Not Babies Anymore

The last day of school was the 17th - last day of kindergarten and we are now the proud owners of First Graders. They no longer look like preschoolers, they're long and skinny - accented by the fact they seem to be inheriting thier father's height. When I bought them new clothes all I could think was this can't possibly fit - but it does. A little sadness for the toddler/preschoolers that are well in the rear view mirror. Thosae chubby arms and legs are stilts, they eschew any clothes deemed "babyish" and the battle cry is often "I can do it myself!" Big kids talk to them and thier eyes light up in admiration that an older kid paid attention to them and it's retold in great detail. And that's what they aspire to, to being a big kid and being able to do so much more. 

How did those days speed by so fast? 

I blinked and it was gone.

But as one age ends, another begins. Six is such a fun age - they're old enough to dress themselves but they dress like Elton John. Once they brush thier hair they have no problem letting you braid it - the fancier the better. They are so much fun to take out, both the girls can sit through a meal now and we can go out without having to chase one while having an iron grip on the other. This time around we took them with us to Seaside to visit Aunt Kim and Uncle Steve, they decided to show off thier (LOUD) singing skills by singing "Chicken wing, chicken wing, hot dog and balony, fucking macaroni"........ - I almost fell off the sidewalk and Uncle Steve instantly declared this was his new favorite song. I said what did you sing and they sang it again, insisting this was the correct words. FYI it is CHICKEN and macaroni but not a battle I wanted to fight downtown Seaside so we just stopped the singing for now. We ate lunch at Sams where Nana had a beer to help her get past the singalong. They had a great time and liberally complimented the guy bringing the food that he was the BEST EVER. They told the waitress she was beautiful many times. C and D are very complimentary and honestly I've seen them light people up - it reminds me it's never a bad idea to compliment people. 

We went to the arcade and they had a blast of course - favorite games were shooting and driving race cars, C managed to not only shoot all the pirates but then sank the ship - we know who will be Poppop's hunting buddy. It was a lot of fun and Aunt Kim gave us her points so we could get extra prizes - a fun afternoon! This visit has been a bit more low key, one of the perks of them being more independent is I don't have to take days off from work, David takes them to the park and I can work with them here, they can amuse themselves. The loft office gets a great deal of traffic - I have a teapot and china sets for them so lunch is always  a tea party while Nana works. I bought a low table so they can do playdough, draw, etc while I'm working. The downside is the dogs often join us so it will be me, girls, both dogs, Bob the Cat in my 7 x 7 office and Poppop has the other 2000 feet to himself.  When I'm off work we do art projects and bake, play on the swings and wading pool, the days go by pretty fast. We were doing pretty good this time around accident-wise until Dutch whacked C in the eye with his tail this morning giving her a red peeper, but she recovered pretty quickly. Oh well, we tried. They will be heading home in a couple of days but will be back a couple of times over the summer. I never thought in a million years I would be one of those doting grandparents with the best granddaughters in the world - 

But here I am!

 

Banned Camp

The First Amendment has been taking a beating lately, hasn't it? People seem to misunderstand the difference between "freedom of speech" and "sedition", "racism", "hate speech", etc..... You get the idea. It's become such a muddle, I sincerely doubt that back in December of 1791 our forefathers could have envisioned the right to speak one's opinion could have lead to Twitter, Facebook or January 6th. But like gun control, abortion, Trans, CIS and Binary no one seems to know what to do anymore. First there was no limits on social media platforms, you could pretty much freely chat about bombs, hate crimes, cyber bully with out any repercussions - that was not good, no sir. 

But now. 

So to be fair I have been banned Four times in the past year and a half. The first one I will take but it was related to a meme that I had posted (which I thought was funny) (I still think it's funny, sorry not sorry). The weird thing was it had been posted a year and half prior, then suddenly it was taken down by the Facebook Puritans and I was sent to FB jail for a week. I'm kind of guessing someone noticed it and reported it? But I had shared it from someone else's page, not sure if everyone gets in trouble or just me.  So there is that one. 

The last 3 were just bizarre. Last year on my 60th birthday an old classmate jokingly called me an Old Lady, I shot back I'd hit him with my cane. A week in the Pokey for threatening someone with violence. Oh and with FB don't try to argue - you'll get absolutely nowhere. It has a page that comes up if you disagree, you disagree and it instantly tells you you're wrong, go sit on your cyber bunk. The most recent was I am on a Mid-century modern page which is where I get some of my decorating inspiration from. This house was built in 1938 and quite a few on this site have the real wood paneling, etc that I do. Someone shared a video of an update in which the couple PAINTED  over their turn of the century woodwork - it was henious. So I posted a picture of my living room and made the comment I would "shoot anyone who painted over my livingroom". Yup. Apparently on FB you can not make terroristic threats to anyone decorating badly. 3 days in the hoose gow and a month on restriction. I have no idea what the restriction is - it moves my posts in groups lower??? what is that?? - just every time I'm on I get a stern message reminding me I'm being punished. 

The last one was on Reddit - let me stop and tell you here I LOVE AITA (Am I The Asshole)in which people tell their tale and you can write your opinion. It's like group participation in Dear Abby, one of my top ten time wasters actually. But like all of the internet there are trolls and I got caught by one. The troll started by trying to get me to argue, I wouldn't and then told them if they wanted to debate to go on Facebook - that was not what landed me in hot water. I called them a Karen and that is, believe it or not one of the number one reasons to get a 2 week gag order. Yup, you can look but for two weeks you cannot post. And the crappy thing is you don't get punished unless someone reports you. Like a Troll. Lesson learned. They didn't care the troll had been baiting me, I was the one that uttered the Karen so I got the cyber spanking. Bastards. And I don't know about you but it feels like we went from Do What Ever You Want to Here's Your Scarlet Letter in a heartbeat. 

 

Three Years In

on Saturday the 11th was our 3 year Anniversary of moving to Oregon. Three years!  When we first moved here the twins were only 3 years old , we pulled up in a van with Bob the Cat, Molly and Rueben. The house was a disaster to put it mildly, the smell of cat urine was overwhelming and it was one of the few 90 degrees days they'd had that summer so it was baking! David, Kim and Steve had cleaned one room and the bathroom of cat pee - we slept in there with the door shut for a month. When we were 30 minutes away I got an alert that FedEx was not going to deliver our mattress - I panic called them as the idea of sleeping on that floor was beyond even me. I was able to get through and after convincing them it was not an abandoned house and better yet, the driver was kind enough to come back - I will never forget that feeling of relief, 

sometimes the simplest things are the most important.

I had save my time from Bayada -vacation, holiday, personal so I was able to take off for two months. Aside from major surgery I've never been out of work for that long! It was a good decision looking back, we had a ton of work just to make it livable, we scrubbed and painted, set up the rest of the utilities ( we had no internet for almost a month), reconnecting with Kim and Steve. We explored our town, met our neighbors and I pulled a bazillion blackberry vines. Bag after bag of trash, just went you thought you were getting on top of it David would take down another stand of blackberry vines and another pile of trash would appear. We had an entire livingroom set next to the garage - I found a mound and pulled two bags of dirty diapers out of the ground.

Yuck!

We set  mouse and rat traps  - some nights were pretty snappy, but thank goodness no insects. I'll take a rat over a cockroach any day of the week! We had no furniture to speak of, most of what we transported was appliances - we had my grandmother's bedroom set, 2 tvs, the dining room furniture and ........ well. That was it. We spent our evenings parked on the mattress with all the pets watching tv on the floor. But we got to see the girls, Brandi and Jackson when he was stateside - oh my, that was the best thing ever. No more full days of airports arriving sleep deprived, thousand dollars of flights, having to save vacation constantly. They were now a mere four and half  hours by car! 

That was it!

And if you're wondering why we didn't buy closer -  it was mainly cost and being near a large town. We bought this house right before the explosion and it was well under 100,000. It was a mess as you can see from the pictures but it had great bones and it was really our kind of house. During this we bought a second house to flip in Astoria - in the end it turned out to be an amazing decision but getting from Point A to Point B  I would never do that again. NEVER. And no, I still can't talk about it but the whole thing stank from one end to the other. But - it's over and done with.

And we got money out of it, I can deal. 

The other really fun thing was I didn't have to take the first job that came down the pike. Usually when we move I usually end up taking two jobs- The job I need which is anything fast hire and then later on the job I want. Yes I'm an RN and yes, there's a lot of jobs out there - a lot of AWFUL jobs. You make bank but they bleed every penny out of you and then some.  I wanted something that was not hands on and I did not want to be administration. And I found my job, I started working for the Area Agency of Aging and Disability - I will be there 3 years in August and I can honestly say I love my job and I love my co-workers. It's a really nice place to work and my job is right up my alley. 

I have to say this year we feel like we're really settling in, the first two was constant working on the house, working at work, the other flip house, etc.. But it's been fun. Since this house was built in 1938 we've furnished it with estate and yard sales with some FB MarketPlace thrown in. We are slowing down of course, it's taken awhile to find just the right pieces haggling our way through but we have the house furnished how we like it. We still yard sale on the weekend because it's fun poking through other people's things but we've slowed down a great deal. We have the girls coming this weekend, we take them for about a week or so at a clip and it's great to get to participate in watching them grow up, no more peering into a video screen. So overall aside from some bumps here and there it's turned out to be a really good decision. Of course there's been some bad things, the Astoria house and of course Molly and Rueben's sudden and insanely heartbreaking departure from this plane. But we also ended up living 5 hours away from Jess, owner of Sitka, Rueben's half brother and she helped us get Bee and Dutch - so much to be grateful for!  I"m glad we took the plunge.