It's My Birthday...

...and I kind of don't care. I mean, I do care, but I don't.  I did make my almost 8 year old autistic nephew say happy birthday to me though.

"Get over here and tell me happy birthday."
"Happy!"
"say happy birthday Aunt Leslie"
"Happy!" (then much quieter) "Birthday."
"Oh! Thank you!"

Now he is laying against me on the couch as I type this. He is waiting for his mama to take him to school.

Now it's time for birthday list-a-rama.

• I asked my husband to get up with the kids this morning. Now the kids are already at school and he is still in bed. Thanks soooo much, honey. 
• I got a birthday check from my parents last week. I spent half of it on a living room chair at a garage sale last saturday. Or rather, I borrowed the money from my SIL until I get the check cashed. I also found a vinyl copy of Purple Rain. Awesome.
• This one time, my brother sent me a birthday card that was a paper taco. I liked it. 
• I have to think for a second about how old I am now days. That means I am well on my way to being old.
• I had a good friend growing up that had the same birthday as me, just a year younger. We used to go eat breakfast at Dee's before school. I would get a hamburger, she would get a cobb salad. 
• Ok, we did that once.
• In my old neighborhood, this week was like birthday week, The girl next door, May 7th. Me and Deb, May 8th. Another chick, may 9th. And then THE TWINS on May 10th. 
• Two years ago today, my husband and I attended the groundbreaking for the Kansas City LDS Temple. The temple is now complete and was just dedicated over the weekend.
• I hate Ben Affleck. That has nothing to do with my birthday. 

What I Learned Over the Weekend

1. Sometimes you have to lose big to get big blessings.
2. It takes a lot of cleaning dishes when there are 8 people living in your house.
3. Probably, maybe, you should keep your bathroom somewhat clean. You know, just in case an extended family member has an emergency and needs to use your shower. (Hadn't cleaned my shower in I don't know how long. Embarrassing.)
4. Not everyone in the world is cold and heartless. (Holla! to all my generous fellow Gardonian peeps!)
5. You can squash that burning spiteful feeling down to the bottom of your chest and just love. (Hope it holds.)
6. It's really hard to get house fire smoke smell out of clothes. (What's that you say? Vinegar? We'll try it.)
7. The longer you stand on a tile floor, the more it hurts.
8. I have a lot of patience. I did not think so before.
9. Maybe I don't need as much sleep as I thought? (Nah. I don't believe it.)

Love Note

He's not very romantic, but he has his moments.

See?

It's an actual love note! I don't think I've ever gotten one of these before.  I liked it.

 The strawberries were delish and right out of our little back garden too.

Dear Dr. Urologist,

Just because 99.99% of your patients are in their 80's (I'm the o.o1%), it doesn't mean that your office has to look like it is the 80's.

Mauve is sooo thirty years ago.

I Watch TV A Lot These Days

• The Today Show insists that floral printed jeans are this season's hot trend. FRIENDS, I exhort you, JUST DON'T. Please
• Good 'ole Jaime Lee Curtis. All concerned about how all us ladies are pooping and stuff. "ACTIVIA!"
• I'm hooked on Revenge. It's like a soap opera but with a bigger budget. 
• Also, I'm partial to Raising Hope on Fox. 
• I kind of just watch The Talk so I can bash it and otherwise make fun of it while I watch. It's half the reason why I watch the Chew too. The other half of the reason is food. Food is the best reason to do anything, am I right? 
• I refuse to watch The Revolution. They took All my Children away from me and I dealt, but when they took One Life to Live away, I made a vow. A vow to never watch the revolution. I take this vow more seriously than my marriage vows. KIDDING. (kind of.)
• Every morning I turn on GMA while the kids are getting ready for school. That's Good Morning America for you non-morning show watchers. (Why you would be a non-morning show watching person, I do not know.) Last Friday, I was in the hospital and my husband was left to get the kids ready for school. Well, long story short, he blew it and my nine year old daughter not only got herself and her brother ready for school but she fed the baby too. When my husband finally gained consciousness, he said she was all stressed out because she couldn't find GMA. Apparently, she gauges where she should be in her morning routine by what segment is on. I did not know that.
• I don't have netflix. Sometimes I think I would like to have netflix. Does everyone have netflix? Seems like you wouldn't need TV if you had netflix. Would netflix kill the pleasure of watching syndicated sitcoms? I like to be surprised when I turn on reruns.
• I was with the baby early one Tuesday morning and they were airing part two of Masterpiece Theater Great Expectations on PBS. Oh man, I was hooked like a fish. I had to go to bed (causes sleep is important) but I watched it online a few days later. Then I watched The mystery of Edmund Drude last Sunday. I had no idea Charles Dickens was so enthralling. I might have to start reading some of his novels.   Masterpiece Theater rocks! Next week? Bird Song. A WWI love story.

So, This Is What Happened

Yeah so, it's been a little while since I blogged. There are multiple reasons for this, but that is not what we are here to discus today. Sorry to disappoint you, I just don't believe in excuses. Okay, I do believe in excuses. I just think that it is none of your beeswax.

But I think it might be okay to share some of the things that have happened since the last time I blogged. Like, for example, this:

My daughter tapped danced in a recital at the Lied Center on the KU campus. She killed it and afterward  she said it made her feel famous.

Then, all of a sudden, I looked like this:

We weren't sure how it happened. I just thought it was a real scorcher of a bladder infection. As you can see, it was not a bladder infection.

So then this happened:

and I still looked like this:

so I was sad and frustrated.

But then my doctor said it was okay to induce and that there was no time to waste.

And then this happened:

Mostly because I was dilated to a 9 for over six hours and I developed a low grade fever. Plus the baby's heart rate was dropping with every contraction.

It was a boy.

Then a week later, I got a blood clot under my incision and my doctor had to open it back up. After that, I had to go to the wound center many times where they poked and prodded and otherwise inflicted pain upon me. They also outfitted me with a handy dandy wound vac. Oh, you've never heard of one of those?   Neither had I, but let me tell you, it was a load of fun. A. Load. Of. Flippin. Fun. 

Then the Relief Society organized and helped me clean my house and brought me food. God bless the Relief Society. And my mom. I could write another long post about everything my mom did to help. I couldn't have done any of it without her.

So after that, you know, Thanksgiving and Christmas brought a multitude of blessings and messes for me to clean up. 

Then I briefly considered divorce several times.

After that, we had our 11th wedding anniversary and my husband made sure we had fresh flowers in the house for two weeks. Then he bought me a new computer. 

Now, it is spring break and I expect to lose all semblance to sanity. 

Any questions?

Dear Lisa,

Hey! I am doing fine, just fine. However, unlike you, I find myself suddenly with more time than I know what to do with. So, I sleep, clean (just a little), and I just started a new cross-stitch, which I am loving. I haven't sat down and just sewed liked that since I started going to school. And of course, you know what I'm talking about when I say that I have been making the rounds through the "cross-stitching movies." You know the ones we have watched so many times we don't even need to watch them, just listen- North and South, Little Women, Happiest Millionaire but I need a copy of Beaches. Cross-stitching just isn't the same without Beaches. Am I right?

But I have a plan, a cross-stitch plan. Every year we walk through the open class building at the Johnson County Fair and there are usually less than five cross-stitch submissions and every year I think to myself, "That blue ribbon winner is a chump. I could do better than that in my sleep." So my plan is to enter my latest cross-stitch in the county fair and clean the floor with it. Blue ribbon, here I come! (What, so I need a little ego boosting, is that so bad?)

I laughed when you wrote about riding the sky ride with Peyton and you felt like you were going to have a panic attack. That's exactly how I felt the whole time we took the kids on the big Dora Ferris Wheel at MOA. Could you tell? I tried not to show it, but you seem to always read me like a book. When you rode the Tidal Wave at Lagoon, did you shout "More taste!" or "Less filling!"? Do they still do that? I hope so.



(Why do we never get an answer when were knocking at the door?)



So, all my fantasies came true last night as I got to see the Moody Blues in concert. The venue was an old theater in down town Kansas City, not a bad seat in the house. The place was full of old ornate woodwork and red velvet. I walked in and kept waiting for the chandelier to fall and the opening score of Phantom to play. Justin Hayward still sounds just like he does on my records that he recorded in the '60's and '70's. And just like I posted on facebook, I cried. I don't know why, maybe it was the hormones and maybe it was just so amazing for me to be there and see them live and you know, me and the Moody Blues go back nearly 20 years now. (Oh shizzle, did I just write 20 years? I am old, how did this happen?)



(Love my new Moody Blues shirt. It has the words to Tuesday Afternoon in the background. Eeeeeee!)

 I do wish I could come to Boise next week. I am so proud of Taylor for graduating. It's a lot of work! But I will be looking for those texts and pictures you promised.
Love,
Leslie

P.S. It just occured to me that I could have been 15 and wrote about all this same stuff. I'm a dork.