Prom Weekend

So this weekend is prom for El Dorado High School. My daughter and her friends are going. So that means that they will be coming over to my house to get ready. My fear is that they will all be a little neurotic. I get to do their hair, which I am looking forward to. The nail polish and all the make-up, I could do with out. I just hope it doesn't turn into a mini wedding kind of thing. I am not into that. Although, I did order a flower and the limo. Oh well, all that matters is that they all have a blast!

I know I am going to sound like a preacher, and I don't even go to church. There is a lot of negative going on in the world right now. Maybe it always has been that way. It just feels like we are surrounded by negative talk and negative actions. When you are handed a bad blow of something, there is a reason for it. Really. Sometimes who knows why, but as long as you think positive, positive comes out of it. Always. Just look for the silver lining or is it through the silver lining. Either way, life is good. I have read a few blogs where the people seem to have back to back crappy stuff happening. Are they bringing it on themselves? I don't mean to sound mean, but seriously, when you think with bad thoughts, bad stuff hangs around. Life is too hard sometimes, why not try to make things happy in your life. Just by smiling, you can have a great day. When you think those happy thoughts, happiness is all around you.
A couple years ago my husband lost his great paying job. I worked part time at a job and volunteered at our kids school quite a bit. The first day of dealing with what had just happened, was scary. I knew everything would be OK. Things happen for a reason, always. Sure enough, it all worked out just fine. My husband started back at school full-time. I went back to work full-time. I ended up hating my job after a couple of years. But what I gained from being there made it all worthwhile. I got some amazing friends out of it. Some people can look at it and think how much they hate their job and dwell only on that instead of looking at what really matters. People and what they give you. Not financially, but emotionally. I did end up walking out of my job one day in November, but fortunately for me, those people that I became friends with found there way to me in one way or another. I would never take any of the bad stuff out of my life because there is so much good that comes back at me just by thinking positively.

Daughter's driving

So my daughter is now driving legally on the road with an adult at her side. My wonderful husband keeps volunteering me to take her out and practice. I'll admit, I am not the perfect candidate for it. My facial expressions come into play. I am not a good liar in any form. Again, my face says it all. So not only am I trying to get her comfortable with driving, but I am trying to get her used to a manual transmission. I have always found that I have more control driving around the hills with a stick shift versus an automatic. So we were out the other night driving and giving all the neighbors a good chuckle. I had her stop and start constantly so she could get the feel of letting off the clutch and giving it gas. Everyone knew we were coming by the squealing tires. I honestly thought she was doing pretty good, but what I got on my end was "Mom, you are a horrible teacher." I made a point, seriously, of not saying one negative word. I am proud of how I handled myself. I know me and I loose my patience with my own kids. We just have another five months left of this!

Creatures that lurk int the night

There are worse things that happen in the middle of the night, but what happened last night seemed pretty bad. Our youngest dog, Abbott, got up to go outside, so I thought. Then I heard some strange thrashing noises coming from the kitchen or just outside of our slider. I flew out of bed and saw something about raccoon size flying through the kitchen and then it kept bouncing in our slider up and down. I started screaming at Abbott not to go near it, because I still wasn't sure what was in the house and what might be outside. My initial thought was that two raccoons were fighting outside the door and one ran in through the doggie door. Finally, everyone else came to the rescue to help me hold back the other two dogs that came to check out the noise. For some reason, my son opened his bedroom door and the thing ran in there. At that moment we were able to put our dogs in our bedroom and take a breath. We had to process the whole event in order to move onto getting "it" out of his bedroom. Once we looked in to see what "it" was, we realized he was just as scared as we were. It was a cat. He made himself at home in my sons bed, still breathing pretty heavy though, just as we were too. Now to get him out. He didn't want to budge. We were all afraid of him or her because we weren't sure whether it was a feral cat or not. So my husband and son used brooms to try and persuade him to leave. He was not having any part of it. He kept, somehow, holding onto the window and curtain. Finally my brilliance kicked in and I realized that if I take the screen off the window, all we have to do is open the window and he will go out. Not the case. Apparently, we needed to make sure the window was completely opened and then once we did that he ran outside.
It took us a good two hours to finally calm down enough to go back to sleep. I had to keep my focus on mentally writing my next essay in order to stay relaxed. Otherwise the what ifs kept creeping back into my head.
I am a little pooped and sore today, but everyone is safe and happy and that is all that matters!