It's like this...

Boeing, you vixen you! You called. We spoke. You're still the same, enticing, wonderful, desirable job that you were before. You had good news. Hubby is NUMBER FOUR on your callback to work list. So, you have four beau's before us. It's all right. We know you are fickle, we're just glad to be included. And now that I've seen some hope and light at the end of a very long and financially draining tunnel, I feel like I've just consumed about twenty caffeinated drinks!!! We're Number Four! We're Number Four! We're Number Four!!

'Don't look now Fido, but Pammie is going to try some jazzersize!"

Apparently the job in Portland is a no go. However, Judge Alito was confirmed to the Supreme Court and you can see him dancing here .

BUT another place did. Today hubby got a phone call about his resume from a place in Portland, Oregon. I vagualy recall sending his resume there. I went on a resume sending frenzy one day and I think I sent his job resume all over the planet. I can't remember all the places I sent it and that's probably a good thing. Portland is about four hours away from here. Hubby's dad lives down there so if it worked out he could perhaps stay with him for a bit to see if the job worked out. FIL is newly batching it again, so he might have room. We shall see. I'd still rather Boeing called us though.

Think Again!

I called a gym to set an appointment to go check it out. All well and good, but today for the appointment I went to the wrong gym. They had no record of me having called. Well duh. Of course they didn't. I didn't call them! The ladies there were totally in a panic that I was there and didn't have an appointment. Yes, it's a women only gym. I'm not even sure the word 'gym' applies to what I saw there. A few work out machines were set in a circle. Between each machine and the next there was a bouncer kind of thing for the person doing the exercising to jump or dance on and then they would move on to the next machine. Since they had no time for me, they wanted to make another appointment and have me come back. I was polite and made the appointment but I'm not so sure I'm going back. Gaaaaa. Maybe I'll buy some weights or just toss my kids around for good measure. That ought to burn off a few calories.

This is my beautiful nine year old. Generally she's a quiet, reticent child. I say usually, because there are times when she surpirses me. Yesterday she was holding our cat, whose name is Dakota. She whipped him around so his butt was in my face and said, "BEHOLD SOUTH DAKOTA! I started laughing. Then she said, "It stinks in South Dakota and that's why nobody wants to live there!" So, as far as funny things go, it ranked high on my scale of hilarity yesterday. I just thought you all needed to know that.

Not that I get them that often. I have too many children around me to keep me up and going. Today it's gray and rainy. This rain is coming down sideways because it's so windy outside. Sideways. Yeesh. So I thought I'd do something different today. I called a gym. I feel like that Diet Snapple commercial where the girl is so proud of herself for switching to diet and doing something great for her body, then she slips into a gym and slips right back out again. Baby steps. I'm going to take Baby steps. I set up an appointment to go check it out on Monday to see how I feel about things. Two years ago I was walking five miles a day and taking a kick boxing class. Now the most exercise I get is running off at the mouth. Mostly. Although I did start taking a multivitamin pack every day since the beginning of the year. That's a little baby step as well. What's that they say? It's not where you are but the direction in which you're going? At this p...

Hubby was one of the massive layoffs from Boeing after the tragedies of 9/11. Now they may want him back. Fickle, fickle Boeing. You treated us so well for so long. We loved you. We relied on you. Then you dumped us. It hurt, I won't lie and say it didn't hurt. It hurt a lot. Oh sure, we saw the signs, we knew it was coming. That 60 day warning slip you gave us was our first clue. We tried to shrug it off, but we lived in fear until The Day. The break was clean. We've stumbled along for a few years, found different jobs but nothing to compare to you. We compared every job to you. No one had the high wages, the great health benefits, the incredible overtime. You ruined us for other jobs. Now you're giving us that 'come hither' look. It's tempting. Oh so very tempting. We loved you for so long and we were trying to move on. You haven't actually officially asked us back yet. Not yet. We hope you will, but then of course we will live in fea...

The kids are off at school, my two daycare babies aren't here and I want to fall blissfully back into bed and sleep for another fifteen hours. Not that I slept that long last night. I never do. I should clean the kitchen, do some laundry, read some scriptures or work on cleaning off my desk here. Better yet, I ought to start the outline of the book idea that came to me in the middle of the night. You know, when I'm doing that not-sleeping-thing. I'm amazed I remember my ideas on it at all because generally I wake up in the morning with the hazy thought that I had an incredibly, amazing, life-altering idea but it's lost in my fuzzy brain, never to be seen again. This time I remember. I think I'll take a nap first though.

Perhaps I'm easily amused, but these two guys make me laugh. I posted a video clip of them before and here's their website link . Turn up the sound and laugh along. The world needs more laughter.

You know how some people have Lists? Their Lists include all of the things they want to accomplish, visit, see, experience or do before they leave this mortal coil behind. I've never made such a list. But if I had a list like that, it might look like this: Or not. I do have other things I'd like to do, places I'd like to see.

I think this is the face my teenagers make at me when I tell them it's their turn to clean the litter box. I can't be certain though, because when I quickly turn around it's gone. I have my suspiscions though.

Rogers High School Student Struck and Killed Running for Bus She lives not too far from us, goes to high school with my daughter who just turned seventeen. She got up this morning, showered, dressed, put on her make up as most teenagers do in preparation for their day. Then she grabbed her back pack, went out the door and she won't ever be coming back. I haven't talked to my girl yet. I haven't hugged her yet and told her I'm sorry. I haven't been able to look in her eyes and see if this has lessened her sense of being immortal. Death doesn't come to anyone my age....it can't...it won't....it just did. My heart aches for her parents. I drove by the accident scene this morning where the police and press are still gathered. Cameras are out, lights are set and talking heads are recording their horrible messages of a sweet young girls life cut too short. Flowers and stuffed animals and candles will soon be appearing there as a makeshift memorial to ...

I need this because lately it's how I feel. Ok, it's a place to store your knives. The one I have in my kitchen doesn't have the personality this one does. Of course it might scare the children.

So, the teenager calls from school this morning. She's got that voice. The one that tells me she wants me to feel sorry for her because her life is no longer worth living, for the umpteenth time this week. She needs to come home from school. Something horrible, really, really horrible has happened to her. This horrible thing is so horrible that staying in school today is impossible. She has no choice. She must come home. She must come home now. She got some makeup on her shirt. Can I call the office and get her an early release? Um, no. Although this is obviously serious in a my-life-is-ruined kind of way, I'm not inclined to allow her to miss an entire day of of school because she got a smudge of makeup on her shirt. She took this news as well as could be expected. She hung up on me. Ah yes. Parenthood. Delightful. Update: She called to apologize. That's something I suppose.

Today was sunny and when I went outside the air smelled like Spring. It was a delicious feeling! Last summer I yanked out some of our lawn on the corner and planted a pampass grass in the middle. I bordered it with dusty miller and pink flowering plants. The pampass grass has sprouted up quite nicely, but the pink flowers have passed on. Since today was so beautiful I decided to do a bit of weeding. I yanked out the dead flowers. It looks a lot nicer now I think. I want Spring!!

Remind me not to die on a NY Subway . Seems a man was going home from his job at a Post Office and crossed over to the other side while riding the subway. No one noticed for six or more hours that they were traveling with a corpse. Who say's New Yorkers don't notice their surroundings?

I decided that dinner this evening would be barbecued hamburgers with homemade French Fries. I hadn't made fries in a long time and thought it would be an extremely healthy and low chloesteral delicious addition to our meal. I started heating up some oil mixed with Thai peanut sauce. Hubby told me not to use it in the oil. Ha. Who's the cook around here buddy? So, I went to begin peeling the potatoes. I can peel five lbs. of tubers in record time. I'm tater peeling pro. Then my youngest wanted to help. She wanted to peel the potatoes. So I let her try. It wasn't easy, since her right hand doesn't work very well. At seven years old, she has learned to compensate for her physical limitations quite well but there are still many challenges ahead of her to work through. I just didn't realize that peeling potatoes would be one of them. We worked out a plan. I would hold the potato and she would peel it. I would turn the potato when she told me to and...

I received this email today: Hey Pam: So, they put me in charge of finding people to sing for the program on March 23rd. I'd really love to have you sing a song called, "Close Enough to Touch". I don't know if you have the CD or have heard it before, but I think it is perfect for your range and voice. What do you think? Are you game? Sister Grace would be your accompanist. Jenny To sing, or not to sing. I love singing and have done solos before. It's just been a little while since I've done so. Generally I don't mind getting up in front of large crowds to speak to them, it doesn't make me nervous. Occasionally singing will make me anxious. We shall see. We shall see.

In April it will have been two years since we purchased a soul-less home. Don't get me wrong, it's a very nice soul-less home. It's huge and it's brand new and I should be happy here. I'm not. Two years of living in a pretty prison. We moved here because hubby got a job here. A month after moving here, he lost that job. Things haven't been good for us financially since that point (shakes fist at Boeing in general) Here's a picture of our new home. Here is our old home. Our old home was getting too small for us. With four children and three bedrooms, we were sleeping in the family room. The windows needed replacing and the deck needed a lot of work, but we had nearly half an acre of land and the neighbors weren't so close that we could hear them breathing at night. That's not the case here. The houses are built so very close, they have no character, no soul. It's not that this town so far south of my beloved Seattle isn't a good ...

We have discoverd the face of terrorism and it is us. Me. I mean my blond, blue-eyed six year old. The dangerous one. She has many weapons in her arsenal and you just never know when she may decide tip the balance of power in her favor during a flight and hijack us all to Disneyland. As a family we travel to Las Vegas on a yearly basis. We go there for the loose slots, comped drinks, wild dance parties sun. Hubby's parents live there and they bring us down to visit each summer. We call it our Club Himka, complete with enormous outdoor pool, exceptinoal culinary experiences and chocolates left on our pillows. My in-laws are wonderful people. Since driving to Las Vegas in a car with four children would make good fodder for the next Chainsaw Massacre movie, we prefer to fly instead. So fly we did. But before we could fly, we had to run the Security Gauntlet. This is where complete strangers have the legal right to make you disrobe so they can grope you. I'm sure there a...

Found this and have watched it a few times. It always makes me laugh. Ok, so I'm easily amused. I admit it.

I took my son (he of painful injury fame) to the doctor yesterday. I knew he had strep throat. After four kids and numerous hospital visits, doctor visits and ER fun, I know things. The professional medical community doesn't like it when you 'know things'. A parent with knowledge of medical procedures, medicines and practices makes the doctors more than a bit nervous. It perturbs them. They like to be the ones dispensing their wisdom and making the decisions. When my third child had her finger smashed open after dropping a weight upon it, we spent some quality time in the ER. I asked that they give her some versed. Versed is in a class of chemicals called benzodiazepines which are all sedatives, hypnotics and/or muscle relaxants. Another benzodiazepine is Xanax. I wanted her to have this medication so she wouldn't remember the pain she was about to endure. She'd broken her finger and sliced it open so far that it needed stitches. I was haughtily informed t...

It's been raining here. A lot. We'd have beaten our previous record if Mother Nature hadn't decided to take one day off from giving us measureable rainfull. We were concerned because we saw this big yellow orb in the sky and we weren't sure what it was or if it was dangerous. Just to be on the safe side, most of us stayed inside just in case. The following day the deluge began again and we all felt waterlogged safe once more. Everything was going swimmingly (get it? Ha! Swimmingly? Rain? Ha! I crack myself up) until my sister invited the God's of Vehicle Breakdowns to visit me. She knew better than to ask me how my car was running. She spefically asked me if everything was functioning. She did so within earshot of my vehicle. Not two seconds later my drivers side window went down and refused to come back up again. Did I mention that it was pouring out? Did I also mention that I had to drive an hour and a half to get back home? No? Well, it was and...

Today we're going to discuss Bush and the signs signaling that he's the anti-Christ, why he messed up the Seattle monorail deal, how he doesn't care about black people and what he was doing on that grassy knoll. But first lets talk about something more important: the death wish my son has. He's going to be fifteen in April. That's the plan, but I fear he has other ideas, at least subconsciously. He's a skateboarder. This means he jumps onto a thin piece of wood that is attached to four wheels and then he races at breakneck (and I do mean BREAK NECK) speeds down streets, ramps, stairs and stair railings. That last thing is called grinding, by the way. I think it has something to do with what happens to your private parts when you hit it the wrong way. There are numerous skate parks around the Seattle area, both outdoor and indoor. Since we've been on our 25th straight day of continuous rain, the indoor places have been getting quite a lot of my har...

It's been a lovely day. My father drove out here ("I spent over 70 bucks on diesel fuel to sit here and eat lunch with a bunch of kids?) for Special Person Day at the elementary school. He and I got the girls some lunch from Burger king and traipsed into the school with the other bajillion parents/grandparents. We ate lunch with Ashley first, then Allison. It was fun. Here is Ashley and her Papa, my father, Then I took my father to tour the new retirement living apartments near me. He saw all the old people there and made a face. I'm not sure, but I think one of the old ladies made one right back at him. Then I got the call I always dread. "Please come get your child, I think she needs stitches" Ashley, who has Cerebral Palsy from a stroke suffereed in the womb, wears a DAFO. It's a leg brace on her right side that helps keep her foot aligned and gives her support for walking. Somehow she got her good hand wedged inside the articulated part of the ...

Venezuela News And ViewsVenezuela News And Views: A crumbling country and Darth Chavez I have close ties to Venezuela, it's a country and a people that I love. To see the turmoil that has shaken this county, well, it shakes me. Only 15% of the population came out to vote there last month. Only 15%. Despite pleas and coercion from the Chavez thugs, only 15%. Iraq did better than that and those citizens were facing possible death by doing so.

This is my beautiful seventeen year old daughter. Husband and I have briefly considered becoming muslim so she would be forced to wear the traditional burkha and we would be able to stop seeing men three times her age oogling her in public. For some reason she didn't go along with that idea. The wearing of burlap sacks as clothing was also not a big hit with her either. It hasn't helped that she's going to the gym every day and has now used her work money to pay for a personal trainier. Personally, I think she's doing this just to upset us, her parents. When she got back from the gym last night her face was lit up like a Democrat's after finding out that impeachment hearings for President Bush were a GO. Seems her personal trainer (female) told her that another personal trainer (male) has a crush on her and is planning on giving her his phone number. This is the guy she herself has been oogling for months. I immediately told my husband to begin preparing fo...

It's been raining here for 23 days straight. Not that I'm complaining yes I am but that seems a bit much, even for a born and bred Pacific Northwesterner such as I! The weather forecasters say that our record is 33 days straight. I fear we're going to break that record. It's time to build an Ark.

So another one bites the dust , along the lines of Brad and Jennifer and other Gollywood Celebs. While there are some marriages that survive the rigors and stress that comes with celebrity, it's apparent that the majority do not. Bennifer didn't even make it to the altar. I greatly admire those who work through their struggles, compromise, put each other first in their lives and in their hearts and stick with their vows. It's not easy, but then nothing worthwhile ever is in this life.

Here is the reason I'm going to have to send my female cat Smokey to Lamaze classes very soon. He's also the reason I can't see my monitor most of the time. I should have known when I took this picture that they weren't just 'cuddling' all the time.

As I sat down here to write, my male cat has climbed up to my desk and is sitting right in front of my monitor. He doesn't seem to think I need to see anything while I'm typing. It's a good thing I'm a touch-typist and don't need to see what I'm doing. Speaking of my cat(s), I do believe the girl kitty is pregnant. She's either pregnant or growing a rather large tumor in her tummy. She's only eight months old! That's one issue, the other is that the father is....her brother. (No, we aren't from the south) The reason I know the paternity is because a few weeks ago my youngest daughter came to tell me that the cats where playing. I told her that's nice, mm hmm, ok, yeah, not a problem. I was on the computer at the time so my Automated Mommy Response System was fully deployed. This allows me to let my children believe I'm right there with them, paying excruciating attention to every word our of their mouths when in reality I only he...

Going by the amount of paper that I shredded today, a great many! I get bills in the mail, which I rarely open. (I'm a bad, bad, girl with a few issues) and they pile up. Each of my four children bring home reams of paper from school each day, especially the grade schoolers. Paper, paper, paper. Everywhere paper. I found myself cleaning my kitchen counters by sweeping off all the paper into cardboard box lids and stowing them in my bedroom until the urge to shred struck me. It struck today. I've spent literally ten hours opening envelopes, taking out the pertinent personal pages of info and tossing the envelopes into the trash. Then I shredded what was left. I think I've killed my shredder. It got awfully hot and now it's not working. I told you, I'm a bad, bad girl.

So, She's guilty of killing her children by reason of insanity, is she? Having given birth to four children, I have an understanding of postpartum depression. Having said that though, I cannot fathom taking the lives of my children (except my teenagers, but that's another story entirely)

My husband and the cats. Although he looks incredibly comfortable on the couch, he's not. The couch has seen better days. Those days were waaaaaay before it came to be in our possesion. You see this couch came from Auntibell. Her name was Maribell and she was/is my husband's aunt. We lost her to breast cancer several years ago. This little love seat was part of her living room in a FAB house on Mercer Island over looking Lake Washington. On the left is Maribell and to her right is my mother in law Bonnie. (An amazingling wonderful woman that I adore!). At the time this picture was taken, Maribell was already quite ill. She knew the cancer had spread but I never heard a complaint from her. As her disease progressed she told all the women in the family that she wanted to leave us something to remember her by when she was gone. She set us up to go to a jewelry designer to create our own individual piece. Some chose to have earings or necklaces made. I chose a ring....

I amazed myself by getting out of bed this morning and actually staying out of bed. For me lately, this constitutes a miracle of sorts. With all the rain around here I think I need one of those lights that makes you happy, not to be confused with one of those pills that makes you happy. I got the girls off to school, and started cleaning. After I ate something called Kashi with some soy milk for breakfast. It wasn't bad. Not like Twigs and Bark, but close. It's a good thing I'm not really a hungry-morning-eater or it would never have done it for me.