Just a question...why is it that people have no problem walking behind my van when I am backing up in a parking lot, or walking in front of me when I am driving down a parking lot? Truly folks, this is an eight passenger van, what part about it can crush you or kill you don't you understand? I especially love it when mothers drag their little kids behind my car when I am pulling out of a parking place. So, my question is, and god knows I look about twenty-five different times as I am backing up because I know people do this...if I actually hit someone, who's fault is it? I hate to be morbid, but I couldn't believe how many times this happened when I was running errands on Friday. Why do people do this?????? It is making me crazy!!!!

So, just in case you thought I was kidding about my mother-in-law.....here's the brief run down of the past eleven years.

1. Went to New Jersey before we were married to visits Frank's aunt and uncle, who are also his godparents. His aunt is his mother's sister. I love her, love her, love her. She is so awesome and I wish she was Frank's mom. Anyway, my mother-in-law, hereinafter known as "the woman", flies in from Vegas, plops herself in the middle of everything and wants to be the center of attention.

2. Two of my friends planned a couples wedding shower for us. We live in California folks. In California you never invite anyone to anything, outside of a wedding, unless you are pretty sure they can come, have said they can come or are going to be there anyway. You just don't, it is considered rude and considered asking for a gift from someone you know you don't have to entertain. I have since learned that this is normal in Frank's family, didn't know it then though. So, my mother-in-law, who lives in Las Vegas, wasn't invited. She sends ME a gift which I brought to the shower. I called her after to thank her and she swore me up and down like a sailor (and not lovingly like Jenn would) for not inviting her to the shower. Thank god Frank was standing across from me as I just handed the phone to him without a word. I know he would have never believed me if he hadn't heard it himself. This is two weeks prior to our wedding.

3. Somehow, still haven't figured out how, she got Frank's brothers not to go to the wedding. I think she told them they shouldn't come because they weren't asked to be in the wedding. Long story, Frank's second wedding and it was justified...trust me. Bottom line, Frank's own brothers didn't come to his wedding.

4. Doesn't make any move to help with the rehearsal dinner so we just had a BBQ at our house. She arrives late, with her second husband and proceeds to tell anyone who will listen why she is asking for an annullment (sp?) from Frank's dad. She hasn't been married to him for over thirty years folks!!! My cousins told me later that they actually had dinner at the hotel before they even came to the rehearsal dinner and ate at the table right next to them. This is why they were late!!

5. Proceeds to get drunk at our wedding reception and hang all over me. Oh, and did I mention that she wore a black dress to the wedding, with a white lace over lay thing?

6. Insists on coming in to town three days after Drew was born even though I asked her to hold off 'til Christmas which was three weeks later. I needed my mother, Drew was 9 1/2 pounds and I wanted my mommy to help me. She threw on the guilt trip, ended up coming and didn't help me one ounce. I remember leaning on the kitchen counter to support myself while washing dishes because I was in so much pain.

7. Comes to Drew's first birthday and sits next to Frank and Drew when they were singing Happy Birthday. Basically leaving no place at all for me to be near my own son in front of his first birthday cake.

8. A million other things in between......then Christmas 2004 we went to New York to spend Christmas with this Dad and second wife's side of the family. She has five kids. Every Christmas Eve they have a big party. The woman flies in to town and stays with one of Frank's brothers. This brother now cannot come to Christmas Eve since the woman needs to be babysat on Christmas Eve and refuses to go to the Christmas Eve get together with Frank's dad's family. It would have been the first time all eight kids were together on Christmas Eve in over twelve years and she ruined it.

9. Goes to confession if she has to go to our church for anything. Basically, can't get into a Catholic church fast enough to ask for forgiveness for going to our church. Which is Presbyterian, nothing wacka doo. I think this is so rude. When we visit her, we go to the Catholic church without question. I wish she was respectful.

So, there you go. I know this is long, but maybe it will explain some of the reasons why I cannot stand my mother-in-law and it is very, very hard to deal with her anymore. I guess I have gotten to the point of "Life is too short and I don't need to be treated this way anymore."

Sick to my stomach with a splitting headache....this is how I felt when I woke up this morning. My husband has just informed me that his mother is coming for Christmas. He thinks I am kidding, but the thought of this literally makes me physically ill. I cannot stand that woman and she ruins everything she attends. Oh joy, I can't wait until January!!!!! Sorry, I can't get excited about Christmas this year. I can't stand being around that woman.

Seventeen years ago on the 17th...I was shopping with my mom in a department store in Morgan Hill, Ford's Department Store. Morgan Hill is a suberb just south of Santa Clara County. My boyfriend's (at the time) family owned the entire chain of department stores. We lived in Santa Cruz. There was a store in Santa Cruz and the flagship store in Watsonville, along with several other stores along the coast and in the Central Valley. The store started shaking and my mom and I wrapped our arms around each other and got down close to the floor as there was nothing to get under. I remember the Jockey underwear rack falling down right behind my mom and we didn't hear anything. I remember watching the lights pop and fall out of the ceiling and we heard nothing. To this day I cannot explain to you why we heard nothing, because it must have made a lot of noise. I have lived in California since I was three years old. We lived in Santa Clara County which is right on the San Andreas Fault, the biggest, most active fault in California. We had earthquakes all the time. They were fun. Earthquakes are fun when they are 3.5 or so. This really didn't feel a lot different. We walked to the china department after it stopped and we were about three inches deep in the china and crystal on the floor. We went outside. My mom put the top down on her convertible and we all gathered around to listen to the radio as all the power was out in the store. When the radio got to the point of saying the Bay Bridge collapsed, everyone thought we heard it wrong. They said it again, we had heard it right. We knew this was different than any other earthquake we had experienced. My boyfriend and I locked the store up the best we could and started home. We went over Hecker Pass into Watsonville. He had a Volkswagon Cabriolet at the time and we were dodging boulders and just trying to beat the Highway Patrol to Watsonville. The radio had said that Hecker Pass was closed. We needed to get to the other side of the hill, to home, before they really closed the Pass and wouldn't let us through. When we got to the other side of the hill we looked down into Watsonville. It looked like a camp. A lot of people in Watsonville didn't feel safe going back into their homes and they were camping on the high school field, the main park in town and every other grassy area they could find. We looked down at all the campfires, tents and camp lights and knew it was bad in Watsonville. We stopped by his parent's house in Aptos. They had a swimming pool which, they said, had looked like a tsunami when the earthquake hit. Water was everywhere. We got home to our apartment in Santa Cruz and it looked like someone had turned it upside down. Santa Cruz is just fifteen minutes or so away from the epicenter of the earthquake in Loma Prieta. Books were everywhere, everything was off the shelves and the cats were gone. We listened to the radio all night. At about 10:00 a.m. they said there was looting in Santa Cruz. We went downtown to guard the Santa Cruz store. There was one guy who was just about to walk off with a leather jacket when we arrived. We also found out that a woman had died in the dressing room after the building next door fell onto the roof of the store. The entire downtown looked like a war zone. In the days following, we spent our time trying to get to work, clean out the Watsonville store so the wrecking ball could take it down forever and look for our other cat. One of our cats came home shortly after we did. Her stomach ruled her life and she wasn't going to miss a meal, no matter what happened. The other cat didn't come home for four days. For those of you not familiar with Northern California, the Ford's Department Store in Watsonville was the second oldest department store in the state. It was a very sad day when the wrecking ball came as the store had been the center of the community for over a hundred years. My boyfriend's grandfather put his house up for collateral and received a FEMA loan to rebuild the Watsonville store. It opened, with great gala, almost two years to the day after the earthquake. Unfortunately, it was too much for Watsonville. The store would have been more at home in San Francisco and it failed miserably. Today, the Ford's Department Store chain is no longer. I learned that when you live through something like this and when there is so much to do to make everything work, you have no time to grieve, no time to cry. When the Northridge earthquake hit years later, I sat on the couch and cried. I cried all the tears that should have been cried when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit on October 17, 1989.

This is something Dr. Phil NEVER talks about....When you have been slender all your life and you start gaining weight over the years. It is hard to see, except in your jean size, that you are actually gaining weight because you aren't looking for it. It started like this, I was happily going along in my size 6 Levi's when I went to pull them on one day and....SOMEONE SHRUNK MY JEANS!!!!!!...oh, wait, I am the only one who does the laundry. HHHHMMMM....did I just buy them? I wonder if they changed the design? Yes, that is it, they changed the design and it retroactively effected my jeans in my closet. Sneaky little devils those jean companies are to send their little worker elves into my closet so my jeans are up to date with the new design. Then what do they do, hide under your bed so they can watch your expression the next morning when you can't get your big toe in them? So, fine, I go to size 8. That's okay, it is still a single digit number. Size 8, that's still fine for me, I am getting older you know. I have had children. Size 8 it is. So, when my size 8 jeans are looking a little worn, I run into the store and pull a size 8 off the shelf, buy it and bring it home. The next morning....MY SIZE 8 JEANS DON'T FIT. Well then, let's look at the tag, I must have grabbed a size 6 instead. No, the tag says 8. Fine, let's write to Levi's and let them know that they are going to blow my ego all to hell if they make me go double digits and couldn't they please go back to the old style so I can wear my size 8 jeans and feel good about myself. I received a rather lengthy response from Levi's. Bottom line, we are sorry, we have been watching the market and we feel that this style fits more of the people in this size range than the last one. Fine, I'll clone myself a thousand times, will you bring the old style backthen???? So, off I went to double digits. On the way home I thought, "How did this happen?" I eat fruit, anything in season, apples, pears, nectarines (my favorite, I live for nectarine season), bananas and grapes all day at work. I eat yogurt or cottage cheese about mid morning. When I get tired in the early afternoon off I go to one of the two popular coffee places in San Francisco and get a caffeinated blended drink. What is that you say?? What do you mean they have a lot of calories in them? How can a drink have a lot of calories in it? How can you gain weight from a drink??? So, then it is time for my physical. My little tiny petite doctor, I swear she is about 5'1" and, maybe one hundred pounds soaking wet, tells me I should probably lose weight. Just a little bit. A very do-able number in fact (for a normal person with any type of willpower!!!). Then she asks me if I know where my problems are...yes, at P--t's and S-------ks. Well, she is also a cancer doctor, I'm sorry I can't think of the scientific proper name for it right now. So she says, "You know what I tell my cancer patients to drink so they can gain weight?" Gee, let me guess, S------ks?? Yes, they have a lot of calories. So, now I need to find a S------ks Anonymous meeting. I need help, I need support, I need to stand up in front of everyone and admit..."My name is Kathleen and I am a S------ksaholic" Then I need to sit with same group of people and try to detox myself from these evil drinks, go back to getting a straight cup of coffee and the pounds will just melt themselves off and I will be in a size 6 jeans again. Right???

Christmas Decisions...mine and my husband's, don't worry you guys don't have to stress about Christmas yet. Let me introduce you to my husband's family...two biological brothers from his parents marriage, five step brothers and sisters from his dad's second marriage and two step brothers and sisters from his mom's second marriage. Delete the two from mom's second marriage, his step brother is dead, his step sister, I don't think, give two shakes about Drew, my son. So, now we have seven. My step sister-in-law e-mailed all the kids over the weekend with an idea. Everyone will be assigned a family, through a drawing that dad and step mom do and you will spend $150.00 on this family. She said this way everything will be fair, whether you have no kids, one kid or three kids. Well, my other step sister-in-law has no kids and my sister-in-law has three kids. Sorry if this comes out wrong, but raising kids is expensive and if you don't have this expense, why should I spend just as much on a couple as I would on a family with three kids?? I think the basic idea is good as there are eight kids alone with the step brothers and sisters and four more with the brothers which brings us to an even dozen nieces and nephews, on husband's side alone, to buy gifts for, I just think the money is too high and I think that Christmas is for kids. Not that we don't get my other step sister-in-law (and her husband) something every year, we do, but it is just a little something for the house. I think I would have a problem spending $150.00 on them as a couple. Likewise, Drew certainly doesn't need $150.00 of anything for Christmas and I certainly wouldn't fill out the wish list for my husband and I as we don't need anything (short of a new kitchen, hardwood floors and two remodeled bathrooms, but that's another story). Help!!! What do I tell her without sounding cheap? Also, my sister-in-law and brother (biological) -in -law have three kids that we are close to, even though they live in New York and one of their daughters is my husband's goddaughter. Sorry, I can't see not buying them gifts. Do any of your families do this type of thing? How does it work? Does it work?

When I initially started this blog, or attempted to anyway, I was going on the theme of I need myself back. This isn't necessarily true. If I had my old self back I wouldn't have husband or my son or anything I have and cherish in my life right now. So, I'm dumping that theme for "Just Lovin' Life" which is what I do everyday. I loved the old Toyota commercial wherein it said, "Life, by it's very definition, is good" So true. So, in the coming days you may hear stuff about my husband, whom I love dearly, but drives me insane sometimes. He is a Virgo in the truest form (sorry Jenn) and needs things "just so" He is also my best friend and the love of my life. I will touch on my son, who is also the love of my life. He is in to every sport known to mankind. He is currently on the select traveling soccer team and trying out for two different basketball teams. He is looking forward to Little League next year, indoor soccer and probably football next fall instead of soccer. He decides what sport he wants to play, we don't push. We just drive him all over the place and make new friends with all the parents of his teammates. He is in elementary school and loves math. Reading is not his favorite subject and we need to push him in this area. My family, parents and brothers, who drive me crazy, but in the end I love. My mother-in-law, husband has no interest in reading the blog, don't worry. Anyway, my mother-in-law who I personally think is the most bitter, unhappy person on the face of the earth and she is determined to drag everyone down with her. Thank god she lives in Las Vegas and we don't see her much. I may even touch on my daugher, Sarah. I lost her when she was four days old, twelve years ago. Sometimes it hits me like a truck, sometimes I cry and all the time I know that the experience I had with her only made me stronger. In case anyone is doing the math, I was a single mother and this was before I married husband. So stick around, I would be honored, and give me opinions, tips, hints, anything that will help us all survive this thing called life and just keep lovin' it.