Jerrett and I both have November birthdays. His is the 12th and mine is the 28th. So it’s the time of year when family and friends send us crazy birthday cards and I thought I’d share a couple with you.

The above is a picture of a bunch of clowns - on the inside it says, “You can just tell we’re family” and then my sister Tory added, “I don’t see you and I in this photo, did we miss the call?” She’s a nut and I laughed so hard my sides hurt after reading it. It’s funny because I use a ‘circus freak’ analogy when talking about the hight difference between myself and the rest of my family - I’m over six feet tall - my dad and mom…they do good not to require peddle extensions in their cars. 

I remember when I was about 14, I got a card from my mom in the mail that had a picture of a big nose on the front of it - I thought to myself, “What in the heck!?” Then I opened it and I still remember what it said - and it’s words EVERYONE should live by. “You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friends nose” - truer words have never been printed. 

Which leads me to this jewel. When I saw it, I got a bit weepy. I don’t think we realize how quickly they grow and change - but it only took this card, personally created by my dad and step mom, for Jerrett’s 14th birthday this year:

See what I mean? Look at him. He is SO adorable! The first thing John said when he saw it was, “Wow, two belts, so this isn’t a new thing?” Jerrett is standing in the living room of my dad and step mom’s house, behind him on the floor is the train he would play with for hours and hours. It had smoke. Real live smoke. He thought it was the coolest thing ever. Of course, as every good ‘ole Texas boy should be, he’s wearing Wrangler jeans and I’d be willing to bet, that’s one of those crazy canvas shirts that were so popular back then. I don’t know. He looks so sweet and innocent

Anyway, so those are some of the cards from this year. I’ll post some more, as they come in I’m sure.

Here I sit, zombie-like and exhausted. What, you might be asking, possessed me to stay up all night on a ’school night’? Sick kid. It does it every time. It seems, every time we have plans, as a family, to go out of town or something similar, Jerrett gets real sick right before. I can only assume he does it because he’s worried himself sick - he tends to over-think things to the point of exhaustion and we all knows what happens then. At any rate, he’s crashed out on the couch right now and I am sitting here attempting to pull my head together enough to work on stuff that ain’t gonna wait, no matter who is sick. 

Also? I got the cutest birthday card from my sister in Florida - it’s funny and if I wasn’t so physically spent, I’d take the Christmas Cards off the scanner (and the Blockbuster movie, my sunglasses and some random business expenses receipts) and scan it for all to see…but, alas, I’m to tired to move…so maybe later. I also want to share Jerrett’s birthday card that my dad and stepmom sent. It is absolutely priceless! It’s a picture of Jerrett at about age 3 standing in their living room…he looks so darn cute!

Anyway now this just turning into randomness and it’s keeping me from doing the crap I need to be doing.

I got a phone call yesterday from an actual real person who was calling to ask me if I supported Barack Obama - it was actually refreshing to hear an actual voice - which begs the question, is McCain using Robo-Calling because he can’t get actual real life people to make the phone calls? Things that make you go hmmm - especially in this decidedly republican state where McCain already holds the office of Senator. To date, 1 real life phone call from Obama’s camp - 6 Robo-Calls from McCain’s camp and/or his local political supporters asking me to support him.

One question, to all of you out there, do the calls really work? I wonder, because I can’t imagine some random (or live or robo) call prompting me to change my mind - I would like to think, at this juncture, minds aren’t being changed by listening to telephone propaganda. I could be wrong though.

The new glasses are pretty awesome. Friday night, I did have some minor headache-ish type stuff, but I think it was because I was relaxing my eye muscles, rather than straining - and I’d been straining for so long, it no longer caused me headaches.

I Twitter’d, Friday night, that it’d been dark for over 40 minutes and I’d not had a single trick-or-treater…shortly after I updated, I got one - it was nothing like Halloween on Hitt Street in Boyd (they closed down the street for trick-or-treating and we’d have thousands of people) but we did have a good turn out - when I’d finally had enough, I dumped my candy bucket in this one kids pillow case, because he had a darn good costume and I was bone tired and wanted to relax.

Our anniversary is in six days - that’s Saturday for all you guys out there wondering. Followed directly by the Marine Corps birthday (11/10) then Jerrett’s 14th birthday (11/12) rounding out the month with Thanksgiving (11/27) and my birthday(s) (11/23 & 11/28) - it’s a full month, for sure.

I’m not sure what we’re going to do for the holidays. We had originally planned on going to Texas, but financially - with the economy and whatnot, it’s just not in the cards. Then, we’d thought we might head out to Bakersfield to spend the holidays with that side of the family, but as that time draws closer and closer - it’s not looking like we will - so who knows. We’ve got a week or so to decide…

Anyway, that about sums up what is going on here. We’re hanging out, as usual, for a day of absolutely zero excitement.

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, old…but I feel old sometimes and there is nothing like having a teenager in the house to solidify that feeling. A few weeks ago, I was driving through the subdivision when I noticed some kids on their bikes - I said out loud, “Hey, there’s some kids you can play with!” and then I turned to look at Jerrett (my almost 6 foot tall, almost 14 year old son) and he said, “Mom, they’re like 8″.

They’re like 8.

I noticed, right in that minute, that Jerrett is not only getting older - but he’s getting bigger. I remember when he used to be dwarfed by the front seat and I worried about him riding up there, because of the airbag - but now…he’s as big as I am.

He’ll be 14 in twelve days…that’s two years away from driving, four years away from moving out and 10 years away from dating…ha…I know, a mom can hope.

Sometimes, I look around at my peers and I’m so thankful that I had Jerrett young, because my being young allows me to relate to him on a much deeper level - but, now I feel old. OLD.

Along those same lines - guess what I got today? Reading glasses. They’re fashionably cute, of course - but it doesn’t dismiss the fact that I have READING GLASSES. My only saving grace is the fact that I do not have that chain thing going around my neck…yet that is.

In other news, I saw my Hematologist today and he told me that I don’t have to continue the weekly treatments because my labs came back and I am on the low side of normal - I did go ahead and get my treatment today and I go back in six weeks for port maintenance with the possibility of getting a treatment, depending on my levels. In the mean time, I have to go in for labs every few days so that they can monitor the rate in which I metabolize the iron storage I’ve built up. Good news for sure.

I can say, today, I totally feel like I am on the down hill side of 2008. It’s always this time of year that I start to stress out about the whole topic we don’t discuss here…it starts with our anniversary, Jerrett’s birthday, my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, John’s birthday then Marni’s birthday. It’s just a lot to soak up - and each year, it gets a bit more intense.

Anyway, I am going to go take my half blind, arthritic arse to the bedroom and read. Now that I have glasses, maybe I’ll enjoy it again. That is, if I can get over the whole having reading glasses thing…grrr

So, there’s been a lot going on here - and I just haven’t felt like blogging. To be honest, I am totally drained by the end of the day and in the morning, I spend so much time trying to talk myself into staying up rather than just going back to bed, that I don’t have time to blog then either.

Keeping with the random wonkiness that is my life, Jerrett developed a sudden and extreme allergy to cats. This has been pretty devastating for him because he loves his cats more than anything in the world (well, not more than XBox 360, his new Laptop or Ham & Cheese Hotpockets…but they come in a close fourth…). At any rate, he’s not happy. I, on the other hand, spent the entire weekend vacuuming the world, washing everything possible and scrubbing floors (did I mention laundry? Yeah, I did a lot of that too!). I am sad, of course, I love my kitties. They are like the answer to my secondary infertility (thirdary? Is that a word? What do you call it when you’ve had two, but can’t have another? Whatever.) Anyway, he puffed up like a bullfrog, so we put the cats outside - and until today, they’ve been ok. Those of you back home may not be aware, but here in Arizona, they don’t have actual ‘fences’ - they have cinder block walls all around the perimeter of the back yard. It was odd when I first saw it, but I am getting used to it now I guess. So, as I was saying, the cats had all stayed in the yard for the past three days…then today, Jerrett calls me at work, “JAXON IS MISSING!!!!” - apparently, Jax went off to do whatever it is that boy cats who have been fixed do…I am certain he’ll be back…but its sad, because I know he could really be gone and he’s the oldest of our lil guys.

Things are not looking up at John’s work. It seems that with the reduction in production, the need for a Six-Sigma Black Belt trained Process Improvement Engineer is…well…drying up with the production. I figured it’d eventually come to this, because the housing market out here is just awful. I admit I worry, because his line of work is so specialized…and coveted when the economy is slipping but recoverable - not so much when businesses are dropping like flies and they can barely afford to keep the production staff they need to continue to offer their product. It’s a double edged sword.

Oh! I randomly heard from the lady that lived next door to us when we lived in Malta…that was strange. We hadn’t talked in almost three years and then *BAM* - she calls. Apparently, the housing market isn’t as bad there as it is here…there is a new subdivision in town and they are building a new school to support the students. It’s odd to hear that, because there was talk of just shutting down the 5 room school in Malta and busing the kids to Dekalb, where the Jr. High and Sr. High school kids went. Anyway, that’s pretty cool I guess. I don’t know if I ever shared this with you guys back home, but Malta was smaller than Boyd. They didn’t have a single traffic light, nor did they have a store of any sort. The town was so small, in fact, that they didn’t offer mail delivery if you lived in Town. You had to have a PO Box and come pick up your mail (but only during business hours, because the place was locked up tighter than a drum at 5 PM). I wonder how all that’s working out for them now?

So, that’s basically it. We’re hanging in there, but things aren’t looking good. With John’s job and whatnot, we might be exploring our options…again. God I hate this.