Another new year. Another attempt at keeping up with ... life?

Yeah, yeah.  Here I go again.

Steve tells me that I have no excuse for not getting back to blogging.  I think I have a perfectly good excuse.  I suffer from a terminal case of Start-itis.  Lots and lots of starting new things or restarting not so new things.  Not nearly as much following through.

So what has happened in my life since I completely bombed on my last attempt to do this regularly?  Welp, I decided that the job I had at the beginning of 2013 was not for me and moved to another job I enjoyed considerably more.  Eventually though, it became clear that juggling a full time job with children who were in school was harder than it looked and I was tired of missing out on their activities.  But I didn't leave without learning something!

What did I learn from these two jobs?  I learned that there will ALWAYS be fresh fodder for shows like "Maury" and "Jerry Springer".

Always.

Like the driver who needed me to call a tow truck because his car was stuck... on the hood of another car. He couldn't explain how he'd gotten on top of the other vehicle, but he was absolutely certain it was NOT an accident so he didn't need to speak with claims.
Oh! And he couldn't get out of the car, because it was rocking back and forth and might slide off and down a cliff.  (!!!!!!!)
To top it off, he wouldn't give me permission to call emergency services.  He wanted a tow truck.  NOW!

No lie.  This call happened.


Then there was the poor guy who walked into the hotel and quietly asked for a room:

Me: No problem! What kind of room would you like?
Him: An empty one.
Me: *blink*  Is this a problem you've had before?
Him: Kind of.  I came home from work early today to surprise my wife.  I surprised her boyfriend instead.
Me: *twitch*

~~~~~~~~

So now I'm staying at home again.  Let the OCD meltdown begin!!!!
*cough*


The family is doing well, considering the following....

~we have a teenager living in the house and speaking to her is closely akin to waking up an Alaskan Grizzly in the middle of January.  I like to live dangerously....

~there is a 7 year old little girl who considers the word "No" to be a vulgarity and seems to believe that she is more than capable of raising her little brother without our help, up to and including doling out punishments she deems him to have earned.  We are tempted to hand over the reins and go on vacation....

~there is a 5 year old little boy who spends all his free time exercising, lifting weights, and running laps around the house, and who has recently discovered that he's stronger and meaner than both of his sisters.
He also got a bunch of baseball equipment for Christmas.  And a set of Nerf guns.  And Nerf arrows....

~~~~~~~~

We also have 4 cats living here.

Lea will be 8 on April 15th and is the oldest, and the queen.  She is particularly fond of whomping Jack constantly to remind him of her rank.  When she isn't abusing him, she's generally sprawled out in most inconvenient places throughout the house in positions that can only be described as having been thrown unceremoniously out of a moving vehicle.

Jack will be 2 years old on April 9th.  He still behaves very kittenish and regularly turns the house into his own personal demolition derby while he asserts his dominance over his sister, Zippy, and she promptly puts him right back in his place where he belongs. He's probably one of the biggest cats I've ever owned, despite not having an ounce of fat on him and he's also one of the smartest, despite nearly choking to death every other day on strings and pieces of plastic wrap or bags. *rolls eyes*  But, he's my big baby and I can never manage to stay mad at him more than a couple of minutes.

Zippy is a trip.  She is Jack's littermate and sweet as can be as long as she's not possessed at the current moment.  She gives whole new meaning to that theory about cats having random number generators in their heads that force them to run in one direction until they bounce off of something and rattle the numbers around to get a new direction.  But once she decides she's going to sleep, she just sorta.... falls over.

Then there's the newest addition to the menagerie.  Flicker's birthday has been estimated (and therefore assigned) as February 1st of 2013 so she's about to be a year old. Imagine our surprise to learn this little detail after taking her to the vet in October to ask if she was old enough to be weaned. Long story, lots of tests, and an entire veterinary staff wrapped around her little paw later... it's determined that little Flicker has Pituitary Dwarfism which is extremely rare.  We can't even guess her life span, much less the health issues she will more than likely face throughout her life.  She's a doll and everyone who meets her just adores her.  Oh yeah.. she's blind too.  But she's not letting that stop her!

~~~~~~


I suppose Steve is probably right.  With this collection all under the same roof, I guess I should be able to come up with SOMETHING to write about once a week....

right?

*sigh*  I gotta go.

Heather's squalling about Hunter backseat playing her computer game.
Hunter's decorating the carpet with diced playdoh, and muttering about his Hulk action figure needing something to smash.
Sarah's locked in her room with the iPod and laptop again.
Steve's downstairs making himself lunch.
And Jack just shot past me like a bullet after something crashed downstairs and Steve let out a rather impressive string of insults at the top of his lungs.

Yep..everything's pretty much normal.