Day of bad news

My one piece of good news - my new dishwasher was delivered - yeah!

At 6:30 AM we found out that Ira's Gran Gran passed away overnight. She has been deteriorating the past couple of weeks. So, we had kinda been waiting, but it is still sad to see her go. I will personally miss her as she was the one person on Ira's Mom's side of the family that I could relate to.

Since the day was starting poorly and since we were also waiting to see if my ex Mother-in-Law's (and basically Jason's second Mom) test results came in yesterday like expected, I figured I would call Jess (my ex-husband) to get the scoop and really screw up my day before 8 AM. Yes, they came in, but they were not able to diagnose lung cancer, just that she had blockage in her lungs and was now coughing up blood. Well, by 3:30 and after seeing another specialist they did confirm that it is in fact lung cancer. We will not know the severity until after the biopsy - so keep her in your prayers.

In the meantime, she has very limited medical insurance and many of the tests have not been covered. Plus, it sounds like any hospital stays will not be covered. So, there will be a charity garage sale in mid-May to help raise money for the medical bills. If anyone is interested in contributing goods or shopping, please let me know and I will get more details as they become available.

This weekend will be saying goodbye to Gran Gran and the near future will be trying to make Jason's Grandmother as comfortable as possible.

Keep thinking positive thoughts for us.

Draft day - repost of the MSU/Purdue blog

Today Devin Thomas was drafted by the Washington Redskins in the 2nd round. Which means I now officially have a connection to the NFL. I am very happy for Devin and only want to see him play and succeed. In celebration to that I have reposted the MSU/Purdue blog from November.

MSU vs. Purdue

This picture was in the Free Press yesterday, my son is the little blonde boy on the left and my boyfriend is the tall guy in the gray sweatshirt behind my son. So, at the age of 11, Jason has made his newspaper debut.
They went the MSU game in Purdue on Saturday. Now, while Ira and I are Michigan fans, Ira's cousin Devin #5 is the starting WR at MSU and my son has been completely converted to an MSU fan. And if he wasn't before Saturday, he is now. The game in Purdue was the first time he has gone to a college football game. Plus, he is an avid football fan (gee, I wonder where he gets that from) and he knows all of the players on the MSU roster. On top of that, this kid loves autographs.
So, with all of that in mind, Ira can hardly get Jason to get up and go to the bathroom during the game because he doesn't want to take the chance of missing a thing. With the sharpie in his pocket he was able to meet the entire team after the game and his jersey is packed with signatures. Devin signed the #5 in front and Javon Ringer #23 signed the #5 on the back. The rest of the back of his jersey is filled with black squiggles - Davis, Hoyer, Saint-Dic, etc. Needless to say, he wore the jersey and took the newspaper into school today.
After the day was through he ended up throwing up and came home with a headache. I am guessing it was due to all of the excitement and lack of food (he just wouldn't eat). Unfortunately, there was only two tickets so I didn't get to see all of the excitement, but it fills my heart to know that Saturday will probably be remembered as one of my son's best days ever.
Initially Posted by Shay at 1:02 PM on 11/12/2007

My Crazy Life

Sorry I haven't blogged much lately, I have been crazy lately. Back to work after vacation, Jason's baseball season is gearing up, and bowling is gearing down for all of us. On top of that everything is breaking down again - so, it's been a lot of shopping and spending - fax/printer, dishwasher, and riding lawnmower to name a few things that have completley quit and needed to be replaced in the past week. Okay, the lawnmower quit just before the end of summer, but I waited as long as I could before I needed to buy a new one :-)

Fortunately my homeowner's policy kicks in at the end of the month so that we can get the garage door opener and kitchen ceiling fan/light fixed.

So, I am still alive and just really busy. I will write more soon.

Our trip to the Grand Canyon

It's a long one....
Jason and I started off with a good vacation. We golfed, we hung out at the pool, we went for a couple of drives. Nice and relaxing. And then...we went to Tombstone and all of the reason that my Mother and Stepfather drove me crazy came back like a ton of bricks.

For some reason they don't bother me apart, but when you put them together you may as well send me straight to the loony bin. My Mom had to work until 8:00 at night two days while we were there, which was fine, but that only left us one night to really do anything and that night happened to be their wedding anniversary. So, I offered to take them to dinner in Tombstone since it was going to be our only chance to get out there. First, at this time of the year by 5:30/6:00 most of the shops are closed and none of the activities are going on. So, we went into a couple of shops and had dinner. My Mom and Tom (my stepdad) complained about one thing of another the whole way there and back. Tom is a bit worse than my Mom, but my Mom feeds off of it. The funny thing was that everything that they talked about didn't even effect them...a response to the school system issues, some family who has one son that is gay and one that is in jail, Arab's, Mexicans. Seriously, how can somebody be happy with that much negativity running through their body?

By the time we returned to our hotel I was not sure how I was going to survive the 12 hours round trip to the Grand Canyon. I am a pretty positive person and just do not like to be around that much negativity, let alone for such a long length of time.

That Wednesday Jason and I played golf and then went with Tom to the Pima Air Museum and the Boneyard at MARG (plane restoration and scraping). On the way back, Tom started on me about my sister and how all she wanted was my love. BTW - bad topic with me. I very directly explained to him that I have never turned my sister away but, that I gave up trying a very long time ago and that she knows that anything at this point is 100% up to her, but that she has never made an effort. He went on about his relationship with his brother and how one of them will eventually die and it will be sad if they don't fix everything before then. Well, then maybe he should concentrate on his relationship with his brother because I have not had anything to do with my sister for so long that metaphorically she is already dead to me. Jason and I had dinner by ourselves after that.

Thursday morning came and it was time to head to the Grand Canyon. Jason and I had my laptop, 7 movies, 2 mp3/ipod, puzzle books, and book for each of us. For the 6 hours up, there was some kind of headphones in our ears for the majority of the trip, just to block them out. Let me give you a synopsis...

• they brought their dog
• after much debate we had BK for lunch
• tom turns into the wrong driveway because he couldn't see the big sign that said Burger King the next driveway up and of course, he complained about us sending him to the wrong place
• We had to eat on the patio because of the dog
• after 4 whopper jr's, 1 large chocloate shake, and fries we are back on the road. Oh, and that is just for my Mom, Tom, and the dog.
• tom puts his elbow into my laptop for the 10th time, easy to do since it is mostly in the back seat
• my mom keeps trying to talk to us like we can hear her.
• once we pull the headphones out, it sounded like this....arby's, snow, there's some water, gas station, no, I don't care about your sale (responding to the commercial on the radio) - seriously do you two ever stop talking? Do you need to read every sign, point out the obvious, and respond to the commercials.

Ah, we are out of the car and I decided halfway through that we would not be sharing a hotel room together. One - based on the reviews, the pet rooms were not great, two - we needed some space, and three - Jason and I had pretty much been sticking to a MI schedule and been asleep around 9 or 9:30 and I didn't want to make it uncomforatable because of that.

So, after we changed clothes and put on our tennis shoes Jason and I are ready to go. It's not even 4:00, we still have plenty of daylight and get some sightseeing done. WRONG! First, we went to their room and asked if they are ready to go, my Mom says, "where the restuarant?" Are you serious - how the heck are you guys hungry after your feast at BK a couple of hours ago? No Mom, not the restuarant, Grand Canyon. Well, she is tired and Tom is going to take a shower. O.K. So, Jason and I walk to to the visitor's center and watch the Grand Canyon movie at the IMAX theatre. Very cool - it gave us some history, took us on an airplane ride, and a rafting ride. After that, we shopped around for a bit and checked out some tour packages. Since we were not going to have time for any tours, we made the decision that we would come back in a couple of years and bring Ira. This would just be our mini-trip.

After that we headed back to our room for a few minutes and then decided we were ready for dinner, which we were going to have with Mom and Tom. Wrong again! They can't leave the dog in the hotel room or the truck. So, they are going to order pizza. We weren't exactly up for pizza and a bit disappointed that they kept changing plans on us that we went to dinner by ourselves. Even Jason at this point is mad and commenting how they keep bailing on us.

The plan the next morning was to meet at 7 to head over to grand canyon because Tom wanted to head back by 11 or 12. Yep - 12 hour trip for 4 hours of sightseeing. Yippee!!

Jason and I took showers the night before so that we could just get up and go the next morning. We were up around 6 and after getting around went to have breakfast. After eating breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express in Benson all week, which is great, we were a little disappointed with the continental breakfast at the Red Feather Lodge. So, we walked across the street to McDonald's ($4.00 for a sausage mcmuffin with egg!! Welcome tourists - hee hee), ate, and made it to Mom and Tom's room by 7:05.

They are not packed and Mom is over at the continental breakfast getting plates for both of them. So, they haven't eaten yet either. Plan change - 7:30. Jason helps my Mom take two big plates of food back to her room and the time changes again to 7:45.

Well, the visitor center does not even open until 8. It would have been helpful if Jason and I would have paid attention to that the night before.

We finally make it to the park and agree to go around the South Rim. Stop, take pictures, get back in the truck. That is pretty much the theme for the next 3.5 hours. It was beautiful and while I couldn't find a complaint in the world, the two in the front seat didn't stop complaining about one thing or another.

When it came to stop 2, I think, there is about 10 foot of rock behind the small walls at the outlook. So, Jason and I are standing up on the wall, sitting on it, and taking pictures. As soon as I get done taking Jason's picture Tom is yelling at Jason to get off of the wall. Strike 2 - if my son is doing something wrong and needs to be yelled at, then fine. However, with 10 foot of rock behind him and the fact that I am taking his picture, and I, being his Mom, am standing right there. Yelling at him was not the smartest thing to do and may be the quickest way to piss me off, but it opened up so fun for Jason and I.

When we got to the grand view site there are hiking trails going down into the canyon. Jason and I were standing on platforms, going down the trails, having fun with it and taking some great pics. However, this bothered Tom so bad that he had to keep going back to the truck. My Mom said that we would have to forgive him, that it just bothers him to see us out there like that. Trust me, Jason and I both have height issues and neither one of us would push it past what we were comfortable with. But, neither one of us had any issues with the heights all morning. So, since we knew it would bother Tom and I was already not happy with him, we looked for every hill, rock, platform that we could get to. And, soon after that Tom's leg was bothering him and he just started staying in the truck. Was it really his leg??? I don't know. I know what we did was bad, but at this point we had to find a way to shake this trip up.

The trip back to Benson was an exact duplicate of the trip there. So much so that I decided to get Tom a set of postive thinking CD's for his birthday. I just don't know how there is really any happiness when you complain about absolutely everything. Not only does it have to be eating him up inside, but it bothers everyone around him - trust me on that. By the time Jason and I got to the airport the next morning I don't think we could run in fast enough. Home sweet home.

On a side note, I apologized to Jason for seeing the crazy side of this set of grandparents. Frankly, I lived with my Dad after they divorced when I was 10, except for one year. I was 16/17 and the summer I was 17 I had my foot operated on and my sister tried to commit suicide. After they put my sister in the mental hospital (she spent time in 2) my Mom became psychotic. She would not let me out of the house and disconnected every phone in the house except the one in her room. After my Dad tried to call for the hundredth time I finally had enough room to hop on one leg to get to the phone and yell for help. My Dad showed up with the police, but they couldn't take me. What they did do was get an emergency court hearing to get me out of there. What I didn't tell Jason is that after the court hearing and a weekend away I came back to a message left at my future in-law's house that my stuff would be in the driveway. Sure enough, she threw all of my belongings in her driveway, including my waterbed frame.

I didn't talk to her for more that a year after that. She didn't even come to my high school graduation, she just dropped my sister off and left. My sister called me down to the hospital after my Aunt (my Mom's closest siter) committed suicide. We at least started to talk after that, and honestly I don't even think about that whole ordeal all that much until I see the crazy, undependable side come out like I did this week.

I told Jason that is why I chose alcohol and smoking (my Dad and Stepmom, who I actually refer to as my parents) over crazy. Jason said that he would have done the same thing.

Sorry about the length, but I think I just needed to download everything out of me :-)

More AZ pics...

I will blog later about the Grand Canyon and our AZ vacation. But, frankly I am not up to it today. So enjoy the pics for now....

To see them all go to ...

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=7kwfg1b.8ju01vsz&x=1&y=wtgeic&localeid=en_US

Arizona vacation - day 2

Yesterday, Jason and I went golfing with my Stepdad. We had actually golfed 18 holes by 11:00, which is pretty good. Jason actually wanted to go back in the afternoon and today. So, we have a tee time to golf 9 holes Wednesday afternoon before we go to the boneyard in Tucson.

We had lunch and came back to the hotel to hang out at the pool. After a lack of sun for so many months and the winds here that helped hide the heat, we are both a little pink.

In the afternoon we decided to go for a ride and headed to the outlet mall in Tucson. We had fun and spent no money - a successful shopping trip :-)

Here are some pics we took yesterday....