Dolly Mama Strikes Again!

Hello again, people! How was your holiday weekend? Here at Dollymamaville we had several activities:

Friday night I took my 2 oldest boys to the county fair. My daughter had been invited by a friend, and the Firecrapper was keeping the 3 little boys home and putting them to bed early. The highlights of the evening included:

My 12 year old son catching up to me an hour into being at the fair (he had been riding rides with his friend) being so nauseated that he ended up having me drive him home. When we got home he actually took about 10 minutes to get into the house from the car, and that was by crawling! *Not* feeling too good, I guess!

I took my 7 year old back to the fair since he was having a fine time, and I was a good sport riding stuff with him, until we rode the "Splat" which just about made my dinner go splat..... It was the closest to vomiting I have ever been while riding something. Not too nice.

While hanging out at the fair I was marveling how not much has changed even since my earliest memory of being at such an event. It seems that the fairs always bring out the 250 lb. women with short terry cloth or cut off jean shorts riding up their heinies, and their macrame halter tops..... Why is that??

I also did my own informal observation of obesity in my county, and determined that probably 80%+ of the adults and 70% of the people 18 and younger were obese. Nice, huh? Just add in all those chain-smoking ride operators, and you've got yourself one nice atmosphere going on....

Speaking of ride operators, I was thinking about them. Apparently they travel all over the place all summer long delivering, setting up, operating, and taking down these rides, games, and food vendors over and over again. I was thinking that after a summer of seeing all those fat-butt wedgies, dunlap bellies hanging out of shirts, listening to the same bad ride music, and such, that there must be a high suicide rate amongst them..... Anybody know?

Anyways, getting back to my near splat experience, I gave my 7 year old the "15 more minutes and then we're going home" warning, and then happened to turn and see my daughter getting off a ride, holding her hand and wrist, and crying to her friend's mom. I went over to see what was going on, and found out that the poor kid had collided with her friend and hurt herself. So, I got to take my nauseated self, crying daughter, while herding both children who were moving at a snail's pace all the way through hell's half acre to the very back of the fair grounds to get her some ice for her hand, and then snail's-pace all the way *back* through the fair, and then to the very back of the parking lot to find our car, and then listen to her gutteral whimpering all the way home..... Big fun.

It took us 2 days to recover from all that excitement!

On the 4th the Firecrapper had to work, so I was on my own to come up with a fitting way to spend a national holiday with the kids. We spent a good part of the day doing our usual holiday activity, which is picking up the house! Then we had a nap, and then I was a good sport and took them to a church picnic and fireworks thing.

Unfortunately, the set up was far less than convenient for me to be there. The house where we got together was on a tiny lot on a curve, so there was only side yard space to play in, with 2 sides being at the street. (no back yard) We were also butted right up against the house next door and they were also trying to have a party, so the little kids from the church party kept wandering over to the next door house thinking it was an extension of what we had going on. I basically spent 4 long hours tensely counting heads and calling to my children "Get out of the street!" "Get out of their garage!" "Come back!" "Where are you?" "Do you see ____?" over and over again. I think that I managed to appear to be relaxed, but it was very tiring. By the time the fireworks started up, I had to give up and take them home. It's really hard to count heads in the dark, ya know.

This morning we sent the 12 year old off to camp til Friday night, and then the other kids helped me pick apples from our June apple tree. I always have these wistful feelings of living an ideal life whenever we pick apples or do some food-gathering-in-nature sort of activity. All that good, healthy, back-to-the-earth stuff makes me feel like things are just right. :) (After a couple back-breaking hours in the kitchen I get over it, though) Some years I have made applesauce and either canned or frozen it, but this year I decided to try a less-sweltering option, and instead ran all the apples through my Green Star juicer. All I had to do was wash and quarter them, and then push 'em on through. Of course, I had about 2 bushels of apples, so it took awhile, but I ended up with a lot of nice apple juice. June apples are really sour, so I added some sugar to the juice, and it turned out tasting very much like apple cider. I'm pretty excited that this worked out so well, because I was really wanting something that didn't make a huge mess or make me sweat for hours, plus I wanted to try to use the apples in their raw state as much as I could. Obviously, with so many apples, it made a lot of juice, so we have frozen a few gallons of it, so it won't be exactly the same as eating raw, but it preserves a lot more nutrients and enzymes than if it had been heated, so it's a good trade off for me and something different for a nice change.

I've recently updated my blogroll both by removing and adding some. One new addition is Tales From My Tiny Kingdom which has quite a bit of funny fare.

The post at Chez Miscarriage that I was referring to is now gone, so don't bother looking for it. The gist of it was:

She had attended some gathering of pregnant women, and they were supposed to go around the room and introduce themselves. Every woman there introduced herself in relation to her unborn baby (such as "Sierra's mom" or "mommy-to-be on July 31st") which Grrl of Chez Miscarriage thought was rather odd since they never actually told their real names. Later in the gathering they were supposed to go around the room and tell "one precious promise" to their unborn baby that they intended to keep. People were saying things like, "I promise to love you unconditionally" and stuff like that. But what does Grrl say?

"I promise to always introduce myself by my own first name."

ba da bing!

I thought it was hilarious. (unfortunately, she says nobody laughed.)

So, now you know.

Also, kind folks who have helped me brainstorm about somehow switching around phones/cell phones/interent in order to save money have asked me what I decided. Basically, I tried out People PC, called to cancel my MSN, MSN offered to give me the same service for cheaper, and I hated People PC service. So, I've got what I had, but for $5 cheaper per month. We kept everything else the same because really, it's as cheap as we're gonna get it and switching ain't gonna help a thing.

We are still surviving without Netflix, however. The first month we rented quite a few movies, so it probably didn't save us anything, but this month we've not had much time for movies. I was realizing that when I had the Netflix I felt this self-imposed pressure to hurry up and watch it because I wanted to send it back right away so that I could get another one coming and, you know, get my money's worth! But, I don't really have time for many movies. Especially ones that aren't for the kids to see.

I've tried to keep up on my revolutionary household plan of Completing Things, but, by crackie, it's hard to do! When I am faced with a day when there are 30 things that must be done at least part way, and I can either get them all done to a "good enough" point, or I can finish 12 items and dis the remaining ones, guess which thing happens?

So, yeah, still working on that! The laundry has stayed under control, and I guess with 8 people here, that is an accomplishment in and of itself, so I won't be too hard on myself.

And that, dear ones, is all the news that's fit to print at 2am! Hopefully I'll have something more titillating for you at a later date. (titillating?! Did I just say that?!)