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I'm a little bit impatient. That's just me though. If I'm expecting something to happen, I get antsy. I won't be able to stop checking until it actually happens. A few weeks ago, I ordered some vanilla beans online and I swear, I checked my email 100 times in the 3 hours it took for them to confirm my order. Then, the next day, I kept checking the mail and the front porch waiting for them to arrive, even though I knew they wouldn't be here for a couple of days at least.



So now, I have about $3,700 coming in from a freelance job I did, which is really great because I can use the money towards buying a car...but now I can't stop checking my bank account to see if the transfer has been deposited yet. Like checking it every 5 minutes is going to make it happen any sooner? LOL

Having a really good day so far today. It's one of those days when I'm just happy to be alive. It's beautiful outside, I'm going home for a visit in just over a week, my older son's birthday is a few days away, I've completed everything that I needed to get done...everything is just going right. And yeah, just as I predicted in the below entry, I'm over being angry from last night.



Hooray for good days! :)

You know, sometimes my mother and step-father manage to really piss me off. It doesn't happen often, thankfully, but once in a great while they do something that I just can't deal with. Tonight is one of those times.



First, a little back story so you understand what's going on....



When my mother's lease was up on her car last year, she turned her car in and started driving mine. I didn't mind because I work from home and rarely ever need a car. On the occasions that I do, I live less than a block away from them and my step-father works nights, my mother works days, so between the two of them, one of their vehicles is always home. So...I let her drive my car. Then, when she decided she didn't like my car (it was a 2007 Pontiac G6), for whatever reason, she started looking for a car for herself. She car shopped for months. One day, she came home driving a brand new Chevy Malibu. I thought to myself....okay, she'll probably want to run me up to the dealership to pick up my car. But no, that wasn't the case. She had traded my car in for her new car. She never asked, or even hinted at the possibility that she might do that. Needless to say, I was pretty upset, but I bit my tongue and stewed in silence. For the first time since I've had a driver's license, I no longer had my own car. I felt a little lost at first, but I got over it.



Fast forward to the end of last October...I cashed out my 401k from my last job so that I could buy myself a car. I talked it over with my mom, because she's an accountant, and we weighed the pros and cons before finally settling on it. The day my check arrives, she tells me that she needs to borrow the money because she's behind on her bills. Again stewing in silence, I loaned her the money knowing that I wouldn't have any way to buy a car without it.



Fast forward again to the beginning of February...I came into a little bit of money, about $2,000, which isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but it would have gotten me a used car. Of course, what happens again? "I need to borrow some money, I'm behind on our bills." Again, I went right to the bank without saying a word and loaned her the money, only keeping about $200 for myself to do something with the kids that we don't normally have the extra money to do.



So now, about $6,000 later, not only has she not mentioned any terms for repayment, she's behind on her bills again. This time, I don't have any money to loan them. But, that's not what pissed me off tonight. No, what pissed me off was the simple fact that I have an appointment at my older son's school on Thursday at 2 pm. It's the only appointment I have there every year, and I absolutely can not miss it. It's for his IEP review. It's to plan for what services he'll receive next school year. About 10 different teachers and service providers have to attend the meeting, so they're a pain in the butt to schedule. Once the time and date are set, they're set. There's no changing them. We've known about the appointment for a month. I made sure to tell my mom about it so that no one scheduled anything else for that day. Well, wouldn't it figure...my step-father goes and schedules a doctor's appointment for that afternoon. He refuses to reschedule it.



So, now either the kids and I have to get up early to drive my mother to work that morning so that we can keep her car (she leaves the house at 5:45 am!), or my step-father has to drive her in to work when he gets home from work that morning, which he is dead set against because he's a stubborn prick sometimes. And now for the part that pissed me off...they act like I'm putting them out because I need the car for one stinkin' afternoon when it's their damn fault I need to borrow a car in the first place.



Yes, I love my parents. Yes, I know one day (all too soon) they'll be gone and I'll wish that they were still around. I understand that, I really do, but some days, I just can't help but get angry with them. I'm sure, come morning, I'll be over it and I'll go back to just biting my tongue and putting up with it, but tonight I'm really steaming and I needed to vent.

Finally starting to feel a little better. Not completely, but it's certainly a start. I still have a runny nose, but the constant need to sneeze and the watering eyes are pretty much gone.



On the agenda for today...work on the blanket I'm making for my cousin's baby, and watch Twilight OnDemand.

Cole has practice again tonight. I need to kick as much of this cold out of my system as I can before then. I'd rather not be out at the baseball field for two hours with a constant need to sneeze, a nose that won't stop running, and eyes that won't stop watering.



Both of the boys are off to school, so I'm crawling back into bed. Hopefully I'll feel better after a few more hours of sleep.

Just got home from Cole's very first baseball practice. He's really happy. I expected things to go much worse than they did, so I'm pleasantly surprised.



You see, Cole can't hit, catch, or throw a ball. He's on a team with 8 other little boys who play baseball like they breathe. It's second nature to them. You can tell just by watching them that they've been doing it since they were old enough to walk. You can tell that their fathers take them out and toss the ball around with them...give them pointers, etc. Cole has never had that.



I can't play baseball to save my life. I can catch with the best of them, but don't ask me to pitch a ball, or to hit it with the bat because I've never been able to. Football, basketball and soccer...now those are my games. If he had picked one of those, he'd be doing as well as the other kids on the team. Unfortunately, he had to pick the one sport that I just can't help teach him.



So, with all of that, I expected the other kids on the team to make fun of him tonight (7 year old boys do tend to be cruel at times), or for the coach to get frustrated with him. Cole is...well, to put it kindly, he's emotional. He takes things personally. So I expected him to cry at least once tonight. If not because of something that someone else said, then because he wasn't as good as the other boys. It didn't happen though. None of it. He didn't cry or get upset, he wasn't picked on, and the coach didn't get frustrated. Actually, everyone was very nice, they helped him out whenever they could, and he had a blast.



Just now, while I was tucking him into bed, he thanked me for letting him sign up for baseball. That made my night. :)

Reading imagesinwords journal about her attempting to learn Greek has me a bit misty-eyed.



I realized that there is a huge part of my heritage that I have been missing out on since my grandmother passed away in 1993. We no longer have the traditional holidays, or the traditional foods. I don't get to hear the little old Greek ladies sitting around speaking a language that I only understand bits and pieces of. I have no one left that I can say s'agapo to that will actually know what it means.



At first, the traditions in our family continued, but as the years went by, little things just stopped happening. First, it was Sunday meals. Then it was the little holidays. The year before last it was our New Years festivities. Last year it was our traditional Christmas festivities. Finally, this year no one is doing Greek Easter. It's the last thing to go.



Greek Easter has always been the most memorable holiday for me. When I was young, my grandparents would get a live lamb to roast over an open pit in their back yard. I would spend hours in the kitchen with my grandmother, helping her make the tsoureki, spanakopita, tiropita, pastitsio, baklava, loukoumades, and kourambiedes. We would dye all of the eggs red (to symbolize the blood of Christ). Occasionally grandma would let me draw a little design on the egg with a white crayon before they were dyed, but that was the most extreme we could get. They had to be red. Then, when the time came, everyone in the family would pick one egg and we would tap them together with each other. Whoever's egg cracked last was destined to have good fortune for the coming year.



The first Easter tradition to go was the live lamb. Then it was the eggs. Then the traditional foods. Now...no holiday at all. It's pretty depressing for me.



Unfortunately, I can't pass down the traditions to my sons because they aren't interested in learning about them right now. I can only hope that in time they'll want to learn them.



I'm happy that imagesinwords is learning the language. At least there is one person out there interested in it. :)

COMMENTS

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imagesinwords
01:47 Mar 18 2009

I know what s'agapo means :) I taught my son how to say it when he was 4... and told him to tell it to the people that owned the little Greek restaurant on our corner we used to spend so much time at. They were SOOOOO happy, they sent him home with a few Greek flags :P Ya'Sou!

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mtsoul77
02:01 Mar 18 2009

Amazing! Even my mother, who grew up in a house with 4 adults who spoke Greek, looks at me funny when I say s'agapo.



Did you know that ya'sou is used to say both hello and goodbye, like Italians use the word ciao?



Efharisto Heidi. You made me smile. :)

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Sitting here, preparing for a very long night ahead. Cole is sick...very, very sick. Poor kid is running a 102.2 fever, he's throwing up, coughing, sneezing, his nose is running, his eyes are bright red. He hasn't been this sick in a long time.



Of course it had to happen the day before he starts baseball practice, right? He's been looking forward to starting practice tomorrow for over a month now. He has stared at the calendar every day, counting down each day. I feel so bad for him.



If we're lucky, it'll pass overnight and he'll still be able to go to practice tomorrow. If not....well, I'll have a very sad little boy on my hands.

I love when I scroll to the bottom of the page and see this banner...







It always makes me giggle. :)

Received some bad news today. My brother-in-law's cancer has returned. :(



I know cancer can be beat. He's beaten it before. But this time is so different. He was supposed to have heart surgery for a faulty heart valve later this month. It was during pre-surgery tests that they found out his cancer was back. Now, unless they can get his white blood cell count up, they can't do the heart surgery. And if they can't do the heart surgery, they can't do chemo for the cancer.



They gave him a transfusion earlier, and they're running more tests to find out if he has Leukemia or Hodgkin's. So, for the time being, we're playing the waiting game.