Jillfr’s Blog

In high school while playing basketball I hurt my right knee. I tore my cruciate ligament right in the middle of the floor in the middle of a home game. I then had to play with a giant brace on my leg for the rest of my high school career. It seemed at the time that I was the only one with one in the entire conference so everyone made a big deal about it. I was always very aware of protecting my knee even after surgery and therapy. When I went to ISU and joined the circus, although I loved the spanish webs I didn’t try out because they hung from one leg and I was afraid if it was my right knee I would hurt it again. I regret that I thought that way, but I just did. 

Years later while riding my bike with my children and dog. I fell off and hurt my knee again only to have my son not be able to avoid me and run over my leg too. At that time I was looking for a teaching job and remember having to go into interviews on crutches and being so embarrassed.  I also had to have arthroscopic surgery again on it to fix my ACL. Therapy again! Now my husband always accuses me of not liking to ride my bike and he is correct. I think I even had a small panic attack while we were riding bikes at the Grand Canyon because I really felt like something was in my throat the entire time. 

Now it was snowing at the end of January and I had recess duty. I really thought nothing of it. The kids were having fun. I decided I should take a picture of them building a fort.  I did and then went to walk back onto the brick top. The next thing I knew I was on the ground. Worried more about if I had ripped my husband’s rain pants I had put on to stop the wind. He always tells our kids how he paid a small fortune for the rain gear and they need to be careful with it. I was relieved when I had not made a hole. Kim came to check on me and thought I had hit my face. I had not, but my good knee or my left knee really hurt. 

Xrays, MRI and three doctor visits later I found out that nothing was broken, but I had torn my PCL and meniscus. The doctor told me I had to stay home for 2 weeks. No, I said I am a teacher and can’t. He said well that you will probably need surgery and several weeks off cause PCL surgery is awful. I said 2 weeks then. I did stay home, I did therapy and it is getting better. I had stopped taking the pain med and got in trouble for that. I forgot it was also an anti-inflammatory medicine.  After he took liquid off my knee I promised to take the medicine if he never did that again. He said my knee will never be the same. Great, just what I needed now I don’t know which knee to baby!!

Our new house. 

So Brian and I have been looking for a a house for a long time. We have wanted a ranch house because he has bad knees and I had a bad knee. We have seen both our parents struggle with stairs as they got older. His parents, my husband said, were even living in a death trap before they moved. They lived in a raised ranch so once they took the chair lift up had there been a fire they only had the chair lift to help them down and only one of those at that. Anyway this October we finally found one that seemed to meet all our needs. Brian and I never decide on big decisions quickly, but this time we did. We have now seen several houses and this was only the second one that we decided to bid on. Last year there was a house we liked, but that is when everyone thought it was a great idea to over bid on houses. That one needed a ton of work too.  We bid on this one and decided that since my niece moved in we really needed this because it would get my one daughter off our front couch. We told our realtor, Brian’s sister, to put in our bid with a clause that said we were willing to go 2000 over the top bid. Well, good thing we did because that is why we won. That meant at the end of October we owned two houses. 

We have been working on it whenever we can. I finally told my husband that although he can hang drywall we should just hire someone. We did and there started the oh dear. We picked the guys who our roofer suggested. He is amazing and super picky like my husband. They did a great job talking about what they would do so they were to get started. First of all not sure how but they always broke the drywall at the bottom of the wall on every piece they put up. At first they were just leaving their water bottles, trash and whatever laying around. I had to ask them to clean up after themselves and also if they could start cleaning up all the dust, especially before painting. “Oh, we do a nice job,” they said.”  They kept showing me these million dollar homes that they worked on. They must have a clean up crew that comes in for them there because unfortunately I had told them all the rooms paint colors.  Needless to say my husband would catch them as they were going not doing things they had said and point it out to them. One day, they said they were going to be done and I told them remember you said you were cleaning up  the mess and everything is going to look nice. I said Brian was taking off early to talk to them before they finished. Guess what they took off early too and left behind a huge dust bowl with freshly painted walls. I wanted to cry. Not only that but things weren’t done right. We are now paying the painter we should have had to do it to fix stuff. Everyone we asked about drywall included the painting so we said might as well. Big mistake!

The mud room I wanted to put in was to be done by a different guy. I am obviously not good at hiring people because he too had great recommendations. However, first he had a flat tire and sent me a picture, then he got shot, yes you read that correctly and sent me a picture from the emergency room of the wound. Then he came and worked on the room with his swollen arm. He then didn’t come back and when I texted him he said he had dropped his phone in the toilet and lost my number. We really just wanted him to complete the job and go away. He came back and worked for like an hour and called to tell me he had fallen off his ladder/bench thing and broken open his wound. He needed to know where the nearest hospital was. I told him and texted him to see if he was okay, but with his open wound he cleaned up all his stuff and took everything. He doesn’t seem to respond back!  Now we have another guy who is supposed to come finish/ redo parts of the mud room. 

Meanwhile Brian is working 10 hour days at Facebook in DeKalb which is almost an hour away. Coming home to the new house and working on things until around 10 then coming home to shower and eat dinner to do it all the next day. I am not the best helper of most of the things he needs to do anyway, but hurting my knee at the end of January and struggling to walk really didn’t help. Our kids try to help but they are all busy with school and other activities so when people ask me when we will move in…….. I hope before we go broke and lose both houses is going to start to be my answer.   Oh yeah we have barely started to pack because well the new house and school and all the other activities we have going on!!!

Earlier in a post I talked about our wedding dress. The reason I called it ours is because it was originally bought for my mom when my parents got married. That dress sat in the back bedroom at my grandma’s house on the top shelf in the closet in a brown box forever. My grandma was the sweetest, best grandma you could ever ask for. She never said no to anything and baked all the time. Cookies, cakes and pies. By the way she made a pie everyday and if it wasn’t eaten by the end of the day she would throw it away. Her three children tried to make sure that never happened and I loved when my mom beat her two brothers there after work when it was a cherry or strawberry pie!  Anyway the wedding dress was the one thing my Grandma would say no to. We could not touch the box or ever even open it to see it. I told her one day I will because I am going to wear it. SHe just said that is why I am saying no now. 

When the dress came to our house I think that was when my dad built the cider closet in the garage.  It went on the top shelf in its box there. My mom said no we can not open it.

Years later my sister decided she was getting married. She is only 5’2 by the way. We went all over the Quad CIties, Peoria, Chicago and Texas looking for a dress for her. She almost fell in love with one in Texas. The problem was she was so little that all the dress at the time they put on her were huge and you had to pull them in the back so she could sort of see what her actual size would look like. Dana is not a visual person. Somehow one day she was trying on my mom’s dress. It actually looked really good on her. I wanted to cry because she loved it. We had finally taken it out of the box and not my sister was going to wear it. We took it to a seamstress and the first thing my mom told her was, “YOU CAN NOT CUT ANY OF THIS DRESS OFF.”  She pointed to me and said, this daughter 5’9 has always said that she will wear it someday.   The seamstress said she could do it and she made the dress look just perfect on my sister!  My mom and I after the wedding had to shake rice out of that dress forever. I said well, I will not have people throw rice at my wedding.

When Brian asked me to marry him I knew it was finally my turn to wear the dress. People asked me if I wanted to go shopping, but my mom knew that I wanted her dress. We went back to the same seamstress and she took out her temporary stitches and lengthened the dress again. My mom was a little shorter than me, but she had a giant hoop under the dress. My hoop was not near as big so when she took out the stitches it actually made the dress a little too long with my hoop. 

My Grandma missed seeing my sister and I in the dress, but I know that she was smiling from heaven. Her saying no to us had kept the dress just perfect for our special days in the same church that our parents had gotten married in. Thank goodness Brian didn’t forget his belt for his pants like my dad did!!

Why?

Why do children insist that you didn’t tell them?

Why did I fall at recess and actually tear stuff in my knee?

Why is our house we bought taking so long to fix up?

Why did the drywallers/painters think they could get by without doing everything they said?

Why does the weather change so drastically?

Why did my class think it was a good idea to have a black market store with 3rd grade money while I was gone?

Why did two boys decide to fight while the sub was there?

Why did the kids think it was a great idea in my class to grab thumb tacks and put them upside down on people’s chairs?

Why do I find myself telling my class “It’s my knee that I hurt, not my eyes?”

Why did I think it was so cute when another teacher called me by my first name and a kid asked why she did that, “I said because we are friends. Two kids in shock then said…..”Teacher’s have friends!”  

Why did my son get my other daughter to practice late while I was gone?

Why is it only March 8th?

Why did I sign up for something else to do when I couldn’t seem to get everything done I wanted before?

Why could they make a sliding glass door 30 years ago, that no one seems to be able to make as big now?

Why can’t my sister see that I am just trying to help her daughter?

Why isnt my mom still around to help my niece and sister? 

Sorry I just felt like being a 2 year old today and just had to  ask WHY about everything!

Weather Wonders. 

What is up with this weather?  The weather lately is absolutely crazy. We get freezing cold temps and snow, sleet whatever and then the very next day we have temps in the mid 50’s/ 60’s. That is so crazy. No wonder kids are getting sick. I don’t remember the weather changing so drastically when I was little. I do remember waiting for the lake behind my house to freeze hard enough that my parents would finally let me go ice skate.   That required weeks of super cold weather and then my mom having my dad just double check the ice and mark where the water pump in the lake was and make sure we stayed far enough away.  It was also a good way, I think for my mom to have my dad help shovel the snow if needed.   After all, I skated every winter I could so I knew where the pump was. Now I hate cold weather, but I do feel bad for the kids because part of the fun in living in Illinois, when you are little, is the winter snow and snow days. Now they hardly get any snow and because of COVID they will never know a true “SNOW DAY”!  It seems like Mother Nature is also gypping them a little bit. As an adult however, bring on the 60-70 degree weather!!!

Wow the things you do for peer pressure even as an adult!  The mom dance that the group talked me into by saying we don’t have to do Sunday on stage it will just be good exercise. Well, once you are in. You are in.  I informed the group that I had just come off a cane and had torn my PCL and meniscus.  I stayed in the back and Haley was super excited that I had done it.   She says we looked great. There were some mom’s who were really into the dance and then there was me. I tried to hide in the back as much as possible so that people couldn’t see that I could not squat and was being very careful with my knee. Later another mom from our group told me she didn’t go because she injured the top half of her body. If we could put our body together we would be much better. I told her she should have gone with us.  We only got 45 minutes to learn the dance and then there was no practice today. I showed Haley the video that we had made during class and she said I hid my knee issue well. My knee did hurt worse than it has in awhile last night. Anyway peer pressure or not it was fun hanging out with some of Haley’s other dance friend’s moms and doing something completely out of the ordinary, hurt knee or not!!  I succeeded and my daughter was super proud and her team told the 4 of us that we did great.

Well we shall see how this goes. We are at my daughters dance convention and when we were here last year the mom’s all decided that this year we would surprise our daughters and join the MOM’s dance class. They then perform for the girls later. I tried at 7:00 am to get out of it. I do have an injured knee and I am still icing it and going to therapy. Well the mom’s said I NEED to be there so I said I will go for moral support. It should be fun and hopefully they have a chair or I can bring one in or I’ll just laugh at them all as I leave!! All our girls are so talented when they are dancing I am sure they got it all from their mom’s. I would be looking forward to helping this group of mom’s embarrass our daughter’s later if I hadn’t been such a klutz at recess at the end of January. Here is to wishing we had a chance of even looking close to this good on stage later. Did I remind these other mom’s that I just got rid of my cane?   

My childhood house!

It all started when we moved from St. Charles to Alpha. My parents first moved us into my aunt and uncle’s old house. They had just built a farmhouse by a pond and had not sold their other house yet.  The plan was not to stay there long. My parents were building a house in Skona Lake. It was a good thing my dad was handy because the builder died before the house was complete. It was fun seeing it all put together and helping pick out my room’s carpet. I also got to get a waterbed which I loved! 

I didn’t realize how spoiled I was in that house until Brian and I started looking for a house. My parent’s thought of everything it seemed. My sister and I each had our own room with a walk through closet to each other’s room with a laundry shoot in it. My parents had their room, bathroom and walk-in closet. 

The dining room was right by the kitchen and you could look out at the lake. We had a ton of family meals there. The kitchen had a big island and eventually a sunroom off of it where the deck had been. There was also  a front room that was where we kept our organ and all my mom’s Lladro figurines. When you walked in the front door you could also walk downstairs. The staircase had open stairs that led to a huge family room.  This is where everyone loved to hang out. Downstairs there was also a bathroom, a “Toy” room and a gigantic laundry room/storage area.  Under my the garage which was a two car garage, but had enough room in the front of the garage that you could fit another car or two in. My dad built a cedar closet there for all my mom’s dresses and any special occasion dress my grandma had, baton outfits and our wedding dress. (Another story for another day)  Under the garage was a room just as big where we kept our tractor and sailboat and whatever else we had for the lake. 

This house was where my mom’s family would come to celebrate Christmas Eve every year after my grandma passed away, several of my family’s anniversary parties, showers and most of my sister’s and my friend’s birthday parties. It was where my friends and I would end up after a dance or for new years or just about any time. My parents would give us the huge basement and we loved it. My dad also had his faculty Christmas party there every year after the district sing. Literally k-12 would all get together all dressed in your Christmas dress and sing. Then the teachers all came to my house afterwards. When I taught in Galesburg we also had our staff Christmas party there and set up tables so we could have a sit down meal as a staff! All the girl’s in my class came to a friend’s and my birthday party once and loved it because there was enough room for all of us to sleep downstairs. 

My daughter’s were both hoping that my dad would keep that house until they were old enough to buy it. They also wanted us to try to just move it here so that they could live in it. It was sad to help my dad empty that house and it took as long as I thought it would. My kids and Brian did a great job helping my dad who is now 86 pack up and move. I guess we’ll always have the memories, but my friends, family and I will miss the house where everyone would always be welcome and have room to keep inviting more. It was a house built for entertaining and boy did my parents love to entertain people. 

PICTURES

Why does everything always happen at once?  I read a post yesterday about how the person felt like they were always rushing around. I totally agreed with them. I do not remember rushing around all the time when I was a kid while in school. It felt like we did reading, math and everything, but at a very nice pace. I even went when I was young to help my mom teach in her classroom and still it felt like she was teaching the children in her class and everyone was relaxed and just going about their day.  Now when I teach I feel like there is never enough time. We are especially rushing to get things done in the afternoon with what feels like a thousand transitions.  We go from lunch to SEL to writing to ELA Deb to Math Deb to Science/Social Studies to maybe library check out or something else. It tends to make me like Wednesdays a little bit more because our afternoon gives us a little more classroom time to just stop and work on something we need to. 

Then there comes my home life which is also crazy. I rush from school, usually to pick up my niece from her job so that we can run to my daughter’s volleyball game to watch that before taking her to dance class right after. Meanwhile, I also have my other daughter that needs to be picked up from Badminton at DGS some time. My son who stayed home from college to attend COD until he decides what to do with the rest of his life also decided to take night classes. This makes it so he is not taking my niece to COD with him as was planned and he is also not available to help take his sisters where they need to go. Brian is working 10 hours a day at Facebook in Dekalb so he leaves at 6:00 and gets home at 6:15, home to the new house that we are trying to get ready so that we can move into. He gets to the old house about 10:15 to eat whatever I have managed to cook for dinner that night. 

Tonight was just one of those nights where it all happened at once and I couldn’t get it all done. My daughter’s junior high had their Spartan Showcase where instead of conferences you walk around to see something they have done in each class. It started at 5.  Chloe had her meet the team night which you guessed it started at 5 and only went until 5:30.  On the way home from school about 3:50  a lady called saying she was 10 minutes from my house. ‘What have I done?’ I had thought. She was coming to look at our 20ft. Wide sliding glass door that needs blinds or something. That part went great. The lady knew her products and we were done by 4:30. No idea the price yet! I grabbed Haley, and we got to her school 5 minutes early and they were letting people in. We ran around and looked at all her 8th grade projects but by the time we left it was already 5:19. The painter and basement floor guy started texting my phone and Haley said she hadn’t thought about dinner. I stopped to grab her food cause she is at dance until 9:30 and then Chloe called to see if I was almost there. I was still in line for food. She needed money for her uniform which while in line I had to transfer from my account to her card.  Then ran to pick up Chloe and told her how sorry I was I missed her entire meet the team night. We then ran around together to get gas and everything needed for Haley’s dance weekend, plus an ankle brace for her since she hurt her ankle. I just wish I could have made it to both things for the girls. WHY DOES EVERYTHING ALWAYS HAPPEN AT ONCE?

I was going to be in second grade and my parents decided to move. I thought that was the worst day of my life. We lived in St. Charles at the time and my dad was the principal of the highschool. Best of all my best friend lived in a kitty-corner across the street from us and two boys are age also lived right by us.  We had a blast, the four of us and I never wanted to move.  To top it off we had a great babysitter that my dad had nicknamed “Stingbean!”  Why would anyone ever want to move even if we were moving closer to my Grandparents?  

To top it off we moved to a small town called Alpha and my dad was now going to be the superintendent of the school AlWood which is Alpha and Woodhull put together. He told everyone we would not stay there long.  It was also a rule that the superintendents had to live in the district. This seemed okay for my older sister, who was lucky enough to have one of my cousin’s in her class. I however hated it. My class just could not handle the fact that my dad was “in charge” of the school. I realized this the first day when a girl came skipping up to me at recess, wrinkled her nose and said,” Your the superintendent’s daughter.”  She totally made sure I realized that I was not to like being his daughter and as we grew up in our huge class of 42 that never really changed.  

Despite Cindy and her views looking back I am glad we moved. My parents and I became super close and I was able to spend way more time with my grandparents and my mom’s side of the family.  I found a new best friend and although she didn’t live kitty corner from me we had some really good times together and still do. I also learned how to be very resilient as the superintendent’s daughter and cherish all the memories I made with my family.  Which turns out is exactly why my parents would move from St. Charles to Alpha. SO maybe they did know what they were doing!!