Here's to you, my soulmate and cousin

COUSIN STACEY IS COMING TO OKLAHOMA NEXT WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As you can see from the gratuitous over-use of exclamation points, that I am oh so excited for this event to occur! Cousin Stacey and I have been cousins since ... oh my gosh did I really just start that sentence intending to tell you how long we've been cousins? Why yes, yes I did. Silly me.

I feel so blessed to have her in my life now and cannot thank God enough for bringing us together at this point in our lives. Too many times we've declared that we might possibly be soul mates or at the very least twins, separated at birth, which makes the family tree cease branching in an oogey sort of way. Since January we have shared countless emails, more than one 2 hour phone call and some rather hilarious IM sessions.

She's coming in for her birthday and we are taking her on the Gambling Run (Courtney, can we borrow the Clipboard O' Fun? HA!) then having a Cousin Party on Saturday night. Courtney will be at the Hill, but she said she might be able to sneak out for awhile. I have yet to hear back from Uncle David and Keith and Alyssa (HINT HINT), but we're hoping that everyone can make it for another side-splitting evening of cousin bonding. I can hardly stand it!

She chided me in an email that (sniff sniff, sob sob) that I hadn't blogged about her impending visit and I assured her that her coming into town was A#1 on my list of things to blog about today. So Cousin Stacey - here's to you. I love you, girl!!!

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Friday I spent all day going through clothes. Rubbermaid box upon Rubbermaid box of the kids' clothes. Over Spring Break Sis and I had tried the spring wardrobes on the kids, handing down, giving back and just generally making a mess out of things. Since then the boxes have set in my van, then in the toyroom floor, then in the living room floor. So Friday, since the rain was preventing me from having any fun on the internet, I worked on the clothes. Abby and Sam are completely set for spring and summer clothes-wise, I just have to buy them both some flip flops and sandals. Kady, on the other hand, has more clothes than Imelda Marcos had shoes. I called Sis at one point and asked her how many dresses she thought the average little girl had. She said, "Well, I'd say 20 would be over average." My reply:"My daughter is more than twice over average then." She said, "OH gosh I was kidding! Most little girls don't have 20 dresses!!!" Well, mine had 40. That was just dresses. That didn't count the 10 pairs of jean shorts, 8 pairs of knit shorts, 5 skorts, 25 t-shirts, 2 pair of capris, 5 skirt/blouse ensembles and 2 pair of shortalls. Yeah. The kid gots clothes. So I began the arduous process of weeding through them all. Last year, she got to keep all of the clothes that fit, even though she could've worn two outfits a day through the summer and would've never had to repeat. But this year she is sharing a closet with her sister and therefore she is limited on the amout of clothing she can own at any given time. She could care less - as long as she has dresses, she's cool. It's her momma that loves her clothes. So throughout the course of the day, I managed to knock it down to 15 dresses (some play, some church), 2 pair jean shorts, 5 pair knit shorts, 2 capris, 3 skorts, 10 tshirts, 2 blouse/skirt ensembles and one pair shortalls. I think it will fit now. I hope.

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I finished pricing all of the garage sale items, washed and hung up all of the clothes for the consignment shop and at 2:30 Friday I took a shower. Chandler's daddy picked him up at 3:30, the kids got off the bus at 3:45 and I immediately loaded them up and we drove in to Fairland to the consignment shop. I drove by Sis' house (it's on the way, I'm not stalking her) and saw her loading the kids into her in-laws' truck. I pulled off in the ditch to say hey and see what they were doing. The original plan was to take the boys to karate, then go to Mom's to help her price her garage sale items, spend the night and then get up early for the garage sale. Well, our friends, Terry and Melissa, just bought a ginormous house and are in the process of moving. All of the help they had recruited had turned up AWOL. So being the kind friends they are, Sis and Bub offered to get the truck and help them move. I know what it's like to move with children so I told them to load up the munchkins into my van and I'd take them while they helped with the moving. Sis assured me she'd be done with the moving by "early evening". I have got to start remembering that her idea of "early" and mine are two totally different things.

I took all 5 munchkins to the consignment shop, back home, loaded the garage sale stuff into the van, threw Nutri-Grain bars at them and off we ran to town. The accountant had called and our taxes were done and they wanted money and signatures (don't we all). Fortunately for me and my gas tank, the accountant and the karate dojo are on the same street in Commerce, which is 25 minutes from here. We flew to town, praying that all of the HiPo's were on a dinner break, cashed a check/made a deposit, signed for the taxes and got the kids to karate with 5 minutes to spare. Then after karate it was off to McD's where Happy Meals were ordered and bribes were made. I took them to Mom's (because remember, that was the plan) and fed them then Mr. Diva stopped by and he ate while I sat and stared at him because we never see each other anymore. Thank God I brought a book with me because the evening just kept going and going and going and I was stuck there with the kids, all of my stuff was priced, Mom's stuff wasn't ready to price and where the HELL was my sister?????

At 8:45 Mom got in from work to find me sitting on the couch reading while steam quietly rolled from my ears, the five kids watching Popeye and her other daughter nowhere to be found. She had to go back to the college to take some linens to a kid that was staying on campus overnight and when she got back, Sis was back. It was about 10 by this time. At 10:30 the neighbor girl from next door came over to look through our stuff before the sale. We had just broke open a bottle of wine and Mom offered her a glass. What ensued was 4 hours of utter hilarity and Amy so thoughtfully educated us as to what "tossing someone's salad" means. I had no idea. She works with teenagers so I figure she's up on all the lingo. Wow. Makes me kind of not want to ever get out of this smart-mouthed 8 year old pre-teen thing if salad tossing is what teenagers talk about now. Yikes. Amy went home around 2:30, after my 4 glasses of wine had made me so unbearably sleepy that I dozed off on the kitchen table while she and Sis talked about people and things I had no clue who or what they were.

Amy left, we opened a bag of Sour Cream and Onion Lay's, I got a Dr. Pepper to caffeinate the wine in my system, Mom opened a beer and we had declared that the pricing of the garage sale was to begin. Then Mom's phone rang. Yes, at 2:30 am. It was John, this guy that is kind of in the middle of one of those non-divorces from his non-wife who he was non-married to. Does that make sense? He said he was on her street with two six-packs if she was thirsty. I guess she was because she told him to stop right in. He wasn't 3 sheets to the wind - I'm guessin' it was more like 10 or 12. Hilarious, I gotta say. When I fell asleep sitting straight up in a wooden rocking chair I decided it was time to get some sleep, pricing or no pricing.

I have no clue how long John stayed, but after he left Mom went to Wal*Mart while Sis, the kids and I slept. We got up at 5:30, I called Mr. Diva to get him up for work and we headed outside armed with coffee and price tags. Holy SHIT it was cold Saturday morning! I was trying to clean off some tables we were going to use, but when I'd spray the cleaner on the table, it would freeze immediately. Had I paid attention to that bad omen I'd have marched my ass straight back into that house and gone back to bed. But noooooooooooooooo we kept right on. We had three Cozy Coupes for sale, so we set it up like a car lot and put signs on them like "Everything Must GO!" and "Low miles" and "Energy efficient" on them. Got quite a few chuckles before they sold, I gotta say. We got everything set out, perplexed that we didn't have the usual early birds who get there as you're setting up. But it was cold, we said, they'd show up as it warmed up. Well, it would've been beneficial if someone had told us prior to the planning of the garage sale that Neosho, MO, was having their city-wide garage sale yesterday and we were no competition for the 1,000 families participating in that.

If we had 40 customers yesterday I'd be over estimating a bit.

I made a whole $54. Mom made $15. Sis made $82, but she had mattresses and big stuff. All of that freezing, all of that sleep deprivation for roughly $150. I shouldn't complain because that $54 is going to pay for my oil change and the mounting and balancing of my four new tires, so I'll hush.

When we finally decided to quit beating the dead horse of a garage sale, we then began the exciting task of repricing the flea market worthy items for relocation. We made it home last night around 5:30, after I had stopped at the chicken place in town on the way home. I threw dinner at the husband and the kids, told them to get their PJ's on, laid down on couch and DIED for about an hour. After that I had the energy to get up and shower, snuggle with the kids a bit, order a PPV movie and then send everyone to bed. Paul and I watched Saw, which we had started watching at MagnetLady's awhile back, but had never had the chance to finish. Wow. It was awesome. I had inadvertently read a spoiler on it so I spent the entire movie trying to find where the spoiler came in and was perplexed as all get out. Then after it was over, I gave myself a headache trying to work out a time line in my head of how it all went down. I am so compulsive it's not even funny.

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It's 12:17 pm, I'm still in my pj's, the kids are outside, one of the neighbor kids it up here and I'm debating as to whether the kids get PB&J or grilled cheese for lunch. It's a tough life I live, people.

I do have to clean the house. I mean, really actually clean the house this time. I leave on Friday for this spring's "selfish vacation" and I'm leaving the kids with the sitter on Friday and then with Paul the rest of the weekend. That is simply a recipe for Messy House Flambe'. So if I take care of some of the big stuff, get it in order, maybe it'll be easier to piece back together when I get home.

Oh yeah, 7 pages left in Fahrenheit 451. Read it. It rocks.