Post #500

According to the count on the entry page to my blog, this is my 500th post!

Last Saturday, Logan and I took Gage on a long birding adventure.  We left a little after 6am and didn't get home until 3pm.  We did a lot of driving and a lot of walking.  Gage did very well with both.  He spent his driving time either on Logan's lap or curled up sleeping in the back seat.  He's really good on leash and spent his walking time snooping into everything he could find and picking up as many ticks as possible.  (I had to remove one from between his toes.  Yuck!)  Gage was excited about the whole trip and happy to be along for the ride.  I never heard him whine or cry even once.  Gage is a bit more laid-back and a lot less exuberant than Duncan was, but that is probably a good thing.  We had a great time and Gage proved himself to be the buddy dog we were hoping for!

Including today, the kids have 2 1/2 days of school left.  Both are VERY excited and can't wait for Camp Zone to start the first week of June.  I can't believe that my babies will be in 8th and 5th grades!  It will be fantastic to have them at the same school, but dang, I feel old!  Logan really didn't like his teacher this year.  She was one of those who assumes all boys are wild and poorly behaved.  She often punished the boys as a group and Logan was very offended.  Kaylin also had this teacher and she really didn't bother to get to know the kids individually.  This was her last year before retirement, so I think she was counting down the days until she was done teaching and cared even less than in previous years.  In the fall Logan will be in middle school and will get to change teachers several times a day.  I think he will greatly prefer that to being stuck in one room.  Kaylin certainly does.

Gene and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary on Wednesday.  Well, we didn't really "celebrate" because we worked and then Logan had baseball practice from 5:30-7:30.  We hope to go to dinner and a movie this weekend and then have a trip to New Orleans planned the first week of June.  It will be the first time both of us will be away from the kids for more than one night.  That's hard to believe, but I guess with our limited time off work and school we want to take the kids along and spend the time with them.  I am looking forward to spending some time alone with Gene, though!

Last night we were talking about the many, MANY things we've learned in 20 years of marriage.  I think one of the biggest things both of us had to figure out was that Gene wants to "fix" everything and while I sometimes need to complain about something to him (anything from a headache to an annoying coworker) I don't EVER expect him to find a solution to my personal problems.  Well, not only did he spend years driving himself nuts trying to find solutions to my minor issues, it never once occurred to me that he would even dream of doing such a thing.  It literally took us years to figure out that if I came home from work and said "Ugh, I have a headache." the response I wanted and the ONLY thing I needed from him was "Oh, poor Susy."  What I would sometimes get was a very frustrated "Well, I'm not a doctor, what do you want ME to do about it?"  Um, nothing?  I'm a big girl and I took some aspirin.  I want you to do the same thing as I do when you whine about a headache.  Say "that stinks" and move on with your evening.  It took a looooooong time for both of us to figure this out about the other person!

 I will never forget many years ago running into a former Pizza Hut coworker at the mall.  This girl had annoyed me to no end when I was her manager.  She missed a lot of work and had millions of excuses.  I apparently complained about her to Gene a LOT.  Anyway, this was several years later and I was thrilled to see her.  I walked away from her happy and nostalgic, but Gene was silent and furious.  It turned out that he couldn't stand this girl for all she put me through and had never been able to come up with a solution to fix that problem for me.  I was beyond shocked because yeah, she had been annoying, but it was only for a short time and I hadn't given her a thought since.  I certainly never expected Gene to solve that problem- but he wanted to!  A few months ago, I had an upsetting meeting and my (single) boss was trying to be positive and told me to go home and complain to Gene and that things would look better in the morning.  My boss did cheer me up, however unintentionally, because I spent the rest of the day thinking about how Gene would be the LAST person I would complain about this minor work-related slight to because he'd probably think I wanted him to execute the director of the park district or something.  Nope, that's not at all what I wanted :)