I’ve had a migraine all day, that I’ve been keeping at bay with medicine, but, I still haven’t felt totally up to snuff. Blogging just wasn’t really in the cards today, although I do have some reviews that I wanted to get done. They will just have to wait.

It sort of turned out to be a good thing, though, because I worked on some of the design elements of my two new blogs. And I had a super-cool blogging buddy, Loretta, helping me! She totally rocks!

Aren’t they starting to look nice? Why, thank you, I think so, too!

Have a good evening - and I’ll blog at ya tomorrow!

Thank God in Heaven above that the boys don’t have access to this monster:

It’s a Mountain Dew Game Fuel soda machine! Oh my gawd!

My husband didn’t get home last night until 12:30 from the band competition he’d taken our other son to, and he said that when he went down to the ‘dungeon’ - those boys were wired FOR SOUND!

They had Halo 3 on the big screen, and DDR on the regular TV - and they were wound tighter than eight-day clocks!

I knew that one of the boys was being picked up early for church, so I went down there this morning as quietly as I could to wake him up, so I wouldn’t wake up all of the boys. When I opened the door, I was shocked to see all of them not only awake, but, already playing video games!

And the funny little monsters - you know what they said to me? With big smiles crossing all their sweet, sleepy faces, they said:

“We went to bed early, so that we could get up early and play video games, because we knew Daniel had to leave early.”

I thought to myself, “Well, that’s odd, I was sure they had stayed up late.”

So I asked them how ‘early’ they went to bed. By this point, they are all giggling:

“3am. It is early, you know!”

Monsters!

Tonight is Shawn’s slumber party - my thirteen year old. He has four boys over and they are all juiced up on sugar, caffeine, and video games! I threw some hot dogs in there for good measure. This definitely would be a good day for me to try a hoodia patch, with all this junk food around. They are all outside playing right now, which I imagine I’ll have to call a stop to soon, as they are not doing that ‘quiet thing’ very well. It is 9:30PM here and I don’t want to upset any of the neighbors. All in all, they are nice boys, so it’s a good party, but, whenever you mix an odd number of kids, candy, caffeine, and slumber parties, there are bound to be little issues here and there. They seem to be handling them nicely, though. Thank goodness, because, I am sitting here at my desk, trying very hard to keep myself awake. I am just no good in the evenings, anymore. Around 8pm, I start fighting off the ’sleepies’, so this is getting a bit too far past my bedtime. I am hoping my husband will be home soon to take over. He needs to probably blow up an air mattress for them, anyway. The floor in the basement doesn’t have any padding under the carpet, and there is only furniture enough for three boys to sleep on. (A couch, a big sidechair, and a loveseat.)

Last weekend Patrick had his birthday slumber party. He turned 14. He had two boys spend the night. It was definitely quieter, but, those boys were pretty darn sweet, too.

Uh oh, the boys are starting to yell a bit too much - I better go hush them up.

Yikes! Anyone wanna come over? My thirteen year old son is having his birthday slumber party and he and his brother received their copy of Halo 3 in the mail today. These boys were pumped just on that information alone. Then one of them brought over a twelve pack of soda. No, not just any soda. What he brought over to make the celebration complete - Mountain Dew Game Fuel Halo 3 - which has 73 milligrams of caffeine per 12 ounce can! According to this soft drink caffeine chart, that’s more than Jolt Cola!

They have divvied the box up, even giving me one (No, I haven’t drank it, yet) and they have decided that they want to each save one unopened one. Well, you know, they have to preserve this historic event. Which it seems to have really become. The boys’ cousin even missed their family birthday party because his copy came in the mail the day of the family party for three of the cousins. The strange thing was, I was upset he wasn’t there until I heard why he wasn’t there. And that is just one example of how big and some could say, out of control, this thing has gotten!

Ok, well, in case you’ve spent your life wondering what five boys and 365 milligrams of caffeine sound like, I recorded the event for you. You will only see my beautiful Christmas angel, because, I don’t have permission from their mothers to post their pics on the internet - and more importantly, because, I’m hoping she may deliver me from all of this.

(Sorry it’s so blurry, not one of my better camera-skills days! And I have no idea why the sound is fuzzy - that is the first time my new camera has done that!)

What, I mean, what, could I possibly even say to that? Oh, I don’t know, maybe I could tell you about something “nuke-you-ler”, or maybe I could tell you that I, too, “do the Google” - but, I don’t know.

I know I certainly don’t want to get on my No Child Left Behind soapbox, because, I’ve got work to do. No, I don’t have no time for them dang praisedents that cain’t even speak no Ainglish krect.

Those are the words of my sweet 10 year old daughter. She had to write a paragraph at school about a beautiful garden, and those words just really struck me. Are you just experiencing that waterfall with her upon hearing those words? I know that I am!

It’s funny, because, a group of friends and I have been having a lot of discussions lately about just this sort of thing. Taking your readers there with you, right into the scene, and letting them wholly experience it with you - like you’re looking at it on a viewsonic monitor - or even better, like you’re actually there! And here that concept is so beautifully demonstrated by a fifth grader! That’s just awesome!

I would love to share with you her whole paragraph, though, as I found it really sweet:

Designing a Garden

My imaginary garden is beautiful! In my garden I have all kinds of flowers. Also my garden has a rocky path leading up to a stream of water comeing from a rushing, gushing, spectacular water fall! With fish, tadpoles, and frogs. Next to the stream is a open field with a gazebo in the middle. In the middle of the gazebo is a swing. Sometimes I will move the gazebo and put a beautiful mahogany picnic table. Surronding the field is all kinds of trees and flowers. Some of the trees are: pecan, oak, apple, and Maple. Some of the flowers are: Daises, roses, and daffodils. Also I have fruits and vegatables.

I left her mistakes in place, because, they are cute, and I wanted to you read it as I see it on thepaper. (I’d scan it if it wasn’t in pencil and my scanner wasn’t fussy.) And the colorations were my doing, so I could emphasize that beautiful use of ‘taking your audience with you’. And also so that I could point out that, yes, that child’s father is a carpenter - how did you guess?

…to pay us what you owe us, so, we would like you to pay us even more

What the heck?! I’m late on my electric bill, because, the darn 100 degree days just did. us. in. Our darn bill is $359! And I guess I had a slow blogging month, or maybe I would do better to say, an unproductive blogging month. Things have just been so busy around this house, that it has been really hard to get much work done online! But that is a whole ‘nother sack o’ potatoes! (I need an office with a door, to lock the family out, so I can get some work done!)

What I’m really bitching about here, though, is that, for two weeks, I’ve been bustin’ my rumpus trying to get all the money together for that stinkin’ electric bill, among others….when I get this just loverly letter in the mail from them:

The electric service account at the above referenced address indicates a delinquent payment record. As a result, a deposit in the amount of $250.00 must be paid on this account.

See what I mean? “You can’t pay, so pay us some more.” That’s intelligent. Gah.

This same thing happened to me at the bank a couple of years ago - it was just like credit cards, you’re drowning, and in your dire struggle to get caught up - they push you back down under the water!

Life makes so much sense sometimes, doesn’t it? Ugh! I am almost there - to the original bill amount, that is! But, I still don’t have the total amount - I have until tomorrow. Wish me luck! And feel free to help out, if you’d like! All you have to do is click on my pretty Hippie Spelunker mug up there in the top left, and you will be taken to PayPal, where you can send me a buck or two, if you like. I only need $69 more, and I’m trying to avoid the pawn shop, but, I’m definitely not ruling that out - Mark’s got lots of watches, maybe even some Luminox watches. He loves those darn dive watches, but, they might just pay a bill this month!

I will work better this month. I will work harder this month. I will work more this month.

Work better, work harder, work more.

My new mantra. Heh.

I was checking my stats this evening, and I noticed that someone visited this blog today from Singapore - and they came from Backlink Watch, which I thought was rather odd. So I went to Backlink Watch to investigate and see if I could find out how that happened.

And I’ve now wasted a good chunk of my life checking backlinks on all my sites and it’s all your fault, Singapore!

It’s just so addicting - I couldn’t stop watching all those sweet linky’s showing up on the page bit by bit! I think I could watch all night.

I absolutely love watching my stats - seeing where people are coming from, and what they did while they were here. And I most especially love seeing how long they stayed. It’s market research for my blog!

I’m about to switch Statistics software to one that came highly recommended by John over at One Man’s Blog. He even used video to demonstrate the ultra-coolness of this software.

So I can’t wait to get it and fuel my stats sickness even more!

I wonder - if my blog readers are voyeurs (of the blog) and I’m a voyeur of my voyeurs - wonder what that makes me?

(Yes, I should totally have linked you to John’s post about the stats software, I’m in the middle of too many things right now - I’ll try to do it tomorrow. You could just search, you know.)

(No, I don’t actually have anything against Singapore - that was just the ‘name’ I used for my blog voyeur.)