To be enlightened

After being on the market for approximately 8 to 9 months our house out by the lake sold. Anyone who's sold/bought a house knows there were snafus and snags. An inspection of the house proved that the house needed to be lifted a bit. The oven stopped working sometime during the last 3 years. But overall the house was in good condition. Once we figured out how to fix those issues so we could close relatively quickly the process went pretty smoothly.

We did get pretty close to the asking price. I was just gratefull that PF accepted the bid without any haggling. I remember the night that PF handed me the contract. We were in a restuarant. I jumped up and did a dance. People looked up from their meals to watch me. I didn't care. I was just so happy.

Now we have money. We no longer look at every purchase and wonder if it is essential to our living. Now we can go into Quiznos and get the kids a bag of chips and a drink and buy a children's meal at the competition next door. I've got big plans for that money that we spent on the morgtage. We are going to start saving for the kids education. We aren't going to have a seperate account for each of them. It's all going to go into one account. It will be our money-- not their's.

I'm also going to go out shopping for kitchen chairs, material to recover the dining room chairs and to make a valance for the dining room window. Our other expense we plan to do is put in a fence. I'm tired of the neighbor's dog's poop in our yard.

I feel lighter than I have for years. And I know that PF does to.

While we're on the subject...

When I was pregnant with my children I had lots of strange dreams. After the two pregnancies I was amazed that the two pregnancies were similiar in that I had dreams. Each pregnancy I dreamt of celebrities. I am not a celebrity hound. I don't read the gossip rags. I may occassionally glance through People but do not seek it out. Another similiarity was the subject matter of the dreams remained constant for the particular pregnancy and each of the subject matter was disturbing for markedly different reasons.

For the first pregnancy I will not describe those dreams in detail; nor, even hint to what they were about. What I'll tell you is Goldie Hawn, Sally Fields and several other female actresses were in those dreams.

While I carried MI the actors ranged from Don Knotts to Tom Cruise (Which some of you may remember that I disliked Tom Cruise long before it came into vogue.) These were dreams of action, adventure, murder and doomsday. I was hounded with dreams about serial murderers, mass murderers and the end of the Earth as we know it. It use to scare me. I thought perhaps I was being possessed by the devil or something.

Where is all of this leading to? My Mom picked up my girls from their respective institutions. When she got to MI's she was handed a report. It wasn't good. In fact it was down right scarry! My little darling had her hands around another child's throat! She was doing her best at strangling the little guy. His offense? He told her he wasn't her friend.

Hmmm! Now that was a tactic I never thought of as a child longing for friendship and companionship. They won't be my friends I'll just kill 'em!

What's even funnier is we do not use physical punishment. Okay. We give 'em a slap on the hinney when they are behaving dangerously. Things like... playing with matches, running into the street, strangling other children... OOPS I didn't do that. No. I talked to her about how she could have really hurt the other child. I told her how disappointed I was with her behavior.

Reflecting on things that have happened over the past year in preschool I realize that MI is far more violent than my other children have ever been. This past year she told other children in her class that I would come and shoot them with my gun. (I don't own a gun!) MI resorts to her fists and feet first. What I'm wondering is... were the dreams an indication of what is to be? Do I have some sort of budding criminal on my hands? Pray not. I wonder whether the preschool teachers think she comes from an abusive family.

My little darling is the cutest thing in the world. She is sweet and funny but I don't think you want to make her mad. I keep telling myself that her spunk will hold her in good stead when she's an adult. I've told MI not to turn bitter. I've told her to stay sweet. This was one of those days where I wonder if I will ever get this parenting thing down.