Elite Rehab Placement

I grew up in a home where there was very little mention of alcohol or substance abuse.  That's not to say that we didn't talk about it or discuss the dangers, but our home was free of alcohol.  I remember as a teenager in the early 80's going to a D.A.R.E meeting that our church sponsored.  There were police officers and substance abuse counselors at the meeting.  They warned us of the dangers of substance abuse and helped to educate us about how our immediate, impulsive choices could affect the rest of our lives.  I remember feeling afraid of ever picking up any type of substance.  My father is a retired police officer and I recall asking him one time what he would do if I was to ever be arrested.  He replied that he would leave me in jail for the night at least.  His reason?  If I spent a few days in jail I would most likely do everything I could to never do it again.  As a first born child and a rule follower, I believed him and for the most part lived my life on the straight and narrow, never participating in under age drinking or substance abuse.

I met my husband in the summer of 1994 and married the following summer.  We began dating and were engaged within 8 weeks.  It was just one of those things where we knew that we knew that we wanted to be together.  He was very honest and forthcoming with information about his past.  He will tell you that he is an alcoholic, he has an addictive personality and he can’t be the guy who just has one beer.  He was arrested in Florida in 1984 on a drug possession charge and spent 30 days in county jail because he didn’t have the money for bail.  He was released and went back home to New Jersey, where we currently reside, and he began to put his life together.  

In 2003, I was pregnant with our third child when my husband began drinking socially.  We had moved back to his hometown and he began to spend time with his childhood friends, many of whom were still single and living the party life.  At first it didn’t seem like a problem but as with anyone who is an alcoholic will tell you, there is no such thing as one drink.  His drinking quickly escalated to an every night event.  He was functioning as an alcoholic, trying to live the life without me knowing, but I knew he was a mess and that things were going to end badly.  In October of 2003, I discovered that he had been driving around while drinking with our boys in the car.  I was beyond furious.  He came home and passed out and I sat in the kitchen and began wracking my brain for a solution.  I contemplated leaving him, but I realized that I had done nothing wrong and that he should be the one to leave.  I called his cellphone, knowing that he would get the message in the morning when he arrived at work, to tell him that he needed to leave and get his life together and decide if he wanted a family or not.  It was the hardest thing that I have ever done.

          My husband is a good and kind man and in the daylight the consequences of his actions were too much for him to bear.  He reached out to a friend from our church who runs a faith-based substance abuse recovery support group for help.  Three days later he was on a bus to South Carolina to spend two  months in a program called U-Turn for Christ.  The program was life-changing for him.  He was humbled and brought back to the simple truth that he is powerless, without the help of a higher power, over his addiction.  He was restored back to a right body, mind, and spirit during his time there.  He came home a changed man and has been substance free going on 14 years.

          In January of this past year, our 17-year-old son was arrested for possession of marijuana.  It was disheartening to hear the police officer say, “It’s not that big of a deal, it’s hardly any weed.”  New Jersey is in the throes of a massive heroin epidemic.  It is killing almost 1,000 people a year.  According to the National Institute on DrugAbuse, marijuana is a gateway drug and the thought of my son going from marijuana to heroin terrified me.  As part of his sentence from the juvenile court, he must attend six months’ worth of meetings with a juvenile conference committee in our town.  This is basically a group of people to whom he is responsible for completing assigned tasks and remaining accountable to them through drug tests.  One of the things that he had to attend is called Project Pride.  It is a program wherein inmates are given a forum to speak to teens struggling with addiction issues.  They share the ugly truths of addiction and where substance abuse can lead.  Our son was deeply impacted by the stories that he heard.  He remarked, “I can’t believe how it can go from so good to so bad so fast.”

          The thing about this situation is that I was completely unprepared for it.  How could this have happened?  How could I have been so blind to what was going on?  We attend church regularly, we homeschool our children, they are in boy scouts and involved in community activities, they play on sports teams, we eat dinner together 4 nights a week.  This kind of thing doesn’t happen to families like ours, right?  Wrong. 

          So where to go from here?  We started to have open, honest, and sometimes heartbreaking communication with our son.  We have always talked to our kids. We let them know that they could tell us anything, ask us anything, good, bad, or ugly, and we would still love them and we would always be honest with them.  But kids make their own decisions independent of us and we must decide things in those moments that will affect us all for the rest of our lives.  We never talk to our son from a place of judgement, just from love and acceptance, but that does not mean that we have not drawn a hard line with him for his own good.  We have told him that once he turns 18 he will no longer be protected the good people at the juvenile committee who want to help him, he will be a legal adult and will have to face adult consequences.  We have told him that we will always be here to help him.  He meets with a counselor weekly now who feels a rehab facility isn’t needed at this time, but in the future we will keep Elite Rehab Placement in mind.  The section on teenage substance abuse on the Elite website was extremely helpful to us. 

        I have seen first-hand that addiction can and does ruin lives.  I am entering nursing school for my second degree and I hope that I can take the experiences that I have lived through and help someone else in their darkest time.  One of my favorite quotes is from Henry Ward Beecher, "Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.”  I seek to always treat people with the compassion that they deserve because suffering from addiction is nothing to be ashamed of.

Have You Seen Reviewsio?

With the holidays fast approaching, I recently began making my lists of all of the things that I need to get done and people to shop for for Christmas.  Amazon is always my first go to site, and so when a friend posted on Facebook about a new company called Reviewsio, I was all over it.  Amazon sellers give their products, to people like me and you, in exchange for honest product reviews.  Sellers need good reviews to sell their products and the products are offered at deep discounts because of this.

Reviewsio launched on October 1, 2015 and now their online deal catalog is available for you to browse.  You search the catalog, choose your deal, get your product, test it out, and then write your review.  It's that simple!

All you need to do is become a Reviewio member and have an Amazon account.  If your request for the deal is approved, you get a voucher code that will knock down the price of that item when you checkout on Amazon. You order it, you test it, you review it, YOU KEEP IT. It’s really that simple!

Fashion Friday

I attended a small, private Christian school during high school. We did not have a dress code per se, but we were required to wear a skirt or dress to school every day. I really did not have a problem with this as I loved coming up with new outfits, and my mother is a wonderful seamstress who was always sewing some funky new thing for my sister and me.

I love fashion, and I love looking cute. But in the past few years I have been in a slump. Oh, I still rock the latest fashion when I have a special occasion, or when I go to church, but for an everyday look? Well, I have adopted a uniform, two actually, that I am not proud of. My first outfit consists of a pair of very forgiving stretch boot cut jeans and a red v-neck tee. I wear this one mainly in the warmer months. The second outfit consists of a pair of Old Navy Sweetheart jeans, a white turtle neck and a navy Boy Scout hooded sweatshirt. I sport that lovely ensemble with Kevin's Ugg slippers and wool socks, mainly because our house is only a few degrees warmer than the city morgue.

The other day I put on my skinny jeans, brown tee shirt, and this cardigan that I recently purchased at Target. I put on some earrings and a sweet little pair of brown ballet flats. The kids were staring at me as if I sprouted another head.

"Mom." my oldest said. "You look so...colorful."

You know that you have reached a new level of cool when your 15 year old son notices your clothes.

So in honor of that, I have decided to make more of an effort every day to look more colorful. I know that I have Annette Funicello hair in this picture, please try to ignore it.

Exhibit A: colorful from Goodwill.


I bought that yellow sweater for $3.oo at Goodwill. Everything else was not $3.oo, but close enough.

I plan on doing a Fashion Friday post every week with my own clothes. I have decided to put the whammy on myself. Fellow moms of the world who are stuck in the mom uniform rut, won't you join me?

Arachnophibia

Joe and I are deep in the trenches of a spider study. He wanted me to buy him a tarantula, but I talked him into an egg carton spider instead. This seemed less terrifying to me. The last thing that I want to think about is a tarantula getting loose in the house and biting me in my sleep. It would be like the Brady Bunch episode only with more screaming and crying. (Fast forward to 11:19)



This is the craft that we made. The best part? Googly eyes. We like googly eyes.

Creeping out from the darkest recesses of the school room...

...come the spiders!

Mercy

I found this the other day on Pinterest. I quickly read it, and then pinned it to my board.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday was a bad day. A very bad day. I saw the day heading in a downward spiral of anger, resentment, frustration and strife. I saw it going there and I could have stopped it, but I didn't. It was like stepping outside of myself and watching the events unfold like a movie. A movie about a destructive tornado that tears thorough some unsuspecting little town leaving its residents lives completely turned upside down.

"Where did that come from?" they quizzically ask each other.

"I don't know, but I am so afraid that it is going to happen again. I hope it doesn't."

Sometimes the worst part of being an adult is that although you are supposed to know better and do better, you still act like a child. Last night after all was calm and I apologized to my boys for acting the perfect part of the lunatic, I was still feeling unsettled. I woke up in the middle of the night and got up out of my warm bed. I went into their rooms and put my hands on their sleeping heads and asked for mercy for their memories. I prayed that they would not remember the bad days. That the good days would all pile up until the deep places in their minds were so filled with good memories that there was no room for the bad ones. I wish that I could take a magic eraser and wipe all traces of the unhappiness that I have caused completely from the minds. But I can't. The only thing that I can do today is do better than yesterday.

Today I will do what matters.

Hot c-c-cocoa

It has been getting progressively colder here in the the northeast. Not Arctic Circle cold, but cold enough. I have not been able to feel my finger tips since October. I really dislike being cold. Add to that the fact that we have oil heat and at $3.03 a gallon we are subscribing to the put more clothes on line of reasoning. It's fine for my boys, because they are part reptile, but I am a delicate flower. I walk around the house in no less than 3 layers of clothing, and will frequently put the hood of my sweatshirt up to conserve more body heat.

This afternoon was especially frigid. We had rain and then snow followed by a ferocious breeze out of the north. It was cold. Fer realz cold.


We all needed a pick me up, and this did the trick. Hot cocoa in a snowman mug. Who wouldn't be warmed by that?

Please don't let the outward condition of that red potholder be a commentary on my culinary abilities or lack thereof. This house has an electric stove, and I inadvertently tossed the potholder on the hot stove top after grabbing the food from the oven. The odor of burning cotton cued me into the fact that something was wrong. Thankfully I grabbed it before a full on fire consumed the kitchen.

How are you keeping warm?

The Secret Ingredient

This is why yesterday ran smoothly.

Why yesterday was infinitely better than the day before.

Why today holds promises of good things.


May your day be blessed!

Coming Clean (not literally)

What I want you to believe:




The reality:

This is what the room looks like at the end of 4 out of 5 school days, minus the tipped over chair. I know that the tipped over chair gives the room a "the beatings will now begin" feeling, but I can assure you that is not the case. Joe was playing visit the dog in jail, and the chair just never got picked back up. Nor did the legos. Or the blanket. Or the books. You get it. Sometimes you just have to shut the door and say, I will deal with you tomorrow. (Or in a week from now.)

So this is a reality check for those who think that my home is always clean. Clearly you have been supplied erroneous information. Don't you feel better?

Getting it Together

I really love decorating for fall because the colors bring such a feeling of calm to a space. I kept it simple, as simple as the ginormous mantle would let me. It was a challenge to not overfill it.

Also pictured is my new sofa table, courtesy of Craig's List. It was exactly what I was looking for. Exactly.

These fall pictures also serve as the living/dining room afters. You remember the befores, right? Gone is the green paint and the super shiny brass fireplace frame. I spray painted the existing one with high heat spray paint. May I suggest that you open the windows if you ever do this? Gah. I was coughing up black particles for over an hour.

You can't really tell from this photo, but the pining room paint color is darker than the living room. I love the way it turned out.


I did pretty much the same thing last year. I used sticks and twigs along with the dried flowers. I love the crisp, fall feel to the assortment. (Click to enlarge.) I also used fake pumpkins. Last year I used real ones and they rotten and ate away at the wood. Why did I not know that could happen?

I consider this a part of the 31 Days because this is important to me. I love to decorate and it can sometimes get pushed to the back burner.

Is that mop following me?

This is a video of my family singing to me on my 40th birthday. I watched it for the first time the other day and I had to keep rewinding it to look at the mop. That mop has had a prominent place in the majority of our photos.




Note John's 8th grade graduation. (Please disregard the wardrobe malfunction.) This is our old house. You can see in this photo the full extent of my kitchen cabinets, hence the mop living front and center there in next to the fridge.


Christmas. Always a joyous occasion. And. What's that? The mop again. It mocks, silently, from its haughty little bucket.


I truly believed that once we had a larger home, the mop would no longer make its way into our family photos. So much for logic.


Have you heard Foster? I bought the whole album from iTunes and downloaded it onto my iPod. The entire album is awesome, not just this one song.



How cute is Mark Foster at 1:08? It feels wrong to sing and dance around the house to a song about running away from bullets, but I like it. I think the message is this: even if you are being shot at, nice shoes are important. (Oh, I kid!)

Death by Landline

So Verizon has been trying to kill me, or drive me straight to the booby hatch. We moved a little over a month ago and attempted to move our service but Verizon was on strike. We were told that they could disconnect our service, but could not schedule an install date due to the strike. Oh, by all means, sign me up for no internet for an indefinite amount of time. We told them that we would go with another provider. We kept all of the service on, however, because we wanted to keep our current phone number and the service has to remain open for them to port the line. Big mistake. We should have just changed our phone number.

We are still waiting for our line to be ported. Verizon blames Comcast. Comcast blames Verizon. I have called Verizon maybe 20 times. Each time I call I get a different person who gives me a different story. One guy even hung up on me. Granted, I yelled at him, but I was beyond frustrated because of Verizon's put you on hold and the disconnect you trick. (It happened 4 times last night.) I know that they most likely pull that stunt to get you to give up. Not me.

Oh, no.

I am like a bad penny, I just keep showing up. Verizon will rue the day that they refused to port my line!! As God as my witness, I will never use Verizon again!

Last night, out of complete frustration, I was tempted to cancel the service altogether and just get a new number, but purely on principle I won't do it. I have invested too much time in this undertaking to just roll over and die.


The thing that has kept me from a full on nervous breakdown of mythical proportions is Mumford and Sons. Watch for yourself. Fine Irish lads, they are.

Runaway Jury

My husband was selected for jury duty. You would think that he won the lottery, the way he is strutting around all proud of himself. He came home and said, "If it doesn't fit you must acquit." OK, Johnny Cochran. I am going to have to break it to him at some point that he is a juror, not an attorney. It is my fear that he is going to get put in jail for being in contempt of court for some crazy thing like standing up in the juror box and yelling, "I OBJECT!" Then I will have to bail him out with my birthday money, and he will lose his job for doing time in the big house. (He just read this post, before I posted it, and he said that in all actuality I would be the one to do something crazy. If I am being honest, my brotha has a point.) Oh! Also, the judge told him that they are allowed to call a sidebar. How awesome is that? I would be all over the Sidebar.

Sidebar!
When is lunch?

Sidebar!
Can I go to the bathroom?

Sidebar!
Will Kato Kaelin be testifying?

Have you ever googled funny court questions? People say crazy stuff during trails. How much would you love to have been a juror on this case?

• Lawyer: "Trooper, when you stopped the defendant, were your red and blue lights flashing?"
• Witness: "Yes."
• Lawyer: "Did the defendant say anything when she got out of her car?"
• Witness: "Yes, sir."
• Lawyer: "What did she say?"
• Witness: "'What disco am I at?'"

****************
Joe is taking piano lessons. We bought a small Yamaha keyboard from Craig's list. It is the perfect starter instrument, and came loaded with a myriad of preloaded sounds including a freight train and a gorilla. So far all anyone has played is the Jaws theme song. That is not irritating at all. Kevin pressed one of the preloaded beats and began hitting random keys, all ending with the gorilla's grunt. Also not irritating. Tomorrow I am going Tiger mom on all of them. No child of mine will make imitation gorilla sounds at the piano recital.

Schoolroom transformation, part 1

This house has an amazing room that the previous occupants called The Den. My sister calls it The Rumpus Room. I call it The Inappropriate Schoolroom. Note the bar, hence the inappropriate. Also? That light fixture above the bar? It is ugly. And the light, when illuminated, casts an orange hue that can only be described as murder scene lighting.

So, before we had chaos. My sister says that my brand of chaos is not the average persons brand of chaos, but it is chaos nonetheless.

This red chair is my decorating kryptonite. We bought it in North Carolina, but it only worked well as a functioning piece of furniture in the FROG (family room over garage) in North Carolina. I keep it for purely sentimental reasons. It was, literally, the elephant in the room when it was placed there in the schoolroom as a last resort. You could not get around it and it is afraid of mice. It is crazy. Currently it is taking up 98% of the floor space in the family room. Something need done with it, as my favorite North Carolina pal used to say.

More of my brand of chaos. And a random child.

I should have closed the door to the bathroom. Tres tacky. Readers, meet the toilet. That behemoth of a coat rack was left by the previous occupants. I think they left it to drive me crazy because every place that I put it, I accidentally walk into it. I hate that stupid thing.

Oh! This was the water that I used to wash the paneling. Um, ew. That was one wall. The paneling is going to be painted. I don't mind painted paneling, in fact, I really like it as it adds some architectural character to a room. The brown paneling and trim in this room though, make me feel like I am sitting in a cave. In 1970. With Marcia Brady. And we are saying things like, "Dancing with Davy Jones is so groovy."

That's better. I call this the art corner. I am original with my titles, admire me. The boys painted those abstract art canvases in North Carolina. I love the bold pops of color. That magazine rack belonged to my grandma. It makes me happy to have a part of her near me. Also? Classical music playing softly in the schoolroom? Must have.


This was our first day. Notice the red chair is absent. In its place is the white chair that I slip covered my mother worked on tirelessly. This chair is a much better fit.

The, finally(!), organized shelves.


How adorable are those jars from Ikea? Love. I am going to go back and purchase a few more.

To be or not to be sign courtesy of Primitives by Kathy. I have this one and this one on my wish list.


Outside is the patio. I cannot wait until the humidity disperses and we can commence with outside reading.


I plan on painting the paneling on our six week break. I can't wait to cheer this room up with some color.

More afters to follow!

Where did August go?

So we moved. For those of you that have known me for a while either online or in real life know that we have moved, a lot. The biggest move we made was our move back to New Jersey from North Carolina. It was the hardest, most emotional move. Ever. Can't stress ever enough. I jokingly now say that I was dragged back over the Mason/Dixon line, but there is some truth to it.

We moved to North Carolina believing that we were never going to leave. Never say never is all that I have to say about that. Living in North Carolina was like living in paradise. We moved in March of 2006 and settled quickly into the Carolina lifestyle. We felt as if we had found our place, and then the other shoe dropped. Things became hard, and we had to move back to New Jersey in September of 2008. Some day I will go into all of the details, but I am still not ready to put it all out there.

We moved the 15th of this month. It was a great move in that we actually picked the place that we are living in. Many things happened in the past three years that I had little to no control over until this move and that is why it was good. It was our choice.

Here are the before pictures.

The entryway. Front door is behind you. Stairs to the right lead to three bedrooms. Kitchen right in front of you. Living room to the left.

The formal living room. Try not to be too jealous of me, I know that paint color is ah-mazing! Too bad the interwebz can't convey sarcasm.

The living room is connected to the formal dining room. And, P.S. that ginormous mantle intimidates me. That is a lot of brick. Talk about a decorating challenge.

I truly cannot decide which is worse. The paint color, or the fact that they painted ev.ry.thing that awful color. (If you look out the window to the right you will see a brick wall. That is part of the patio that you will see later in the series, just as a reference point.)

No, no, I changed my mind. The chandelier is the worst thing. Hello? Madonna? From 1986? Yes, we have your chandelier. Come and get it, please. Kitchen entrance there on the right. Can you see that this is a big circle? I hope that I have conveyed that. An engineer, or even a person who writes with a modicum of clarity, I am not.

Here is my favorite part. Try to overlook the paneling and the fact that this room now looks like Mr.Brady's office. In a few months it will look gorgeous. This room is adjacent to the kitchen which is connected to the dining room. This is our school room/office. That entire left wall is lined with built-in bookcases, shelves and cabinets. JOY!! Outside of the sliders is a beautiful patio. (Referenced in earlier picture.) The best part of that whole door situation over there is that the screen is on a spring loaded hinge. Now no one has to learn the life skill of closing the door. They do, however, have to know how to open it.

Yes, I have a bar in my school room. Doesn't every conservative Christian home schooler have one? The kids want to keep it and fill the fridge behind the bar with Monsters. Monster energy + school work= begging for the eye twitch to return.

View from the office into the kitchen. There is a door to the left that leads to the backyard. I took outside pictures but that will be a separate post.

I loved, I mean loooved my kitchen in North Carolina. This one rivals it. I can honestly say that this kitchen is not my style, at all. (I am not a pink girl.) But I am not going to complain because I have cabinets! Drawers! Pantry! More cabinets! See that brown door to the left in the background? It leads to the family room and basement.

I know. I had the same reaction. We are just some beaded curtains, lava lamps and bell bottoms away from looking like the set from That 70's show. But again, the room size is awesome and there are great bones to the space. (Full bathroom to the left. There are 3 full baths and one half bath altogether.)

That door leads to the side of the house with will take you to the backyard.

View from the foyer again. Two doors to the right are bedrooms. The master is the left of that bathroom there in the center.

This bathroom is so well preserved in it's vintage 60's look that it is almost not hideous. Also, this house was ahead of its time in many ways. Double sinks in the main bath, double closets in the larger of the two bedrooms that was most likely meant to be shared by two children. And! A laundry chute. If you have a laundry chute and you have your trial by fire with shoving too many towels into it, just know that a 28oz can of tomatoes, tossed with some enthusiasm, will clear that sucker right out.

The view from the landing at the top into the living room. This house is huge! It is so much more than I could have ever hoped for.

Final view looking into the kitchen.

We have already done some painting, and I am excited to show you the changes.