I've had such a yucky weekend.  Without going into detail and being accused (again) of running and telling all of my friends everything that is going on, let's just say that it was yucky and I can't believe that I will have to raise 2 more teenagers.

 

I had a horrible migraine this weekend, the sort that makes me sick to my stomach.  Boy, do I hate that!  Throw in some insomnia and it's gearing up to be a fun time!  I feel a little bit better today and hope that my upset stomach was only due to the headache.  Maybe I'll know tomorrow!! Yippee!!

 

Man, am I boring.  I do apologize.

I know it has one "d", but I have a friend who says it is infinitely cuter to say spidder rather than spider.  There was a spider sighting today - in the house - but not a black widow.  Reece was sitting on the floor putting together a puzzle and a black spider (not a black widow, not a field spider, but just a general spider) was headed right for him.  He didn't see it so I pulled him up onto the sofa.  We went looking for him, not exactly to be friendly, but, well, you know...but we didn't find him.  He's probably hiding under the piano, something he will regret tomorrow when he discovers that Reece is fond of low "C" in repeat.

 

Ah well.

 

My shoulder is feeling better today.  Raise your hands and say, "Hallelujah!"  I'll join you!  Up until today I couldn't raise my arm.  I'm getting a lovely bruise on my shoulder, but it isn't nearly as indicative of the pain as it should be.  I mean, really now, if I have to suffer so much that I can't raise my arm and I gasp in pain when the kids give me a hug I should at least have SOMETHING to show for it, right?  If it gets any darker tomorrow I'll try to take a picture but at this time it just isn't worth it.

 

Speaking of pictures (yes, I did speak of them, just in the last sentence), my camera is on life-support.  I'm afraid it is going to have to retire and be recycled.  My screen went out.  I don't know if there is anything more wrong with it or not.  I guess I could take a few pictures and then load them on the computer to see if it works at all.   Mike pointed out that I have a lovely camera that served me well prior to this one.  Well, yes, and it takes beautiful pictures, but you see, it is not digital and therefore much more cumbersome in this instant gratification world.  He asked if I could hold out until Christmas and I said, "But of course" but inside a little piece of me said, "What?!  Are you kidding?  How am I ever going to remember Thanksgiving or Alicia's birthday or DAYS AT THE PARK?"  I have been spoiled these last nearly 5 years with my cute little compact camera that I could hang from my wrist and take short videos with. 

 

I wonder if I could get an SLR out of this?

 

No, I'm not going to even suggest it to him.  As much as they make me salivate (read: Drool), I'm not serious enough about photography to warrant that expense.   Sigh.  I think I'll get some batteries and film tomorrow and remember the joy of printed pictures.

So I realize that a lot of my posts are going to share a common thread, something that anyone reading will realize before long - I am a klutz.  Seriously.  It's almost comic movie status.   Except that it isn't really funny, I just tend to spin it that way for your enjoyment. Oh, and black widows will probably be mentioned more often than you can imagine.  I assure you, this is all real.  I do not exaggerate what happens to me.  I don't have to.  If I were ANY klutzier, I'd be dead!

 

On to today...it started off well.  I got up early enough to do my mile and a half on the treadmill before taking Anayla to school.  That's always a good thing.  I developed a migraine half way through it but I have decided to just push through those unless I am nauseated.  I was on a roll, Reece was still sleeping, Alicia had just gotten up and I had swept the front porch.  I decided to do something about the back porch because Mike is always tracking dust in.  I was in the swing of it (haha, swinging the broom, anyway) and making some headway. I took some things out to the garbage can and moved a few things around.  I noticed that on one of the chairs was a HUGE dead black widow.

 

I thought it was dead, anyway.

 

This thing was the Arnold Schwarzenegger of black widows and like the Terminator, came back to life!!  This, of course, did not make me happy.  Although it was roughly the size of a SUPER BALL, I still tried to knock it off the chair with the broom so I could, I don't know, JUMP on it and hope that its exoskeleton would actually crack.  It was not about to get knocked off that chair.  I decided to grab bug spray to stun it.  Of course, the sliding glass door decided to lock on me.  I was outside, knocking on my door, yelling for Alicia while keeping that spider in my peripheral vision the whole time.  I finally got in the house and by the time I got back outside, I could no longer find it.  Mike pretended that he was going to look for it, but I think that he was secretly afraid of Frankenspider and he left for work without finding nor killing it.

 

Giving up on the back porch (I mean, really, can you blame me?) I decided to go run a few errands.  I took our environmentally friendly bags out to the van and put them in the back.  I have to point out that I'm not so keen on saving the planet as I am on not having a billion bags hanging around the house, literally hanging, from drawer pulls.  I grabbed the hatch and pulled on it really hard so that it would have great momentum and fully close the first time.

 

It didn't close.  Why? Because it nailed me on the left shoulder!  How on earth did that happen?  It struck right where my bra strap sits and it struck HARD.  I almost passed out, right there in the driveway.  I yelled "Ow!!!" and I think I may have said something else because the old lady across the street RAN into her house, but I was trying to stay conscious, so I'm not sure.  Sorry old lady!!  I usually have a very clean mouth!!  In every sense!!

 

I went into the house and was in tears before I even reached the door.  Mike met me at the door (this is before he fled the spider) and asked what happened.  I told him and then I went to the couch and sobbed.  He brought me frozen corn and I informed him that we have real ice packs on the top shelf.  He brought me a real ice pack without a towel. I asked if he could wrap it so I don't get burned.  He went to get a towel and Alicia came in with the corn, promptly spilling it because of course it was half used.  I told Mike to sweep it up before it got soft, and he missed his opportunity and it may have been funny if I wasn't weeping.  Keep in mind that Mike is a NURSE and he was ready to give me freezer burn.  Anyhow...

 

He gave me acetominophen and I sat and recovered and then I went on my way.  I've been in pain all day and my headache just keeps hanging in there, but I'm alive!!  I'm going to bed soon, probably with pillows on the floor, just in case I fall off, as my friend Erin suggested.

Something bit me today.  I don't know what.  I'm scared to know.  It was on my left foot and I had two itchy spots.  Immediately I started to feel a little panicky, due to finding out a couple of summers ago that I'm allergic to black widows.  Do you know how to discover you're allergic to black widows?  Why, get bit, of course!

 

I've been working outside a lot, I worked in the front yard for 2 1/2 hours on Sunday.  I did find one of the dreaded bulbous spiders that day, but dropped the rock and smashed the offender to smithereens, oddly enough with my foot instead of the rock...that may have been safer.

 

Anyhow, what do you figure the chances are that his bride was watching and is now a TRUE black widow and hell-bent for revenge?

 

I'm just kidding.  I seriously doubt that it is a black widow bite, mainly because I haven't broken out in hives to the top of my head.  Still, I have to wonder what wanted a piece of me.  Whatever it is, it should take note that I'm a part of the Family...you know, an Italian Family...they're mostly dead and gone and not my blood relatives, but the hungry, hungry creature doesn't have to know if we don't tell!!

 

I think I'm a bit tired and perhaps I should go to bed.  I'll bet this isn't half as funny when I read it tomorrow.

I won tickets the other day to go see Martha Muzzini at the Gallo Art Center.  I had never heard of Martha Muzzini, but I've also never been to the Gallo Center and was dying to go there.  I had two tickets and wasn't sure who to take.  Mike is working super early in the morning so he didn't want to go.  Anayla is helping out at the Amazing Adventure seminar at church.  What to do?  I thought about my friend Donna as she's my usual fall-back for just about anything.   As I was going through a mental list and narrowing it down, my friend Carol was brought to my attention.

Carol and I were best friends at a time in our lives.  We met in the 8th grade at little tiny Turlock Adventist Elementary School.  The school was eventually closed 8 years ago and is now rented out by the church to Sierra Vista Children's Center (where one of her boys now attends.  Pretty cool, huh?).  Our memories, however, are still there as strong as ever, especially since it still sits on our church campus.  We went on to Modesto Adventist Academy, now Central Valley Christian Academy (and oddly enough a different facility on the same land as the original), for our freshman year.  We were split up sophomore year as she continued at MAA and I went on to Turlock High School.  We still remained fast friends, spending as much time as we could together.  Our junior year we were roommates at Rio Lindo Adventist Academy, a boarding school in Healdsburg, CA. 

 

It was there that our relationship changed.   Rooming with your best friend is probably not the best idea.  Taking several of the same classes together doesn't help, either.  I'm sure that on my part I wasn't always the best roommate.  My parents announced their divorce to us kids two short weeks before school started and I moved a couple hundred miles away.  Eventually, I left school at the end of third quarter and came home, finishing the school year up with home studies.  My senior year was back at Turlock High while Carol stayed at Rio.

 

Carol went on to college and I stayed in town and worked.  My mom had 4 kids and a high school education.  I worked so that I wasn't a burden to her and tried to help out as much as I could around the place.  Carol and I kept in touch when she came home on break, working hard to stay close.   Somehow, though, it just wasn't the same.  We managed to remain friends even with our different lives.

 

I met Mike and a few months later moved in with him into our first apartment.  Carol got back together with her high school boyfriend (also named Mike) and they soon got married.  We continued to hang out as couples and do things together although it was getting harder to do so.  Then her Mike got accepted at a college in Southern CA and they moved on an extremely short notice, so short that she didn't even know where they were going to live!  For the first time since I was 13, I didn't have an address or phone number for her.

 

I missed Carol greatly.  Our lives had taken pretty different paths at that point, but we had tried to stay friends.  She had two kids and was married, Mike and I were co-habitating with no kids, just a dog and a couple of cats.  She was going to church, I was feeling too guilty to go to church.

 

Fast-forward....Carol is back in town.  She and Mike moved back when I was pregnant with my first child and she was pregnant with her fourth.  I had Alicia in November and a month later she had Justin.  By chance I happened to run into her Mike at the physical therapy office that was, at one time, her dad's.  We were friends again.  We had things in common again.  We both had babies.  We were both stay-at-home moms.  We were both broke, haha.

 

Then things went sour for Carol.  She started pulling away again.  I learned that her Mike was doing a lot of stuff he shouldn't do.  I learned that she battled depression and he certainly wasn't helping.  Eventually, they got divorced.

 

Carol and I stayed in touch, as much as she allowed.  She had to go back into the work force and had to move often, but always stayed in town.  I was back in church, but she was pulling away.  I was losing her again and didn't know how to keep her in range.  I spent many hours praying for Carol.

 

Recently, she has been putting herself out there, which I know is a hard thing to do.  She is ready to have friends again, to get out there and be....Carol.  This brings us up to speed thus far.

 

I sent her a message on Facebook (she had had to change phone companies and I didn't have her new number) asking her to go with me to the concert.  She was excited and said yes, providing her oldest would be at home to babysit the two younger boys.  He agreed and off we went!!

 

Neither of us had heard of Martha Muzzini.  I looked her up on Youtube and found a couple of grainy videos with sub-par sound that people had taken and posted.  I didn't make it all the way through any of them.  We figured we'd find out something about her together.  Let me tell you, it was an experience!!

 

I picked Carol up and after a bit of difficulty getting out of her neighborhood (all the houses look the same and there are these big round-abouts and she hasn't lived there for long!), we were headed up to Modesto.  We found the Gallo Center even after I turned too soon and we had to navigate the one-way streets.  Then we had to find parking.  We followed the signs to a garage where the guy asked for $5.  They don't take credit cards so between the two of us we scrounged up enough to change to park.  I mean, we were counting pennies!!  By the way, when there aren't signs saying that it's parking for Gallo, the parking structure is free.  What a rip-off!

 

We walked the two blocks to the theater and got in line for our tickets.  I was very impressed with the way the center looked.  It had really been hyped and was living up to all the hype.  After a few minutes we entered the actual theater and there I wasn't quite as impressed.  It was pretty plain, pretty much like any basic theater.  Maybe I'm spoiled by the beauty of Turlock Auditorium?  People who appeared to be from all walks of life and backgrounds filed in and were ushered to their seats.

 

Not too much later Martha was introduced.  The crowd was on its feet!!  On its feet and JUMPING!!!  When you read this, please remember that Carol and I are Adventists, born and raised, and Adventists don't dance.  I still don't even clap in church, although many people do now.  Martha was jumping and dancing, her backup singers were jumping and dancing, the people in the crowd were jumping and dancing.  Arms were not only lifted, they were waved around and swung about and, quite frankly, I'm glad that no one was seated by one woman in particular because she would have knocked them out cold!!  There was a lot of clapping, which doesn't bother me in the least, but as I said, the dancing took me off guard.  Did I mention that this was gospel music?  Much different from the Contemporary Christian concerts I've been to, where someone may lift their hands to Heaven and maybe clap a few times sedately.

 

Since we couldn't see the stage due to everyone standing, we took to people-watching.  Boy, was there a lot of watching to be done!!  Every now and then we'd comment on someone who seemed particularly spry and energetic.  We don't talk in tongues in our religion, but we found out later that we were both half expecting to hear some of that tonight, and then got a good laugh about us both being so funny about that sort of thing.  I wonder what we would have done if someone HAD talked in tongues.  It probably would have scared us a bit, seeing as how we are used to the sound of amen only ending a prayer, much less someone talking in something we couldn't even begin to decipher. 

 

The concert lasted for a couple of hours and that Martha, well, she was bouncing around the stage the whole time.  She admitted to turning 40 in February and then I felt so completely out of shape that it was a bit sad.  When the concert ended we decided not to stay for the meet-and-greet and to just head back to Turlock.  We were both hungry because we skipped dinner so we decided to grab something to eat.  Did you know that most fast food places close at 10pm?  We didn't know that!  We ended up getting Taco Bell at the drive-thru and taking it back to her house to eat where we talked and laughed some more.   Finally I turned my phone on and Mike happened to call.  It was nearing 11 and he was worried - not to mention tired!  I bid Carol goodbye and came home.

 

Carol and I have been through a lot through the years, both together and apart.  I am just so grateful that after 25 years we can still get together and pick right back up where we left off.  I look forward to getting together with her again.   Who knows?  Maybe one of us will win tickets to something else and we can go people-watching again.

Our trip to Columbia was so nice!!  It was hot, but not unbearable.  I think it was around 100 degrees, but there was a nice breeze that kept us cooled down.  We got there a little bit late for my liking, but there were 10 of us going and we ate lunch before we headed out so I guess it wasn't so bad. 

 

The first thing we did was look for a bathroom when we got there.  Luckily we didn't have to use this one.

 

They have nice modern bathrooms for the public to use. 

 

There is a lot to look at in the tiny town.  Our first stop was a barn full of different carriages, including a hearse.  There's no artificial lighting in the barn, though, so it's really hard to get a picture.  Our next stop was the museum.  Mike could spend all day just in the museum. Alicia was fascinated with the display case that had the artifacts that women used in "the olden days".  Here the kids are in front of one of the display cases.

 

There's a new addition to the displays in town - a bowling alley!!  The sign said that it was a pasttime mainly for young men and I think it was pretty obvious by all the pictures with half-naked women hanging on the wall, tastefully done of course.  The kids took turns rolling the bowling ball at the wooden pins.  I only got pictures of Reece because I was too busy setting pins after that.

 

That's Lindsay watching him roll his next frame.

 

There is an old buggy that is prime for pictures and we made all the kids (including teens) climb up for a photo op.  They weren't exactly cooperative, but it's probably hard for most people to get 7 of them looking at the camera at the same time.

  

 

There is still a privately owned house within the park.  The family refuses to sell it to the state, which I think is kind of cool, but it would be neat to be able to tour the house itself.  It's very pretty, though, and a classic example of the popular architecture at that time.

  There's a nice marker telling all about the history of the house.

 

We looked at some chickens in a coop (I'll spare you the pictures) and then headed over to the fire station. Of course, the viewing space is itty-bitty, you can only fit about 4 people in it, and really dark.  There was some guy taking pictures with a really fancy camera (I think I drooled a little), but he was a jerk so when we realized that Reece accidentally stepped on his bag in the dark I didn't feel so bad.  Really now, it's dark in there and you can hardly fit anybody in and the guy leaves his equipment bag lying in the dust and expects that it's going to be fine. I noticed that later he carried the stupid thing.  Serves him right.  Anyhow...I did get a picture of the outside of the building.  I have to point out that every time I tried to take a picture of something, someone had to walk into the shot.  I gave up and just let it be.

  Anayla was taking her own pictures.

 

Mike wanted me to get pictures of the architecture but he wouldn't stay out of the pictures and neither would my sister Karnette.  I took them anyway, defeated, lol.

 Then he decided we needed pictures of the kids in front of the hotel, for some odd reason.   Again, they didn't cooperate.

  

Tyler and Anayla are soooo gangster, haha!!

 

All of that foolishness made us thirsty so we hit the sweets store for sarsparilla.  Those old labels sure are informative, hehe.

   The sugar rush affected some of us more than others, causing for stupid posed photos.

 

 

We wandered around some more, encountering a man who played the piccolo.  Other times we've been there we've seen small children playing the fiddle, that sort of thing.  They're in costume so it's pretty cool.

 

We went into the smithy shop and the kids wanted personalized horseshoes, but it was getting close to closing and I wasn't about to spend money on every single kid.  They had some cool dinner bells, though, for a price.

 

The town closed up at 5 pm, a bit early if you ask me, for a Saturday in the summer.  We weren't ready to head back yet.  The kids decided that climbing the rocks would be a really fun pasttime so that's what they did while we took pictures.

  

 

  

 

   I really liked this picture of Khori.

 

  Lindsay crawling through rocks.

 

 I don't know what she's pointing at...

 

 I like this one, but Anayla doesn't because she's turned around.

 

  She liked this one better, but Karnette kind of ruined the shot.

 

I'm going to leave you with some pictures of buildings, 'cause I know that's what you want!