Wash, Rinse and Repeat

I’m still attempting to think up catchy titles.  Yeah, I know, stick with my day job.

I love movies.  I mean love them.  Now don’t think that I know every title, or director or am a fan of a certain genre, that’s not me.  That’s too close to being put into a box, or stereotype and that is most certainly not part of my character.  I just enjoy a wide variety of movies, with the small exception of horror movies.  They are the only ones I just cannot watch.

I have a few movies.  I’m not an avid collector, mainly because I just do not have the storage for them, plus I wouldn’t want dh to accuse me of being as addicted to movies as he is of hunting paraphernalia.  The majority of movies on my shelf are of the kids/family variety.  Not just because I have kids, but because I love those movies.  I can still cry at a good ~popular cartoon~ movie and not feel embarrassed about it.

Lately, due to my need to get my house organized, I’ve been really holding off buying the new movies that have come out, or even resisting the good price of used ones.  I’m just finding it not worth it if I don’t intend to watch it repeatedly.

Ah, now we come to the reason for my idiotic title (it was the only one I could think of at the moment).  I’m a repeat watcher.  I am much like a kid where I can watch a movie over and over again without being bored.  I have many a ~popular cartoon~ memorized in my mind, and can even play them over in my head if I’m having trouble sleeping.

Dh has harassed me about buying movies because he is not a movie watcher and he rarely repeats watching anything, unless it has to do with hunting (yes, he has hunting videos).  A while back, since he’s a major budget freak, he ‘gave’ me $50 a month to do whatever I wanted with.  Yippee for me, not that I didn’t spend money on myself before, but I just ignored his remarks that it wasn’t in the budget.  I’m not a spender, nor am I a spend-thrift (read cheapo), I’m reasonable, however dh is not.

I can’t say for sure if it’s the idea of listening to dh for the rest of my life complain about what I spend money on for the house (movies for everyone), or the fact that I just don’t want movies I don’t repeatedly watch taking up precious shelf space, but I’m cleaning them out.  Yes, I know, are you holding onto your seats?  These movies are almost as precious to me as my flesh and blood, errr, my books, yeah, yeah, my books.

We’ve become so cluttered in our lives, and we wonder why we are so cranky.  I find, in our home, that we all tend to snap at each other easily when the house is cluttered and crazy.  Yes, even the kids react to it, especially in their rooms.  I realize every house is going to have some clutter when you have kids and toys, but reducing the amount of toys the kids have makes it not only easier on me to clean up (when they’re small like Sweet Pea) but also more relaxed about if there’s a few toys strewn about.

So we’ve started on a kick lately of decluttering.  I am packing up my books today, and have plans to go through our Christmas decorations.  I am not quite sure where exactly I’ll take them, as our used stores are often too packed at this time of year to take more items.  But I’ll ask around and see and hopefully someone will take it.

I will always be a repeat watcher, and will always buy movies.  But from this point forward I will be more picky about which ones I buy.  I gotta make room for more kids right? *snicker*

Ah, I love the smell of grossed out Boy Scouts in the morning

I got my thrills this morning.  I slept in until 9 am, hurt my back slightly helping dh, had mega-cream in my morning coffee (a change for me) and grossed out 2 boy scouts.

There was a knock on my door about ten minutes ago.  Two lovely boy scout guys, about in Jr. High I’d wager, were on a bottle drive on this fine Saturday morning.  I loathe taking my bottles in, and I knew there was a bag in the garage so I asked them to head on back.

As I opened the garage door I said to them, I hope you’re okay with deer carcass.  The one kid said ‘oh yeah’, but the other didn’t say a word until he saw it piled up on the floor; ‘oh yuck!’.

Nothing like grossing out a teenage boy to make your Saturday morning just a little brighter.

I have to say that I’m truly enjoying blogging more now that I’ve been making an effort again.  Even though it wasn’t for any reason (NaBloPoMo), it did kick start me into posting more.

I’ve had a lot of traffic lately on my site.  I love WordPress blogs because they can give you the information about what people are searching for in order to get to my site.  Wanna know what people search for most that come here?  Subject and Predicate.  I kid you not.  It is a conundrum for kids, and my own has been no exception as she has had trouble with it – and still does – but I have done a few searches myself on the webpages I use frequently to homeschool with and have come up with a small compilation of some that may help those who are still searching (is that a huge sentence or what?).  Oh, and a side thought, the second most searched thing is for chain mail gloves, it seems my dh isn’t the only one cutting off his fingers butchering some animal.

Ok, here they are in no particular order:

Lead By Example – complete subject/predicate

Lead By Example – sentence sense

RHL School – Simple Predicate worksheet

That’s all the ones that I have that are free.  Through my school board, I have access to more sites that aren’t free because they are registered through there, but I can’t share those unfortunately.  This wasn’t a google search either, this was just through my own resources I’ve kept bookmarked.  A good google search for these terms, exactly like this (with plus signs and all – they are extremely important when doing a search as it requires that the results have both terms) +predicate +subject , should help out a bit.

Good luck!  And hey, keep scaring those boy scouts out there, it’ll help them grow kahunas later.

Cheese is my mood today

I am Canadian so we don’t have Thanksgiving this late, ours is in mid-October.  We also don’t have Black Friday of any kind.  So I’m always happy to get the chance to be a part of it without stepping into any crowd-mobbed store.

I received an email from Signing Time, as I always do, that states what deals are being put on for their own little Black Friday thing.  It’s an awesome sale.  Buy over $75 worth of DVDs (some exclusions apply) and get 50% off at the checkout.  I was thrilled!

This fine morning, I sat down at my computer to order.  I placed 4 DVDs in my cart and proceeded to the checkout to find that yes, I got the 50% off, but then they’ve skyrocketed their shipping costs to 2X as much to Canada.  Ok, wtf, is that really a sale then if you’re going to charge an excessive amount for shipping?  It was close to $40 for 4 DVDs.  What, have you gone into alignment with U.S. ebay sellers?

So needless to say I removed everything from my cart.  I’m pretty sure I won’t buy from them anymore as I can’t justify the cost for shipping that is charged when I could easily buy a different brand, in Canada, that costs a lot less with no gouging on shipping (and has the signs the same as other ASL signs – but that’s another rant).

I went to a baby shower last night.  It was strange.  I am the kind of girl, much like my Punk, who doesn’t really give a rat’s ass if her hair is perfect, or if I’ve even got makeup on.  I’m just not a girlie-girl sort of girl.  I’m not truly a tomboy anymore, but last night I discovered I am among a very few that are like this in my area.  I was completely surrounded by women who’ve got every piece of hair over-dyed *ahem**cough* in place, nails were manicured, makeup was pristine and everything was pink.  This shower was thrown for a mom of 6 boys and she just recently had her first girl.  So of course everyone, including me, got something pink for her.  Then I realized I fell into that trap.  Yes I’m sure she’s in heaven finally getting some pink colour into her house, but seriously, why didn’t she have pink before?  Is it wrong for boys to wear pink at anytime?

It was a strange feeling most of the night.  I surely felt out of place amongst that hairspray-primped-manicured group of women.  I just don’t belong.  It’s a good thing I’m okay with that, but it is a little strange when it comes up again and again.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention a talk dh and I had this morning that made me grin again, as they usually do.  He plays hockey with a great group in our vicinity and he actually went for beers afterward with them.  He got talking with one guy who has 5 kids.  He told him that his family size and the family of 6 boys & 1 girl I talked about are inspirational to me as I’d love to have that many kids.  The guy then reassured Ken that he too was very reluctant to do such a thing as add onto their brood.  Men are logical about this stuff in that they think of the little things, like vehicles, houses, trailers, etc.  This guy tells dh how they have their kids organized.  All 3 boys are in one room, and I believe their house is smaller than ours.  I was thrilled that he had an inkling of more than 1 more kid.  THRILLED!  But I’ll wait and see, I can’t rely on dh’s thoughts from one moment to the next.

Hope all of my American friends had a fantastic Thanksgiving and a great shopping day if they went today.

Sleep is overrated

Not really, but when you get very little, you try and convince yourself that sleep wasn’t really needed.

Sweet Pea had one of his nights.  It’s a strange phenomena that happens occasionally with him.  I should actually say rarely as it’s only happened 3 times this year and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for it.  He wakes up screaming and cannot calm himself down, nor can we without picking him up for a good cuddle.

The first time it happened I was camping.  I know, can you imagine?  Talk about bear bait.  So he woke up screaming at about 1am and didn’t stop for 2 hours (the weirdest thing is the girls slept through it all only being 4 ft away).  So, being it was the first time I hadn’t any idea what to do, but he was starting to hyperventilate, so I scooped him up.  He did that weird huffing breathing, you know the one, where a sniff happens about every other breath.  It took him an hour for that breathing to stop as I laid him on my chest and he went to sleep.  I did sleep a bit, but again, being the first time I didn’t realize I could get up once he’d fallen asleep and put him back to bed, so I stayed in that position for 4 hours.  I was so tired.  Thankfully dh managed while I went back to bed for a few hours.

The next time it happened I was at my mil’s.  Imagine that.  I’m very blessed with my il’s in that they don’t really interfere and my il’s love me!LOL!  Anyway, it was around 11 pm when he woke up.  Dh and I both attempted to keep him in his bed and calm him but once the huffing breathing came on strong I knew I’d have to pick him up.  So I grab him and snuggle on the floor until 3am when he finally calms and falls asleep hard enough that I snagged him up and put him back to bed.

Last night it happened again.  But this time it happened at about 10 o’clock and I was still up watching a movie.  Dh had been trying to calm him but it wasn’t working.  I attempted to calm him while he was in his bed but as soon as I made a slight movement he thought I was leaving and started wailing again.  So I scooped him up and took him to my bed.  I was tired and wanted to see if I could sleep beside him.  Well shit, the little barf got all settled and started to play with my chin!  Oh I don’t think so big boy, so I snagged him and put him back to bed at 11, and he went back to sleep again easily.  He did get up another time in the night but he calmed down easier.

6:30 am hits and I’ve got my 9 y/o in my bed snuggling from a bad dream.

See?  Sleep is overrated right?

Aw man

I’m not a NaBloPoMo person per se, mainly because I don’t want to join a group that tells me I should be posting everyday in order to belong, but I had my own goal to post at least an entire week in a row.

I blew it.  I blew it yesterday, and I apologize to my one reader out there who had an interruption in the consistency of my posts.  *snort*

So my wrap-ups that I posted about Tuesday are awesome.  It’s not like my girls have their entire multiplication table memorized now and are onto trigonometry, but they are really enjoying doing it.  So much so that they spent 90 minutes yesterday doing them.  Yes, ninety minutes.  All in a row.  I was quite amazed really as they both were a little jumpy at the prospect of doing math when we were having a break but they caught on quickly and were proud to show me their answers.  Bing was a little intimidated by the multiplication but once she started going she got the hang of it.

Yesterday was a weird day.  I am so glad we’re homeschoolers, I truly am as it gives us the opportunity to reorganize our schedule to do other things.  Punk went hunting with her dad in the morning so we didn’t do school in the morning.  I made bread with Bing for a while and then when I thought we would start school my bank phones and we snuck in there for an appointment to create a bank account for Sweet Pea.  It was an opportunity I could pass up so we turned it into an errand afternoon and went shopping at <big box store> to get all of our stuff done in one shot.  So at 3pm we fall through the door with armloads of groceries and hell, I decided we weren’t doing school today.

I love homeschooling.  I just hope I can encourage Punk to enjoy writing more.  Ah, we’ll get there.

Hang onto your seats

If you can believe it, I am doing a product rave, and I’m actually going to name the product.

I know, I know, you can get up off the floor and back onto your seat again – I told you to hang onto it – I can tell you’re floored.  I hate that consumers do free advertising all the time so I tend to never do that unless a product really wows me.  I won’t do it on my blog unless it’s seriously pertinent to the story (rarely), or if I love the product (also rarely).  This is one of those rare times.

The product is a homeschooling product technically, but if you have a child in serious need of flash cards, but don’t have a visual learner, this may be for you.  Ready?

Learning Wrap-ups.  Yes, I did it, phew.  Anyway, these are awesome tools.  My girls are having trouble remembering their multiplication and division, so I went to my local homeschooling store to grab some great flashcards.  They didn’t have any so the lady recommended these.

They are a small, plastic key-shaped unit with 10 of them stacked on top of each other.  Through the upper part is a permanent pin to hold them together (so they rotate rather freely) and attached to this pin on the back is a string.  On the front and lower portion on each serrated side is numbers corresponding to each notch (confusing? take a peek at the link, it’ll help).  On the centre of the lower part of the ‘key’ is a number that is to be added (or multiplied, divided, or subracted, if you have those kinds); ex. +1, in big bold print.  The left hand column of numbers is what is to be added to the centre number.  The left hand side is the answer numbers, not organized in sequence.

The string is then pulled across the back of the ‘key’ to the first number on the left hand side.  When the answer is thought out, the child then finds that answer on the right hand side and wraps the string around the front to that corresponding notch and around back again to the next number in line on the left hand side.  The child then works their way down the left hand side, criss-crossing the string from addend to sum (or multiplicand to product, etc) until they have a mashing of string back and forth all the way to the bottom.

The child knows they are right (or you can check it easily) by merely flipping the finished ‘key’ over to see if their string lines up perfectly with the bumped out lines on the back side.

It is super easy and the girls already love it.  The starting out place is important and must be figured out before hand or frustration will ensue and the kids won’t like it, so figure it out yourself before hand.

The only thing I don’t like is the store I bought it from charges more than if I had bought it straight from the maker.  Sucks sometimes to be a shopper in Canada.

Oh, and for those of you who keep doing a search for subject and predicate, if you have access to the movies on Brain Pop, there is a great short clip on there that is easily understood by kids (plus a quiz to follow if you want).  If you don’t, I’ll keep hunting around for some good stuff.

Can you believe it, two recommendations from me in one post.

Sunday is a good day for blithering idiocy

-I just realized that if you post continuously on your own blog at WordPress you will eventually find your post scattered around on others more often, by WordPress’ automatically generated common posts thingy.  It seems to happen at the end of posts and I found some of mine linked around this week whereas before, when my posts were much more random – as they have been in recent months – I’d have no links of my blog on other pages.  Kwim?

-Do you realize I used the word ‘random’ and didn’t cringe?  I’m a person that gets bored with the repeated word, or repeated action.  Dh is someone that does things over and over again, repeatedly, forever if he could.  He went on a pancake kick and we had pancakes every Friday for about 6 weeks.  I didn’t eat pancakes again for another year.  He’s done the same with hunting, I used to hunt myself, but I don’t want to pick up a gun again because his obsession with it has driven any semblance of interest right out of me.  It was the same thing with the word ‘random’ that was on every Blog.  When I used it for my own title I was kind of making fun of all the people out there with no imagination by throwing the word ‘random’ in there with a strange, and seldom used adjective ‘frogged‘ (check out the definition on the bottom part of that page).  I’ve just started to use it again, but very rarely, as it has finally become even less used than über.

-Sundays are a good day for me normally, but this one was strange.  Not that it was a bad day, but every Sunday that passes I feel less and less connected or ‘in’ my church community.  A few months back, dh was ordained a deacon.  That kind of thrust all of us into the spotlight, not just him unfortunately.  We became this family under everyone’s eye, and it bugged me only a little, but it was there.  Now, it has finally returned to normal.  We had a breakfast put on by a group in our church and it was great, there were a ton of people, which I like to see.  It means the community of people wanting to be a community is growing and thriving.  But today, I just sat back most of the time, didn’t talk to a soul and let things roll around me, and I truly enjoyed it.  I didn’t feel like anyone was watching the deacon’s wife, or wanting to talk to the deacon’s wife.  If anyone came up to me, and they did, it was to say hi to me because they were someone I talk with most weekends.  I’m glad normalcy has returned.

-Dh has butchered the deer.  In fact he has just walked in the door after starting 6 hours ago.  It was a long haul because it was a fairly big deer.  That and he’s a cheap ass so he likes to get ever piece of meat off that baby.  He even skims the ribs.  Now the ribs on a deer are very unlike a cow, or a pig, there isn’t much meat there at all, not even ½ an inch.  But dh wants to get every smidgen off so he can have a lot of ground meat for sausage.

I love blithering posts.

The Hunter strikes again

I’ve posted the last few years about my being a hunting widow.  I joke about it, but I don’t think non-hunting families get how close to being a widow we become.  No, no one has shot at dh accidentally, nor did he ever mortally wound himself.  I refer to ‘hunting widow’ differently than most I’m sure as it means for me that dh is close to death from me if he doesn’t step up to the plate being a husband and father.

I’m sure other hunting wives can relate to this abandonment that happens to us every fall.  My dh goes so far as to use the fact that we need the meat and it saves money to do it this way.  Oh yeah because there’s no meat at the grocery store (or we don’t have a beautiful, reasonably priced, local, organic butcher).  And the money he’s supposedly saving is going into all the tags and fuel it takes for him to get out there 5X a week.  He keeps saying that he does it on the way to work, but when work is in the exact opposite direction of hunting it becomes a bold faced lie.

I’m losing my mind.  The kids keep taking the brunt of it with my fuse being as short as it is.

It’s been four hours since I first started typing.  And no, the kids didn’t distract me, but dh called and informed me that he got one.  Yep, he’s a Bambi killer this morning … well, Bambi grown up anyway.

He called me and asked me for a favour, and I of course asked what before I said yes, being the good wifey I truly am.  Then he tells me he got a deer and would I come out with the truck.  See, dh takes his commuter car hunting because then he feels better driving 30 minutes in a car that gets 40 mpg compared to the big ol’ 17 mpg for our truck.

I of course say yes because this is in an area I absolutely love, and have been dreaming about moving to.  So I pack up the kids and take a short trek West to the mountains to meet dh with his kill.  Man, he sounds like a carnivorous cat rather than just an obsessed hunter.

Anyway, in the four hours, we’ve got it home, and he’s dressed it and cleaned it … any thoughts as to why it’s called ‘dressing’?  Is that to help the slightly squeamish not think of what he’s actually doing?

Maybe I should consider bad mouthing him online more often, it seems to bring him good luck .  I’m just looking forward to the inner tenderloin for supper tonight as a treat just for having to put up with his obsession for one more season.