My Name is Kris and I Blah-g

I know that Michaela misses her Daddy. She doesn’t really express much emotion about it and hasn’t really at all in the time that he’s been gone. I think we’ve only had two meltdowns. The first was when her hamster Henry died which was not too long after Daddy. Too much loss? I am not sure. I think part of it was because I wouldn’t get her a new hamster (sorry but as cute as Henry was, he was kinda gross and I got stuck cleaning his cage – not gonna go there again). The 2nd was on our trip to Florida earlier this year. Our last family vacation with Mike was to Disney World in September 2007. Believe it or not, there was a lot of foreshadowing prior to that trip and in hindsight I know I was being prepared. I felt strongly then that it would be our last vacation together. It pains me to admit that now. But the inclinations that I was having then were too strong for me to deny now. I just knew. We returned to Disney World this past March. And it was a big trip. I had traveled alone with Michaela before but they were small 1-2 day trips so it was pretty easy. But this was a full week in Florida and by about 4 days into it we were both feeling the strain and we fell apart in each other’s arms crying over how we missed Dad. I know I instigated it. I always do when it comes to him because like her father, Michaela tries to avoid anything sad. She’d just rather not go there. In fact the day of his funeral she put her foot down and told me that we were allowed to cry at the funeral but once it was over, NO MORE. She wanted to spend what time she had left with his family celebrating her Dad and having a party. She was and IS a very insightful child. We had the party per her request and it was just what everyone needed. Still….she didn’t cry at the funeral. She faced it with bravery and was stoic much like her Dad. I am so opposite…I just have to let it out. Sometimes I wish she would just because I know that for so long Mike bottled things up and it wasn’t good. And I’ll leave it at that…So, she doesn’t cry for her Dad. But there are times when she mentions him out of the blue – often in fact. She freely requests to visit him and she loves to talk about the funny things he used to do. It’s healthy for her and me to talk about it. Her Dad was a great guy and he loved her very much. I don’t ever want her to forget that. But time is flying by. It’s only been about 22 months yet Michaela is 7 now and so much “older” than she lets on. I think back to that little girl in the blue dress that touched her Daddy for the last time at the funeral and I can’t believe she’s the same little girl. She keeps much to herself although I try to get it out of her. He was the same way and it drove me nuts. I usually found out how he felt after the fact – usually in something he’d write on his Myspace page or in a card…today I found a little note that Michaela had written to her Dad on his Facebook Page which I still keep active. It said simply, “I love Daddy.”*sigh* How can you NOT get choked up when you see something like that?! I miss him too, Michaela. More and more every day…

It’s been a while (again!) since my last post. I just don’t have as much free time these days. I try and smoosh any little time I have into moments like these – very early morning before the sun even thinks of coming up and before I need to get Michaela out of bed so we can start our day. Tomorrow is Halloween. I’d like to say we were excited about it but with how crazy things have been it’s kind of been pushed to the back of our minds. I forget how close its gotten. Luckily this year’s costume is an easy one – princess…I know…SHOCKER! But this costume Michaela picked out herself and purchased with her free Disney gift card she received when we went to Disneyland on her birthday. Pictures will be posted this weekend…Other prep work includes our graveyard in the the front yard. It was snowed on this week so we have to unbury the skeleton and light up the green spot lights. I haven’t used them all month mainly because they get really hot and I don’t want to cause a fire! But I think I will turn them on starting tonight to see if we can burn off some of that snow! We’ll have the smoke machine again this year and for the first time we’ll use our front window to project a movie. We’ll see how that turns out. I mainly do this for our own enjoyment. We don’t get many trick or treaters which is probably a good thing. Michaela is into it though. Her cousins are for the 2nd year in a row doing a “tunnel of doom” and it’s turned her thoughts to what we could do to make our own tunnel of doom. What she doesn’t realize though is that if we did that, we’d have to stay home to work the tunnel…that means no trick or treating. So, I think we’ll hold off another couple of years. Although, she’s got some really wicked ideas. It was fun putting the graveyard up because every time we placed a tombstone or she’d stick a bone in the ground she’d let out a “Whoa-HAHAHAHA!” It was hilarious to hear her scary laugh and I have to admit that I was pleased that she’s as demented as I am and her father was. So, we’ll see how it goes! I imagine that it won’t be long before we hang back at home and create our own version of Disney’s Haunted Mansion. She even told me last night that we should contact Disney and ask to borrow their crystal ball with the scary lady inside. Yeah, like they’ll just GIVE me Madam Leotta! HA HA. Silly girl!!

I think it’s inevitable that as a Mom, I want to be COOL. I mean, who doesn’t? I guess there is a fine line between being your child’s friend and being MOM. You can only go so far in the friend department because well, friends don’t tell other friends what to do, where to go and they usually don’t issue punishments for bad behavior. So, being MOM can be a hard job. But that’s not what this post is about. I would say that I do pretty okay being a mom although I am the first to admit that I still have much to learn in the patience department. I am quickly learning that I suck at 2nd grade math. I apparently do it wrong.  I am not quite sure when 2nd grade math got so complicated or when it became politically incorrect to “borrow or carry the one” but that is a big no-no these days. Ugh. Don’t get me started. So I am not a math genius. I never have been. One thing I know that I am good at are trips to Disneyland. Yeah yeah…this blog is all about the Mouse House and I have certainly created a monster in my kid who not only shares my love of all things Disney but Rick Springfield, too. What can I say? Taste CAN be taught. A sense of humor is important. I would say that mine has gotten me out of some tough spots in my lifetime. I was always a chubby kid. I was teased consistently in school. But thanks to my ability to laugh I think I survived well. I don’t know if I would want to relive any of that but if I could knowing what I know now, I think I would have kicked a little more butt. But all that aside…I have my sense of humor to thank for getting me through childhood and most of all, for helping me through this past year and a half. Nothing about my life these almost 2 years now is FUNNY. But…. I still like to laugh. I yearn for laughter and most of all, I seek it out in my daughter. My biggest fear after Mike died was how losing her dad would affect my little girl. This kind of thing can do lots of damage and I just worry that she’ll one day look back on her childhood with regret that it was all taken from her at such an early age. I’m mom. I’m a pretty ok Mom. But I’m not super-Mom no matter how hard I try. I can’t be all things least of all a Dad. But I can try to keep male influences in my daughter’s life, keep her father’s memory alive and encourage that wicked sense of humor that she not only inherited from me but from her jokester father! Mike loved a good prank. I mean, he LOVED it. Somewhere there is a tape with recordings his nephews and him making prank phone calls. They are classic. I wish I could relay in words how funny they are but you just have to listen to them to appreciate the effort he went into making them. I hope I find that tape some day. There was the time that he and my brother spent an evening sending pizzas to one unsuspecting neighbor in our apartment complex – both of them hiding in the shadows of our bedroom staring out the window with glee as every 15 minutes a different pizza delivery guy tried in vain to deliver pizza to this poor woman. Now, I won’t encourage this type of behavior in Michaela but already at 7 she has an unrelenting evil streak in her. She’ll tickle you until you pee if she could. Her latest effort is the squirrel bomb. And yeah..I am to blame for this one. I squirrel bombed a picture of my parents from our cruise this past summer and then again, a picture of our family this fall. We just spent 3 days in California. Every time I pulled out the camera or we found ourselves on a ride at Disneyland that took pictures, I was asked, “can we put squirrel in the picture too?”So here you have it…the beginning of the Squirrel Bomb Gallery courtesy of my kid. I fear the joke may get old but to a 7 year old, this one will live on for a while and she thinks it’s funnier than anything! Enjoy…

I woke up this morning to learn about the news that the Nobel committee had awarded President Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. This has weighed on my mind most of the morning as I thought about how this could have come to be, who nominated him, what the people of Israel and places like Georgia (the Georgia in Europe, people) think of this and mostly, what a farce this “prize” has become. Nominations for each year’s prize are due in February. Obama took office in the last 10 days of January. His nomination came a mere two weeks after he was in office. To be considered, one would think that they would have to reflect on the previous year’s and beyond work of the individual. So to award Obama this prize is laughable. He’s done nothing to merit such an “honor”. So what can one gleam from this other than the people who gave him this thing are either (1) a bunch of kooks, (2) easily bought, (3) easily manipulated or (4) all of the above. So I reflect on the past 9 months because the president of the Nobel committee is weakly explaining their decision as one based on Obama – the president, not the man or junior senator that he was before he took office. This and of itself should nullify his consideration because he hardly garnered any world peace in 9 months let alone the measly 2 weeks he was president before nominations were due. The Nobel committee president  champions Obama’s diplomacy efforts and how he has brought hope to the world. Um, yeah.. did he base this on a CNN/MSNBC poll of 475 people,  52% of which are democrat, 19% republican and the rest independent? Spare me.In all the amazement and disgust that I have experienced in these early morning hours, I have come to the conclusion that this will do one of two things. The first is that this will be used to try to bolster Obama’s credibility. And two, if the other side is smart, it will be used to expose the insignificance the Nobel Peace Prize has become. Obama received it after having done NOTHING. I take that back. He’s vowed to shut down some of the defenses that have been put in place by other administrations that have kept our country and our allies safe. In doing so, he has pretty much bent over his desk the American people and the good people in Israel and parts of Europe who have come to rely on these defenses. He has pretty much given those who seek us harm an opportunity to strike and a message that their terroristic tactics have worked. He’s taken back his promise of bolstering up Afghanistan and is now hemming and hawing about whether or not we should send in more troops to support the ones that are already there. Yeah. Great commander in chief.Domestically he’s proven what a dictator he intends on becoming. He will pass a healthcare bill with his majority in the House and Senate despite large opposition by most of America. His bill will FORCE us to pick coverage and if we don’t, they’ll tax us…HEAVILY. His bill will strip down Medicare so drastically that the people who come to rely on it won’t have to worry about selective euthanasia that the left supports so well, they’ll die off before they can even be treated because their coverage won’t help them.  Worse yet? The health care bill? None of us will be allowed to read it before it’s voted on and passed… think about that.Other crap….His intention of cap and trade will destroy small business which employs the majority of Americans. His promise of unemployment not rising above 9% was a total lie…it’s now about 10% and getting worse. We have states like California in the midst of utter failure because liberal agendas have driven them to do unspeakable harm to their constituents. Farmers can’t grow their crops because the water has been shut off to save a small fish. Banks have been taken over by government, their accounts frozen, their customers pawned off on larger, government owned banks and forced to adhere to their new rules. Customers (me!) have had their mortgage payoffs LOST, are being intimidated by the banks for non-payment of a mortgage for a house they no longer own and live in daily fear over how it will destroy their credit for the years to come. So, don’t ask me if Obama’s policies have come to harm me because they have. And it’s just the beginning. There is nothing peaceful in his intent for the American People.

Fall is always a magical time of year for me. I love the colors and the smells. The crisp air in the mornings and warmth in the afternoons are just a reminder of how nature can have it all at times. In some ways I wish that there were only two seasons – Spring and Fall. They seem to be the shortest and perhaps that is why I appreciate them most. Once they’re here, they’re gone. This fall, I am sad to say, I am NOT that excited about because it means winter is not too far behind! We had a pretty wet spring. It seemed as if winter would never end and when Spring technically got here, it wasn’t warm. It felt like summer barely got here and then we were thinking of back to school. Thankfully, we have had quite a few events to welcome in the new season – namely the birth of two new babies! Babies are wonderful! And these two are no exception! I could probably spend hours photographing them, trying to get that perfect picture. But I’ll settle for the couple I got here. In addition to these awesome babies, we have had some great fall color to enjoy. I’ve started a Fall Picture gallery. In it are a few pictures I’ve taken so far. Okay so technically, the ones with me in it I did NOT take. Dad did..but I did the fancy schmancy stuff in photoshop. And thanks to my wireless camera remote, I managed to take the family group shot. So, here they are. As more are taken, I’ll share them here. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge.

I would love to have the skill of a great photographer. I am just not sure I have the patience to sit in a class although I fear that one would do me some good. I’d rather just get out there and take pictures. I am fortunate. I have a really really great camera and it makes up for what I lack in know-how. I will say though that if I can compose a shot well and get in focus, I can do wonders with it in Photoshop and having done so, I realize that many of today’s photographers probably do just that. I suppose if I were to look at their raw, untouched photos, I would find many an unspectacular image as what I see in most of mine. However, I am going to keep at this. I don’t think it will ever be a money maker for me but I think I can surely come up with some shots worthy of hanging on my wall.