New Address

For those of you that still come here ... maybe someday I'll be able to maintain two blogs. But for now, please click on over to my main blog about the The FarmHouse Kids and my life.

www.thesiekmantriplets.blogspot.com

Thanks for visiting!

Tanya

Happy Birthday Sis

Okay everyone getting your singing shoes on .... it's Delurk time, and time to say Happy Birthday to my little Sis .... April. She reads here, so everyone sing the "HB" song in the comments! Please ... just a little bit?

I have to tell you .... she's 44 today! She thought she was 45 until my sister Robin told her to figure up the years ... talk about fast aging! See what happens when you enjoy life so much .... it just whizzed right by her!

Happy Birthday April ... I love you very much and I hope you had a great day!

Memories of a Grandmother (Part Two)

Click here to read the beginning ....

I loved my Grandma Imo. To a little girl who was in awe of this woman, that brought gifts and stories and lots of love from far away .... getting to visit her, and have her to myself was the best thing in the world to me.

The summer I was eleven, for two weeks, I stayed with my Grandmother in Peoria. It was so exciting, and I remember looking forward to it for at least a month before I got to go.

It was right after the 4th of July, she came home to visit, and I went back with her. It's funny because I remember the trip as well as the entire visit. Right outside of Bartonville, where she lived, was a bridge. This wasn't just any ordinary bridge .... but a bridge that arched across a wide river, and one that lifted in the middle to let barges travel down the river. I was so amazed with a bridge that had stop lights and raised itself up in the middle. I remember being mesmerized watching the slow moving barge pass under us. It was as if I was in another world.

As we got close to Grandma's house, I remember watching the street signs. Watching for Pershing Avenue. Just a little street that curved around to another street. Not very long, and not many neighbors. Just a small little white house that sat back off the street. I know I'd been there before, but my memory doesn't let me go beyond that year I was eleven. As we pulled into her driveway, I felt so happy to be there.

The little things are so clear. Meaningless little things that tickled me as a child. I remember how clever it was to have a little rubber ball on a string hanging from the ceiling of the garage, so that when she pulled in, and the ball hit the window .... she was "home," in far enough, and could safely close the garage door. I remember her slowly inching towards that ball like it was yesterday. Forty years ago.

As we walked into her house, everything was just like I had pictured. She had talked so much about her house that I knew what I would see. She had pictures of her Grandchildren everywhere, and all the things she had made. The same things she had made for us, and my Mother, and my Aunts and cousins. Her refrigerator held all the little magnets she made. I was in awe of those magnets. I moved them everywhere and I grouped them together. Just like the ones I had at home.

That summer I learned to sew. She taught me how to work her sewing machine. How to thread a needle, and how to embroidery. I was eleven, and I absorbed everything she had to teach me, as if I were a sponge. She showed me how she made her own patterns. In my youth, I thought she was way beyond other Grandmothers. She was so talented, and so crafty, and I wanted to be just like her. There was nothing that she couldn't make ... and everything was so beautiful.

I learned to string beads, and I learned the difference in polyester fabric, and I played in her fabrics and put colors together and we made little doll quilts. She made my Barbie doll clothes, and put them together on little cards with shoes and little Barbie purses with ribbons.

It was a summer to remember .... one that I always will. As I grew up, she taught me more, and her craftiness never slowed down, until she could no longer go. When I was grown, she gave me her sewing machine, the one she taught me to sew on when I was eleven. I cherish that machine. She gave me her patterns that she made my barbie doll clothes with, and she gave me the pattern that she made the dress that my first daughter wore home from the hospital. Those old hand drawn patterns mean the world to me.

She crocheted little hats for Joey to wear in the hospital since he was so small. She worried about his little head getting cold. One of the treasures that I love the most is a dress that she crocheted for Juli from rose colored thread. I know much love went into making that dress for her Great Grand-daughter. This Spring, I'll take Megan's picture in that same dress.

My Grandmother went to Heaven almost ten years ago, but not before my children got to know her well. She followed the same traditions with my kids that she did as I was growing up. I still have the monkey socks she made and all the little toys and dolls she crocheted for my kids. She gave them a quarter when she came to visit, and when she stayed the night with us .... we sat up until the wee hours of the morning .... playing Yahtzee and Scrabble and talking about old times.

Her birthday would have been last week, and I've thought a lot about here lately. I was so lucky to have had a Grandmother like her.

Life is wonderful when you have someone that you love ....

Be Blessed.

Dr. Phil said What?

Yesterday while at work, I was gossiping and laughing with a group of women nurses about silly little things .... and one of them said, "Dr. Phil said that "we women" should always make ourselves look very pleasing to our men."

I thought about that ... and yes, I agree to a certain point. I'm sure Marlboro Man would love to see me in a stretchy tight little butt huggin' outfit with my boobs hanging out and my hair all over the place and makeup on my face with puckered up red juicy lips .... batting heavy layers of mascara at him. But that would be a dream. In color and in reality ... that would be a nightmare!

My evenings are spent in sweat pants, if I'm lucky, with my hair pulled back in one of Meg's hair bows that I picked up off the floor. I wear the same old tee shirt for a few days at a time, with food drippings and snot spots all over the tail. ... and would that be a Bra hanging on the doorknob? I might have shoes on if I can find them, and sometimes my socks do match.

Speaking of socks, the hair on my legs are so spring loaded, most of the time my socks won't even stay up, so why bother. I've sweated off any trace of makeup I might have had the pleasure to put on, on my one and only potty break, and that's only if I take them all with me to the toilet.

Most of the time I'm not sure if the smell I emit is "butt-crack" or just "lack of deodorant," because the only bath I get these days, is when I get soaked from head to toe from them splashing water on me, when they are in the bathtub. I can't get naked and hop in with them, because that might earn me a visit from CPS, and I can't leave them unattended because that just might get me arrested.

You can't walk through my house without breaking a leg because of toy overload. They've torn down the curtains and blinds, the TV is reprogrammed to NASA since Sam is smarter than he should be, and trust me on this one, that just doesn't entertain three years olds these days. They've color coded the walls with crayons, and at this point we're learning how to connect the dots. Paint is cheap and I know a day will come that they will grow up. But for now ....

Generally speaking, my weekends are the worst, since most of them are spent in the house, without smelling fresh air from Friday evening to Monday morning. .... and he's saying that I should always make myself pleasing to look at for my man?

I'm hear to tell you .... Dr. Phil doesn't have three year old triplets, a full time job and doesn't cook, clean and do the laundry everyday! He's not sleep deprived and he doesn't spend 49 hours of his day sitting on the edge of the bathtub waiting for someone to poop. He doesn't yell, "Next" as soon as he wipes a butt and herds one kid out the door and another one in. .... and he doesn't spend the only time he might have to himself sitting on the floor in the dark whispering "get back in that bed, or a mouse might get you!" (yes, Dr. Phil, I'm aware this might cause psychological damage and long term effects, but I need to sleep too. We'll deal with it later!)

Then, after all is quiet in the house, he isn't on his hands and knees under the table scraping food off the floor with the back of a spoon, .... or wiping the milk off of his face that is dripping down through the crack in the table, as he bangs his head fifteen times while scrubbing the floor.

Come on Dr. Phil .... if you said this, tell me you were kidding. Right?!!

Seven years ago, I used to be the "Queen of Strut," and, "looking pleasing to my man" is what got me where I am today! .... fifty years old, living in Green Acres with Marlboro Man, three year old triplets, a nervous Chihuahua that pees on the floor, a house full of flies, and a bunch of stinking cows! Give me a break! I am just trying to find time to suck in enough air to survive. Don't you think for one minute that if I had just one extra hour in my day, I would do my best to please my man a little, right before I pass out from sheer exhaustion when he gets home at night.

So, please don't give him any ideas. I don't have time for this, and trading me in for a newer model just isn't in the picture ... the poor man couldn't afford child support, take care of the kids and milk the cows at the same time!

Like Martina McBride says, and for the sake of my inner woman and the Sisterhood, I'm hanging onto every word she sings .... "my baby loves me just the way that I am!"

Be Blessed all you wonderful women out there, and "Welcome to my World Dr. Phil!"

Now for real: If by chance you read this Dr. Phil .... this was all in fun, except the mouse part, and I'll let you deal with them in a few years! I truly love you, and I would watch you everyday if I had the time, but you know how it is .... sigh!