Common Mom

Still busy playing with the fam! Here’s part two of the Trampoline Saga

Yes, IT is done! And do you know how long it took me to unattach and reattach all the springs the CORRECT way? 10 minutes. Yup, 10 friggin’ minutes. After all that crap on Sunday, it took me 10 MINUTES to get the trampoline all set up. No pulling, no dragging, no killing my back, no cutting my hands with rusty spring ends. 10 minutes of mildly stretching springs while whistling a little tune (OK, I can’t whistle - but if I COULD whistle, I certainly would have!).

Anyone who knows me KNOWS that had I been given insructions for this thing, I would have read them all through first before doing anything, and only after reading all the instructions would I have started over at step 1 and begun assembling the trampoline. You see, I’m a technical writer. I write instructions every single day for hours and hours. I would have read those instructions if for no other reason than to make the person who wrote them feel like they’d written something useful But I was NOT given instructions (used old trampoline dragged from the neighbors yard) and walking the 20 yards in to the office and turning on the computer to google “trampoline assembly instructions” would have taken an entire 5 minutes. And that, ladies and gentlemen, would obviously have been a waste of time

We’re headed to the mountains to play for the day! The kids have been jumping on the trampoline, so I felt the need to share this post that was previously posted on May 21, 2007 I’ll post Part Deux tomorrow.

So I bought the kids a trampoline this weekend . . . an old used one from the neighbors. They had a moving truck out front so I asked if they had sold the trampoline with the house or would be willing to sell it to me. They said it was all ours - $50 - woo hoo! The dad who lives there (we’ll call him Jim Bob) and I were silly enough to think we could just tip it up and roll it to my yard. GREAT idea . . . IF we had 4 adults that were over 6 feet tall AND had yards with no trees or hills. When it’s just me and Jason, that wasn’t such a great idea. And I HAD to move it yesterday cuz they are closing on Wednesday. I didn’t ask Jim Bob to help cuz they were obviously busy packing and moving . . . figured they had enough going on. So, Jason, my 6 year old, and I tried semi-disassembling the trampoline . . . no luck. Apparently when you take just the legs off, the thing becomes unround and this freaky shape. So we started undoing some of the springs . . . which was a royal pain in the ass! Cuz once you undo one side, the other side is pulling so tight that you can’t stretch them anymore. ICK! We finally, with the use of a crow bar and bungee cords (don’t ask) got them all off. We totally disassembled the thing and took it to our yard, where I promptly realized we do not have a flat spot large enough for a trampoline We found the “best” spot that wasn’t right in front of the storage closet and started reassembling. We’ll have to cut off a couple tree branches, but I’m OK with that We got it “round” and started attaching the springs. I got 3/4 of them done and couldn’t stretch the rest, so decided to put the legs on and get it as finished as I could. Bad idea. When you attach the springs first, the thing gets all contorted and not round (see statement above) and the legs won’t fit in the holes and you can’t rotate the frame. So, undo all springs - again. Attach legs, which is a pain with one person cuz when you lift one side to attach the legs, the legs on the other side fall out. Jason was a great help, really. Keira (she’s 4) not so much - “Is it done yet? When can I bounce on it? It’s REALLY big mommy - how did you get that over here? You should have waited for Daddy. He’s strong and could do it better than you…” Finally got all legs on and it’s round and actually sitting pretty level - wedged between some huge pine trees. Then I hear Keira yell “Jason, don’t swing in to me on that thing!” I yelled across the yard “Jason, get down! Do NOT swing in to your sister on that!” Then BAM - and Jason screams. He was standing half on the swing set with his legs around the new green disc swing thing and apparently “slipped” (whatever!) and swung toward Keira, but his plan didn’t go as well as he thought it would - and he fell half way off the green disc and the other side came up and smacked him in the mouth. Blood everywhere. He totally cut his top lip with those new huge pointy teeth he has - and knocked one of them a little loose! I was SO MAD! Took him inside, the whole time being the good mother I am and telling him that I’m sorry he hurt himself, but I don’t feel bad for him because I told him not to do it and he did anyway and this was his natural punishment for being a pain to his sister. Gave him and Keira each a popcicle - his to use as ice on his lip and Keira to have cuz, well, it wouldn’t be fair for just J to have one. You see, his mouth was dripping blood and I didn’t want him walking to the kitchen to get ice, which would have required him to walk across the freshly shampooed carpet and up the stairs, all the while dripping blood on it, so I sent him around to the garage for popcicles out of the freezer instead of to the kitchen for ice. I know, I’m in the running for the mother of the year award!

Anyway, back to the trampoline - I started attaching all the springs and got about 3/4 finished and can’t even come close to attaching the rest. Can’t stretch them far enough. I endure a dinner of my daughter looking longingly out the sliding glass door and saying “I sure wish I could bounce on that huge trampoline. When is Daddy coming home? I bet he could finish it.”

So I get online today to see what the “trick” is. Lo and behold, I have to undo ALL the friggin’ springs AGAIN! It says to do it in quarters . . . which I kind of did, but not really. So we’ll see if I actually get this thing completely assembled this evening or if my 4 year old will belittle me and tell me how much stronger Daddy is than I am.

Naaaaaahhh . . . just a little nickel-sized hail. OK, there was a lot of it! On my 15 minute drive home from work, I go up in elevation a bit. In that time, it went from 85 and sunny, to cloudy and rainy, to 57 and hail! There was so much hail on the road to my house that the car was getting pulled all over like it was a snowdrift! This is just our backyard a little while after the hail stopped. Not so much in the yard, but it’s weird how it accumulates in some places and not others!

Princess asked me to put “pail nolish” on her toes for the 4th of July - red and blue polish. So I obliged She somehow convinced Dude to do the “drying” duties . . . I guess it is technically a power tool since it plugs in. If he only knew that some day I’ll use this to blackmail him

I was in Wally World last weekend. Right up front, they have all the school supplies out. I just about freaked . . . wondering why they feel the need to put them out so friggin’ early! It’s only the middle of July! Summer is already short enough - then they have to go put the school supplies out so early.

Then I realized I only have 3 weeks in which to purchase said school supplies for Dude.

***Sigh***

There’s so much more I want to do yet this summer!!!

Dude went to a friend’s house for a sleepover last night and to hang out today, so Princess and I had the evening to ourselves. We went to Wally World to get her some more headbands, because you can just never have enough. Then I told her we could go wherever she wanted for dinner. She chose 3 Margaritas . . . a Mexican restaurant. I was a bit surprised. I asked her why she chose 3 Margaritas if she could go anywhere. The answer . . . “Because it’s fun to say! Three MargaRIIIIIIIItas!”

Hey - whatever the princess wants.

So I get in the elevator to leave work last week and there are 3 guys from Boeing (they share our building) already in there. We do the obligatory hi, hello, blah blah blah. I notice one guy keeps looking at the ceiling. Kinda weird cuz he’s having a conversation with his 2 coworkers, but instead of looking at them, he keeps looking at the ceiling. They get out on the 1st floor and the obligatory have a good night, blah blah blahs are taken care of.

The doors close with me still in the elevator to head to the garage. I’m curious, so I look up at the ceiling. And what do I see? A mirror. And what do I see in that mirror? Cleavage. MY cleavage. I was wearing my “cleavage” shirt as Queen Taunya calls it. It’s a cute shirt, and totally appropriate for work - if you’re at eye level. If you are, however, looking at me from above, well, you apparently get a show.

Note to self - take the stairs when wearing cleavage shirt to work.

That was a total nightmare! Site got hacked . . . bad enough that it downloaded a virus when you accessed it . . . I sure hope none of you got infected! My home PC and everyone else who I talked to’s home PC blocked the virus. My other PC . . . not so lucky - had to be totally rebuilt - OOPS! I guess the Blog Gods were not with me that day

Anyway - I’m back, it’s back - except for the images. A big thanks to my friend for taking care of this and getting it all back up and running - with major security measures in place . . . heck, I even have a hard time getting logged in it’s so secure!!!

Hope you all played hard and had a great 4th!

So last Friday, on my day off, my coworker calls my cell. We had layoffs - again. We lost one writer. So now our tiny little team is even tinier . . . in the past month, we’ve gone from 5 to 3. At one time, there were 12 of us! I feel so bad for S . . . she is a single mother of a teenager and just lost her job. In fact, 3 of the 5 people we lost in this office are the only source of income in their homes. Scary stuff.

We couldn’t get all of our work done as it was . . . now we have 2 fewer people. And us writers are perfectionists by nature. It is SOOOOO difficult to take the “Do what you can with what you have” approach when you want to do everything the RIGHT way - not the MAKE DUE way.

Anyway - I’m still here . . . doing what I do . . . and kind of feeling like crap for still being here when others aren’t.

See, it’s not that awful. If it had been pretty much anywhere else on his leg, no stitches and no restrictions. But it just happened to be on the bendy party of his knee right where he SHOULD HAVE been wearing knee pads. Have I mentioned that I’m a little upset with him for not wearing his knee pads?

So while he’s limping around school without being able to bend his knee, I’m heading to the course with Hubby, MIL, and FIL for a fun morning of golf A great day to play hookie from work . . . OK OK, I’d never do that . . . I actually took the day off . . . but it’s still a great day out.

Happy Friday!