I know everyone loves it so I wasn’t going out on a limb that I’d regret buying it. Better safe than sorry when you are going for a treat. Who am I kidding? I’m a pansy and hate to waste money. I generally try something with friends before I’ll buy it. Hubby helps me branch out of that when we go shopping.

I like a blended red wine. I’ve never bought a red wine that didn’t have the percentage of what it’s sources are somewhere on the label. Interesting and I guess that leads them to change it if they want or gives it some mystery?

Since I don’t know the percentages I’m sure I’ll be totally talking out my butt. I prefer a higher percentage of cab usually. But then generally when I find a red wine blend it has cab, merlot and one other. Who knows what this combo could be.  There could be a lot of different grapes used that I might have said no too if they were listed. Who’s to know.

Swirl test - It’s looking light in texture. Doesn’t stick to the glass very long and is quite clear. Makes my mouth water as it looks like it will be refreshingly light for a red blend.

Smell - I can smell the cab. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a red wine and it smells amazing. I can smell something sweet but it’s a lost cause because I just want to taste the cab so bad.

Taste - It’s as light as I thought it would be. Perfect for summer drinking. Very light smoky flavor which is perfect for me. I love smoked foods but I don’t like it overpowering my wine. It’s a nice sweet flavor but not because of the grapes themselves. I’m getting the hint of something else. Man, I’m out of practice at this!

I think having the name and the vineyard name are messing with my tastebuds as well. Power of suggestion and all that. I’m trying to force it to taste like cake and I’m actually craving cupcakes right now so that’s not helping either.

Maybe it’s a hint of vanilla I’m tasting. It’s sweet but not sugary sweet.

Paraphased description from the bottle

This wine shows a heady nose of chocolate, deep rich blackberries, red fruits, and a creamy mocha finish. It’s reminiscent of a blackberry chocolate cupcake with a mocha coulis.

Now with that said. I still can’t taste the blackberry and the hint of chocolate must be what I’m tasting, not vanilla. See, I did great by not reading the description before doing my taste test. You’re getting my honest, screwed up opinion as it happens. lol Lucky you!

The coffee is an after taste. I can just barely taste it after a while. But I’m not tasting it while sipping. Being an avid coffee geek, I should have been able to taste that. So they did good making it just the right hint.

After further research, the wine has a zinfandel base and then uses other classic varietals. So, as I thought, I’m talking out of my butt with what I’m smelling and tasting. THAT is because I’m not educated enough. I must go on more wine trips. Like the one coming up this weekend lol

Now I can add zinfandel to my list of likes and I did so accidently. Awesome! I like when I can add more flavors to the mix.

I was unaware that amazon sold wines. WHY HAVE I NOT LOOKED INTO THIS? Here’s the wine so you can do a quick shop for it. It’s very affordable as a gift and tastes much more expensive than it’s price.

Online friends are there all hours of the day and night. I’ve made online friends in all time zones. Someone is always up and always online to reply to an email or a quick text for those really good online friends that we’ve exchanged phone numbers as well.

I’ve been online since around 1999. In those early years, forums were popping up specifically for WAHM’s. Work at home mom’s for those of you newbies. lol Forums were all the rage but with so many out there and with little one’s in my house, I got to weeding out which one’s I wanted to spend time at quickly. MommysHelperOnline.com was one of the spots that ended up being home. It’s been defunct for some time now so don’t bother going to a link.

A lot of close friends were also created there. In fact my good friend, previous biz partner and now VA (right hand gal) was from there. If not for MHO, we might not have become friends.

But this is about the owner of MHO, Anita DeFrank.

She and I were too crazy peas in a pod. If we got to emailing or yahoo chatting then we could be on for hours and not accomplish anything productive. But hell, we might have bought 10 domains in that time and oh the ideas we had! This was the time of niche marketing. More, more, more was what we were being taught. Unfortunately, no one was also passing on the info that you needed to be successful with ONE before building all the others. lol

We chatted online almost daily for years. We partnered with the above friend and came up with one of the first social media style sites just for WAHM’s. We were so proud of ourselves for hitting that market at the top of the boom. Of course it wasn’t called social media back then, it was web 2.0 and social media as it stands wasn’t even in the works.

I learned a lot from Anita and I hope I passed on knowledge as well. That’s the great thing about online friends. When you hit a biz wall, you contact them and they either will help you figure it out or help you find someone that can.  She knew more about email marketing and html than I did and I definitely got the basics from reading her newsletters and asking questions directly.

We knew about each others kids. We cried, ranted and cheered to each other about family and business. For many years this was a daily occurrence. Helping each other as we tried to make this online thing work and raise young kids.

Then contact became less and less and I had a bad feeling that something behind the scenes was going on. I got some bits and pieces but I never felt like she was spilling everything. Which was her prerogative but people can’t help you if you bottle things up.

She and I never exchanged phone numbers because we didn’t need to. We talked online daily or emailed quickly if we knew one of us was going to be busy. This was also before I had a normal cell phone and texting, what was that? But then I stopped getting replies very quickly. Then it went to not at all and my pretty much begging for a hello just so I would know how she was doing.

She was in a bad car crash a couple of years ago and it left her really messed up. Obviously things went very downhill from there as I found out she passed away over the weekend.

I just went through emails and I haven’t heard a reply from her in 2 years. It’s sad to know that whatever she was dealing with, she felt she needed to cut out all of us online friends and the community she had created.

In fact that’s how I found out of her passing. For some reason it popped in my head to ask her long time business partner if she’d heard from her lately. What I got back was a link to Anita’s obituary and that she passed away just 3 days prior. Wow.

Sadly, I’m not surprised by her passing. I have a feeling I know what some of the issues were that she was going through. But I’ll never know for sure since she didn’t want to talk about them. I do feel sorry for her kids who are just slightly younger than my own. To have lost their mother when all of them are so young, it heart breaking.

I want to focus on the happy times and the three way emails we would have going that would drive Lauren crazy! Lauren’s kids were itty bitty so she wasn’t online as much as Anita and I were. We could have 20-30 emails back and forth before poor Lauren even got into the conversation. roflmao But it worked both ways. They were EST and CST so they could be figuring out all sorts of stuff in emails before I even got up on the west coast.

She was a good friend and helped me through many years. I miss that Anita and I think I mourned her a couple of years ago because I already knew she was lost to me. I went through emails to see what the last contact I’d had with her was and that of course led me to reading some. It’s human nature to do the “what if I’d pushed harder” or “what if I’d made the effort to actually call her”. But that’s not going to do any good. I’m in Seattle and she was in Pennsylvania. I couldn’t push much from here and she did have her family with her.

As I just went frantically searching my gmail accounts for a photo of her I think it’s really starting to hit me. There are so many emails when I do a search for her that it won’t even list the number. It just says many. Going back years and years to the happier emails brings tears to my eyes. I know there’s a photo in there somewhere!

When flipping through them, I found a few emails between three of us. Of the 3 of us, two of them have passed at a young age. Denise Wilms passed a couple of years ago suddenly. Now is the time to go hug your loved one’s because you just never know when it’s your time. And now I have really depressed myself.

I’m glad that gmail lets me archive all of these emails. Imagine the ideas that are in there that we never put into fruition.

Anita’s memorial is on Wednesday and I wish her family much peace and comfort.

RIP Anita DeFrank, you’ll be forever missed.

I’m not a happy girl when I’m pushed out of my amazing yacht on the river denial. In fact, I get really pissy and I’m going to come off my yacht swinging. So here I am, off my yacht and in the ghetto with everyone else.

There are many more than 5 things not to do during your daughter’s senior year, but I’m going to start with these 5 or I may never actually get it posted.

Ok, well I had a ton more but I didn’t bring my phone in when I went pee and took a shower. How did we survive before we could put notes on our phones? I had a whole ton of options to write down. Damn it! Well maybe that just goes right into the first thing not to do the year your daughter is graduating?

1. Don’t turn 40

A big one would be, don’t turn 40. This was a huge mistake. Yes, my friends and family did an awesome job of making my bday all about me. It was a great birthday. Turning 40 wasn’t the problem, nor was the actual day and how we celebrated.

I honestly do think of age as just a number and hitting 40 didn’t bother me. But, there’s still just something about hitting a new decade in your life that makes you reflect. Add in that your daughter is graduating and you start thinking back to your senior year. It’s a recipe for disaster. Count ahead and keep your daughter back a year, it would have been a smoother transition.

2. Don’t expect the eye rolls to decrease

Whatever you’ve been getting from the girl in the last two years as far as eye rolls, sarcasm, flip outs, and attitude is not going to change. In fact, it’s going to increase. If your one of the lucky one’s and your daughter is just like you, it will increase about 10 fold. At the first sign of my Mom giving me the,” you were the same way” speech, I’m OUT. I just can’t hear it. I know, shut it. (no, I don’t tell my mom to shut it. I think it VERY STRONGLY)

3. Don’t start remodeling

We’ve lived here for 14 years. It’s time to fix things. Stuff has started to fall apart, not look so great or just finally needs to get done since it’s been…14 years and all.

See #1, you start doing some reflecting. You and hubby think it’s about time to get shit done. You start going for it. But we all know that remodel projects never end in just one room and there is never just one project going on at a time. Oh shit, I’ve got a graduation party in 4 weeks. A huge party because we are blessed with a lot of great people in our lives that want to celebrate.

However, we’re freaking poor from one graduating and another that’s NOT and just started drivers ed. Good idea on the remodeling idea. No time, no money, let’s do this! Time to start calling in favors to get the work done lol

4. Don’t go on an extreme diet

I keep rocking back and forth on the weight and I hate it. So I decided to cross running a half marathon off my bucket list and while I’m at it, I may as well really go for the weight loss as well. Sounds good in theory doesn’t it? I mean, I’m running 12-22 miles a week for training, it should be easy to lose.

Well take it from this girl that has her degree in personal training and used to train people for a living. No, this was a bad choice and too much at once to take on when no one else in the house was on board. I did lose a couple of pounds and manage to keep it down to that but then my asthma kicked in and I was put on a steroid inhaler. Hi 5 pounds in a couple of days.

Stress eating is at the top of my list. Which leads to take out. I love take out when I’m stressed. It’s overly salty and full of fat. Everything against my diet restrictions. Don’t go extreme, make nice small goals that are easy to stick to. Like me right now just saying no to take out!

5. Don’t expect your emotions to stay in check

I’m really not an emotional gal. I know if my hubby read that he’d give a big snort. He’s been with me for 23 years. He has no idea how hormonal, moody and just plain crazy I could be if I was a regular girl.

Now you can count on it being more like I’m pregnant. Prom stuff set me off so I was starting to cry while checking out to get the flowers. I get a random email with senior info in it and I tear up. I can’t stand it. It annoys the hell out of me.

There are more, so many more.

I hope I do get to posting the others. It’s just so hard to get blogging into the mix right now. Which is another thing that is pissing me off. There’s no balance going on right now!

I’m aware that I must have been one hell of a bitch to deal with in the last year of living at home. I can remember some things and I know I was a brat. BUT, I also had strict parents which is what I attributed so much of my fight too. K, I’m just not going there. Takes these tips and run with them.

Never mind, don’t run with them. Just run to the store and stock up on wine and alcohol. I’ve been setting you up with drink recipes and wine choices so you can make it through.  I’ll have even more wine coming up. Weekend away with friends is coming up and we found out a wine festival is going on at the same time!

Perfect way to set up these last few last weeks of the school year right? Trip away with good friends, making some drunken goofy memories, making fun of each other and no responsibilities. Pretend I’m 17 again

I went shopping yesterday with the youngest and grabbed some flowers so my pots don’t look so sad this year. I even got them planted, which is a huge step around here. They are now my Mother’s Day present to myself it looks like. Glad I did it.

I miss the days when the kids were small. Back then, they came home with something cute and homemade from school and I got to go in for a Mother’s Day tea. Done and it was fun. Now I just never know what to expect and last year was the worst one ever.

Recap last year

I didn’t blog about last year’s non-event because it just sucked. Neither kid did a damn thing. In fact, neither kid even said Happy Mother’s day until before bed. Then one remembered and the other one just went with it. Thanks, but no thanks. Hubby made me breakfast and dinner. I’m not his mom so wtf was up with that?

I was in tears in bed that night because it was obviously too much to ask for the kids to even recognize that it’s a holiday. I’m not looking for gifts, just some acknowledgement of all I do would be great.

Not always that bad

This is why blogging your holidays is such a good idea. When you do have a bad one, you can go and search your own site to see better days. Like back in 2009 when I wrote a Happy Mother’s Day post. Funny to read it because I obviously wasn’t sticking to the foods I could eat or still hadn’t figured out which one’s were hurting my digestive system at that time. I would never get a T-bone for my dinner now. lol

There was also the year that the family bought me a pearl necklace and earrings. Oh boy did I cry. It was so unexpected. I am not a big jewelry person and I NEVER get jewelry for gifts. Talk about tears lol

This year…

is going to be whatever I make it. We were supposed to go fishing as soon as hubby got off work. But then they had overtime (weird, someone called in “sick” on Mother’s Day) and they were going to mandatory someone to work. The guy that was going to be mandatoried has young kids so hubby said he’d take it instead. I approve and he knows that or he’d never have taken it before checking to see if it ruined our plans. Does that mean I’m not a little cranky about it? No, it doesn’t mean that. I can still feel a little cranky it happened. That’s life as a firefighter wife and I get to bitch about it to make myself get over it faster.

We were going to go fishing today with the youngest. The oldest has to work from 10-3 so her day is shot. I wasn’t looking forward so much to the fishing part but I WAS excited to get our smoker running and throw the trout in there. That’s a bummer. Plus it would have been fun to get out on the lake with the boys for a few hours. Especially since it’s not raining like it was supposed to.

We’re already starting off better this year because the oldest mumbled Happy Mother’s Day to me before leaving for work. Thanks, for giving it all the enthusiasm of being forced to tell me something. I felt the conviction behind your words. But beggars can’t be choosers, so I’ll take every scrap I can get. Especially from her right now since we are getting along SO well.

My son got up and immediately told me Happy Mother’s Day also. So we’re 2 for 2 on the win dept. He’s cooking himself breakfast at 12:30pm. Scratch that, it’s now 3 and he’s still cooking this breakfast. I think there may be a professionalism problem. I’m unsure if it’s supposed to be for me as well or just himself. However, since it’s so late, I’m going to assume it’s for him. Either way, I’ll most probably get stuck cleaning up after it. At least I got him to unload the dishwasher without any complaints.

I dropped off lunch at the station. Hubby had them move things around so he was working down the street at a quieter station. Guess they got hammered last night, which is typical at headquarters since they cover every station in the district. Working a 72 is going to be brutal if he can’t get a nap in there.

Then it was a stop at Mom’s to drop off a flower basket. I feel bad that I was glad I couldn’t find anyone around. But I’m honest on here, I just wanted to get home so I could put my sweats back on and hit the couch and enjoy my Resident Evil marathon. Which is what I’m doing now.

Dinner tonight is a rotisserie chicken I picked up, steak fries and some kind of veggie. We have a lot of selection right now. I grabbed strawberries, shortcake cups and whip cream for dessert. I’m also working at not popping the cork on my Red Velvet cupcake wine. It’s only 3 after all. lol

Hmm, red wine’s supposed to sit out and breath for an hour. I better go see if it’s chilled enough that it can be opened. I don’t have a decanter to pour it into. Look at the things I need to add to a wishlist. I really should have a wishlist that I can just point people to.

So how did your Mother’s Day go? Or how is it going since it’s still only late afternoon here on the west coast.

Quick update:

It’s now 6:30 and I just wanted to update that the day has turned out just fine. We’ve enjoyed a dinner that I didn’t slave over or have to clean up from. There have been laughs. Son and I have enjoyed our Resident Evil marathon. We’re actually on the last one now and he’s never seen it. Plus I got a card and this beautiful flower basket…

Life is good

I liked this recipe because the ingredients were pretty inexpensive and it didn’t require very many. After a couple, hey I wasn’t driving, the sugar started melting down the glass and became pretty messy. lol So you may want to pay attention and keep coasters or napkins around to put the glasses on.

I bought the martini glasses just for the night. I figured if we were celebrating, I was worth $7.99. I love Marshall’s for stuff like that. I got 4 cute martini glasses for under $10 with tax.

When I did my search online for drinks I chose pineapple juice as the target keyword. I needed some more pineapple juice for the teriyaki chicken so why not put the leftover juice to work?

I’m looking forward to doing some searches for some drinks that will do well camping this summer. We just can’t wait to get our trailer out for a vacation!

I’d seen a picture online of a daughter at the station getting her prom pic. I knew I wanted to do this also. I mean, REALLY wanted to. I kept that excitement in because that means people might shut it down. lol But all I had to do was mention it and then it easily was done. In fact our good friend was all,”Hell yeah, I’ll even put my class B’s on”. Yes, as you can imagine, he has a little girl He’s on the far right. LUV HIM!

I don’t know how my hubby deals with all the ribbing. I mean, at least our buddy says things and then immediately rethinks it and says, oh shit if someone said that about my daughter I’d punch them in the face. lol He heard a comment from someone else today too and I just don’t understand the holding the tongue. How does one do that?

Well one thing, it was kind of a superior but since it’s someone I went to school with that’s difficult to remember. Hence, I AM NOT a good candidate for working in the department I guess? But, he’s just really good at shining it on. I however did joke that he was obviously the next one to get punched. It’s much funnier if you were there for the BBQ the night before. lol

We have the oldest kids out of almost everyone. Of the group that was at the station today we definitely have the oldest. I don’t remember being around many others regularly that have older kids, or maybe they did have older kids but they didn’t talk about at that time? I’m not sure. We’ve always been around older people prior to the dept so it’s odd that this didn’t come up with us being the jackass making comments. But I really can’t remembering ever talking about someone else’s kids and how we would have been getting into trouble at that age. It’s already in our heads, no need to point it out.

I guess one thing that probably helps hubby is knowing that they will all be in that same boat. Which is probably why the jackass comments pop out. They know they will be there at one point. They just don’t realize how fast it will hit.

I’m going to be honest, it’s all starting to really hit me and I’m not doing as well with it. I picked up my daughters flowers today and started to cry at the checkout. I got the text message they were on the way to the station and half way there I started to cry again. I have lived in denial really well, but it’s caught up with me and it’s here to stay for the next 4 months I’m sure.

Tonight there was prom. It was also the deadline for getting her college acceptance in. While she was off at prom I was making sure that was paid online. While I was home alone. Yes, major shit only goes down when your firefighter is at work.

Thankfully I branched out a couple of nights ago and asked my friends to come over. Sometimes last minute works and sometimes it doesn’t. Only 2 of them could come over but that was enough to get me through so I wasn’t sitting here tearing up by myself the entire night. I’m very thankful they came over and I hope to return the favor down the road.

I’ve learned by this point in life that I’ll never get the chance to recreate moments. Sharing in the moments used to make me jealous I think. Can’t really explain it but it was something that seemed like it should just be the four of us. Now, I love to share the big moments that are happening in our lives. It means all the more to me that so many people are in our lives that want to share in the big events. Especially when the kids want the moments shared. I think that says a lot about our friends and family.

For now, I’ll have the memory and the pictures that my daughter got to see Dad on prom night. That both of us got to see how gorgeous she looked. Today after he wakes from his nap we can start to wallow in the fact that we are too young to have this hottie, who also has a good amount of common sense.

She came home pretty early from prom and it was weird. She didn’t have a curfew and she’s not secretive as she doesn’t have to be. We’ve taught her that honesty goes a long way. But tonight she came home before 11 and jumped in the shower to get all the tanning gel and hair junk off. Then I got the notice that she  was off to a friends house. It had a secretive air to it.

I feel pretty confident that she isn’t going to be unsafe in driving around or something like that. I also feel confident that she knows if she feels threatened or put herself in a bad situation, she can call a friend of ours to get her at any hour of the day or night. That was brought up tonight. Our friend specifically talked to her about it. Good friends are amazingly priceless and I’m glad they were placed in my life!

This week has been a big push into big changes. I don’t get to hide anymore from the fact that she’s going to graduate and she is going to move out in just a few months to go to college. There will definitely be a lot of posts coming up as I work through it. Or just for me to vent because I can’t figure out how to work through it! lol

Any tips on things that have helped you through a kid growing up and moving out?

My Mom taught me to do this. I wonder if she got it from the commercial or before?

Mom had an in-home daycare which means I grew up with a ton of kids. She has much more patience than I ever could find to have raised all those kids. And raise them she did. Most of the kids were at our house from around 6am to 5 or 6pm. I can remember many a night that they were there even later having dinner with us which was NOT ok by my Mom’s standards. 12 hour days watching someone else’s kids are long enough.

Again, I don’t know how she did it. Plus there was still us to raise and run us around to all our sports and activities. But that was part of why she chose to have the home daycare. She was home for us also.

Since I was raised in this environment I had a lot of different ideas on how to take care of things as they came up. Showing them how to throw a better tantrum is one of them.

I can’t remember ever having either of my kids throw a tantrum in a store. I know there were times it was getting close and I left. Those times were when I’d pushed the limit and they were tired, hungry or both. But of course there were times at home that they pulled them or tried to. They really never got far with me and the kids learned quickly thankfully. Pitching a fit in life will get you disliked but talking it out will get you a lot of things, including respect.

But let’s just talk a little about Momma and shopping to get this stage set. I don’t like shopping. Don’t like as in H-A-T-E it. I get bored and want to just grab whatever or walk out. Sure it probably has to do with not having money to buy everything I want when I see it. But I can’t remember being much of a shopper since I moved out of my parents house. Yes, I’m aware there could be a correlation there with who’s money is being spent. lol

I’ve had some great shopping fun here and there since but they are few and far between. I go and have a drink or two for lunch before we hit school clothes shopping. The teens and I have our fav mall to hit and our fav restaurant we go to for school clothes shopping. Yep, you guessed it. It’s in the mall parking lot so we can just walk back after lunch. I went into this dress shopping 100% sober and for good reason. I’m getting to that reason, bear with me.

This is my daughters last months of high school. It’s her only dance and she’s going with her boyfriend of quite a few months. I kind of told her she could go for it for this dance because she did save us so much money by not going to all the others. I mean she’s my only girl and she’s really frugal too. I know she’s aware of how much she’s saved us by not going. I was expecting to get hit pretty hard and I’d warned hubby what I’d told her. I was so completely wrong in my thinking. I wasn’t thinking she’d get crazy but that she’d have a little more fun with the spending of it. I know she’s a thrifty girl, but she’s still so very girly.

She went shopping with a friend to quite a few different stores to look at dresses. In doing so, she’d changed her mind on the color of dress which I was happy to hear. She’d been looking at a more nude/peachy pink color and that would have washed her out. Now we were on the look out for black or red. Perfection, even though she can pull off so many colors. I was really surprised she wasn’t going for the pink as she rocked it for a homecoming dress and again, she’s my girly-girl. Amazing what hanging out with so many rednecks has achieved of late. Just wait until you see what she’s making her boyfriend wear.

But the true story of the dress has to do with me keeping my mouth mostly shut. My working on not pissing her off because I can do that without even talking if it’s the wrong day or minute of the day. As I said in the title, this is the last dress she has to have me around for. However, I wanted the experience to be really good so she’ll want me around for the most important and probably the only dress she’ll have to buy next. The wedding dress.

Not that I want her to get married soon or anything. That’s just how my brain works. I’m always thinking ahead to how things will work or be perceived. In some ways it’s a total curse as I worry about crap that no one ever even thinks of. But as far as the teens go, it’s come in very handy.

By us having such a good time prom dress shopping, I’m hoping with all my heart that she’ll want me there when she goes to pick out the most important dress of her life. I’m hoping that she’ll WANT to ask me to go looking with her.

I made sure that I was completely positive about the dress shopping. I worked hard at not using any trigger words or sentences that will set us off for a fight. I also made sure that she gave her opinion before I gave mine and that ended up pretty easy. She was had the same thoughts I did about dresses and even picked out the dress I’d hoped she would. WIN, WIN, WIN!

Now I’m hoping the experience was good so when the time comes I’m on her first call list for wedding dress shopping. Even if she has a group of friends that will actually help her make the decision, I envision my Mom and I sitting comfortably in the background drinking wine and trying not to cry. Oh hell, who am I kidding? We’re definitely crying and laughing in our wine while she and her friends are figuring out the perfect dress.

I’ll post more about prom and of the course the ultimate dress, after next weekend. Prom is the 27th.

Now that my in-laws both live in Eastern Washington we’re lucky to see them twice a year. I could easily spend another week visiting both their houses. I miss them terribly and especially since no one’s getting younger.

My stepmother-in-laws health isn’t awesome. She’s doing a great job by going to water aerobics class regularly and seeing her doctors, but she’s more frail each time we see her. If they still lived close we probably wouldn’t notice the decline. But it always slaps me in the face with worry when I first see her again. Dad is so awesome about watching over her and still keeping her 100% independent.

This is what I have to look forward to in my old age. I don’t have to look far to see what my husband will be like. My FIL loves to be a pain in the ass. The bigger ass he can be, the more hilarious he thinks it is. This has been a growing part of daily life in my house and I know it will only be getting worse. Well I definitely know that because I’ve been witnessing it lol I just shake my head and walk away. I get my digs in with my FIL when I can cause he knows I’m not a doormat or it would bore him. He wouldn’t think it’s funny to pick on me if that were the case. Eh I grew up with a PITA Dad so I know I have to dish it back.

Now that’s just one house. Every time I was up to help, I was told to go sit and relax, I’m on vacation. Well ok. I mostly will then. I know they don’t get a ton of visitors so its fun to have family to take care of. Hell, it’s a big deal in designing my dream home in my head. I want a place everyone can come stay and I can cook away.

Now the other set of in-laws are where we stopped first and I posted from their back patio. Mom’s an awesome cook and baked a bunch before we got there too. I’m a little worried about the scale. I’m still refusing to get on it until this Saturday.

My hubby is the baby in a family of 3 boys. Dad had 3 boys, but 2 of them were with Mom. Needless to say it took quite a while for her to get into the mindset that her either of her boys could possibly do anything wrong. Honestly I remember exactly when it happened. It was awesome.

Mom and I were out in the garage so she could smoke and we were doing a real number on the beer. Kids were out back with the guys. We were having a great time catching up since they’d already moved to Eastern Washington at this time and I was used to visiting with her at least once a week. This was only about 9 years ago and hubby and I have been together 23 now!

Next thing I know, we’re both doing the drunken trash on the men talk. She wasn’t defending her baby boy like normal. I guess after 14 years she figured I loved him and wasn’t leaving despite any faults. I mean if you’re married to a guy and its a manly guy, they all have similar issues you have to put up with. My step-FIL was a long, long time teamster so go figure if she married a manly man or not.

Even though we were close before, that set it up so I knew I really could talk to her about anything. I have been able to ever sense. It’s great having more than one mom to get ideas, encouragement and help from. I’m blessed with three

I’ve had a rough couple of weeks with different random issues. Taking off for spring break to my in-laws house couldn’t have come at a better time.

Here I literally sit with not a care in the world. The financial issue I was having is now taken care of. Not that we are debt free but back to “normal”. Shit’s not hovering over my head just waiting to blow up like it was.

Hubby and I have had some really good discussions about many things so we’re in a better place. It’s the last few months of senior year for the oldest. To say that money is tight, is a huge understatement. Every time we turn around until June 7th someone will be asking for money for something. Prom is coming up at the end of the month. Holy hell I need to get cranking on more biz.

But that’s at a standstill right now while we relax and visit. We haven’t seen my MIL and stepFIL for many months and last time we saw them it was only for a few hours. In fact in the last year and a half I think we’ve seen them less than 24 hours all total. Now that I think of it, good grief. Way too long.

So we’re spending a few days here and then on to my FIL and stepMIL’s place. I’m one of those complete weirdo’s that got lucky and loves her in-laws. I even have two sets to love so the odds weren’t in my favor of getting so lucky. But lucky I am. They are all awesome.

The picture is me right now blogging on the back patio. It’s only 1pm but I’m very close to opening the wine. This relaxing view just calls for me to pour a glass.

It’s super quiet and with how relaxing it is, the words are flowing much easier than they have in weeks. Having to force blog posts out was painful. Painful because I had to do it or see a decrease in my paypal account. But a big part was it was so forced and that’s not normal. Blogging comes pretty easy for me since I’m such a quiet and reserved person.

The last few weeks it hasn’t been easy at all. Every post was like pulling teeth. My mind was on so many other things and it could take hours to get one 300 word post written up. My poor VA is behind in work from me because I barely got 3 posts off to her to put up for me. Not cool of me but I did warn her that I was having issues at least.

Now the biggest issue is focus. This week I’m hoping to get my brain back in order. Time away always reminds me what sites are the most important to work on. If I only have a few hours then I have to get to the money makers first. If it’s not making it on that list then I have to rethink why it’s still around. Bleh, not this week I don’t. This week is for enjoying the company, enjoying the view and poppin’ that cork.

Later, Sageland Reisling is calling me…