the gookins dot net

It was beautiful this afternoon, so beautiful that Matt and Allie decided to stay home and play outside (gasp!) rather than go to see the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. As you can imagine I was delighted, not only because of the 30 bucks it would have set me back and that I’ve had a back ache and would be uncomfortable in a cheap theater seat, but because well, I would have had to sit in a theater and watch Alvin and the Chipmunks.

While they were playing I decided to run to Target, my favorite discount chain store to pick up some new pj’s for Don, since he is going in for a sleep study tonight. Honestly, he does have pajamas that he usually wears - he is too paranoid that the house will catch on fire and he won’t have time to put on a pair of pants before diving out the window totally nekkid for all the old nosy neighbors to see - but they’re embarrassingly ragged, or “comfy” as he prefers to say. Hopefully the sleep study will go well and I won’t just be stuck rolling him side to side all night long for the next 50 years or until I go deaf and can’t hear him snore.

Anyway, back to Target. It is my favorite because it’s not Wal Mart, and they have great clearance deals. How can you not love a good clearance? Of course the flannel pjs were on clearance, as well as many, many, many other things. I was giddy from the sight of all of those CLEARANCE signs.

I went in for a $10 pair of flannel pants, and came out with a cartload of clothes and $200 poorer (shh, don’t tell Don, he doesn’t part well with his money). They were all great deals and (mostly) things we needed. And as a bonus, I didn’t forget the pj’s I went in for.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, I’m happily skipping along behind my shopping cart full of bargains and no one is even trying to run me over in the parking lot. What a joyous day! I load the van, put the cart in the cart corral like a good little shopper, and head for home. Fifteen minutes later I pull my dirty little van in the driveway and begin to gather things to take in the house - the library bag, some stray wrappers, my bargains, a few stray barrettes, my purse… My purse.

I run into the house, throw a few Target bags of clothing at the kids and screech, “I think I left my purse in the caaaaart!” or something like that. I dash back out to the van to grab the other bags and look one more time. Still no purse. Inside, Allie answers the phone - it’s Target, they have my purse.

Let me tell you, having to pick up your forgotten purse makes you feel like a total imbecile. The guy at the customer service desk said, “You’re not the first person to do this, that’s why we have this big log book.” And I had to put my real name, address, phone number, and signature in the log book, acknowledging that I was indeed the dumbass that forgot their purse. But I do have kind of an excuse, lame as it is. My purse is RED. The cart is RED. It blends right in. Just like the HyVee grocery carts.

Yep, it was the second time I had driven off while my purse was still nestled safely in the seat of the cart, only last time I realized it sooner and was able to retrieve it from the cart corral. Stupid red purse. It will be cut into a million tiny pieces and put in the garbage, as soon as I am not too embarrassed to go back to Target to buy a new purse. I don’t have another one right now, the dog barfed in my other one, so that went in the garbage too. I don’t have very good luck with purses lately.

I planned on doing national blog whatchamacallit this month, to try to get me back into blogging for the new year. I missed the first day, so not off to a great start, eh? I think I’ll still try; if I give up because I think I’ve already failed, I’ll never get anything going. Does that make sense to anyone but me?

The blog topic for January is “Best”, whatever that means. I guess for today that word means to me putting my best effort into the things I start this year, even if I should have started them sooner, and not worrying about starting at the “right time”. I can say I should have done this or that back when ____, but it’s not going to help me out right now. The important thing is to do it now. I have a horrible procrastinative streak in me, and the only way to get rid of it is to tell that little bugger to shut the hell up and just do whatever it is I need to get done.

And today, the second day of the new year, is the day to start.

Christmas is such a good time for making fun of stuff people try to sell. I was looking for a board game I had seen before and searched on “white trash game” on amazon. This was one of the choice items that came up. Oh, please, Santa, please bring me the collector action figure of my dreams!

Neuticles. Because people don’t have enough ridiculous things to buy for their pets.

I can just see some guy sitting there thinking “Hmm, Spot has seemed so down since his neutering, maybe he needs some artificial nads to help him feel manly again.”

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, or even looked at our blog. I thought that maybe we should get rid of it so I can stop having that “I should blog something” feeling. But I’m kind of sentimentally attached, since it has a bunch of stuff from our short-lived traveling days and other happy times.

I’m not sure why I haven’t been blogging, whether it’s that I’ve grown bored with it, have nothing new to say, have a hard time putting what I have to say into words, or just don’t have the need to write what we are doing for all the world to see. It’s not like I haven’t had time. But the fact is, our blog is something I would be sad to see go.

So just maybe I’ll make it back here a little sooner.

what part of these mapquest directions make any sense?? If I want to go from Altoona, Ia to Lamoni, Ia without taking I-80, It won’t let me take the 65/69 bypass directly…I end up going in circles.

Turn RIGHT onto NE UNIVERSITY AVE/IA-163 W.
Merge onto US-65 S via the ramp on the LEFT toward INDIANOLA.
Take the SE 64TH AVE exit, EXIT 73.
Turn LEFT onto SE ARMY POST RD/SE 64TH AVE.
Merge onto US-65 N toward MASON CITY.
Take the E UNIVERSITY AVE/IA-163 exit, EXIT 79, toward PLEASANT HILL.
Turn LEFT onto IA-163 W/E UNIVERSITY AVE.
Merge onto US-65 S via the ramp on the LEFT toward INDIANOLA.
Merge onto US-65 S/US-69 S/HIGHWAY 69 via EXIT 70A toward INDIANOLA.
Merge onto IA-5 S toward CARLISLE/MASON CITY.
IA-5 S becomes US-65 N.
Take the SE 64TH AVE exit, EXIT 73.
Turn LEFT onto SE ARMY POST RD/SE 64TH AVE.
Merge onto US-65 S via the ramp on the LEFT toward INDIANOLA.
Merge onto IA-5 N.
Take the 85TH AVE exit, EXIT 97, toward FLEUR DR.
Turn LEFT onto 85TH AVE/85TH ST.
Merge onto IA-5 S.
Merge onto US-69 N/HIGHWAY 69 via EXIT 70B toward DES MOINES.
Merge onto IA-5 N.
Merge onto I-35 S toward KANSAS CITY.

That is so screwed up.

My poor, abandoned blog. Every now and then I visit here, hoping someone blogged something, hoping to come up with some brilliant thing to post, but nothing. I keep thinking I’ll get some big inspiration and start blogging away again. We didn’t even blog Matthew’s 11th birthday last week. Happy birthday, little guy, we still love you even if we don’t blog every milestone.

I can’t let the entire month go by without posting something. Sadly, facebook has taken over as my online outlet. Mainly because I can just post stupid shit there without having to actually think about anything. So, in case I’m not on your friend list yet, here’s my message to you:

Friend me! I’m at: http://www.facebook.com/don.gookin

That is all.

I have just not felt like blogging lately. Me and about 20 other bloggers I read. It must be the season.

So just what the heck have we been doing? I’m not sure. We’ve been busy but never with anything terribly exciting. On the homeschool front, tumbling wrapped up for us in March. The kids are getting close to “finished” with school for the year, I hope to have loose ends wrapped up this week. We took today off though while Jess went to Adventureland (amusement park) with the local homeschool teen group, so we may seep into next week. Actually, I’m ready to say “screw it” and call it good. I can’t say they’re learning much, their hearts and heads aren’t into it, and neither is mine. So never mind, we’ll be done Friday.

Jess will be high school age next year, so we have been doing a little investigating into classes available to her. She isn’t too interested, but I want her to know the specials, like art, are available if she wants to take a class or two. I’ve also been looking at the graduation requirements, and some of them are stupid and a waste of time. There are some quite lame classes you can fill your time with as well. Who needs the class on learning to live as an adult? Just stupid. I’ve mostly been looking at what colleges want to see though. We are operating under the assumption that Jess will go to college, but if she finds something she enjoys and doesn’t need it, we’re fine with that. But our goal is to have her prepared for any route she chooses.

Matt goes to the pediatrician Friday. A few weeks ago he mentioned “that pain” that he gets in his chest when he’s running or playing…yeah, that’s what I said too, “Uh, WHAT pain??? As if it were a normal thing. He’s not real good at expressing himself, so I’m not all too clear on what exactly is going on. It could just be from being out of breath, but I worry because as a baby he had a heart murmur and saw a pediatric cardiologist who said it would fix itself, but there’s never been any follow up on it. His heart really pounds when he’s been running. I dug out my stethoscope and listened but I haven’t worked peds for almost 11 years (I was pregnant with Matt) and I’ve never been good with abnormal heart sounds so it was kind of pointless. We also have asthma in the family, so I don’t know if that plays into it, but I really want to have this followed up on soon. And I’m not going to let it go with a quick listen and an “I don’t hear anything abnormal”, I want some actual follow-up testing.

We have no soccer games this weekend and I am glad! Matt has two games left, Jess has three, but we get a weekend off to do other fun stuff like build a deck. Okay, I’d much rather watch soccer

Allie has been to 3 dance competitions and recital is only a week away, then she’s on summer break. She has national competition in June, dance “camp” in July, and classes restart in August, so there’s not much break to the break.

Life with the dog is going fine. Don takes him running with him in the morning on most days. I can tell when he didn’t go running because the dog is a bit spazzier and tries to drag me out the door and down the street. He’s a smart guy though, and has figured out I don’t run unless my life is in danger.

We’re looking at a trip to the east coast this summer, but haven’t had much time to do any planning, so I don’t know if it will happen. We want to visit DC museums and Civil War battlefields mostly (okay, I can only speak for me, that’s what I want to see) and the ocean. I could spend a couple months there and not run out of places to go, but it would only be a week whenever we can squeeze it in, so I’m going to have to trim my list down a bit.

That’s all for now. I’m going to try to blog a bit more in the future. I think it helps keep my head cleared of a bit of the clutter that usually occupies it.

Allison turned 9 today, and we’ve been so busy that the traditional happy birthday post almost didn’t get written until after midnight. Allison had dance pictures all morning, then we had to get groceries for her chosen birthday dinner (homemade Chinese food). This was followed by opening presents, a visit from her cousins, making a giant birthday cookie (Allie even made the frosting and decorated it herself). Then it was cooking and eating, and cleaning up and more eating. I think she had a good day.

Our littlest munchkin is now officially halfway to adulthood. The fact that she is growing up is all too apparent in that none of her gifts this year were toys (except for two more Webkinz). The girl who used to reliably ask for Barbies or Littlest Pet Shop is now happy with clothes, jewelry, and gift cards. But as much as I want her to stay my little girl forever, I’m very proud of the young lady she is becoming.

Happy Birthday Allison!

This is probably one of those things that’s already been around the blogosphere and I’m just late to the game in finding it, but it’s cool nonetheless.

Bohemian Rhapsody played on old-school computer equipment:

well, beyond words for me.

Did you know that some women eat or ingest their placenta?

And I thought burying it in the back yard was weird.

We went and picked up Griffin the Wonder Dog from the Animal Rescue League today. He is supposedly black lab/pointer mix, and supposedly about 18 months old. I’ll be taking him to the vet soon to see how good they are at naming his breed and guessing his age.

He’s a sweetie (so far) and is good with the kids (so far) and doesn’t beg for food (so far). He sits, lays down, and goes in his kennel very well.

When we were in Portland I got an email from our supervising teacher setting our appointment for our final meeting this school year. I didn’t have my calendar with me, and surprise, surprise, I forgot to put it down when I got home. It got lost in the inbox.

I got an email from her this afternoon, saying she hoped everything was okay and let her know when I would like to reschedule. I couldn’t figure out what the heck she was talking about at first, it took my brain a few minutes to realize that it was already the end of April.

I have been this way since I got back from Portland. Sarah, I think I left my brain somewhere in your house, could you send it to me when you find it? Hopefully Charlie hasn’t gotten to it. They’re kinda hard to replace.

Awhile back, I wrote about Nate Phelps, the son of the infamous Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, and an article on his escape from a life of abuse at the hands of his father.

If you’d like to hear more of his very moving story, in his own words, he has posted the transcript of a talk he gave a couple weeks ago.