Category Archives: Family

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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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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

 

 

 

 

 

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Full Circle (yes another cake posting)

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IMG_4565Today I walked in the Beggin Barkus Pet Parade with the cake lovers. (http://stlouis250cakelovers.com). I had such a good time meeting new people who have the same love for these crazy cakes as I do. Let me back up to Allyson’s and mine second cake adventure. This was right after we had returned from Big Stuf camp. Our tenth cake was at Clementine’s which was St. Louis first LGBT bar. There were two men sitting outside and when we walked up to the cake, one asked us how many cakes we had seen. I said about ten or so. He told me I must see many more, that finding them is half the fun. (I thought he was kind of crazy at the time, little did I know). He then introduced himself as the cake artist. I said get over here and have your picture taken with my daughter. He asked if I was sure and I said yes. He then told me he also did the Powell Symphony Hall cake. Well I knew at that moment I would for sure have to see that cake. After I got home, I looked up his name and he is Earl Miller.

So today which cake do you think was on the float? The one in the picture of course. And somehow I managed to be the one in the back to help Earl steer the float. This made me extremely nervous because it’s just like steering a boat which I cannot do well at all. I think Earl figured this out pretty quickly and probably wanted to shoot me. I had a hard time talking to him because he’s a cake artist and in my head famous. It would be no different from walking with Michael J Fox. The parade was very cool because I love dogs. Heck growing up I wanted to own a dog farm. I got over that, way too much work but I still love them. I saw so many cool ones. Since it was a pet parade there were other pets there as well. I saw a rooster, a goldfish, a cat, a huge bunny in a stroller and a pig. And some of these guys had on some crazy costumes. I didn’t take any pictures though. After the parade we had to take the float back to Nadine’s Gin Joint (Clementines closed the end of September and the cake was hosted in front of Soulard Art Market) where it will permanently reside. On the way back the float tipped over and the cake went crashing to the ground. My heart stopped beating and I flashed back to dropping mine out in the front yard. At least this time I didn’t gouge my leg which I still have the mark from. I felt horrible especially since Earl was right there. I set my bag down and totally forgot about it. Thankfully, Jason was paying attention and grabbed it for me. So we righted it and then somehow I ended up in charge of steering. Those of you who know why my passenger side view mirror is missing can understand the comedy of me being in charge. When we got back I told Earl I was sorry it fell and he told me not to worry it wasn’t damaged. There were a couple of scuff marks but I am sure he could fix that in two seconds flat where it would take someone like me three weeks or longer. I would have to research it and think about it for a while. Better to take my time than to mess it up.

Mole moral~I would have never guessed last summer that I would be walking with a cake artist and his cake. One of the most coolest cake experiences so far.

 

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Buckram

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This week Allyson informs me she needs buckram for a project she is working on. I ask her what she is talking about. So she shows me a picture on the internet and it seems to be a type of material. I say google it and see if they sell it at Joann’s fabrics because I would hate to pay shipping on something that is listed at 1.75 and sure enough they do. So I do what every crazy crafter does, I go up there a couple of days later to get her more fur for her fur suit and this buckram for the eyes of the mask she is making. So I ask the girl cutting the material where it might be located. She has no idea and says to check crafts. Well, I wander around over there for a little while and then I get on the internet and type in where is buckram located at Joann’s fabrics. I was surprised to find someone’s post that said “I am making a fur suit and I need buckram, do they carry it at Joann’s?” Someone responded with in the material section by the tent type material. And sure enough there it was. So when I went back to have that piece cut it was a different gal who was older than the clueless wonder I asked first. She was impressed that I found it and told me most people had never heard of it. So I gave her the whole fur suit story. So within two days Allyson had the eyes finished and complete with glasses.

Mole moral~if you know how to ask a question in a search engine, you can almost always find the answer! It’s a good thing I am pretty good at it!

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Labels

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imagesLast week at church Tom talked about everyone having labels and labeling everything and everyone. For some reason this stirred up all the negative labels I have ever had in my life. They all floated around in my head all week which is probably one reason why I had nothing to write about it or even status update on Facebook this week. I’ve been quite and even one of my bosses said I wasn’t myself this week. Even though Tom ended with the only label anyone really has is “the treasured child of the most high God” it didn’t really help me feel better.

Today at church Josh finished up the series and summarized the first three weeks. All of a sudden all the positive labels came to mind. It started with one of my favorites given to me not to long ago. I’ve been a nurse since Jesus was a young boy. Ok so I do have the most RN experience on my floor and only one tech as more than I do. She’s ten years ahead of me in the game. It just cracks me up and it also cracks the patients up when I use that line. It usually gets brought up when they ask how old my kids are and then tell me I don’t look near old enough and don’t believe my true age.

The next one that popped up was CR for crazy Rachel. That also started at work but probably at least seven years ago. They call me crazy in a good way most of the time. I mean how many people run a 1/2 marathon and then a full marathon back to back. Or come into work at anytime between 8 and 3 depending on when one is needed and then take five or six new admissions. Yep CR!

Then funny came along. I first heard that from my counselor when she told me that i am really funny and really good in tough situations with using humor. Ever since she told me that I have tried to embrace my humor and use it to help others.

Next good writer. I have had several people tell me I need to write a book. I don’t think I have the discipline for that so I will stick to this blog. I am horrible at English and spelling and grammar and whatever else goes along with that but I suppose that is what people pay editors for. However I have no plans to write a book anytime soon.

And finally I will end with creative because if I don’t shut up the negative label of conceited will come to mind. I usually deny my creativity but that would be a bold face lie. The Christmas stocking that I did for work (see previous blog) prove that wrong. I am currently still working on the t-shirt quilt from hell. I have learned a lot (the hard way) about what to do and not to do. I am still working on the cake ornaments and they turned out pretty good considering I have never painted a day in my life. I have four left of those to finish. It has come to me in waves as to how to decorate them for each person. For example my niece Sierra we started calling Finster almost from day 1. She has always acted like Chuckie Finster from Rugrats. So on hers I put a picture of Chuckie and wrote Finster Meister because that is what Brian usually calls her. But no I am not creative at all.

So here’s to a better week and some fun Mole adventures to write about.

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It’s not a pocketknife, its a machete

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All three girls have spent their money they received from Grandpa John for Christmas. Emily bought herself two new pairs of jeans. Kayla ran out and got her belly button pierced. She has harassed me for years to which I said, I am not signing for it so you will have to wait until you are 18 and pay for it with your own money. Hey she did follow the rules. Now if she will only stop showing it to me because it makes me want to throw up. I cannot stand sticking my finger in  my bellybutton so I cannot imagine having an earring in it. Let me go vomit before I finish typing this. And then there was Allyson. She found a knife on the internet that she wanted and it was within budget. I thought it was going to be a knife that would fit in her pocket. It came in the mail while I was at work yesterday and when I came home Emily said it was a machete. The thing is huge and certainly not a pocketknife. Allyson said it’s not sharp at all. To which Emily said she and dad are planning on going to Johnny’s (Brian’s life long friend and hunting/fishing buddy) and sharpening it all up. I suppose if Allyson can shoot a deer with a rifle, she can own this sharp giant knife with a scorpion handle.

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Mole moral~Always check the dimensions when ordering things off of the internet.

 

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Today’s cake debacle

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Today Brian had Dominic help him take the cake around  the house to the basement. Now that seems simple enough, except this is the Mole house. The cake would not fit through our tiny sliding glass door. I swear it is the smallest sliding glass door ever made! When the girls were little we could barely get the Barbie jeep through it and when our deep freeze was delivered they had to take the entire door off. He then measured the cake and the doors in the house. The cake would have fit through the front door but not the door down to the basement. It also won’t fit through the door to Emily’s room. So it can’t go in there either. I think I will put it in the laundry room as Brian would not agree to let it sit on his pool table. It is way too cold to be taking the sliding glass door off so he has put it in the very back of our garage where the only way I could hit it would be to plow through the recycling bin. Otherwise I would be parking in the driveway. I can hit my car, the garage, the trash cans and anything else including backing up through the grass but no way am I risking even bumping the cake. We don’t want to move it a bunch because the rocks keep falling off of it every time we move it. So until I get in touch with the artist and see if there is a way to replace some of the rocks and then use something to get it all to stay stuck I am leaving it put for a while. And with my car behind it, no way can anyone get it out of our tiny garage.

Mole moral  Nothing is ever easy and always makes for a great story!