Author Archives: rachrn34

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My one hundredth blog-post!

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Today is Allyson’s fourteenth birthday so there is no better way to celebrate than with my one hundredth blog post being about her. At this time fourteen years ago I was in the hospital with my sister and my sister-in-law and we were waiting for Brian and Johnny to get home from the lake. It was a Sunday morning. They did not leave when I first called them, so by the time Brian finally arrived an epidural had been placed to slow down my labor so he wouldn’t miss the entire thing. I was so numb that I couldn’t even sit up to push right so we all chatted for about two hours and by then my uterus had done all the work and she was out within three pushes or less.

She is the artist and musician in the family. She asked for a keyboard a couple of Christmas’s ago and learned how to play by ear. She then requested a guitar last year for her birthday and was doing well on it, until a string broke and her lazy mother still has yet to take her to get it replace. She has been asking for an electric guitar for at least a year so on Monday I surprised her and said let’s go pick out a guitar. I had googled what is the best guitar place in St. Louis. I picked the place based on excellent costumer service. They said some of the stuff could be pricey but it always goes on sale. Since I had no idea where to start, I didn’t need a jerk not wanting to be bothered. We got a really super nice guy and so she picked a purple guitar and went with the cheapest amp for now. He took her over and showed her how it worked. Of course we also had to purchase a cable and a carrying case. I felt like I was buying a computer. So she came home and plugged it in and Kayla said oh no you aren’t playing that thing right now. I asked her if she wanted to take lessons and she is going to think about it. There is no reason to sign her up, if she is not interested. She has not spent much time with it yet because she is right in the middle of another creation.

Sometime in January or February she became interested in fur suits and fur suit dancing so she decided to create her own. She started with the head and watched YouTube videos and did it all on her own. She then had me make the body of the costume while she did the hands and feet. However, it was so hot with all of it on, she rarely if ever wears the costume and instead cut out sleeves and had me sew them for her on the sewing machine. So this was her first attempt.

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The head was too big for her to dance like she wanted to it, so she started on a different head. She also decided she wanted to try out of the talent show at school so she put the rush on to finish it. She made the talent show which is next Monday. When I went to pick her up for her orthodontic appointment on Monday the secretary and reading teacher were raving about her try out. They couldn’t believe her dancing abilities (she free styled it) but were really shocked when I told her she made the costume herself. They also said all the kids loved it, and I could attend the talent show on Monday if I wanted to. I am not sure if I want to navigate crutches, it will depend on how I feel. However my neighbor’s daughter is on student council and will video it for me. So this is her second costume and a link to her dancing in our side yard. She was quite annoyed that Brian kept video bombing her as he was cleaning out his work truck.

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And now she is working on this head with the eyes that follow you. It is going to be purple and we had to order grey and purple fur off of the internet. Let me just say that it is not cheap but cheaper than drug rehab. And it keeps her busy most of the time. I cannot wait for this to come together to see how the purple will look. It’s longer fur as well so pretty exciting.

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Happy Birthday Allyson Nicholemann!

Mole Moral~ I would have never guessed the day she was born that she would be a fur suit creator. So cool and so much fun!

 

 

 

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Sticker Shock

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The moles own four cars. Kayla has an 2002, Emily a 2004, me a 2006 and Brian a 2011. Please tell me how he ended up with the newest and best vehicle. I guess that’s what happens when you are outnumbered 4 to 1 in your own house. About six month after  Kayla got her car, she kept saying the brakes weren’t right. Brian looked at them several times and even fixed the back rear brake as it kept locking up. After that was fixed the front brake was then acting up. He changed the pads and they were becoming even worse so he took it to the shop down the street. The guy looked at it and said the brake fluid had been contaminated and the entire system had to be replaced. He suggested we ditch the car and start over. As if I have five grand lying around and the time to try to find another car with low miles. Her car is only at around 50K miles so the engine and the transmission should be good for a long while. I hate to say that and jinx myself, (Refer to my magical thinking post). After much discussion and yelling we decided to fix it. I googled contaminated brake fluid and every single person that posted that they had the issue it started in the rear brake locking up and moved right along the course of Kayla’s car. The guy that fixed us told us it can take one to two years after the wrong fluid is placed before it ruins everything. So either the dealer did it which seems highly unlikely or the oil change place Brian takes it to. This is the only car that Brian does not change the oil in. He said it is a nightmare and not worth it. However from now on he will be telling those jokers not to fop off any fluid, that he will take care of it himself.

The car was finally finished today. I had already paid 800 so they could order one of the most expensive parts. So I went down to pick it up and it was another 600. The guy didn’t want to take a credit card again as he said my credit card charged them almost 200 for using mine. I of course said that’s total bullshit and asked him if he wanted cash. So he let me take the car and I picked up Kayla. We went to the ATM and the max withdrawal is 300 so I took out 300 and she took out 300. Apparently the ATM was out of 20’s so the guy ended up with 60 ten-dollar bills. He was telling us that the valves could have blown at any moment which would have left zero brakes and could have been a tragic car accident. He also gave her instructions that it would take 200 miles to get the brakes to set so not to be waiting until the last-minute to stop and to give herself plenty of time. He also wants her to bring it back after 100 miles for an adjustment. He was really, really nice.

It’s been a rough week, sharing vehicles and having to drive her to places. It’s one advantage of having older kids, no longer being a chauffeur. After 1400, I hope the repair bills are done for a while. However, my car will be ten years old (I purchased it in 8/05) and if have 167,000 miles on it. The passenger side mirror has been missing for two years or longer. The air conditioner has now gone out. It’s only a matter of time before I will have to crack and get a new one. My hope was for it to last until Kayla graduated high school and I’m a year past that.

Mole moral~ Why didn’t I just write a check you ask? I didn’t even think about it, until Meg asked. That probably made more sense but now the shop has plenty of ten-dollar bills.

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4000

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image4000 is the number of miles I have been trying to reach on my Nike+ running app since my last 1/2 marathon in September of 2013. At that time I was only 250 miles away and was sure I would reach it by the end of 2013. And then plantar fascitis reared its ugly head and I have been battling that ever since. I had surgery a year ago in May to fix my right foot and being told that 95% of the time when you fix the worst foot, the other gets better on its own. Well as usual nurse curse reared its ugly head and by October (five months after surgery on my right foot, I was begging for it on my left.) Of course nothing is ever that simple. I had to have my foot injected and do stretching and blah blah blah before hand. So after about two months my foot still felt great so I started walking/running again and started a couch to 1/2 marathon training program. About two months into it and after a six-mile run the injection on my foot wore off and I was back to square one. I decided I was done with it, and went back to Dr. Anderson and said nothing has helped so fix it like my other. He does these surgeries on Fridays and since my birthday is on a Friday this year, I decided that would be the best gift I could give myself. To be able to enjoy my job without wanting to hack my foot off and to be able to get back outside and to my God time.

imageI had noticed on my Nike app that I was about 15 miles away from 4000. Since I am on a prescription anti-inflammatory, I decided I was going to meet my 4000 mile goal before surgery. My friend Theresa had started going to a personal trainer and walking every day so we found a 5K to do and I adjusted the walking schedule so I hit my mile goal by the end of the walk. Hopefully it doesn’t take me another year and a half to do 250 miles. I am hoping after 12 weeks, I can get back to walking three or four times a week. I would really like to see the next color which is yellow. I am currently in the black color which is really boring for a background. It’s all about the little things. A lot of my friends switched to Garmin because it is more accurate. However I am not a professional runner and this does the trick for what I need. Keep track of my distance and how many runs I have done. Plus I have fond memories because in the early days (July 2009 was when I started) when it was my iPod with a little thing I stuck on it with a thing it my shoe that tracked the distance. It’s hard to believe now I can use my iPhone with GPS tracking. And although it may not be total accurate, it’s close enough to keep me motivated to continue running and meeting distance goals.

 

Mole moral~No fancy gadgets required for this simple girl with a desire to spend time with God while out running and or walking!

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Why being outside sucks!

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I think I have hated outdoors my entire life. I swear I could live inside and never leave. Well except to run, that’s the only time I like being outside. Anyway yesterday I decided to take the dog on the hike up Mastodon Mountain. For those of you living outside of Jeffco Mastodon state park has a trial that goes up a hill and back down. It’s about 1.75 miles in length. I like it because I can let the dog off her leash and she goofs off and then runs to catch up with me. Only I could be walking along minding my own business and come upon this.

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The dog was unimpressed and walked right on by. It was super humid yesterday and after about a mile I was really wishing I had brought some water along. I think the dog was too because her tongue was hanging out of her mouth. We finally got back down the mountain and across the street and she was acting dead. No way can I carry her back to the car so I notice a creek and I call her over thinking she will take a drink. Oh heck no, she did this instead.

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So that required a bath when we got home because she really smelled gross.

This morning I found a tick on me and wanted to vomit! See I really do hate the outdoors. It’s either too hot or too cold or too many bugs!

Mole Moral~Better to stay inside where it’s safe and animal copulation does not happen in plain sight!

 

 

 

 

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Clean eating the first week.

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I had been playing with the idea of trying clean eating for a while now. I decided to give up chips, pretzels, crackers and popcorn for Lent. This had to be one of the stupidest ideas I have come up with in a long, long time. This triggered a sweets binge for 40 days and I’m not really much for sweets. You name it, I ate it. I ate a lot of processed stuff like fiber one bars, granola bars etc. Towards the end of Lent I was even eating fries and food from work. I had gone off the deep end and I wasn’t sure if I was coming back. The Thursday before Lent ended I had a really bad day and forgot and ate cheese crackers. I said sorry God and Lent was over. On Easter I ate everything in sight including two deserts and a chocolate bunny. I knew Monday was CE day. (Clean eating). I had spent three hours at the grocery store finding all the stuff I needed for the weeks menu.

I weighed myself on Monday and couldn’t decide if I should vomit, off myself, say screw it and eat what I want or smoke a carton of cigarettes. I did none of these and started the clean eating. Here are my thoughts.

1.  What a pain in the ass. Cooking all my food. Really? I hate cooking.

2. I’m not hung up on clean and nothing processed will ever touch my lips again. Seriously! Processed and junk food is the best and tastes fabulously and takes zero effort or thought to prepare.

3. I lost 6.5 yes SIX AND A HALF POUNDS this week. Of course last Monday’s weight was probably a little inflated from a four-day stress eating binge but who the hell cares! I am back down to weight watcher goal weight so if I went to a meeting, I wouldn’t have to pay.

4. I know understand why ladies didn’t work in the old days. I cannot imagine preparing and cooking food from scratch and trying to work full-time. It’s been a challenge and I only work 24 hours a week. On day 2 work wanted me to come in at 8 and I had an hour of cooking to do before I could leave house so someone else came in and I came in later. I’m glad I skipped a couple of hours than throwing in the towel on day 2.

5. I am beginning to understand the obesity and diabetes epidemic in this country. Given the choice of quick and cheap over time-consuming and priceless I get it.

So I am now onto week two. We shall see how things go.

Mole moral~ cooking still sucks even in light of a nice weight loss

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Magical Thinking

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For the longest time I have always come up with the worst case scenario so it wouldn’t happen. For example, a co-worker has a headache so I say they have meningitis and are going to die. Also, if a patient has a symptom I get the situation diagnosed to almost coding and in ICU. Since this rarely, if ever happens, I am convinced thinking the worst makes it not happen. Back when I saw my counselor she asked me if I really thought i had magical thinking. Although I told her no, I sometimes still believe I do. This week I had a couple of patient situations come up in which I did indeed predict the worst case and nothing happened. Everything was fine. So this just furthers my delusion! And Meg said to me “so you are a rainbow unicorn” last night and then sent me this meme today! I loved it.

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Mole moral~ I am a badass unicorn! I will keep the worst case to myself so I don’t freak out the patients. As for my family, friends and co-workers, they are all on their own.

 

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Music

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When I was growing up and my mom would listen to the “oldies but goodies” station, i remember thinking to myself I will always enjoy my kids music. I would stay modern and fresh all of my life. And then I had kids and I swear a person’s brain chemistry changes and you cannot stand their music. I tried really hard, I swear. I would let them listen to Z107.7 in the car for a time until I became homicidal and wanted to run everyone off of the road and then I would change it to the music of my youth. Emily and Kayla would always listen to Nellie and he is from St. Louis but it has to be the most awful rap known to man. Especially when their really cool aunt bought them the real version with all the curse words.

This all came back to me yesterday when Allyson was the DJ in the car when we were off to get more fur for her latest fur suit head. (One of these days, when she is finished I will write about her project). Not only did she turn on rap music but it was rap in German. (One of her fur suit buddies is from Germany). If you like me find rap annoying, you should listen to it in German. It’s a totally different experience. I think it’s worse!

Mole moral~ Everything comes back to bite my in the butt!

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The Moles go to Elephant Rocks

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IMG_7295At the beginning of the week I asked the girls what they wanted to do on Friday. At first they said the zoo and I said then I am staying home so they asked what I wanted to do. I said well how about Cahokia Mounds and Emily said everyone says it’s boring. I then suggested elephant rocks. I am pretty sure my dad took my sister and I there when we were kids. I had finally went to Johnson Shut In’s back when Emily was about five. So we set out for the rocks today. We took 55 to 67 instead of straight down 21. I had no idea we had so many state parks between our house and there. Anyway we didn’t even make it a mile down the road when I realized we forgot the dog so we turned around and got her. I knew she would love it.

Allyson announced about halfway there that she had been there with her friends Ryan and Trent. We had a great time climbing all over the rocks. Even the dog had a blast but she made me nervous when she would run right up to the edge but she always stopped. Only I could manage to duck under a tree limb and get it jammed into my earhole. Wow did that ever hurt! I didn’t even bleed so I wasn’t allowed to carry on.

IMG_7326The section that looks like elephants was really cool. So were all the names carved into the rock back in the 1800’s. I know none of that would be allowed now. Allyson had an eye doctor appointment so we had to leave earlier than planned. As we were driving out of the park the sun started breaking through the clouds and we had full on sunshine by the time we arrived home.

And for those of you wondering, no there was not a cake there and never had been. It would have been a great place for one though!

Mole Moral~ When walking under trees wear earmuffs!

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Taxes are a pain

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I finally finished up my taxes today. I was waiting on the 1098-T form from Rockhust and my stuff from Ameriprise. I finally had to call Rockhurst because someone moved (cough Emily) and did not give Rockhust her new address. Luckily they could email me the form. Prior to adding what we paid in tuition for both kids we were only getting 2000 or so back. Because both Emily and Kayla are over 18 we did not get the child tax credit. To which Brian’s solution was to have another kid. I told him he was out of his mind. That a baby costs way more to raise to the age of 22+ than getting an extra 2 grand back a year. Once I added in the college stuff for Emily and Kayla our refund went way way up and so now we are rich for about three weeks. Hahaha.

I then proceeded to the FASFA so that Jefferson College will get off my back about filling it out. She won’t qualify for financial aid but by filling it out now, it will save me time when she goes to the big expensive college. Ha.

Now that I have wasted three hours of my day off, its time to find something fun to do, like take a nap. HAHAHAHA.

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Craft projects overload

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Last week I had five craft projects all going on at the same time.I truly felt I was getting nowhere with any of them when someone from work told me to finish one at a time. Oh this was genius so why couldn’t I think of it. So the first thing I did was finish all four baby bibs I had half started. In my defense I had run out of thread for three of them and was just too lazy to go to the store. Next up was my cake ornaments to finish. (Ok so this is the real reason for todays blog).I finished those the other day so now I am finishing up the t-shirt quilt I am making for Emily’s PT school friend. This weekend I also have to make a fur suit for Allyson (I will post that entire story next week after its debut). And lastly I still have to paint my big real 250 cake. However let’s get back to the cakes I made.

So last October while riding the exercise bike at the rec center I came up with the wild idea to make cakes for all nine people I drug out to see cakes and make one for myself. The first thing I had to do was find wood so I went to Hobby Lobby and they had what I was thinking of. the two round sections of the cake were actually wheels probably to be used to make a wagon or something. However I persuaded Brian to get out his electric sander and sand the tread out of them. I was going to do it by hand but I would probably still be sanding today. I have never painted anything in my life except to stain the fence and the deck. Both of which are located outside and if I messed it up, who cares. Well actually the paint drips bug Brian but not enough for him to stain. Hahaha. So I asked Emily if I should prime the wood and she said yes. So I base coated them all white twice and waited like 2 days between coats. I refused to be in a rush and mess them all up. After that i picked out everyone’s favorite color and painted them and then I was stuck like for a long time. They were suppose to be Christmas ornaments but it was well after Christmas before I finished. It took a while for the ideas to come to me but I think they turned out well. So I am going to post pictures and what all the stuff means. This is mostly for the family but if you are not related to me and not bored to tears feel free to read.

My first cake was Emily’s and her favorite color was mint green. After I painted the icing black we decided it looked like Frankenstein so I went with it. I originally planned for these to be Christmas ornaments but my sisters and mine will be sitting out year round. Each cake has the person’s name and how many cakes they say. Emily’s car is named Frank and Frank is now short for Frankenstein.

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My second cake was my sisters. Since her cake was purple I got the idea to paint grapes on hers. It made me think of the cake at Washington Historical Society which my bosses boss ended up owning by offering a donation.

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Kayla’s cake was next and I got the wise idea to attempt to draw the Piasa Bird her cake as a reminder of the caking day in Alton where we couldn’t find over half the cakes. We really thought we were looking for a bird statue and could not believe it turned out to be painted on a cliff and looked nothing like a bird. She has a jazz shoe because of her jazz solo when she danced. Because she always goes to the movies I decided I could draw the Wehrenberg Theater logo. She at least recognized it when she looked at it.

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I then decided to do Sierra’s. When she was born she had reddish hair and Brian almost immediately started calling her Finster for Chuckie Finster from the Rugrats. Chuckie was afraid of everything and Sierra ran a close second. They had similar personalities and we all blamed Brian because of the nickname. As she got older he started calling her Finstermiester. This past year she went with her father to the G-Eazy concert. He is some singer that i have never heard of. I drew a map of Africa on one side and the Arnold water tower on the other. This was because her father is from South Africa and her mom was from Arnold. Africa did not turn out as well as I had hoped but hey its the thought right?

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Next up was Conner and I knew I wanted to do Spiderman. So I googled the Spiderman logo and thought how in the world would I draw that. Well it is the time of the internet so I found a tutorial on how to draw it. I was very excited that when looking down the round part of the candle looks like the round part of the spider. I also put on Superman and his nickname from Brian. Seamus McDonough. After I gave Karen hers she put them on her mantle. Conner has since taken his to his room and put it with his other special things.

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Kayla hadn’t been dating Dominic for three weeks before Brian started calling him fry cook. He worked at Steak N Shake so one day it came to me the Golden Spatula from Spongebob. And so his candle is the spatula. I attempted to draw the Steak N Shake hat and bow tie. Dominic also loves to skateboard so I added one on it. My favorite is the spatula!

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It took me a while to do Bridget’s. I have no idea why I had such a hard time. When she first started hanging out at the house she worked at McDonald’s. Her last name is Werner so Brian started calling her McWeenie. Later on he changed it to Weeniesan. She is now teaching at Denoyer Dance so that is also on her. The paint is so dark I couldn’t get the pictures to turn out any better. After I had modge podged it, I noticed an orange dot on the top of the cake. I decided to leave it since orange is my favorite color.

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I did Brian’s next. I decided to top of his cake looked like a hockey puck so I made the candle a hockey stick. I then placed his nickname he gave himself at least 20 years ago. We use to watch wrestling and guy was named Valbosky so he started calling himself Mobosky. I drew a golf club and golf ball and wrote Vanilla because his golf friends call him vanilla cause he shoots the ball straight down the middle and never varies. I attempted to draw bowling pins around the top layer. One must use their imagination.

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Mine was easy now that I was on a roll. I put I love cake on the top in X’s to represent my love of cross-stitch. Everyone knows I’m CR and I love to scrapbook. I would save the best for last. Allyson’s.

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Allyson wanted minecraft and gave me this picture to make the candle. She had way more confidence in my artist ability than I did. So I did manage to paint the candle pretty close. I then decided to draw a minecraft guy on the top. I showed it to Allyson and I could tell she hated it. IMG_6984It would take me a bit to get it out of her. But finally she looked at me and said mom would you look where the candle would go. Holy crap, I hadn’t even thought of that.  So needless to say I painted over it. She calls herself Wilson Moehlmann on minecraft and Wilson Wolf is her YouTube name so I had to place that on hers. Her fur costume she is working on she calls Woolzey and she loves soccer. I think her cake turned out the best especially after I painted over it and made the top part PG

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Mole Moral~When you grow up in an x-rated house and have all guy friends you are the first one to notice improper candle placement. Although I must admit the candles on the real 250 cakes were a little too phallic in my opinion! I know you are going to look at them. Bahahaha