Decorating

Just wanted to let everybody know that I'm tweaking with the look of my blog.

In between laundry, cleaning, restaurant cr@p and drinking coffee.

It's not getting done all at once, but about 10 minutes at a time.

Bear with me :)

Vinyl Sausage

We have this slide bouncer thing. It was a gift. And a darn good gift, at that. Today it was beautiful outside. So, I asked Chloe if she wanted to play on the 'bouncy slide.' Well, of course she did. This thing is actually pretty easy to put up. Roll it out, plug in the air compressor, tap a few stakes into the ground, and you're good to go.

She had a blast bouncing around on this all afternoon. When Becca got home from school, they were invited to a neighbor's house to play for a couple of hours in their back yard. Fine. 'Me' time is good. The homework got done, and off they went. I had the house to myself.

I also had to put that thing away.

By myself.

Thank God there wasn't some stray parent with a video camera taping their child outside. I had to look absolutely ridiculous. I started very calm and focused. I made sure the air was out. I start folding this thing up. Unfortunately, the size of the folded 'bouncy slide' was about twice as big as the bag I'm supposed to put it in. I unfolded. I folded again. I straddled this damn thing, shoving it into this bag. I was laying on the grass, holding the thing on top of me.

I was a mess.

But I got it in that damn bag.

Heather - 1
Bouncy Slide - 0

Take that, Little Tikes.

Rats and Birthday Cake

I have very mixed feelings about Chuckie Cheese.

Strictly as an entrepreneur and business woman, I think it's great. There's always money in entertaining kids. Especially when it's mixed with giving parents a little break.

As a mom? That's where my mixed feelings come in. I don't really mind going to Chuckie Cheese during the week. In the afternoon. When other parents are at their regular jobs, and it's nice and slow. It's not a bad place when the weather is crappy and you have a bit of cabin fever. When it's slow. Every game is only 1 token. That's cool. And there are things that the kids can actually do on their own. Cool.

We had a bad experience with germs at Chuckie Cheese. A couple of years ago, everybody we know (including us) got sick after going to Chuckie Cheese. EVERYBODY. I blame it on the tube/slide. We all got a horrible stomach flu. Becca was 3. Chloe? 18 months. Becca got it first, and it plowed through the family. It was utterly and completely terrible. Becca was in the slide the day before she got sick. It was a Saturday. I have since found out that they clean that slide on Saturday nights (Well, at least at our Chuckie Cheese). We go early in the week now.

We also bring a VERY LARGE bottle of hand sanitizer. I am constantly putting it on their hands. When we get there (so we don't spread any germs we might already have). Before we eat. After we eat. When we're done playing. Again in the car. We haven't gotten sick since that one time. But I am VERY afraid to go there in the winter - the middle of sick season.

What motivated me to write this post? Well, let me tell ya. We went to a birthday party on Sunday at 'The Cheese.' It was at noon. The place was completely insane. We had to wait in line to even get in. It was the longest two hours of my life. There were screaming children everywhere. When we gathered for the 'birthday' part, we were jammed into a corner. We ate some cardboard pizza. The kids didn't want to sit. They wanted to play some more. It was loud. Very loud. It was a birthday party for a neighbor kid (who is very sweet, and a cutie!). But being in the middle of 8 different birthday parties all happening at the same time was just too much for me.

Sorry, kids. You're not having your party there.

I got home, popped two Advil and considered having an adult beverage. Some days, this motherhood gig just doesn't pay enough.

I was rejuvenated later in the evening, when Tony took the girls outside to play. Did I relax and give myself some 'me' time? Nah. I popped the MP3 player on, cleaned up the house and put away laundry (singing at the top of my lungs). All better. That's all I need. Just a half an hour of escape every day or two.

Signs of a Broken Heart

First, let me say that I had a great weekend! The weather is starting to cooperate, we had great business at Downey's House, and I made it through a party at Chuckie Cheese yesterday. I'll complain more about Chuckie Cheese soon. But for now, I have this for you:

I'll bet you thought that title meant I was going to talk about love.

Wrong.

I received this email over the weekend. It talks about how a woman might feel if she were having a heart attack. I'm 38. There are people my age who have had heart attacks. So, I tucked this information into the filing cabinet in my brain. I hope you do, too. Here's the email:

FEMALE HEART ATTACKS


I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is the best
description I've ever read..

Women and heart attacks (Myocardial infarction). Did you know that women
rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have when experiencing heart
attack .. you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat,
grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor that we see in the movies. Here
is the story of one woman's experience with a heart attack

'I had a heart attack at about 10 :3 0 PM with NO prior exertion, NO prior
emotional trauma that one would suspect might have brought it on. I was
sitting all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap,
reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking, 'A-A-h, this is the life, all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with
my feet propped up.

A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when you've been
in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you've swallowed a golf ball
going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is most uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn't have gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more thoroughly and this time drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was my initial sensation---the only trouble was that I hadn't taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m.
After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing
motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my
aorta spasms), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my
sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering
CPR).
This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both jaws. 'AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling ab out what was happening -- we all have read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI happening, haven't we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, Dear God, I
think I'm having a heart attack!

I lowered the foot rest dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, If this is a heart
attack, I shouldn't be walking into the next room where the phone is or
anywhere else ... but, on the other hand, if I don't, nobody will know that
I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in a
moment.

I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room and dialed the Paramedics ... I told her I thought I was having a heart
attack due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didn't feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the facts.. She said
she was sending the Paramedics over immediately, asked if the front door was
near to me, and if so, to un-bolt the door and then lie down on the floor
where they could see me when they came in.

I unlocked the door and then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost
consciousness, as I don't remember the medics coming in, their examination,
lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the
call they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but I did briefly awaken when we
arrived and saw that the radiologist was already there in his surgical blues
and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was
bending over me asking questions (probably something like 'Have you taken
any medications?') but I couldn't make my mind interpret what he was saying,
or form an answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until the
Cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon
up my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2
side by side stints to hold open my right coronary artery.

I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at
least 20-30 minutes before calling the paramedics, but actually it took
perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St. Jude
are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was already to go to
the OR in his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart (which had stopped
somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and installing the stints..

Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want
all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned first
hand.

1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body, not the
usual men's symptoms but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and
jaws got into the act). It is said that many more women than men die of
their first (and last) MI because they didn't know they were having one and
commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some Maalox or other anti-heartburn
preparation and go to bed, hoping they'll feel better in the morning when
they wake up ... which doesn't happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not
be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is
unpleasantly happening that you've not felt before. It is better to have a
'false alarm' visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be!

2. Note that I said 'Call the Paramedics .' And if you can take an
aspirin. Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!

Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER - you are a hazard to others on the
road.

Do NOT have your panicked husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at what's happening with you instead of the road.

Do NOT call your doctor -- he doesn't know where you live and if it's at
night you won't reach him anyway, and if it's daytime, his assistants (or
answering ser vice) will tell you to call the Paramedics. He doesn't carry
the equipment in his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do,
principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Your Dr will be notified later.

3. Don't assume it couldn't be a heart attack because you have a normal
cholesterol count.. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated
reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it's unbelievably high and/or
accompanied by high blood pressure). MIs are usually caused by long-term
stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormonesinto your system to sludge things up in there.

Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep.

Let's be careful and be aware. The more we know the better chance we could
survive.

A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this mail sends it to 10 people,
you can be sure that we'll save at least one life.


**Please be a true friend and send this article to all your friends (male &
female) you care about!**

And just as I was typing this, Chloe woke up, came downstairs and started playing a game. I guess she learned a new word. As she was playing she said "Dammit! I almost got the blue one." Yeah, I've gotta go and deal with that.

Happy Steak and BJ Day

Yup, that's what today is. Steak and BJ day. You can learn more about it at their website www.steakandbjday.com/ To sum it up, it's the male version of Valentine's Day.

Here in Pittsburgh, it also happens to be Parade Day. This is the day, in the past (and I'm stressing IN THE PAST, because it's different now), that I would find my husband the most inebriated. He's Irish. Plain and simple. They would start with beer and donuts at 8:00, head to the parade, then take the bus back into Carnegie. Carnegie was a mecca for Parade Day Partiers. Lots of bars, one of them being an Irish Pub. And we lived in Carnegie. It was the perfect storm.

Me? I've never been to the parade. I'm not much for a) being out in the cold - and it's usually cold on parade day and b) large crowds of drunken people. I just don't have the patience.

So, Steak and BJ day combined with Parade Day? That's drinking, hanging out with buddies, steak and a blow job. That's the perfect day for most guys I know. Now my guy? He won't be going to the parade this year. He'll be working at Downey's House, keeping the fun going. He will get to hang out with his buddies a bit, but he won't be drinking. As for the steak and BJ? He might eat a steak at the restaurant.

But he doesn't get home until 4:00 in the morning. That's when I'm sleeping.

Sorry, babe.

UGH, Pittsburgh Weather, Why Do You Torture Me?

It's March in Pittsburgh. March in Pittsburgh is very bi-polar. You have your good days. Last Saturday, it was warm (70 degrees), sunny and just a little breezy. Perfect. This morning it was 26 degrees. Now, it is supposed to go up to 50 degrees today. But, like my father who lives in Florida says, "50 is a 'down to' number. Not an 'up to' number." As you probably know by now, I'm really not a snow girl. I honestly believe that I was born in the wrong place. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE Pittsburgh. The people, the buildings, the architecture, the spirit. But the weather? It sucks. I got to thinking about where I would move to (dreaming, really...I don't think we'd move until we're old and gray). One of the options my brain came up with was Arizona. Hurricaines? No. Earthquakes? No. Tornadoes? No. Blizzards? No. The only thing that my folks say about Florida is that it's sometimes like soup walking out the door - super humid. Not so in Arizona, my friend. I think Arizona is my new fantasy place. So, just to push the fantasy a little further (and aid in my Law of Attraction visualization-thingie), I found this website: SFP and did some poking around. This is the house I'd like to have. And that is the house that I will visualize when I dream of moving some place with perfect weather. But this is more around what I could afford. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But if I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming big!

So, if you see me IRL (in real life, that is) and I'm staring off into the distance with a glazed look in my eyes, I'm probably thinking about myself in the warm weather, enjoying my new home.

Just leave me alone to enjoy it.

Show Me The Money

You know, the past year has been crazy for us...especially financially.

It all worked out OK in our heads. Tony will quit his job, we'll still have one more paycheck on its way. We'll turn the restaurant around in 2 weeks (which we did!), open up and get right back into making money. We tapped ourselves out in order to get the money to purchase the restaurant. A second mortgage, emptying out the 401K, plus another small loan got us our money to purchase Downey's House.

There were a few things that we didn't really factor in. Like new signs. And deposits for the utility companies. And, oh yeah. The first food order. Most of these things ended up on our personal credit cards. Some of that stuff is still on there. Plus, we really had to live off credit cards for about a month. But hey, you've got to take a risk to get where you want to go sometimes.

Well, I've decided that I need to get that credit card stuff in order. I have amounts on four different cards, just sort of floating around. So, I went to this site I heard about, and you can get instant approval credit cards right online. It's nice to see all of the different deals, right there on one site. Me, I'm a fan of zero percent interest. I don't need a lot of bells and whistles like cash back or airline miles. I'm gonna get all of this in order - and paid off (hopefully) quickly. The restaurant has been doing well, and Tony is happier than a fat kid in the Twinkie factory.

So, now that it's been almost 1 year, I'm feeling settled. Not so crazy and scattered. And I'm takin' care of business.