What's the deal with the underlined words and the annoying links that pop up? I don't like them. Make them go away. They are stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Memorial day, to celebrate memorial day I the first thing I did was look up who the first soldier to die in Iraq was. I looked at his picture and I learned about his life. When I return from work I am going to tell the kids about about him. This man was killed by friendly fire and I don't know if he was the actual first soldier to die but the reasons that he joined the military were compelling. This I will share with the children, lots of people are going to the beach today and I would like to be one of those people. With a little luck I will get to zoom in and out of work and then pack up for the beach. I am hoping to get there by 3 pm, earlier maybe.
  Last night I dreamed that I pulled up ro my house and there was a truck in my driveway that I did not recognize. My first instinct was that we were being robbed and I was going to call 911. I guess I was expecting Kelly because because I then thought to myself that perhaps her had trouble with his car and had ro borrow someone elses truck. The kids were with me, I entered the house first. There was a man inside who insisted  that this house was his and that we clean it up. At this time I am almost positive that this man is my husband but he doesn't look a think like him. He then takes a nap on the couch and I go near him, I want to smell him because I am sure if I smell him I will know if it is my husband. I run my fingers over him and I notice that he is wearing a necklace, a rope chain. It can't be Kelly he doesn't wear jewelry. It is dark inside, or am I blind. Not all the way blind but very visually impaired.
  The man leaves the house, I lock all the doors and I intend to call the police but no phones are working, it's night time now. He appears to be gone but his truck is in the driveway, I don't know why but I hide his keys in my underwear of all places. Then I go to sleep, he apparently never left the house and he wants his keys, I give them to him. Then we have what is probably the best dream sex dream ever.The next morning I am pretty goo goo over him and this confuses the kids, aspecially my oldest son. The intruder is about to leave town in his trailer He is arranging a few things in the back, it is almost empty when I notice a bowl full of rings, I immediately deduce that he is a serail killer. I ask him if these were from his vistims and he answered yes. I asked hi if he was going to kill me, and he said no or something else meaning no. I then decided that I should get his license plate and it was Nebraska 4562  or 65 not sure those were the first letters. He had multiple plates. He was wearing a mask. He drove off and I thought my daughter was missing but then I remembered that she was spending the night at her boyfriends house. Then I woke up.

The majority of my best blog material is a direct result of the tragedies and comedies that play out on the homefront.  These are the people that I know and this is what I write. I write to entertain myself, and there is therapeutic value in it. As my brood matures I realize that I am going to have to have to start writing fiction or at least cleverly disguise the epic adventures of the Ying family and pass it off as fiction.

Motherhood continued

 Of course my daughter's tears were rewarded by her school admin with exactly what she wanted so I was not even needed. The magical tears of Ms. L, the Drama Queen. Why don't my tears work as well. B used to encourage me to,cry to get my way with Kelly. Never works with him, if he even noticed. It could be because I am not a very theatrical crier, I'm more of the big wet tears rolling down my face until my eyes are so red and swollen that they look like I am having an allergic reaction crybaby. Maybe it only works for really beautiful people. I think loudness nis they key, she's pretty loud. She's what one would describe as a hysterical crier. You know when they say she was in hysterics, yeah well that's our ms. L able to summon tall hysterics in a single bound.

Motherhood Part I

 I have about 15 minutes before Ranger's bus gets here, if I wasn't waiting for him I would be hightailing it to L's school. There waits my crying daughter. Just a few minutes before she called I was feeling so accomplished for getting the taxes lowered on three more properties. This is probably the first time in recent history that she has real and not imagined concerns that I could actually help her with, but over the phone I could do nothing. We are connected to our children, spiritually. I believe this, it's not just sentiment or affection. It's a real physical emotional link. Maybe I am not as empathetic as I should be always. I'll have to be honest as connected as I feel to my children I don't share that connection with my parents. They didn't nurture the natural bond so it is really just not there. So here I am just waiting, trying to decide if I should drop little brother with the sitter before I collect her. I cannot always fly in and save the day. I have to keep telling myself this. We have to let them fall. I can be the big squishy soft thing that they can fall on so it won't hurt as much. This is what you have to look forward to young mothers. So relish the moment because it gets complicated at times.

Ying makes me ashamed of myself - I have avoided the blog like the plague and I don't suppose I have tell anyone why.  I know B would tell me I'm an idiot and doing exactly the OPPOSITE of what she wants me to do.  So...here I am.  With nothing to say.  Maybe if I just come say hi once in a while I can ease back into this....But, I really enjoyed reading about Ying's crazy life again.  The real one and the dream one.

I tried to do a load of laundry this morning like a good wifey and the door fell off of my worthless piece of crap front loading washer. Maybe this is the universes way of informing me that I am not meant to do laundry. I am sure there are at least a couple of blogs out there dedicated to my hatred of my front loading HE washing machine. Those of you that missed them are just going to have to use the blogger search tool. Well at six am that is the most exciting thing that has happened all day.
  It's property tax time once again (as if the broken washer wasn't an exciting enough read). We identified 3 of our houses that are valued way over market value. One of which is the house that the Dickersons used to inhabit. We haven't done anything to this house in years so it is somewhat in disrepair. The current tenant has a huge pit bull in the back yard so she had to go into the backyard and take pics for me. She claimed it was because she "didn't trust the dog". Now I have seen plenty of dogs humping peoples legs but as a testament to my wicked sense of humor I thought I would share this with you. The entire time she was back there the freaking dog was non stop on her leg on her back when she bent over. It was insane, She isn't a small women but it was a challenge for her to peel that damn thing off of her. I laughed so hard I almost peed myself. I would have filmed it but she had my camera.
  The tree that the Dickerson's planted is huge, even bigger than last year. I'll post another pic on Brandy's wall.

Lazy

  I plan on spending a lot of time out doors with the children this summer. We are going to the beach, to the lake, to the park, maybe a little camping as well. So I saw a a cooler with wheels on it at Walmart for twenty five dollars and bought it. We have at least a few ice chests, one has a broken lid and another has a drain that leaks but they are still usable. I wouldn't have just bought a new cooler for the heck of it, but wheels yippy. In my fantasy world my husband comes home from work sees the ice chest and praises me for my brilliance as if I had invented the wheeled ice chest myself. In reality he got upset that I purchased something that we didn't need and called me lazy. I  hope I don't catch him trying to use my wheeled Ice Cube.

I really need to stop watching old episodes of Medium on Netflix

DREAM 1I was with law enforcement and we were searching for something in a swamp. I heard someone say,"This is interesting, we found an arm."They began trying to pull a woman with long blonde hair out of the water but she was stuck among the plant like growth. Her body looked dead but not decomposed, I kept staring at her and I would get flashes of her alive in the water. She was murmuring something but I couldn't make it out. I could see that she was lying on a file box and papers were spilling out of it. I couldn't discern anything on the papers though. I felt more like an observer and less like a participant in this dream.

DREAM 2
 There was a women in my house, she looked like my nephews wife. I believe that she was living with us. Kelly was teaching her how to calk the shower. He was praising her but she was doing a pretty crappy job in my opinion. I was jealous of her. I knew Kelly was sleeping with her. Apparently she was one of my coworkers because she complained about something that I did at work. I said somethimg nasty to the both of them stormed off into my room and cried like a baby.

Gosh my kid is creative, or just plain mean.

  My daughter has been nursing a broken heart over the weekend. Young love ahhhhh, I don't  envy her. Even if she is more beautiful than I ever was, has her whole life ahead of her- unlimited potential and what not. No more teenaged angst for me thank you very much. I could do it again, but only if I knew what I  know now. God my life would be different maybe or exactly the same I don't know. I haven't done too bad for myself.
  Her first true love broke up with her after nearly a year of inseparable Siamese twin like codependency. Just like that, could have been he had a moment of clarity and realized that my progeny is nuts descended from a long line of impulsive lunatics. He regretted it almost immediately but she was too scorned to go back into the time machine and pretend it never happened. Although he has done this many times for her. He's a glutton for punishment, but damn have you seen the girl she's a knock out. So after 3 days of not seeing him which is some kind of a record she agrees to have him back upon  the following conditions. He cuts his long hair very short, wears a shirt to school that says I am an idiot for breaking up with my girlfriend and agrees in writing that her mother gets to name their first born son. The name will be supplied to me by her at a later date. This kid is creative. I don't know if I should feel ashamed or proud.

New Blood

I have come to the conclusion that what this blog needs is new blood. The old blood is busy, or has writer's block or just doesn't care to exert the effort required to share something, anything very often. I'm cooking chili right now. Not homemade really, all the spices are neatly portioned out in little cellophane packets. Could technically qualify as homemade. I am so very fat at the moment. That's my proclamation for the day. I am fat so be it.

Dream Theatre

  I have not had many dreams lately. I could be dreaming, but I forget about all of my minds theatre before I wake up. At times I will open my eyes and there will be that hint of a dream reel running but it fades fast. Last night I dreamt that I was a younger version of me. As the dream began I was alone in a small apartment. The carpet was worn and it reminded me of the a tiny efficiency apartment that I first shared with then  my future husband Eric. So if I go by the apartment, I must have been 17, just a year older than my daughter is now. I was looking at a big glass jar of cookies. They looked like chocolate chip, and homemade. They were not uniform in size. I noticed there was one lying on the counter and I raised it to my lips, it smelled very sweet, like a caramel candy. Vanilla, just a hint of it. I was about to take a  bite when the jar caught my attention. I noticed that one of the cookies had a chocolate chip missing. The small hole was dark inside which gave the cookie the appearance of being hollow. I brought my face closer to the container and that's when I noticed something small moving inside of it. I assumed it was a roach. I remember dropping the cookie in my hand repulsed. I then realized that the thing moving inside of the cookie was not a bug but a very small snake. I backed away from the jar and then saw an animated mouse toy with a long tail jump in the jar, underneath it's costume I could clearly see that it was a small serpent. I picked up a book and sat it on top of the jar to trap them inside. At that point I noticed that the jar was pretty much filled with snakes. Guests arrived and didn't seem too botheredI by the snakes but I was completely unnerved.
  Dream fragment- I'm in the home I live in now, only there is alot of light.
Side note- In reality my house is very dark, there are storm blinds and even boards from hurricane season 4 years ago. That's a whole other blog.
I can see a baseball field and a youngman that I used to know is coaching, the game is over he is walking to his truck. He sees me and knocks on my door. I answer but I don't want to let him in but I do. My children are young, like when I first met him. I don't want them near him. He tries to get me alone with the kids but I do not leave. His name was John.

 I will write later about what I think that dream means, it scares me.

I don't find the blog particularly appealing without Brandy, just saying. Maybe it was the feedback, or because even this tiny little blip on the web just reminds me so much of her that it is overwhelming. It feels lonely,. like there is something missing, like maybe there is no point. Does that sound silly? I think that she would think so because there is always some point to self expression. Even if the point is just to scream, just to be heard or to amuse. Well it has been over a year since she took off on that rocket ship into outer space. One of the main things that has changed in my life is the fact that I am working, and doing something that I really enjoy, you could say love. I say I love my job when people ask but love is such a strong word. I tend to love easily when it comes to people but saying that I love my occupation or even a hobby that is harder.  I've taken up photography as a hobby and I really love photographing people tormenting my family by chasing them with a camera. I find myself wanting to document the most mundane things. I just want to tell a story with pictures. ` I don't know if I ever would have figured that out that I was a photographer if it were not for this job. When I first saw the ad in the paper I told myself that this was something that I would like to do. They asked for a resume which I didn't really have so I made one. It wasn't difficult. I had no idea how I was going to get my children to school work and pick them up, rides activities and all that entails but I figured it out. I don't miss much with them and the things I do miss are probably those things that I would have tried to avoid anyway.
  I have no idea where this was going but there I've written something.