Just a quick PSA

For those of you that miss me and I know who you are.. I am just spending some quality time with the Waterman. The little dude has taken off for the night to spend some time with his best buddy, so that leaves the Waterman and myself to a night and day of kidlessness. Oh what shall we do with ourselves??

Seriously though going on a boat trip tomorrow to the Eastern Shore.. Taking the camera so when we get back there will be pictures.

Have a great Memorial Day everyone!!!

PS.. Ann Marie IS my real given name..

I love Joe!

This is Joe.



Isn't Joe handsome??


I have loved Joe since the day I was born. He protected me from the big bad things in the world and was my super hero. He has bailed me out of jail, he chased off a bad boy or two.. maybe three, he loved me even when he couldn't like me very much, he taught me to ride a bike, throw a base ball like a boy, start a go cart (granted he broke my nose while trying to do so), he taught me how to be me and not what everyone (erhmm my mother) wanted me to be. I could keep up with this list forever but I won't bore you.

Joe bought me this today. I see many many grilled things in my future. Thanks Joe!!!

Joe hasn't always been Joe to me, for the first 33 years of my life he was just Daddy.

I think I have finally lost my mind..

My dreams.. I can't take them anymore. They aren't really scary just weird and they are starting to get to me.

I am not someone who has ever looked into what my dreams mean or what I am trying to tell myself but this is getting out of hand. To be honest I do not even know where to begin to analyze what is going on in my gray matter as I snooze.

One I can pretty much figure out. It was easy actually. Binky got pregnant, and when I took her to the vet she was pregnant alright with 13 mix breeds they were going to have to abort. (keep in mind Binky is all of 3 lbs she couldn't handle 13 of anything inside of her) Well I understood all of this and told the vet I would do anything to save my Binky that the money from 13 pups was not worth it. That is when he told me that they were mix breeds and I couldn't sell them anyway. Enter weird part of dream, she was pregnant with 3 books, 2 coffee cups, and 8 other inanimate objects. I remember the books and coffee most simply because those are two of my addictions and I was thinking that it was all my fault!

If you don't think I am addicted to books since Monday afternoon I have read two novels and I am starting on the third.. Yes you counted right that is a novel a day. As for the coffee I never am without coffee. EVER.

I figure that was my brains way of telling me that I am spending too much time with these things and not enough time with real life, the problem to me is that IS real life.

I also have dreamt that I was pregnant NOT EVEN POSSIBLE PEOPLE and that someone I used to be close to was pregnant, in a way you could say she is part of the family, kinda. What is up with all this pregnancy dreaming!! I know that pregnancy does not mean pregnancy in your dreams but I have NO idea what it means.

This past weekend I had to get up and go outside to the garage to make sure that the Waterman was really out there because repeatedly people kept coming in the house telling me he wasn't there, or he had left, or he wasn't where I thought he was, this was all in a dream and granted he was right where I left him when I found him, it was still weird!

This morning was what put the icing on the cake. A friend that passed away 2 years ago or so came to see me this morning. Which is fine.. I suppose.. but when you tell me that you are coming back to visit with my 9 year old after he gets home from school today I am not so sure it is fine anymore!!! No no no.. GO AWAY.. Take your note you have in your hand that allows you to see him and go back to where ever you came from! You are NOT visiting with my son.. even if your note says that you are now his new dad GO AWAY!!!

I did not say any of those things in my dream but I was still thinking them. What I did say was today was not a good day in a very shaky voice and walked back into my house and woke up.

It is now 7 am.. and I need a drink.

I can admit when I am wrong

Apparently my Chosen Sister (I stole the term from here.)had to set me straight this morning. She was a "Clique Hopper" too. This I knew and I think what I said was not communicated well. I must say we do learn by making mistakes though because I had no idea that she had gotten in "trouble" in 4th grade by a very enlightened teacher who realized she was getting into a very small clique that would ultimately lead her down a path of self centeredness and close mindedness. I am not saying that she would have turned out that way because later in school years I think due to life she would have changed. I just think this teacher realized these three little girls (that is what they were at the time) were closing themselves off to the rest of the world. Thank goodness for this teacher because there is a chance if it had not been for her that my sister would not have chosen me. I should send her a thank you card because that one act 25 years ago may have molded part of my life.

When I said that she didn't understand my "clique hopping" I was incorrect. She understood it. She just didn't understand why I would chose to hop into a crowd of not so desirables. There were lots of reasons for this. I think some of it was for shock effect. Some of it was for the bad girl image. Some of it was so I could do the things that some of the straight laced cliques would never have done with me. Some of it was for safety.. like I said lots of reasons. I don't regret it, none of it. I would not change a thing because ultimately everything I have ever done in my life has brought me to where I am today.

So to my chosen sister I am sorry that I made it sound like you didn't understand me, because you did more than anyone else in my life. LHK

This is all leading to something I promise.

I read on a blog the other day a question. I can not remember the exact verbiage of the question but it was pretty much this "If you could live your dream life what would it be?"

I am living my dream life. There is nothing I would change (well I might be living in a bigger house). The fact is I am not sure that many people would agree with me if you knew my entire situation but the deal is I am happy, my children are happy, and my husband is happy. Isn't that what life is all about? I have a great job that I love. I love the people I work with (well 99% of them) and I love the work I do. I live in an awesome town even though to some people it maybe small town (it is). I married a man that I have loved in some capacity for my entire adult life. I have life long friends who are all over the US and even one that is far far away. I have people who come here and read this blog who I have never met, who I have never emailed, the extinct of our relationship is leaving each other comments on our blogs, but the fact is I care about them and they care about me. Read my comments if you don't believe me. I have a friend who I have spoken to on the phone maybe twice, the rest is email but I know if I called her today and told her I was in trouble she would be there for me.

I may not have enough money to pay all my debt off in the bank, I may not have a house big enough to hold all my books, I may not have all 4 of my kids under one roof, I may not have the fanciest car in town, but I am richer now than I ever imagined I would be.

To me that is a dream life if I ever heard of one.

Torn between to lovers is like a..

ball and chain..

Or is it trying to love two women.. old country song in my head sorry and before anyone has heart failure there is nothing wrong with me and the Waterman. We are fine, wonderful to be exact. This is about my youngest child, before your next heart failure he doesn't have lovers or women. What he has is two friends that are tearing him apart!

Why can't kids these days realize that it is OK to have more than one friend? Why can't they understand that it is ok to hang out with people from other cliques? When I was in high school, that was the odd thing about me I suppose, there wasn't a group I couldn't hang with. I thought it was because I was too weird to belong to any one group at the time but looking back on that time of my life there wasn't any groups that really shunned me. I was just strange enough that everyone wanted me in so they could try to figure me out I suppose. Well that and I knew where to get all the "illegals". I was what I like to call a "Clique Hopper" and later in life that helped when I started bar hopping! The role of "Clique Hopper" was never understood by this person. Which is totally crazy because SHE was a "Clique Hopper" too. I suppose what freaked her out was I would hop into cliques that were dangerous territory for her. They were probably dangerous for everyone there and I am quite sure that I left more than a few brain cells around those cliques, but it was high school you are supposed to do that right?

Anyway my point here is that the little dude has a new friend and he has no idea how to divide his time. Don't get me wrong I LOVE the fact that he has friends. When we moved here he had no one and spent countless hours in his room playing video games. Then he met Friend 1 who lived right across the road. They were inseparable it was great my little guy had a friend who I wasn't friends with his parents first!! Awesome right? Wrong. We moved. Only a mile down the road but to an 8 year old that may as well be across the state. Just this month I have agreed to let him walk the mile to see Friend 1 but the issue is in the mean time he has met Friend 2 and if Friend 2 is around he completely doesn't want to hang with Friend 1. Which really isn't all that big a deal because Friend 2 is so much closer to home and I have known Friend 2's parents all my life. Well this weekend enter Friend 3. This is new.. Friend 3.. I had never even heard of him before until Friday and all of a sudden I get told "Friend 3 wants me to come over today and play". Friend 3's parents I do not know, I do not know where they live, or their phone number. I know nothing about Friend 3 except his name is Friend 3. So finally today after many phone calls that were answered with Dude is not here right now (Friend 3 apparently knows how to use the phone and is not afraid to use it) I met the parents of Friend 3, they seemed nice enough so I allowed Dude to hang out there for the afternoon and he apparently had a great time. And as soon as he got home he headed up to see Friend 2, but over dinner I get the bomb shell of all friend bomb shells... Ma, I am not friends with Friend 1 anymore because Friend 3 doesn't like him. UMM WHAT!!! No No No NO! It does NOT work that way. Friend 1 was your friend before Friend 3. And when I caught myself saying that I knew that was wrong too. I didn't know what to say except but .. please don't be one of THOSE kids.

We talked about it a bit and I hope I made my 9 year old understand that life isn't about being friends with one person, or in one particular group or the other.. I can honestly say that friends help mold me into the person I have become and I feel like if you limit yourself to one person or group you are going to be led to disappointment at some point in life as you are going to get into situations where you do not fit in so well.

It is all funny in a way because I was trying to put some kind of label on my blog the other day.. is it a parenting blog, a marriage blog, a photo blog.. that kind of thing.. my blog like me does not belong to any particular group and I like it that way! I just hope I can raise my kids to be the same.