How Much Entertainment Does a Family Need?

It's quiet in my house right now. Both kids are on an electronic of their choice, Erin on the iPod touch and Gavin on my iPad. I'm on the iMac and so was Ken until a few minutes ago. We're just a wired family. It keeps us sane sometimes. We all do our own thing. It really gets convoluted when Gavin wants to FaceTime Ken from another room in the house just to be funny instead of walking to talk to him. (I know Ken's family in Florida regularly chat with each other when their each on their separate computers in their rooms doing their own thing.)

We have a choice of laptops, tablets and handhelds, plus one pc. Who needs cable television when we've got all that? Still, Gavin does like cartoons sometimes so we have Netflicks and Hulu. We actually do have Cable TV, but only because we have to have it because of our cable internet.

Believe it or not one of our favorite forms of entertainment does not come from the electronics. Ken and Gavin love to go outside and watch the chickens and I prefer to read books. OK, I have eBooks and paper books both. But the chickens are live entertainment. The guys give the chicken day old bread that we get from one of the restaurants in town and they watch them flock to it. I really don't like to go outside to watch the chickens but to each their own.

Ken actually thinks cooking is a form of entertainment. I just don't see it. Cooking is something one has to do to get food in the belly so as to not go hungry. Also it doesn't have to be fru-fru or special, just plain old food from a box. Ken, however, believes food can be made from recipes and set up nice on a plate.

There might have been a time about 9 or 10 years ago I agreed with him. But in 2003 I had a gastric bypass. Food these days only does one thing for me - fills me up a little and has very little special meaning to me. I can't get excited about entertainment of food because I don't eat enough to get excited about it. It really just makes me pretty disheartened to think about food to be honest about it. I could care less about how things taste. I eat the same things all the time and really don't care about them. So, food as entertainment does not do it for me. I'm afraid to say I really am not a good cheerleader for Ken when it comes to one of his favorite things to do, unfortunately.

Gavin likes to go to the park for entertainment. Sadly the cold weather has really cut down on that for now. There has been a couple of days here and there that he has tried to get bundled up and went to ride his scooter. Then sometimes he'll also go to Centre College and swing on the tire swing they have set up there. Kids are easy to entertain outside. . Inside recently we've given him a few boxes and let him have at it. He's really enjoyed that. Those boxes have been tunnels, tents, houses, water and electric companies - well, you name it. What kid needs toys? Give them the boxes. Oh, I forgot, he plays HayDay on my iPad. He is really into HayDay. Sometimes I can hardly get my iPad away from him to read my books. There are other games he plays too, but HayDay is the main one right now.

I'm pretty sure Erin just listens to music and watches movies on Netflicks. It's what she's doing right now. Music.

As for me, just give me a good book and I'm entertained for hours. It's all I need. I can go on Amazon looking for free books occasionally. I'll go on Facebook to check up on friends and family. But mostly I'll have my nose in a book.

I Have a Confession To Make....

Unbreakable ornaments

I Have a Generic Christmas Tree

My Generic Tree

Yes, it's true, my Christmas tree is so generic it could be one of those kind you find already put together at Wal-Mart advertising to buy their trees. OK, maybe not Wal-Mart... Target. At least they decorate their trees nicer with more ornaments.

Don't get me wrong, my tree is very pretty in my opinion. It just doesn't exude the Christmas feelings that my previous trees have. The difference is in the ornaments. In previous years I've had all the ornaments I've collected throughout the years. The Disney characters, the ones the kids made at school, the ones I got from friends as gifts, the ones I bought to commemorate special occasions, etc. Almost each and every one of them had a story behind it. If it didn't, then it's story was that I bought it just because I needed extra ornaments that year, but I knew why I bought it.

But I did something different this year. My husband bought a new tree and 200 new generic, but pretty, ornaments. I thought that meant he wanted to see the tree in only all those ornaments, leaving no room for my old ones. Now I can see that I was wrong to leave them off and I will certainly not do that again next year. It's too close to Christmas for me to make changes to the tree now so I'll leave it as it is. At least these ornaments are less breakable than my keepsakes and I don't have to worry about the dogs knocking down glass stuff.

DECORATING

Isn't it great to be able to get out the decorations of Christmas and get that old Holiday Spirit back? As you Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly or whatever else you're decorating with you can turn on the holiday music and feel the season flow right through you. When do you get out your decorations? There are so many different things I've been told by different people for different reasons. One starts decorating right after Halloween, Oh My! Another starts decorating the weekend before Christmas - yet another Oh My! Why wait so late?

I like to start decorating really soon after Thanksgiving. That's when the Christmas music gets going really well on the radio and there are more stores than Wal-Mart putting out decorations to buy. More people are talking about Christmas so the excitement just seems to be floating in the air everywhere. When decorating for the holiday it really helps me to be just coming back from some place just bursting with energy, like, the mall. Then I feel the Holiday spirit and actually want to get out that pack of 2,000 bulbs in the 15 degree weather and put all over my house. OK, maybe I'm going too far with that... I hate cold weather and we haven't put up lights this year. But do you understand what I mean the holiday spirit is contagious?

If anyone actually reads this please leave me a comment, say hi, let me know you've stopped by. Especially if I don't know you. Tell me your Christmas tradition.

Have a Very Merry Christmas Everyone!

A Blue So Dark

A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler

This book gave me the title of my blog. There is a quote in it that I think really fits the scatterbrained person I am today. "Sanity is a sonnet with a strict meter and rhyme scheme - and my mind is free verse." You see, I called myself scatterbrained but it's really just "free verse".

By no means am I saying I'm insane. What I'm trying to say is that sometimes I feel that my thoughts are so scrambled everywhere at one time I can hardly focus on one thing at a time. I want to do too many things at once sometimes and all too often I end up doing nothing because I don't know where to start first. On the other hand, maybe I am insane.

ABOUT THE STORY

"Fifteen-year-old Aura Ambrose has been hiding a secret. Her mother, a talented artist and art teacher, is slowly being consumed by schizophrenia, and Aura has been her sole caretaker ever since Aura's dad left them. Convinced that "creative" equals crazy, Aura shuns her own artistic talent. But as her mother sinks deeper into the darkness of mental illness, the hunger for a creative outlet draws Aura toward the depths of her imagination. Just as desperation threatens to swallow her whole, Aura discovers that art, love, and family are profoundly linked—and together may offer an escape from her fears." Amazon's description


Aura is in over her head. She's not old enough to be mom to her single mother and still try to be the teenager in the house. She's afraid her mother's mental illness will be passed down to her so she'll go crazy too someday and she's miserable. The mother is a schizophrenic who has been off medications for a long time, either not realizing she needs help or refusing it. That causes some memory loss and occasional episodes when she acts really weird interspersed with other times that she's completely normal. When she's weird she can either be extremely happy or extremely angry for no apparent reason. Aura and her mother thankfully find help and can stay together.

The book is not easy to read because it is full of her anguish and pain. There are some lighter moments. I identified with both her and her mother, a little, so this book was especially good for me. Not a joyful ending, but a good one where you know every things going to be alright.

Online Shopping and Stocking Tradition

ONLINE SHOPPING

All hail Amazon! Amazon Prime especially. Since my husband became a Prime member I cannot tell you how many times we have decided to forgo the hassle of going to the store to buy something and do it at Amazon instead. Even when we do go to the store we'll check our Amazon pricing by phone while going through the aisles. Since shipping is free with Prime, even if the price is only a little bit lower I may decide to order it instead of get it right then, if I don't have to have the item right away. For instance, Christmas gifts arriving by UPS during the daytime when Gavin is at school rather than when I'm shopping with him is so much more convenient.

In fact, I don't even bother doing the Black Friday shopping anymore. I use to be one of those die hard get up early stand in line people who would have to try my best to get the sale on SOMETHING at a store just because it was the thing to do. Now, that is Sooooo OUT. Amazon it IN. And I am IN on IT.

GAVIN'S SANTA LIST IS DONE!

So today I did a serious inventory of the wish list I had compiled for Gavin on Amazon. Showed him what it had on it and asked him what else he might put on it before he wrote his Santa list. He and I worked on it together. He added a couple of things I had not thought about but for the most part I'd done pretty good at adding all the stuff he'd mentioned to me he might like to have. Then I asked him which ones would he really want and were the most important that would go on Santa's list. He had to come up with the best of the best, of course, because everything could not possibly go on there. Although Gavin knows Santa can't get him everything anyway, Santa has to know he's not greedy, (like his mommy).

The reason I'm putting this here is because Ken and I immediately took the list and became Santa. We whittled the list down to what was acceptable, because the list was still quite long, and then at AMAZON.com under his wish list we clicked "add to shopping cart" for each item we wanted, then checked out. It was that easy. In my last post I worried about what to get him and seriously I had no worries. It was done.

I still have to go outside the house shopping for other people and for Stocking stuffers.

 STOCKING STUFFERS

Speaking of stocking stuffers, when I was really young I didn't have a stocking. We had paper bags. In those paper bags we each got one apple, banana, orange and candy bar and a handful of hardshell nuts. no toys. I didn't get a real stocking with a toy or two in it until I was around 8 (still had the other stuff in it too). You see, until then my Mom, Dad and I spent Christmas's with my paternal grandparents. Dad was the oldest of 9 kids and most of the rest were still pretty young when I was little. So stocking stuffers like kids get now were out of the question. When I was 8 or so my Aunt Barb crocheted my cousin and I stockings (big ones). The main reason we got them then is 1. All my dad's brothers and sisters had finally gotten too old for Santa and 2. My brother was 1 so mom and dad decided it was time to have Christmas at our own house now. It was still weird to wake up on Christmas morning at our house instead of Grandmas's for a long time.

What is a stocking anyway? Traditionally I mean? I have very little knowledge of what the traditions of stockings are. I remember the christmas cartoon a long time ago about santa putting gifts in the stockings because the stockings hung over the fireplace to dry. How silly is that? The stuff would make socks just rip then where would kids get new socks that, I'm sure were needed more than toys. And, where on earth did we get the traditions that stocking stuffers had to be toys, or candies or fruit or just whatever they are? I'm sure we get them from our ancestors, just as I did. I know of now one else, for instance, that puts only fruits, a candy bar and some nuts in their kids stocking, assuming they have a stocking instead of a paper bag. It just isn't done. I don't think they would even think of put that stuff in there with the other junk they do. Yet, for some reason, every Christmas, I want to. Whether I do or not, I want to. It just doesn't feel right without them. Because I was so ill informed of this tradition I looked it up and found a few stories about it:

• The tradition of hanging stockings is said to have its roots in the 16th century Dutch tradition, where children in Holland used to leave their clogs by the fireplace filled with straw for the reindeers or donkeys of the Saint and a treat for Santa himself in the house. In return, the Santa Claus used to leave treats for children.
• There is a legend about kind Saint Nicholas related to the tradition of Christmas stockings. Once a kind nobleman had a turn of fate. He lost his money and his wife and was left alone to fend off his old days with three daughters of marriage-able age. Once, when St. Nicholas was going on rounds, he heard all four of them crying together for they had little to eat and make merry. Their biggest problem was how to arrange dowries for the daughters so that they can get married.
  The saint knew that these people were too respectable to be offered any charity and so he thought of another way to help them out. He saw that the three daughters had washed their stockings and hung them over their fireplace to dry. So, in the night, he quietly climbed down the chimney and placed three purses of gold in each of the girl's stockings that was enough to marry them off. In the morning, when the family found the money, they were very thankful to God and the kind nobleman who did so much for them.
• According to yet another theory, at about the end of the nineteenth century, Thomas Nast and George Webster cooked up a story about a visit from Santa Claus as an illustrator and writer respectively, which became very popular. It was in this story that Christmas stockings were first mentioned as being hung from a chimney, thus, giving birth to the tradition.

From http://www.worldofchristmas.net/christmas-symbols/stocking.html

Thanksgiving, Christmas and my Birthday

THANKSGIVING

I got to spend Thanksgiving with some of Ken's family in Florida. It was nice. The last few years my family of four have spent Thanksgiving here at home doing nothing. The next day we went to Walt Disney World. That was a treat for our family. Spending money we really couldn't afford to, but doing it anyway because we had a little saved up for a vacation and that's what we chose to do. That was the real reason we were in Florida. The day after that I had a migraine. A serious blown out real migraine. The two days before had ruined me. Luckily we had provided a day of rest in Florida so I was able to sleep all day long at a family members house while the rest of the gang visited family there. I really slept a whole day and night. It was enough to allow me to be refreshed to drive home a third of the way on Sunday. I would have driven more but Ken just happens to like to drive.

CHRISTMAS

Christmas is going to be spent at home, as usual.

I am really writing to rant about presents. How hard it is to buy presents for a 15 year old! It's even getting tougher to buy them for my 6 year old, Gavin. He wants different things all the time. Actually, he wants everything, so how are we to pick out just a couple of things to get him? Things that he'll care for, maybe? That he might not ruin or forget about within a week of Christmas. I know we can get him clothes but thats more of a present for us when it comes to his age. Ha ha Gavin. As far as Erin, I can get her clothes too, but she'd have to pick them out since I know she does not like what I like. I've been shopping with her and what I picked out she totally vetoed. I have gotten her a couple of things, I think she'll like them. She may read this so I won't mention them. There are a few more things I have in mind but I don't know if I'll get them or not. They are not primary gifts as I've already gotten that. Next, there is my husband. He never gives me a hint as to what he wants. I'm thinking outside the box with him but he may think my gift idea too frivolous. Maybe I'll do it anyway and he'll love it. I know he reads this so Ken, you'll just have to wait and see - at least until you give me a better idea. I've already gotten my gift. I got to pick it out. I'm good. I got an upgraded wedding ring. The Celtic weave band is my actual original band, but this makes the third upgrade since then. It's a one Carat tw PPF diamond band, chosen by Ken and myself at Reed's Jewelers. This isn't the best picture but you get the idea.

MY BIRTHDAY

January 3rd is my birthday. I'll be 40. I'm having a hard time with that number for some reason. This whole year all I  could think about was I'm almost 40. That I look 40. I'm looking so much older. The last few years have really taken a toll on me. When I was 36 I looked 32, maybe. Now I look 40. I look my age. 

Birthdays can suck sometimes. Mine does anyway because it's right after Christmas. That's a little selfish because I'm thinking about how I get screwed on presents - usually the Christmas and birthday one get lumped in together. So not fair. Sometimes even Valentines day gets lumped in together with it! At least I didn't get married around that time too! OK, considering my Christmas gift this year I have very little right to complain. I'm a little teensy bit selfish.

Maybe when I turn 41 or 42 for a present I can get a little nip and tuck around my eyes and chin. I think my aunt got her first plastic surgery at 45. I could do a few years better. I'll just start saving up my extra quarters, the ones Gavin doesn't manage to find after I get change. Those can really add up. Besides, the cost of those procedures has really gone down anyway. Hmmm...