I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve experienced summertime when the living truly was easy. For a brief time period in my life, 3 years, I had my summers off. At the time I didn’t have kids so I enjoyed sleeping in until 10am with just the warm sunshine and a breeze to wake me up. My goals for the day usually consisted of eating, followed by watering my flowers, occasionally mowing the lawn, and on a good day taking a nap.

For the past 5 years I’ve been a 12 month employee again, joining the ranks of what I would imagine to be most of the work force. My schedule stays exactly the same as it does the rest of the year. These days the best I can hope for is that the kids will get themselves up on Saturday morning to watch some cartoons and allow me to sleep until 8.

It also means that in addition to indoor projects there are also outdoor projects that need to be done. This summer in particular it seems that I can’t get caught up on outdoor projects, the weather just will not cooperate. It seems to only rain while I’m actually at home, or remain much too wet to do much of anything.

SueL at Parents2Parents wrote about how she’s enjoying the Lazy Summer Days and finds that the absence of little tasks such as reviewing children’s homework makes her summer seem more calm.

Do find the summer months calm and relaxing? Or hectic and busy?

George Carlin died yesterday at age 71. In our circle of friends this truly is a day of mourning. We are too young to have caught Carlin back when he made his transition from suit and tie slapstick comedian to long-haired comedic philosopher and first began touring on a much smaller scale. I hear though that he even made appearances in the North Country, hitting the major colleges. My friend Joanie talks of seeing him on more than one occasion. I however never had the chance. I had always hoped to, and knew that given the fact he was in his 70s that my time to do so was limited. Unfortunately I never made it.

While I’m sure Carlin was over the top for many, what I loved and appreciated about him was his honesty. His thick sarcasm blended with an intelligence that makes me laugh nervously and squirm uncomfortably. What made his humor funny was that it was SO TRUE. He didn’t need to imitate famous people, talk about sex incessantly (we’ll put his lists of words you can’t say on television aside), or slam the people in his family in an effort to get a laugh. All he did was point out the obvious in the world. Every little thing that was ridiculous, every oxymoron, every thing that we did on a daily basis that just MADE NO SENSE.

You know what? It was funny, but thought provoking simultaneously. I don’t know how many times in my life I’ve found myself changing the littlest things about myself based on something I heard him say. Whether it was deciding to step INTO the plane rather than ON the plane or another similar subtle play on words, I’d catch little ‘Carlinisms” in my day to day life.

A part of me thinks that’s what he wanted.

The net has been covered in blog posts, obituaries, video clips. Check out a few of them yourself.

George Carlin, 71, Irreverent Standup Comedian, is Dead: New York Times

A God Who Cussed: Director Kevin Smith Remembers George Carlin

George Carlin: In His Own Words-In a 1997 interview with Newsweek discusses his ideal obituary and life accomplishments (video clip)

George Carlin on Death: (YouTube Video)

I feel like I’m in a 500 level potty training course….AND that I’ve failed…

Those of you that have been regular readers will recall that we began potty training Catherine QUITE some time ago. We had our fights, our ups and downs, and then I suddenly thought that she was finally getting it. When I would arrive to pick her up from daycare she would be dry. She would stop her playing at home and use the potty. We were pleased.

Then something happened. I don’t know what. I can’t even begin to know what. But something happened and she regressed. She began having regular accidents, she was wet at daycare, she would go through all the clothes I had sent with her and show no remorse or concern. Rewards didn’t seem to work. Punishments just earned arguing from her, return arguing from us, and a smug attitude from her that made me irate.

My mother would tell me that all she needed was a pat on the bottom. But even after watching both Chuck and I give a ‘pat on the bottom’ after an entire weekend at her grandparents house where she didn’t ONCE use the potty because “I don’t feel like it” even my mother had to admit that she just didn’t seem to care. She seemed to enjoy the negative attention as much as positive attention, and would smugly smile at you as tried be stern. My mother in law suggested moving her backwards into diapers again which Chuck and I discussed but felt like months of work were gone and we weren’t sure it would change anything since she treats her underwear like diapers most days anyway.

I think about her starting school in the fall of 2009 and I wonder if she’ll even be potty trained by then. I wonder if the whole thing is just her way of controlling us in the one way she can. We can’t control when she pees, she has absolute power over us there. We’ve wondered if it’s a way of getting attention, whether negative or positive.

We have however, as our studies into potty training continue, noticed a pattern.

• She tends to regress whenever there’s a change. (i.e. one or both parents leaves for a work related trip, we travel to a grandparents house for the weekend, we visit friends etc)
• She stays drier at daycare. There’s a strict potty schedule at daycare. We have no potty schedule at home. Are we shooting ourselves in the foot? Don’t we want her though to be able to sense when SHE has to go? There’s some things to ponder there.
• She often will not tell you when she’s wet. She’ll continue playing. If you discover she’s wet she tries to hide it and tells you to “Nevermind” and “Leave me alone” Is she actually ashamed? Could there actually be a physical reason why?
• Lately she has started avoiding other tasks, like dressing herself, trying to write her name, etc because she says she’s “Not a big girl.” If you ask her why she’ll tell you that she has lots of accidents and that only big girls don’t have accidents. I’m not sure whether she’s trying to use this logic to manipulate me and get herself out of doing things or if she actually feels like a failure. She’s very dramatic. It’s sometimes hard to tell.
• It does not bother her to be wet. This worries me slightly. It makes me wonder if I shouldn’t have pushed the potty training thing when I did.
• She cries if you get upset with her for being wet. She’ll also apologize in advance for being wet. The more laid back you are about it, the better she seems to do. If I tell her “It’s ok. Just clean up and try again.” She tends to try harder than when I try to punish her. She gets defensive and then starts peeing on furniture, floors etc.

Chuck and I are not pet people. We don’t have cats (I’d love one-not Chuck!). We don’t have dogs (He’d like one-not me!). I’m beginning to think it would have been easier to get a puppy, or perhaps I should spread newspaper all over my livingroom, or purchase a litter box.

I can only hope that Max will be easier.

Any advice out there? ANYONE????

With less than an hour left until the day is through I wanted to be sure that I found at least a few moments to wish Chuck a Happy Birthday today on this summer solstice. Despite a few downpours here and there throughout the day, overall the day was nice and we had friends and family over to celebrate and were even able to enjoy some time spent outside. The sun truly did shine on us today.

Ok. I’m not really. I actually have 4 days off from work since I had to use my vacation days this year or lose them. I had so many plans that I had been looking forward to completing. Despite the fact that it is mid June I still have yet to plant my flowers, and not only have empty window boxes, but also stacks of beautiful perennials that were given to me by a co-worker. We I decided to build a big flower bed along the side of the house. We didn’t want to put one along the front of the house for fear that if we do actually have professionals come and look at our basement they might require us to remove it. So I have a stack of recycled landscaping timbers that we rescued from the yard that the previous owner had left behind. They’re currently stacked against the house waiting to be put together. The dirt is currently waiting to be stacked against the house on the side as well.

But it’s raining.

Again.

It’s been raining for days with no end in sight. Our lawn is almost knee high in the front yard. In the photo at the top you can see that some of the wildflowers DO actually touch my knees. PATHETIC. I keep hoping for the slightest break in the clouds with some warm sunshine so that I can race out there and sprint in long strides with the mower and try to at least make the front of the house look somewhat presentable.

I see that other houses have still managed to keep their lawns mowed and I think to myself that they must have mowed on Sunday while we were away with family. Or perhaps on the last sunny day that I was working.

And although we’ve turned our furnace off for the season, I’ve been contemplating turning it back on due to temperatures in JUNE…and late June at that….that are hovering around 50 degrees. It’s days like this I wish we had a fireplace to take out the chill.

While there’s certainly enough work to be done indoors, including a livingroom that I’d love to paint, but am hesitant to tackle alone, I’ve found that without anyone else in the house to bother me it really doesn’t take long to cycle through tasks. I’ve already cleaned out the kids closets, cleaned out several boxes, bins etc that had been around the house. Perhaps I’ll move on to the toys in the kids room next.

Perhaps it’s the cold weather but while I cleaned out the kids closets yesterday I thought about fall clothes already. All of this despite just getting another shipment of summer clothes via Ebay…which I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll ever wear. We haven’t yet used our swimsuits, which by now we would normally have used a few times. I packed up the extra swim kits for daycare so that the kids could play in the water and gave them to one of the daycare assistants this morning. She laughed out loud when I handed her the bag.

“We won’t be swimming TODAY!” she said in her thick accent from the Dominican Republic. I explained that I had been off from work the day before and had been cleaning closets.

I guess today it’s cleaning floors, washing throw rugs and blog posts….goodness it’s been awhile since I’ve been blogging again….