In the sickness I linger....

OK...so, yeah...I had pneumonia, I took my antibiotics like a good girl and now I have a cold AND I think it's sinking back into pneumonia :( I'm SOOOO sad! I don't feel well at all, the coughing has my head feeling like it's going to split right open....**gross out factor of 5 coming up, queasy?, don't read** this morning when I was having a one of my coughing fits, the mucous was tinged with blood...I just looked at it and said out loud, "this can't be good", Emily said she didn't even want to see it! (can't say as I blame her) I'm just hoping that things will be OK until Monday so I can go to the doc again...UGH...more pills...more of his moronic noise telling me to take the cough pills that he prescribed to me, which, by the way, DON'T WORK..I told him this before..but ya know, other than all this....life is good :)

I just spend the last couple of days alone with Emily, I really enjoyed the time alone with her, well, the times when she wasn't gone rehearsing for All State Band ;) the rest of my time was spent just trying to rest, which was EXACTLY what I wanted. I just wish I had been feeling better. Her performance with the All State Band was fantastic, they performed a song that was written just for that event. It was in honor of it being the 75th Anniversary of All State Band. First though, they played a song by John Mackey titled "Kingfishers Catch Fire" I LOVED this piece, it was my favorite of the performance. The second piece was the one written just for the event, written by Scott Boerma, who happened to be Emily's conductor at the Michigan Youth Arts Festival this past spring, it was titled, "Sentiment". The third piece played was written by David Maslanka and was titled, " Give Us This Day (Short symphony for wind ensemble). Their guest conductor for the weekend was Jerry F. Junkin, he's a conductor for the Dallas Wind Symphony and also holds a chair at the University of Texas at Austin. (Sarah, he was also at U of M for a while!)

The night before the big All State concert, we went to watch a couple of other concerts that were being held at the Music Conference. The first was the Oakland University Wind Symphony, they were VERY good! If you're interested in what they played (Sarah) just ask and I'll tell ya ;) The true highlight of the night came after that symphony though...we got to see the CMU Trombone Choir!!! Woo Hoooo...Fire Up Chips! Of course, you know that seeing the Trombone Choir means SEEING BEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!! I got to see him for about 5 min. earlier in the day and less than that after the concert, but hey, I'll take what I can get....ahem...except the 6:30 AM call he gave me this morning to let me know that he was cheerfully, bright eyed and bushy tailed on a bus heading to Toledo for a Kappa Kappa Psi Leadership conference. After being awake all night, I wasn't all too thrilled to be receiving this call, but hey, he loves me...right? So, I will go into what they played 1st-Mini Overture by James Kazik 2nd-Reflections and Rattledance by John Cheetham and 3rd- Symphony No 3 by Camille Saint-Saens. Yes, very lovely concert indeed. I even held my coughs until between the songs!! Yay me! Heh, an after thought....it's always those times that you wish you had a camera to get a pic of the look of surprise on someone's face when they see you and they're not expecting you! One example comes from yesterday evening...after the "Bone" choir, Em, Jake and I were heading down the hall backstage to see Ben...I slowly walked up to his friend, Mark, that brings Ben home once in a while, he didn't know we were there and when he saw me, he was just like.."WHOA! What are YOU doing here!?!?!" then he turns and hollars down the other hall.."Hey Ben, your Ma's here!!!!!" Ben, of course, already knew this! I should have told him that I came all the way down there just to see HIM play, hehehe. Good times. One of Ben's other friends, Andrew, came over and gave me a big hug...with a few BIG pats on the back...oh my..not good :( (coughing fit ensued). Ben gave me a quick hug and said, "C'ya" then he was gone. *sigh* the day ended too quickly. I miss him.

My ears are plugged. I don't like it. I can't eaves drop on my kids right now...bugger! They're plugged to the point where they hurt. UGH! I hate having to keep saying, " 'scuse me, I didn't hear that"

I love scarves! I wish they could be worn all year long...well, I imagine they could, but, it would be too uncomfortable in the hot summer.

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to go back to High School knowing what you know now? I mean, to be able to go back with all the knowledge of right now back to the days of uncertainty, awkwardness and doubt. Oh yes, I would trip people in the hall and look right at them and say "yeah, so, what are ya gonna do about it?" Maybe, I would even do better in math? HAHAHAHA....yeah, right...no knowledge from now could help me with that! Oh, the cutting sarcasm that would be retaliated with sharp precision! I would love to go back and be as sure of myself then as I am now.

I think I may go and try to get some rest, I say rest because I know that sleep won't come tonight.

Y'all Smile and enjoy the night,
Love Ya :)

Happy New Year...2009

Well, here we are, another year gone by. Happy New Year! 2008 pretty much passed out of our household with no extra celebration, there usually never is, just the usual, boring bowl games blaring on the T.V. *yawn* I spent most of the evening listening to music and reading.

It's amazing how much you can forget about the songs you grew up with. Some are written in your memory, never to be forgotten, you could practically be sitting on the game show "Name That Tune", hear a few notes and spill out the rest of the song..others, though, aren't as easy, I mean, remember them, but didn't really put them to memory. It's a lot of fun to go over them and actually listen, kinda brings back memories of when the song originally came out. For instance, the first time I heard "Sweet Child of Mine" was when I first got pregnant for my first child_unit. I really liked the song back then, OK, let me rephrase that, I like the music, I never really did 'hear' the words. 20 years later, this song has come up front and center, thanks to Guitar Hero, I hear it a LOT! I took the time to actually hear the song this time, I really do like it, so much that I added it to my playlist! I don't think I'll actually need to play it on there with all the guitar hero going on in this house! One of my favorite groups 'back in the day' was REO Speedwagon. How could you NOT like a group that uses so much piano in their music :) We actually saw them in concert, it was AMAZING! The highlight of the night, for me anyhow, was when they started to bring the big, white, baby grand piano down from the ceiling on a platform playing "Can't Fight This Feeling" WOW...loved it!!! That would be one concert I would like to see again! ZZ Top would be fun to see in concert again too!

Ahhhh, did I mention that we're getting a small respite from basketball? Yes, it's true! We did have to attend the Christmas Tournaments the first part of kids' Christmas break, but, it was only for 2 days, not too bad. Next week starts back to business as usual! 4 games a week again. *sigh*

I think this is one of the coldest, windiest and snowy Christmas breaks that I remember having in a long time! We've had 3 different days of wind advisories and probably another two the next couple of days. Amazing! We "HAD" a lot of snow, but it rained :( (bye bye snow woman), that sure made things pretty messy around here!

Oh, oh, ohhhhh I got my own digital camera for Christmas!!!! I was very excited about that! It can even video tape! I'll have to get a bigger memory card though, the one I have has far too many pics on there. I taped CMU's "Thriller" performance during the halftime show at the Motor City Bowl! I wish I could have gotten closer, but alas, I'll be content with what I did tape! Heh, I had to chuckle when I opened one of my gifts from my ma. She got me some smiley undies :) Yup, she loves me! They go along with my smiley camisol, T-shirt, jammie bottoms, socks....*snickering* heheh, yup, thong too....now all I need is that little winking smiley tattoo on my lower back ;) yeah..like that'll ever happen!

All State Band is coming up fairly quick now. I hope we can do a fund raiser somewhere in the mean time! I'll have to talk to the band director and see what her thoughts are on that. I know that I need to get Em some reeds too for her saxophone before we go. Hmmm, shopping trip to Bay City...woooooooOO!!!!!!

I suppose I should end this now, Em wants me to come and pick her up, she needs to come home and take a nap after staying awake all night and sledding today...at least she knows how to celebrate the new year!

Y'all listen to some good ole' 80's music!
Love Ya :)