Xtreme Babysitting

I've probably mentioned here before that I have two sets of kids that clamor for my attention. The first set of course is my own, Shawn and Donnie. The others belong to my best friends R & S. Their 4 y/o sons nanme is Ali-joshua and yes they are muslim. Parental responsibilities are a little different in the arabic community. The women typically stay home with the kids and the families are usually very large. The little girl is 8 months but her eyes light up whenever I come into the room too. This is my second family in nearly every sense of the word. Of course you know with family there are always certain things that as an aunt/uncle what have you, you're just sorta expected to do.

Well the last two weeks have been a hailstorm of activity for me. My weekly schedule has looked something like this:

Sunday - spend time with Shawn and Donnie , shawn has all of his buddies over the house playing games and Donnie is running me around the neighborhood on his tricyle.

Monday - pick Joshua up from daycare so S can focus on her medical boards while R finishes work. It's tough for him to get to the daycare in time and I work just down the street.

Tuesday - my karaoke night though it has been pre-empted the last two weeks by the kids. My family as I call them may come over and Shawn's upstairs with the video games or working on math/reading lessons and Donnie's running me around the house.

Wednesday - Pick Joshua up from daycare again and if the boys are begging for me, tell him I have to go back to work or run errands so he's not too jealous. Yes, a 4 y/o can get jealous and will tell you he doesn't want to be your friend anymore cause you're leaving him lol. It's cute.

Thursday - another day I may get some free time but usually, wash rinse and repeat of tuesday. The kids, not the karoake, that's tuesday only.

Friday - toss up, depends on who calls first or cries the loudest. Split between my kids and Joshua and E.

Saturday - Time to try and clean the house cut the grass and somewhere in here I'll probably see either set of kids again.

So I've been quite busy lately but last night I promised to pick Joshua up from daycare and spend the night since he was so upset when I couldn't stay longer on monday. Of course I had Jennie calling me all day to ask if I was going to reconsider cause Donnie and Shawn (mostly donnie cause he's 3 and wants what he wants when he wants it) were wanting me. I told her I made a promise so I would have to see them tomorrow which is today. Well work ran a little long so I wasn't able to pick Joshua up from school which he himself reminded me several times when I finally did get to the house. I told him it was ok cause I'd brought a change of clothes and was spending the night. One thing to understand R & S would have me spend the night every night if I said ok. Not so much because of the kids but just because of the family thing.

However, the other thing about family....ever see the Airtran commercial where the kids show up on Mom and Dads doorsteps with the baby and say hi, drop the baby and run. Then the parents are left there going "They left us with the baby!!"

Yeah, that would be me last night. I got in the house and ten minutes later they were on their way out. It was kinda funny but they only go out maybe three or our times year so I didn't mind. I've been babysitting for them ever since Joshua was 6 months old so it was nothing new and S's mom was there. Only problem there is she's from Syria and doesn't speak any English and of course I dont speak any Arabic so we did a whole lot of pointing at stuff and kids and nodding or shaking our heads as we tried to get them both to goto sleep, eat and other stuff. It also showed proof that you can learn something from Reality TV. Joshua was a lot easier to put to bed before he could crawl and then before he could walk and then before he could talk. Now, he will debate the bedtime ritual until his dad gives him two options, one being the light turned off and the door closed and we just leave him in there. It's a little harder to discpline someone elses kid so last night when I got the inevitable debates on going to bed, I simply called dad and put him on speakerphone so he could talk to Joshua. That helped some but he still fussed a bit and all it took was the option to A lay down and close his eyes, or B have me call dad again to get him to finally settle in for the night. Of course, I always fall asleep trying to put him to sleep so I dont know who fell asleep first.

End of a good day

But I got a early wake up call. See what happens when you go to sleep at 7am when you know you have two kids that are going to wake you up in an hour or less. Sure enough 9am came and Donnie had to pee, every five minutes. No lie, I dont know if he's even got a bladder. Of course his brothers wake up call was worse, donnie decided to give him a good slap or two and scream Wake-Up. I think it's the Wiggle's Influence...Wake Up Jeff...we need you for the show.

Donnie took this

Enter the Age of Aquarius

I'd link but I suck like that...however I was reading a post on OT and it had information about Aquarii and a lot of them were pretty close on me so I thought I'd post some of the information from the site.

Here's the link though http://www.astrology-online.com/aquarius.htm

The Water Carrier
January 21 to February 19


Traditional
Aquarian Traits

Friendly and humanitarian
Honest and loyal
Original and inventive
Independent and intellectual

On the dark side....

Intractable and contrary
Perverse and unpredictable
Unemotional and detached

Aquarius About Your Sign...
Aquarians basically possess strong and attractive personalities. They fall into two principle types: one shy, sensitive, gentle and patient; the other exuberant, lively and exhibitionist, sometimes hiding the considerable depths of their character under a cloak of frivolity. Both types are strong willed and forceful in their different ways and have strong convictions, though as they seek truth above all things, they are usually honest enough to change their opinions, however firmly held, if evidence comes to light which persuades them that they have been mistaken. They have a breadth of vision that brings diverse factors into a whole, and can see both sides of an argument without shilly-shallying as to which side to take. Consequently they are unprejudiced and tolerant of other points of view. This is because they can see the validity of the argument, even if they do not accept it themselves. They obey the Quaker exhortation to "Be open to truth, from whatever source it comes," and are prepared to learn from everyone.

LIKES
Fighting for Causes
Dreaming and Planning for the Future
Thinking of the Past
Good Companions
Having Fun
DISLIKES
Full of Air Promises
Excessive Loneliness
The Ordinary
Imitations
Idealistic


That's not everything but just some of the stuff I thought was really interesting. It's pretty close on me actually and I usually laugh at this stuff as crap.

Reason 599 that Parent's shouldn't try to cut their kids hair

We might have been ok if he sat still. I'll have to fix it tomorrow or take him to the salon. Bad Bad daddy.

At home with the kids

Picture compliments of mom who just took the kids home for the evening. I'll get to keep them tomorrow and take them to the little festival in town. Poor Donnie was wiped by the time this picture was taken as was dad. Shawn on the other hand was having a ball playing computer games still.

What a weekend

It was my full intention to post lots of pics from my incredible weekend here but alas time and my phone have not been my friend of late. I spent the weekend with two truly beautiful friends and Syrenboy of course. Friday was Stephie's birthday and though she was very slow getting there once she did, the fun commenced.

Syrenboy became my new best pal almost as soon as I got there. Friday morning around 10am he decided he couldn't wait any longer and had to wake his new toy up. I felt little hands poking me and it was Ryan testing to see if I was awake. We played lightsaber duels and rock star before moving on to the serious stuff, The Need for Speed. He handily kicked my butt the first several games before allowing mom to play. I quickly found out why mom isn't allowed to play too much, she's pretty stiff competition....lol. Well he did manage to beat her a few go rounds and I even managed to win one.

We called Stephie to see where she was and she hadn't left yet, ack!! So we decided to go eat at Syrenboys favorite restaurant, Ryans. It had been a while since I'd been to his restaurant lol but the food was great and the company even better. I got a tour of the town and Tara's college which was very nice. The scenery in WV is simply awesome. It was past midday and still no Stephie so we decided to play some miniature golf. That was too much fun and each hole had little facts about West Virginia on them which was really neat. Ryan waxed us both of course.

Since we were still waiting on Stephie lol..we decided to go swimming at the hotel pool. The hot tub was nice but too hot and the pool was really nice but too cold. The room was just right...but we got in both the hot tub and pool anyway at Syrenboy's urging lol. It didn't seem that bad once you'd been in a few minutes but it was still really cold and we had fun as we tricked other guests into jumping in. Hey why suffer alone right lol? Stephie finally made it while we were splashing around in the pool and we had a great time and pretty much wore ourselves out playing in the pool.

Saturday we went to Ryan's Tball game and he totally crushed a couple of the balls. I think if he'd kept running he would have had at least one in the park homer. We had these icees from heaven too. Man let me tell you it doesn't get much better than the icees they make at the Sophia Community Fields. We dropped Ryan off after that so the adults could go out and play. We had a wonderful dinner at Ernies Rib Pit after taking an awesome tour of the New River Gorge. I'd been wanting to see that bridge ever since I used to SkyDive. It's high enough that people get to jump off it one day a year every year called Bridge Day. I may go and watch this year now that I know where it is and have friends in the area. Well after torturing our wait staff at Ernies we decided to skip the strip club and goto a dance club called Weekends. It was too much fun though none of the girls really were into dancing that night. We played foosball, darts and pool while enjoying some adult beverages with Taras friend Regina another really cool cat.

Sunday was time to go unfortunately but before we did, Tara took me on a tour of The Tamarack ( a really cool showhouse for lots of arts and crafts made in West Virginia) and Grandview at the gorge (a really beautiful park). I couldn't believe it, we actually wore Syrenboy out. That kid has the energy of 10 nuclear power plants but he was out like a light by the time we got back to the hotel and I hopped in my car to head home.

It was an awesome awesome weekend and I had a great time. I can't wait to go visit again.

Oh Happy Day

Today will be a fun day. I'm going to meet Syren and Asrai, that's Tara and Stephie to the OT Challenged..lol. Tomorrow is Stephanies birthday so we're gonna take her to a strip club which will be fun for me as they're both into women. I had almost forgot about that and had resigned myself to taking them to a male strip club, woohoo for lesbians and bi-sexuals.;-)

I've fixed my blog so those that I want to post comments can. If you think you cant comment and think you should be able to, you know how to reach me. I'm looking forward to this weekend as I enter a new more stress free phase.

Pardon the mess

There's actually no mess here right now, the mess is with my personal life which has intruded into my Journal and Blog. For the time being I've turned off comments from anyone but team members and I dont even know what the hell that is. As soon as I get it figured out I will invite my friends to comment on my blog again and at some point I'll go back and open it back up again. Unfortunately right now, there's a person whom I used to care very dearly for that I have no reason to belive will not follow me all over the internet if given the chance, desecrate my name. What she does on her own journal or blog is of no consequence to me cause I'm simply not that interested in her opinion anymore.

This is a sad day and a happy day cause tomorrow it will be over and I'll never worry about it again.

The Condom Game

I found this on another site and it is hilarious. I'm not such a good shot so I ended up with 4 kids.

http://viral.lycos.co.uk/games/condomgame.html

NO, you may not!!!

Hahaha....Wow if I had known it was that easy I would have been doing this a long time ago. It's going to be my new catch phrase though. I dont know why I answer the phone when the tele-marketers call. Sometimes I like to fuck with them, make them jump through all kinds of hoops and ask for ridiculous disounts or freebies only to tell them, Nah, I dont think I can do that today. Other times (especially with the mortgage folks) I quote them the ridiculously low rate I already have which completely lets the winds out of their sails or tell them I never want another credit card in my life which does about the same for those idiots. Today though when I picked up the phone I got "um um...cough cough...oh Yes...May I speak to Mr. Steven Harris please?". Well the 1-888 number was a tip off from the start but since none of my friends have ever called me Mr. and any of the companies that I would deal with would show their numbers I knew from the jump it was a tele-marketer. I could also say since the call came on a sunday morning (what businesses do you know that are open on a sunday morning?), it was pretty obvious. So there I was, and the lady starts "May I speak to Mr. Steven Harris please?" I just calmly said, "No, you may not!!!". End of phone call...lol..I guess she didn't know what to say to that.

And while I'm in such a good mood I guess I should also thank my neighbor Jeff. I dont know Jeff and I dont know which neighbor he is but seeing as BellSouth fucking sucks right now, he's my link to the internet. See I secure my wireless connection at the house cause though it takes some setup to access another computer over a wireless network connection, I'd still rather not have to worry about someone trying to do so. I have no interest in what's on his computers and haven't ventured to see if they're open too but I do appreciate that apparently his DSL or Cable connection is much better than mine which goes out all the time and stays out for minutes to hours at a time. I've called the useless idiots at BellSouth (who are probably more likely at IndiaSouth) and they all want to say it's my router. Umm..when I plug your stupid cable into the back of my computer and the network link light doesn't even come on, I think thats a pretty good indication that their aint shit coming out of the wall jack.(I have a FibreChannel so no modem needed, just plug right into the wall network jack). But alas these fools will have me delete and recreate connections repeatedly till it comes back on which is more just a coincidence of timing than any real technical troubleshooting they've done. It's down yet again and rather than fuck with those nitwits, I just connect to good ole Jeff's network and play away. I'll give BellSouth a call later but right now, I just dont feel like messing with it.

I pity the fool who likes this haircut

Silence is not bliss

I was talking to my friend Christina today about how it had been a while since I'd seen her online and how there are friends that you can not talk to for months or years and still know that they care about you. I say that because I have several friends that I dont see on any kind of regular basis but still love very much and know that the next time I call or they call, we'll pick right up where we left off how ever many weeks or months it's been ago. And then there is the flip side. Not to say that there are friends that you keep in touch with that you dont care about but more to say that there are friends that you for whatever reason DO happen to talk to regularly or nearly regularly. Why is it that I freak out when one those friends doesn't call or write in a few days or weeks? I suppose I know the answer to that question but dont want to deal with it. I can feel when things aren't quite right between me and some of my friends and it's tough. This was a nice week, I heard from two people that I didn't expect to and it made me smile. Of course to bring balance to the universe, I didn't hear from someone that I shouldnt' but expected I might at least hear a hello from today and it made me sad.

That brings me back full circle to reflecting on friends and how you just know that somewhere out there, they're still thinking about you with fond memories till the next time you speak. At least that is usually the case.