thursday....

I am still feeling a bit dizzy, not up to giving blood. So Mirielle and Aaron are on their own. If Mirielle does the fainting thing, I hope she can still drive home....Aaron has a permit, but cannot drive unless the front seat passenger is 21 or over.

I still am considering taking Mr. Jonathan and Miss Charlotte Claire to the library, as he has been asking me for days. Yesterday, I was going to take them, and then just couldn't. I even had their nice bye-bye clothes out....Mr. Jon was pretty bummed. The library is only 5 miles away, but getting ready and getting out the door...

I think we are cancelling our Blockbuster membership. They have a new thing going, where if you get movies online, you cannot get the next one on the queqe if you still have one out from the store. So for the money we pay, it is just not worth it. It is better to just go in and get the movies...especially since we don't watch that many movies consistently.

Another little pet peeve: rebates. I hate rebates. When I got contact lenses for Mali and Aaron, the best deal for them was the one year supply, with the price so attractive because of hefty rebates. Of course, being the organized person that I am, I finally got to the filling out the forms stage last night. And of course one of the forms required a phone call, to order a special rebate order form of all things! That is being sent here from Minnesota tomorrow, and then I have to fill it out and send it in with all the forms and receipts and u.p.c codes......and if it isn't postmarked within sixty days, we don't get the rebate. I hate rebates. It is almost as if they make it as hard as possible to get the money, once they enticed us with the low price. Bauch and Lomb. Now, I don't want to go as far as saying I hope they go out of business, but jeepers.

I also hate it when I find so much to gripe about.....when I think of how good we have it, it makes me almost ill to see how much complaining there is in me. Today, the telephone guys came over to fix the internet, as our modem seems to burn out when there is a power outage....which is pretty often, out where we live. These two guys are just plain small town nice guys. The little kids act like they are company, the way they say "hi" to them, and hang around smiling at them. I told them that we have sixteen kids, and the one guy said, "there's nothing wrong with that"..... I thought that was a funny way to reply. He probably didn't know what else to say. They cheerfully replaced the modem, and didn't seem to notice the popcorn all over the living room floor, courtesy of Miss Camille.....it's funny, how my house is comfortable to me, and seems okay, then when you have people in, and look around, and think about how it must look to them....it is embarrassing. Some of Suzanne's label signs are still up, there is a small pile of clothes on one of the couches, the shoes near the door are not organized and neat, the toy bench in the kitchen is piled high with jackets and sweaters.....but the kitchen floor was swept.....oh well, who cares.....

Not too much is going on, yet so much is going on.....I need to decide what to do with Champ the dog, who has been doing quite well despite his age. We have been looking at the poor guy and trying to decide when to do the inevitable, putting him "sleep".....we don't want to do it.....but he is old and hobbly....but he is still happy! And he's made it through the winter so far, he deserves to see spring again.....(we let him in the house for nights, and anytime during the day he wants, he has a nice little rug to sleep on).....anyway, he is supposed to get his rabies vaccination again. If I don't get proof to the town clerk that he is current with it, I will get a fine. I am tempted to say that he is deceased......anyway, I can't see taking a feeble old dog to the vet for a rabies shot.....what do I do?

Oh, I read in the paper that there is legislation in Missoui and Georgia intended to spare taxpayers from footing the bill for women having more children than they can afford. WHAT? They are seeking to limit the number of embryos that may be implanted by fertility clinics....."It's unforgivable," said R, Hudgens, a state senator who is sponsoring the Georgia bill...."this woman already has six children. She's unemployed, and she's going and having 14 children on the backs of the taxpayers of the state of California." Oh, don't even get me started......unforgivable. Who is this Ralph Hudgens, to have to forgive someone? How is her reproductive choice his business? Come on, people choose to indulge in risky behavior, and maybe have accidents, and we the people have to pay....oh, just don't get me started....

I guess another one of my pet peeves is when the government gets involved......obviously, there is not a huge population surge of batches of eight babies.....and those babies are a miracle. What a world we live in, where life isn't revered....unforgivable....oh, I'd like to give him unforgivable.

And now, I need to work on getting my long tangly hair brushed, and get my kids over to the library....and just a warning: I am a book-a-holic....after I got married, I read everything John Steinbeck ever wrote. Then Charles Dickens. Then Taylor Caldwell. And of course every issue of National Geographic, cover to cover.....then I found more authors, through the years. I have read most of Stephen King....I don't care for the scary stuff, but he can write, the way he words things....I love him. Anyway, what I am saying is that when I get a good book, I devour it within a day or two. Lots of things get pushed aside. So, if I find some good books, goodbye for a while....