The things Moms do for their kids.....

Let me tell you about the past 36 hours or so.

(At this point, Himself would moan, "And if I don't want to hear about it?"
To which I'd respond, "Listen anyway." In kind, loving tones, of course.)


Let's rewind back to early Tuesday morning.

3am ~ My alarm goes off. I hit it and it shuts off. It's somehow therapeutic to have an alarm clock that turns off by slamming.....um.....pushing a large button on the top. I stagger out of bed and check to make sure Cameron's awake and up. I hear the shower running. Good. He's up. I go back to bed.

3:10am ~ I think I hear a loud whisper. I look to the doorway of my bedroom. No blurry shape blocking out the dim light from the kitchen. However, being a mom, I get up again to see if I was hearing things or if Cameron really did need to talk to me.

He really did need to talk to me. As in, "Mom, I feel like I'm going to puke." Now my children don't come to me with that statement after about age twelve and he's eighteen. His problem was that he had to go to work. I mean he HAD to go. He's in his first-30-days-probation period and if he calls in sick, he kisses his job goodbye. He knew this and I knew this. He was asking for help in making his guts settle down. I made him sip peppermint tea and nibble saltines for about thirty minutes and then sent him to work with the tea and crackers, and with crossed fingers I went back to bed. It's 3:45am.

5am~ Mike's alarm goes off. His has a little push-button on the front and it's on the other side of the bed, anyway. I haven't done much for the past 75 minutes except doze and wait for a phone call.

5:30 ~ Mike leaves for work. I go back to sleep.

5:45 ~ I wake up feeling as if I've slept well for at least half an hour. I check the clock and give up on sleep. I get up and start to put together the last-minute stuff Richelle's asked me to take care of for her Girl Scout event she's putting on.

7am ~ I wake up Richelle and we run around like the proverbial chicken, getting showered and dressed, getting everything checked off and loaded up. We leave for town at 8am. (Breakfast? What's that?")

8:30 ~ My cell rings. It's Cameron. "Mom, I need you here."
"There? At the mill?"
"Yes. Here. Now."
"Why?"
"They found me in the bathroom throwing up during break and they're sending me home. They don't want me to drive myself."
I knew the policy had changed over the years with the company in regards to vomitus. Back in the dark ages twenty years ago, Mike would go to work with the flu. When I asked, he said that if he needed to throw up, he'd just head for the outside door and puke around the corner. The only time he'd stay home with the flu is if he had the trots. Can't very well head for the outside door with that condition.
Cameron wasn't being sent home because he was caught throwing up during break, he was being sent home because he was throwing up. Them sending him home is a different color of fish than him calling in sick. Newer policy having to do with bodily fluids. But to be told that they didn't want him driving himself home? Wow. He must have been white as a sheet. His boss offered to drive him home. The poor guy didn't know how long a drive that was. Cameron turned him down.
I, however, was between that well-known rock and the unyielding hard place. The rock was that I HAD to be with Richelle all day as her adviser and to meet the adult/youth ratio. The hard place was that my son was sick and needed me. Fortunately, his best friend's mom was willing to make a round trip of about 100 miles to get him and take him home. Lovely lady. I am deeply in her debt.

9am ~ The girls helping Richelle with her project begin to arrive. I'm going to skip the next six hours except for one darling funny story and a brief description of her project. Richelle is earning her Bronze award, the highest award available at her level of Girl Scouts (henceforth abbreviated as GS). Along with other requirements, she needed to think up, plan, and execute a community service. At this level, the service can be within GS. She chose to plan and carry out a Daisy (kindergarten level) bridging workshop - a program where the girls complete the requirements to earn a special badge worn on their Brownie uniforms (next level up). She also planned a ceremony for the girls to "bridge" from Daisies to Brownies. She has put in a total of 36.5 hours so far, six of which was the event itself, and not counting the follow-up paperwork.
The funny story: The girls were eating lunch and there were three little Daisies sitting across from me. The one in the middle had a little container of potato chips that got knocked off the table, spilling the chips onto the ground. She picked them all up, sat back down, and with the chips cupped in her hands stated, "Now I can't eat them." I don't think she was complaining, she was simply stating a fact and was uncertain what to do next. One sweet, helpful little Daisy next to her snatched a chip, blew furiously all over one side of it and then the other, handed it back and confidently announced, "Now you can eat it!"
I successfully swallowed my hysterical laughter.

5:15pm ~ We headed home after a brief stop at the grocery store where Richelle actually rode in the cart for a while she was that tired.

Sometime before 7pm ~ Discussion about how Cameron was going to get to work in the morning since his car is still in the parking lot. I offered to drive him but Mike said he could just as easily go to work early and take him. They work in the same mill. We eat supper, Cameron included.

9pm ~ House is quiet as a tomb with a hamster. Mike and Cameron are asleep and have been for almost two hours, Richelle is nearly so, and I'm dragging pretty hard.

3:15am ~ I jolt awake, not having any memory of smacking the alarm silent. I stagger out to the kitchen (deja vu) where Cameron is putting his lunch together. Cameron asks who's driving him. I shuffle back to the bedroom, wake Mike up, and ask him if he's going to be getting up.
"Yeah, but we don't need to leave until quarter after four."
"That'll put him at the mill at five." That's when his shift starts and they're both rabid about getting there half an hour early at least.
Long pause.
"Oh." .....slightly shorter pause.........."You're right." Deep breath and sigh..... "You can go ahead and take him," and Himself shifts to a more comfortable spot in the bed.

3:30am ~ I head out on a 90-minute round-trip drive. The trip down was fun with the chit-chat but the drive back.......do you have any idea of the totally off the wall topics discussed on radio talk shows at 4am? Discussing UFOs and Sasquatch quite matter-of-factly as if they're as real as jumbo jets and bighorn sheep? Cameron said one morning they were having a conversation with Jesus. Odd flock of ducks.

5am ~ I get back home, kiss Himself goodnight and goodbye, climb back into my lightly used side of the bed, fall asleep and don't wake up until 8am.

The rest of the day I have this nagging headache and feeling of lethargy. I manage to get five loads of laundry done, the kitchen cleaned, and the family and dining rooms straightened up but I copped out and picked up pizza for supper on the way home from the Oakland City Council meeting where...

...Cameron was given a commendation for his Eagle project! They are sooo pleased with that sign.

And now I see by the clock that today has become tomorrow. I'm going to bed.

Friday

This afternoon, Cameron decided he wanted chicken fried chicken for supper. It's one of his favorite entrees. He rummaged around in the freezer until he found the chicken tenders and thawed them out and Richelle got some potatoes to prepare. I told Cameron to go ahead and trim up the tenders while I peeled the potatoes and he got a rather revolted look on his face. Touch raw chicken?? I pointed out that if he was planning to make this after he moved out, he was going to have to plan on touching raw chicken. He thought really fast and said he'd rather watch me do it this time so he'd know how to do it next time. I told him I knew that was only and excuse but went ahead and it anyway. He watched closely but never asked to try it himself even after watching me do three or four.

I love making this supper because both the kids are in the kitchen with me. Richelle dips the tenders in the milk, dredges them in flour, then drops them in the beaten eggs. Cameron fishes them out, coats them in crushed Ritz crackers or crushed Special K cereal (whichever we have on hand), then takes them to me to fry. I'm standing at the stove monitoring the cooking and the kids are working together at the sink board getting them ready at a pace that isn't too fast or two slow. I mean, the kids are working together! Without a hint of an argument!! Tonight, I told them that even if I went without supper, I'd still consider it a success because of the fun we had preparing it. They agreed. Then asked if I planned to eat supper.

I didn't even think until this moment to get any pictures but it's a moot point. I don't even have my camera. Nick borrowed it last weekend and I haven't gotten it back yet.

Tuesday

The last Tuesday of the month is when our home school group gets together at the bowling alley for a couple of hours. We love the fun and visiting with friends and throwing the balls down the lanes. Well, the kids love all of the above while I concentrate on the visiting-with-friends bit. This is a great group of people and the new bowling alley is so cool with black-lighted lanes, pins, and balls, bumpers that come up automatically as programed into the main computer for those who request them which allows kids to bowl together regardless of expertise, couches as well as tables and chairs, and an extremely well-equipped arcade.

But here is a changing of an age. Cameron wasn't able to bowl this month because of a job interview conflict. Sometimes it's hard to believe he's old enough to be job- and apartment-hunting, budgeting for life on his own and college. Yikes! Seems like it was just a month ago that he crossed over from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts. Anyway, he had the interview with the mill and one home school couple at the bowling alley is so interested in his success that the mom jumped every time my cell rang, hoping it was Cameron telling me the interview was over and he was hired. Eventually that call came through I was able to tell her that although he wasn't hired on the spot, he did have an appointment for a physical and they said they'd call in a few days for an orientation meeting.

After the bowling, I took Richelle to the bank so she could exchange $46 WORTH OF PENNIES! for paper money. Why? She wants a hamster. She's been collecting pennies since her seventh birthday and decided that a hamster is the ideal thing to spend them on. She did ask Mike for permission and he told her it was all right with him as long as she promised to take good care of it and did research to find out how to do that. She did and she did. She's done quite a lot of research actually, and can go on at length about the care, diseases, health, habits, habitats, and the best prices to get food, bedding, treats, etc.

Who rolled the pennies? Richelle and Yours Truly. One would count and the other would roll until Richelle got bored with her job and we'd switch. I ought to have taken a percentage for effort. We did it all at once and then had to go through them Tuesday morning because I realized that there were half a dozen times that I saw an old penny with the heads of wheat on the back and set it aside....then didn't replace it before rolling the stack! Duh.

So we went to PetCo where they had the habitat and a chew toy Richelle wanted and then went to Wal*Mart for the bedding, chew sticks, and food. She didn't get the hamster because she wants to have everything set up for it before-hand. The habitat Richelle got came with a water bottle, food dish, and exercise wheel that doubles as a zip-around ball. When she gets the hamster, she'll get the salt wheel, lava chews, and possibly some treats.

Richelle started complaining that she was hungry when we left the bowling alley around 3pm. As time went on, she increased in frequency and theatrics as only 11-year-old girls can do. Wal*Mart was the last stop and as we crossed the parking lot to the car, she was in fine form, slumped forward, staggering a bit, moaning plaintively, "I am SO hungry!"
"How hungry are you?" I intoned.
"Hungry enough to eat a WHOLE MEAL!" she exclaimed.
The guy walking a little behind us snorted.

The rest of the day was pretty dull. Except for when Mike said that the flowers in the hanging pots were growing. How can he tell? We just transplanted them Saturday! Maybe the times he went out there and yelled at them to grow had an effect?