Visit the Shaks

Ah, spring. It's my favorite season and it always makes me think of how grateful I am to live in Tennessee. People not from Tennessee won't get this, and people from Tennessee will laugh, because spring is both the best and worst season to live here.

Tennessee really puts on her best clothes for you in the spring. It's not that she's not beautiful in the fall, summer, or winter, but Tennessee really dresses up and puts on a show in the spring. We were driving past a corn field, turned purple with some kind of plant that nobody in my family can agree on. My kids got excited and said, "Look! The corn field got all dressed up for Easter!" Indeed, it seems they all have.

And yet, even though there is great beauty in Tennessee, we all have to pay for it with seasonal allergies, unless one happens to have nasal passages of steel. Still, I think it is a small price to pay for all that beauty. You can have your "purple mountain's majesty"- I'll take my purple cornfields and bright green hills.

This post was for the April Group Writing Project over at MamaBlogga. Click the link to see how you can participate!

Allergy season is upon us. Many people suffer horribly from seasonal allergies. Sometimes it can be very difficult to determine if your symptoms are caused by an allergic reaction or from an actual cold.

Most of the symptoms of respiratory allergies and the common cold virus closely resemble each other. In fact, I am trying to determine if my oldest son has a cold or allergies right now. If you can determine which one it is, you can decide on the best treatment options to help alleviate the symptoms.

Dr. Spock.com might be able to help. Read "Allergy or Cold: How to Tell" to help distinguish the difference between allergy or cold.

You simply must read this article from 1995 about the internet. The best part:

"Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data."

Thank God for Google, eh? Heh.

I have been having early morning fantasies today. No need to run and tell my husband because they are all rated G. I have decided that I want an Easy Button. Of course, this would be a magical Easy Button.

Already, I have a full list of what I would like this Easy Button to do for me:

*Laundry

*Dishes

*Bathrooms

*Mop Floors

*Vacuum

*Dust

*Windows

*Cooking

*My online work for the day

*Turn my very fussy baby into a happy go lucky guy

The question is, what would I do with all of my new found time? I don't know but I would sure love to find out!

This graphic I found at trulylovable.com is so true it breaks my heart. This Easter was a little sad, it was our first without my grandma. We talked about her some and cried some. I don't know that it'll ever completely go away, that hole that Grandma left when she died.

Of course holidays will be a little harder, but it still creeps up on me every now and then out of nowhere. Like when I saw this pic, I just thought, that is so true. And I cried a little bit.

Then, out of nowhere, clear as day, I heard my grandma's voice in my head. "Don't cry for me, honey. You'll see me again someday." I don't know whether to call and have myself committed, or if it's really my grandma, or if my brain is compiling some memory of my grandma with how she really would be. I like to think she's out there, watching for me and I really will see her again someday. This has been so hard.

Yesterday was a warm day and somehow or another I ended up at a park not once, but twice! Me and my youngest met some friends at a park and then went for some lunch. It was good to get out for a bit and Baby D went down for a nice nap once we got home. The fresh air and running around wore him out!

When my husband arrived home from work, he immediately said "Let's all go to a park"! Huh? Did MY husband actually say that? Of course the first thing that entered my mind was that I had already been to a park. Instead of saying that I said "Okay" and started getting everyone ready. I was not going to pass up an opportunity to have a nice family outing. Besides, my two older boys missed the first park outing since they were in school.

My husband and oldest son did some batting practice at the park while my two little guys played. When it was time to go, my husband surprised me again by announcing that we were going out to dinner. Every now and then he is full of brilliant ideas such as these. It was a nice day.

I am looking forward to more park days with spring here and summer approaching. It is great exercise for the kids and myself and the fresh air is great for clearing the mind. More park days please!

My friend GingerSnaps shared this post on Google Reader and I'm glad she did- it's 25 ways to simplify life with kids, and there's a lot of good advice there, like:

Self-sufficiency. This one tip could simplify your life greatly, over time. However, it will make things more complicated in the short term. The idea is to teach your kids to do things for themselves as they get older and more capable. Teaching them to do something themselves instead of just doing it yourself takes time and can be a little frustrating at first, but it will pay off for years to come. My kids, for example, can make themselves breakfast, shower and dress themselves, brush their teeth, and generally get themselves ready in the morning with only minimal prompting from us. They can clean their rooms, wash dishes, sweep, mop, dust, wash the car. The older ones can cook basic dishes and babysit the younger ones. This type of self-sufficiency has saved my wife and me tons of time and trouble over the years.

I cannot agree more. Teaching your kids how to do things for themselves not only simplifies things for you as a parent, but teaches them important life skills for later on. I didn't know how to do laundry when I moved out of my mom's house because she didn't want any of us possibly screwing up her washing machine. That's fine for her, but I had to learn about doing laundry the hard way. My 7 year old knows how to do laundry although the actual task is not quite at her age level at this point, so it is not a regular chore for her. It will be someday, though, oh yeah.

Head over for more great advice.

I need to lose about 8 to 10 pounds. In the past, this would not have been a big deal for me. I would have set my mind to it and the weight would be gone. After 3 kids, 2 c-sections and passing years, I am not finding it as easy as it used to be.

I used to have amazing snack control. Basically, I did not allow myself to snack and it was no big deal. Sad to say, I have turned into a snacker. After being home for so long, the bad habit has taken a hold of me. My rigid self control seems to have vanished. I weigh more now than I did last year and have gained back some of the weight I lost after my last baby. I have finally realized that it is time to get very serious about it before it becomes a constant issue.

I found a cool website called The Daily Plate. You can enter your height and weight and how many pounds you would like to lose. It will tell you how many calories to eat daily to achieve your goal. You can keep a daily journal of what you ate that day and what exercises you performed. They have groups you can join for motivation and low-fat recipes in their forum. This might be what I need to start taking what I eat more seriously.

My power went out this morning for nearly half an hour. My oldest kid, ever the joker asked me if I paid the bill. This led to my daughter believing that someone in the neighborhood didn't pay their bill and caused the entire neighborhood's power to be out. Thank goodness it doesn't really work that way or we'd never have power.

I secretly enjoy power outages because it forces us to spend some time together as a family- time that we would normally be working on our own separate things- Flip playing the Wii, me on my computer, my husband playing the PlayStation, you get the idea.

I remember a power outage at another house I lived in- we were on the same power grid as the hospital and our power went out very rarely, and when it did go out, it was never for long. One day, though, the power went out and stayed out. I walked outside of my house to see if it was just my house at the same time several of my neighbors did. It was just about dinner time, and we all started talking about how hungry we were. One person said they had hamburgers thawed out, I had some charcoal, and another neighbor had a big grill. We ended up grilling out together that night, and we didn't even notice when the power came back on.

Yeah, I dig a good power outage every now and then.

Could it be that time already? My youngest son is 19 months old and I believe it is time to put away the crib and bring up the toddler bed. Dan has looked at me with his evil little grin and attempted to start climbing out of his crib. Although he has not actually climbed out yet, I think he would be safer in a toddler bed at this point.

My middle son was 18 months when I transitioned him. He had climbed out and IN his crib several times so it was very clear that I had to change his bed situation. He was thrilled to have a new "big boy bed". The transition could not have gone any smoother and I hope it will be just as easy with Dan.

Here are a few safety precautions I plan to take first:

• Get a wall anchor system to attach his dresser to the wall so there is no chance of it falling on it if he attempts to climb it
• Put new safety latches on the drawers of his dresser. There are latches on there now but some need to be replaced.
• Get a lock for his closet door. He has no business in there.
• Put a child proof door knob cover on the INSIDE of his door. I do not want him to be able to get out on his own at this point. I did this with his older brother rather than putting a gate in his doorway and it worked beautifully. I will hear him if he wants me.
• Of course, I already have all of the electrical sockets child proofed.

Some articles say that you do not necessarily need to move your child to a toddler bed just because they climb out of the crib. I personally think that that it is necessary. Even if your child is a good climber, there is always the chance that they could fall and break something. Besides, if they are climbing out I think that is a good indication of being ready for an older type of bed.

Here are a few tips for the transition (after you have made sure your child's room is as safe as possible):

• Introduce the toddler bed early in the day, not right before bedtime. Let your child enjoy it and explore it well before they are expected to sleep in it.
• Be sure to put your child's favorite stuffed animal or blanket on the bed when you introduce the bed to your child.
• Keep your child's bedtime routine just the same as it has always been.
• It is normal for your child to get out of the bed and try to play. Come back in the room and gently remind your child it is time to sleep and put him/her back in the bed. This will go on for awhile but they will get the idea.

This is my last baby and my last crib. It is a big milestone but it is time to embrace it. My little men are growing up!

In the time since I wrote the title and put the picture in this post, I've played a few hands of internet spades, talked in an IM, read a bunch about raising urban chickens, and played around on Twitter.

Yes, I am a procrastinator. I've learned to keep my procrastination down to manageable bits, but sometimes when my schedule is messed up, or I find something horribly interesting like the urban chicken thing, I get knocked off track and can't find my way back.

While surfing around this weekend, I found an interesting post about getting the procrastination under control, there are a lot of good tips there.

What are you doing to control procrastination tendencies?

Spring began a few days ago and Easter is over. Most children are on spring break right now. Once they go back, they will be on the last stretch of the school year.

Is there really only two and a half months of school left? Where did the time go? This school year seemed to fly by even faster than usual. Of course, I say this every year. Each year just goes faster and faster. In fact, this past winter has been the fastest I can remember!

When I was younger, I felt that Jan., Feb. and March were such sloooooow months. Now they go by in the blink of an eye just as the summer months do. It is kind of scary how every year goes faster than the last. Does anyone else feel time going faster than ever?

It's spring break, finally. We get ours after Easter, which it seems most people got theirs this week. We just have to be different here in Tennessee, I guess. Of course, we get an extra day thanks to Good Friday. We like to take lots of time off whenever possible.

I'm excited to get to spend time with the kids this week. A lot of the time my oldest son spends spring break with his dad, but I think this year I'll have him for most of the break. I'm super excited!

We're not going anywhere or doing anything, but I think it'll still be fun just to have this time together. I think we'll hit some of the local tourist spots and pretend we're tourists. Shopry Mills, here we come! ;)

I would like to wish everyone a very Happy Easter! Whatever you do, do not pester the Easter Bunny!

Lately I've been very...meh...about the state of the world and humanity in general. The general hatred of the middle class and upper class to the poor people of the world is something I cannot get over. I sit somewhere in the bottom half of the middle class myself, and I've been below the poverty line for much of my adult life, so I'm on Team Poor Folks.

I've lived in dangerous neighborhoods most of my adult life. I've lived in neighborhoods where I got pulled over by the cops who asked what a white girl like me was doing in a neighborhood like that (living there, sad to say) and I've lived in places where the woman across the street from me was a prostitute, and I've lived right next door to neighborhoods where the people shot the mailman and when the paramedics came to rescue the mailman, they shot the paramedics. Needless to say, those people didn't get mail for quite some time afterward. Fortunately I lived a couple of blocks over and  continued to receive mail.

So now I live in a neighborhood that is the nicest neighborhood I've ever lived in. And still, we have driveby shootings and burglaries and gang problems. The difference is, that's not my part of the neighborhood. My part of the neighborhood is filled with mostly lower-paid working class types who don't have time to become criminals- they're too busy working.

Yet the vitriol directed toward my neighborhood because of the few bad apples that spoil the bunch is horrible. This is a comment from a story in the newspaper about the police catching people responsible for 13 burglaries in my neighborhood:

Its like I said before just fence in that whole stinking neighborhood and call it (My neighborhood's name) Penitentiary. Its the worst development ever built in the state of Tennessee so either fence it in or burn it down and run the scum out of the county and the state.

Like I said before, the vast majority of my neighbors are working class people who are good people and not criminals. But this fool wants to burn it all down or fence us all in. It's enough to make me want to cry and I  see these types of comments on a daily basis.

That's why it's awesome to see a story like this. Thank you, B-Mo, for restoring a bit of my faith in humanity.

With Easter approaching, many of us will be dyeing Easter eggs. You can use the basic kits that are bought from the store or you can get a little more creative.

Amazingmoms.com can give you some ideas with "A Dozen ways to decorate your Easter Eggs". Here is one way that sounds creative:

"Rubber Band Designs: Wrap elastic bands around hard cooked eggs, then drop them in food-coloring dye. Remove eggs, pat dry with paper towel and remove rubber bands. The parts of the egg covered with rubber bands will not be colored. Once the rubber bands are removed, you can drop the egg into a different color dye."

They also have ideas for marbling, sponging and waxing your Easter eggs. Read the rest to get more Easter egg decorating ideas. Have fun!

Let me warn you ahead of time. Hidradenitis Suppurativa is pretty gross- it's basically chronic boils. Here is the Wikipedia entry about it. If this sort of stuff grosses you out, you might want to go read elsewhere, because I'm going to talk pretty frankly about it.

I have had hidradenitis suppuritiva, or HS for short, since I was 20 years old. I was just diagnosed with HS, however, last year. This is partly due to the fact that I was embarrassed to talk to anyone about it, and then when I finally started talking to doctors about it, I was brushed off and told it wasn't a big deal.

The first time I got a boil, I freaked out. I was working in a mailroom for a large book distributor here in Nashville. We had 4 stations- 2 of them stations where you could sit down and 2 stations that kept you standing up all day. This, of course, happened on a week where I was at a sit down station. I developed a boil on my hiney and it made sitting horribly painful. I finally broke down and asked my mom to look at it. Let me tell you, dropping trou in front of your mother when you're 20 years old is pretty embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as it would have been in front of a stranger. My mom just said, "Yeah, that's a boil. I used to get them a lot when I was your age, and your grandpa had them pretty badly, too. I think it's hereditary."

It wasn't that bad for many years, but after the birth of my daughter, it started getting worse and migrating from my butt and groin area to under my breasts, my armpits, and around my belly button. It went from a minor occasional annoyance to a full blown problem that sometimes causes me to be able to normally function.

I went to several different doctors about this over the years. One doctor lanced a boil for me with no pain relief. He told me that it wouldn't hurt that much and putting the lidocaine in would hurt more than the lancing. Well, now that I've had a boil lanced and drained both ways, I can say this doctor was a terrible liar. It hurt horribly without pain meds. Injecting lidocaine is uncomfortable, to be sure, but cutting me open with a scalpel with no pain meds is agony.

Doctors tend to do that kind of stuff not to be deliberately cruel, but because they are ignorant of this disease. Like I said before- I was brushed off for years as "having a little problem with boils" before my current doctor took me seriously, did some research, and is working with me to provide the best and most painless treatment options.

If you are suffering from chronic boils, don't be embarrassed. Go to a doctor about it. There are treatment options although there is no known cure. If your doctor doesn't know about this, or doesn't have a satisfactory treatment plan for you, ask for a referral to a dermatologist. This is not something to be embarrassed about- this is something that is treatable.

As for me, I'm combining diet and lifestyle changes (losing weight, restricting caffeine, avoiding fried foods) with antibiotic therapy and pain control. Yesterday I had a flareup so bad that I had to have the boil cut open and drained. Now we're going to me using the antibiotic constantly to hopefully prevent flareups. Eventually, I may have to have surgery. But at least we're on the right track.

There's no need to continue to suffer. No need for embarrassment. The more of us that "come out of the closet", the more awareness and hopefully more research will be done and a cure may be found.

Some of us tend to gain a little extra padding over the winter months. Nothing wrong with that, it helps us stay warm! If you are at all like me, this is the time of year where the thought of putting on a bathing suit creeps you out a little bit. It is time to do something about it!

I have a treadmill. A poor, dusty and neglected treadmill. I am happy to say that I have used it twice in the last week. My plan is to walk on it for 30 minutes every day. For me, that is aiming very high because I have never been big on exercising. I start out with a plan and it usually gets dumped rather quickly. Not this time!

I recently turned 34 and it occurred to me that I am not getting any younger. Now that I work at home, I just don't get the same amount of physical activity as when I worked in an office. If I don't start some kind of exercise program now, I am going to pay the price in the near future.

I looked up walking on the Internet to find out how much I should do to actually benefit from it. Most sites I visited said you should walk one hour a day every day. Yikes!  Actually, the one hour a day is if you want to lose 1 to 2 pounds a week. Personally, I am thinking about 5 pounds total and some toning. I think that 30 minutes each day should help me accomplish that goal.

Who is in it with me? We could have a little Exercise Shak group going on here and check in with each other for motivation. Let me know if you are interested and I will do a "Wednesday Walking" post weekly where we can talk about it.

I belong to a mom's group. A mother in the group expressed her hesitation and fears about sending her son to preschool for the first time. She said she was a nervous wreck and kept second guessing her decision to send him. The first day ended up going very well and although she cried, her son did not.

Although I am home with my children, I made the decision to send my son to preschool last fall. I felt that he needed the social interaction with other children. Also, I wanted him to get a sense of a structured learning environment before he entered kindergarten. It has gone amazingly well and I am very glad I sent him.

For me, the decision was not as hard to make as it was for the lady in my mom's group. After having three kids, I have learned a few things along the way. Most of what I learned stemmed from a natural progression rather than a great epiphany.

With my first son, I coddled him more and gave in to what he demanded more. With my second, I learned to say no better and stick with it. I was able to "train" him more rather than letting him "train" me! By the time I had my third son, my "devoted" time with him was spread out between three children so it was another learning adjustment for me. What I found out through these years are things I wish I knew the first time around:

• It is okay to say no even when you are met with a disappointed face
• A little bit of crying it out is necessary sometimes so that your child understands you mean it
• Train the child before he/she trains you because SOMEONE is getting trained, let it be you!
• You don't have to entertain the child every second of the day. Let them find ways to entertain themselves otherwise they will grow up getting bored easily.
• If they don't eat at a meal, don't stress about it. You really can't make them eat and they will eventually eat when they get hungry.
• It is only natural to want to overprotect your child and keep them with you safe and sound. However, teaching your child to be independent is probably one of the best things you can do for him/her.

That last item leads me back to preschool. Aside from teaching some basic pre-K skills, it helps them to learn how to be independent from Mommy. Sure, they could learn this in Kindergarten but I think these days children need this before they reach elementary school. With so many working mothers, there is a large percentage of kids that are already advanced (compared to 20 or so years ago) by the time they reach kindergarten.

I think my friend made a great decision to send her son to preschool. When my youngest guy gets to be that age, I will send him too.

The failing economy has had a whole lot of play in the media. I haven't talked a whole lot about it here because I've been talking about it at Home Ec 101, and one can only stand so much economy gloom and doom in one day. However, this post from Aunt B really makes me think about just how many of us are struggling:

Some days, I’ve got to tell you, I just feel like the fleshy conduit through which one giant company funnels money from another giant company.  And I worry that I can’t stretch to accomodate those companies wanting more money from each other.

I keep thinking that we should grow a garden, maybe ask Mack if there’s a patch of sunny ground near the creek we can borrow, but then I worry that it might get to the point, with gas prices going how they’re going, when I can’t afford to get up there to tend it.

I just feel ill at ease about things and have no confidence in our leadership to guide us through this.

I wish I’d paid more attention to my grandparents talking about what they did during the Depression.

Lemme tell ya, B, I had grandparents who talked constantly about the Depression, but it doesn't really give me answers for dealing with today's world. Well, it does to some extent- my one grandma talked about eating endless beans and rice to the point where as an adult she wouldn't touch rice.

My other grandma said they hardly noticed there was a Depression on because she lived in rural Indiana where everyone was terribly poor to begin with, and things didn't change much during the Depression. They were still poor, but at least they had food to eat since they grew it themselves.

I think the "being poor to begin with" part is the part that will be to my advantage, if the economy gets any worse. I'm not nearly as poor right now as I have been before. I've lived in that ugly part of the economic system known as the "working poor". I was in the unenviable position of making $25 a month too much to qualify for food stamps, yet the cheapest rent I could find (in a bad neighborhood, at that) was more than half my monthly income. But I pulled my budget tightly around me and wore it like armor. Eventually, I got out of the pit of financial despair.

We're still pretty poor, but we're not that poor. And I've learned that as long as I have my friends and family, I can lose everything materially and still be fine. I'll pull lessons learned from my Depression-era grandparents to grow some of my own food and find new ways to cook rice, and we'll be fine.

For your St. Patrick's Day, here is a cute little video that is sure to warm the heart. Have a happy, fun and green St. Patrick's Day!

I have never been so ready for a weekend in my life. Here, enjoy this video in the meantime:

Spring is in the air! At least there have been glimpses of it here and there. I have noticed more birds singing each morning and we are being treated to another warm day here in Maryland.

I have started thinking about shopping for summer clothes and my son is about to start his baseball season. All of the signs are here.... I guess I cannot ignore that it is also the season for spring cleaning!

I must admit that I am more of a sporadic cleaner rather than a methodical cleaner. I get it all done but I am not the person to give tips or advice for such things. Luckily, Kristy from Homemaker's Cottage blog sounds very motivated and can tell us how to "Jump Start Your Spring Cleaning!"

"Once you've set your weekly pace, decide how much time you can afford to spend on your cleaning on a daily basis. For me, an hour or two is a realistic goal, but I don't expect that 60 or 120 minutes to necessarily be a consecutive time frame! With lots of interruptions and even lots more to do, I let myself work on projects in small bites of time. Sometimes I can squeeze an hour of work into my afternoon, but more often I get things done in 15 or 30 minute segments."

I told you she was motivated! Usually I just pick a chore. Then, that chore leads to another one because I notice it needs doing while doing the original one. But then again, my computer is not broken so maybe the cleaning can wait!

Commenter David let me know about the website CommonTies.com, and I'm really glad he did. It's a PostSecret-like site, but different. You'll have to go there to read it for yourself because the stories there presented with the artwork are very compelling and often heart wrenching, like the one I have featured here.

It's funny how much in common you can have with people you have never even met. One of my grandmothers is in the end stages of dementia and the line "I miss him terribly and he's not even gone" chokes me up because I feel the exact same way about my grandma.

It is human nature to reach out like this, and to be touched so deeply. I'm just glad Common Ties exists, and David told me about it. You should all go take a look.

If your husband (or wife) was caught up in a mess like New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, would you be able to stand by him/her? The political world has different rules than our normal lives do. I for one, would not be able to play by them.

Fist Full Of Marbles raises this question in a post called "Stand By Your Man":

"I'm sorry but in my opinion when the politician is caught in something of this nature I don't believe the wife should have to stand by his side and act like she's above doing and feeling what every other wife in America would be feeling. That it is NOT okay, that she is ashamed, and even if she chooses to stay with him it will never take away from what she feels at that moment - the desire to be as far away from him as possible at that moment."

I feel very bad for Mrs. Spitzer and the tough situation she is in. She is caught between her "wifely political duties" and being a woman who has been wronged. I wish her the best of luck in this tough predicament. How would you handle this if you were in her shoes?

I remember the first time the price of gas ever entered my life. I remember the lines at the gas stations, but I was so young I never really equated that with the prices. It wasn't until I was 7 years old and we were walking to church (we went to church downtown where you had to park in a lot and then walk a block or so to ge