.  Pretty much ever.  We cancelled caller id because no one ever called us on it who we needed to talk to.  I put the answering machine on it, and told people to call our cell phones or leave a message.  The only messages we’ve got in months are people wanting us to vote for them in the form of robo calls or people wanting to lower our interest rates.  Again in the form of robo calls.

The cable was a little more complicated.  When I suggested that we cancel it David and the BoyChild both let out screams that could be heard in the next county.  David began investigating the different options.  We bought a Roku.  Then we bought another.  We signed up for Amazon Prime and changed our Netflix to streaming video only.  David asked for and received at Christmas a USB TV tuner.  You can record over-the-air TV and burn it to a DVD.

So I called them yesterday and cancelled everything except our high speed internet.  It will save us $105 a month (actually probably more because this last bill says on it “Upcoming Price Changes” and the guy told me it would be going up another $15 or $20 a month with their price changes.  Because we all know they weren’t going to lower the prices.

The BoyChild will miss Cartoon Network.  But we’ve stopped watching television during the week, so he won’t miss it a whole lot.  And I hate the shows on CN so I don’t see it as a great loss.

So what do you think?  Anyone else take the plunge?  Got an suggestions or words of advice?