Confessions of a Blogaholic

Bonjourno , grazie , prego , and arrivederci are some of the words that I picked up in Venice. A few months ago, I posted about how my friend Cristina was getting married in Venice. How I was the Matron of Honor and would be going to Venice for her wedding. Well, it came so fast. On Tuesday, January 19 th , I left from Phoenix to London, Heathrow . I should have had a seven hour layover in London, but our flight from Phoenix left two hours behind schedule. I had planned on paying a short visit to Henry and William, but no such luck. There was plenty to see at Heathrow though....Plenty. From London, Heathrow , we transferred to London, Gatwick and then flew into Marco Polo airport. Once we arrived at Marco Polo airport, we were taken to Venice in a water taxi. At which point, I had been traveling for what seemed like forever. I had left Phoenix at 11:00 p.m., and had arrived in Venice at 11:00 p.m. the next day. Not really 24 hours, but pretty close. Once checked in, I wanted to expl...

that I'm in a pickle. A few weeks ago, Buddy and I were trying to clean out our storage room. It's down the street from our house, but now that Buddy moved his welding shop, we have plenty of room in our garage. We are slowly trying to empty it, and save some $$ and get rid of that bill. I had forgotten how much stuff I had left over from the now deceased Sassy Girlz . Tables, racks, mirrors. Stuff that in a haste, I just put into storage. We brought a lot of it home and Buddy helped me bring it into Kai's room. Then I had the brilliant (not so brilliant) idea to paint her furniture. I wanted it to match her wall. I first started with her night stand. That was easy enough. Then I thought, I'll paint her desk. I did that also. Next, she had two tables that were a different shade of pink, so I painted those. My pickle? I'm not sure that I really like it. Because now her headboard is still white and if I paint that pink, then it will get lost in the wal...

On December 22 nd , Kai and the students at TDA performed The Nutcracker with the Moscow ballet once again. This was Kai's fifth year performing in this show. Every year, I always say that it's going to be her last year to do it. Not because she doesn't want to, not because she thinks that she is to good to do it. It's really because it always falls on a weekday close to Christmas, or right after Christmas. That means that I have to take time off of work during our busy days at the office. It's a whole day affair. Early arrival for costume fitting, then having to wait for the ballet dancers to arrive so that they can practice on stage. Sometimes time for dinner and then the show. This year, Kai was a Butterfly. It was a very short role, but she was on Pointe and she loved that. And, she broke the tradition and was not an Angel again. I was sad about that. You can read my post about her being an Angel for four years in a row right here . They don...

Finding a song for Kai's new solo was a bit challenging this year. Holly and I had discussed it quite frequently. This would be her first solo in the Teen division. I had asked Holly for a Latin piece and she looked and looked for music and didn't find anything that she liked. Then she was thinking that Chantilly Lace had suited her well. She liked the old 50's band music on Kai. She decided on Great Balls of Fire. We liked it. My only hiccup was that in my eyes, the costume had to be red.....again. Her Chantilly Lace costume was red. With a name like Great Balls of Fire, what other color would I use. I figured I could be creative with it. Then, on the night before Holly was going to start her solo, she called me and said that she had downloaded every single version of Great Balls of Fire, and she didn't like any of them. The ones she liked, were to short and the ones that were longer, she didn't like. She was stuck. I thought that she would cancel her private for...

After a long absence from my blog, I am finally sitting down to post. So much has happened in the past month that I honestly don't know where to begin. December 23, 2009 turned my world upside down. My mom suffered a minor heart attack, and was taken by ambulance to Chandler Regional Hospital. When I arrived, she was in good shape, and she was talking. They ordered a CT Scan of her chest. When she got back to the ER from her test, every thing that could have gone wrong, did. She suffered another heart attack, this one was much worse. She was in-tubated and things were not looking very good for her. The next few days were spent waiting for tests to be run, consulting with Dr.s and praying. A lot of praying. We were finally told that she would need to undergo a quadruple bypass. There was a problem with that, because she was in critical condition. Her kidneys were failing, her blood pressure was to high, as was her blood sugar. And, she was to weak. The surgeon said that we would ...