Weekend

I had a lovely evening out with my friend Tamara on Friday night. And learned that THERE IS A BAR! WITH ALCOHOL! in the MOVIE THEATRE! We were both starving so we grabbed hot dogs before the movie started and then as we headed in, she said, “Want to stop in there to eat? We could get apple martini’s” and that is when my head exploded with joy. After the week I had had, it was like the gods had smiled down at me, and gave me the gift of booze, IN A MOVIE THEATRE!

We had to down them pretty fast because the movie was starting soon, and Tamara won the FASTEST EATING OF A HOT DOG EVER! lifetime acheivement award. I would have beaten her, but the sneaky chica asked me how all the work stuff turned out RIGHT after we sat down, so I was busy talking while she inhaled food. Smooth tactic, Tamara. I’ve got my eye on you. *peer*

We watched the latest Lindsay Lohan movie, which was exactly what you would think the latest Lindsay Lohan movie would be, cute, entertaining, and doesn’t make you think in any way whatsoever. After the movie we checked out the few other restaurants and discovered their bars were full to bursting, so returned to the movie theatre bar and ordered some food. (I did good in asking for no bacon or mayo on the sandwich. Yay me! I probably ate too many fries though.) It was nice to get out with a girlfriend and discuss kids and our men and work and life.

Saturday

Saturday morning SOUNDED like all others, starting with the bleary wakeful consciousness of Jocelyn calling out, “MOOOOOOMMMY…. DAAAAAAADDY……” which we ignored as it turned into vibrant top-of-the-lungs versions of ‘twinkle twinkle’ and the alphabet song for probably another 20 minutes, before I poked James and said, “go get her.” During the week, lately I have been getting up and bringing her and Ethan into our bed before I hop in the shower. It gives them some transition time from waking up and getting up (this happens at about 6:15am, so some transition time is a good thing), and also it’s fun snuggly bed time with Daddy, but I always miss it, because I’m in the shower. So I was looking forward to my OWN snuggly bed time with the kids, but the conversation from James and Jocelyn I heard floating back to me deemed otherwise.

“Hi Daddy!”

“Hi Jocelyn! Would you like your bear?”

“Yes! Bear Daddy! Jocelyn’s bear!”

“Oh. …. Oh dear. Uh oh.” (this is probably where he takes the bear away)

“NO DADDY MINE BEAR! MINE BEAR!”

“Uh oh.” (I’m starting to get worried now.) “You are a mess, Jocelyn.”

“(more screaming about said bear)”

“What did you DO?”

“Poop, Daddy. Poop!” (said in the cheeriest tone ever.)

“Yes. Poop.”

By now I am out of bed and running water in the kids bathtub. Until I see her, and then I realise that a BATH is stupid because the poop will come off her smeared hands, arms, legs and turn the bath into a non-joyous stinky cesspit in which I don’t want my daughter splashing in. We go to our bathroom instead and I shower her off with me.

Granted, we are old pros at this, given that Ethan regularly discovered his own poop at this age, and being in his own bed at that time instead of a crib gave him the opportunity to not only paint his OWN body with shit, but paint the walls, the dresser, the carpet, the doors and even deposit some into his dresser drawers. The major incident of poop smearing is still refered to in our household as, “E cubed” which stands for, “Ethan’s Excrement Extravaganza!” This was also when we realized that the paint that the builder painted with is crap, as a lot of it came off in all the scrubbing. (It’s got purple satin finish paint in there now. Hopefully we won’t be required to test it.)

Ahhhh, what a way to start a Saturday morning! With poop smeared child, crib, blankies, my little pony, pillow, etc! Yay! Thank god for modern inventions, like the washing machine!

The day held other non-fun things, the second being, Ethan’s 4 year old shots. Decidedly NOT FUN. The last shot he had was his flu shot last fall. I wasn’t holding him properly, and he actually GRABBED the syringe and pulled it out before teh shot was over and the doctor had to get another one. This time, he had to get FOUR shots, and I had to physically hold every limb while the doctor took her time to administer the shots, insisting on putting on little band-aids to each one RIGHT after it was given. I asked her to just do them all, BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM! and we could do the band-aids after, but she said something about then they would bleed. I WILL TAKE A LITTLE BLOOD, JUST GET THIS HELL OVER SO I CAN RELEASE THE DEMON WRIGGLING AND STRUGGLING ON MY LAP!

It really was awful, and Ethan was pissed at me afterward. I think he is still pissed at me. He told me several times throughout the weekend, “I don’t like you anymore, Mommy.” He also doesn’t like his doctor anymore. I have one dreaded thought, and that is the doctor wasn’t sure if he needed ONE of the shots required, and she was going to go through his records carefully and check to see. If he is required to get one more, then it is going to be BAD, as I’ve already told him that he is done with shots until he is 11. There had better not be anymore.

Of course, we went to McDonald’s after and got icecream and he played in the playland tunnel world of toddlers, which he loved, but then he reverted back to being really mad at me on the way home. On the one hand, who can blame him? I held down my own flesh and blood while he was injected, not once, but FOUR TIMES, 2 in each arm. That’s right, he got two, and then I had to TURN HIM AROUND and HOLD HIM AGAIN while he got two more. OF COURSE he’s goign to be pissed. But I can’t go around letting him talk to me and act to me the way he was talking and acting, so it was a tricky relationship between comforting and disciplining, all weekend.

Saturday night our sitter arrived at 5pm and we escaped to childless freedom! Oh the possibilities!! We could drink ourselves silly! Dance the night away (until midnight which is when we said we’d be back)! Movies! Dinner! Dancing! Peeing without company or interuption! The world was our! What did we choose to do with our precious hours away from our offspring? We went and looked at new cars. That’s right, internet, we are SO DEVIL MAY CARE!

Seriously though, looking at cars is not a very child friendly experience, the child wants to sit in the driver’s seat and steer, they leave sticky fingerprints over every surface imaginable so that the sales rep starts to get that tight-lipped “when are you leaving again?” attitude, and you can’t really take the time to check out everything you want. Plus, the sales rep does this weird climbing the walls thing, when you go for a 30 minute test drive and leave the kids with them. Something about poop and smearing and new leather and automatic locks.. I didn’t make it all out last time. So it was nice to check out the new Suburus alone, and do a little test driving, although the ones we wanted to test had dead batteries. Apparently when people sit in the cars, they leave the lights on. You’d think that’d be one of the things they’d check before leaving the lot each night. Just drive by and make sure no lights are on, not that hard, but anyway. So yes, we’re looking at new cars for James. We’re not ready to buy yet, so I personally thought it would be fun to sit down and haggle the price as low as we possibly could, and then when they won’t go any lower, GET UP AND LEAVE and see what they do. James wasn’t that interested though, something about how the thought of haggling for a new car makes him want to vomit. THAT’S WHAT MAKES IT FUN!

Then we had dinner, and spent a nice half hour in Barnes and Noble (another experience totally ruined by the presence of children) before heading back home, picking up milk on the way and surprising the sitter by being home by 11. That’s us! We are CRAZY! CRAZY I TELL YOU! We booked her again for next Saturday, so we can go see X-Men. And we will be visiting that bar again, because what doesn’t go better with Wolverine then booze? NOTHING! THAT’S WHAT! WHEEEEEE!!!

Sunday we loaded everyone up and headed to Lowe’s and Target. Picked up 15 bags of mulch at Lowe’s and a couple bags of Miracle Gro garden soil. I was happy that the mulch I wanted was only $2.50 a bag, which seemed like a pretty good price. I was dreading a $3 to $4 price tag. I have bought in bulk the last few times, some with good results, some with bad. The last batch I bought was in the beginning of April from the local Recycling and Composting Facility. I got the double shredded stuff, and it is pretty disappointing. A lot of very fine particles in it that blow away in the wind. Good mulch is warm and the water soaks right into it, but this stuff the water just runs right off of it, and it doesn’t have that wonderful mulchy smell. (I would wear a perfume that was mulch scented. Mmmmm. Anyone know of a woodsy perfume?) So I’m glad I went with the bagged mulch, seems SO GOOD, practically steaming, and the water soaks into it. I had a couple flats of impatiens (annuals) to plant, but still had pansies in the ground where I wanted them to go, so I agonized over them for a while. I knew the pansies were going to die once the brutal summer heat hits, but they were still good for another couple of weeks. On the other side, I don’t want to have to leave my plants out until the pansies finally kick it and then do more plantings in only a few weeks, so I pulled them up. Wah! I felt so bad doing it, but there you go. I saved some of my favorites and planted them on the side of the house with our hydrangea bush. It gets a lot of shade over there, so maybe they’ll be ok for a while.

So I planted white and orange impatiens in the front, white and red impatiens on the side with the deck (full full full sun) and still had a few left, so planted them right in front of our air conditioner units on the other side of the house (the side with the hydrangea). I have no idea if they will hinder the unites later, whey they get big, but I didn’t have any other place to put them, so there they went. Then I spread the mulch, and it looks sooooo nice. The annuals look so small and piddly right now, but by June and really in July, they’ll have taken off beautifully. It is going to be an all impatiens summer, let me tell you! (aside from the beans and tomaters and perrineals I have. I sooo totally almost spelled that “perineum.” I don’t think I got the spelling right either way.)

I spent a lot of time working the soil, trying to get through the Virginia red clay, getting it mixed with previous years additions and mulch, getting the rocks out as well. The soil is really doing well in some places, and in other places it is still very much clay-bound. I kept our wheelbarrow behind me to toss rocks into, and by the time I was finished it was full. I’ve stopped being amazed at the amount of rocks in the ground, because otherwise, my head would explode, it’s insane.

Some of the plans I laid out over the winter have gone by the wayside. For example, there’s a butterfly bush I was going to move over to the deck, which I’m still planning on doing, but for now, I want to keep those beds more temporary so I can work the soil each year and improve it. That is hard to do with permanent plantings. Plus, I didn’t want to dig a hole that big. (Once again, I hate our clay soil. Big holes the first year is just not going to happen.)

So yesterday was Gardening Day! and while it was hard, it was nice. I love working with the earth and seeing things grow. It was Sunday, and being outside with nature was like my own little religious service. Interupted from time to time with my helper Ethan, who used his new lego Scoop to help with the digging. I didn’t take any pictures, but will soon. I am actually sore today, which feels good.

CUTE KID STORIES OTHERWISE KNOWN AS IT’S NOT A PAPER TOWEL:

– Jocelyn grabbed one of those mesh rubber pad/sheets that you line drawers with (and I use to keep my cutting board from sliding around) and for some reason James informed her that “It’s not a paper towel.” Which she then informed us again for the next half hour as she skipped merrily along swinging it to and fro. She’d skip up to me, skid to a stop and say, “It’s not a paper towel, mommy!” waited for me to acknowledge this fact, and then skip off in search of daddy to inform him of the same thing. For some reason it just really cracked me up and a few times after they were in bed, I was forced to turn to James and say, “It’s not a paper towel.”

– Cute but in an ‘uh oh’ sort of way. Ethan has many little cars and trucks, I guess they are of the match box variety though not necesarily that brand name. One of them is a little fire truck that our friend Selena got him (along with others) last year for his birthday, with a little plastic ladder which actually goes up and down. He has been enamored of this particular truck this past week. James told me that Friday morning, Ethan wanted to take it in to school to show to his teacher. I picked them up that afternoon and halfway home, he cried out with sadness, “WE FORGOT MY FIRE TRUCK MOMMY!” He wanted to turn around, go back and get it, and was sad when I told him we couldn’t, and we would have to get it Monday morning.

I kind of thought to myself, he will forget about it once we get home, and true, it’s not like it consumed his every waking moment. But he did bring it up several times, when school come up, he would add, “And we will also get my fire engine, right mommy?” and even mentioned once out of the blue, with no mention of school to prompt him.
Well, James has informed me that this morning when he dropped him off, he ran and checked his cubby, and was pretty sad when said fire engine WAS NOT THERE. I was kind of worried about this all day, but when I picked him up this afternoon, he RAN to his classroom and grabbed the fire engine and RAN back to me, hollering, “I got my fire engine mommy!!!” I asked him where it was, and apparently it was on a shelf with the other fire-fighter toys. He was so happy to have it back in his grimy little hands.

THAT IS ALL! (and oh my, it was definitely enough. Sometimes when the brain vomits, it just can’t control the spew.)
-amy drove a lot this evening, but she’ll tell you about that tomorrow. With pictures!

I had a pretty rough week at work last week filled with looming deadlines and under the breath muttering and finally finishing up with a too-loud-for-the-office “talk” on Thursday with fingers pointing about who’s to blame with Friday kind of on a low simmer all day long. It is nice to look on this week as fresh and new with a lot less stress. Monday morning idealist. Yes, that is what I am. Come Wednesday, I’ll slink in all cynical and downtrodden. But today is Monday and it’s beautiful outside and ahhh.. life is nice.

I have a lot of meetings every other week on Friday, and last week was a meeting Friday. I brought in a notepad, and jotted down the amusing things folks said in the 1.5 hours of meetings I attended:

“I told them no, I’m not doing it until I get all the content. I’m like a hostess, I’m not going to seat you until your whole party is here. Give me ALL of it, and THEN you’ll get your webpage.”

“No, I haven’t even thought of that project. It’s not even on my plate yet. It’s not even in the fridge. It’s back at the grocery store, that’s how far I am to getting to it.”

“Well, I had a problem with this project. So I waited a while, and it went away.”

“I’m doing a lot of stuff. I just don’t want to talk about it.” (This was in a meeting specifically for keeping everyone updated on what you’re doing.)

– “Well, so I can use Charley then, since he’s not busy.”
– “No you can’t, I said I was going to use Charley. I called him. I CALLED DIBS ON CHARLEY!”

Lots of things to cover, too many to do right now, but I wanted to post a project skinny update.

I am down 1.5 lbs. Am I disappointed? A little. Looking back over the week, I need to focus on water more. And I know that nothing can slow weight loss like not enough water, so this is a biggie. Friday night wasn’t the most stellar points wise, and neither was Saturday night, but I think I did pretty good overall.

The most important part is, I actually started and stuck with it. I know I can do this. It really is a good feeling. And 1.5 lbs is better than none at all.
That is all. More weekend wrapup later.

-amy

6:05 stared at me from the alarm clock and I kept very slowly closing my eyes and then realizing what I was doing and FORCING them back open. It was 6:08 when I ACTUALLY GOT UP AND WENT AND DID MY EXERCISE VIDEO.

I only had time for 10 minutes. BUT I GOT UP!

YAY ME!

-fini

I have been telling myself, and tell you all of you at times, that this is it! Climb on board the skinny train! I’ve been slacking, but now I’m doing it! Yessiree bob, this is me, not slacking!

And then I haven’t done anything. And in addition to not doing anything, I’ve put things in front of me that are not even REMOTELY good.

I have really been feeling cruddy about myself. It is as if every shred of will power has disappeared.

Imagine a pool of bad eating behavior. Not only have I NOT walked away from the pool, I have just been swimming around in the pool occasionally calling out, “OK, I’M GETTING OUT NOW!” “Really! I am!” “Tomorrow’s the day, I’ll get out, I promise!” “Just five more minutes, ma!” “Ooooohhh look i’m all pruney like David Blaine!” “Hey, this pool makes me feel like shit all the time, and yet the ladder to climb out is soooooo faaaaaaar awaaaaay maybe next week.”

And I have really been wrestling with myself on HOW I wrangle up the motivation to get out of that fucking pool. I have to DO IT, and I just HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO.

This week was the big week. I was going to set my alarm early and get up and exercise before getting ready for the day. I was going to make excellent choices, quit drinking so much damn caffeine and no water and subsist on lean protein and fibrous fruit and vegetables and whole grain starches.

The alarm went off Monday morning, and I could have gotten up, I wasn’t soooo tired, but I didn’t. I stopped at 7-11 on the way to pick up my PKR and got a diet coke and a muffin. The kind with sugary sprinkly things on top. This is me for months, feeling like shit about my choices, so I manage to kind of shove the actual choice way down deep inside, and the crappy feelings along with it, but it makes it easier to make that same choice again. And again. And again.

So yesterday, I opened up my weight watcher’s online point tracker thingamabob, entered in my breakfast, my sugary muffin, called up the Pad Thai that I desperately wanted to order for lunch, and sat staring at the fact that 1 cup is 9 points. Does the restaurant serve only 1 cup? Fat chance, 2 and a half, at LEAST. So we’re talking likely, 18-13 points in that take out container.

I stared and stared and I thought about the times in the past when doing this was “easy”. I KNOW it wasn’t actually easy. But the motivation and the will power to JUST DO IT ALREADY was actually there, as opposed to now, when it seems like this impossibility. I got to thinking about why it was a possibility, and I think it was the end goal that did it. This seems like such an easy thing, but it totally was it.

So I looked really hard at those times when it was “easy.”

When I got pregnant with Ethan, I weighed about 295 lbs. Look, I used a real number. Scary, huh? Well I AM scared, and it’s time to get serious, so there you go.

I gained about 40 lbs during his pregnancy, but about 6-8 weeks post partum, I was back down to 295. I wanted to have a V-BAC with Jocelyn (vaginal birth after caesarian), and was told that the only way I’d even have a chance, was if I didn’t gain any weight. Ethan was a 9 lb baby, and the story goes that second babies are usually even bigger. I did NOT WANT a caesarian. That was my goal. I was about the same weight when I got pregnant with Jocelyn, and that goal did it – it gave me the power to act. I only gained about 5 pounds during the entire pregnancy – which meant that my body was actually losing weight, while the baby and reproductive bits were all gaining the appropriate weight. 6 weeks after she was born, I was down 20 pounds to 280 – I had lost it while I was pregnant. That success gave me enough drive to keep at it, and I lost another 30 lbs. I was nursing her the entire time and so was allowed to eat an obscene amount of food to fuel the milk production boob factory, and I also was cutting all milk protein out of my diet, as she had a pretty strong intolerance for it. When you’re eating a TON and can’t have ice cream anyway because your baby will be miss fussypants, it makes it fairly easy – but that’s not to say that it wasn’t hard work and I needed to stay motivated.

When she was about 5 months old, some gall stones decided to lodge themselves in my liver and I developed pancreatitis and spent a week in the hospital. I pumped for that week, but when I came home, nursing didn’t last too much longer. The truth was, I was sick of limiting my diet so much, it drove me crazy, so the breastfeeding came to an end.

With the new liberties allowed in what I ate, project skinny fell by the wayside and my attempts to pick it back up have been pretty lackluster. Before I spent a week in the hospital, I weighed 246. That will be 2 years ago, this fall. As my weight climbed over the past 1 1/2 years, I kept trying and trying to get back with it, but haven’t really had the focus and the goals to keep me on target. The immediate gratification always won out over the long term ideology. Last week, I crossed out of the 250’s and the scale read 260.5 and I knew that this is it. It is time to focus and figure out HOW to get the motivation I need, because this has GOT TO HAPPEN.

I used real numbers. They probably shocked folks, but hey, anyone that looks at me could probably guess. Just because I don’t SAY how much I weigh doesn’t mean I don’t actually weigh it. This is it. I’m serious about this. Thus, full disclosure.

Yesterday I stared at the 9 pts for a cup of Pad Thai and got off my ass and went to Subway instead. I got a foot long so I wouldn’t feel deprived (I was stuffed), but even that is still an excellent choice (especially compared to Pad Thai). Did I have a perfect day? I don’t think stopping at Taco Bell on the way home would qualify as “perfect” but I entered EVERY thing I ate into my points tracker (including the chocolate chip cookie I had last night) and this morning brought a baggie of sugar snap peas to work to munch on. Still got a big diet coke this morning, but I’ve also drunk 2 bottles of water to go with it (and I really need to finish this up cause I need to pee something awful.)

This is it. What is going to keep me focused? I know that thoughts of “I don’t want to be like THAT again” won’t last, because I think them all the time. This time, no more “free” Saturdays. I’m going to track all the time, EVERYthing.

And the thing I’m going to focus on when I want to toss it all, our vacation in August. We are still trying to determine what we’re goign to do, but whereever we go, I want to look better than I do right now. I want to have more energy, and feel good about myself, and I know I can make a difference by then. If I take one little step every day, then in August, it will have amounted to something, and by this time next year, I may have gotten a long way towards a healthier me.

Specific goal time – I’ll go with the standard WW first goal, which is 10%. I’m just going to focus on these first 26 pounds.

And maybe tomorrow I can actually struggle out of bed when the alarm goes off to try some exercise. But if not, at least I know I still am out of that pool.

-amy has to pee so bad g’bye!

I showed you one of the canker sores I got.

What? I didn’t?

Oh fine, here you go:

That was in mid March.

Since then, I had a double canker sore (2 of them VERY close together, just inside the corner of my mouth), and then about a week or 2 after that cleared up, I got another one on the other side of my mouth, and NOW, I have one in front, behind my lower lip. It started out as just a wee sore spot, and then it was a teeny tiny little white spot of a canker sore, and now it’s a full on raging canker sore and it’s driving me crazy. I THINK it’s on the decline now.

So what happens? MY TONGUE IS STARTING TO FEEL ALL SORE AND CANKERY AND SOMEONE JUST SHOOT ME NOW.

Seriously, this will be my sixth canker sore this year. In fact, I think I had one or two before I took that picture of my tongue, which means even more than that.

That is SO NOT RIGHT.

I’m beginning to think I am eating or drinking something that is causing these fuckers. I hope it’s not my gum. (Trident, and Juicy Fruit) I love gum. I hope it’s not diet coke. I love diet coke.
WAAAAAHHHHHHHH.

the end.

I went into Ethan’s room this morning and he was sitting up putting on his socks. He gave me a little grin and we exchanged the usual “good morning!”s and “did you go to the bathroom yet?”

me: Guess what!
him: what?
me: Today is your birthday!
him: *gasp of excitement!* I’m four now?
me: Yup, you are four today!
him: I’M FOUR!

The rest of the morning was spent with him saying, “I’M FOUR TODAY!” every few minutes.

I will always be thankful that he was born just in time for me to be a mother on Mother’s day. Even if it means that there is always more birthday excitement going on than Mother’s Day excitement 🙂

june 2002

may 2003

may 2004

September 2005

April 2006

And of course, see the top of the page for this month’s all-ethan-all-the-time-banner.

WAR!! HUH! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR.. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING…
Except when it means you have clean clothes.

James declared war on the laundry this weekend and I gladly enlisted. Battle 1 (consisting of about 5-6 loads) has been WON, at the cost however of staying up until 11:30pm. Battle 2 (about 2-3 loads left) will likely be waged tomorrow and my hopes are high for VICTORY!

I wish that it really was a war, and once won, it would stay won. Unfortunately laundry haunts us and will return to battle again in the not so distant future.

GEEKY THINGS

I started out the weekend feeling pretty cocky and straightening my imaginary “geek grrl power!” hat, because I installed a new hard drive in my desktop and copied over my original drive and it all booted up beautifully and there are no issues whatsoever.

Then the fates frowned on me when I started with my laptop. I have an IBM T42 and IBM puts a super secret itty bitty partition on their drives that has a copy of the original setup / OS from when it was straight from the factory. So, I thought it might be useful to keep all that and wouldn’t it be handy if I could make 2 partitions on my new drive and copy both the boot partition and the super secret partition and everything would be hunky dorey? In a nutshell, it’s not as easy as all that. After trying a few things myself, and finding some pretty spiffy software, I called IBM and got instructions to burn 6 CDs and let them do all the work. It did work, made the partitions, copied stuff to the super secret partition, rebooted and was about to start on the main partition when it just popped up with a failure message. Called IBM back and they said, “what sort of drive is this? third party? Oh, yeah, we forgot to tell you, only works with IBM drives.” Grrrr.

So I guess it’s no biggie, who needs the super secret backup partition? I guess I don’t. Fished out my Win XP cd and deleted all partitions in favor of one big partition and installed a fresh OS on that. Thought I would run into trouble when driver time rolled around, but IBM does have a handy utility that checks the drivers of all the hardware, downloads and installs them all. I’m at this stage now, it installed them all and I understand that the computer is going to be pretty busy configuring everything, but when I booted it up, everything was running very very slow.

I do have some misgivings about the drive in general, first, I thought that I would need 5400 RPM, but it turns out the original drive was 7200 RPM. 7200!!! I could have bought something way faster! DAMMIT! A part of me is a bit wary of not having all the IBM crap that IBM puts on there for you, and I think I would have liked to have had the backup super secret partition, but I guess it’s not the end of the world. Dang, 7200. I should return it and get the 7200, shouldn’t I? (Ha. Now that I’ve finally got everything working. Grrrr.)

Anyway. The “Super Geek Grrrrl Power!” hat fell off, and got trampled into the mud by a herd of feral dogs while I scurried up a tree panting and my heart beating a hundred miles per hour and geeky grrl? Me? Shhaaaw! As if! And monkeys might fly out of my butt!

AND THEN THERE WAS IDEAS AND PLANNING AND CRAFTINESS!

Ethan’s birthday party plans are underway, and I have latched on to a theme that I must say, I’m pretty excited about. Cars is the theme, and yesterday Ethan and I were busy with scissors, glue and poster board / construction paper making big road signs that we will put up all over the house on party day. Last night I made up little reversible “stop” “go” signs on popsicle sticks that can either be handed out when kids arrive, or put into their goody bags.

For an activity, I’m going to get paintbrushes, little wooden cars, and paints and let the kids paint their own race car. They had kits at Target but I shunned them for several reasons and will see if I can collect all the stuff myself at Michael’s or AC Moore.

I wonder if the theme is too “boy” as there are some girls invited to the party. I’m not dwelling on it too much however, and I don’t see why roads and cars have to be “boy” things. Still, hoping that aspect won’t be an issue.

James took Jocelyn to go scope out bikes. The original idea was to get one for Tuesday, the boy’s actual birthday, but we’ve put it off too long, so whatever one we buy, probably won’t be ready until later, so we’ll probably just get it for Saturday.

MARITAL BLISS

The weekend started in a pretty pissy mental state, due to the game which is World of Warcraft and my insane irrational jealousy of said game. James and I talked it over by Sunday, along with a lot of other things and we’re both doing better.

AND A PROMISE OF MORE TO COME

I have a project skinny post that hopefully I will get out tonight. I have lots of thoughts twirling around in my head and it’s time to get them out, hopefully get some clarity, and definitely get going on the road to skinny.

-amy is scattered.

First off, I’m pleased to announce that when I rolled over in bed this morning and took a quiet little peep at the new banner lying there, it’s pixels all akimbo, I was relieved and pleased to find that I still liked it. We won’t have a May Banner #3. I know you’re all relieved too, and find my wild fickle fluctuations terribly upsetting.

Secondly, what is going on? Hello? Did everyone take the day off or something? My commute to work with the PKR at my side was DISTURBINGLY QUICK AND EASY. First there was the usually stop-up at Linton Hall and 28, and there was no backup at all. After I picked up the PKR and hopped on 66, the usual parking lot until we get into the full 4 lanes was not too eye-gougingly painful at all. Before we hit 28, I pointed out that there were actually more cars in the HOV lane that in the other lanes! Then we hit the place right before 50 that is usually where everyone puts it into park, cranks up their radios, and hops out onto their hood for a quick smoke before it’s time to get back in, move up 5 feet, and then repeat. We managed to keep going about 45 MPH throughout that spot. Then when we took our exit (Nutley) and beheld the 2 lights we needed to go through to turn left onto 29.. There was nothing. Maybe a dozen cars, if that. It was just clear sailing and smooth untrodden on asphault as far as the eye could see.

WHAT IS GOING ON, PEOPLE? YOU ARE ALL STARTING TO WIG ME OUT JUST A WEE BIT!

Seriously did everyone take Cinco de Mayo off? Has everyone just left town for a long weekend and nobody told me they were going? What the fuck?

Someone let me know, or I’m going to assume that aliens have abducted two-thirds of the commuting population.

I’ve kind of not written in this here space (is it just me that noticed I’ve not really been writing and everyone reading is like, “huh? what? you’ve been half-assing it? Didn’t even notice. Later.”) because I wanted to write about all the stuff that has happened already before I write about current things, or even things that are rolling around in my head, and part of why I haven’t written about past things is because I wanted to post pictures along with it, and that requires me getting the photos into some semblence of post-a-bility, and so instead of sitting down and writing, I’ve been sitting down and photo wrangling. Then I’m like, “well, damn where has the time gone? Well I’ll just put up some pictures since I didn’t have time to write” which is why there have been a lot of posts with just photos instead of words. Which I’m kind of liking anyway, now I just need to post some words too, and I’ll be happy. So, in a nutshell, I may never talk about the things I was going to, in the past, because a) it’s been like 2 weeks now and I’ve forgotten a lot of it, and b) i haven’t had time to write much anyway and now it’ll take forever to catch up to the “present.”

WE HAVE CATS. OH DO WE HAVE CATS.

Trinity our cat has always peed everywhere, and last year she finally starting peeing everywhere with a little reddish hue and we woke up and thought, Hmmm! Gee! maybe she’s doing this because something is wrong! We took her in, and yes, there was something wrong, and it was bladder stones, and she had surgery, and we paid astronomical fees and took her home with the instructions that we had to change her food.

The thought of “but how will we change just her food and not the others and oh this will be so difficult to orchestrate” as well as some vague directive that the other cats might be ok with eating the food too but have them tested anyway, kind of made it all sink into the background and we never got around to it.. and so now, she’s REALLY been peeing everywhere lately and so I took her into the vet and sure enough, she has red blood cells in her urine and the vet recommends an ultrasound to check for more stones. We suck as kitty-parents.

But she is back home now, and on antibiotics, and we seem to have gotten the feeding cats separately part down, and have EVEN managed to give her her pill without forgetting even once (SO FAR!) (OH MY GOD WHY DID NO ONE EVER GIVE US A “PILLER” BEFORE THEY ARE SO EASY!) and now we just have to schedule a sonogram and get the other cats in for their yearly shots and we MIGHT be able to remove the “sucky kitty-parents” sign from off of our backs. I will always kind of have that sign, because… now don’t hate me… I would be much happier if we just didn’t have any cats at all. I’ve said it before, and now I’m saying it again. I’d love to not feel the grit of litter on my laundry room floor, and not have to scoop out poop and pour out food into bowls and the level of effort has now just gone way up what with the separate foods and all, so you may now all hate me as I hate myself for wanting to shirk my responsibilities as a cat owner. Anyone want a cat? Or three?
Ethan’s birthday is next week, which means we have to go find him a bike this weekend, which is what we decided we’d be giving him for his birthday. Then he is having a birthday party next Saturday with the 8 kids from his class all invited. Eight. 4-year-olds. In my house. I haven’t even figured out what to do for it yet. I have gotten a few suggestions – a camping theme, with flashlights for the kids and toasting marshmellows and hotdogs over a fire and tents and camping games and camoflaugeyness. I read about a dinosaur theme where the kids can find “bones” (dog bones) in the sand like in an archeological dig. Honestly, that sounds neat and all, but I think ethan would rather just play in the sand with his tiny loader and bulldozer like a normal kid. Plus, we have a pretty small sand table and I don’t think that would work. One game I heard is to tie a prize/treat on one end of a string/ribbon and give each kid an end and work their way to the prize, which could be fun. I will probably end up doing the tried and true, “procrastinate until the last minute and just let them play with the toys we already have for a while, then have pizza and cake and ice cream and call it good.”

So, yeah, I wish I was all Martha Stewart with the ideas and the time for super cool execution, and honestly, I would make a pretty good effort if I hit on the right idea, but the procrastination thing is starting to creep up and be the party theme by default. So if you have any wonderful fantazmagoric ideas for me, I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR THEM. Even something for the goody bags, for Jocelyn’s I bought the random plastic crap that is in all the goody bags you see, but I also made marble magnets with simple shapes and colors that can go on the fridge. This time, I’d like to do more handmade and less plastic that will be trashed, or at LEAST get some plastic that will be used. I’m thinking something to drive all the parents crazy – like kazoos. The kids would LOVE them. Parents, not so much.

I am totally going to steal this idea for Ethan’s fifth birthday party.

Anyway, enough with the typing for today. Some things I want to spill (this list is more for my own reference than yours: yard photos and plans, how i killed all (almost all) my little baby seedlings, other things I did NOT kill (but almost did), project skinny starting over AGAIN (really, i mean it this time, no REALLY), environmental anxiety and guilt and How This Might Be The Straw That Brings Divorce Papers, and remind me to tell you about the Dawn and Drew Show and how I was ON IT.
The End.

-amy hopes the traffic is also non existant this afternoon.

I wasn’t liking the old one the morning after. Oh yes, morning after regret, how I know thee. I loaded it up all bleary eyed with that pounding headache from all the booze and drugs, and the banner looked all dark and smudgy and not at all the way I remembered it from the night before. So I dumped it (but I still love your lamp, Tamara!) and went with this all-Ethan-all-the-time banner. He was mugging furiously for the camera and James was snapping away, and I thought it would look pretty nice as a banner. Pretty sure that tomorrow morning, me and this banner will still be on speaking terms. Hit reload if necessary.

Plus, Jocelyn needs more fodder for when she is a sullen teenager, and she point at this and holler, “YOU ALWAYS LOVED ETHAN MORE! YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND ME!” before stomping off to her room and slamming the door with the violence of .. well, a sullen teenager and then cranking up the 2019 version of The Cure at top volume.

-amy