So, kids have a way of getting right to the heart of the thing
My lovely daughter just told me that she saw the, “younger, skinnier, more beautiful version of me” on the beach in Michigan. She was wearing a black bathing suit and had clear skin and the skinny body with the same kind of black hair that I had, when I used to get my hair colored black. My daughter said she saw this woman, and was so surprised because it looked so much like me, that she just stared at her until the woman started looking back at her like she might be crazy.
So I guess that’s nice. (?).
However…since I was eating at the time of this news flash, and I caught a completely unintentional glimpse into my fattiness, I proceeded to go ahead and finish all the crap in the house that I like (that would be White Castle’s, Kettle Cooked Potato Chips and Oreo’s–luckily there was only a little of each). And now I will finish the bottle of wine I opened 2 days ago. Because tomorrow, in addition to my RUN (National Running Day! Click it or check the next post and get in on the fun!), I have to re-boot my dietary intake. And by re-boot, I mean drink only water and starve myself for 3 weeks or so. I have 18 days to become the younger, skinnier, more beautiful version of myself!
That’s healthy right?
I’m not really going to starve myself. That would actually be impossible. I really like food. And I get really hungry and pretty crabby when I’m trying to be “good”. So I’ll just make better choices in the next 18 days. (I picked 18 because of the Warrior Dash. It’s in 18 days so I’m going to use that). It’s a short, attainable amount of time. And if I want to eat a bunch of crap I can do it after the race!
First side note: I also want to clarify, that even though I suggested that my daughter was calling me fat by using some kind of psychologic, mind-bend to passively indicate beauty is equated with thinness and youth, she DID NOT intentionally mean to make me feel bad. She was just telling a funny story and I added all the rest! She even said, “I guess that lady couldn’t have been more beautiful than you, because she looked just like you.” And that’s a direct quote.
Healthy. Unhealthy. Exercise. Sloth. Water. Alcohol. This site is all over the place. I can’t decide to be good or bad. Everything in moderation and add some activity! That’s probably good enough.
**On a second, side note: I had to have lost a few pounds today just from pure sweat and suffering. That rainstorm never did pan out for us and it’s been sweltering here all day. It’s good and hot in the house now. Everyone looks droopy, like water starved weeds. Still not turning it on though. That’s probably going to be a fight later when the BF gets home. Hopefully once he gets going on the topic, the heat will press down on him, crushing his urge to argue and squashing his ability to fight back. He will collapse in a heap of wilty protestation, and me and the kids can drag him to the bedroom and let him sleep it off. It’s always cooler at about 3 am so I don’t know what everyone is complaining about! All that whining about winter and how cold it is…blah blah blah…well, it’s HOT now!! Enjoy!
Alright I better go. I have to call in a take out order for dinner. So healthy!
Hope your Memorial Day was a good one! It’s officially summer now by the holiday calendar!
Despite all the gloom and doom I was posting about for the last few days, the weather took another drastic turn and became sunny and warm! We really do get it all here in the Midwest!
By 4 or 5 pm Sunday night, all the clouds cleared, the sun came out, and the temps started rising. By Monday morning, holy cow!, nothing but sun and 90 degrees. Everyone gets pneumonia!! It’s the motto of “summer” here in Chicago.
At any rate, my kids were back and forth all weekend too. They were in Michigan, and everything here just trots its way right up to the North and East, at a slow enough rate to give me mini-heart attacks all day and night. And I wasn’t even with them! I can only watch it on the radar. Their dad assured me they were fine. Minimal tornadic activity. Dad and his brother were able to tarp the area and manual hold it until the winds died down. Just standing in the rain making sure no one blows away. Now that’s camping! And that’s why I choose to city-camp. It’s where you pick someplace with an ocean or a lake, and things to do, like fishing, museums, zoo’s, parks, etc, but, it also has a place to go inside. Like a hotel or a cabin even. You get the outdoors but you don’t have to sleep there! You can go in a structure. with a bathroom. That’s all. It’s still camping. You still have to pack stuff. Anyway, we all have our own things!
Of course with that nice weather comes beach time. So both kids are a little sunburned, and my son has a chest cold, but it just wouldn’t be the start of summer without those kinds of memories! Today is going to be hot, then rainy for a brief hour or so, then back to hot. As usual I am unpopular in my household because I refuse to turn the air conditioning on. Sorry, but I am against using the air when it’s not really hot yet. It’s still fake hot, ’cause it goes back and forth, and I hate opening and closing the windows. I like to save the air for July. Then everyone will really thank me AND appreciate it. Now it’s just indulgent. Besides, it’s windy outside, and some of it gets in the house! Free breezes! Spoiled!
Alright, let me go pretend to study a bit and check e-mail and I’ll be back to post some fluff and get this site back to it’s usual silliness for the summer.
De-tox complete from the other night and on to today. Maybe.
Sister is having a combo party. She is kind of famous for them. This time is a triple dip although I am only bringing one food item.
Her son, turning 6…happy birthday!
My other sister’s son, turning 4…happy birthday!
And a Crawfish Boil….happy…whatever. That’s not like an official party thing. I think. I think it might have gotten thrown together kind of last minute. Not really sure because I don’t really eat the buggers. I am not a fan of eating things that require getting them out of small bony bodies. Crustacean shells. Exoskeleton. However you want to describe it. I’m not eating it.
That’s really beside the point because we are under tornado watch again, even though the weather was supposed to be clear now. The black stretch of severe thunder and lightning and tornados is scaring the bejeesus out of me. Especially since we are supposed to be driving more into it and it’s heading for where my children already are. They already had a terrible day and night of rain yesterday and it only looks like it’s going to get worse. I don’t think 3 hours of cloudy weather in between horrendous storms makes for a fun weekend. I say chuck it all and come home and be warm and dry while watching the storms from the living room couch. That may have to be my plan. Half an hour and then we’ll see.
If your weather is better…have a great weekend, but if you are in the crap belt like I am, be careful, watch the weather, take shelter as needed. And that’s not just me saying it. That’s the advice in the advisory. Watch the sky, stay away from windows, take shelter. See you on the other side.
So I guess it’s winter again
This weather is very confusing. It was tornadic, (It’s a word. I’m sure I saw it somewhere else in a descriptive forecast on a reputable organizations site) yesterday. Literally. We did have one touch here in Illinois. And then another in Indiana nearby. The stories from southwest of here just keep getting worse. Luckily, the area I live in gets kind of side swiped by bad weather. We are rarely the target of a direct hit, but we do get the residual stuff like high winds and debris. If you have been reading this blog for any time, you know that I am constantly having trees fall on my house. It’s really annoying. And since it’s almost the end of May, it’s overdue. NOT that I am jinxing my spring luck so far. Please please please every tree stay where you are. I won’t complain about anything because I do get do sit here in my house and post stupid things for everyone to read. And believe me I have some really stupid stuff I am about to launch into. But, for the moment, our weather. Re-capped exclusively for you! The 24 hour + loop!
8 am. Tornadic. (Like that? Used it twice!) Dark, straight rain, kind of heavy. 12 pm. Sunny and warming up. 1 pm. Rainy again but still warming up. 3pm. Sunny and really warm. Humid. Like summer. 5pm. Aww, getting colder, windier. 8 pm Lightning, thunder. Temp dropped. Rain starting to fall, but light and steady. All night long. 8 am. Rain. And brisk temp. 11am Still raining, but windy, blustery they say, like winter, about 46 degrees or so. 2 pm. Same rain/wind mix that can’t decide what it wants to do. Stop, or knock one of my limbs down. (I should prob go look outside really quick, it always happens when I don’t check every other minute). 2:30 pm. I would not be surprised if I saw ice pieces or snow flakes.
And that’s my hour by hour, updated, description. Real groundbreaking, gripping journalism there huh? Maybe I should delete that whole last paragraph? This may be why these posts get really long. What I meant to say was, “We do run the rail here concerning our weather. Goes up and down. And it’s annoying” (I’m just going to continue writing now).
Of course it doesn’t compare to having my house flattened by a tornado proper and having my children swept away. That really sucks. One day I hope to be part of a team that travels to natural disasters to help as needed. That’s a future goal. At the moment I have nothing useful to offer, except this ridiculous website. I still need my license, for one thing. And a bit more experience than “NONE”. Anyway, get involved if you can, however you can. The name of the state has a link to info that you can use: Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma.
Kids are on the way home so I am going to take a break and let that post sit for a bit. Then, I promise, all the stupid you can handle!
Oh wait, I almost forgot the reason I started talking about the weather to begin with: Tom Skilling! He’s our Chicago weather guy for WGN, TV 9, like, all day. He’s kind of popular and funny, but weird and strange at the same time. They give him like 20 minutes of the news to talk about all kinds of weather and related things. He really loves his job. You can tell. Anyway, I was reading his weather forecast for today and I thought it was worded in such a way that it would be a pity not to share it with more people. (Well that’s kind of dumb I guess, seeing as how it was on the actual WGN site and prob got read by thousands, but hey, an extra 3 or 4 people can’t hurt). I copied and pasted it, directly from WGN TV’s, Chicago Weather Center:
Tom Skilling’s 7-day forecast:
“March-level chill with potentially record- breaking cool daytime temperatures close to 30 degrees below normal! Wind-driven light rain from a thick overcast. Blustery, chilly and raw. Rain becomes more sporadic in time, diminishing to passing sprinkles or drizzle this afternoon and evening. Powerful NE winds 16 to 28 mph, 35-40 mph gusts. Daytime highs likely to hold below the record low max temp for May 26 of 48-degrees set in 1961. Cloudy and sprinkly through evening.”
That’s word-for-word with all his punctuation and terms. The part I think is funny is how many different ways he comes up with to say the same thing. I LOVE it! Chill, cool, wind-driven, thick, overcast, blustery, raw, sprinkles, drizzles, cloudy, powerful. My favorite though is right at the end and the sole reason for all of my, long, drawn-out, round-about words and paragraphs above:
“Sprinkly”. “Cloudy and sprinkly”.
Come on now. Say it out loud:
“Sprinkly”.
THAT is entertainment! (And that is really taking the long way to one lame-ass, let-down of a destination) You are welcome.
I guess we’re next
Tornado’s just rolling across America. Here in the midwest we are waiting. I live in Chicago and I can tell you that it’s raining now. We are under watch until 1 pm central time. It’s dark, it’s raining pretty steady and I have no TV. The satellite has been lost. Obviously I have internet, but that usually blinks out too.
The rain is not coming down really hard so I may be ok for awhile. The kids are at school. It’s pretty safe there. I had to remind them that tornado sirens mean you stay IN the building and cover your head. Fire drills are the one you run outside for! Makes a big difference! That’s kind of a running joke we have because when they were little, the daycare used to do drills with the kids. It was to help them learn the different emergencies and sirens and what to do. On one particular test day, the FIRE drill went off and almost all the kids ran into the safety room and kneeled against the wall covering their heads. Except my son, who was trying to get people/kids to run OUT of the building, knowing it was a fire drill, not a tornado. Needless to say many children perished in this fake fire, except my son and daughter and a few others.
ALERT: just in case this is not absolutely clear…this was a fire drill. No actual fire occurred. No children were hurt or ever in danger of being hurt. It was only a practice drill!!
The teacher praised him for being so smart and not falling for the doubt, that most likely crossed his mind, thinking he might have been wrong. Especially since most of the kids refused to leave with him. Anyway, I was proud that day. He knew what the situation was, he tried to help the others, and he didn’t back down from what he knew to be true. My little hero! That was a long time ago and it’s funny to remember, because I haven’t thought about it in a long time.
Anyway, I will try and get some pics. Everybody loves to run outside in tornado weather and take pictures! Apparently I am no different! But I am ready, just in case. All showered, dressed, house contained and prepped if I have to hide in the closet or get the hell out of here. Luckily my son just bought a bunch of flashlights and lanterns for camping this weekend, but they will come in handy if we lose power later. I have enough coffee for the morning and a way to heat it if needed. Priorities.
I’ll be taking a break from the school stuff for a few days, at least one or two, because I am a bit burnt out. Those two days of extra classes didn’t make me feel better. I thought I had a pretty good grasp on what I know, but when I left yesterday, I felt less than confident, especially when I started getting some of the answers wrong. Without a bunch of boring, endless details, let’s just say there is a method that this class teaches and I am not really good at method learning. But I am withholding judgement, because this just may not have been the best week to jump right back in. And I did pay for it. Voluntarily. And they say it does help. I think I just need some time between classes over and new classes starting. More than three days. So we shall see.
Ok it’s quiet again here and the TV is back. Still under tornado warning. Still 1 pm. I hear birds! Crazy birds out there chirping all around, hopping in that wet grass and drinking up those puddles of water. Now is a good time to go survey the yard and take out some garbage. Be back later.
just shy of pretty 