The Weblog Of Melissa Mularski

I miss my little buddy tonight.

Sweet dreams, Owen.

A few days ago Owen said, “Mom, you need to get a haircut pretty soon.” After he said that I decided I did kinda need a haircut.

It was unseasonably cold today, so I figured today would be a good day to get the stupid haircut out of the way. We did that, then did some grocery shopping, and went home to make a fruit salad. It turns out Layne (our dog) really likes watermelon. Owen commented, “She really likes everything, mom!” True.

In the early evening we had Owen’s buddy Mark over. They played games and had some pizza. We dropped Mark back off at home, then went to Owen’s swim class. He got another “Atta boy!” from his swim instructor and did just great in the pool.

Wednesday 07-01-09

• Elliptical trainer
  • Laps: 8.2
  • Time: 43 minutes
  • Calories: 403
  • Watching: Intervention on A&E

With all the talk of Michael Jackson’s death, I was trying to give my 9-year old son a synopsis on his life. Boy, was that tough. Even showing him pictures of Michael from boyhood to manhood raised more questions than I had answers for.

Then I decided to stop talking and just watch a few music videos with him on YouTube. Thriller, mainly, as Owen is a freak for zombies and everything undead. He loved the video, and afterward thought Michael Jackson must have been a pretty cool guy. I loved it too, especially when it first came out in 1983. I was 10 at the time, and also a freak for freaky things like zombies. Still am.

We watched Beat It next, as I thought he should see more of Michael’s dance moves. That wasn’t as exciting, as there were no zombies.

But then we watched Eat It, Weird Al Yankovic’s version of Beat It. Owen loved that one, and although I’d thought it was pretty annoying when it first aired, it was pretty darn funny watching it now. Especially seeing Owen start to understand the meaning of the ‘parody’.

Owen’s got a Guitar Hero game for his Nintendo DS. One of the songs on that is We’re Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister. For awhile he was playing that one a lot and going around the house humming the tune. I told him I wanted him to see the video for that, as I thought he’d get a kick out of the video and how the Twisted Sister guys looked. I reviewed the video myself around then because I was a little concerned it might be PG-13 or more (it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it). It was fine, at least in Owen’s version of fine, but then I forgot to have him watch it.

Not so tonight. After Eat It we watched We’re Not Gonna Take It. He laughed a lot at that one. Then we had to look up pictures of Dee Snyder (lead singer) to see what he looked like now, then more pictures of him from the 80’s. He actually looks pretty good now, all things considered.

He wanted to watch a lot more videos, but it was bedtime, so his music video education will be put on hold just now.

Owen had his second swim class tonight and was doing great. At one point during the breast stroke he got an ‘Atta boy!’ from his swim instructor, who’s one of the head instructors for the whole school system. Afterward he was smiling and happy as he always is after a good swim.

Monday 06-29-09

• Body pump at the YMCA — 60 minutes

I had this great idea about a month back to take the kids to Cedarburg’s Strawberry Festival this weekend. What I didn’t realize was everyone else in Southeastern Wisconsin had the same great idea. When we arrived, we stood in line for close to an hour for their strawberry pancake breakfast. It was all-you-can-eat, but the only thing served was just that: pancakes with fresh strawberries (and orange juice, milk and coffee). For some reason I was expecting eggs, hashbrowns, and other breakfast foods so I was a little disappointed, but that was only me. More than anything I was starving after a full day of a killer migraine where I barely ate any food. It was very hot out, and the only seats available were in the sun, so after the initial serving of three pancakes each everyone was pretty much done and not interested in having any more.

The pancakes were really good, and the strawberries were excellent. The kids weren’t too perturbed about waiting in line, loved the breakfast, and only spilled one cup of orange juice between the 4 of them, so all things considered it was a good time.

Afterward we walked around the giant crap…er…craft show and zeroed in on a stand of giant chocolate covered strawberries. Once we all had one, everyone was pretty much disinterested in anything strawberry for the rest of the day (although they were really good!)

We walked to a park in town where the kids played on the playground, then did some exploring at the creek that ran through the park and walked around a bunch.

When we left, there was an insane line of cars coming to Cedarburg…to think when we got there we thought it was crowded! We were glad to leave when we did, but glad we went.

Migraine: Friday-Saturday, June 26-27, 2009

• Characteristics
  Unilateral, top center of head
  Steady strong ache with intermittent sharp pain
  Able to function with effort
  Pain scale 0 to 10:
  Friday: Morning: 3, Afternoon: 4, Early evening: 3, Late evening: 3
  Saturday: Morning: 6, Afternoon: 7, Early evening: 7, Late evening: 2
• Timing
  Length: Friday-Saturday 9am (Friday) - 10:30pm (Saturday)
  Worst pain: Saturday 3pm-9:30pm
• Additional symptoms
  Mild nausea Friday
  Difficulty concentrating
• Possible triggers
  Stress
  Dehydration
• Non-relief
  N/A
• Relief
  Sleeping: Saturday intermittent 10am-9pm
  Food (?): Saturday evening

We went to Six Flags Great America in Illinois on Friday. This was my first time going to Six Flags as an adult with kids in tow, but as we’d already taken them all to Disney and the two Universals earlier this year with great results, we were looking forward to it. Unfortunately I had a low grade migraine all day, but it never got too bad and I just lived with it.

A portion of the theme park is called “Hurricane Harbor”, which is a medium-sized water park with water slides, a lazy river, and wave pool. We headed there almost immediately because it was pretty hot out, probably in the mid-80’s.

Although the lines were fairly long the rides were worth the wait. One trip around the lazy river probably takes 10 minutes, enough time to cool off and relax before running into another line. The kids really enjoyed all the water rides we went on and the wave pool, and would have probably been happy if we’d just stayed in that part of the park all day.

I was hoping we’d get a chance to go on the Eagle, but Mike and Owen weren’t at all interested in going, so I stayed off with them and hung out while Michael, Rebecca and Lindsay went on. They loved it, of course, as it’s an awesome ride.  All the kids did agree to go on the Logger’s Run, the White Water Rampage (it’s called Roaring Rapids now, but for the life of me I can’t remember that and had to Google it yet again), the new Buccaneer Battle ride, the Whizzer, bumper cars, and a few other various smaller rides. It was a good day.

We sort of lucked out on the food side of things. There’s a McDonald’s just outside the park. Typically I’m not excited to see a McDonald’s, but  when it’s that or $9 hamburgers inside the park, McDonald’s sounds like a pretty great idea. So on the way in we got McDonald’s, and the kids ate it as we were parking. I packed sandwiches and snacks which the kids ate after they were done in Hurricane Harbor. Great America’s refillable “2009 souvenir cup” cost $12.99 for one, and once you buy it you can refill it for .99 each time. (Also note it’s a ‘2009′ cup, meaning you won’t be able to bring it back next year). Forget it, I say! We brought one water bottle along and must have filled at every bubbler in the park twice during the day. It was free and meant we didn’t have to stand in the ridiculous lines to refill our gigantic sticky souvenir cup.

When we finally left the park at about 9:30pm, we realized we never really had dinner. There was a Steak N’ Shake nearby so we went there (another place I normally wouldn’t be too excited to see, but under the circumstances, hooray!) The food and shakes were great, and our waitress was wonderful. The kids aren’t used to eating dinner so late at night, so the whole experience was really fun for them.

They all passed out on the way home, and slept past 10am on Saturday.

I love this whole digital world, but it’s so abstract. Great, I can put my laptop on my lap and look at stories, photos and videos. But what if the whole internet thing goes ka-put someday? What if the online place you house your stories, videos or photos dies as another fad takes over, or your personal web space gets corrupted or deleted? A lot of us are investing so much on the promise that the internet is going to hold all our information forever. Why do we think that? How can we trust something that changes constantly to keep things safe for us permanently? Didn’t we used to write in journals, convert little movie videos to big video tapes (or DVDs), put family pictures in photo albums?

Among some errands and work yesterday, Owen and I went to Costco to get the 400-plus 4″x6″ photos I just had developed. Most of these were from 2008…a few weeks ago I had another 400-plus 2009 photos developed. My plan is to get these put into photo albums. Remember those? Yeah, I personally haven’t put photos in a photo album in years, pretty much since I bought my first digital camera. And that’s pretty sad.

Oh, and I bought 4 nice photo albums too.

I figure if I start with 2008 through the present, and get all those pictures in photo albums, I’ll work my way back until I’m totally caught up (I think I started the digital thing in 2004). I love looking at photos which is why I keep so many in my blog. But will my blog always be online? No. I hope it’s online for many years, but I really can’t say if it’ll still be around 5, 10, 20 years from now. Who the heck knows what the internet will even be like in 5, 10 or 20 years? And I know for certain when I die (we’re all going to die someday, after all) my blog will disappear and so will my photos. I have copies of all my pictures on my hard drive, backups on CDs and DVDs that I put in a fire safe, but still. I want real copies in the house, ones I can hold in my hand. Or at least page through in a book.

When I’m done with the photos I’m going to work on making my blog entries into some sort of book format, too. I think Owen might want that someday.