well, it’s been an interesting holiday weekend.

Let’s re-cap, shall we?

Thursday was Turkey day! Yay! I had this weird depression hanging over me all day, and who knows why, because the night before, we had our first snow. It was beautiful, blanketing the ground, transforming the world into a winter wonderland. If I could write poetry, I’d be plaguing you with some very badly written, I’m sure, poem about it. I just love winter. I love the crisp cool air and the snuggly warm clothes that hugs you all day long when you wear them. Ahhhh. Oh yes. Me and winter could get married and live together for many a long day. Sorry James. I’m eloping with winter.

So anyway. I think the depression started when I woke up Thursday morning and James wasn’t in the bed next to me. Through cold and flu season, this often happens, he often abandons me if I’m snoring or if he can’t sleep or if he’s coughing or if I’m coughing, etc. It usually doesn’t bother me, but on Thanksgiving day, it did for some reason. It’s not just the absence of James next to me, he also takes his pillow, his other pillow, and his blanket. So I wake up and roll over and there’s this yawning abyss of nothing but bare cold sheets staring back at me and I feel utterly alone in the universe without even his pillow to grab and smell to remind me of him. The snow was also gone, like it hadn’t even happened. “HAHA,” it said, “JUST KIDDING!” *sniff*

Second thing to bring me down is the holiday itself. It’s a day dedicated to eating and family, and it was just us this year, which, don’t get me wrong, was nice. However, what is NOT nice, is killing yourself making yummy food just to hear someone say, “I don’t like that Mommy.” Over and over and over again. While you’re making it in the morning. While your putting it in the oven. When it is on his plate and you’ve told him repeatedly that he doesn’t have to eat it, and that one little taste won’t kill him.

I blame his picky father. It’s more convenient than any of the other choices.

Jocelyn, luckily, is at a beautiful stage where she will eat anything. And does, often. While I was cleaning the meat off the turkey later, she kept coming round for a bite every few minutes. She’s a turkey fiend (She also loves the rotisserie chicken from Costco).

So yeah. We should have done like a friend of mine did, and just ate Thanksgiving on the couch during nap time, because I think it would have been better for my morale. I am exaggerating, it isn’t like I killed myself cooking, in fact James was in charge of the turkey, and then we only had dressing and Company Carrots â„¢* as side dishes. While I love this stage of their development, sometimes I just can’t wait until they’re older so holidays like this won’t be just a waste of time.

*Company Carrots â„¢ is my family’s trademarked Thanksgiving day side dish. It’s almost more important than the turkey. My mom used to just tell us that however many carrots we peeled, that’s how much she’d make. Well, we would peel dozens, because we loooooved company carrots. It’s so yummy! Even James likes company carrots. No idea how it got that name though. It sounds like the dish is very old, like from Anne of Green Gables era, and the recipe would only be brought out when company came over for tea or something.

Friday I did some work at home, which was fun and no fun at the same time, and then Friday night I bullied James into going into DC with me with the kids and seeing The Polar Express on IMAX in 3D. It was pretty fun. We took the metro in, (“A TRAIN!!!! We’re in A TUNNEL!! Look, a TRAIN STATION!!” -Christmas will be hard to beat this year) and we walked around the JAM-PACKED Natural History Museum for a bit before the movie. Ethan was a wee bit afraid of the big dinosaur bones, and we didn’t go see the Hope Diamond, which I always like to go check out, and Jocelyn stayed in the stroller, which made maneuvering through the millions of people a bit on the impossible side, but the movie was the prime draw anyway. I’ve seen it with Ethan about three times in the theatre, and James hasn’t ever, so I did Jocelyn duty, and Ethan and his daddy watched the movie in 3D. Jocelyn did pretty well in the movie, with the help of graham crackers and bagels and jujifruits (fruit snacks that we have named “jujifruits”, not the actual candy) I had to take her out in the last half hour, which wasn’t bad, because she had tons of fun spinning around in the wide open lobby and then came running over to me to fall down. She also got some good jumping practice in.

James admitted that it was worth it, even though he was starting to feel miserably sick, just to see Ethan watching the movie which he adored. Grandma has already called me and “dibs” the Polar Express DVD as her Christmas present to Ethan. Kind of a bummer, because I’d have liked to have it in the house before Christmas and watch it up to the big day. So, along with the “METRO TRAIN MOMMY!” ride to and from DC, Friday night was fun, even though poor Jocelyn had to sit in the same diaper all that time because her mother forgot to bring one. Doh. Luckily, Mr. Poop stayed away.

However, Friday night, the real fireworks began. James spent his night in the kid’s bathroom, and I spent mine in our bathroom. He was sitting on the throne, I was kneeling in worship before it’s porcelain white-ness (wondering exactly when the last time I had cleaned in there was, actually). We decided later that it could only have been the turkey day leftovers that we’d had for lunch. I consulted with my mom, and we decided that since the dressing had egg in it, it was probably that. Yes, James and I were mildly food poisoned, and it will make me tread lightly in The Zone henceforth forever after! We weren’t as speedy in tupperwaring our leftovers after the Big Eating Event, and we will be from now on!

I think James got the worst of it (he was pooping all night, whereas I actually puked only once), but it wasn’t pleasant for anyone. Even the kids, especially Jocelyn who remained in her crib Saturday morning until 9am, and in her crib during nap time until 4pm. Luckily Ethan entertained her a bit during that time. Probably reassuring her that no, Mommy and Daddy aren’t dead, they’re just sleeping. Don’t worry, they’re breathing, I was watching. (Not really. Of course, I was asleep, so how would I know what those two talked about.) The rest of the day, they pretty much ran around our immovable tired, feverish bodies while we occasionally called out directives such as, “don’t pull your sister’s hair!” and “No hitting!” and “Your brother is not a punching bag!” and “TIME OUT!” before drifting into sick desolate non-caring again. As long as no one dies or is maimed, they’ll be fine, right?

So Saturday passed in a haze, and generally we felt better Sunday, but even today (Monday) I don’t quite feel 100 percent. The tummy is ok, but now a sore throat and general achey mopey yuckiness* have taken over. Luckily though, it’s liveable, which is good because I don’t get vacation time until I’ve worked at this company for 6 months. Yay.

So that is the Thanksgiving holiday weekend wrap up.

“I’m thankful for my hair.” – quote from Amy, at her eleventh Thanksgiving dinner when everyone had to say what they were thankful for. (I’m never going to live this down anyway, so I thought I’d let you, the Internet, not let me live it down either. Was that sentence grammatically correct? I don’t care anymore. Goodbye.)

* according to my spell checker, “yuckiness” isn’t a word. Isn’t that surpising? “Mopey” is OK, but yuckiness? NO! DOES NOT COMPUTE! “Achey” isn’t either, but that one, I get.

– amy dangles her participles over big, yawning cliffs while hollering, “STAY BACK! I’LL DROP IT!!”

PS – (as if there aren’t enough footnotes going on) My ice just sighed at me. It was interesting.

Not that sort of fantasy.

Sheesh, you people. Get your mind out of the gutter.

I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Mimi Smartypants and she mentioned how she does kung fu kicks in the elevator when it is empty. Aside from her, of course. I guess it isn’t actually empty. It’s late. Sue me.

Anyway. I was thinking about how I don’t have any cool things like that, that I do, but tonight as I was sitting here musing on my return to work tomorrow (stayed home with a non-sick Ethan), I realized that I DO have office fantasies.

The guy in charge of our division/office/borg collective, is a very nice man that I’ve spoken with once, on my first day, when he was in his office when the HR lady was showing me around. He was very interested in me and seemed to know about my skills, which impressed and scared me. I wasn’t quite sure who HE was, but the huge office kind of tipped me off that he was probably the highest guy in the office.

Anyway. Back to the fantasy. Every day, many times a day, I trek from my cube to the kitchen, questing for tea bags and hot water to douse them with. Mr. InCharge’s office is not between my cube and the way to the kitchen, but it is in between the kitchen and the front desk, which leads to the hallway which has the door to the ladies room, and I often go through that door because of the said tea bags doused with hot water and sprinked with many many many packets of Equal (if aspartame causes tumors, tell my family I love them). So once every few days, I douse the tea bags, and trot out past the front door to answer nature’s call and then return to the kitchen to retrieve my mug and return to my desk.

So I pass Mr. Incharge’s office, and being the nice guy that he is, his door is usually open. sometimes he’s in there, and sometimes he’s not. Well, every time I pass I have this urge to just go in and plop down on his expansive sofa (as opposed to the chairs opposite his desk where I’m guessing folks usually sit) and just shoot the shit. “Hiya! How’s it going? Do anything interesting this weekend? Me? Oh just a little TV, some gardening, nothing special. OK, Just thought I’d say hi!” and pop up and leave.

It’s really not a big thing, just a fleeting thought that passes my mind when I pass Mr. Incharge’s office.

The other thing I’d like to do, and probably will when I can get away with it, is turn a cartwheel going down the hall. I’m always plotting on when and how I could do this. Once I thought to myself, the adrenaline rushing, “THIS IS IT! THERE’S NO ONE AROUND I COULD TOTALLY TURN A CARTWHEEL.” But then I chickened out with the thought that I haven’t done a cartwheel in years, and I should probably practice at home before taking my act on the road. I think I was also wearing a skirt, so that’d be a good reason not to.

Cartwheels remind me of pre-teen adolescence, back in those golden years when it was still ok to play with your friends, make up stories, act them out, pretend in the backyard, dress up your kittens.. before the abrupt change into teenagers when suddenly you don’t “play” anymore, you “hang out”, you paint your nails, you talk on the phone and you alternate between talking about boys, clothes and tonight’s math homework. My best friend and next door neighbor, Heidi and I did cartwheels all the time. I even had a “thing” where if I was ever in a crappy mood, I would do a cartwheel, and it would make me happy. I loved to do them in grocery stores just to shock people (this one continued on into adolescence though, shocking people doesn’t seem to grow immature with time. or does it?)

So I’m totally thinking about taking that Mr. Incharge thing out in case someone from work finds my blog one day. It’s not like it’s bad or anything, but still. Oh well.

– amy’s turnout was never good enough, but she always had “beautiful hand shape”, and good feet
” amy’s ballet teacher never forgave her for also taking gymnastics, despite the beautiful hand shape and the high arched foot

I love to use words like this, especially in a highly techno weenie babble-talk conversation:

wonky
wussy
weird
flukey
funky
floo0hooey
goofy

“I was looking at the page on the dev server and somewhere in the programming it is duplicating the last two characters of the content include and reproducing them just outside of the css div content area. It’s totally wonky”

And then inform the person next to me, that it’s a technical term with a straight face.

I wasn’t suffering from the “MUNDAYS” or anything, in fact, I actually was feeling pretty good. Until I went to drop Ethan off at his pre-school, and he didn’t want to go into his classroom.

When I went into his room this morning to wake him up, he didn’t get up right away (he usually does). I had to go in a second time and turn his light on and make sure he was getting up. He is usually very excited to get out of bed, visit the bathroom and get dressed all by himself (a recent accomplishment is the ability to snap his own jeans, which at one point, he showed to each person in turn at yesterday’s soiree). So I was a little worried that something was wrong, but he seemed fine and his usual boisterous self after he got over the initial sleepiness. He didn’t seem to be that hungry though, and only ate about 1/4 of his morning bagel. He seemed fine walking in to school, but when we got to the actual door to his class, he wouldn’t walk in. I pulled/carried him in, and sat with him in a snuggle, but I didn’t want to draw out the inevitable departure. He didn’t bawl, but there was a few tears shed. When I left, he had gotten out his naptime blanket and was huddled up in it, ignoring his teacher’s attempts to engage him.

My morning commute was lengthened due to an accident that blocked one lane of traffic. I didn’t get in until 8:30, a half hour later than usual. I think of this as an additional half hour that I worried about my poor little son, berated myself for being a bad mother who is working instead of staying home with him and his sister, and decided that I was ruining his life forever. I got to work and promptly called his school (I had forgotten my cell phone, or I’d have called on the drive in) to hear that he was doing fine.

I always say that I wish my kids would just stay this age forever, and of course in a way I do because they’re small and just cuter than big-eyed kittens in baskets hugging the Snuggly teddy bear on top of sleeping long-eared puppies. WAY CUTER. But a part of me dreads them growing up because parenthood at this stage has got to be so much easier than parenthood to older kids with actual problems and concerns. Right now, I can hug them away any tears and kiss their boo-boos and help them get through being scared of the dark, and let them “DO IT MYSELF MOMMY!” and show them their letters and what sounds they make. It still kills me at times like today, when I wish I had never HEARD of going back to work, just so I could stay with my boy and hold him. But surely even this will be easier than what is ahead. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to help them with fights with friends, problems with school or teachers, having the wrong sort of friends, storming off to their rooms with slammed doors and huffy silences.

Motherhood is hard right now, but I know how to be a mother to toddlers. I don’t know how good a mother I will be to older kids, or dread the day, pre-teen and beyond.

So, yeah. Mondays suck.

I’ll write more on my weekend later.

One thing you may not know about me, is that I like to talk smack.

Of course, I’m not very good at it, so my smack talking is usually pretty lame. But if I drink enough, the urge to talk smack increases. So at our usual poker gatherings, and even at my monthly Bunko game with the suburban neighborhood ladies, I tend to get happy and loose with the, “YOU’RE GOING DOWN, BABY!” “IN YOUR FACE!” and the general merriment of loudly lamenting my own suckiness, if that’s the case.

It’s not so much that I HAVE to win, or hate to lose. I just think that getting all boisterous is part of the fun!

Speaking of suburban neighborhood ladies, I have succumbed to the inevitable and am hosting a Pampered Chef party this weekend. “Pampered Chef?” you wonder. “What’s that?” Well, just think back to when your mom hosted or attended the in-your-living-room tupperware parties where the gals gathered and oohed and aahed over the latest and greatest food storage device, talked with each other and caught up with the various ongoings, and then occasionally bought said food storage devices. Now update it to the present decade, and there you go. I’m thinking about doing my hair up in a beehive, donning an apron, high heels and dishwashing gloves* for the event. If you are reading this and are in the near vicinity, then it is likely that you received an invitation. (If not, then call me! you can come too! come come! dishwashing gloves optional!)

* I actually have dishwashing gloves. They’re pretty neat. I got them because sometime a few years ago I started getting a mysterious rash on my hands after I was working in the kitchen. Once I had them, I was hooked – my favorite time to don them was cleaning out the baby formula bottles. At least when Jocelyn was breast-fed, the breastmilk didn’t smell so bad when you were cleaning the bottles, but damn, formula (especially old formula) is particularly rank. Now, I use them all the time, it’s so nice to not get your hands wet. However, I do have a strange urge to don an apron, apply mascara and wear high heels when I’m wearing them.

Back to Pampered Chef.

I am looking forward to this event with some trepidation. First, it involves people in my home. Not just any people, but neighbor people. This freaks me out. First off, I am not the June Cleaver type, and my household shows it. The friends we’ve known forever know that we’re slobs, and slobs with kids, so I like to think they don’t care or notice, even though they probaby do. But it seems like our neighbor friends always have spic and span houses whenever I drop in with table runners and pictures on the wall and tidy play areas where the toys never venture out or look like a ten children play there instead of just 2 or 3.

I did manage to run the vacuum around the main floor at least once a week when I was at home, and I remember when we lived in our temporary townhouse while waiting for our current house’s completion I had a pretty good weekly routine down for making sure the kitchen floor didn’t develop new and deadly diseases. That routine switched over to “Oh the dog will get it.” and other non-cleaning actions. But even then, and moreso now that I’m working full-time (and the dog is away), our house is in sad shape. It would be even worse if not for James, who always, ALWAYS empties and fills the dishwasher, which is the job I hate most in the world. Even when we do manage to pick up the toys that are scattered EVERYWHERE, they just come out again the very next day, so when I’m tired, it’s very easy to look around, think “what’s the point?” and curl up with a book instead.

But even if all the toys were picked up, floors vacuumed, and surfaces cleared, my house is just lacking that grown up look that the other bunko gals have. Pictures! Fake flower arrangements! Furniture that actually have decorative items on their surfaces other than stacks of unread mail and magazines! Seriously. After attending a few Pampered Chef, Southern Living, Tastefully Simple, Party Lite (that one is candles), and some other parties that I can’t remember the name of, and not to mention Bunko nights, my house just doesn’t match up. I don’t think I have the decorating gene. I am always afraid that what looks nice in the store or magazine is going to look yucky in my home, or won’t turn out to be my style. I think my problem is that I don’t ever really think of myself as grown-up yet. I mean, I do think of myself as grown up, but wasn’t it easier when you could collect all sorts of random shit, stick it up on your wall, and call it good? I’ll have to hunt up a picture of my dorm room. I guess I’d like my house to look nice, but still reflect ME (I guess it could reflect James too) and my taste, and once again, my inner picture of myself isn’t “married 31 year old suburban wife and working mother” but rather, “hip, groovy chick who cares not for responsibility or convention”. And also because I don’t know what I like, rather, I like everything, and thus, I’m afraid if I bring it into my house, it’s just going to look junky instead of sleek and planned.

Well.

This subject is lengthier in this blog than the trepidation is at the upcoming gathering in my head.

The gathering isn’t in my head. The trepidation is. Just to be clear. Didn’t want that sketchy grammar up there giving you weird images of gatherings in my head. Although if I did hold a gathering in my head, I would want YOU to be there. Won’t you RSVP in the affirmative? I must say, the decorations THERE are very nice. Funky and ecletic, but most of all, ME.

I so feel like running out and dying my hair this color today. I shall try to resist.

That is all for today. Farewell kind viewers! All … six of you, I think. I’m not counting James who is contractually obligated to read what I write, if for no other reason to discovery whether or not I’m pissed at him for something that I can’t bring myself to say to him. If I did count him, that’d be seven.

FAREWELL!

* Name the movie! It’s one of my favorites!

It’s storytime!

I am walking down the hall from my cube to the kitchen when I remembered that I wanted to fill up my water bottle. Water = good. So, I turned back.

Then I thought, I can put my lunch in the microwave and THEN come get my water bottle thus saving time waiting around for the microwave to finish. So I turned back toward the kitchen.

THEN I thought about the distance between point A, my desk, and point B, the kitchen, and decided that my progress between point A and point B was less than 50% and thus turned back to head to my desk to retrieve said water bottle.

It was at this point that I realized that I just circled in place like a dog and if I kept this up someone was going to walk by and give me a bone or something so I beat it back to my desk and sat there, peering around the cubicle wall to see if anyone had seen my strange behavior and was shooting me “weird crazy new-girl” looks.

What’s that? Another story? But I just told you one!

Well, all right, but JUST THIS ONE.

The people that design women’s work wear, have no compassion. DO WOMEN NOT NEED POCKETS IN THEIR SKIRTS??? The answer is NO. Err, Yes. What was the question? I need pockets! And yet, none of my skirts have any. NONE. This is my fault, of course, for buying them w/out pockets in the first place, but seriously, if I waited around for pockets, I’d have no clothes. And while the walking in place in a circle thing would have been embarrassing if someone had caught me, I’m guessing it’d have been even more so with no clothes.

So, no pockets. This has led to some drastic changes in my being. For one, my cell phone has always been my mode of telling the time. I haven’t worn a watch since I was in high school. For some reason after the one I wore broke, I just never could find one I liked as much, and then I was used to NOT wearing one, and didn’t like the way they felt. The cell phone is always in my pocket, so if I needed the time, I just fished it out and checked.

So, when I was working in DC, taking the train, taking the metro, walking walking to my office.. Well, I really needed somewhere to stash my phone so I didn’t have to go rooting through my bag looking for it. One would think “Just buy a watch, dumbo,” but seriously, so strict was my non-watch attitude, that it never even occured to me. Until I found the perfect place for my phone – right in the middle of my bra. I would look around covertly and snuggle the phone down in between the boobs. I would walk merrily from office to metro station and be able to check the time with only getting a few strange looks a day. However, the “non-watch” philosophy was quickly shaken to it’s foundations after I had it on vibrate a few times and just about jumped out of my skin when it went off. Now, THAT will wake you up in the morning!

So, I wear a watch now. I searched and searched and found a watch that I could live with. It’s more of a bracelet, a piece of jewelry really, than a watch. It’s awful purty! The lasting effects of the no pockets situation however, is that now I randomly stick things in my bra when I have no where else to carry them. When I drop Ethan off at school, we have a security card to get into the building. Ethan likes to hold it and “beep!” us in, but then I take it and stash it away securely.

Other items that have been known to reside with the breasts:

1. My keys (this one is a daily occurance).
2. Many packets of Equal sweetener (also daily).
3. Spare Kleenex (but not in the usual way tissues are stuffed in the bra, I promise I don’t need them like THAT.)
4. Pens, paperclips, and various small office supplies.
5. Socks (Mine, Ethan’s, or Jocelyn’s. Never James. Ew.)
6. And in the last week, cough drops.

Sometimes when I get undressed for bed and take off my bra, the weirdest things show up that I have no recollection of putting in there. I think all the items are gettin’ busy and multiplying. PARTY IN THE BRA! NO COVER CHARGE!

Ahem.

OK, storytime’s over! Now off to bed!

So this weekend, aside from the inappropriate thoughts in the head of the amy regarding the ballet (why do i love to put ‘the’ in front of everything? I need help.) it’s been chock full of events and personal enlightenment. Friday night consisted of a “Let’s look inside Amy’s head!” experience. It was interactive, complete with waterworks and I’m sure a Tammy Faye Baker look since I was wearing mascara at the time. I got some insight on why I feel all mopey and depressed sometimes and managed to actually convey these things to James, the wonderful man who listens to my neuroses and tells me it will be ok.

I’ve also started contemplating how much is too much to spill here on this blog. While I would like to go the route of full disclosure, it’s probably not fair to those around me, and we all know how full disclosure can sometimes lead to being dooced so I definitely need to draw the line somewhere. I don’t like lines. I’m going to make my line a fuzzy, foggy sort of mist that I can wander into and out of at will. Yeah! Go mist! On the one hand, I could just pass on the funny bits of my life and call it good, but I didn’t start this blog with the intent of just floating through the events and not really delving into ME, and I don’t want to wanker out now. Because let’s face it. I love talking about ME. ME ME ME.

Anyway. To the weekend.

1) Friday night blubbering*

* To my credit, I got this out of the way FRIDAY NIGHT and then was fine the rest of the weekend – I highly suggest going this route in your mental breakdowns.

I volunteered to fold some brochures for work. So Friday night, James is settled in front of World of Warcraft laptopness and I’m settled in to folding brochuresness. So I’m folding away and we’re watching Gilmore Girls when it occurs to me, that if the situation were reversed, if James was doing some meaningless and menial task, I would offer to help him. What is it about me that I would automatically offer to help complete this boring, skin-drying task? James evidently did not have this “must help” gene, because he didn’t offer. Please don’t mistake me. I’m not trying to paint a “how dare he” or a “poor-little-me” picture here. I’m painting the “I am a PUSSY” picture. Why do I feel the need to offer my assistance? And somewhat related, why do I feel as if I must be in control? I don’t think I would paint myself as a control freak, but maybe I am deluding myself and am nuttier than Monica Geller. As the inner peering continued, into the wee early hours of the morning, I unloaded a bunch of stuff on James and he, as always, has come through it all right, with no threats of divorce on the horizon.

Then again, I hear certified mail takes a few days.

I think that’s far enough into the mist for one day. That was probably a toe, stuck into the mist. Maybe next time I’ll get the whole foot in.

2) Saturday morning weigh-in.

Well folks, it wasn’t good! Up 4.8 lbs. This is not good. I knew it wasn’t going to be good, because I pretty much have been eating halloween candy all week and been saying “Oh this one little thing won’t hurt” to all sorts of things for mealtimes. So this will serve as a wake up call for me. I have been doing this for FOUR WEEKS, and my total is -2 pounds. If I am going to meet my New Years goal, it is time to GET TO IT! Just think. If I had lost 2 pounds a week, I’d be down 8 pounds at this point.

Ok, so no more kicking myself. Just time to get busy. And I am. Saturday I do kind of whatever I want, within reason, which has worked for me in the past, but Sunday, I cooked up a storm and made my lunch to bring to work for the week. I cooked and assembled my favorite thing, brown rice, browned onions (mmmmmmm) and browned, diced chicken. I also made up some of that (startlingly yummy, reminds me of the old pot-luck dinners in the church gym) pineapple fluff so whenever James dished up his mountain of chocolate ice cream, I wouldn’t have to look at him and yearn. No working out yet this week. Maybe Wednesday and Friday. And of course, Water Water Everywhere!

3) Saturday Night Ballet.

This is covered territory, but I’d just like to reiterate: Freedom for ballet dancers everywhere!

4) Cox Farms Pumpkin Madness (MADNESS, MADNESS I TELL YOU!!)

We went down the big slides, ventured over to the goats (who on discovering that Jocelyn did not carry food, immediatedly butted her and made her cry) left quickly for the barn with baby pigs, baby cow, and baby chickens and a slide out of the loft which Ethan wanted to do again and again (“BY MYSELF THIS TIME MOMMY!”), watched them drop pumpkins from atop a lofty crane (Ethan loved it, Jocelyn was scared of the noise of the pumpkin hitting the ground), did more slides, ate apples and cider, threw some itty bitty pumpkins, played on the toy train, watched the ponies giving rides and then finally came home.

Regrets: James and Ethan always went first down the slide(s) with Jocelyn and I following, so I never got to see either kid’s face coming down. That would have been great. Also, James forgot the camera. Damn him. Oh well.

5) The afternoon and evening of Sunday TANTRUM HELL.

And it came to pass, that Jocelyn was exceedingly sick. And yay, the girl laid down her head upon her crib, and did not sleep at naptime. The Lord decreed that there be no sleeping, but there would be much coughing, and sniffing and crying. And the Lord looked down, and said, “Let there be screaming. Let there be running away from the parents who wish to console her, they must look upon their spawn and weep for their inability to comfort her.”

Well, a wee exageration, for we did discover a few things that helped her. Distraction. And I’m not just saying, wave a toy in front of her or turn out the Wiggles, because even the powerful POWERFUL draw of the Wiggles only worked for about 5 minutes. I finally tossed her in the stroller and took her around the block in BLISSFUL silence, only to return home, and watch her THROW herself on the ground in a fit just inside the door. She was so tired and so sick that she just hated life, poor girl. Daddy discovered the other distraction and took her to the grocery store where she probably amused herself tossing things out of the cart and watching Daddy run after them. Oh she’s good at that. When they returned, it was late enough to try to carry the distracted momentum into the bathtub, and then into jammies and bed, where she laid and coughed and sniffed and cried some more. It was truly one of the worst days of her young little life, and I daresay ours as well. Some Benedryl and Robitussin finally came through and she did get SOME rest that night. Today, she is much improved, and actually slept very well last night with minimal coughing.

So exciting, full weekend. That’s it. The end.

– amy “I AM A PUSSY!”

First off, I’d like to say that I think the title should be asked for at the bottom of the post, and not the top. Not that this is in any of your hands, but when I go to post, there’s the title field, right there front and center. Well, I’m not ready for a title yet, because my mind has a zillion things of which it hasn’t selected one of, to write on.

Yes, I ended with a preposition. Bite me.

This weekend was kind of shitty. But the more depressing question that has been pressing itself on my mind, is WHY? I honestly have not been able to figure it out. There have been little shitty things and events that have happened, but I don’t think it was any of these specifically, just that my mind has not been able to wrap itself around any of them in a way that makes me a happy person, instead, I have dealt and dwelled on them until I am an unhappy person. If I could just figure out that different way of wrapping my mind around them all, I think I could change the outcome of the shitty weekend. I know I can do this, I’ve done it before, but driving in to work this morning all I could think about was just how shitty I feel and now I have a whole shitty week in front of me and I think I’ll go eat worms.

So, the weekend. I’m going to take a page out of mimi smartypants’ book and go with a numbered list as opposed to narrative. Don’t go to that link until you’ve finished reading my post, because once you do, unless you already know of mimi (which I’m sure you have, because blogging has been around forever and she’s awesome and with me just starting to blog now i am being such a poser and don’t i know all the GOOD bloggers started five years ago already?)

1. Weigh-in Saturday am was good – down 5.2 lbs. Yee ha! I celebrated with a Whopper at lunch, and then also had some Wendys for a very late dinner, with fries, but I feel perfectly vindicated in this because of the circumstances which I’m sure will be discussed further down the list. So. Anyway. Yay me.

2. Went to get a new pocket calendar for my purse because I keep needing to refer to January in my current one and hello! January is after year’s end and mine only goes to December. I’ve been needing a new one for a while now, so I finally went to GET it, taking Jocelyn with me, and when I got there and managed to look at the ones the store had, and had picked one out (not an easy task with Jocelyn “helping”), it turns out I had left my wallet at home. The reasons of which also will be discussed further down on this list, which I think will be number….

3. Ethan went down for his nap with such enthusiasm that James and I looked at each other in awe. Was this our child? In his bed? SLEEPING???? It turns out, it wasn’t our normal happy child. It was our poor, sick child, as we learned after he woke up. I was down in the kitchen making pineapple fluff when I heard his door open and close. I called to him to come down, but no answer. So I walked up and there he was, sitting on the top step all forlorn and sick. He was burning up when I led him back to bed and laid him down to rest while I fetched drink of water, thermometer, children’s motrin. Turns out the fever was up to 104.5, which is in the danger zone they always tell you about — they don’t want to see the kid RIGHT AWAY if it’s not over 102. So I fetched my wallet (thus it not being in the right place for later use), got out his health insurance card and called them up and procured an appt for 7pm. Which sucked, because when you go to urgent care, you are always there for hours and hours, so likely we wouldn’t be home until late, and yes, we weren’t home until 11:30pm.

The doctor covered his bases (one good thing about urgent care) and ordered a throat culture, blood test, urine analysis and xray. He couldn’t manage peeing in a cup, but everything else was done, and I must say that little boy is a trooper. When we finally saw the doctor again with the results all in, he basically said it was probably just a cold but they were going to put him on antibiotics anyway. So then we got to wait another 40 minutes for the prescription to be filled before we piled back in the car and headed home. I was starving at this point, which is where Wendy’s comes in.
The night went all right, I’d set my alarm for 6 hours after he’d been given the last dose of motrin, and James went in to deliver some more. Unfortunately, he’d thrown up in his bed. This was due I’m sure to me giving him a dose of his prescription right away, which can cause an upset stomach if taken on an empty stomach. To my credit, I had gotten him some chicken at Wendy’s too, but that exchange went something like this:

me: Are you eating your chicken, Ethan?
him: No, I’m going to wait until we get home.
me: Honey, when we get home we’re going straight to bed. Have some chicken now. Have some bites.
him: I’m going to wait until it cools down.

Of course, he was asleep about 30 seconds after this, thus no food. So anyway, James popped him into our bed with me while he changed the sheets and remade the bed and then popped him back into his bed, medicated again. The next went all right except that his cough had changed from a wet, congested, bringing-up-snotty-mucus sort of cough to a dry, rattling and somewhat barky cough. Uh oh. This is the first warning sign of croup. Other than that, he was really doing very well, so we decided to go get James new shoes. We are going to the ballet next weekend and I sold James dress shoes on Ebay last spring (he hated them, they pinched his shoes, I wasn’t just randomly looking around for things to sell) so we had to get him something he could wear instead of his sandals. Just as we were finishing up, Ethan took a turn for the worse and it seemed like he coudln’t talk at all, so we high-tailed it on home. I got back on the phone with the Kaiser people and made him an appointment for monday morning. James and I discussed it, and determined that I should stay home with him today because James had stayed home the last two days that someone was sick and couldn’t go to school/daycare. Then I realized that I couldn’t stay home. I am getting fingerprinted today. Doh. So James is home with Ethan.

Look, I got all narrative on you.

I have to go get fingerprinted now. More later.

1. Leaving every light on on the floor you’re not on. I don’t care that you didn’t turn them on. You left the room with the light on, and eventually the floor, and don’t you think our $350 electric bill is HIGH ENOUGH?2. Saying you’re “On it.” when I’m nudge you to go get the girlie in her crib at 8:00 7:00 am and is so bored and has been awake for so long that she’s kicking the wall through the bars of her enclosure, but not budging for another 20 minutes except to say (again without budging) as I get up and throw on some clothes, “Oh, I’ll get her.”

3. ….. The fact that that fucking game gets more face time than I do. Netflix, I will now be embracing you.