Just old or insane?

Forget work - go back to bed!

Good News, Good News! No, I did not find the letter. I did find out from the very helpful, sympathetic, chuckling lady at the CIS (formerly INS - why do they have to change letters, just to confuse the already confused?) that all I have to do is write to the CIS Nebraska Service Center, in Lincoln, by the way Moby, :), and request a duplicate of the letter. I actually did not have to do any documentation by Oct. 20, just respond to the letter by Oct. 20. Whew!! Sorry, can't deport me yet!! But it'll bug me til the day I die where that letter is - kids'll find it when they clean out the house. lol

You'll find it as soon as you don't need. Sonewhere you've looked a dozen times!

You must be very relieved!

Yea! That's here?? LOL Who'd a thunk it....

yeah, feel like a weight's been taken off my shoulders - was getting pretty uptight here! Here's what I sent them - figured somebody should get a chuckle out of my forgetfullness/stupidity since I wasn't...

In August I received a letter directing me to reply by Oct. 20, 2004. Since I have managed to place this letter in a very safe location, the whereabouts of which are unknown to me at this time, I contacted the CIS headquarters and was directed to send you a letter in order to request a deplicate.

:)

You mean they won't let me have DG in my padded room??? That is cruel and unusual punishment. I'll call Clarence Darrow. or somebody. If convicted felons can sue for cable TV in prison, I will have DG!.

Unless of course, they don't want me hanging around other mental cases?

Terre- that is part of removing you from your addiction... :)

Are we assuming that ALL addictions are harmful????
I'm rather addicted to food, water, air....please don;t make me give those up too. LOL

Might be easier than giving up DG!

Personally I refuse to give up my addictions! I like them! Chocolate, caffiene, DG, DH (not necessarily in that order) nope, not giving them up for nobody! Take those away and I'd be unable to control those violent tendencies the doctors are so concerned about.

I'm with you, Terre!

Hi kooger, you might want to add a fax number if you have one to expedite the process. You might get a duplicate faster. Also, please consider sending your correspondence return receipt requested or equivalent and at the bottom of your correspondence write-
cc: common carrier

Then take another copy of the letter and toss it in an envelope and mail it standard mail with no delivery confirmation.

Just a thought. CIS, INS, or whatever the acronym du jour is makes me somewhat nervous particuraly when dealing with time sensitive material. Sorry if I intruded, that particular governmental body concerns me at times.

Terre... you are aware of the programming the nice gentleman is providing for his convicted felons incarcerated in Arizona ever since he was court mandated to provide cable right? I was rather amused. The Disney Channel. I am told one can get more channels in a psych ward.

See! If they can have Disney, I should be able to have DG!

Thanks, Equil. didn't think of including the fax number. Mail goes out in an hour so I'll get that added and sent.

omg, Equilibrium you had me crying with your tale of a morning in crazyland! lol

Hmm...I'm a meager 26 and already losing it. I tell people that I'm the best friend in the whole wide world because no matter how many secrets you tell me they're always safe, 'cause I can't remember them to tell them! I put stuff on top of my keys or phone so that I'll remember to take them with me and then when it's time to go I move them aside, take my keys and leave. argh. I've learned lately that if I don't hear the cat meowing for 5 minutes or so to go back to the last place I closed a door and reopen it. Instant kitty! My ex nearly made me drive off the road on the interstate one time by blurting out 'Kathleen Turner!!' out of nowhere. He'd been trying to figure that one out for days. I spent an entire hour one day trying to help someone think of a fruit that begins with the letter d. Can't think of one. We settled for doughnut. I can remember 10 different 10 digit phone numbers that I call once a month, but I couldn't tell you what I had for dinner last night.

Sign me up! lol

Durian Fruit

http://home.arcor.de/be/bethge/durianengl.htm

Wow, Angie, I thought I was bad at 47 but 26 is pushing it!! Better start wearing your car keys around your neck now!

Well Angie I'm only 27 and in the same boat!

This is probably the funniest thread I've read in a long time. My roomate is staring at me... as I roll on the floor crying. I'm 23 and have locked myself out of my house twice this month. I go for a run in the morning and can't for the life of me remember my Oh and when I was nannying, I hid easter eggs for the kids and when they couldn't find them all, they asked me where they were, Still have no clue.... so Moby's incredibly funny bit on hiding our own easter eggs is right on! Mere

Hello ecobioangie, learn from my mistakes... do not get married and do not reproduce or buy children which gets you the same end result as having biologicals UNTIL you feel relatively comfortable with being uncomfortable on an ongoing basis. By the way, that's not a tale of morning crazyland... we actually live this way 24/7. You get desensitized after a while. My Mother warned me that if we got married and got kids that we would join the ranks of others who were poster families for why birth control should have such a prominent place in our society. Did I listen to my own Mother...noooooooooooooooooo. So here I am ready and waiting for somebody to take me away. I'll go quietly, I promise.

"...can't for the life of me remember my ____"

hpluver, it would appear that you still can't remember your ____
ROFLMAO!

Tee Hee Heee KEYS, GOSHDARNIT!!!!

I will always remember when I was a kid, my mother put her good scissors up so us kids couldn't use them. Trying to find them went on for weeks. She even had a lady she worked with come out to the house to help. She claimed to be a physic. That didn't work either. They finnally appeared right where she had put them. This was after a new pair was purchased!
Bernie

Equilibrium, you have my heartfelt sympathy...your saga made me remember why I am so happy when I get up in the morning, NO KIDS live in my house. After raising three of my own and and providing housing temporarily for an assortment of fosters and/or relatives, it's pure joy to get up and find nobody here but me and DH. There's no music making the windows vibrate, my favorite sweaters/shoes etc are still in my closet odor and spot free except for what I've dropped on them, doors don't slam, the phone doesn't ring every other minute, nobody stands in front of the open refrigerator complaining that there is nothing to eat, no disheveled teenagers not belonging to me suddenly appear in the kitchen, I retire and sleep soundly without one ear cocked for the door or the telephone, the cap is on the toothpaste, the bathroom floor is not heaped with towels, I don't have to know where anyone else's clothes are, there's not 45 cupcakes to prepare with 10 hours notice.................any of this sound familiar?

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my kids, but I sure like them better grown up and living in their own homes! You have rewards coming in the future!! Look forward to the day when you get to visit THEM, and use the last squares of tissue off the roll and not replace it, leave your coffee cup anywhere but the kitchen, walk in with mud on your shoes, laugh when they complain about their children, buy noisy toys for those children, tell them you'll call them and don't do it, and ahhhh!! the joys of grandparenting present endless possibilities. Someday you'll look back and remember the chaos fondly...in the meantime, just repeat to yourself, This Too Shall Pass................and remember that we've been there and survived!!!

It's all TOO familiar, especially those hungry teens in the kitchen, mine or otherwise. Ahhh, some day...

Yes meezersfive, your scenario of your home of days gone by is all too familiar. Made me laugh. We do not have music making the windows vibrate although a very young boy did appear here last summer and I have no idea where he came from. Nice kid. An alien spaceship must have dumped him off then sucked him back up again as I went to the bathroom and when I came out, he was gone. Kids said he sort of showed up at the end of the driveway so they invited him in. This is not exactly a densely populated area.

All joking aside, I love the boys and the activity level in the home. We were considerably older when we began a family and that really helps to keep things in perspective. It helps to be established as when the first hacky sack hits the $500 vase, you sweep it up and toss it in the garbage realizing the kid doesn't know the difference between a $5 vase and a $500 vase. No screaming as it is an accident. You then systematically go through the home boxing up anything of value that isn't behind glass. Lesson learned. Our basement is boxland. I vaguely remember what is in those boxes these days. Could care less actually. He he, let the kids sort through it when we die!

As far as getting up and finding nobody here because they are all on a monthly camping trip with my husband... I am absolutely miserable. I have no doubt another 12 years of crazyland until youngest goes to college and I will share your sentiments but not now. It just wouldn't be natural doing laundry that had underwear devoid of skid marks and who can go to the bathroom without knocking the toilet lid into snake skins and a rock collection set on top? I don't know what it would be like to sit on a couch without a little green army man poking me in the rear. HotWheel cars on the kitchen counter along with the science experiment du jour are as common place as bananas and the loaf of bread. Legos breed at night while we are sleeping and it creates an opportunity for my husband and I to hone up on land mine avoidance techniques. Not that we will ever need that skill but they do hurt like a son of a gun when you step on them in bare feet. I don't even mind not being able to park in one of the 3 spaces to our garage because of all the quads and mini bikes and wood working projects out there. We are constantly amused by what goes on here. We lost our minds a long time ago but still have a tremendous sense of humor. We also have awesome boys.

One of my plant traders mentioned she'll be held up a while until she resolves an issue with a cop. This reminds me of the last time DH and I had an "up close and personal" encounter with a policeman. This would not be a tale to tell in this thread were it not for my attention issues.

DH says it was in the blizzard of February, 1979. We couldn't get the car onto the main road to get to work that morning, so we hiked the 2 1/2 miles to the nearest bus stop, which dropped us off at a corner I will call Raven and Nevermore (Poe did some of his best writing in Baltimore). We promised to meet at that corner after work around 5:30 pm.

Hah! Do we of the attention-issue school remember such things? (It wasn't until my 57th year that someone diagnosed me with Attention Deficit Disorder.) Anyhoo, comes 5:30 pm, and as I walk towards the corner, I realize I have forgotten the names of its streets. It's a corner with a reputation for crime and drugs and not recommended for sauntering after dark. I begin to panic and with great embarrassment ask a policeman if he could help me find DH.

Officer Zeitsomething (Zeitscheld?) asks me for a description of DH. Okay, I was fine with height, weight, eye color, nose and other endearing details, but he also wanted to know what DH was wearing. Hah! (Clothes, to us, represent various sums of money that translate into the cost of peatmoss or hyacinth bulbs or books or sheetmusic or craft materials or sheetrock or tools. So, perhaps attention issues might not explain this one. We don't care about clothes. We look like bums which unfortunately makes Officer Zeitsomething's assistance all the more remarkable.)

The officer and I walked around looking for DH for 30 or 45 minutes, and then he deposited me at a Greyhound bus station with a cup of coffee while he went back on the streets to keep looking for DH.

OMG, what a sight. At 8:30 pm, in come two hulking policemen with the most unforgettable grins on their faces and with my skinny DH seemingly suspended between them. DH was fine. He had been walking around looking for me when approached by our two rescuers. He was wearing colors opposite to what I told the officer, who was quite amazed. We will never be able to thank the officers and their department enough.

We made it home at 12:30 am in the morning. After all these years, the bus transit system in Baltimore still behaves as if there is a major blizzard on many days - fair or foul. We had other adventures before dragging our sore tootsies in that night, but minor compared to this.

So, Ecobioangie, I know all too well whatcha mean about being able to remember phone numbers but not what happened yesterday. An affinity for patterns got me through school - the fourth of five high schools put me in five math classes because I flunked everything else. That and notes. From what I read now, it seems that schools are getting better at diagnosing learning disorders and enabling kids to learn how to manage their learning issues. But, the schools are hugely hampered by insufficient funding to implement these programs.

Equ- that was very sweet! We are in our late 20s and have been married for 5 years. So I love it when people hound us about having kids, then 5 minutes later they are echoing the sentiments of Meezer!!! :) We are like, uh, yeah, because you all make it sound so appealing to have little rugrats all over my house! My FIL went through a phase where he kept making us magnets and t-shirts. One of our magnets has a couple in bed and the husband is telling the wife "let's try getting up every morning at 2am to feed the cat, and if we like doing that, we can discuss having a baby." LOVE IT!!! I think our 5 pets are how we are working ourselves up to having a baby. Actually, when the idea of me being someone's parent doesn't have me laughing hysterically, then maybe I'll do it! :) Besides, look at the stuff we have said in this thread... instead of a cup of coffee forgotten on the top of the car, mine would be my baby in a car seat. Oops! Forgot he/she was up there! The last time by bro and sis inlaw spent the night with us, they had both babies (2 year old and 4 months old). We were just about to go to sleep and heard the wailing and tantrums in the next room. We were quite for a while, then my husband said "aren't you so glad we aren't the parents?" Ha! Being an aunt, which I am 6 times over now, is not unlike being a grandparent! I spoil 'em rotten and send them back home. Everytime I send one of my neices home with another noisey and/or big toy, my SIL glares at me and says "don't think I won't remember this..." But seriously, I think the good outweighs the bad and in a couple of years we hope to join the ranks with kids of our own. I got an email forward a while back called "peanutbutter kisses" and it was a lot like your post. Very sweet!
Jamie

After listening and joining in with so many women in 'coffee kletches' complaining about our kids and husbands, I realized how awful and ungrateful we all sounded. I made a conscious effort to cut down on all that degativity and it helped my attitude a lot. One lady, I just made a point to be somewhere else because she was so negative about other people, I found myself chiming in and I didn't like myself when I did that. If we lose one of our family, and many have, we hurt terribly! So, even though we are complaining, and groaning about the disasters our little darlings create, I think I speak for everyone in saying we love them more than life itself. Go ahead and have a houseful, Jamie, you'll never regret it!

Oh, and be prepared to lose your mind, keys, shovels, cars, coffee cup, kids, etc. because sooner or later, it WILL happen! lol

Kooger- I have had an abnormally large amout of CLOSE friends who have had fertility issues so I think I have seen a good balance of those who complain about it and those who would give anything to have one. BTW- before I forget to say it, Meezer- we know you were just kidding and all. Don't want this to seem like we are coming down on you!!! Funny how my 2 friends (out of the 5 who are having/have had problems) who now have babies, NEVER complain about the sleep deprevation, never being able to go anywhere w/o finding a babysitter, broken items, etc. My friends/family members who were blessed and able to have kids with no problems just complain about all of it!
I co-hosted a baby shower for a friend this summer and an ex-coworker sent me an email to RSVP and say she would be attending. That was at 4pm on a Tuesday. The following morning, her 36 year old husband dropped dead of a massive heart attack at work. They have a 6 and 4 year old and she was 7 months pregnant with their 3rd. He had a rare, undetectable heart condition so it wasn't as if he was sickly and it was something they were expecting. So, it goes to show that life is short and we should think before we complain.
Sorry guys- didn't mean to put a damper on an otherwise upbeat, happy thread!!!

Sorry news flash kids never stay away .they go out multiply and come back with extra mouths to feed . as i type 29 year old on divan and 7 year old granddaughter needing picked up from school . Mother hood is terminal at this house

Hmmm... kind of like Gremlins?! Just don't feed 'em after midnight! :)

Texasgarden, Kooger and all who've been reading this thread, make no mistake about it, having a sense of humor will get you through it all! The fact that my kids' friends stopped by to visit with me after all mine had moved out, reminded me that no matter how large the crowd, how loud the noise, or how vanished the food, I did love having them there, and missed them when they were gone. You all know I was just making fun of it , I wouldn't trade my kids for a million but there were times back then when I would have swapped the whole tribe for a sack of rotten apples! One of my best laughs was when my oldest called me after watching her two boys trying to kill each other over a stale piece of Halloween candy, and after describing the conflict to me, sighed, "Well, now at least I know why some animals eat their young!"

Well, I'll confess... my husband and I rarely refer to when we are going to "have kids." We actually use the phrase "unleash our hell spawn on the Earth." Because we have no doubt that's exactly what we will have! Ha! Kiiiiiiding! :)

oh yeah, meezers, didn't misunderstand you at all - my post was more directed at those folks who are 'waiting' or 'deciding' to have or not have kids.

One of my favorite stories a friend told me about - Two of her boys fought so much, in sheer frustration one day, mid-fight she threw them both in one room, and yelled at them, "Okay, you guys wanna fight? Well then fight! Whoever comes out of this room alive is the one I'll raise!" Slams the door, absolute dead silence on the other side of the door. A short while later, they sheepishly come to her, "Did you really mean that mom?"

Kooger, I have no doubt that if those were my boys, they would have fought to the death!!! Ha! Watch, I will have the most docile kids b/c I am expecting holy terrors. :)

I'm just afraid my kids will be so ridiculously smarter than me that I won't have a chance in hell. lol

Oh, and THANKS! rikerbear. :) I'd call and tell the friend, but he wouldn't know what I was talking about at this point. (he has the same problem) lol

eco, there was alwasy DATES too :-)

shutup. :P (jk)