The Prom: part 2

It's Saturday night and a pleasant calm has settled over Baileyville. This is due in part to the 2 youngest of the Bailey clan visiting dreamland in their rooms, and due in part to the two teenage versions of the Bailey clan having a great time at the prom! What a day this has been! So before they come back home buzzing with descriptions of the fun they've had, I want to show off the pictures and tell how MY day has gone today. After all,....doesn't the mom get some attention in all of this too?

The day began with my alarm clock not quite getting to chime. Why? Because suddenly all the images of my calendar with times and appointments to meet for the day popped into my head. So I turned off the clock (which I shamefull set for 8am because i was SO tired the night before) and ran to the shower. Seriously, I ran because Manti was about to get into it! He was going to be home most of the day and I wouldn't be,...if he got a shower then, I'd go the whole day smelling "old yesterday". I talked him out of his shower and jumped in there myself. THANK GOODNESS! Tommy had gotten brakes for his little Camry, so I kissed him and my boys goodbye as they went across the street to let his nephew put them on for him and Mesa and I headed towards town. One of Tommy's childhood friends is a hairdresser and she was scheduled to do Mesa's hair today at noon. She's in the Walmart style shop, and we were early. So we picked out some rhinestones to put into her hair and got a subway sandwich. We started to go ahead and get her nails done, but it looked like they were pretty busy and I worried we wouldn't get her nails done before her appointment time.

The hairdresser/friend had a lady and her mother there,...and they kept monopolizing her time. So as Mesa and I sat and went through books, the hairdresser did her best to please these two ladies and get them to move along. 45 minutes past our appointment time, she succeeded and Mesa hopped up in the chair. Want to see the magic that took 2 hours to do? You can't tell it, but there is a FULL can of hairspray on this childs head!

Don't look at her dress YET!

So we get done with the hair and we HAVE to do something with her nails because one of them was broken badly and had to be repaired. We ran down to the nail salon and asked if they could fit her in and be done by 3pm. I'm sure they were cussing at me in Chinese, but we ended up leaving and going down the street as we prayed they would be less busy. Thankfully, they WERE less busy and we got there seconds before they got swamped. they told me they could do it by 3pm, which was 20 minutes away. I figured if they could do hers, they could mine too. Bad decision on my part.

At 3:20pm, we ran like animals to the car and I made a 15 minute trip home in 9 minutes. We were supposed to leave our house at 3:30 and go to the next town over (a 30 minute drive) to meet Mesa's boyfriend at a park for pictures. They had reservations for dinner at 5pm, so we had to hustle. We were supposed to leave the park at 4:45 to drive Manti out to meet his date in the town we just came from for pictures at a different park to be finished so they could make dinner reservations at 6pm. Welllll.....I put Mesa's makeup on and helped her get her jewelry on. We crammed her into her dress and threw her shoes on (not even noticing if she'd shaved her legs or not!) and ran out of the house....just hoping Manti had gotten himself all together.

We didn't get to leave the house till 4:10. We drove....like mad. Her boyfriend was on the phone with her nagging her about being so late and he finally says "let's meet at a different park that is closer to the restaurant we're going to". We said fine and raced to it...only we drove right past it! There are so many one way streets in this town that we drove through a funeral home parking lot twice trying to find our way OUT of it! We got there though and got some really nice pictures of our beautiful girl and her boyfriend.

Yes yes,...nice.
NEXT!

It's Manti's turn. We got there a little later than we wanted to, but we got there. His date had 2 friends there as well, so you'll see them in these pictures too.


NOTE FOR MY FAMILY... yep, his date colored her hair the same color as her dress. I'm happy her dress is red and not green :D She was happy he didn't paint his face! (lol!) So here they are...

So I just heard from both kids, prom is over. Mesa is on her way back from Georgia Tech's ballroom, and Manti is on his way to ... bowling alley. oook! So I guess in a couple of hours, we'll get to hear all the details!

Me and Tommy make purdy kids!

Morgan

Of all my children, Morgan is my oddball. He is the only one of my 4 kids who will let you hurt him if it makes YOU happy to do it. (Jared tests this theory often.) He is the one who will get angry the slowest and love you the deepest. He is the one who gets so thrilled about being able to make you happy that he can't keep his excitement contained no matter WHAT. He has his typical kid attributes, but he has some attributes that will surprise you if you just watch him long enough and actually HEAR what he's saying.

That said,....
it should be known that of all my kids (including Manti), Morgan is the one who know the ER doctors by first name and is the only one who can prop his feet up while getting staples!

So Mesa is going to prom Saturday and we found her a dress. This is the "Mormon Prom", which means she can't wear a dress that exposes her in any way. She needs sleeves and her skirt needs to be knee length or longer. Do you know how many dresses that eliminates? So I ended up in Villa Rica at a store is slam full of prom dresses. We told the girl there what we needed and she stuck us in a room while she found dress after dress for Mesa to try on. She picked one that is just gorgeous,....and has spaghetti straps. Ordinarily, that's a problem, ... .but I had the idea that we could take a scarf and CREATE sleeves with it. LUCKY US,...the shop has a seamstress and she does alterations. What I described really was easy to do! So Mesa got a dress and had to go back for a fitting on Tuesday. We did that and all went fine, ... got her jewelry there even,... but not shoes. We decided to head to the mall for shoes, but it was well after lunchtime and I needed some protein!

We get to the mall and eat, and in the far corner is this STOOOOOOPID play area for little kids. Why is it there? I am clueless...perhaps to tempt little children over. This one day (out of however many years that mall has existed) is the one day we gave up and let Morgan and Jared go play. It's mostly just an obstacle course type thing with big shapes for the kids to climb on. So first thing, Morgan climbs up one. Then out of nowhere from behind him comes some kid who needs to learn about punishment (and is about Jared's size) SHOVES Morgan off the thing. Morgan tries to catch himself,...but..... (Kitty, sounding like a ballet dance to you?) he lands on his hand with all of his weight. The kid weighs 72 pounds,...that's a lot of weight on one little hand! He said he heard a sound like a gunshot. Tommy says his hand felt like his thumb was dislocated and because of how it looks today, I tend to believe it. Tommy feeling of it and checking for broken bones put a little pressure on it and it moved back into the joint, but it swelled up HUGE.

No shoe shopping got done. We left the mall and headed for the closest emergency room, which happened to be back in Villa Rica. We should have stayed at the mall a little longer. Might have gotten our own medical license and been home a couple hours earlier! (Such a slow ER!) There were only 3 other people in the waiting room besides us, 2 of them went in ahead of us, and it was still 3 hours later before he got a splint on his hand!

The xrays show no bone problems and his hand is just fine. They are calling it a bad contusion (fancy word for bruise) and today it is definitely black! No blue, ... just black right now. It's still swollen pretty fat and looks ugly, but the pain is greatly reduced. He's got one of those temporary casts on his whole left forearm and he is so proud of it! He was scared they would take his hand off and put a prosthetic hook on his wrist for a hand instead. He didn't want to be a young captain hook!

And that is the Morgan saga of Tuesday.

OH, let's add an addendum here:
As we drove to the ER, I heard Jared in the backseat (who was very worried about his bwuther) that if it was hurting too much, he could squeeze Jared's hand to make it feel better. I was impressed with Jared caring so much :)

Funnies

I have had some extremely stressful times for the past 2 months. I think the spirits have even felt sorry for me. I say this because of the little funnies that crop up here and there to break up the tension. Thought I'd share a little of them....



Kitty and Lee, do you remember that church at the end of the road where the primary and middle schools were back when ya'll went to Central? This sign is that church's sign. They were changing the picture after we came home from church, so I got lucky to get this picture! Isn't it funny? Makes you want to have some fish!

---

Then tonight, we all went to eat some fast food chicken. We're sitting in the restaurant just talking as a family when the kids bring up some muscle pains Manti has been having. This morning, Mesa massaged his shoulder and put some good pain relieving cream on him. We wanted to know how effective it was. He said it worked wonders. So I reminded him that he should have regular work done on his muscles to keep them flexible and such. I reminded him that taking care of his body NOW will make a huge difference when he's older, and that showing his future he loves them enough to care for himself so that he is capable of caring for them will mean a lot one day----I SHOULD KNOW.

Ok, so that was a catty thing to say, but gimme a break,...I've had a rough 2 months!

Well of course that led to a snap from Tommy who declared he DOES love his family, and that of course demanded a response from me announcing that we would recognize it if he would consider that his overworking his damaged body reduces the time we have with him and increases the hardship on us all for later. He didn't agree. I told him at the rate he's currently going, he'll go out with a bang when his body just snaps and doesn't work anymore. He responded that he won't bang and I said he would.

Just then, Manti pipes in by saying "Ya'll stop talking about banging at the table!"

That ended THAT conversation!

---

Here's some egg on my face:

This coming weekend, Manti and Mesa both have prom dates. Mesa and her boyfriend were discussing what kind of dress she would get and he said he just hoped she didn't get a purple dress. Well we went to a store looking...we went to several stores looking. It was hard to find something modest (and her prom is a church sponsored one that has a dress code), so we ended up at a store that had no modest dresses, but DID have a seamstress who could alter the dress to put sleeves on it for her. YAY!

Well we find a dress that is perfect except for having no sleeves, being slightly too long ....and being purple. It's a dark plum shade of purple though and is really pretty. She had to try on tons of dresses before we came across that one though. The whole time , Sean (her boyfriend) kept texting her and kept texting her. She was changing dresses for more than 2 hours, so her phone constantly buzzing started to get on my nerves. I answered his messages for her and told him to shush, she was busy. He slowed down,...so I told him shush a couple more times. Then when she picked her dress and the seamstress was measuring her and pinning the dress for the alterations, her phone goes off again. I decided it was time for him to get a note from me >:-D

I send him a message and tell him she found a dress. He asked right off the bat what color it was. So I told him.... BARNEY PURPLE! He didn't want to believe it, so he asked her. She told him YEP it was. He shivered at the thought ...too funny!

We've not allowed him to see her dress because we wanted him to be wowed with her beauty when he sees her like that for the first moment. He just couldn't understand that and I had gotten frustrated about it. I decided to mess with him more. After she had gotten dressed, she sent him a note and told him that she would sneak him a picture of her with the dress so he could see that it really was purple. We stepped out of the dressing room and found a dress (size 3x) that was seriously bright purple. It was hideous! She held it up to her and I took a pic with her cell phone. She sent it to him. He told her he thought she'd look pretty in anything. We just laughed and finished up paying for the dress. The seamstress cut us a piece off the bottom so we could give it to him to match with his tux tie.

You'll never guess what happened next.

Sean is head-over-heels for Mesa and is so excited about every moment he can spend with her. He's a perfect gentleman and we really couldn't ask for any better person in her life right now. But that means he forgets himself when he's excited,....and this is one of those times.

She told him 3 times before we got home from that store that she had a piece of cloth from her dress for him so he could match it. We didn't tell him that wasn't really her dress in the picture, but we did say we had fabric for him, so wait to shop till she could bring it to him. Did he listen? Nope! He had hoped we got enough cloth from the dress that his mom could make him a tie from that, but they didn't cut us that much. So he decided to go shopping anyway. Funny boy,....he did! He found a tie too! Then after he buys it, he sends a picture to Mesa and tells her. She nearly falls in the floor when she opens her phone and sees this picture. She sent him a note real fast and tells him that picture she sent him was a joke...that's NOT her dress. Too late though! He has a purple flowery tie!

Joke's on us, right? LOL! Fortunately, there are a lot of purples in that tie and it should match the dress anyway,....besides, matching exactly isn't really that important.

So did you laugh?

Oh, tomorrow we go pick up her finished dress. I guess we'll be heading out to buy shoes too!!! Sigh,...it never ends, does it?

Nursing Mothers Unite!

I have 2 sisters and a brother who all mean very much to me. All of us have some young children still, and a few are still nursing their little ones. Those little guys are gorgeous babies and I want to be able to help them anytime they need me. That could be any day, near or far. So just to be prepared, I wanted to post some information that could come in handy. And if anybody else out there is a nursing mommy and can benefit from this info too, then I'm happy about that too.



If you have a little one and make that amazing choice to nurse your baby, pat yourself on the back for such a selfless act that will provide miraculous things for your child! Then immediately start working to ensure you always have plenty of milk to provide for that child as long as you choose to nurse. How? That would be the purpose of this post!



First:
STAY AWAY FROM SAGE! It might taste good in sausage or Thanksgiving dinner, but it will DRY YOUR MILK SUPPLY UP! There are tons of other spices in this vast world that you can season your foods with, so give this one up while you are lactating. If you get to the point you want to dry your milk up, you know what you can do to speed that up!



Second:
Keep your diet simple as much as you can. Yes you can eat chocolate and lasagna, but let them be treats. Fruits and vegetables are chock full of nutrients that you need. Those nutrients are easier to assimilate into your body when they come from foods. So this is the best route. The more colorful your variety of fruits and veggies, the better off you'll be. Remember that if you aren't getting enough of those nutrients, its YOU who suffers first while your body goes into your reserves and gives it to the baby. And when that is exhausted, the baby will stop getting enough. That defeats the purpose of nursing, doesn't it? It is important, so fruits and veggies, fruits and veggies, fruits and veggies!



Third:
Plenty of water is necessary too! Your body is comprised of a lot of fluids and if you are regularly sharing some of your body fluids, you will definitely need a source of replenishment. Drink lots of water! Distilled water is a good choice and so is reverse osmosis. Tap water is about as bad as drinking pond water these days, but if its your only choice,....



Fourth:
Go to the herb shop near you (or order online) and invest in a bottle of Blessed Thistle and a bottle of Fenugreek. Capsules or liquid is your choice. Fenugreek is what they use to make artificial maple syrup. You'll detect a slight scent on the capsules, and when your body has absorbed it and gotten it started working, you'll start noticing that sweet scent following you. Keep that baby suckling at this point! Baby is going to think "mmm this tastes good!" and will want a little more. The more suckling action that goes on, the more your mammary glands receive stimulation that encourages milk production. The baby likely will want a little more and thus try to nurse a little longer. It's ok...it's actually helping your milk supply increase, so let 'em nurse!



Blessed Thistle is another one that has some amazing historical uses. Seriously, google it and see what you find out! If you find any notes that include Dr. Christopher....READ THOSE! That man was the most amazing natural doctor I've ever even HEARD of! He impresses me more and more with each sentence I read that he's written. He has recorded evidences where women who have never had children were able to begin lactating and nurse babies! That's nothing short of a miracle in today's standards and what he had these women do was so simple that it's like the leppers who were cured just by washing in a river. Dr. Christopher told them to eat a good diet of mucusless foods (that means cutting out pasta, breads, meats, ....that sort of stuff), suggested they drink quarts of distilled water per day, and had them drink a cup full of blessed thistle tea at least three times a day. Imagine that,....you adopt a baby.....formula is one of your first purchases, right? Doesn't have to be though! Like I told you, nothing short of a miracle, but Dr. Christopher documented more than one occasion where an adoptive parent was able to begin nursing due to following these suggestions.



Now I make no promises, but I will say that I had plenty of milk for my firstborn, plenty (I guess) for my second born (who I swear was a cannibal baby and I had to wean her before she ate me alive!), adequate for the third born but only for the first 4 months. After that, it was a struggle,....and the fourth child got a week milk supply too. So again, I took fenugreek and blessed thistle trying to ensure he had enough to eat.



Breast milk is precious stuff, and is THE perfect food. If you can nurse your child, do. It does make a difference. In fact, my studies say that it's good to nurse till they are about 18 months old because that's when they cut their stomach teeth and eye teeth which coincides with the time when they have developed enough gastric juices to tolerate "big people foods".



I won't judge a person who doesn't nurse their baby. It's a personal choice,....I just think that if you DO choose that route that you are doing something wonderful that will have lifelong effects of a physical kind and an emotional kind.


Either way you go, I wish you luck, I wish you joy, and I wish you plenty of milk! I hope this post benefits you in some way.

Bragging on the Cook

If you never been to my sister's house and eaten meals prepared by her and her husband, you have missed out on a major joy in life. They can cook, lemme tell ya! The only thing saving me from TOTAL obesity is that I live 5 hours away from them! I'm sure if I lived closer they would be sick of me by now, so I guess it works out.

What makes Dave's recipes so great is that he comes up with them. Sure, he might start with a recipe from a book or magazine, but he's not satisfied with letting someone else's tastebuds determine what he and his family will eat. So he modifies it and plays with it and experiments until he reaches a level of perfection that equates to a level of bliss unknown in any restaurant in the land. And get this: He likes to cook! He's content being the primary cook in the house even, so Kitty doesn't have to be the one to figure out what to fix for dinner every night like the rest of us.

If you haven't seen Dave's blog site with recipes he's posted, put on your stretchy sweatpants so you can eat more and go there now! He'll tell you what's for dinner!

Now if I can just talk him into a trade,....I'll take photos of what I make from his recipes if he'll experiment and make me up a recipe by request :D Think he'll go for it?

Ambien Strikes Again!

You (depending on how well you know me) might remember that Tommy has a back injury that brings him much pain. And you might deduce that pain disturbs your ability to sleep. From that you should be able to expect a person going through that would have resorted to sleep aids out of desperation. Since sleep aids don't address the CAUSE of insomnia, they are not the best approach and don't work as well as we would like. And when this happens, we look for more potent aids. This is what Tommy has done more than once.

A few years ago, he obtained a prescription for Ambien from whichever doctor he was seeing at the time. He would take one of those pills and in 5 minutes, he was no longer among the sane conscious. Frequently, he would just fall asleep where he sat.

Well one night, he fell asleep next to me on the sofa. I was dreading having to guide him to the bedroom, so I just let him sleep a little bit. The kids were all up and watching tv with us, so they quiet as their daddy slept. I got to thinking about it though, and I realized this was becoming a pattern for him,...so I started decorating him. I put little toys all over the man,....I mean ALL OVER HIM! He had a parade going down each arm and a little rally happening on his legs. I even put a few things on his shoulders and something on his head. He didn't notice until the kids got to laughing loud enough to wake him up. I think he learned a little from that experience, because then he started taking his Ambien and giving it a few minutes to work, then he'd go on to bed. If he waited too long,.....it was going to be a rough night!

A rough night consists of Tommy becoming a 300 pound zombie. Nope! He doesn't weigh 300 pounds, but somehow he would become dead weight and I swear he found a way to double every pound he DOES weigh so that he would be nearly impossible for me to get to bed! I managed to have him lean against me, which made me lean over and walk "elephant style" with a man sleeping on my back till I could guide him to the bed. He wouldn't know where he was really, so when I told him to sit on the bed, he would sit right where he was standing. I learned to have him turn around so his butt landed on the bed and not the floor (he was HARD to pick up out of the floor!) and then I learned to have Manti stay up with me and help me-just in case! Maneuvering him around the end of the bed seemed like extra work too, so I finally started having him sit on my side of the bed and roll towards his pillow. Depending on my own condition, I would either hop on the bed to help this happen, or I would run like lightning to the other side to catch him. (He always would roll too far if I didn't.)

And then there were the nights he wanted to talk. Oh my goodness, the things he would say! Some I can't even post online...they were a bit colorful! There were times he insisted on feeding pencils to first graders. He got so funny one night that I grabbed my journal and a pen and I would write while he chattered nonsensically!

So why am I telling you all this?
Because he got another doctor to give him ambien. I forewarned the doctor that Tommy+Ambien=Halucinations & no sleep for me. Tommy doesn't remember these things, so it wasn't a big deal to him,....and he got his prescription. The doctor did pity me a little though and gave him a prescription for something else that should counteract the goofiness from the Ambien. So far, it's been working ok,.....until last night......

This time I've got video evidence! It's of Tommy in bed last night, so I'll have to review it and give it some thought before putting it online for the world to look at and laugh,...but chances are that I'll find 60 seconds in that long 45 minutes that I can share! :D

Just like a few years ago, he started dozing on the sofa. Problem here is that Manti had already gone to bed and it was just me and Mesa! She tried to help though, thank goodness! We managed to get him on the bed, and then the antics began. He had his eyes closed the whole time and he would snore a little between "spells",...and he washed a pig and he talked about the chickens that wore shoes. He wasn't sound asleep,...which is unnerving,...and I know this because he could hear us talking to him and would respond a bit, but in some very nonsensical ways. When Mesa was laughing about chickens with shoes, he heard and he said "uh uh! The sheep wear shoes! Chickens have pants!" He went on and on about who knows what. He said liked women and when asked WHAT women, he got a 2 year old smile on and said "my wife"......lucky man! He directed a symphony too it looked like, and he would snap himself straight up in the bed. He nearly dove out of the bed headfirst a couple times but we managed to catch him and make him lay back down. He wrestled with the bedding and he sang without his lips opening up until I thought I was going to have to knock him out so I could get some sleep.

*sigh*....don't you wish you had moments like mine?

Upcoming Workshop

I'm a little nervous, and for good reason! A couple of weeks ago, the Ag. Center here in town called the Herb Shop and asked my boss if she (or a representative from the shop) would come to an Herbal Workshop they are offering to the community in May. She said SURE! .... and then she called me to see if I'd do it!

Ever hear of the "Master Gardeners"? Well this is the group who is sponsoring this shebang. There are people who will show about growing herbs and people who show about cooking with herbs and I don't know what all else. The herb shops in town were invited to share medicinal information on herbs....and from they way they talked, I'm the ONLY one in that category!

Oh yeah, my boss loves me. She's always been a great salesperson and has done a wonderful job over the years of selling capsullated herbs. She's never really experienced "poorness" either, because she has very little experience with liquid tinctures and I don't think she's ever made her own stuff.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have experienced poorness! In fact, one year I was voted queen of Brokeville because I was demonstrated such extreme poorness. So this means that I definitely have experience making up my own stuff. I've done it for so many years now, that my friends and family call it my "brew". My own mother has called me a witch doctor (and I'm starting to call myself that even!). So it is definitely something associated with me. I've even expanded my efforts to include lotions and potions and even made up bathing products, cleaning products and even my own laundry detergent (which, btw....is way better than anything you ever bought! I can provide references to back up my claims) and air fresheners! I guess this sort of demonstrates how long I've been a citizen of Brokeville, doesn't it.

Well anyway, these skills impress my boss and she really likes telling people about it. Sometimes I like her bragging and other times I feel like one of the short people with a bone through my nose and a shrunken head in my pocket. She tells this person who called and asked the shop to participate all about me and my "skills"....and now I'm scheduled to be there.

What on earth will I be doing? BEATS ME! I hope I'm just setting up a table display and smiling sweetly while wishing I knew how to cast spells on snobby people....but I have a feeling that's not what I'll be doing. I was so worried about it that I even sent a phone number and email address of someone I know who TEACHES this stuff....trying to get myself off the hook. And from what I hear, they got him and he agreed to come. Does this get ME off the hook? I don't know yet. I have to wait till Monday to be able to call and find out!

Let's say I have to actually open my mouth and show people stuff. And let's say YOU were going to be there. What kinds of things do you think YOU would want to know about? Would you want pamphlets to take home with you, or a sample of something, or would you want a demonstration of some sort? Would you want to taste and smell or just see stuff brewing and see some lotions? Would you be looking for first aid type applications or aromatherapy kinds of stuff or what?

One thing I KNOW I want to impress upon anybody who will listen is this thought (and I came up with it, so if it sounds stupid, I want to know before I say it in public please!):

If you think of your herbs as food now, you won't have to think of them as medicine later.

I need feedback. If you love me, you'll tell me your thoughts!