Angie: June 2006 Archives

I have been doing something I didn't tell y'all about. I took a course like this given by one of these. I purchased and learned to handle this. I passed the written test with a 100%. I passed the field test with a 98%. I am a member of this and this. I applied for this. Why? My husband spends alot of time working away from home during the week. I am not frightened but I do want to be sure my children and myself are safe at all times. I also want one of these.

I have always had a secret crush on Keanu Reeves. My love affair with him began before he appeared in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. I mean way back in that little known movie Youngblood with Patrick Swayze and Rob Lowe. That long ago. SShhhhh. Don't tell. And don't laugh. People magazine named him one of the 50 most beautiful People of 1995. To me he always was and still is. That same year Empire magazine named him one of the sexiest film stars of all time. Yes, he is!! I have willingly forgiven him all of his weird idiosyncracies. Even when he was drunk and/or stoned and hanging out with homeless people sleeping on the streets. Even. Then. Something about him pulls on my heart strings. I imagine had I lost not only my baby (Eva Archer Syme Reeves, born stillborn a few weeks before delivery date) and then my fiance, Jennifer Syme, both in tragic situations I might have spiraled down to the deepest pits of depression and gone insane or had a major nervous breakdown myself. Suffice it to say, I understand and have loads of empathy and sympathy for him. I am willing to forgive him many things. So yesterday I went to see The Lake House. No spoilers here. If you like Jane Austin and Persuasion. If you are a hopeless romantic. If you can believe in the magic and not look for the strings and zippers. You should go see this movie. Keanu has gained a little weight which I think looks good on him. He is not cut like him the Matrix movies. He looks his age, which I think is a good thing. I want to see the men I like age with me. (I think that is why so many Hollywood types do not appeal to me. They don't let themselves age and they screw it up trying to be teenagers or 20-somethings. Bah.) On the other hand, Sandra. Sandra, Sandra, Sandra. Too much makeup. Way too much makeup. She is aging and her face really shows it. Despite the fact that she and Keanu are the same age (both 2 years older than I am) she looks old. Almost too old to play this part. They needed to wipe off some of her makeup. She didn't look natural in any way. Far over done. And what the heck is it about her nose that bothers me? Go see the movie. It is a fairly good movie if you can believe in the space-time continuum, time warp romance. It is not a great movie. It is not a blockbuster. The outcome was somewhat predictable in the first 10 or 15 minutes of the movie but that was okay. The movie isn't about the ending but the journey that gets you there. I took Steven with me. He was very quiet when awake, sitting up and starring at the screen. I sat about 3/4 back, no one sat behind us. I let him nurse and nap and got lost in the movie. I enjoyed it. I would watch it again. I might even be willing to buy the DVD when it comes out. Because I am a Keanu Reeves fan. It fed the romantic in me. I am glad I saw it. I don't think the price of the matinee ticket was wasted. With that I'll leave you with a Keanu quote ... "It's always wonderful to get to know women, with the mystery and the joy and the depth. If you can make a woman laugh, you're seeing the most beautiful thing on God's Earth." ... what's not to like?

I was thirteen when I first saw the boy who made me blush and left me breathless. It was with baited breath that I stood near my stepfather and heard him contract the young man to come back and bale the back hayfield in those giant round bales that were just making the scene way back then in 1978/79. I had the mother of all crushes on that blonde haired, blue eyed boy. The following year again he was engaged to bale the hay in the back fields into those big round bales. I had a birthday and was now fourteen and he was everything to my young heart. I spent time riding on that big John Deere tractor as it pulled the bailer. I was willing to do anything just to have time with him. Over those first teenage years I saw him off and on. Sometimes because he was doing work for my stepfather. Once because he showed up on our doorstep on Valentine's Day evening with a box of candy for me after months of not seeing him or hearing from him. I stood blushing and stammering and not knowing what on earth to do as my parents and little sister looked on. I never had a real boyfriend and only dated sporatically because I always held out hope he would notice me more. I was always second place to another girl also named Angie but I always held out hope he would see she was just there because he had a truck and wealth. Though I never met her I always got the impression from others who knew her she wasn't really interested in him it was more about what he had or better stated what his family had. For a while he did take a real interest in me. When he entered GMI I went with his mother to visit. I watched him graduate. We wrote letters all the time. On the weekends he was home I spent sunday afternoons over at his house to see him off for the week. His mother even held out hope that one day we would get married. We were just teenagers but it was said. My parents let me go and do more because of him than I had ever been allowed in the past. Our families were farmers. Simpe people making a living off the land. We worked together and played together and went fishing and hunting together. In my stupid girlish dreams and my stupid girlish heart I truly believed I would grow up to marry him. He was my first crush. He gave me my first kiss. He was my first love. I kept away from other boys because my heart ached at the thought of him and I always told myself if I had a boyfriend when he came around I wouldn't be able to spend time with him. In eleventh grade I asked him to go with me to my high school prom. I had a beautiful yellow dress and he was to wear his military school uniform. A few days before he called and cancelled. He said he couldn't come home that weekend. The commander had issued orders that everyone was to remain on campus. It was supposedly for some type of discipline or punishment I can't remember the details, it seemed odd but I believed him. I held it together until we got off the phone. The huge hot lump of tears in my throat couldn't be held back. I cried myself to sleep that night. That is the last time I talked to him. The last contact I had with. I saved every card and letter he wrote me. I tucked them away in the heart shaped candy box long since empty of the chocolates sweets. For one little instant I had been his valentine. I would pull them out and read them over and over again. They were hidden in the bottom of my closet in a box filled with a big sweater and a heavy blanket. Those were my love letters. The one real proof that for a while he loved(?) liked me a whole lot too. I kept those letters until they began to fall apart and the ink was fading. A freak accident with burst water pipes and a septic tank flooding brought an end to those letters. For many years they were the most important things I owned. It was when I was 9 months and bursting at the seams pregnant with Colby that I happened into an old country store and ran into him. My cheeks turned red. My heart slammed in my chest. I was breathless. As we pulled away from the parking lot I had a hard time pulling my eyes away. Once my sister ran into him. Then again he came into the place she was working. I will NEVER forgive her for trying to get a date with him. Red corvette or not. Me married with a child or not. All those years later were of no concern. He was my first love and she had no business sniffing around him. It was and still is a hurt I can't explain. His grandfather was killed in an aweful farming accident a few years before my divorce. Just aweful. I sent a flower and a card as is fitting. I know his grandfather meant the world to him. I never received a thank you or any type of acknowledgement from him or his family. I often was on the road that passed his family lands and watched sporadically as he built a house near the tree line at the back of a field. I always scolded myself and felt ashamed for the thughts that jumped into my head when anything stirred the faintest memory of that blonde haired boy. I had a dream about him last night. In that dream he treated me like I always wished he would. He even apologized for the prom incident. This morning I woke up wanting to cry. I woke up confused as to why I would dream about him all these many years later. I googled his name. The #1 googled entry for his name is the post on another blog that asked about a first kiss and young love. I have a giant fear that he might google his own name and find the comment I left. Maybe I can get her to edit out his name. They say you never forget your first true love. It is true. At least for me. My heart has never forgotten either.

My momma was here two weeks ago. She had not seen Steven since his birth and the changes in him really surprised her although she knew there would be huge changes from the newborn baby she had last seen months before. While she was here she would often look at the children as played and comment on who liked whom or note the resemblances in the way some spoke or their body language. On this trip my momma brought up photo albums for me to scan and video tapes for me to convert to DVD. I have been working on those the past few days. Angie, newborn Before I could scan the photos I had to purchase a new scanner. Nothing that we know of is wrong with our old scanner. It just won't interface with these new laptops and Windoze XP. It has been very frustrating and I have cussed so many times in the process of trying EVERYTHING at least 100 times. No dice. I went online monday and ordered a scanner. I ordered a middle of the road, moderastely priced scanner. It was a Microtek Skanmaker s400. I opened the box. Laid all the pieces and parts ut on the table. Opened the plasticbag with all of the instructions and software. Angie, 5 months old #1. Unpack box. Done. #2. Install software. O'kay, simple thing to do. Insert CD install software. #3. Plug in scanner and connect to PC. Easy. Done. #4. Follow the prompts and begin scanning your photos. Yayyyy! This is the part I am WANTING to do. Popup indicates the need for a missing DLL file. Easy Peasy. Off to the Microtek website. Download the file. Still doesn't work. Angie, 10 months old Search the support section of the website and see there is a new installation file with packaged drivers and dll files for XP. I downloaded and installed the file. Machine needs to reboot. Okay, reboot. Machine turns off. Machine turns on. Windoze begins to load. Machine shuts down. Turn on machine. Windoze begins to load. Machine shuts down. Huh? Turn on machine. Windoze begins to load. Machine shuts down. No. F'n. Way. Turn on machine. Windoze begins to load. Machine shuts down. WTF?!?!?!?! Lots of cussing. Angie, 13 months old Turn on machine. Windoze begins to load. Machine shuts down. Begin melt down and tears because .... Every photo take of Steven in the past four months is on this machine and not yet burned to CD. Frantically try to boot machine. After 52 tries I get it to boot in safe mode. Spend 4 hours burning photos to cd and dvd. Spend 2 hours restoring machine to last fully working settings. Uninstall all of the scanner crap. Angie, 15 months old Listen to me, please! DO NOT BUY A MICROTEK SCANMAKER s400 and try to install it before you have saved everything you want from your machine!!!!!! I will NEVER trust that brand again. NEVER. EVER. I returned that machine for a full refund plus the cost of shipping. I called around and found an Epson Perfection 4490 WITH a rebate from Office Depot and carried myself there yesterday morning as fast as I could. They only had one left. I asked them to hold it for me. Brought it home. Unpacked it. Installed software. Plugged in scanner. Scans the first time like magic. The photos in the post are things I have been scanning. Momma brought me my baby photos. Something I have never had. Steven's photos, and Colby's and Gracie's are burned to CD and DVD. The only photo of my mother holding me as a newborn baby.
Angie, 3 days old. Make it a priority to save your photos. Take the time (and expense) to preserve something you can never replace. If you need a new scanner and you buy one ... back up your machine and save everything to another machine or to cd/dvd so you don't spend hours crying thinking you have lost your precious memories. Updated: In the middle of trying to redo my kitchen, house cleaning, the last days of school, a teething 4 month old, driving school for Colby, Classes for me and a thousand other things, I am spending however many days it takes in a row to get all of my photos in order. I won't ever go through this again if I can help it. I have blank, cd's and dvd's, a new scanner, and a VHS to DVD converter. I have no reason to put this off any longer. Think about it. I encourage you to do the same if you have not already. Please don't put it off if this is something you need to do. Please. Don't leave yourself in a position to regret having never taken the time. And I do mean taken the time. Everything in this house will fall by the wayside until this job is complete.

My post isn't finished. Come back in a little while. It is the last day of school and I am running behind this morning. Please, come back in a little while. In the mean time hop over to MommaK's and enjoy Mere's blog baby shower.

After my divorce I went through the I-am-never-getting-married-again stage. It took a while but in time I came to my senses and realized that I could not hold every man accountable for the shitty way my marriage left me thinking and feeling. So then I stepped into the I-will-marry-again-one-day but it quickly transferred to the but-he-can't-already-have-kids subdivision, which quickly was upgraded to a-man-who-has-never-been-married-before department. I had convinced myself from observing those around me that I wanted NOTHING to do with baggage from a previous marriage. Mine was enough and I certainly didn't want to help tote anyone else's bags around. I was steadfast in my determination to not get involved with men who may have been married before and those who had children from previous marriage(s). I especially gave wide birth to those who had kids but had never felt they needed to marry the mother either. My pickiness good sense left extremely slim pickings in the single men category. That was perfectly okay with me. However it didn't take long to realize that most of those men were only interested in tiny blondes with big boobs and no sense at all. What was left wasn't much to write home about. It was my experience from those I met that women with children were not a top choice either but if you were only interested in some recreational sex then you were a red-hot commodity in the single world. No, thank you. You have to marry this cow if you want milk. I don't give nothin’ away. So being single again, with children, living in the boondocks, not putting out and not caring to be a Sometime Sunshine for a good ole boy, left me sitting at home a lot on Friday night date night. Saturday night, too, if you want the complete honest truth. Sunday nights as well if you want the brutal truth. Which really was no big loss to me anyway. I just hated the looks from other single people. I also hated the thoughts I could read on their faces with them thinking pathetic thoughts about me rarely having a date. That was okay, too. I would rather be dateless than stoop to the I'll-go-out-with-anyone-just-so-I-have-a-date that many of them did. I shiver thinking how low several stooped just to not be at home on a Friday or a Saturday night. There are a couple times I stumbled and didn't realize I stooped until it was far too late. I seriously hang my head in shame and hope to god no one ever finds out the complete details of those few times. I had had enough of all of the varying degrees of single men (and one who wasn't single but wanted to pretend he was) by the time I met Steven that a divorced man with a child from a preivous marriage wasn't such a taboo thing after all. Today that divorcee and this divorcee are the happy parents of a four month old baby boy. Steven, 4 months old today Life doesn't get much better. ***** There is breaking news on the internet this morning )and no it isn't that baby picture - let's move on from that old news). This is big news. This is beautiful news. OMG is she beautiful. And she has her own newspaper column. Go see. Go on. Oh. And it is her birthday. Go party. Happy Birthday, Lucinda! This is a big bonus day. Lucinda is posting on Mamarazzi today. Make sure you check her out.

Someone recently accused me of making everything I do look graceful. I need to dispell that myth. Here is a secret: I don't have a lot of grace unless you consider my youngest daughter, Grace. That's a lot of Grace. Otherwise, very little grace. Maybe because in my posts I don't complain (too often) I give the appearance of things being a little too perfect. Oh believe me, things are not perfect, unless you consider I am perfectly happy in this point of my life. My days are just like yours. I cook. I clean. I do laundry. I change poopy diapers. I get tired. I dream of housekeepers and personal maids and a team of gardeners and handymen. I do try to put a good meal on the table every evening. Sometimes it might take me ALL DAY to actually get the meal prepared. There are even times when supper isn't on the table when Steve comes home. I might even serve him breakfast for supper because it doesn't take long to whip up some eggs and biscuits and or maybe sausage and pancakes. Remember after we eat there are dishes to wash. I might occassionally wash dishes as I cook, I also have a dishwasher but more importantly I have a daughter whose sole chore is to clean up the kitchen after meals. I have help. If I didn't have help these days the dishes might sit on the counter or in the sink for a quite a while before I get to them. I clean a little everyday. House work is a never ending chore. But my house is not spotless every minute of the day. Maybe because I have been doing it longer than most I make it look easier? Right now I am sitting with a puddle of papers at my feet and a stack of bills to pay. I have a baby fussing and a teenager complaining. I have a dog begging to come in and a cat terrorizing the dog. It is hazy, hot and looks like storms coming. It is early and I am tired already. It's hot and looking like rain. The pool temp is at 74+ ... maybe I'll have a pool day until the rains come. Too bad it is too early for margaritas.