Surviving 40

I really like this picture, my Aunt Susan found it and made a really cool custom birthday card for me with it. As you can tell from the picture, today was my 40th birthday. Thankfully, it was a perfectly good day with no trauma and no drama! John and Joey got me huge assortment of retro candy like I used to eat when I was little- pixie stix, Sugar Daddies, bottle caps, Fun Dip, Mary Janes.

They went a little crazy at Cracker Barrel it seems, as they also made up a custom basket of even more candy that I like AND gave me two cases (24!) of chocolate Moon Pies! I think I may need to invite any and all of you blog readers over to help me with all these sweets! At work, four of my coworkers remembered my birthday and were kind enough to come to the library to wish me a good day. After work, we went out to eat at Balla's Steakhouse in Largo with John's Mom and Lisa, my best friend of nearly 31 years. Dinner was great, I had French onion soup, steak and grilled shrimp. After dinner, we went shopping for a while then back home to play the new Wii games that Joey bought with the money he earned helping John and his boss with a couple caterings that they did this week. Tomorrow, we're going to a movie (Night At the Museum 2) with Lisa- hopefully we'll bring along some of that candy for the movie! It has been a nice relaxing birthday, but I fear that Joey gave me another gift- he has had a cough for the last few days that I attributed to allergies, but considering that I started the day with a matching cough and a mild fever I suspect that it wasn't allergies at all! So, I'm heading off to bed as soon as I take some cold meds. Have a good weekend everyone, and thank you so much for the birthday wishes that I received, whether by mail, email, Facebook, Plurk or Twitter- no matter how they arrive, they are very appreciated!

School's (almost) out!

I have to work until June 4th, but Joey's last day of school is tomorrow. He's been getting a little hyped about the end of school, and it's showing in the amount of time he's spending in the detention room! He had two detentions all year prior to last week, but somehow managed to earn three in only the last 8 days! This past week, John would be waiting for him to get OUT of detention and I'd get an email that he had another one-he didn't do anything malicious, he just has an abundance of energy and has trouble sitting quietly at his desk. Tomorrow is a half day, I told him to be excessively polite and compliant, we don't want ANY more discipline notices. Despite that, he is destroying his final exams- he got a 97 in history, a 98 in science and a 110 (none wrong, plus extra credit) on his vocabulary final. I think that he's going to get all A's this grading period, but we'll have to wait for the report card next week to know for sure.
We sold our "old" popup camper tonight, and made reservations to take our new travel trailer to Fort Desoto Park in St Pete in a few weeks- that place was booked solid for the near future. There is a beautiful beach there, it's a really nice county park.
Tomorrow is my big shopping trip for groceries, I must have officially become an "extreme couponer" because last week the manager of the store actually came over to the line that I was in and pulled my cart out of line so he could go through it and make sure my items matched my coupons! Everything matched up, I'm very careful to make sure that I only use the coupons for the things I buy, but I was a little peeved that he would do that. Hopefully he was satisfied that I'm not a scammer and he won't paw through my groceries tomorrow. Personal space, dude! :)

Flashback!

I was recently asked to write a guest blog item on the St. Petersburg Times blog "Stuck in the '80s". I chose to write about a topic close to my shallow, still teenybopper-ish heart: teen idols of the 1980s. The blog item was published today, click on the title "Bubblegum bonanza: Top 5 '80s teen idols" to read it. Feel free to leave a comment 'fessing up to YOUR favorite teen idol of the '80s.

Picture party!

I have a few pictures to share of the events of our week, here you go! First, this is a picture of Joey after the academic awards ceremony at school. He received an award for "Silver Honor Roll", which is all A's and B's for the whole school year. I wanted to yell "that's 22 A's and only 2 B's!" but I managed to restrain myself! He was pretty proud of himself and of course milked it for a trip to McDonalds afterwards.
On Friday, we bought a new (used, but new to us) SUV and travel trailer from a widow in St Pete. She doesn't want to camp alone, so she gave us a great deal. The SUV is a 1999 Chevy Suburban, absolutely spotless inside and with low milage- only 41,500. We took it for it's first longish drive on Saturday, when we drove to the next county North to pick blueberries. We got over 6 pounds of fresh berries and the ride was SO comfortable! It will be John's car and I'll keep my Saturn Vue for as long as it can keep creaking along with 95,000 miles on it. The travel trailer is a 1998 Sunny Brook 26 foot camper, also in beautiful shape- it's clean all over. It has a full bathroom with shower, fridge and freezer, microwave, stove and oven, twin beds in the back, and a couch and dinette that convert into twin beds too. It is going to be such a change from our small popup with minimal appliances! I did manage to get John and Joey to get out of the new camper for a while today (they are obsessed- they even slept in it- in our driveway- the night we got it!)long enough for a Mother's Day meal at Cracker Barrel with my mother in law. We had a good time, and the food was great!

New Colin Hay song...beautiful!

You may remember that last month I went to a Colin Hay concert and I mentioned that he did a new song that just destroyed me- it took me another two songs into the show to regain my composure, but it was a beautiful, touching, memorable song. I finally found a video of him doing that song, called "Water Over You". Some background about the meaning of the song: he said that as a child he used to watch old Western movies where they throw a bucket of water on sleeping cowboys to wake them up. His father would take him and his siblings into the woods to play hide & seek and would sometimes fall asleep under a tree. They would pretend to throw water on him and say, "You have to wake up. We threw water over you." In this song, he's wishing that the magical "water over you" can make his elderly parents immortal. It's devastating, but the words and guitar work are beautiful. The CD that it's on "American Sunshine" comes out in August. Here's the vid:

Warning: shameless proud Mama moment

I have to brag on Joey a little bit, forgive me but I'm a proud Mom. He got his reading level testing scores on Friday, and he scored at a 12th grade reading level. He's in sixth grade, so he's reading six years above his current grade level. I'm so glad that he enjoys reading, if the librarian's kid didn't I'd have some explaining to do! Right now he's reading the first book in the "Twilight" series and on Tuesday he should be getting the copy of "The Last Olympian" (the final book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series) that I preordered so he'd get it as soon as it comes out- he really loves that series. Tomorrow night he's getting an award at the middle school/high school academic awards, but I don't know what subject area it's in. He's dressing up for the awards, so I'll probably take a few pictures that I'll put up here tomorrow. Thanks for letting me brag on my boy a little bit, I'm very proud of him. :)

Mister Rogers video

I found this video so touching, I wanted to share it here. I've watched this video many, many times and I've never gotten through it without a few tears but I find it very inspiring. I've often said that I adore Mister Rogers beyond reason, this video shows why.

Good stuff, now that summer is near I'll have to drag out my "What Would Mr. Rogers Do?" t-shirt. Joey is absolutely mortified every time I wear it, but it's one of my favorites. Was I right? Were you both inspired and touched? I hope you enjoyed this video as much as I do!