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It galls me how much time is wasted in an office.
People stand around and talk about video games or television. They surf the internet and play hallway hackey-sack. They wander to the break-room for a soda, they stop and watch world cup soccer in the conference room. They stop by my cubicle and shoot the breeze and I smile and chat while thinking I could be with my kids right now, I could work from home and get all of this stuff done in four hours, GOOD GRIEF, THE AMOUNT OF TIME THAT IS WASTED IN AN OFFICE IS CRIMINAL. (Which is not to say that it isn’t a terrific job, because it is, and I am lucky to have it, and to have a great salary and a pleasant boss and interesting work, and you know what, let’s forget I said anything about work in the first place because the only thing that would be worse than working full-time would be NOT working full-time, PLEASE DON’T FIRE ME FOR THE LOVE)
The baby refuses to look at me when I finally get home. He wants his dad, which is ridiculous, because his dad has been gone just as long as I have, we CARPOOLED and yet I’m the one he’s holding a grudge against. He believes I’m a fair-weather friend, and it takes me the whole weekend to win back his good will and preference. I hold him for an hour after he falls asleep at night, wishing this could count as quality time, because now, suddenly, I’m one of those moms who is forced to care about quality time.
The children are excited I’m home, they aren’t holding the full-time job against me yet, but I can tell it’s wearing on them, from the way they cling and fuss and argue with each other. It’s been mostly fine because Grandma has been here for the last week and she lets them watch TV and play video games and eat too much junk, but she leaves on Wednesday and then they’ll be with a babysitter, and we’ll see if they are so willing to forgive me then.
Well meaning people ask where we are moving to, and I tell them "I don’t know,” and I make a joke about being spontaneous, something dumb about throwing a dart on the map, and then change the subject before I start to get morose and teary-eyed - because most people really don’t want to deal with your sadness - you can be sad, but not THAT sad, not sad in a way that's going to make everyone uncomfortable. When my powers of WASPy repression fail me, I try to at least make it more palatable for everyone around me, by being a version of sad that includes Not Feeling All That Sorry For Myself, or Looking on the Bright Side, or Having A Stiff Upper Lip, or Being O.K. With It Because I’ve Learned A Good Lesson About Fiscal Responsibility.
I am not really very good at this kind of acting though. I don’t have much experience pretending not to be depressed. The only time I was ever really depressed was as a teenager, and back then I flaunted it, I wore it proudly, I snarled and snapped and dared people to mess with me. People would say what is WRONG with you, and I took it as a compliment, an external validation of my self-diagnosed issues.
And honestly, I don’t think I have Clinical Depression or anything like that - I’m just sad because things kind of suck right now. I’m guessing that once things suck a little less, once we’re in some other mode than Stuck, (or once I eat this tray of brownies right here) well – THEN I’ll probably feel better. (And in probably related news, I am vastly fat right now, the fattest I’ve ever been in my life. Let’s hear it for my new insurance, which covers gastric bypass surgery, and I’m TOTALLY DOING IT, SHUT UP, I AM.)
I hide out in my house, avoid church, avoid friends who will ask how we’re doing, what’s going on, what's with the house? The truth is that I don’t care about the house, about how it’s gone and we have to move. Sure, I will miss my neighborhood, and the school and the park with the stream, and the way it takes an hour to walk around the block, because there is always a friend to stop and talk to for a few minutes. But I’m o.k. with it. I can handle it. It’s just a house, I tell my friends flippantly, and I mean it.
What I am not so o.k. with is the fact that I am out of the house for ten hours a day. I’m not o.k. with my nine month old being with a sitter more than he’s with me. My friends who work tell me I will get used to it, that it won’t bother me so much after a while, but I’m not sure that I WANT it not to hurt. I’m not sure I want to get to the point where I’m totally o.k. with leaving my kids for almost 50 hours per week.
It’s not as though I’m new to working. I’ve always worked full-time, ever since I was eighteen years old, but from the moment I got pregnant with Megan I worked from HOME - four or five hours during the day and three or four at night – and I could stop to take them to school, read them a story, fix them a snack. They had a sitter, but I was here, they could run in and out to see me, and when I was done working, I walked out of my room and into the family room, The End. But now there is This Freaking Economy to deal with, and apparently the tech writing gigs, they are not just falling out of the sky, and I have had to Make Certain Accommodations. It boggles my mind now to think about how I complained about it sometimes, about how hard it was to juggle work and the kids.
At night after they’re in bed, I know I should be packing, but I can’t make myself do it. I don’t know where we’re going, and what good is a departure without an arrival? Instead I climb into bed hours early, hiding under the covers, alternately sniffling and napping and picturing my children in the future, turned melodramatically goth and pale and sarcastic, full of hatred for their constantly absent mom.
(I am closing comments, but I will go ahead and list a few that I would fully expect to get: 1) I’m Sorry, 2) Come On Sue, It Could Be Worse, 3) Maybe You Should See A Counselor, 4) Just Be Grateful You Have a Job, 5) Hey, At Least Nobody Has Cancer (Yet), 6) I Lost My Job Too, But Now I’m Making Great Money Working From Home Selling XOSLIEFJL, 7) Here, Let Me Give You A Little Thing I Like To Call Perspective, 8) GAH, Stop Feeling So Sorry For Yourself, You Are Insufferable 9) I Hate To Say It But Working Moms Deserve To Feel Bad, And If Only You Would Sacrifice You Could Be At Home Like Me, 10) Defensive and Cuttingly Angry Comment From Working Mother, 11) Flame War, 12) €£¥∞β≠€¥€)
Showing posts with label Best posts IMHO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Best posts IMHO. Show all posts
Monday, June 14, 2010
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Faithless
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I need to tell you all this. But it isn't funny. (DANCE, CLOWN, DANCE!) Sorry.
And it might take a couple of posts. But I want to tell it anyway. So I will.
BOOOyah.
This is Part One.
A few weeks ago, I got together with a few local bloggers for a kind of round-table discussion thingie (technical term) where we talked about blogging. Eventually, the discussion got around to faith, and a few people talked about how they approach faith on their blogs.
When it was my turn, I told everyone that I didn't talk about faith on my blog, other than anecdotally. I copped to being a coward, to not wanting to invite that kind of controversy into my silly little world.
I told them I didn't want to end up being in a position where I had to be the Defender of Mormonism - because honestly, the church could hardly have a more ineffective spokesperson. I see the kind of crap Courtney goes through and I think - NO. No way. That is Not For Me.
(I'm courageous, what can I say.)
All of those things are true, but not COMPLETELY true. I left a lot of stuff out.
The truth is, I don't talk about my faith because I have so very little of it to go around, and what I have I guard jealously - I don't usually put it out on display for people to take whacks at it. This is not that blog. I am not that blogger.
------------------------
When I started Mormon Mommy Blogs, I wasn't doing it out of some sense of uber-religiousity, or because I wanted to surround myself with other bloggers who believed what I did. I was doing it because I had an ax to grind.
I was irritated with the big clutch of blogs known as the "Bloggernacle" - a group of mostly faithful blogs where people discuss doctrine and theology and issues related to the church.
I was spending a lot of time on some of those blogs, reading, thinking, trying to figure some things out about my faith.
I read a succession of dismissive comments about "mommy bloggers" and the attitude I was sensing - that we were silly and inconsequential and not at all relevant to mormon blogging as a whole - it irritated me. Grated on me. Made me want to throw stuff.
So I thought, I'll start a list. A list of mormon mommy bloggers, to show them how many of us there were. How NOT inconsequential we were. To show "them" - whoever that was - how many of these women were great writers. How many of them had readerships. How many of them were not entirely frivolous.
Elisa came on board at MMB right after I started it - she took care of adding the blogs whenever people asked to be put on the list (which was ALL THE TIME). And she said This could be something more. This could be a big thing. We could really build this into something.
It probably perplexed her, the way she would say, Sue, let's do this and this and this, and I would hem and haw and say, well, let's think about it for a while. She would say, I think we should have contributing writers and I would say hmmmm. She would email me a question and I would respond days later. I was reluctant to do anything with my creation.
Eventually, I handed it over to her - just walked away from it, handed her the keys and signed out. (And as you can clearly see, she implemented her ideas successfully once I got the heck out of dodge.)
I made a few excuses, but never really told her why I was fleeing the crime scene.
I should've told her the truth.
I didn't want anything to do with continuing to build that site because I felt like a fraud.
Here's Sue, the most faithless mormon ever, founding and running a site called Mormon Mommy Blogs.
I felt like a hypocrite.
---------------------
At that point in time I was still up to my neck in a huge crisis of faith, one that had been going on for a couple of years.
I wasn't unfaithful in any way that you could see. I did and said the standard mormon things. I went to church (mostly). I wasn't off participating in drunken orgies. I followed the commandments the best I could. I think I was a pretty typical mormon - in word and deed.
But not in my fickle little heart.
In fact, I'd told my sister Diana a few months before, "I think I'm agnostic."
(How you doing Mom? O.K.? Hanging in there? DEEP BREATHS, Mom. DEEP BREATHS. IT'LL BE O.K. It was a POINT IN THE JOURNEY, Mom. A point in the journey.)
---------------------------------------
I was born and raised a mormon - a true believer, down to the core.
Even during those times when I wasn't behaving like it, I still believed it. I just did what I wanted to do and then felt incredibly guilty about it afterward.
My whole life I had nightmares about Christ returning and sending me off to burn in the fiery pits, even though this isn't what mormons believe, strictly speaking. As a kid we lived by an airforce base and in the middle of the night planes would fly overhead and rattle the walls. I would think it was the second coming and would jump out of bed screaming, and then drop to my knees to fervently, rapidly pray for forgiveness. As a teen I was almost pathologically religious - but not righteous - and full of self-loathing for all of the ways in which I felt I was failing to be a worthwhile human being.
Later on, after I'd sort of gotten my head on straight, spiritually and mentally speaking, I got my act together and proceeded to embark on the typical mormon experience - went to a church college (Ricks, back when it WAS Ricks), met a returned missionary, and married him in the temple.
It should tell you something about how firmly entrenched I was in my beliefs that I was absolutely, cartoonishly SHOCKED when my faithful little sister married a convert.
Let me repeat that. I was worried because she married a guy who CONVERTED. Not a guy with different religious beliefs. Just someone who came to them a little later in the game.
It embarrasses me now, remembering how I expressed my concern for her and judgmentally clucked my tongue. I meant well, I just thought it was incredibly risky for her to link up with a guy who MIGHT NOT BE THAT STRONG IN THE FAITH.
{facepalm}
Ooooooh, I was smug. God probably thought I needed a smack-down. I'm guessing.
One day I was "talking" (read: debating) with a friend about religion and she said something sort of shocking about the history of our church. I told her she was wrong, that what she was saying was ludicrous. We went back and forth for a while, each firm in our own position, and when we hung up I jumped online and googled. And stared at the screen in disbelief.
A few weeks later my faith was in tatters. Not because of the things I read that were demonstrably false, but because of a few of the things that were actually true.
(I think this is part of why I'm so unwilling to debate people about ANYTHING anymore - politics, religion, the importance of boots - I feel extremely insecure in my positions. If my feelings about religion can change, then - anything can. I no longer feel comfortable expressing strong opinions that might come back to bite me in the future.)
I won't get into all of the study and research I compulsively, hysterically participated in for the next few months, but trust me - it was extensive. And after that, I talked to my bishop - who had no answers for me, who didn't even want to DISCUSS my questions. I talked to my stake president - he was more comforting, but couldn't give me the hard, solid answers I felt I needed.
I found solace in a group of mormon blogs where they actually discussed these issues from a faithful perspective and found a tentative peace with some of the things that were keeping me up at night. (And I don't want to get into any of that here - what those issues were, or how I resolved them. This post is not about that.)
But still, I struggled.
---------------------------
Can I just say that it always really bugs me when I hear stories about how people prayed to find their lost watch, and God answered their prayers? Or about how they prayed to pass a test, or they prayed about what color of shoelaces to buy? For one, I don't think God cares about your test - He gave you a brain for a reason and if you didn't study that's your own dang fault. For another - if He cares about shoelaces, why doesn't He care about, say,Rwanda
But I did believe that God cared about spiritual things - that if you wanted to know something about spirituality, about what was true and right and good - that He would answer those kinds of prayers because that was His arena. Ask and ye shall receive, and all that jazz.
So I would pray about these issues I was having, pray to get SOME KIND OF answer. Pray to know if, despite all of these sticky little issues, there was still some kind of truth there.
If this was a story in a church magazine, what would've happened next is that I would've felt the spirit and known it was all true.
What I got?
Was radio silence.
God did not, apparently, feel in any particular hurry to confirm or deny.
TO BE CONTINUED (As in, this is not necessarily where I'm at TODAY. It's just where I'm at in the retelling.)
(DUN Dun dun)
(Part Two is here.)
------------------
To be clear: This is not about Mormonism - not really... It's just about faith. What it's like to have it, and to not have it, and to sort of have your own version of it, and the points in between.
SUBSCRIBE
And it might take a couple of posts. But I want to tell it anyway. So I will.
BOOOyah.
This is Part One.
A few weeks ago, I got together with a few local bloggers for a kind of round-table discussion thingie (technical term) where we talked about blogging. Eventually, the discussion got around to faith, and a few people talked about how they approach faith on their blogs.
When it was my turn, I told everyone that I didn't talk about faith on my blog, other than anecdotally. I copped to being a coward, to not wanting to invite that kind of controversy into my silly little world.
I told them I didn't want to end up being in a position where I had to be the Defender of Mormonism - because honestly, the church could hardly have a more ineffective spokesperson. I see the kind of crap Courtney goes through and I think - NO. No way. That is Not For Me.
(I'm courageous, what can I say.)
All of those things are true, but not COMPLETELY true. I left a lot of stuff out.
The truth is, I don't talk about my faith because I have so very little of it to go around, and what I have I guard jealously - I don't usually put it out on display for people to take whacks at it. This is not that blog. I am not that blogger.
------------------------
When I started Mormon Mommy Blogs, I wasn't doing it out of some sense of uber-religiousity, or because I wanted to surround myself with other bloggers who believed what I did. I was doing it because I had an ax to grind.
I was irritated with the big clutch of blogs known as the "Bloggernacle" - a group of mostly faithful blogs where people discuss doctrine and theology and issues related to the church.
I was spending a lot of time on some of those blogs, reading, thinking, trying to figure some things out about my faith.
I read a succession of dismissive comments about "mommy bloggers" and the attitude I was sensing - that we were silly and inconsequential and not at all relevant to mormon blogging as a whole - it irritated me. Grated on me. Made me want to throw stuff.
So I thought, I'll start a list. A list of mormon mommy bloggers, to show them how many of us there were. How NOT inconsequential we were. To show "them" - whoever that was - how many of these women were great writers. How many of them had readerships. How many of them were not entirely frivolous.
Elisa came on board at MMB right after I started it - she took care of adding the blogs whenever people asked to be put on the list (which was ALL THE TIME). And she said This could be something more. This could be a big thing. We could really build this into something.
It probably perplexed her, the way she would say, Sue, let's do this and this and this, and I would hem and haw and say, well, let's think about it for a while. She would say, I think we should have contributing writers and I would say hmmmm. She would email me a question and I would respond days later. I was reluctant to do anything with my creation.
Eventually, I handed it over to her - just walked away from it, handed her the keys and signed out. (And as you can clearly see, she implemented her ideas successfully once I got the heck out of dodge.)
I made a few excuses, but never really told her why I was fleeing the crime scene.
I should've told her the truth.
I didn't want anything to do with continuing to build that site because I felt like a fraud.
Here's Sue, the most faithless mormon ever, founding and running a site called Mormon Mommy Blogs.
I felt like a hypocrite.
---------------------
At that point in time I was still up to my neck in a huge crisis of faith, one that had been going on for a couple of years.
I wasn't unfaithful in any way that you could see. I did and said the standard mormon things. I went to church (mostly). I wasn't off participating in drunken orgies. I followed the commandments the best I could. I think I was a pretty typical mormon - in word and deed.
But not in my fickle little heart.
In fact, I'd told my sister Diana a few months before, "I think I'm agnostic."
(How you doing Mom? O.K.? Hanging in there? DEEP BREATHS, Mom. DEEP BREATHS. IT'LL BE O.K. It was a POINT IN THE JOURNEY, Mom. A point in the journey.)
---------------------------------------
I was born and raised a mormon - a true believer, down to the core.
Even during those times when I wasn't behaving like it, I still believed it. I just did what I wanted to do and then felt incredibly guilty about it afterward.
My whole life I had nightmares about Christ returning and sending me off to burn in the fiery pits, even though this isn't what mormons believe, strictly speaking. As a kid we lived by an airforce base and in the middle of the night planes would fly overhead and rattle the walls. I would think it was the second coming and would jump out of bed screaming, and then drop to my knees to fervently, rapidly pray for forgiveness. As a teen I was almost pathologically religious - but not righteous - and full of self-loathing for all of the ways in which I felt I was failing to be a worthwhile human being.
Later on, after I'd sort of gotten my head on straight, spiritually and mentally speaking, I got my act together and proceeded to embark on the typical mormon experience - went to a church college (Ricks, back when it WAS Ricks), met a returned missionary, and married him in the temple.
It should tell you something about how firmly entrenched I was in my beliefs that I was absolutely, cartoonishly SHOCKED when my faithful little sister married a convert.
Let me repeat that. I was worried because she married a guy who CONVERTED. Not a guy with different religious beliefs. Just someone who came to them a little later in the game.
It embarrasses me now, remembering how I expressed my concern for her and judgmentally clucked my tongue. I meant well, I just thought it was incredibly risky for her to link up with a guy who MIGHT NOT BE THAT STRONG IN THE FAITH.
{facepalm}
Ooooooh, I was smug. God probably thought I needed a smack-down. I'm guessing.
One day I was "talking" (read: debating) with a friend about religion and she said something sort of shocking about the history of our church. I told her she was wrong, that what she was saying was ludicrous. We went back and forth for a while, each firm in our own position, and when we hung up I jumped online and googled. And stared at the screen in disbelief.
A few weeks later my faith was in tatters. Not because of the things I read that were demonstrably false, but because of a few of the things that were actually true.
(I think this is part of why I'm so unwilling to debate people about ANYTHING anymore - politics, religion, the importance of boots - I feel extremely insecure in my positions. If my feelings about religion can change, then - anything can. I no longer feel comfortable expressing strong opinions that might come back to bite me in the future.)
I won't get into all of the study and research I compulsively, hysterically participated in for the next few months, but trust me - it was extensive. And after that, I talked to my bishop - who had no answers for me, who didn't even want to DISCUSS my questions. I talked to my stake president - he was more comforting, but couldn't give me the hard, solid answers I felt I needed.
I found solace in a group of mormon blogs where they actually discussed these issues from a faithful perspective and found a tentative peace with some of the things that were keeping me up at night. (And I don't want to get into any of that here - what those issues were, or how I resolved them. This post is not about that.)
But still, I struggled.
---------------------------
Can I just say that it always really bugs me when I hear stories about how people prayed to find their lost watch, and God answered their prayers? Or about how they prayed to pass a test, or they prayed about what color of shoelaces to buy? For one, I don't think God cares about your test - He gave you a brain for a reason and if you didn't study that's your own dang fault. For another - if He cares about shoelaces, why doesn't He care about, say,
But I did believe that God cared about spiritual things - that if you wanted to know something about spirituality, about what was true and right and good - that He would answer those kinds of prayers because that was His arena. Ask and ye shall receive, and all that jazz.
So I would pray about these issues I was having, pray to get SOME KIND OF answer. Pray to know if, despite all of these sticky little issues, there was still some kind of truth there.
If this was a story in a church magazine, what would've happened next is that I would've felt the spirit and known it was all true.
What I got?
Was radio silence.
God did not, apparently, feel in any particular hurry to confirm or deny.
TO BE CONTINUED (As in, this is not necessarily where I'm at TODAY. It's just where I'm at in the retelling.)
(DUN Dun dun)
(Part Two is here.)
------------------
To be clear: This is not about Mormonism - not really... It's just about faith. What it's like to have it, and to not have it, and to sort of have your own version of it, and the points in between.
SUBSCRIBE
Thursday, April 01, 2010
True Confessions, Part Six-Hundred-And-Two
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You know what?
I really don't like Sundays. I'm probably going to be taken off to mormon blogging jail for admitting that, but it's true.
Our family tries to do the whole "Keep the Sabbath day holy" thing and most days what it ends up meaning is that we all get stir-crazy and irritable with each other.
So that you can understand where I'm coming from, here are the rules we try to live by on Sunday:
Thou Shalt Not Work
Rest from your labors and all that.
How we do on this one: Not bad. But by the time the kids are in bed, I usually figure the Sabbath is over and I pull out the laptop and get back to work. (Although I guess I'm probably o.k. on this one regardless - since I'm usually just pretending to work. I mean come on, I have blogs to read.) (I have to be careful with this though, sometimes I forget to keep my scowl of concentration on my face, and I'll start smiling and my husband will say, "YOU ARE SO NOT WORKING," but then I just say, "It's the SABBATH. Of COURSE I'm not working. GO READ YOUR BIBLE, SINNER.")
Thou Shalt Not Go To The Store
I guess under the premise that your patronage requires someone else to work on Sunday?
(Although really, if we're going to carry that whole idea through to it's logical conclusion, shouldn't we all then stop taking the Sunday paper, because that means someone is having to deliver it? Stop using electricity because someone probably has to monitor those power plants? Stop flushing because someone has to monitor the sewage treatment plant? WHERE DOES IT END? I ASK YOU.)
We do allow ourselves to go to the gas station - because I can swipe my debit card and I'm not requiring someone else to work. (So basically, any business staffed entirely by robots - OK TO PATRONIZE.)
How we do on this one: Pretty good. I mean we flush and use lightbulbs, but we generally stay away from the store, unless it's an emergency and we need tylenol or diapers or emergency chocolate.
Thou Shalt Not Play Sports
I will confess to not understanding this one. Why no sports? Is it because they're rowdy? Or because you sweat, and that's kind of like working? And why are some recreational sports o.k. and some aren't? Like, it's o.k. to take a family walk, but it's not o.k. to go hiking. You can go on a family bike ride but only at a leisurely look-I'm-not-engaging-in-sporting-activities pace. And you can go on a drive, but you can't go for a boat ride. (Because of Satan being part mer-man.)
How we do on this one: So-so. Sometimes we go up to the canyon with the idea that we're just going on a drive, or to have a family picnic, (five minutes from our doorstep, HOW COULD YOU NOT) and we end up hiking a little. Although it isn't exactly restful because I end up worrying that God Is Angry About This and will therefore sic a bear on us.
Thou Shalt Get Thy Brood To Church
Mormons go to three hours of church, y'all. THREE HOURS. (Personally, I think we'd have a LOT more converts if we dialed that back a little. I don't even want to do things that are FUN for three hours.)
How we do on this one: Church starts at 9AM right now, and I will just admit right now that MOST Sundays, we don't make it there for the first hour. (DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT MOM.) We TRY! (USUALLY!)
But by the time everyone is showered and blown dry and dressed and besocked and presentable, it's getting late. And if you get there late, you are NOT getting a pew, you are going to end up sitting in the metal folding chair ghetto at the back of the chapel with all of the other families who couldn't get their act together either, and those parents are usually all so demoralized and beaten down that they allow their children to run completely wild - beating each other over the head with chairs, eating crayons, and behaving in a generally depraved fashion.
When I see that we are cutting it close and are going to end up in the ghetto, sometimes I just make an executive decision so that my children don't have to see such poor examples of reverence. It's ALL ABOUT TEACHING REVERENCE really.
Thou Shalt Partake of the Following Approved Activities:
Church. Eating. Reading. Game playing. Crafts. Visiting people. Visiting the elderly. Making cookies for random people. Reading scriptures. Making puppet shows about Jesus. Gathering around the piano singing.
Although honestly, all of these activities generally take a back seat to sitting on the couch staring blankly at the walls, pondering how we will get through the next umpteen hours of our lives without any snip-snapping at each other or the children, who we love, but let's face it - EIGHT HOURS IN THE FAMILY ROOM AS A FAMILY.
YIKES.
So basically, I'm looking for ideas. What do YOU do on Sundays to make it - not like that? What on earth do you do all day long? How do you keep from killing each other? Do you have fun family/friend get togethers? (And if so, can I come? Without the kids?)
PS: I should add that the eight hours of family time is NOT enforced family time. ON THE CONTRARY. We encourage them to go a) upstairs to play, b) in the basement to play, c) outside to play, d) in the garage to play, e) up on the roof to play - I'M FLEXIBLE. Just - GO PLAY. Somewhere else. Sometimes they will actually go off and have fun together, but a lot of other times they just want to be with us - and when I say "with us" I mean RIGHT WITH US, on our laps, draping themselves over our shoulders, and hanging on to our noodly biceps. (Clearly I need to be meaner to my children.)
SUBSCRIBE
I really don't like Sundays. I'm probably going to be taken off to mormon blogging jail for admitting that, but it's true.
Our family tries to do the whole "Keep the Sabbath day holy" thing and most days what it ends up meaning is that we all get stir-crazy and irritable with each other.
So that you can understand where I'm coming from, here are the rules we try to live by on Sunday:
Thou Shalt Not Work
Rest from your labors and all that.
How we do on this one: Not bad. But by the time the kids are in bed, I usually figure the Sabbath is over and I pull out the laptop and get back to work. (Although I guess I'm probably o.k. on this one regardless - since I'm usually just pretending to work. I mean come on, I have blogs to read.) (I have to be careful with this though, sometimes I forget to keep my scowl of concentration on my face, and I'll start smiling and my husband will say, "YOU ARE SO NOT WORKING," but then I just say, "It's the SABBATH. Of COURSE I'm not working. GO READ YOUR BIBLE, SINNER.")
Thou Shalt Not Go To The Store
I guess under the premise that your patronage requires someone else to work on Sunday?
(Although really, if we're going to carry that whole idea through to it's logical conclusion, shouldn't we all then stop taking the Sunday paper, because that means someone is having to deliver it? Stop using electricity because someone probably has to monitor those power plants? Stop flushing because someone has to monitor the sewage treatment plant? WHERE DOES IT END? I ASK YOU.)
We do allow ourselves to go to the gas station - because I can swipe my debit card and I'm not requiring someone else to work. (So basically, any business staffed entirely by robots - OK TO PATRONIZE.)
How we do on this one: Pretty good. I mean we flush and use lightbulbs, but we generally stay away from the store, unless it's an emergency and we need tylenol or diapers or emergency chocolate.
Thou Shalt Not Play Sports
I will confess to not understanding this one. Why no sports? Is it because they're rowdy? Or because you sweat, and that's kind of like working? And why are some recreational sports o.k. and some aren't? Like, it's o.k. to take a family walk, but it's not o.k. to go hiking. You can go on a family bike ride but only at a leisurely look-I'm-not-engaging-in-sporting-activities pace. And you can go on a drive, but you can't go for a boat ride. (Because of Satan being part mer-man.)
How we do on this one: So-so. Sometimes we go up to the canyon with the idea that we're just going on a drive, or to have a family picnic, (five minutes from our doorstep, HOW COULD YOU NOT) and we end up hiking a little. Although it isn't exactly restful because I end up worrying that God Is Angry About This and will therefore sic a bear on us.
Thou Shalt Get Thy Brood To Church
Mormons go to three hours of church, y'all. THREE HOURS. (Personally, I think we'd have a LOT more converts if we dialed that back a little. I don't even want to do things that are FUN for three hours.)
How we do on this one: Church starts at 9AM right now, and I will just admit right now that MOST Sundays, we don't make it there for the first hour. (DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT MOM.) We TRY! (USUALLY!)
But by the time everyone is showered and blown dry and dressed and besocked and presentable, it's getting late. And if you get there late, you are NOT getting a pew, you are going to end up sitting in the metal folding chair ghetto at the back of the chapel with all of the other families who couldn't get their act together either, and those parents are usually all so demoralized and beaten down that they allow their children to run completely wild - beating each other over the head with chairs, eating crayons, and behaving in a generally depraved fashion.
When I see that we are cutting it close and are going to end up in the ghetto, sometimes I just make an executive decision so that my children don't have to see such poor examples of reverence. It's ALL ABOUT TEACHING REVERENCE really.
Thou Shalt Partake of the Following Approved Activities:
Church. Eating. Reading. Game playing. Crafts. Visiting people. Visiting the elderly. Making cookies for random people. Reading scriptures. Making puppet shows about Jesus. Gathering around the piano singing.
Although honestly, all of these activities generally take a back seat to sitting on the couch staring blankly at the walls, pondering how we will get through the next umpteen hours of our lives without any snip-snapping at each other or the children, who we love, but let's face it - EIGHT HOURS IN THE FAMILY ROOM AS A FAMILY.
YIKES.
So basically, I'm looking for ideas. What do YOU do on Sundays to make it - not like that? What on earth do you do all day long? How do you keep from killing each other? Do you have fun family/friend get togethers? (And if so, can I come? Without the kids?)
PS: I should add that the eight hours of family time is NOT enforced family time. ON THE CONTRARY. We encourage them to go a) upstairs to play, b) in the basement to play, c) outside to play, d) in the garage to play, e) up on the roof to play - I'M FLEXIBLE. Just - GO PLAY. Somewhere else. Sometimes they will actually go off and have fun together, but a lot of other times they just want to be with us - and when I say "with us" I mean RIGHT WITH US, on our laps, draping themselves over our shoulders, and hanging on to our noodly biceps. (Clearly I need to be meaner to my children.)
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
Farewell Sweet Maiden
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One thing I like to ponder is my own death. I have very specific ideas about how to achieve the funeral of my dreams. In our religion we're supposed to have these funerals that are uplifting, focusing on the fact that we'll be together again someday and making sure everyone knows all about that good news, leaving everyone feeling good.
And I know other people want their friends and family to have a big party, celebrating their life. That's so nice, I think.
But I don't want that. I want everyone to cry over me, a LOT. Because I'm DEAD. I'm FREAKING DEAD. I mean, come on. Party on your own time, this is my FUNERAL we're talking about. Show some respect, and by respect I mean, show everyone how you just cannot picture the world without my bright shining light of awesome lightness and how it will pain you to go on for even ONE MORE SECOND. Geez.
Unfortunately, when I tell my husband my final wishes, his response is usually to roll his eyes or laugh at me, or start muttering some more, so I thought I should post my final requests in a more public forum so that if I kick the bucket anytime soon he will have no choice but to obey my wishes. Accordingly, here are my FINAL WISHES:
1. I would like to give the eulogy, via a pre-recorded video. I think that would be really touching. Believe me, nobody will be more broken up over my death than me, you know? I can really lend it that air of gravitas and reverence, what with all of the incoherent sobbing I will do on the video. And also it might really freak a lot of people out which amuses me.
2. If that won't work because I die before I get around to making the video, I would like either my brother Mark or my sister Diana to give the eulogy, mostly because I'm pretty sure they would both fall apart and start crying on stage, which is always good for getting the audience going. Diana would probably get REALLY upset and fall into unflattering snorfle type crying (such is the sisterly love we share) which would be ugly but also super touching. Alternatively, my sister Wendy is an actress AND also kind of a wuss, and my sister-in-law Holly is an ultra-dependable public cryer.
3. If they give the eulogy, I'm at least WRITING IT. I mean gosh. How else will they know how to narrarate the powerpoint presentation I put together with highlights of my life? Besides, I've already spent a lot of time writing the dang thing.
4. I would also like to give the musical number, because hey, how touching would that be, having the dead girl sing at her own funeral. Not a dry eye in the house, that's how touching. I'm thinking I could sing something subtle and understated like My Immortal by Evanescence or Fantine's Death from Les Mis, something like that.
5. If I am in a bad accident, and there is some question about whether or not I am brain dead, I say leave the machines on. Because you never know. I might come back.
6. But if I do appear to be pretty much deadish, please give someone my organs. And then, after they have my organs, please send them a little picture of me to keep on a shelf somewhere, so that when they wake up in the night and look around with their donated eyeballs, they'll see me staring RIGHT at them, kind of like I'm haunting them, but in a nice way. Like that.
7. I hope my husband will remarry quickly. He's an affectionate sort and he would get far too melancholy without someone around to hug him a lot, plus the children would need a mother. Therefore, I think he should marry an old spinster type - someone completely unattractive but with a sweet spirit. If that won't work, he should at least (as I've mentioned before) not marry anyone younger than 25, or smaller than a size eight. (Seriously hon, a 19 year old might be hot, but she'd be REALLY annoying. She'd probably make faces at you if you decided to bake and eat a can of cinnamon rolls at ten o'clock on a Sunday night. ME? I don't judge. In fact, I care so much about your feelings that you can always count on me to sacrifice and eat them WITH you. I'm a giver.)
I think that's it. That's all I can think of right now at least. How about you?
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And I know other people want their friends and family to have a big party, celebrating their life. That's so nice, I think.
But I don't want that. I want everyone to cry over me, a LOT. Because I'm DEAD. I'm FREAKING DEAD. I mean, come on. Party on your own time, this is my FUNERAL we're talking about. Show some respect, and by respect I mean, show everyone how you just cannot picture the world without my bright shining light of awesome lightness and how it will pain you to go on for even ONE MORE SECOND. Geez.
Unfortunately, when I tell my husband my final wishes, his response is usually to roll his eyes or laugh at me, or start muttering some more, so I thought I should post my final requests in a more public forum so that if I kick the bucket anytime soon he will have no choice but to obey my wishes. Accordingly, here are my FINAL WISHES:
1. I would like to give the eulogy, via a pre-recorded video. I think that would be really touching. Believe me, nobody will be more broken up over my death than me, you know? I can really lend it that air of gravitas and reverence, what with all of the incoherent sobbing I will do on the video. And also it might really freak a lot of people out which amuses me.
2. If that won't work because I die before I get around to making the video, I would like either my brother Mark or my sister Diana to give the eulogy, mostly because I'm pretty sure they would both fall apart and start crying on stage, which is always good for getting the audience going. Diana would probably get REALLY upset and fall into unflattering snorfle type crying (such is the sisterly love we share) which would be ugly but also super touching. Alternatively, my sister Wendy is an actress AND also kind of a wuss, and my sister-in-law Holly is an ultra-dependable public cryer.
3. If they give the eulogy, I'm at least WRITING IT. I mean gosh. How else will they know how to narrarate the powerpoint presentation I put together with highlights of my life? Besides, I've already spent a lot of time writing the dang thing.
4. I would also like to give the musical number, because hey, how touching would that be, having the dead girl sing at her own funeral. Not a dry eye in the house, that's how touching. I'm thinking I could sing something subtle and understated like My Immortal by Evanescence or Fantine's Death from Les Mis, something like that.
5. If I am in a bad accident, and there is some question about whether or not I am brain dead, I say leave the machines on. Because you never know. I might come back.
6. But if I do appear to be pretty much deadish, please give someone my organs. And then, after they have my organs, please send them a little picture of me to keep on a shelf somewhere, so that when they wake up in the night and look around with their donated eyeballs, they'll see me staring RIGHT at them, kind of like I'm haunting them, but in a nice way. Like that.
7. I hope my husband will remarry quickly. He's an affectionate sort and he would get far too melancholy without someone around to hug him a lot, plus the children would need a mother. Therefore, I think he should marry an old spinster type - someone completely unattractive but with a sweet spirit. If that won't work, he should at least (as I've mentioned before) not marry anyone younger than 25, or smaller than a size eight. (Seriously hon, a 19 year old might be hot, but she'd be REALLY annoying. She'd probably make faces at you if you decided to bake and eat a can of cinnamon rolls at ten o'clock on a Sunday night. ME? I don't judge. In fact, I care so much about your feelings that you can always count on me to sacrifice and eat them WITH you. I'm a giver.)
I think that's it. That's all I can think of right now at least. How about you?
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Wednesday, September 02, 2009
The Mysterious Case of the Continually Evolving Due Date
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NO BABY YET. I REPEAT: NO BABY YET.
Some people were confused about how I could be twelve weeks along in February, and yet STILL BE PREGNANT IN SEPTEMBER. Well. That is certainly VERY easy to explain.
This is possible because I am a moron.
January 2009
I call my old OB's office.
Me: "I took a pregnancy test and it says I'm pregnant."
Nurse: "When was your last menstrual period?"
Me: "December 2nd?"
Nurse: "Are you guessing?"
Me: "Kind of."
We settle on a due date of September 10th. I tell her what the OB said after my last c-section - that my uterus was shot and that I should take steps to make sure I NEVER GET PREGNANT AGAIN. She leaves a message for the doctor, who reads his old notes on the chart and calls me back. We have a ten minute conversation all about DANGER and RISK and TAKING PRECAUTIONS. I am officially scared to death.
February 12, 2009
We discover our insurance no longer covers the old OB, and I reluctantly find a new one.
NEW, COMPLETELY CAVALIER NOT-TAKING-ME-SERIOUSLY OB: "Sometimes when we're performing c-sections we see a paper thin uterine scar and get a little freaked out. But we really don't know very much medically about how much stress the uterus can actually take. The uterus is an amazing thing. You'll probably be fine."
Me: "Uhhhh....."
OB: "Listen, we'll keep an eye on things. If we start seeing signs of tearing or rupture, we'll take the baby a little early - in August or possibly July."
February 24, 2009
Me: "I'm twelve weeks now."
Husband: "Nine weeks."
Me: "No - I think I got pregnant on December 13th. That makes me..."
Husband: "That would make you ten weeks."
Me: "Ten-and-a-half. That's practically twelve."
Husband: "Is this because you want to tell people, and you think you aren't allowed to tell people until the first trimester is over?"
Me: Yes. "NO."
April, 2009
At a party, talking pregnancy with a friend who is due in September:
Friend: "When is this baby coming?"
Me: "I'm not sure. Maybe August. Or July. It sort of depends." I ramble on for a few minutes about possible complications and early babies.
Friend: "But what's your official due date?"
Me: Huh. When IS my due date? Surely this knowledge was in my brain at some point in time. "August 20th?"
Later on that night, I realize this is NOT actually my due date but the date of the Project Runway premiere.
(HEY, IT WAS AN IMPORTANT DAY.)
April 2009, again
Ultrasound tech: "So according to what we can see on the ultrasound, your corrected due date is actually September 28th."
Me, grumbling: "Yeah, like THAT's accurate."
June 2009
My friends throw me a baby shower. Because as they all know, I'm due ANY DAY NOW. The baby could come at ANY SECOND. In JULY. Or maybe in AUGUST. Or maybe on September 10th. Or the 28th. Or maybe NEXT YEAR. NOBODY KNOWS.
July 2009
The OB tells me everything looks fine so far, and barring any problems we'll plan on a September 14th c-section.
Me: "Like what kind of problems? Because last night I bent over and I felt tearing and I was looking at wikipedia and I wondered - "
OB: "You didn't rupture."
Me: "Right, but - "
OB: "Severe pain. Severe uterine pain and bleeding. Call us if there is SEVERE UTERINE PAIN AND BLEEDING."
August 2009:
I have somehow gotten September 10th stuck in my head. Approximately twenty people ask me when I am due. I tell all of them September 10th.
August 2009, Again:
I get in an argument with my husband about my c-section date.
He insists it is September 14th.
I insist it is the 10th, after all, "I should know, I mean, it's MY body getting cut open. Geez."
He gets out the calendar and I slink away in defeat.
August 2009, Some More:
I am having contractions. In all of my previous conversations with the OB, she has emphasized that I should NOT worry about uterine rupture because we really only need to worry if I start having contractions.
I call her office in a dither, all "RUPTURE - RUPTURE WILL ROBINSON." She tells me to lie down and drink a glass of water and the contractions will probably stop.
They do.
(It is very anti-climactic.)
September 2009:
I realize that for all of my complaining ("I HAVE BEEN PREGNANT FOR FORTY-SEVEN WEEKS" and "PLEASE JUST GET IT OUT OF ME" and "MY STOMACH IS BREAKING OFF") I am now too busy with work and the kids' activities to have this baby.
I ask my OB if we can move it back to September 28th again because I have three user manuals to finish before I can possibly afford to take a few days off to have the baby. The 14th is just not going to work for me.
Shockingly, she does not go along with this.
----------------------------
So there you have it. September 14th. D-Day.
I am actually looking into outsourcing the birthing process to my husband. He gets paid time off from work, so it would make way more sense for him to just go ahead and have the baby.
(I'll keep you posted on how that works out for me.)
-------------------
PS: I didn't forget about the Thanksgiving Point giveaway - I just never bothered to announce who won. I did pick a winner and deliver the tickets last month though - they went to Debbie, who commented at 10:11 PM.
Some people were confused about how I could be twelve weeks along in February, and yet STILL BE PREGNANT IN SEPTEMBER. Well. That is certainly VERY easy to explain.
This is possible because I am a moron.
January 2009
I call my old OB's office.
Me: "I took a pregnancy test and it says I'm pregnant."
Nurse: "When was your last menstrual period?"
Me: "December 2nd?"
Nurse: "Are you guessing?"
Me: "Kind of."
We settle on a due date of September 10th. I tell her what the OB said after my last c-section - that my uterus was shot and that I should take steps to make sure I NEVER GET PREGNANT AGAIN. She leaves a message for the doctor, who reads his old notes on the chart and calls me back. We have a ten minute conversation all about DANGER and RISK and TAKING PRECAUTIONS. I am officially scared to death.
February 12, 2009
We discover our insurance no longer covers the old OB, and I reluctantly find a new one.
NEW, COMPLETELY CAVALIER NOT-TAKING-ME-SERIOUSLY OB: "Sometimes when we're performing c-sections we see a paper thin uterine scar and get a little freaked out. But we really don't know very much medically about how much stress the uterus can actually take. The uterus is an amazing thing. You'll probably be fine."
Me: "Uhhhh....."
OB: "Listen, we'll keep an eye on things. If we start seeing signs of tearing or rupture, we'll take the baby a little early - in August or possibly July."
February 24, 2009
Me: "I'm twelve weeks now."
Husband: "Nine weeks."
Me: "No - I think I got pregnant on December 13th. That makes me..."
Husband: "That would make you ten weeks."
Me: "Ten-and-a-half. That's practically twelve."
Husband: "Is this because you want to tell people, and you think you aren't allowed to tell people until the first trimester is over?"
Me: Yes. "NO."
April, 2009
At a party, talking pregnancy with a friend who is due in September:
Friend: "When is this baby coming?"
Me: "I'm not sure. Maybe August. Or July. It sort of depends." I ramble on for a few minutes about possible complications and early babies.
Friend: "But what's your official due date?"
Me: Huh. When IS my due date? Surely this knowledge was in my brain at some point in time. "August 20th?"
Later on that night, I realize this is NOT actually my due date but the date of the Project Runway premiere.
(HEY, IT WAS AN IMPORTANT DAY.)
April 2009, again
Ultrasound tech: "So according to what we can see on the ultrasound, your corrected due date is actually September 28th."
Me, grumbling: "Yeah, like THAT's accurate."
June 2009
My friends throw me a baby shower. Because as they all know, I'm due ANY DAY NOW. The baby could come at ANY SECOND. In JULY. Or maybe in AUGUST. Or maybe on September 10th. Or the 28th. Or maybe NEXT YEAR. NOBODY KNOWS.
July 2009
The OB tells me everything looks fine so far, and barring any problems we'll plan on a September 14th c-section.
Me: "Like what kind of problems? Because last night I bent over and I felt tearing and I was looking at wikipedia and I wondered - "
OB: "You didn't rupture."
Me: "Right, but - "
OB: "Severe pain. Severe uterine pain and bleeding. Call us if there is SEVERE UTERINE PAIN AND BLEEDING."
August 2009:
I have somehow gotten September 10th stuck in my head. Approximately twenty people ask me when I am due. I tell all of them September 10th.
August 2009, Again:
I get in an argument with my husband about my c-section date.
He insists it is September 14th.
I insist it is the 10th, after all, "I should know, I mean, it's MY body getting cut open. Geez."
He gets out the calendar and I slink away in defeat.
August 2009, Some More:
I am having contractions. In all of my previous conversations with the OB, she has emphasized that I should NOT worry about uterine rupture because we really only need to worry if I start having contractions.
I call her office in a dither, all "RUPTURE - RUPTURE WILL ROBINSON." She tells me to lie down and drink a glass of water and the contractions will probably stop.
They do.
(It is very anti-climactic.)
September 2009:
I realize that for all of my complaining ("I HAVE BEEN PREGNANT FOR FORTY-SEVEN WEEKS" and "PLEASE JUST GET IT OUT OF ME" and "MY STOMACH IS BREAKING OFF") I am now too busy with work and the kids' activities to have this baby.
I ask my OB if we can move it back to September 28th again because I have three user manuals to finish before I can possibly afford to take a few days off to have the baby. The 14th is just not going to work for me.
Shockingly, she does not go along with this.
----------------------------
So there you have it. September 14th. D-Day.
I am actually looking into outsourcing the birthing process to my husband. He gets paid time off from work, so it would make way more sense for him to just go ahead and have the baby.
(I'll keep you posted on how that works out for me.)
-------------------
PS: I didn't forget about the Thanksgiving Point giveaway - I just never bothered to announce who won. I did pick a winner and deliver the tickets last month though - they went to Debbie, who commented at 10:11 PM.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
I See London, I See France...
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There is a robin that sits outside of our window every morning and sings its sweet little heart out. It's very Mary Poppins. Eeeeevery single morning at 5:30 AM.
I freaking hate that bird.
The other morning the bird started singing at precisely 5:17 AM and I was so mad that I got up and went outside intending to do something about it, something involving rocks and a few pointedly stinging remarks. Unfortunately, as soon as I got outside it flew up onto the roof of the neighbors house, right above their master bedroom window where it just knew I'd be scared to throw something, and then it resumed singing. MOCKING ME.
Me, whisper-yelling: "SHUT UP BIRD."
Bird: "Tweedle tweedle twee."
Me, full of impotent rage, jumping up and down: "Go away! Go away! You suck! I hate you!"
Bird: "Tweety tweet tweet."
It was very frustrating.
(One of my neighbors has very mischievous six and ten year old boys, and I cannot for the life of me understand why she has failed to furnish them with BB guns. This seems a tragic oversight.)
(Do you think that would be an unfortunate present for someone to leave at their doorstep?)
The bird's early morning singing leaves me plenty of time for rage-fueled tossing around in bed before it is time to get up. I do this with quite a bit of irritation and loud sighing, since in my sleep deprived haze I feel quite certain that my husband ought to be Doing Something About It, although I'm not sure what that would entail. Just something. I think I would like to hear him out there screaming at that bird, really giving it the what-for. Maybe throwing something heavy, like a patio chair or the swing set.
Despite my bird fueled rage, my attitude about all things baby is finally starting to improve. It helps to have ultra-sound proof that it's a boy and not actually a demon from the netherworld as I was beginning to suspect. Unfortunately the only thing I've really done to prepare for the baby's arrival is whine a lot.
When I found out I was pregnant I walked around the house moaning about how stupid we were to give away all of our baby stuff, stupid, stupid, HOW COULD WE BE SO STUPID - thoughts I cagily kept to myself when my sister-in-law generously offered to give me some of her old baby stuff. She sweetly said she didn't need any of it anymore, because they were Done, and I did my best to nod gratefully instead of mumbling "famous last words SUCKAH," under my breath.
(Actual conversation with doctor this morning after ultrasound: Doctor: In a few weeks we can start talking about whether or not you'd like to have a tubal ligation after your c-section. Me: TIE THEM! TIE THEM NOW! I WANT THEM TIED. WITH DOUBLE-KNOTS! DO YOU DO DOUBLE KNOTS? Doctor: Uh....)
Anyway, thanks to my sister-in-law the baby will sleep in an actual crib instead of a laundry basket, and will have a stroller instead of the conveyance I was mocking up - a trained Labrador with a saddle.
We don't have a stitch of baby clothing in the house, and I'm dreading the inevitable trip to Target, where we will lay down all of our pennies as a sacrifice to the baby apparel gods. Most weeks lately I feel like Alexander, Who Used To Be Rich Last Sunday - payments from my tech writing clients come in the mail and at first I dance my wild dance of crazy glee, and then I realize the dishwasher is broken, and we owe fifty-seven million dollars to the IRS, and Carter grew two sizes over the winter and needs new pants, and the mortgage is due in three days.
I can't bring myself to spend money on maternity clothes. It seems such a waste to buy new clothes that I will use for four months. I have decided to forge ahead with wearing pajama pants and stretching out my existing shirts for the next few months, and if my underwear happens to show, well then it JUST HAPPENS TO SHOW.
All in all, I expect that I will be quite grumpy this summer, what with the pregnancy and the extreme wardrobe, and if anyone says a word about my non-conventional maternity wear, they will RUE THE DAY, because I swear if it is the last thing I do I will find a way to sic that freaking bird on them.
I freaking hate that bird.
The other morning the bird started singing at precisely 5:17 AM and I was so mad that I got up and went outside intending to do something about it, something involving rocks and a few pointedly stinging remarks. Unfortunately, as soon as I got outside it flew up onto the roof of the neighbors house, right above their master bedroom window where it just knew I'd be scared to throw something, and then it resumed singing. MOCKING ME.
Me, whisper-yelling: "SHUT UP BIRD."
Bird: "Tweedle tweedle twee."
Me, full of impotent rage, jumping up and down: "Go away! Go away! You suck! I hate you!"
Bird: "Tweety tweet tweet."
It was very frustrating.
(One of my neighbors has very mischievous six and ten year old boys, and I cannot for the life of me understand why she has failed to furnish them with BB guns. This seems a tragic oversight.)
(Do you think that would be an unfortunate present for someone to leave at their doorstep?)
The bird's early morning singing leaves me plenty of time for rage-fueled tossing around in bed before it is time to get up. I do this with quite a bit of irritation and loud sighing, since in my sleep deprived haze I feel quite certain that my husband ought to be Doing Something About It, although I'm not sure what that would entail. Just something. I think I would like to hear him out there screaming at that bird, really giving it the what-for. Maybe throwing something heavy, like a patio chair or the swing set.
Despite my bird fueled rage, my attitude about all things baby is finally starting to improve. It helps to have ultra-sound proof that it's a boy and not actually a demon from the netherworld as I was beginning to suspect. Unfortunately the only thing I've really done to prepare for the baby's arrival is whine a lot.
When I found out I was pregnant I walked around the house moaning about how stupid we were to give away all of our baby stuff, stupid, stupid, HOW COULD WE BE SO STUPID - thoughts I cagily kept to myself when my sister-in-law generously offered to give me some of her old baby stuff. She sweetly said she didn't need any of it anymore, because they were Done, and I did my best to nod gratefully instead of mumbling "famous last words SUCKAH," under my breath.
(Actual conversation with doctor this morning after ultrasound: Doctor: In a few weeks we can start talking about whether or not you'd like to have a tubal ligation after your c-section. Me: TIE THEM! TIE THEM NOW! I WANT THEM TIED. WITH DOUBLE-KNOTS! DO YOU DO DOUBLE KNOTS? Doctor: Uh....)
Anyway, thanks to my sister-in-law the baby will sleep in an actual crib instead of a laundry basket, and will have a stroller instead of the conveyance I was mocking up - a trained Labrador with a saddle.
We don't have a stitch of baby clothing in the house, and I'm dreading the inevitable trip to Target, where we will lay down all of our pennies as a sacrifice to the baby apparel gods. Most weeks lately I feel like Alexander, Who Used To Be Rich Last Sunday - payments from my tech writing clients come in the mail and at first I dance my wild dance of crazy glee, and then I realize the dishwasher is broken, and we owe fifty-seven million dollars to the IRS, and Carter grew two sizes over the winter and needs new pants, and the mortgage is due in three days.
I can't bring myself to spend money on maternity clothes. It seems such a waste to buy new clothes that I will use for four months. I have decided to forge ahead with wearing pajama pants and stretching out my existing shirts for the next few months, and if my underwear happens to show, well then it JUST HAPPENS TO SHOW.
All in all, I expect that I will be quite grumpy this summer, what with the pregnancy and the extreme wardrobe, and if anyone says a word about my non-conventional maternity wear, they will RUE THE DAY, because I swear if it is the last thing I do I will find a way to sic that freaking bird on them.
Friday, October 31, 2008
LOVE...... EXCITING AND NEW......
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My husband keeps telling me that I should write about my own hopeless crush, but the sheer volume of crushes I talked myself into makes that almost impossible. I think I had a crush on someone every year of my life, almost always with semi-tragic results - a tradition that kicked off with Michael in the fifth grade.
I was such a boy crazy freak. I don't know where it came from. Maybe too much Love Boat. (Disturbing fact: back in the day I thought Gopher was "so fine." GOPHER.) (shudder)
When I was twenty I fell madly in love with one of my best friends and spent the next year covertly trying to make him fall in love with me. When that didn't work, I wrote him a long passionate letter explaining how I felt. He wrote me back - a very sweet note, saying that he loved me as a friend, but gently letting me know that it was not happening - now or ever. I read it, cried over it, then decided the note obviously contained hidden meaning. Instead of it meaning that he was not in love with me, which is what it said, it actually could be interpreted to mean that he was TOTALLY in love with me and if I waited around long enough, ALL OF MY DREAMS WOULD COME TRUE. It was all in how you looked at it, really.
I decided that what I really needed to do was step it up to the next level (the level of being completely insane). I repeatedly demanded that he participate in long conversations all about why he couldn't just go ahead and fall in love with me because DUH, it was SUCH A GREAT IDEA. I was pretty sure I could eventually convince him to fall in love with me if I was persistent enough.
Me: But we're so perfect for each other.
Him: I like you a lot, but I don't like you in that way. Please, please stop it.
Me: OK. I get it. I do.
Me: But probably I should ask you again next week, right?
Him: (jams pencil into his brain)
One late night I went to the home of the bishop of my YSA ward (translation: leader of a church congregation for young single people). When he opened his front door I was standing there crying my eyes out. He invited me in, obviously thinking there had either been a) a murder or b) some kind of spiritual crisis I urgently needed to discuss.
I told him I had a terrible, terrible problem that only he could help me with, and that I really needed to talk to him RIGHT that second. He invited me into his family room, where I told him (between sobs) that my life was over, it was OVER, because my crush didn't love me back and never would, and he was seeing someone, and how would I ever get over this, and what oh what oh what should I DO?
You should've seen the look on his face. That poor man. (Being the bishop of a singles ward must totally suck.)
I have to hand it to him - he did give the advice thing the old college try, telling me that the kind of love you have to convince someone to feel for you would never make you happy. This is probably where I should've had an epiphany and recognized the wisdom in what he said, but at the time, I just thought he was nuts. Because OF COURSE it would make me happy. It didn't matter how it happened, it just mattered that it happen.
If I'd been a Harry Potter character I totally would've been Romilda Vane, trying to make Harry mine by spiking his punch with love potion. As far as I was concerned the whole concept of free will was for suckers who weren't trying hard enough.
Man. I was nuts.
I was such a boy crazy freak. I don't know where it came from. Maybe too much Love Boat. (Disturbing fact: back in the day I thought Gopher was "so fine." GOPHER.) (shudder)
When I was twenty I fell madly in love with one of my best friends and spent the next year covertly trying to make him fall in love with me. When that didn't work, I wrote him a long passionate letter explaining how I felt. He wrote me back - a very sweet note, saying that he loved me as a friend, but gently letting me know that it was not happening - now or ever. I read it, cried over it, then decided the note obviously contained hidden meaning. Instead of it meaning that he was not in love with me, which is what it said, it actually could be interpreted to mean that he was TOTALLY in love with me and if I waited around long enough, ALL OF MY DREAMS WOULD COME TRUE. It was all in how you looked at it, really.
I decided that what I really needed to do was step it up to the next level (the level of being completely insane). I repeatedly demanded that he participate in long conversations all about why he couldn't just go ahead and fall in love with me because DUH, it was SUCH A GREAT IDEA. I was pretty sure I could eventually convince him to fall in love with me if I was persistent enough.
Me: But we're so perfect for each other.
Him: I like you a lot, but I don't like you in that way. Please, please stop it.
Me: OK. I get it. I do.
Me: But probably I should ask you again next week, right?
Him: (jams pencil into his brain)
One late night I went to the home of the bishop of my YSA ward (translation: leader of a church congregation for young single people). When he opened his front door I was standing there crying my eyes out. He invited me in, obviously thinking there had either been a) a murder or b) some kind of spiritual crisis I urgently needed to discuss.
I told him I had a terrible, terrible problem that only he could help me with, and that I really needed to talk to him RIGHT that second. He invited me into his family room, where I told him (between sobs) that my life was over, it was OVER, because my crush didn't love me back and never would, and he was seeing someone, and how would I ever get over this, and what oh what oh what should I DO?
You should've seen the look on his face. That poor man. (Being the bishop of a singles ward must totally suck.)
I have to hand it to him - he did give the advice thing the old college try, telling me that the kind of love you have to convince someone to feel for you would never make you happy. This is probably where I should've had an epiphany and recognized the wisdom in what he said, but at the time, I just thought he was nuts. Because OF COURSE it would make me happy. It didn't matter how it happened, it just mattered that it happen.
If I'd been a Harry Potter character I totally would've been Romilda Vane, trying to make Harry mine by spiking his punch with love potion. As far as I was concerned the whole concept of free will was for suckers who weren't trying hard enough.
Man. I was nuts.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
The Operations Manual I'm Writing Is Slowly Sucking The Creative Life Force Out of My Brain - Somebody Heeeeeeeeelp Meeeeeeeeeee
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ACK. I'm never gonna be done with it either. ACK.
I’ve been kind of annoyed with my work lately, because the engineers I’m working with right now – they’re not all that convinced that I’m actually smart. I’m a contractor, so I work with a wide variety of clients, and this is my first time completing a large project for this particular team. I'm not in the office a lot (I mostly work from home) so they aren’t quite sure what my deal is yet. I think they all just assume I’m some kind of lumpy little team mascot.
I’ll say something like, “I’m working to complete the operations manual for the system,” and they’ll all look at me like, “Aw, how cute. She thinks she understands what our machine does.”
Or I’ll put together a diagram and they’ll be like, “Oh look – she made us a little picture! Good job Sue!” as though I’m five and I just broke out the crayolas.
To be fair, they’re all really nice guys, and the environment is professional and respectful. It’s not blatant. They don’t mean to do it. It’s just the attitude of engineers in general.
Every single place I’ve worked, the engineers tend to think they’re a lot smarter than most of the other people in the room – usually because they ARE. They’re just used to it. And they’re used to people not really understanding what they do.
But that’s my whole JOB. It’s my job to speak engineer and translate it into normal person talk. I may not be as smart as they are, but I'm still smarter than the average bear. It takes them a while to get that though.
The most gratifying part for me is usually the day after they’ve read whatever I’ve put together, when they start looking at me with something akin to respect.
(No, that's a lie. The most gratifying part is totally the paycheck. If I could get a paycheck for just lying around doing nothing, it would still be completely gratifying.)
Still, condescension or no condescension, they are definitely my people. When I DO have to go into the office, it’s cool to be in an environment where they have NO IDEA if I’m fashionable or not. (I’m not.)
Here is ACTUAL SMALL-TALK from a meeting I attended a few weeks ago:
Marketing guy: Dude, you have a hole in your shirt.
Engineer: I know.
Marketing guy: You’re wearing a shirt with holes in it.
Engineer: So what? They’re just little holes.
Marketing guy: It’s time to get a new shirt.
Engineer: I love this shirt. It’s my favorite shirt. I’ve had it since college.
Marketing guy: You got out of school 12 years ago.
Engineer: So? It’s a really good shirt.
Me: It’s like an old friend, right?
Engineer: EXACTLY. See, she totally gets it.
Marketing guy (looking at my t-shirt and jeans): Yeah, I can see that.
THANKS MARKETING GUY.
(Marketing people are NOT my people.)
You know, I think I’d rather be negatively judged for my smarts than negatively judged for my appearance. I’m not sure what that says about me. Probably something dumb.
I’ve been kind of annoyed with my work lately, because the engineers I’m working with right now – they’re not all that convinced that I’m actually smart. I’m a contractor, so I work with a wide variety of clients, and this is my first time completing a large project for this particular team. I'm not in the office a lot (I mostly work from home) so they aren’t quite sure what my deal is yet. I think they all just assume I’m some kind of lumpy little team mascot.
I’ll say something like, “I’m working to complete the operations manual for the system,” and they’ll all look at me like, “Aw, how cute. She thinks she understands what our machine does.”
Or I’ll put together a diagram and they’ll be like, “Oh look – she made us a little picture! Good job Sue!” as though I’m five and I just broke out the crayolas.
To be fair, they’re all really nice guys, and the environment is professional and respectful. It’s not blatant. They don’t mean to do it. It’s just the attitude of engineers in general.
Every single place I’ve worked, the engineers tend to think they’re a lot smarter than most of the other people in the room – usually because they ARE. They’re just used to it. And they’re used to people not really understanding what they do.
But that’s my whole JOB. It’s my job to speak engineer and translate it into normal person talk. I may not be as smart as they are, but I'm still smarter than the average bear. It takes them a while to get that though.
The most gratifying part for me is usually the day after they’ve read whatever I’ve put together, when they start looking at me with something akin to respect.
(No, that's a lie. The most gratifying part is totally the paycheck. If I could get a paycheck for just lying around doing nothing, it would still be completely gratifying.)
Still, condescension or no condescension, they are definitely my people. When I DO have to go into the office, it’s cool to be in an environment where they have NO IDEA if I’m fashionable or not. (I’m not.)
Here is ACTUAL SMALL-TALK from a meeting I attended a few weeks ago:
Marketing guy: Dude, you have a hole in your shirt.
Engineer: I know.
Marketing guy: You’re wearing a shirt with holes in it.
Engineer: So what? They’re just little holes.
Marketing guy: It’s time to get a new shirt.
Engineer: I love this shirt. It’s my favorite shirt. I’ve had it since college.
Marketing guy: You got out of school 12 years ago.
Engineer: So? It’s a really good shirt.
Me: It’s like an old friend, right?
Engineer: EXACTLY. See, she totally gets it.
Marketing guy (looking at my t-shirt and jeans): Yeah, I can see that.
THANKS MARKETING GUY.
(Marketing people are NOT my people.)
You know, I think I’d rather be negatively judged for my smarts than negatively judged for my appearance. I’m not sure what that says about me. Probably something dumb.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Why I Think Twilight Sucks, and Other Important Thoughts
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WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT THE BOOK THAT IS CURRENTLY EATING THE MOMMY BLOGOSPHERE, TWILIGHT. If you haven't read it and don't want it spoiled, stop reading. O.k.?
...
...
O.K.
Jessica (who I found through Stephanie) just confessed her true feelings about Twilight, and because of her bravery, I am ready to come out of the closet.
I read it last week. EVERYONE I know has read it, and most of them loved it. Since I'm a total romantic sap, I was expecting to love it too.
You guys... I SO didn't get it. I thought it was very meh, starting with the main character, Bella (otherwise known as the Queen of Meh).
(Ooooh, do you hear that sound? It's me, getting delisted from 50 Twilight loving blogs at once. But I CANNOT BE SILENCED.)
Ugh. She was so boring and stilted and dead inside. I kind of wanted to slap her. My theory is that Bella actually has Aspergers Syndrome and also a really bad inner ear infection that destroyed her sense of balance. Because, come on. She can't consistently WALK without falling? She should go see a specialist or something, right? Why didn't she do that? Why didn't her parents have her checked out?
She was very annoying and I didn't get the whole martyr thing. She's on a date with a guy who has admitted that he isn't all that sure whether or not he's going to SLAUGHTER her as the capper to their date, and she thinks it's exciting and romantic? The girl has some serious issues.
I thought she was dull. I didn't get why Edward would be interested in her in the least. I mean, other than his preference for her biological fluids. Which seems kind of a shaky basis for a romance. Plus, she kept reminding us how he was all cold and dead. Gross.
And then there was Edward himself. Pompous, stilted, fatally unhip Edward. I get that the author was going for a 1911 language vibe, but come on. He hasn't been in a COMA for the last hundred years, he's been hanging out in high school. I don't know if it's a good thing when the romantic lead reminds you of Kelsey Grammar. Or rather, would remind you of Kelsey Grammar if Bella weren't constantly reminding us about his topaz eyes and his muscled chest. Did you know he had topaz eyes and a muscled chest? Because he did have topaz eyes and a muscled chest. Did you pick up on that? It was subtle, you might not have caught it.
I hated how he told her what to do all the time. He was so controlling and kind of ambivalent about whether or not he was going to eat her. I was like, dude, take a stand. Just go ahead and eat her, put us all out of our misery. But he didn't. (Maybe that's book three, I don't know.)
There was no build-up to their romance. One day he hated her (because he was trying not to eat her), and the next day they were both in TRUE TRUE LOVE with extra stalking. I thought the whole watching outside her window thing was incredibly creepy. If he was human, Bella would be filing restraining orders all over the place.
I think the main thing that annoys me is this: I don't like it when the heroine is stupid. And Bella is. If I knew my boyfriend was a serial killer, and he invited me to come over and look at his knife collection, and I said yes, would that be amazingly romantic? Or just kind of stupid? But Bella repeatedly says she doesn't care if he kills her, because she loves him. Wuh?? Wuh in the wuh wuh?
I also didn't understand why her dad wasn't raising holy hell about letting her see Edward at the end. If my daughter freaked out after a fight with her creepy boyfriend, took off, disappeared and then reappeared with said creepy boyfriend in Phoenix, where she just happened to fall through a window and end up in the hospital - I don't think I would be encouraging my daughter to continue to date him. You know? Is it just me? Is her Dad supposed to be delayed?
Jessica thought it got better near the end, but I didn't. It was like Stephanie Meyer got tired of writing about their romance and just threw in a random evil vampire. Random characters who hop in late in the novel - not so scary. (I thought it would have been more scary if they would have pulled in the space vampire from Buck Rogers. Because that episode gave me nightmares for YEARS.)
I get it, some people like the whole bad guy thing, the whole "my love makes you dangerous" vibe. I guess I can sort of see it. I mean picture it, if you were married to someone completely sexless, like Mitt Romney or something, fantasizing about dangerous-romantic-vampires might be just the ticket. But for ordinary women? What is the appeal?
Clearly, there IS appeal in the whole dangerous vampire-romantic-fiction genre. I just don't understand it. (Other than Buffy and Angel. THAT I get. But they're completely the exception. I think it helps that he doesn't want to eat her.)
So please enlighten me. Did you like Twilight? If so, WHY? Why why why why why?
UPDATE: I've had to close comments. Not because of the conversation you see in the comments, but because I got a few pretty obnoxious anonymous comments (which I ruthlessly deleted, because I'm drunk with power) from people who obviously have even MORE feelings about Twilight than I do, and I'm not in the mood to deal with them.
...
...
O.K.
Jessica (who I found through Stephanie) just confessed her true feelings about Twilight, and because of her bravery, I am ready to come out of the closet.
I read it last week. EVERYONE I know has read it, and most of them loved it. Since I'm a total romantic sap, I was expecting to love it too.
You guys... I SO didn't get it. I thought it was very meh, starting with the main character, Bella (otherwise known as the Queen of Meh).
(Ooooh, do you hear that sound? It's me, getting delisted from 50 Twilight loving blogs at once. But I CANNOT BE SILENCED.)
Ugh. She was so boring and stilted and dead inside. I kind of wanted to slap her. My theory is that Bella actually has Aspergers Syndrome and also a really bad inner ear infection that destroyed her sense of balance. Because, come on. She can't consistently WALK without falling? She should go see a specialist or something, right? Why didn't she do that? Why didn't her parents have her checked out?
She was very annoying and I didn't get the whole martyr thing. She's on a date with a guy who has admitted that he isn't all that sure whether or not he's going to SLAUGHTER her as the capper to their date, and she thinks it's exciting and romantic? The girl has some serious issues.
I thought she was dull. I didn't get why Edward would be interested in her in the least. I mean, other than his preference for her biological fluids. Which seems kind of a shaky basis for a romance. Plus, she kept reminding us how he was all cold and dead. Gross.
And then there was Edward himself. Pompous, stilted, fatally unhip Edward. I get that the author was going for a 1911 language vibe, but come on. He hasn't been in a COMA for the last hundred years, he's been hanging out in high school. I don't know if it's a good thing when the romantic lead reminds you of Kelsey Grammar. Or rather, would remind you of Kelsey Grammar if Bella weren't constantly reminding us about his topaz eyes and his muscled chest. Did you know he had topaz eyes and a muscled chest? Because he did have topaz eyes and a muscled chest. Did you pick up on that? It was subtle, you might not have caught it.
I hated how he told her what to do all the time. He was so controlling and kind of ambivalent about whether or not he was going to eat her. I was like, dude, take a stand. Just go ahead and eat her, put us all out of our misery. But he didn't. (Maybe that's book three, I don't know.)
There was no build-up to their romance. One day he hated her (because he was trying not to eat her), and the next day they were both in TRUE TRUE LOVE with extra stalking. I thought the whole watching outside her window thing was incredibly creepy. If he was human, Bella would be filing restraining orders all over the place.
I think the main thing that annoys me is this: I don't like it when the heroine is stupid. And Bella is. If I knew my boyfriend was a serial killer, and he invited me to come over and look at his knife collection, and I said yes, would that be amazingly romantic? Or just kind of stupid? But Bella repeatedly says she doesn't care if he kills her, because she loves him. Wuh?? Wuh in the wuh wuh?
I also didn't understand why her dad wasn't raising holy hell about letting her see Edward at the end. If my daughter freaked out after a fight with her creepy boyfriend, took off, disappeared and then reappeared with said creepy boyfriend in Phoenix, where she just happened to fall through a window and end up in the hospital - I don't think I would be encouraging my daughter to continue to date him. You know? Is it just me? Is her Dad supposed to be delayed?
Jessica thought it got better near the end, but I didn't. It was like Stephanie Meyer got tired of writing about their romance and just threw in a random evil vampire. Random characters who hop in late in the novel - not so scary. (I thought it would have been more scary if they would have pulled in the space vampire from Buck Rogers. Because that episode gave me nightmares for YEARS.)
I get it, some people like the whole bad guy thing, the whole "my love makes you dangerous" vibe. I guess I can sort of see it. I mean picture it, if you were married to someone completely sexless, like Mitt Romney or something, fantasizing about dangerous-romantic-vampires might be just the ticket. But for ordinary women? What is the appeal?
Clearly, there IS appeal in the whole dangerous vampire-romantic-fiction genre. I just don't understand it. (Other than Buffy and Angel. THAT I get. But they're completely the exception. I think it helps that he doesn't want to eat her.)
So please enlighten me. Did you like Twilight? If so, WHY? Why why why why why?
UPDATE: I've had to close comments. Not because of the conversation you see in the comments, but because I got a few pretty obnoxious anonymous comments (which I ruthlessly deleted, because I'm drunk with power) from people who obviously have even MORE feelings about Twilight than I do, and I'm not in the mood to deal with them.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Losing It
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I recently took a personality test that indicated that I was, among other things, "easily distracted and prone to losing things."
There are so many things to say about my new label (isn't it pretty?), but right now I just want to talk about how I'm prone to losing things. Because boy howdy, am I ever prone.
PRONE. (That suddenly doesn't look like a real word to me. PRONE.)
My mom used to call me the absent minded professor, and I used to think that was sort of cute. But it's not. It's not cute at all. I'm so tired of losing my stuff.
I'm constantly losing things - my keys, my rollerblades, my daughter's lunchbox, my keys again, my shoes, my shoes again, my shoes again some more, my cell phone, the house cordless phone, my keys again, my purse, my debit card, my debit card, my debit card, my purse - all day long it goes on.
I'm so glad I have this valuable new tool, the personality type, to help me rationalize away all of my personal failings.
"Honey, you've got to start putting your keys in the same place every time you get home so that you can find them easily."
"I can't do that!"
"Why?"
"Because I'm an ENFP!"
"That prevents you from trying to keep track of your stuff?"
"I can't fight science!"
Before I knew about my ENFP illness, I was starting to think I had holes in my brain. Perhaps some flesh eating bacteria had crawled inside and eaten away the part of my brain that knew where I put my shoes. Because I sure couldn't find them.
So it's kind of a relief. (WHEW.)
Maybe I should give it a try though, the whole putting-stuff-back-in-a-place-where-it-would-logically-go-so-that-I-can-find-it-again THING. Yesterday I used my debit card to pay a bill online, set it down next to the computer when I was done and then walked around all day long looking for it, mystified. Where could it be? Where? Where where where where where? I couldn't imagine.
Tonight I looked for my rollerblades for twenty minutes. TWENTY MINUTES. And the house is perfectly clean right now. My closet is even organized. I just couldn't find them.
"They've vanished," I said to my husband. "I think they disapparated."
"Look in the garage," he said.
And there they were.
He always knows where my stuff is. I used to just call him at work all the time to ask him where my stuff was, but now, because of his job, I can't do that. (It's very inconsiderate of him to have a job like that, I think.)
Sometimes I think he's hiding my stuff just to mess with me, except I know it frustrates him too, the fact that I can never keep track of anything, ever. He knows the last five minutes before we go anywhere will involve what he calls the "walk and mutter." (Well. Walk and mutter and rant and rave.)
"I can't find my shoes. Where are my shoes? They were just here. They were just here. Who took my shoes? Who took them? DOG, did you take my shoes? Because I will kill you. I will kill you if you took my shoes. Who took them? Where are they? Where? Where? WHERE?! Oh look, right there in the closet."
Sometimes I even lose stuff inside my purse. That might not sound all that strange except that my purse is small, almost like a wallet, and there isn't much inside of it. And yet, within it's non-depths I can still repeatedly lose my debit card and driver's license. Even though they are, in fact, still right there in my purse. I'll be at the check-out and I'll go to pull out my debit card and - uh oh, it's not there. It's SIMPLY NOT THERE. I'll pull everything out, look at it and put it back in and it's STILL not there. I'm frantic. Where is it? Where could it be? Is it lost? Is it stolen? Is it disapparated? In another dimension?
And then, WHAM, suddenly it's there.
It happens a lot. (Sometimes I think it's some kind of brain magic. Just - not a good kind. But kind of tricky, all the same.)
Before Fathers Day, I hid one of my husband's presents. I remember thinking that I would remember where I put it. I remember very specifically saying to myself, oh, sure, you'll remember putting it there, no problem.
Um.
Yeah.
I still can't find it.
Sometimes I'll hide treats from the kids, because if they find the cookies they'll never make it into my daughter's lunchbox. Except then I forget where I hid them. It's kind of nice though because sometimes I'll be having a bad day and I'll open a cupboard door and - Oh, LOOK, OREOS FROM HEAVEN.
YUM, Oreos.
Oh. Whoops, I got distracted. (We INFPs tend to do that.) Sorry - I know that's irritating. I BLAME SCIENCE.
There are so many things to say about my new label (isn't it pretty?), but right now I just want to talk about how I'm prone to losing things. Because boy howdy, am I ever prone.
PRONE. (That suddenly doesn't look like a real word to me. PRONE.)
My mom used to call me the absent minded professor, and I used to think that was sort of cute. But it's not. It's not cute at all. I'm so tired of losing my stuff.
I'm constantly losing things - my keys, my rollerblades, my daughter's lunchbox, my keys again, my shoes, my shoes again, my shoes again some more, my cell phone, the house cordless phone, my keys again, my purse, my debit card, my debit card, my debit card, my purse - all day long it goes on.
I'm so glad I have this valuable new tool, the personality type, to help me rationalize away all of my personal failings.
"Honey, you've got to start putting your keys in the same place every time you get home so that you can find them easily."
"I can't do that!"
"Why?"
"Because I'm an ENFP!"
"That prevents you from trying to keep track of your stuff?"
"I can't fight science!"
Before I knew about my ENFP illness, I was starting to think I had holes in my brain. Perhaps some flesh eating bacteria had crawled inside and eaten away the part of my brain that knew where I put my shoes. Because I sure couldn't find them.
So it's kind of a relief. (WHEW.)
Maybe I should give it a try though, the whole putting-stuff-back-in-a-place-where-it-would-logically-go-so-that-I-can-find-it-again THING. Yesterday I used my debit card to pay a bill online, set it down next to the computer when I was done and then walked around all day long looking for it, mystified. Where could it be? Where? Where where where where where? I couldn't imagine.
Tonight I looked for my rollerblades for twenty minutes. TWENTY MINUTES. And the house is perfectly clean right now. My closet is even organized. I just couldn't find them.
"They've vanished," I said to my husband. "I think they disapparated."
"Look in the garage," he said.
And there they were.
He always knows where my stuff is. I used to just call him at work all the time to ask him where my stuff was, but now, because of his job, I can't do that. (It's very inconsiderate of him to have a job like that, I think.)
Sometimes I think he's hiding my stuff just to mess with me, except I know it frustrates him too, the fact that I can never keep track of anything, ever. He knows the last five minutes before we go anywhere will involve what he calls the "walk and mutter." (Well. Walk and mutter and rant and rave.)
"I can't find my shoes. Where are my shoes? They were just here. They were just here. Who took my shoes? Who took them? DOG, did you take my shoes? Because I will kill you. I will kill you if you took my shoes. Who took them? Where are they? Where? Where? WHERE?! Oh look, right there in the closet."
Sometimes I even lose stuff inside my purse. That might not sound all that strange except that my purse is small, almost like a wallet, and there isn't much inside of it. And yet, within it's non-depths I can still repeatedly lose my debit card and driver's license. Even though they are, in fact, still right there in my purse. I'll be at the check-out and I'll go to pull out my debit card and - uh oh, it's not there. It's SIMPLY NOT THERE. I'll pull everything out, look at it and put it back in and it's STILL not there. I'm frantic. Where is it? Where could it be? Is it lost? Is it stolen? Is it disapparated? In another dimension?
And then, WHAM, suddenly it's there.
It happens a lot. (Sometimes I think it's some kind of brain magic. Just - not a good kind. But kind of tricky, all the same.)
Before Fathers Day, I hid one of my husband's presents. I remember thinking that I would remember where I put it. I remember very specifically saying to myself, oh, sure, you'll remember putting it there, no problem.
Um.
Yeah.
I still can't find it.
Sometimes I'll hide treats from the kids, because if they find the cookies they'll never make it into my daughter's lunchbox. Except then I forget where I hid them. It's kind of nice though because sometimes I'll be having a bad day and I'll open a cupboard door and - Oh, LOOK, OREOS FROM HEAVEN.
YUM, Oreos.
Oh. Whoops, I got distracted. (We INFPs tend to do that.) Sorry - I know that's irritating. I BLAME SCIENCE.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Yum, LARD
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IMing the other evening, my friend Azucar and I somehow got to talking about the horrible, no good, very bad culinary pranks our parents liked to play on us. AZ reminded me about powdered milk and wheat gum (VOMIT). I cannot talk about that particular bit of wretchedness without having horrifying flashbacks, but luckily AZ just posted about it here.
(Ooooh, also, my sister wrote about powdered milk a few months ago on her food blog, here. I love how in the comments my brother's wife says he is still traumatized, and my mom tries to disavow her role in it. NICE TRY, MOM.)
My mom had other cooking quirks. For a while there she had this thing about gluten, or as I like to call it, wheat dregs. Once she made us gluten and oatmeal cookies. Let me repeat that. GLUTEN AND OATMEAL COOKIES. And she told us they were treats. That is NOT. RIGHT.
We were not allowed to have chips or any kind of sugary cereal. No Fruit Loops or Fruity Pebbles for us. No sireee, we ate Wheaties. Except, and I've never been able to quite figure this out - they let us put brown sugar on TOP of the Wheaties. And they would just - hand us the bag. Here kids, eat this nasty brown tasting cereal because it's good for you, except, also, HERE'S a SHOVEL and a bag of sugar - knock yourselves out. TELL ME HOW THAT MAKES SENSE.
My mom used to lock the fridge. To be fair, she did not really have a choice. There were NINE of us. Defensive measures had to be taken. She had this bungee cord and she would hook one end to the fridge handle and one end to a hook on the wall, and if you tried to open it and actually managed to get it unhooked, it would basically snap you so hard you went unconscious.
Sometimes, if the fridge was unlocked and mom was in another room, we would just rush it and take anything we could find and run away to another room where we would eat it, crouched in corners, stuffing the food into our gullets while keeping a watchful eye on the doorway. I once ate seven raw hot dogs, just because I could. Because they were there. (This explains so much about my eating philosophy. Oh, look, there it is! Hurry, hurry, hurry EAT IT NOW! EAT IT NOW! BEFORE IT'S GONE!)
I remember very clearly that my mom came after us for that one. She said, "Who ate those hot dogs? WHICH ONE OF YOU ATE THOSE HOT DOGS?! They were raw. RAW! You ate RAW MEAT. What are you?! ANIMALS?!"
I pretended to know nothing. "It wasn't me," I said. And then I threw up on her. (So I think she figured it out.)
If we were very good, my mom liked to serve a little dish she called Chocolate Treat. Chocolate Treat consisted of four ingredients. Peanut butter, unsweetened cocoa powder, powdered sugar, and a dash of milk. She mixed the ingredients together until it was the consistency of thick frosting, and gave it to us to eat with a spoon. So basically her philosophy was, "Here my children, eat Wheaties for breakfast and then you may have a nice bowl of lard."
This is me and my older sister. (I'm on the right.) See the nice healthy sheen on our hair? TOTALLY FROM THE LARD.
Ah, memories. So, what foods did your parents inflict on you?
(Ooooh, also, my sister wrote about powdered milk a few months ago on her food blog, here. I love how in the comments my brother's wife says he is still traumatized, and my mom tries to disavow her role in it. NICE TRY, MOM.)
My mom had other cooking quirks. For a while there she had this thing about gluten, or as I like to call it, wheat dregs. Once she made us gluten and oatmeal cookies. Let me repeat that. GLUTEN AND OATMEAL COOKIES. And she told us they were treats. That is NOT. RIGHT.
We were not allowed to have chips or any kind of sugary cereal. No Fruit Loops or Fruity Pebbles for us. No sireee, we ate Wheaties. Except, and I've never been able to quite figure this out - they let us put brown sugar on TOP of the Wheaties. And they would just - hand us the bag. Here kids, eat this nasty brown tasting cereal because it's good for you, except, also, HERE'S a SHOVEL and a bag of sugar - knock yourselves out. TELL ME HOW THAT MAKES SENSE.
My mom used to lock the fridge. To be fair, she did not really have a choice. There were NINE of us. Defensive measures had to be taken. She had this bungee cord and she would hook one end to the fridge handle and one end to a hook on the wall, and if you tried to open it and actually managed to get it unhooked, it would basically snap you so hard you went unconscious.
Sometimes, if the fridge was unlocked and mom was in another room, we would just rush it and take anything we could find and run away to another room where we would eat it, crouched in corners, stuffing the food into our gullets while keeping a watchful eye on the doorway. I once ate seven raw hot dogs, just because I could. Because they were there. (This explains so much about my eating philosophy. Oh, look, there it is! Hurry, hurry, hurry EAT IT NOW! EAT IT NOW! BEFORE IT'S GONE!)
I remember very clearly that my mom came after us for that one. She said, "Who ate those hot dogs? WHICH ONE OF YOU ATE THOSE HOT DOGS?! They were raw. RAW! You ate RAW MEAT. What are you?! ANIMALS?!"
I pretended to know nothing. "It wasn't me," I said. And then I threw up on her. (So I think she figured it out.)
If we were very good, my mom liked to serve a little dish she called Chocolate Treat. Chocolate Treat consisted of four ingredients. Peanut butter, unsweetened cocoa powder, powdered sugar, and a dash of milk. She mixed the ingredients together until it was the consistency of thick frosting, and gave it to us to eat with a spoon. So basically her philosophy was, "Here my children, eat Wheaties for breakfast and then you may have a nice bowl of lard."
This is me and my older sister. (I'm on the right.) See the nice healthy sheen on our hair? TOTALLY FROM THE LARD.
Ah, memories. So, what foods did your parents inflict on you?
Sunday, May 11, 2008
A List for my Mother
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Thanks for making me practice the piano, even when I had an absolute fit about it, screaming like a banshee as you grimly dragged me back to the keyboard.
Thanks for insisting that we, "for heavens sake, turn off the TV and go play outside." I don't remember much about the shows we protested over, but I remember playing with my brothers and sisters and friends - cops and robbers on bikes, don't-touch-the-ground tag in the backyard, rollerskating up and down the street with packs of neighborhood children.
Thank you for dragging the whole brood of us to the library, over and over and over again, and for unlocking my imagination by introducing me to the Boxcar Children, Mrs. Pigglewiggle and The Little Princess, to Roald Dahl and Anne of Green Gables.
Thanks for making me take swimming lessons - for chasing my six year old self around the pool as I screamed "I DON'T WANT TO DIE!" Later, when we spent summer after summer at the rec center pool, I was grateful that you'd been so VERY MEAN.
Thank you for getting me the pink, poofy, STORE-BOUGHT dress I so desperately wanted for my seventh birthday. I will never forget the feeling of a wish truly, sweetly fulfilled.
Thanks for singing with us, for filling the house with music, for letting us do crazy Broadway style dancing in the living room (not even visibly wincing as we leaped on and off the furniture), and for being the attentive audience for an infinite number of impromptu talent shows in the family room.
Thanks for helping me clear off that branch on the mulberry tree because I was in love with the quirkiness of the idea of sitting there to read, and for letting me read there for hours every day when I probably should have been doing chores.
Thanks for sometimes pretending not to notice when I would read in bed at night, flashlight under the covers. Now when I catch my own daughter reading chapter books in the hallway long after she should be sleeping, I smile. (Well, o.k., sometimes I yell GET IN BED, but - you know, lots of other times I smile.)
Thanks for teaching me what it means to look on the bright side. (I think I'm finally FINALLY getting it.)
You know all those times I screamed and lied and had tantrums and was ungrateful and mean and just generally a little snot? Thanks for letting me survive into adulthood. I can't imagine raising nine children and not going stark, raving mad. The fact that we are all alive and in one piece today is kind of miraculous.
There have been times when I judged you harshly. Kids are good at keeping score, at weighing and measuring their slights and hurts. All too often I kept track of all of the things that seemed unfair, storing them up so that I could throw them back at you during our many arguments, all the while swearing I will never do that to my children.
And now each time my children are angry with me, when they shout, "That's not fair," and tell me how I've hurt their feelings, I learn a little more about what a tough job it can be, and how well you managed to do it, and I pray that my own children will be more forgiving than I sometimes was.
Thank you for the countless things you've done for me - and for all of us.
I love you Mom. Happy Mother's Day.
COMMENTS OFF
Thanks for making me practice the piano, even when I had an absolute fit about it, screaming like a banshee as you grimly dragged me back to the keyboard.Thanks for insisting that we, "for heavens sake, turn off the TV and go play outside." I don't remember much about the shows we protested over, but I remember playing with my brothers and sisters and friends - cops and robbers on bikes, don't-touch-the-ground tag in the backyard, rollerskating up and down the street with packs of neighborhood children.
Thank you for dragging the whole brood of us to the library, over and over and over again, and for unlocking my imagination by introducing me to the Boxcar Children, Mrs. Pigglewiggle and The Little Princess, to Roald Dahl and Anne of Green Gables.
Thanks for making me take swimming lessons - for chasing my six year old self around the pool as I screamed "I DON'T WANT TO DIE!" Later, when we spent summer after summer at the rec center pool, I was grateful that you'd been so VERY MEAN.
Thank you for getting me the pink, poofy, STORE-BOUGHT dress I so desperately wanted for my seventh birthday. I will never forget the feeling of a wish truly, sweetly fulfilled.
Thanks for singing with us, for filling the house with music, for letting us do crazy Broadway style dancing in the living room (not even visibly wincing as we leaped on and off the furniture), and for being the attentive audience for an infinite number of impromptu talent shows in the family room.
Thanks for helping me clear off that branch on the mulberry tree because I was in love with the quirkiness of the idea of sitting there to read, and for letting me read there for hours every day when I probably should have been doing chores.
Thanks for sometimes pretending not to notice when I would read in bed at night, flashlight under the covers. Now when I catch my own daughter reading chapter books in the hallway long after she should be sleeping, I smile. (Well, o.k., sometimes I yell GET IN BED, but - you know, lots of other times I smile.)
Thanks for teaching me what it means to look on the bright side. (I think I'm finally FINALLY getting it.)
You know all those times I screamed and lied and had tantrums and was ungrateful and mean and just generally a little snot? Thanks for letting me survive into adulthood. I can't imagine raising nine children and not going stark, raving mad. The fact that we are all alive and in one piece today is kind of miraculous.
There have been times when I judged you harshly. Kids are good at keeping score, at weighing and measuring their slights and hurts. All too often I kept track of all of the things that seemed unfair, storing them up so that I could throw them back at you during our many arguments, all the while swearing I will never do that to my children.
And now each time my children are angry with me, when they shout, "That's not fair," and tell me how I've hurt their feelings, I learn a little more about what a tough job it can be, and how well you managed to do it, and I pray that my own children will be more forgiving than I sometimes was.
Thank you for the countless things you've done for me - and for all of us.
I love you Mom. Happy Mother's Day.
COMMENTS OFF
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Accidents Happen, Part II (This Time Not Fictional)
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I'm ALIVE and feeling much better. Thank you for the well wishes and the comments (and the sometimes a little bit scary intensity). I have been watching the comments on my last post with excitement, gratitude and fascinated interest, but I have not had time to post because I was in an accident yesterday.
DUN. DUN. DUN.
I was backing out of my garage when I was completely blindsided by a large truck.
Luckily, I'm fine. There is a hole in our bumper, but there were no injuries. I keep reminding my husband that he should be grateful I'm alive, but he keeps rolling his eyes at me.
O.k., so technically, it was our truck that I hit, and technically, it was just sitting there behind me in the driveway. So I guess it wasn't really that I was blindsided as much as that I - sort of forgot the truck was there.
(Hey, I had IMPORTANT THOUGHTS in my brain. You try writing the great American novel in your head and also not hitting stuff with your car. It's HARD.)
Besides, it was kind of sneaky of my husband to just park it there in the driveway. Usually he parks on the street. He was kind of asking for it. I did NOT point this out to him when I told him what had happened:
Me: "Honey, I hit the truck."
Husband, staring at me blankly: "With what?"
Me: "With the car."
Husband, spluttering: "How did - how - it was parked - did you even --"
Me: "Um."
Husband, now examining hole in the car: "How did you not see it?"
Me: "I'm not sure."
Husband: "Did you look?"
Me: "I'm sorry?"
This is the hole I made in the bumper:
To my husband's credit, he didn't get angry, he just sighed a lot. He had to know it was coming. It's been almost ten years since I've been in an actual accident. Granted, I tend to run into stuff, but it's usually it's more like - a house or a building or something.
NOTE: Things I've run into: the house, the boat, the car, the garage door, a pole, the door of a loading dock, a shopping cart holder thingie, my bicycle, and my husband (I TOTALLY didn't see him.)
Oh, I just remembered something. When I was 19, I stopped at a 7-11 to get a Big Gulp. When I was done, I pulled out of the parking lot, looked to my left, saw that it was clear and proceeded to make a right turn - directly into into a parked public transit bus.
The bus driver came out of the bus and had pretty much the same reaction that my husband had.
Him: "How did you not see it? It's a BUS."
Me: "Um."
I did not want to tell him the real reason - that 95% of my functioning brain cells were currently devoted to thinking about boys, and it had not occured to me to look to my right. (In my defense, I DID look left. So if you want to look on the bright side, I was actually half-right.)
---------------------
In other news, my weight loss efforts are off to a fine start.
The other day I somehow found myself at Golden Spoon (as you do), a nearby frozen yogurt place. Basically it's ice cream, but they try to make you feel all virtuous and healthy for eating it, which would be fine if I wasn't eating enough for four people and topping it with cookies and chocolate sauce.
Once inside, I stood in front of the counter for a WHILE, trying to figure out what would be more virtuous, calorie-wise: a Mini vanilla with yogurt chips or a Small vanilla with strawberries. Standing there, I started thinking about how many miles I would have to walk to burn off the calories in that yogurt. It dawned on me that I could NOT eat the yogurt and that would save me a LOT more calories. I could walk out. I could put the spoon down. I could do it.
And so you know what I did?
I ate the MEDIUM yogurt, and then also, I put snickers on it.
So really, this isn't so much a weight loss victory story. It's more like - a cautionary tale. Because once I start thinking like that, denying myself stuff that is more or less healthy (shut up) and fits within my calorie budget/plan for the day, I'm headed for a downward spiral of disordered thinking ("even fewer calories if you throw it up" "even fewer calories if you don't eat anything at all, all day," "hey, I've heard people on meth lose a lot of weight,") and I give up.
I'm a regular font of inspiration, I know. You're welcome.
DUN. DUN. DUN.
I was backing out of my garage when I was completely blindsided by a large truck.
Luckily, I'm fine. There is a hole in our bumper, but there were no injuries. I keep reminding my husband that he should be grateful I'm alive, but he keeps rolling his eyes at me.
O.k., so technically, it was our truck that I hit, and technically, it was just sitting there behind me in the driveway. So I guess it wasn't really that I was blindsided as much as that I - sort of forgot the truck was there.
(Hey, I had IMPORTANT THOUGHTS in my brain. You try writing the great American novel in your head and also not hitting stuff with your car. It's HARD.)
Besides, it was kind of sneaky of my husband to just park it there in the driveway. Usually he parks on the street. He was kind of asking for it. I did NOT point this out to him when I told him what had happened:
Me: "Honey, I hit the truck."
Husband, staring at me blankly: "With what?"
Me: "With the car."
Husband, spluttering: "How did - how - it was parked - did you even --"
Me: "Um."
Husband, now examining hole in the car: "How did you not see it?"
Me: "I'm not sure."
Husband: "Did you look?"
Me: "I'm sorry?"
This is the hole I made in the bumper:
To my husband's credit, he didn't get angry, he just sighed a lot. He had to know it was coming. It's been almost ten years since I've been in an actual accident. Granted, I tend to run into stuff, but it's usually it's more like - a house or a building or something.
NOTE: Things I've run into: the house, the boat, the car, the garage door, a pole, the door of a loading dock, a shopping cart holder thingie, my bicycle, and my husband (I TOTALLY didn't see him.)
Oh, I just remembered something. When I was 19, I stopped at a 7-11 to get a Big Gulp. When I was done, I pulled out of the parking lot, looked to my left, saw that it was clear and proceeded to make a right turn - directly into into a parked public transit bus.
The bus driver came out of the bus and had pretty much the same reaction that my husband had.
Him: "How did you not see it? It's a BUS."
Me: "Um."
I did not want to tell him the real reason - that 95% of my functioning brain cells were currently devoted to thinking about boys, and it had not occured to me to look to my right. (In my defense, I DID look left. So if you want to look on the bright side, I was actually half-right.)
---------------------
In other news, my weight loss efforts are off to a fine start.
The other day I somehow found myself at Golden Spoon (as you do), a nearby frozen yogurt place. Basically it's ice cream, but they try to make you feel all virtuous and healthy for eating it, which would be fine if I wasn't eating enough for four people and topping it with cookies and chocolate sauce.
Once inside, I stood in front of the counter for a WHILE, trying to figure out what would be more virtuous, calorie-wise: a Mini vanilla with yogurt chips or a Small vanilla with strawberries. Standing there, I started thinking about how many miles I would have to walk to burn off the calories in that yogurt. It dawned on me that I could NOT eat the yogurt and that would save me a LOT more calories. I could walk out. I could put the spoon down. I could do it.
And so you know what I did?
I ate the MEDIUM yogurt, and then also, I put snickers on it.
So really, this isn't so much a weight loss victory story. It's more like - a cautionary tale. Because once I start thinking like that, denying myself stuff that is more or less healthy (shut up) and fits within my calorie budget/plan for the day, I'm headed for a downward spiral of disordered thinking ("even fewer calories if you throw it up" "even fewer calories if you don't eat anything at all, all day," "hey, I've heard people on meth lose a lot of weight,") and I give up.
I'm a regular font of inspiration, I know. You're welcome.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Why My Children Will Need Therapy - Reason #462
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(Thanks to the foot post, I now know more about poop and fish eyes than I ever, EVER wanted to know. You're all DISGUSTING. Or rather, your children and animals are disgusting, but in a kind of awesome way. So there's that.)
I must preface this post by saying - I love my daughter and I am NOT AFRAID OF HER.
Still.
The other night I was sitting at my computer in the middle of the night, typing clickety-clack, clickety-clack and chortling to myself, when I felt this PRESENCE.
I looked to my left and the girl from The Ring was standing RIGHT THERE, two inches from my face and I screamed in terror. Except, OOPSIE, it was actually my six year old.
(See, she’s really pale, with long dark hair, and when she’s had a nightmare, she has crazy eyes. So you see how it could happen... Right? Um... Right? Hello? Is this thing on?)
For years I’ve worried about what kinds of things my children will say about me in therapy as adults, and I think for Sarah, it will probably stem from that moment, when I scared the living daylights out of her.
She cried, and I felt like a monster, and slapped myself several times because GET IT TOGETHER WOMAN, she’s your darling, tender hearted, sweet, kind, brilliant daughter. And then I took her back to bed and stayed with her until she fell asleep.
But then. BUT THEN.
Last night, there I was in my bed, innocently sleeping and minding my own business, when again, I felt this PRESENCE. I woke up and looked to my left, and sweet mother of a badger, there she was again, staring at me with the crazy eyes.
“I had a bad dream,” she whispered, in a creepy zombie voice. (Or possibly it was just a scared six year old voice. My imagination - now and then it tends to run up and down the hall, waving its arms and screaming in terror.)
I bit back my screams, held out my arms and she crawled into bed with me. I spooned her and patted her back while she told me about her dream about a poisonous snake in the house.
“How long were you standing there?” I whispered.
“A long, long, long time, mommy,” she whispered back.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
She turned around and looked at me serenely and yet still with the crazy eyes, then said, “I was trying to wake you up with my MIND.”
Um. Ahem. Well. I see.
You know, I love my child, but from 1AM until approximately 3AM (the premium creepy hours), I think I might be just a leeettle bit afraid of her.
I must preface this post by saying - I love my daughter and I am NOT AFRAID OF HER.
Still.
The other night I was sitting at my computer in the middle of the night, typing clickety-clack, clickety-clack and chortling to myself, when I felt this PRESENCE.
I looked to my left and the girl from The Ring was standing RIGHT THERE, two inches from my face and I screamed in terror. Except, OOPSIE, it was actually my six year old.
(See, she’s really pale, with long dark hair, and when she’s had a nightmare, she has crazy eyes. So you see how it could happen... Right? Um... Right? Hello? Is this thing on?)
For years I’ve worried about what kinds of things my children will say about me in therapy as adults, and I think for Sarah, it will probably stem from that moment, when I scared the living daylights out of her.
She cried, and I felt like a monster, and slapped myself several times because GET IT TOGETHER WOMAN, she’s your darling, tender hearted, sweet, kind, brilliant daughter. And then I took her back to bed and stayed with her until she fell asleep.
But then. BUT THEN.
Last night, there I was in my bed, innocently sleeping and minding my own business, when again, I felt this PRESENCE. I woke up and looked to my left, and sweet mother of a badger, there she was again, staring at me with the crazy eyes.
“I had a bad dream,” she whispered, in a creepy zombie voice. (Or possibly it was just a scared six year old voice. My imagination - now and then it tends to run up and down the hall, waving its arms and screaming in terror.)
I bit back my screams, held out my arms and she crawled into bed with me. I spooned her and patted her back while she told me about her dream about a poisonous snake in the house.
“How long were you standing there?” I whispered.
“A long, long, long time, mommy,” she whispered back.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
She turned around and looked at me serenely and yet still with the crazy eyes, then said, “I was trying to wake you up with my MIND.”
Um. Ahem. Well. I see.
You know, I love my child, but from 1AM until approximately 3AM (the premium creepy hours), I think I might be just a leeettle bit afraid of her.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
What I Will Miss
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In the winter, on sunny days, mothers look out the window with determination, and say, "Yes, definitely, go outside," and after a solid half an hour of prep time, finding snowboots and putting on mittens and zipping up jackets, their children head out to play. They build igloos and snow forts and run to the park to sled down the high slope by the baseball diamond. They make snowmen and snow angels until they are too cold to bear it any longer and then they rush into the house with red fingers and noses, to sit by the fire until they are cozy.
In the early spring, they come out, dressed in layers and mittens and gradually casting off clothing throughout the day as they slosh through the waterlogged grass. They dig in the muddy sandbox and poke through the melting piles of slush, discovering toys long hidden under the snow, mixing up magic potions of leaves and early flower buds, and hours later, coming inside with sunburned cheeks, sad because it's starting to snow.
A month later, the flowers start to appear, tulips and crocus and daffodils, and they can’t resist picking them, the first flowers they’ve seen in the yard in months, picking them and bringing them to their mothers. “For you, mom,” they say benevolently, and they wait for a hug and a kiss from a mother who is delighted by the gift (despite her chagrin over the rapidly dwindling supply of unpicked flowers). They play all day long on Saturday, packs of children, pretending to be the Boxcar children or magical fairies, or pirates ("Mom, tell her I don't have to walk the plank!"). They help in the yard, where we plant lavender and penstemon and daisies, and they look at me skeptically as we plant vegetables, not quite sure if they should believe me when I tell them this little pebble of a seed will one day be a cornstalk.
On Saturday, there is soccer, every field and park in town full to the brim with children and their families, children who aren't quite sure if they are running toward the right goal, who lose concentration when they get the ball as they glance up to make sure their parents are watching. On Sunday after church, families are out together, on walks and bike rides around the neighborhood, parents stopping every few feet to talk to people they’ve barely seen all winter as the children urge them forward ("Come ON Dad").
In summer, mothers send their children into the backyard ("Go on, go out and play") and the kids find each other, congregating and planning the morning's mischief as mothers sneak off to check their email, to make a phone call, to read a newspaper, to do the dishes. They play all morning, running through sprinklers and wading pools, discovering neighborhood pets, building dams in the stream at the park, fading over to the shade of porch swings by noon, and disappearing into the house during the hottest part of the day.
They creep back out again in the late afternoon, riding bikes and scooters and trying out skates, knocking on doors to remind their friends that it's time to come outside again. They find a zucchini in the garden and then an onion or maybe a green bean, and vegetables have never been so exciting before. In the evening it’s beautiful out, and we turn on the flood lights, not yet ready for the kids to come in, not quite ready to go in ourselves. The adults congregate in little clumps, talking and gossiping and laughing while the kids race around, squeezing in a few more minutes, a few more minutes ("Hurry before we have to go inside"). I look around at my friends, at my family and stand there thinking, I will always remember this.
In late autumn we pick pumpkins and put the garden to bed and get things ready for winter. We savor the last few warm days before winter comes and spend more time than usual outside, soaking it up, letting them play, letting them enjoy each other’s company. Little arrangements appear on front porches, hay bales and pumpkins and autumn flowers and baskets of apples. We visit pumpkin patches and go on hay rides and run through corn mazes. We plan costumes and on Halloween night, we go around the block and down the street, collecting candy at every door, (except the scary ones with haunted houses, because my kids aren’t quite that brave, at least not quite yet). We hand out eight bags of candy and have to shut off the lights at eight-thirty, because my husband is NOT going back to the store.
The first snow falls, and we are happy, because we made it to November with no snow, and maybe it will be a mild winter, after all (high hopes, quickly dashed). Cabin fever has not yet struck, so we enjoy looking out the window at the huge snowflakes as they come falling softly down, and we drink hot chocolate and put on Christmas music, even though it’s really far too early. We drag out snow boots and mittens and snow pants and a few minutes later, the thin layer of snow in the yard has been obliterated by overly enthusiastic children, who are ready, once again, to make snow angels.
And in Las Vegas, there won't be this, not all of this, but there will be shorts in February and swimming in October and eggs to fry on a piece of tinfoil on the sidewalk in August and it will be different, but it will still be fine - it will be just fine (at least this is what I remind myself when I'm feeling maudlin). Because as it turns out, forts work just as well when you make them with cardboard boxes, popsicles taste even better when it's 114 out, and you can still make perfectly good snow angels in a sandbox.
Life will still be sweet, because there is always sweetness to be found when you look for it, but I will always remember this part of our lives, when we lived for a time in a Norman Rockwell painting.
In the early spring, they come out, dressed in layers and mittens and gradually casting off clothing throughout the day as they slosh through the waterlogged grass. They dig in the muddy sandbox and poke through the melting piles of slush, discovering toys long hidden under the snow, mixing up magic potions of leaves and early flower buds, and hours later, coming inside with sunburned cheeks, sad because it's starting to snow.
A month later, the flowers start to appear, tulips and crocus and daffodils, and they can’t resist picking them, the first flowers they’ve seen in the yard in months, picking them and bringing them to their mothers. “For you, mom,” they say benevolently, and they wait for a hug and a kiss from a mother who is delighted by the gift (despite her chagrin over the rapidly dwindling supply of unpicked flowers). They play all day long on Saturday, packs of children, pretending to be the Boxcar children or magical fairies, or pirates ("Mom, tell her I don't have to walk the plank!"). They help in the yard, where we plant lavender and penstemon and daisies, and they look at me skeptically as we plant vegetables, not quite sure if they should believe me when I tell them this little pebble of a seed will one day be a cornstalk.
On Saturday, there is soccer, every field and park in town full to the brim with children and their families, children who aren't quite sure if they are running toward the right goal, who lose concentration when they get the ball as they glance up to make sure their parents are watching. On Sunday after church, families are out together, on walks and bike rides around the neighborhood, parents stopping every few feet to talk to people they’ve barely seen all winter as the children urge them forward ("Come ON Dad").In summer, mothers send their children into the backyard ("Go on, go out and play") and the kids find each other, congregating and planning the morning's mischief as mothers sneak off to check their email, to make a phone call, to read a newspaper, to do the dishes. They play all morning, running through sprinklers and wading pools, discovering neighborhood pets, building dams in the stream at the park, fading over to the shade of porch swings by noon, and disappearing into the house during the hottest part of the day. They creep back out again in the late afternoon, riding bikes and scooters and trying out skates, knocking on doors to remind their friends that it's time to come outside again. They find a zucchini in the garden and then an onion or maybe a green bean, and vegetables have never been so exciting before. In the evening it’s beautiful out, and we turn on the flood lights, not yet ready for the kids to come in, not quite ready to go in ourselves. The adults congregate in little clumps, talking and gossiping and laughing while the kids race around, squeezing in a few more minutes, a few more minutes ("Hurry before we have to go inside"). I look around at my friends, at my family and stand there thinking, I will always remember this.
In late autumn we pick pumpkins and put the garden to bed and get things ready for winter. We savor the last few warm days before winter comes and spend more time than usual outside, soaking it up, letting them play, letting them enjoy each other’s company. Little arrangements appear on front porches, hay bales and pumpkins and autumn flowers and baskets of apples. We visit pumpkin patches and go on hay rides and run through corn mazes. We plan costumes and on Halloween night, we go around the block and down the street, collecting candy at every door, (except the scary ones with haunted houses, because my kids aren’t quite that brave, at least not quite yet). We hand out eight bags of candy and have to shut off the lights at eight-thirty, because my husband is NOT going back to the store.The first snow falls, and we are happy, because we made it to November with no snow, and maybe it will be a mild winter, after all (high hopes, quickly dashed). Cabin fever has not yet struck, so we enjoy looking out the window at the huge snowflakes as they come falling softly down, and we drink hot chocolate and put on Christmas music, even though it’s really far too early. We drag out snow boots and mittens and snow pants and a few minutes later, the thin layer of snow in the yard has been obliterated by overly enthusiastic children, who are ready, once again, to make snow angels.And in Las Vegas, there won't be this, not all of this, but there will be shorts in February and swimming in October and eggs to fry on a piece of tinfoil on the sidewalk in August and it will be different, but it will still be fine - it will be just fine (at least this is what I remind myself when I'm feeling maudlin). Because as it turns out, forts work just as well when you make them with cardboard boxes, popsicles taste even better when it's 114 out, and you can still make perfectly good snow angels in a sandbox. Life will still be sweet, because there is always sweetness to be found when you look for it, but I will always remember this part of our lives, when we lived for a time in a Norman Rockwell painting.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
They Are So Going To Take Away My Chick Card
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So... Shoes. I’m afraid I don’t understand the whole shoe thing. I know that a lot of women love shoes, buy lots of them, covet more of them, and - I really don’t get it. They’re JUST SHOES. They cover your feet. You step on them. They protect your feet from snow and dog poop and dirt and pokey things. I’ve tried really hard to understand (and yet I still really don’t understand) what makes one pair of shoes cute and another ugly.
I don't get purses either, for that matter. My family had a white elephant gift exchange on Christmas Eve. You could contribute a joke item or a nice item, as long as it was under the price limit. The item I opened was a purse. I opened it and stared at it, because I had no idea if it was supposed to be a cute purse or a joke purse. I didn’t know how to react. Should I laugh? Should I be happy? So I looked around at the other girls in the circle who all made encouraging faces at me and said, “Oh – SO CUTE!” and then I pretended like I understood and enthusiastically said, “Yes, very cute, very cute.” I traded it a minute later for two photo albums and an iTunes gift certificate.
But I need new shoes. I really do. The dog chewed up my one pair of appropriate for winter church shoes and next week it's either fuzzy slippers or tennis shoes if I don't do something soon. Specifically, I would like boots. Looking around at church on Sunday I realized that 95% of the women in the room were wearing boots. And I thought - this is like a post-Christmas miracle, a sign from God that, yes indeed, boots were the way to go. He hath allowed mine eyes to temporarily discern shoe related fashion trends, and I have no choice but to take heed.
I don’t have any boots, unless you count short boots you wear under jeans, and my friend Liza recently told me that not only shouldn’t I count them, but really, I should burn them and never buy another pair ever, ever, ever again. And I’m thinking, "O.k., if ankle boots are ugly, why do they sell them?" Is there a crafty shoe designer out there saying, “Ha ha ha ha ha, I know these are butt ugly, but some loser will see them and buy them, and then everyone else will point and laugh. That’ll be awesome.” Why are they trying to trick me into looking dumb?
And I don’t even know, maybe Liza is wrong and they really ARE cute. I mean, who decides what makes it cute? Four teenagers named Chelsea at Hot Topic who quickly spread the word amongst their fashionista friends? And what if they're just messing with us? How can we know for sure that the shoes are cute and we haven't just all been suckered? HOW CAN WE KNOW? For example, look at these Balenciaga DESIGNER shoes! JUST LOOK AT THEM! What in the -
I would buy my shoes at Nordstroms, where the clerks tend to help you out and let you know what looks nice and what looks stupid, but I’m way too intimidated by the shoe department there. Back when we had actual money (oh, money, how I miss you) I would buy clothes there but could never bring myself to buy shoes. The shoe people frightened me. I was too scared to do much more than very quickly walk by the displays, sometimes twice but at full speed, not making eye contact with anyone. "Who, me, buy shoes? Oh, no, I'm much too busy walking around here, no, don't look at me, don't look at me, DON'T LOOK AT ME - Ayeeeee!!!" So I won't be shopping there. Plus I'm broke. DANG it.
That brings me to my other criteria… I need them to be, and this is key, cheap. I’m thinking I would gladly pay approximately two dollars.
No, I’m kidding. I would gladly pay three dollars.
O.k., FINE. I’ll pay more than that. But, when I’m talking about cheap, I just want you to understand the level of cheapness I’m talking about. Cheap. Cheap but cute. And quite obviously, I will need help figuring out what is cute, and what is not cute, and what is crossing the line into tacky, and what will make me look like I just came from a rodeo.
So – help me?
Please?
P.S. I have ginormous calves. GINORMOUS.
P.P.S. (You guys, thank you so much for all of the nice comments on the last post. They really made my day. I was waiting for everyone to call me nuts, and instead you are all just - awesome and real. And I would answer back to every comment saying, thank you, thank you, but that would get really boring for you to read. But thank you. I really do read and LOVE every comment to pieces. Ahem.)
I don't get purses either, for that matter. My family had a white elephant gift exchange on Christmas Eve. You could contribute a joke item or a nice item, as long as it was under the price limit. The item I opened was a purse. I opened it and stared at it, because I had no idea if it was supposed to be a cute purse or a joke purse. I didn’t know how to react. Should I laugh? Should I be happy? So I looked around at the other girls in the circle who all made encouraging faces at me and said, “Oh – SO CUTE!” and then I pretended like I understood and enthusiastically said, “Yes, very cute, very cute.” I traded it a minute later for two photo albums and an iTunes gift certificate.
But I need new shoes. I really do. The dog chewed up my one pair of appropriate for winter church shoes and next week it's either fuzzy slippers or tennis shoes if I don't do something soon. Specifically, I would like boots. Looking around at church on Sunday I realized that 95% of the women in the room were wearing boots. And I thought - this is like a post-Christmas miracle, a sign from God that, yes indeed, boots were the way to go. He hath allowed mine eyes to temporarily discern shoe related fashion trends, and I have no choice but to take heed.
I don’t have any boots, unless you count short boots you wear under jeans, and my friend Liza recently told me that not only shouldn’t I count them, but really, I should burn them and never buy another pair ever, ever, ever again. And I’m thinking, "O.k., if ankle boots are ugly, why do they sell them?" Is there a crafty shoe designer out there saying, “Ha ha ha ha ha, I know these are butt ugly, but some loser will see them and buy them, and then everyone else will point and laugh. That’ll be awesome.” Why are they trying to trick me into looking dumb?
And I don’t even know, maybe Liza is wrong and they really ARE cute. I mean, who decides what makes it cute? Four teenagers named Chelsea at Hot Topic who quickly spread the word amongst their fashionista friends? And what if they're just messing with us? How can we know for sure that the shoes are cute and we haven't just all been suckered? HOW CAN WE KNOW? For example, look at these Balenciaga DESIGNER shoes! JUST LOOK AT THEM! What in the -
I would buy my shoes at Nordstroms, where the clerks tend to help you out and let you know what looks nice and what looks stupid, but I’m way too intimidated by the shoe department there. Back when we had actual money (oh, money, how I miss you) I would buy clothes there but could never bring myself to buy shoes. The shoe people frightened me. I was too scared to do much more than very quickly walk by the displays, sometimes twice but at full speed, not making eye contact with anyone. "Who, me, buy shoes? Oh, no, I'm much too busy walking around here, no, don't look at me, don't look at me, DON'T LOOK AT ME - Ayeeeee!!!" So I won't be shopping there. Plus I'm broke. DANG it.
That brings me to my other criteria… I need them to be, and this is key, cheap. I’m thinking I would gladly pay approximately two dollars.
No, I’m kidding. I would gladly pay three dollars.
O.k., FINE. I’ll pay more than that. But, when I’m talking about cheap, I just want you to understand the level of cheapness I’m talking about. Cheap. Cheap but cute. And quite obviously, I will need help figuring out what is cute, and what is not cute, and what is crossing the line into tacky, and what will make me look like I just came from a rodeo.
So – help me?
Please?
P.S. I have ginormous calves. GINORMOUS.
P.P.S. (You guys, thank you so much for all of the nice comments on the last post. They really made my day. I was waiting for everyone to call me nuts, and instead you are all just - awesome and real. And I would answer back to every comment saying, thank you, thank you, but that would get really boring for you to read. But thank you. I really do read and LOVE every comment to pieces. Ahem.)
Saturday, January 05, 2008
The Life Cycle of a Blog
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- Get a blog – lie and say you are just doing it to keep in touch with people
- Write a few self conscious posts. Get no comments.
- Post all the time! Sometimes multiple times per day! You have so much to say! All the time! Wheeee!
- Comment other places. Get a few comments back.
- Become addicted to comments.
- Compulsively check comments. When comments are low, let it affect your mood that day.
- Install site analytics/tracking.
- Wonder why Blogger Y is looking at your blog for 12 hours straight. Figure out Blogger Y probably clicked on your blog and then went to sleep.
- Wonder why a certain IP address is looking at your blog 20 times a day. Get freaked out. Realize it's you.*
- Check out other blogs. Wonder why they have awards and you don’t.
- What’s a meme?
- Watch traffic go up. Pretend you don’t care.
- Watch traffic go down. Pout.
- Get awards. Give away awards. Get more awards. Give away awards. Start to be very, very afraid of awards. Write post mocking awards. Never get another award. Sulk.
- Give your blog a makeover (Obviously, I skipped this step ;>)
- Put up ads.
- Have a couple of well received posts. Become self conscious about posting afterwards because you cannot measure up to yourself.
- Guest post places. Suck at it because when you guest post you are supposed to have an actual point and you, my dear, do not have one.
- Get writer’s block. You have nothing to say. Nothing at all. You SUCK.
- Decide to stop worrying about what people think and just - write stuff
- Watch traffic go down, down, down. Wheeeeee!
- Realize you will never be Dooce and become o.k. with that.
- Discover that even when people don't comment, life still has meaning.
- Stop being a total blogging freak and get a little perspective for Christmas
- Stop checking site analytics because you've realized it makes you crazy(er.)
- Achieve blog zen - blog because you want to, not because you have to
Don't pretend you don't do some of this stuff. Maybe not all of it, but some of it? Right?
Anyone?
Anyone?
Just me then?
Okie-dokie.
P.S. *Nicki, you know I'm lookin' at YOU. Hee. That still cracks me up.
Monday, December 17, 2007
The Birthday Party: A Parable
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1 And on the 17th day of the twelfth month it came to pass that the daughter of the Queen turned five years old.
2 And behold, it was decreed that a festival should be held and that children should come to pay homage to the young princess.
3 And when the Queen beheld the large number of children in the land, and heard their cries, and saw their eagerness to attend the festival, she knew that she could not invite one save she invite all.
4 And behold, the Queen prophesied that a great number of children would be out of town, and so it came to pass that the Queen did invite a large number of children,yay, even five and twenty children, to the royal festival.
5 And lo, the royal treasury was bare, and so the Queen did visit the market of one hundred cents and did purchase all manner of goods for the royal festival, and behold, when she laid them before the King, he declared that they were good.
8 And behold their wrath was mighty and the Queen bowed down before them and did work to entice them, yay even to distract them with games and dance and merry making.
9 And behold, the royal dog was freakingeth out, and the Queen did place him in the royal garage, so that he might not pee himself, for so great was his anxiety because of the children.
10 And after much merry making, behold, the Queen looked at her devils food cake, and looked at the King, and cried, woe unto me, for this cake shall not feed such a great number, and thou must travel to the market, and purchase more cake to feed these children who have come to pay homage.
11 But lo, the King said, Nay, oh ye of little faith, fear not, for this cake shall be enough.
12 And the woman despaired, but she began to cut the cake.
13 And lo, there was much rejoicing in the land, for as it turnethed out, there was enough cake, and there were even some children in the land who did not like cake, but who desired only ice cream, and so the cake was enough to feed many children, even five and twenty children, and the news of this great miracle spread throughout the land.
30 And if ye have read all of this, yay, even to the end, now tell me, what think ye of my tale? Thinketh ye that I hath too much time on my hands?
31 Yay, verily verily, it may be so, for behold, the Royal King, he is gone, even again, and I am lonely, and so I say unto you, that she who leaveth a comment, shall be greatly blessed in the eyes of the Queen.
2 And behold, it was decreed that a festival should be held and that children should come to pay homage to the young princess.
3 And when the Queen beheld the large number of children in the land, and heard their cries, and saw their eagerness to attend the festival, she knew that she could not invite one save she invite all.
4 And behold, the Queen prophesied that a great number of children would be out of town, and so it came to pass that the Queen did invite a large number of children,yay, even five and twenty children, to the royal festival.
5 And lo, the royal treasury was bare, and so the Queen did visit the market of one hundred cents and did purchase all manner of goods for the royal festival, and behold, when she laid them before the King, he declared that they were good.
6 And behold, the Queen had prophesied incorrectly, and on the day of the royal festival a great number of children appeared, yay, even all children appeared, save only one, and they arrived bearing gifts and tidings of great joy.
7 And there was much decorating of baked goods, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, for the Queen had only one can of purple sprinkles, and there was no yellow frosting, and behold, this did make the children with baked cookies in star shapes exceedingly angry, and the Queen was afraid, for the noise which the children maketh, it did cause her to tremble and quake.
8 And behold their wrath was mighty and the Queen bowed down before them and did work to entice them, yay even to distract them with games and dance and merry making.
9 And behold, the royal dog was freakingeth out, and the Queen did place him in the royal garage, so that he might not pee himself, for so great was his anxiety because of the children.
10 And after much merry making, behold, the Queen looked at her devils food cake, and looked at the King, and cried, woe unto me, for this cake shall not feed such a great number, and thou must travel to the market, and purchase more cake to feed these children who have come to pay homage.
11 But lo, the King said, Nay, oh ye of little faith, fear not, for this cake shall be enough.
12 And the woman despaired, but she began to cut the cake.
13 And lo, there was much rejoicing in the land, for as it turnethed out, there was enough cake, and there were even some children in the land who did not like cake, but who desired only ice cream, and so the cake was enough to feed many children, even five and twenty children, and the news of this great miracle spread throughout the land.
14 And the King said, Woman, I have been called out of town, and must go. Peace be unto you.
15 And the woman wept because there were a large number of children still present, yay, even five and twenty children and the woman cried, oh, surely I am a cursed woman among all women.
16 And behold, the children brought many gifts, and they brought them forward, in a great swarming mass of gift giving, even an obscene amount of gift giving, and behold, the children would not sit down and give heed to the princess, for they were making merry.
17 And behold great was the wrath of the princess when the children would not give her heed.
18 And the princess did endeavor to make the children listen to her, else she would scream and cry out to the people to leave the land.
19 But behold the Queen did show them mercy, and did exile the Princess to her room, until she could get a grip.
20 And behold, after five minutes, the Princess did return, and she did make amends to her people, and brought them good tidings of great joy.
21 And she did bestow upon them gift bags of assorted colors, and the children screamed with joy.
22 For the candy, it was good.
23 And soon, the mothers of the children did return to the land, and they did say unto the Queen, Behold, you are indeed a mighty and brave Queen, for when we droppethed them off, never had we beheld so many children at festival, and our fear was great, and much did we doubt thee.
24 But you are indeed a true and wise Queen and we shall not doubt thee again
25 And the children left, yay, even all five and twenty children, and the young princess and her cohorts were banished to their rooms, but with many amusements, and the Queen did fall onto the couch and did slumber for half an hour, until she was woken by the Princess, who did come bearing thanks and praise, for she hath enjoyed the royal festival exceedingly
26 And behold, how great was her joy.
27 And behold the Queen was joyful also, for she did love the young Princess exceedingly.
28 And behold, the royal festival was ended, at least for the space of a year.
29 And lo, I say unto you, if ye shall learn a lesson from reading this tale, then take heed, and do not invite a large number of children to the winter festival; yay, only invite a small number of children, lest ye suffer the consequences, even like unto the Queen.
29 And lo, I say unto you, if ye shall learn a lesson from reading this tale, then take heed, and do not invite a large number of children to the winter festival; yay, only invite a small number of children, lest ye suffer the consequences, even like unto the Queen.
30 And if ye have read all of this, yay, even to the end, now tell me, what think ye of my tale? Thinketh ye that I hath too much time on my hands?
31 Yay, verily verily, it may be so, for behold, the Royal King, he is gone, even again, and I am lonely, and so I say unto you, that she who leaveth a comment, shall be greatly blessed in the eyes of the Queen.
P.S. Lest ye doubt this tale, I hath provided this moving picture, that ye may see and believe upon my words.
(had to remove the video - it kept making my posts republish in the feeds :>)
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Point, Set, Match
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DH and I got into the mother of all arguments last night. We don’t fight a lot, but we are both incredibly stressed out right now, and so we put our minds to it and eventually we found something to fight about. I think it started because I wanted him to go shovel the snow when he was in the middle of doing something, and we both had just enough right and just enough wrong in our respective positions that it turned out to be really easy to dig in our heels and completely freak out. It was one of those fights where the phrases “Are you KIDDING me?” and “You’re ridiculous” were thrown around over and over again, by a different person each time.
I already know we shouldn’t fight in front of the kids, but I live here on Planet Earth, where sometimes, crap happens. They were in bed, but kept sneaking out to egg us on. They meant to make us stop, but it had the exact opposite effect because each time they would say something? Like when Abby told us we were being naughty and shouldn’t fight? We would then feel even stupider and angrier and more childish, and would fight SOME MORE because last night we were twelve. Carter came out and yelled at me, “You go sit in your room Mama, you go sit in dere WIGHT NOW!”
I will confess that at one point I was so enraged I threw three large chocolate chip cookies and an ice cube at my husband’s head. (But not in front of the children, I do have SOME self control.) I decided I would show HIM, and took off in the truck, skidding down our icy street, thinking I would do something dramatic, like stay out all night so he would be frantic with worry, thinking I’d slidden to an icy death. Then I realized I had no gas. And had forgotten my purse. And had exactly 27 cents in change in the car. This put a significant crimp in my plans.
I sat in the Home Depot parking lot, my breath making frosty circles in the air because I was afraid that if I ran the heater I would run out of gas, and thought, wow, I’m really showing HIM. HE’LL SURE BE SORRY.
Then I realized he was probably back home, sitting in front of the fire, feet up, flipping channels on the remote, and eating all of my cookies.
So after freezing my butt off for an hour I drove home in defeat and slunk back into the house.
He gave me the look, the one husbands give you when they are sorry and want the fight to be over, and he said, “I’m sorry honey,” and came over to give me a hug, but I was not yet done teaching him a lesson and so instead of giving him a hug I ducked under his arm, stomped upstairs to my office and made sure he knew by the way I was slamming things around that I was still VERY VERY ANGRY.
I heard him popping popcorn and putting on a movie I wanted to watch, and it was cold up there, but I was MAKING A POINT, dang it, and so I sat there in my coat at my desk and worked on stuff. Making a point is really boring sometimes.
Anyway, eventually we both apologized and everything was good and right again in the kingdom.
Today he is down in Las Vegas again for work, and I am here with the kids, by myself, for the whole week, and they are REALLY grumpy right now, boy howdy, so, even though the fight is ancient history, and water under the bridge and was ridiculous even when it was going on? I just want you to know, honey...
I was totally right.
I already know we shouldn’t fight in front of the kids, but I live here on Planet Earth, where sometimes, crap happens. They were in bed, but kept sneaking out to egg us on. They meant to make us stop, but it had the exact opposite effect because each time they would say something? Like when Abby told us we were being naughty and shouldn’t fight? We would then feel even stupider and angrier and more childish, and would fight SOME MORE because last night we were twelve. Carter came out and yelled at me, “You go sit in your room Mama, you go sit in dere WIGHT NOW!”
I will confess that at one point I was so enraged I threw three large chocolate chip cookies and an ice cube at my husband’s head. (But not in front of the children, I do have SOME self control.) I decided I would show HIM, and took off in the truck, skidding down our icy street, thinking I would do something dramatic, like stay out all night so he would be frantic with worry, thinking I’d slidden to an icy death. Then I realized I had no gas. And had forgotten my purse. And had exactly 27 cents in change in the car. This put a significant crimp in my plans.
I sat in the Home Depot parking lot, my breath making frosty circles in the air because I was afraid that if I ran the heater I would run out of gas, and thought, wow, I’m really showing HIM. HE’LL SURE BE SORRY.
Then I realized he was probably back home, sitting in front of the fire, feet up, flipping channels on the remote, and eating all of my cookies.
So after freezing my butt off for an hour I drove home in defeat and slunk back into the house.
He gave me the look, the one husbands give you when they are sorry and want the fight to be over, and he said, “I’m sorry honey,” and came over to give me a hug, but I was not yet done teaching him a lesson and so instead of giving him a hug I ducked under his arm, stomped upstairs to my office and made sure he knew by the way I was slamming things around that I was still VERY VERY ANGRY.
I heard him popping popcorn and putting on a movie I wanted to watch, and it was cold up there, but I was MAKING A POINT, dang it, and so I sat there in my coat at my desk and worked on stuff. Making a point is really boring sometimes.
Anyway, eventually we both apologized and everything was good and right again in the kingdom.
Today he is down in Las Vegas again for work, and I am here with the kids, by myself, for the whole week, and they are REALLY grumpy right now, boy howdy, so, even though the fight is ancient history, and water under the bridge and was ridiculous even when it was going on? I just want you to know, honey...
I was totally right.
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