Senator Hothead: The McCain Quiz

by Paul Slansky March 17, 2008

I pretty much lost my mind last night. Threw a vase..which broke of course. It missed the window but hit the edge of the sill and broke a piece of wood off. The vase had a lot of little marble like glass decorations in it which went everywhere of course. It also had some old flower petals and shells. It made a huge mess. While trying to clean that up I got more frustrated and irritated and knocked over the little shelf that had my little pots of plants started in them. And some candle holders and a few other knickknacks. Most of the things were fine except for one candle holder top that broke. The plants went everywhere:( some had dirt on their roots still but some didn't. At that point I realized I was totally nuts. And just stopped for a few minutes and went and got R to help. The plants are now back in their pots and hopefully will recover. They are all mixed up now and I have no idea which is which. Thats not a problem if they keep growing cause it will show eventually. The rest of the mess is almost cleaned up now.

I talked to a friend of mine who has always had a temper problem. He told me that when I start getting frustrated or irritated or downright angry to sit down and write it out. Sounds like a good idea. Hopefully I will remember when I need to.

Well our plans changed up.  DeLaney threw a straight up PMSING fit over not seeing a certain film and Coltin was throwing a temper tantrum about not being able to hit the arcade AFTER the movie.  So we went to the mall theater. 

 

After those lil fits, we were good to go!  I dropped off the food I usually have left over from cooking when Randy isn't home to Father Mike, filled the van up, grabbed some cash and we got to the Mall in time to get tickets and go grab something to eat. 

 

We hit the arcade where Coltin managed to get himself 80 tickets to cash in before the movie and we walked into a VERY packed movie theater just in time to grab the last few seats for Alvin and The Chipmunks.  Coltin had already seen it with his Dad but was okay with seeing it again.  After the movie we hit the arcade again so DeLaney could finish spending her last tokens and cash in her tickets.  I cashed in mine too:P:D  You KNOW I had to get $5 bucks to play the games also didn't ya!:P

 

After the last stop at the arcade, the kdis and I wondered down to Barnes & Nobles.  I really didn't need anymore books, I have such a HUGE pile of to read books anyway.  But I look at it this way at times, my to GET list is even larger!:D  But I was a good girl, we walked out with 3 calanders.  One for each kid and another one for me.  DeLaney was "nice" enough to point out I already had a new Celtic Blessings calander what was I going to do with the new Celtic Mandala calender.  I promptly told her you can NEVER have too many calenders in the house and I could put it in my computer room.  She shut up then!  I swear she is like her Daddy more and more every day with her logical thinking!  I guess if she is the spitting image of her Daddy it is okay for her to think like him.  As long as she doesn't get to logical and to prissy she and I will get a long just fine as she gets older.  But her PMSing is going to get put to a stop FAST!  I dont' give a rats ass she hasn't started her cycle, she has the acne already (yes my baby girl has started gettin facial acne!), and the tude.  She was told point blank today after her lil fit, that there is only ONE BITCH in the family and that is ME!  I also picked up the book Little Women. 

 

My one and only New Year's Resoluation this year is for every 3 normal books (not counting smutt books-I can read an entire weeks publishing of those with out blinking in a day if you let me!) I read; I will read a "classical" book and then a "modern" book.  My sister, pointed out my libary collection of books is more along the line of a History, Anthropology, Religious, Philosphy College level collection NOT to mention soft core porn collection of the certain smutt book series I keep!  So if I want my kids to read other things, I have to show them Mommy can too.  Randy is NOT happy for every "Classical" and "Modern" Fiction or Non-Fiction book I have to read he has to do the same thing and then we swap if we choose different books!  He is saying he doesn't have time.  He is findign out that when he is home I can find him the time!:D  I can also find him time when he is on the road!  Read one or two chapters before you eat.  He eats then he sleeps, so he has to read before he eats!

 

After Barnes & Nobles and wenching a lil bit to the store manager about our store's crappy assortment of Address Books, we wondered down to Hallmark so I could pick up a new address book.  I got one.  I am not happy with it but at least Randy can figure it out if he needs to use it and I picked up extra inserts.  When you have a LARGE family with the majority of them being either R's, N's, and L's you run out of space easily!    I also wenched a bit to that store manager about their crappy assortment of address books also.  She at least explained that the majority of them went bye bye the day after Christ Mas.  Barnes & Noble's only comment was we have a HUGE selection of Journal type books! 

 

So we loaded up and started heading down the interstate to cross the river and go home.  And for some odd reason I said nope right at the first exit to So. Sioux!  I took it!  Coltin asked if we were going to stop and see Granny and I said nope that is tomorrow.  We went right by her nursing home and I pulled up right in front of the Pet /Grooming/Boarding Place!  Where DeLaney promptly reminded me of her father yet again! 

 

"MOM!  Your NOT allowed to go to any pet store or animal auction with out Daddy, because you have a bad habit of bringing home more animals!  Daddy said so!"

 

I ignored her and said if I walk out with something your Father will get over it! 

 

They had an adorable puppy selection and I was VERY tempted to get the one and only Male Sheltie they had left.  But I didn't.  See I am not a real big dog fan.  I love them but they are sooooooooooooooo much more needier then cats.  And if you leave for a weekend or a week you either A have to take them with you or B find someone to take care of them or C board them.    Plus I dont' really like small dogs.  They are so much more in need of care then bigger dogs.  I looked at the kitties they had.  They had two adorable fluffy orange tabby kittens about 6-7 months in age.  Of course DeLaney wnated one of those.  Coltin honed in on the 3 identical short haired orange tabby kittens about teh same age as our twin black kitties.  I said NO MORE CATS!  We have a female that will give us a litter or two don't worry about getting anymore cats.  Their fish selection was pretty crappy but they get cleaned out for the holidays since they are on of two pet stores in the tri state area that carry exotic fish.  Of course atticsmouse would have went for the rodent selection for her snakes:P:D  She can have them.  They carry a lot of feeder mice.  I guess a lot of folks in the area have snakes:P  Fromt here I wondered back to the front of the store where the birds where at.  DeLaney wanted me to get finches.  I hate those lil things.  Plus they drive my cats batty.  Not going to get anymore finches.  Parkettes I have two.  Don't want NO MORE! 

 

Then I honed in on the Cocketiels and Doves!  They had FANCY cocketeils!  Guess what we have in the house including a new bird cage!  I got myself a Fancy cockteil!  Yay me!  They were hand raised but like most pet stores even a smaller one they don't get to handle the birds like they should.  And our new addition to the family is really scared at the moment.  I made them clip his wings for me.  Usually I dont' clip my cockteil's wings but that is how I lost the first two!  One escaped from his cage while hanging outside and the other one escaped out the door thanks to DeLaney and Coltin's lil friends in TX!  So he was pretty pist when I got him home and pretty scared.  I took him out of his home cage, had his wings clipped, and put him in a brand new cage.  Then I introduced him to the dinning room on top of the sewing table before I clean a spot off for him in the computer room!  Shadow and Socks the two older cats could have cared less. Pisser, Brothers, and Grimm were extatic!  Another cage to climb on and bounce off of!  Sin Kitty is outside hoing around again so I can't wait to see his reactoin to another bird in the house.  Spud the dog is a jealous creature and is barking at the bird periodically!  Tweek and Tweeter the parakeets are happy over another bird in the hosue!  They are twittering a storm up and trying to get otu the side of their cage to go visit the new baby!

 

And yes, before atticsmouse can ask me, I told Randy.  My reasoning for buyin another animal is:  He is getting 150-250 dollar boots in January for work, plus I am paying a good chunk of our defeered payments on HIS truck off with his bonus in January so HIS truck is paid off on time this year!  My bird and cage is a LOT less expensive then his boots could ever be!:P:D  His comment was:

 

"So, do you have a place in the barn ready for me to sleep since you keep bringing in more animals?" 

 

Smart ass man I tell you!

 

I cooked dinner, worked on laundry ( I swear I am always working on laundry!), and the kids and I sat down and played dominoes.  They are in bed and I am rambling on and on and on again:D:P:D

I had a lovely weekend and is at an end.  Friday we spent the day and then the night with my elementry/high school friend Sabrina and her family.  Saturday we got home about 1 pm and the kids did an excellent job of helping mommy do a fast pick up of the house.  Randy got home about 7 pm that night and was bombbarded by the kids and their water guns!:D

 

Sunday (yesterday) Randy woke me up about 8:30 am because he knows the rule of not letting me sleep past 9 am.  The rule is I get extermly bitchy if I sleep past 9!  And none of us wants to deal with a crabby crampy bitchy woman!  We did nothing but veg out on the couches.  The kids weren't to happy because daddy kicked them off the tv for the entire day while he watched a combo of DIY and Spike networks (he normally doesn't get the tv) and made them leave me alone the entire morning.

 

I threw one adult sized temper tantrum after having both my very hot coffee and then my very cold ice tea spill on me via the couch though!  We didn't have coffee tables or end tables since we junked a lot of our older rummage sale finds to move back home this Febuary.  Instead of egging me on like my hubby usually does, he just looked at me and said well why don't you just buy us some tables when we go to the city today to pick up your medicines!  My jaw dropped and I asked him what he did to my husband!  Randy spend money on items that we really don't need!  There had to be something wrong!  He came back with well I think after seeing you get your ass burnted and then iced we might actually need to have some end tables and such........while he was laughing of course!

 

We ran to the city and hit one furnature store.  The Unclaimed Freight Store........yay they are smoking something that gives them deliousions of grandure!  I am sorry when furnature is either unclaimed or damaged I am not spending 200 plus dollars on a coffee table that will end up being replaced or moved to another room down the line!  And you didn't even get end tables for that price!  So we went to my stand by furnature store.  The store that I got metal bunk beds when the kids were 2 and 3 (even though they are painted with nail polish and other paints from the kids going on a paint spree they are in good stable condition and can be repainted!), I bought my huge maple dinning room table (two leafs to make it bigger and 6 chairs and I can buy 2 more chairs to go with it!), and my dinning room maple hutch that is an antique and goes very well with my newer maple dinning room table!  The store is small and family ran.  They don't cater to the overly rich, they don't cater to one specific race or culture and have a wide variety of furnature!  They have a store mascot named Max!  Max is a red and blue Macaw parrot!  He is such a ham!

 

If you can't find what your looking for in this store, the owners, parents and one son; bust out their whole sale magazines and help you find what your looking for.  They have a 90 day layaway plan for those like us that want new furnature but maybe can't fork out the money up front for it and usually will work with you if you can't pay for the furnature in that 90 days!  And if your a repeat customer like we are they usually take about 10 dollars off and if you need delivery they only charge 20 dollars.  Even if you live 30 minutes from them like we do!  And what is really great about them, they will point out damaged furnature that you are looking at and tell you how it happened.  They mark it down accordingly and again if your a repeat customer they knock even more off the price!

 

I was being picky about what I was looking for but I wasn't.  I just wanted tables that would go with the light wood paneling (yes I have paneling -the house is a 100 plus year old farm house and my auntie had paneling put up on the concret walls when she lived in this place over 30 some years ago and is still very nice-nobody wants the work of gutting the walls and putting drywall up!)  I found a lovely coffee table that has an open shelf at the bottom with two glass inserts.  I liked it but wasn't sure if Randy would go for it because his ex wife had glass tables and coffee tables when they were married and they had an incident with one shattering over one of his girls wiht her.  Randy said go for it.  Our kids are older then the girl's were.  And he told me not to worry about getting the end tables with it to just do it.  The end tables have one glass insert a peice and also have an open shelf on the bottom of them.  I got all three tables for 155 bucks with tax!  They are made out of solid wood unlike some of those expensive coffee tables at that other store we went too and wanted 200 some bucks just for the coffee table!  Again these tables are made out of Maple!  I think I have a thing for the light wood of Maple!  The tables were marked as a trio for 165 dollars because they had some damage from delivery but since we were repeat customers they knocked the trio down to 145 for me!  And the mom is busy working with me on finding a mattress for our bed (sleeping on an air mattress right now) that both Randy and I like and can afford!

 

After we got home, rearranged the living room we decieded we best do something.  Randy finished using my mom's weedeater tiller head and got my garden done.  I washed my van.  Then the kids, the dog, and I ran our month worth of garbage down to my parent's dumpster; while Randy washed both of our trucks and his work truck.  We got back home and I used my pampered chef slicer for the first time and made cottage fries to be grilled on our grill Randy brought me home!  Randy started the grill and I grilled up pork cutlets and filet mingon for me (I don't eat pork unless I have to), the cottage fries and corn on the cob! 

 

Randy and the kids had a rip roaring water fight with water guns and the hose.  The kitties came out to play and the barn swallows were having a blast dive bombing Randy's lil orange tom cat Sin.  After dinner at 8 pm (we eat late in the summer) we sat down and watch the movie "Blood and Chocolate"  After the kids and Randy went to bed I sat down and read one of my boy's books he got two weekends ago and then worked a bit on my own book.

 

The weekend is at an end officially today.  I did bail out on my diabetes class this morning.  I'll explain more about why one of these days.  It is humid and hot as hell today and the kids were sunburned after this weekend so I will set them up doing crafts, watching tv, and working on school cirricullim while I am cleaning upstairs and cleaning out closets.  Later today we will go rake my garden so we can water it when the sun goes down and clean some more of the barn.

Confession time

I haven’t played much piano lately. I needed a break from it. I got to one of those plateaus in learning that have always defeated me… that place where I could only go so far and then regression and anger. I’ll explain.

 

Allegro means clipping right along at a fairly fast rate. It is one of those Italian terms that classical musicians have used for centuries. There are lots of Italian words that tell what speed to play something or if the music is to be played loudly or softly or smooth and mellow or choppy and jagged sounding. Well, the ditty I was working on was named “Allegro” by Haydn. Right off the bat I knew this two-pager was to be played fast and because of other markings on the music I also knew it was to be played with a light touch with periods of loud followed by periods of soft, and a multitude of other picky little details that if done right, make music such a pleasure to listen to.

 

When I began practicing this piece I concentrated on learning the notes and fingering and progressed into the more difficult forms of expression. All the while I attempted to get faster and faster. Finally I got the thing almost to speed, but when I did that my fingering was lousy and the expression was not what was indicated by the music. I slowed back down and tried again. As long as I played the piece considerably slower than allegro, I could get all the other things right. But when I brought it up to speed I had no control of anything else. Back in forth I went. I could feel the frustration building until I lost all reasonableness and began shouting at the music, the piano, my fingers, and my inability to master this stupid two-page piece of music.

 

A few days later I spoke to the pastor I work for about this. He was preparing to teach a mid-week class on one of the seven deadly sins – anger. After I described all my feelings he said that I was anger about the something that lay between me and what I wanted to accomplish. I agreed. I explained that I often felt that God only gave me half talents – many things that I can do, but not do anything really well. He then asked me if I was angry at God. I pause and then agreed I was. I am. How can a person love God and be angry at God all at the same time? How can I resolve this? I really want to play the piano well, but how do I know if God indeed really only gave me half a talent and if so, what good is it if it only brings on frustration? Perhaps he actually gave me a whole talent, but I’ve never worked hard enough to master the instrument. How do I know?

 

So, all this is running around in my head when we hit the topic of prayer in my own Bible study. Obviously the thing to do is pray about this dilemma. But how do I approach God about it? Do I ask God for more talent or do I ask him to help me use the partial talent he did give me in some way for him. (I was a dismal failure the year I accompanied one of our children’s choirs several years ago, so don’t suggest that.) Or do I ask for a sign about the actual ability level in this area that he did give me so I won’t keep knocking myself out to do something I will never really be able to do or I’ll know to keep trying. I feel I need to be as honest as I can with this prayer, but I’m not even sure if it’s ok to say, “God, I’m really mad at you for giving me a half a talent when I would love to be able to play all the great church music written over the years.”

 

In the mean time, I’m staying away from serious practicing for awhile. I’m looking forward to some kind of resolution to this problem, but right now I feel like I've lost a friend.