A note to my fellow trick or treaters this year:
Halloween is a wonderful time of year where families and neighborhoods come together and truly become a community. Ken and I have always loved handing out candy, even before we had kids. We usually buy gobs of candy, priding ourselves in handing out the most candy in our neighborhood. Having been at our house for 10 years, I thought that I should give some simple tips and rules for the folks converging into our block this year in order to make the most our the holiday.
Please remember that if you are over the age of 10, that there are little kids also sharing the joy of this holiday with you. Don’t bowl them over for that one tootsie roll. This isn’t a hockey game where you need to check all kids that might get in your way. Be polite and patient. Trust me, there is still plenty of candy out there for you.
Kids, embrace your costume. I understand the 5 year olds might be a hint shy when it comes to wanting to tell the stranger with candy what they are. Shoot, they have been told to avoid this scenario 100 times and this is the one time of year in which we encourage it. But all of you children old enough to know why you chose to be the red power ranger instead of the blue one, please wear it proud. And when I ask you what you are, tell me. I love seeing you all dressed up, and honestly, I will give you more candy when you proudly dance up in your princess garb and announce you are Cinderella. Oh, and Cinderella, if you are only wearing one glass slipper, I will probably give you all the candy.
There are rules for how to get candy. They are not difficult, and easy to follow for anyone who can talk. You must say Trick Or Treat. Don’t just hold out your bag while getting ready to sprint to the next stop. And would it kill you to say Thank you?
Parents-look, I am all for taking your kids out, no matter how old they are. It is especially fun when you have an older kid able to partake in the holiday fun and an infant in your arms lovingly dressed at some kind of fuzzy bug. But please don’t come up to me and shove your plastic jack-o-lantern in my face and have the gall to tell me “This one is for the baby.” I am pretty sure your 2 month old isn’t going to enjoy the Smarties candy.
Teens-yes, please, come out and enjoy the candy. I know I went Trick Or Treating at 15. But I also know that I took the time to actually dress up. And by dressing up, I mean I was in full costume. Not a Scream mask and a pillow case. Not just wearing your football uniform. Not just a t-shirt that says “This is my costume”. Put some effort into it or I can guarantee, there will be no candy coming from my house.
Please just remember this is a holiday of fun and kids. Sure there is candy, more than most mothers would be comfortable with kids being in possession of. But the candy is just one element of what makes a wonderful night. Enjoy your kids, enjoy the costumes, and most of all, enjoy the night.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Tomorrow is Halloween!
10-30-09
Thank goodness it is Friday. I seriously need to be able to sleep in! I am too pooped to poop!
The exhaustion that came from lack of sleep and major stress all week left me in a major state of cranky yesterday afternoon. I came out of it a bit, and we had a nice family dinner. I am loving the family dinner. No shows, just the four of us at the table. It isn’t a fancy table. Heck, it is a folding table with folding chairs. But to me, it is perfect. Plus, super great practice for the boys for more formal dining. Plus, I have been able to mostly make only one meal, and everyone has eaten. It means the boys have tried a few more things, which rocks for me. Don’t get me wrong, we have done sandwich night where they can watch a show, but mostly this week has been at the table.
We also went on our walk last night. The last two nights due to how late it was and cold once we got home, we didn’t do walk. But last night, the boys played with the dogs in the backyard, and we all headed out for a long walk.
Bobby has gotten quite good on his scooter. Dax still struggles a bit, but he is patient and does keep trying the whole time. We decided to take the “route”. This would be my old exercise route which takes us up to the school and back around. It is a good walk. Up hill slightly to the school, and the way back rocks because you have a really long stretch where you don’t have to cross any streets. Why is that important? Let’s just say when you have a very energetic puppy on one hand, and a 3 year old on a scooter that you need to hold his hand, it is not easy.
Our little parade is funny. Bobby leads the way, with Ken and Lycos next. Then Dax and his crashes every few minutes, and Luna and I brining up the rear. As we were crossing the street at one point, there was a lady in a car going down the street. She then proceeds to tell me how wonderful it is to see a family out like ours. She said to never change and just raved about how cute we all were. Who knew were the portrait of family values? It was super flattering, though. I am glad that we can provide this for our boys.
It was a tough walk. Poor Luna’s one pad was a little worn down. She also pulled on the leash enough that my corrective actions left her neck in one little spot a little red. She was thrilled, though. She does have this nasty tendency to walk between my legs randomly, which caused me to almost fall more times than I can count.
The boys and dogs, and let’s face it, mom too, were beat after the walk. It was an awesome tired. We bathed the boys and Luna, all three of whom were crazy filthy. Luna was not as dirty as we thought, but we are still getting rid of the fleas she came with. A flea collar is in her future, although the flea shampoo we got seems to have really helped a lot.
The boys crashed quick and hard. Luna crawled into her little box bed and almost looked dead. Happy, but certainly tired. Lycos watched all of this and she looked a little smug at the rookies.
I didn’t win anything for the Halloween costume contest at work. Although Fred just came up to me and told me I was robbed. That rocks! Yeah, I was up against 3 old white male judges who, let’s face it, were way out of touch with pop culture. One person from a remote location was dressed at Napoleon Dynamite, and they had no idea who it was. I was one of three that dressed up at our facility. I mean, our accounting dept did a whole Wizard of Oz Theme, since they always dress up and win, and one guy who dressed up like Bob’s Big Boy (complete with real burger-he was so the best in my book). People from the other facilities sent pics of their costumes, and there was maybe a half dozen? Of course, Wizard of Oz won, as did some chick with a crappy Zoro costume, and another 3 people in the other facilities, and Bob got 4th place. Yes, they added 2 prizes, and so out of the like 10 people that entered, I think only a couple didn’t win, including me. Oh well. Many people laughed who got it and they thought it was super cute.
Devil Woman, the bitch from the accounting team, had the gall to challenge other departments to dress up like they do. What she failed to realize is that most of the departments did in fact all dress up last Halloween, back before all the departments were practically dissolved or laid off. So a dept of 8 last year that did a disco theme, has since been reduced to 2 people. Not sure it is as interesting for them to dress up. The accounting team is the only group that was left with only a couple of casualties. They still have like 14 people. The only other team big enough to maybe do something is mine, and in reality, the VP who dresses with Accounting, who is over the manager of accounting, is also over my manager. So why are we never invited to play? So fucking lame. It amazes me how lame these folks are at times. I go from absolute bliss with my coworkers to absolute distain in a matter of minutes about 17 times a day. I wish I could find the gray area.
I am really looking forward to my new bra.
I wish my heater would be more powerful. I am freezing. Of course, it has its work cut out for it since my coldness is more due to me drinking ice cold water. The heater can only heat my outside. I suppose I could go get some hot chocolate, but it doesn’t sound good.
I am trying to come up with a good place tonight for our now seemingly regular Friday night family dinner. There is part of me ok with just going to McDonald’s just because they love playing there so much. But I also kind of want to go to some place that has far superior food to the fast food faire. Not sure what that means, so I will have to rack my brain.
I have a hard time believing it has been 20 years since I went into high school.
I just remembered we have a gift certificate to some place in El Segundo. Hmm..perhaps tonight is the night to try that?
I am getting positively giddy about taking the boys to Disneyland on Thanksgiving. I can hardly contain myself. We are not telling them. It will be a huge surprise. I am hoping we can have tickets before we get there so that when we get there, they get to just walk into the gates and stand in complete shock and awe of the spectacle that is the entrance to Disneyland. I am a little worried that the slowness that the Brenans are notorious for will delay us some. I am thinking that perhaps we should shoot for breakfast at like 6 am near the park so that even if they are a smidge behind schedule, we can still walk in the second the park opens at 8 am. Then again, who needs breakfast! Let’s just get in the park!!
Thank goodness it is Friday. I seriously need to be able to sleep in! I am too pooped to poop!
The exhaustion that came from lack of sleep and major stress all week left me in a major state of cranky yesterday afternoon. I came out of it a bit, and we had a nice family dinner. I am loving the family dinner. No shows, just the four of us at the table. It isn’t a fancy table. Heck, it is a folding table with folding chairs. But to me, it is perfect. Plus, super great practice for the boys for more formal dining. Plus, I have been able to mostly make only one meal, and everyone has eaten. It means the boys have tried a few more things, which rocks for me. Don’t get me wrong, we have done sandwich night where they can watch a show, but mostly this week has been at the table.
We also went on our walk last night. The last two nights due to how late it was and cold once we got home, we didn’t do walk. But last night, the boys played with the dogs in the backyard, and we all headed out for a long walk.
Bobby has gotten quite good on his scooter. Dax still struggles a bit, but he is patient and does keep trying the whole time. We decided to take the “route”. This would be my old exercise route which takes us up to the school and back around. It is a good walk. Up hill slightly to the school, and the way back rocks because you have a really long stretch where you don’t have to cross any streets. Why is that important? Let’s just say when you have a very energetic puppy on one hand, and a 3 year old on a scooter that you need to hold his hand, it is not easy.
Our little parade is funny. Bobby leads the way, with Ken and Lycos next. Then Dax and his crashes every few minutes, and Luna and I brining up the rear. As we were crossing the street at one point, there was a lady in a car going down the street. She then proceeds to tell me how wonderful it is to see a family out like ours. She said to never change and just raved about how cute we all were. Who knew were the portrait of family values? It was super flattering, though. I am glad that we can provide this for our boys.
It was a tough walk. Poor Luna’s one pad was a little worn down. She also pulled on the leash enough that my corrective actions left her neck in one little spot a little red. She was thrilled, though. She does have this nasty tendency to walk between my legs randomly, which caused me to almost fall more times than I can count.
The boys and dogs, and let’s face it, mom too, were beat after the walk. It was an awesome tired. We bathed the boys and Luna, all three of whom were crazy filthy. Luna was not as dirty as we thought, but we are still getting rid of the fleas she came with. A flea collar is in her future, although the flea shampoo we got seems to have really helped a lot.
The boys crashed quick and hard. Luna crawled into her little box bed and almost looked dead. Happy, but certainly tired. Lycos watched all of this and she looked a little smug at the rookies.
I didn’t win anything for the Halloween costume contest at work. Although Fred just came up to me and told me I was robbed. That rocks! Yeah, I was up against 3 old white male judges who, let’s face it, were way out of touch with pop culture. One person from a remote location was dressed at Napoleon Dynamite, and they had no idea who it was. I was one of three that dressed up at our facility. I mean, our accounting dept did a whole Wizard of Oz Theme, since they always dress up and win, and one guy who dressed up like Bob’s Big Boy (complete with real burger-he was so the best in my book). People from the other facilities sent pics of their costumes, and there was maybe a half dozen? Of course, Wizard of Oz won, as did some chick with a crappy Zoro costume, and another 3 people in the other facilities, and Bob got 4th place. Yes, they added 2 prizes, and so out of the like 10 people that entered, I think only a couple didn’t win, including me. Oh well. Many people laughed who got it and they thought it was super cute.
Devil Woman, the bitch from the accounting team, had the gall to challenge other departments to dress up like they do. What she failed to realize is that most of the departments did in fact all dress up last Halloween, back before all the departments were practically dissolved or laid off. So a dept of 8 last year that did a disco theme, has since been reduced to 2 people. Not sure it is as interesting for them to dress up. The accounting team is the only group that was left with only a couple of casualties. They still have like 14 people. The only other team big enough to maybe do something is mine, and in reality, the VP who dresses with Accounting, who is over the manager of accounting, is also over my manager. So why are we never invited to play? So fucking lame. It amazes me how lame these folks are at times. I go from absolute bliss with my coworkers to absolute distain in a matter of minutes about 17 times a day. I wish I could find the gray area.
I am really looking forward to my new bra.
I wish my heater would be more powerful. I am freezing. Of course, it has its work cut out for it since my coldness is more due to me drinking ice cold water. The heater can only heat my outside. I suppose I could go get some hot chocolate, but it doesn’t sound good.
I am trying to come up with a good place tonight for our now seemingly regular Friday night family dinner. There is part of me ok with just going to McDonald’s just because they love playing there so much. But I also kind of want to go to some place that has far superior food to the fast food faire. Not sure what that means, so I will have to rack my brain.
I have a hard time believing it has been 20 years since I went into high school.
I just remembered we have a gift certificate to some place in El Segundo. Hmm..perhaps tonight is the night to try that?
I am getting positively giddy about taking the boys to Disneyland on Thanksgiving. I can hardly contain myself. We are not telling them. It will be a huge surprise. I am hoping we can have tickets before we get there so that when we get there, they get to just walk into the gates and stand in complete shock and awe of the spectacle that is the entrance to Disneyland. I am a little worried that the slowness that the Brenans are notorious for will delay us some. I am thinking that perhaps we should shoot for breakfast at like 6 am near the park so that even if they are a smidge behind schedule, we can still walk in the second the park opens at 8 am. Then again, who needs breakfast! Let’s just get in the park!!
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Halloween at work
10-29-09
Today has to be better.
Let’s start off with some good news. First, Bobby passed his hearing test with no problem. This was good. It also means when he doesn’t answer me it isn’t because he can’t hear me, it means he doesn’t listen. This is good and bad at the same time.
After the hearing test, Bobby sat down with this super nice lady who was the speech pathologist. It was in a classroom at this school in Gardena. The teacher of the room was also there, and also super nice. There also was a corner for Dax to play with a bunch of toys. He was calm and sweet, playing while Bobby got tested.
Luckily, I was allowed to sit with Bobby while it took place. She opened this book of pictures and words. It looked like a pretty standard kid’s book. She then started asking him what things were, and like when I kid was wrapped in a towel, asked him what the kid had just done. When they got to an animal page, he also was asked to name all of his pets, which to the pathologist’s credit, she did not bat an eye at the number of names he listed. Bobby also opened up a bit more at this point and told her about the new “baby dog” we have and how she sometimes bites him. He also said that Monarch sometimes scratches him, but that Ittles licks him a lot. Super cute stuff.
So after all of this, she had him go play with Dax, and she went over her assessment with Ken and I. She said he has a great vocabulary. First off, this made me all kinds of happy. She said he doesn’t stutter in the bad way. She says that mostly, he seems to only have problem with the sentence includes a lot of information. Short things, no problem at all. She said all of the things that seem unclear are due to age. She said he seems totally within range of his age group. She actually seemed pretty impressed with him in general. He passed everything with flying colors.
I am sure that my mom isn’t going to feel 100% comfortable with the results as she thinks he has a problem. But I have to trust the pathologist. She seemed to be pretty thorough, asking him to pronounce different kinds of words, and asking lots of concepts. She said clarity will improve greatly with kindergarten. I would imagine preschool will also help. I am considering picking up some books to help work on him enunciating words better. I figure it doesn’t hurt. I can work on teaching him to read along with this.
My evening was spent looking for babies and lips.
Let me explain. I decided at the last minute to go back to my original plan for a costume for today. I thought being Octomom was super easy and funny. I don’t anticipate winning any contests here at work, but I thought it would be funnier than trying to explain my “Dax” costume.
We went to the Dollar Tree where the boys picked out 8 babies for me. Now, all I needed was some of those big fake lips. I assumed the Halloween shop would have them. They did not. We went to Party City, hoping for something. Lucky for us, we lingered a bit more than we needed to. We came across a bag of lips with whistles in them. It would work for what I was trying to do. Plus, I now have a bag of stuff for the boys.
I am currently covered in baby doll. Ken strung them up on two necklaces and I am wearing all 8 around my neck. The lips will come out for pics and showing off. I don’t know how many people will get it, but I am going to hope most. I have similar hair to her, too, so I was able to just wear my hair down. Sure, I could have picked up the Kate Gosselin wig, but I don’t know that that would have been as easy to pull off.
The string the babies are on is digging into my neck, so that isn’t too fun. I won’t be able to wear this all day if this keeps up. I just put the string on my shirt, so hopefully that will help.
So the other day, we were watching some kid’s show. One of the characters sounded like a really bad Katharine Hepburn impersonator. So of course, I start mimicking the voice, adding Kate to the mix. Bobby could not stop laughing. He was giggling and kept telling me how much I crack him up. Since then, I have broken into my bad Kate voice for his pleasure. Every time, he laughs like the first time.
I feel out of sorts today. I am sure it is just coming down from two days of chaos. Today and tomorrow are pretty quiet. I need to clean up the house a bit more since my folks will be coming by on Saturday. They may just meet us at the park, and there is almost no need to come in the house. We will see. But either way, house is still too cluttered when I tried to walk from the front door to the bathroom and bumped into like 8 things.
My day is going far too slow this morning. My head hurts (it has since yesterday) and I am tired. I was so hoping the cold night would help me get cozy. Not sure what was going on. Although, I do know I slept a little since I had some funky dreams where the Scrubs cast opened a private ranch hospital where things kept falling down. Luna and I were there, but not sure in what context. Very odd.
The “town hall meeting” here at work is in an hour and a half, which will significantly speed the day up once I am there. At least it is something to “do” and all I have to do is sit and I am sure answer questions regarding my costume. I would say it has been about half of the people who have seen me that knew instantly who I was. Not bad, really.
I am considering tapping some folks in my department to pretend to be paparazzi for my costume entrance. I think then we could enter as a “group” maybe and I could win them something?
Today has to be better.
Let’s start off with some good news. First, Bobby passed his hearing test with no problem. This was good. It also means when he doesn’t answer me it isn’t because he can’t hear me, it means he doesn’t listen. This is good and bad at the same time.
After the hearing test, Bobby sat down with this super nice lady who was the speech pathologist. It was in a classroom at this school in Gardena. The teacher of the room was also there, and also super nice. There also was a corner for Dax to play with a bunch of toys. He was calm and sweet, playing while Bobby got tested.
Luckily, I was allowed to sit with Bobby while it took place. She opened this book of pictures and words. It looked like a pretty standard kid’s book. She then started asking him what things were, and like when I kid was wrapped in a towel, asked him what the kid had just done. When they got to an animal page, he also was asked to name all of his pets, which to the pathologist’s credit, she did not bat an eye at the number of names he listed. Bobby also opened up a bit more at this point and told her about the new “baby dog” we have and how she sometimes bites him. He also said that Monarch sometimes scratches him, but that Ittles licks him a lot. Super cute stuff.
So after all of this, she had him go play with Dax, and she went over her assessment with Ken and I. She said he has a great vocabulary. First off, this made me all kinds of happy. She said he doesn’t stutter in the bad way. She says that mostly, he seems to only have problem with the sentence includes a lot of information. Short things, no problem at all. She said all of the things that seem unclear are due to age. She said he seems totally within range of his age group. She actually seemed pretty impressed with him in general. He passed everything with flying colors.
I am sure that my mom isn’t going to feel 100% comfortable with the results as she thinks he has a problem. But I have to trust the pathologist. She seemed to be pretty thorough, asking him to pronounce different kinds of words, and asking lots of concepts. She said clarity will improve greatly with kindergarten. I would imagine preschool will also help. I am considering picking up some books to help work on him enunciating words better. I figure it doesn’t hurt. I can work on teaching him to read along with this.
My evening was spent looking for babies and lips.
Let me explain. I decided at the last minute to go back to my original plan for a costume for today. I thought being Octomom was super easy and funny. I don’t anticipate winning any contests here at work, but I thought it would be funnier than trying to explain my “Dax” costume.
We went to the Dollar Tree where the boys picked out 8 babies for me. Now, all I needed was some of those big fake lips. I assumed the Halloween shop would have them. They did not. We went to Party City, hoping for something. Lucky for us, we lingered a bit more than we needed to. We came across a bag of lips with whistles in them. It would work for what I was trying to do. Plus, I now have a bag of stuff for the boys.
I am currently covered in baby doll. Ken strung them up on two necklaces and I am wearing all 8 around my neck. The lips will come out for pics and showing off. I don’t know how many people will get it, but I am going to hope most. I have similar hair to her, too, so I was able to just wear my hair down. Sure, I could have picked up the Kate Gosselin wig, but I don’t know that that would have been as easy to pull off.
The string the babies are on is digging into my neck, so that isn’t too fun. I won’t be able to wear this all day if this keeps up. I just put the string on my shirt, so hopefully that will help.
So the other day, we were watching some kid’s show. One of the characters sounded like a really bad Katharine Hepburn impersonator. So of course, I start mimicking the voice, adding Kate to the mix. Bobby could not stop laughing. He was giggling and kept telling me how much I crack him up. Since then, I have broken into my bad Kate voice for his pleasure. Every time, he laughs like the first time.
I feel out of sorts today. I am sure it is just coming down from two days of chaos. Today and tomorrow are pretty quiet. I need to clean up the house a bit more since my folks will be coming by on Saturday. They may just meet us at the park, and there is almost no need to come in the house. We will see. But either way, house is still too cluttered when I tried to walk from the front door to the bathroom and bumped into like 8 things.
My day is going far too slow this morning. My head hurts (it has since yesterday) and I am tired. I was so hoping the cold night would help me get cozy. Not sure what was going on. Although, I do know I slept a little since I had some funky dreams where the Scrubs cast opened a private ranch hospital where things kept falling down. Luna and I were there, but not sure in what context. Very odd.
The “town hall meeting” here at work is in an hour and a half, which will significantly speed the day up once I am there. At least it is something to “do” and all I have to do is sit and I am sure answer questions regarding my costume. I would say it has been about half of the people who have seen me that knew instantly who I was. Not bad, really.
I am considering tapping some folks in my department to pretend to be paparazzi for my costume entrance. I think then we could enter as a “group” maybe and I could win them something?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
hurt
10-28-09
What a crazy day yesterday. Work has been mostly mellow, aside from the occasional idiot. Yesterday, I had gobs of reports to accomplish, and I was in a groove. I was getting them done in record time. I was quite pleased with myself. Then the boss decided to have some kind of a stroke.
We had recently changed up this one report I do. It is the biggest one I do, and take forever. It is complicated in terms of how many steps there are. It essentially tracks the amount of sales per customer or customer grouping and gives a profit margin along with information on the amount of credit given.
The boss doesn’t know how to do the report, and clearly doesn’t even know how to read it.
Mostly the report is for looking at the top maybe 100 customers as they tend to get incentive credits when they have a high volume of sales. Anyone under that point is just other customers that sure, we are happy to have, but they are not high priority in terms of this data.
So the boss comes to me and says to me, look at line 1438. Yes. That would be the 1438th customer on the list. Sigh. I pull it up. Never you mind that I was still in the midst of all the other reports and statements and everything that makes the last Tuesday of every month hell day for me. Oh, sure, boss, let me drop everything to look up this customer. He starts questioning the profit margin. It is basically an error code in Excel. He is confused. There are about 20 in a row of this, and then beyond that, the percentage is back. Are you fucking kidding me? The man is nitpicking part of the report that isn’t looked at???? So I look at it, point out the reason for the code is because these are 20 customers that did no sales and we only issued them credit, hence the formula can’t give a true figure. That shut him up for a minute.
Then he comes back. It is 1:15.
He tells me that our customer, UR’s numbers on the report look wrong. I ask him how so. He says they have gone down. Ok, what does he mean by that. Everyone has gone down. So he says something about that their total doesn’t match this other total. I ask what total. He doesn’t know. I am not making this shit up. He says something about someone else having looked at the ranking report and that they compared it to their total and it is off. So I ask how much is it off. He says he doesn’t know. It took every ounce of strength to not yell at him. I point out that I can’t find the discrepancy if there is nothing for me to look for. I did find that there were two of the UR branches not listed in the group total (some big customer that have multiple braches are coded by hierarchy and the total comes in as one instead of 500 different branches. These were two branches that had never been coded). It was about $200K. So I ask if that was the difference. He doesn’t know. He asks me to run some kind of sales report. I point out that I need more info on UR in order to do this since you can’t run it on analyst number or customer number unless I had all the numbers. It was like I was explaining my job to my 4 year old. Blank stares. I repeat myself. Deer in headlights still. So I sit there, silent. We sit this way for 2 minutes. No joke. Finally he goes. I knew this was not over.
He comes back and essentially has me call this one chick to code the two stray branches and he wants me to redo the whole ranking report. It is now 2:10. So I politely ask him if I can do it first thing in the morning since there is no way I can finish it before I go. It takes at least an hour. He freaks out saying he would like it before. I told him I would see what I could do. I was pissed.
So I did one small section and I sent it to him. I told him I would do the rest once he verified this info. I wasn’t about to spend my time redoing something that wasn’t necessary.
I was pissed when I left here.
I got home and proceeded to scrub the kitchen to get out my angry energy. I was also heading over to my parent’s house, and I was sure I would have to deal with Luna backlash having just uploaded all the pics. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to as my dad never saw the pictures. Not that he won’t know soon enough, but still.
Ken organized our desk and it looks good. We are going to IKEA this weekend to see what kind of under the bed storage boxes they have. It is coming along nicely. I figure we have a couple more weeks left to get it done since I need to decorate for Christmas soon.
Dinner at a table has been nice the last few nights. Sure, it is just a folding table we pull out, but it is awesome. I like that we don’t watch tv while eating and that we are all there. The boys are still not sure about it, but they seem to be going along with it.
No walk last night. Too dang windy! Plus, by the time dinner was ready and we had eaten, it was too close to bedtime.
Today I leave work a little early to get over to Bobby’s speech and language evaluation. Should be interesting. I hope he isn’t too nervous. Of course, these are specialists and they know how to get kids comfy, so we should be ok. Plus, with Dax there, I think he will feel even better. We are meeting Ken there since his class ends at like 2:30.
Apparently I pissed off Karma or something. I have a couple of fantastic days, and mention it out loud and all goes to shit.
I am going to work now. I think that personal stuff is frustrating to me right now and I don’t even feel like writing it down.
Ok, I am going to try to map it out.
I am tired of people telling me I don’t understand. I am tired of being told that because I am in a long term relationship that clearly I have no recollection of what it was like to be alone and sad. I have a memory that scares Ken because when I can really remember something, I can actually practically transport back to that spot and be as upset or happy or angry as I was in the memory.
My relationship with Ken hasn’t always been perfect. Yes, we were always meant to be, and I truly feel that in my heart, but let’s face it, we have had issues. When we started dating, Ken was never around. He flirted with other people, he didn’t come over to my house when I was afraid a strung out ex boyfriend was going to kill Jenni and I. When I moved in (and subsequently out of) my apartment, he didn’t help. He never stayed at my apt. He didn’t tell his mother I moved in until she called us out on it. He made bad decisions in hanging out with a co worker only a month before our wedding. He still to this day, doesn’t seem to know what time to make the check in call in the morning. Sure, all bad things. But the thing is, we work through all of it. I can get frustrated to the point of tears sometimes when I get home and my house is a mess. I wish he could pitch in more, but we work through it. By the way, I know I also get crazy psycho. I was clingy when we started dating. I had fights with his ex wife. I have done plenty of crappy stuff. We have a relationship. We work through tears and arguments. I have had situations with him that sure, some of my friends may have not gone through. But I trust their insight. Even though they may not have had the exact situation happen to them, they have dealt with pain and frustration and anger and sadness, and they can in fact, help me.
I am very pleased that people come to me with their problems. I love being their email shrink. I take great pride in knowing they trust me enough to tell me all of it. I know that they don’t always take my advice, but that is ok. I don’t expect them to use it all. I am kind of like the confessional that also is the Devil’s advocate. I try to present both sides of the coin because let’s face it, that is the only proper way to solved something.
So when people get on me, tell me I am siding against them or telling me that I just have no frame of reference on their issue, I take offense to that. I have not always been happy in love. It doesn’t fucking matter if it was yesterday or 15 years ago. It all still counts.
There is a Scrubs episode where Carla is telling Elliot and Keith that their issues are not special. They tell her she is so wrong, that she doesn’t get it. Carla, who has been part of a long term relationship with her idiot husband who is sometimes more married to his best friend, who has a kid who also is the best damn nurse in the hospital, sure, they are right, she has no life experience to be able to offer some advice. I feel for Carla. I am not her by any stretch of the imagination, but I know that I have lived through things that allow me to say I understand.
Look, come to me and tell me you just killed a guy, I may not know how to respond. But tell me the boy you love isn’t communicating the way you need him to, yes, I get it. You are worried that you will be alone forever? Been there, and even to this day, I worry something will happen that Ken will trade me in for someone younger and uber hot, and then where will I be? Ahh, yes, self esteem, my old friend. I, too, can feel despair. I have stories to tell, and emotions that I have felt that yes, make me qualified to comment on other people’s problems.
A friend of mine told me something super hurtful this morning. It was harsh, and honestly, I had a hard time coming back from that. It made me feel as though I should just be happy that I have Ken and the kids and not to bother anyone else ever again. Probably one of the meanest things anyone has ever said to me. Look, I can take criticism. I know I don’t always say the right things. The comment actually was derived from ongoing pain in my life, and I was shocked.
People say I don’t understand what they are going through. I worry that perhaps no one understands me.
Ok, clearly I was venting because I don’t even know if any of that made sense.
What is boils down to, is for the first time in a long time, I have felt like a useless friend.
On a totally unrelated topic, Dax grew like 3 inches in the last few months. Bobby, only about an inch, but man, those kids are getting big!
What a crazy day yesterday. Work has been mostly mellow, aside from the occasional idiot. Yesterday, I had gobs of reports to accomplish, and I was in a groove. I was getting them done in record time. I was quite pleased with myself. Then the boss decided to have some kind of a stroke.
We had recently changed up this one report I do. It is the biggest one I do, and take forever. It is complicated in terms of how many steps there are. It essentially tracks the amount of sales per customer or customer grouping and gives a profit margin along with information on the amount of credit given.
The boss doesn’t know how to do the report, and clearly doesn’t even know how to read it.
Mostly the report is for looking at the top maybe 100 customers as they tend to get incentive credits when they have a high volume of sales. Anyone under that point is just other customers that sure, we are happy to have, but they are not high priority in terms of this data.
So the boss comes to me and says to me, look at line 1438. Yes. That would be the 1438th customer on the list. Sigh. I pull it up. Never you mind that I was still in the midst of all the other reports and statements and everything that makes the last Tuesday of every month hell day for me. Oh, sure, boss, let me drop everything to look up this customer. He starts questioning the profit margin. It is basically an error code in Excel. He is confused. There are about 20 in a row of this, and then beyond that, the percentage is back. Are you fucking kidding me? The man is nitpicking part of the report that isn’t looked at???? So I look at it, point out the reason for the code is because these are 20 customers that did no sales and we only issued them credit, hence the formula can’t give a true figure. That shut him up for a minute.
Then he comes back. It is 1:15.
He tells me that our customer, UR’s numbers on the report look wrong. I ask him how so. He says they have gone down. Ok, what does he mean by that. Everyone has gone down. So he says something about that their total doesn’t match this other total. I ask what total. He doesn’t know. I am not making this shit up. He says something about someone else having looked at the ranking report and that they compared it to their total and it is off. So I ask how much is it off. He says he doesn’t know. It took every ounce of strength to not yell at him. I point out that I can’t find the discrepancy if there is nothing for me to look for. I did find that there were two of the UR branches not listed in the group total (some big customer that have multiple braches are coded by hierarchy and the total comes in as one instead of 500 different branches. These were two branches that had never been coded). It was about $200K. So I ask if that was the difference. He doesn’t know. He asks me to run some kind of sales report. I point out that I need more info on UR in order to do this since you can’t run it on analyst number or customer number unless I had all the numbers. It was like I was explaining my job to my 4 year old. Blank stares. I repeat myself. Deer in headlights still. So I sit there, silent. We sit this way for 2 minutes. No joke. Finally he goes. I knew this was not over.
He comes back and essentially has me call this one chick to code the two stray branches and he wants me to redo the whole ranking report. It is now 2:10. So I politely ask him if I can do it first thing in the morning since there is no way I can finish it before I go. It takes at least an hour. He freaks out saying he would like it before. I told him I would see what I could do. I was pissed.
So I did one small section and I sent it to him. I told him I would do the rest once he verified this info. I wasn’t about to spend my time redoing something that wasn’t necessary.
I was pissed when I left here.
I got home and proceeded to scrub the kitchen to get out my angry energy. I was also heading over to my parent’s house, and I was sure I would have to deal with Luna backlash having just uploaded all the pics. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to as my dad never saw the pictures. Not that he won’t know soon enough, but still.
Ken organized our desk and it looks good. We are going to IKEA this weekend to see what kind of under the bed storage boxes they have. It is coming along nicely. I figure we have a couple more weeks left to get it done since I need to decorate for Christmas soon.
Dinner at a table has been nice the last few nights. Sure, it is just a folding table we pull out, but it is awesome. I like that we don’t watch tv while eating and that we are all there. The boys are still not sure about it, but they seem to be going along with it.
No walk last night. Too dang windy! Plus, by the time dinner was ready and we had eaten, it was too close to bedtime.
Today I leave work a little early to get over to Bobby’s speech and language evaluation. Should be interesting. I hope he isn’t too nervous. Of course, these are specialists and they know how to get kids comfy, so we should be ok. Plus, with Dax there, I think he will feel even better. We are meeting Ken there since his class ends at like 2:30.
Apparently I pissed off Karma or something. I have a couple of fantastic days, and mention it out loud and all goes to shit.
I am going to work now. I think that personal stuff is frustrating to me right now and I don’t even feel like writing it down.
Ok, I am going to try to map it out.
I am tired of people telling me I don’t understand. I am tired of being told that because I am in a long term relationship that clearly I have no recollection of what it was like to be alone and sad. I have a memory that scares Ken because when I can really remember something, I can actually practically transport back to that spot and be as upset or happy or angry as I was in the memory.
My relationship with Ken hasn’t always been perfect. Yes, we were always meant to be, and I truly feel that in my heart, but let’s face it, we have had issues. When we started dating, Ken was never around. He flirted with other people, he didn’t come over to my house when I was afraid a strung out ex boyfriend was going to kill Jenni and I. When I moved in (and subsequently out of) my apartment, he didn’t help. He never stayed at my apt. He didn’t tell his mother I moved in until she called us out on it. He made bad decisions in hanging out with a co worker only a month before our wedding. He still to this day, doesn’t seem to know what time to make the check in call in the morning. Sure, all bad things. But the thing is, we work through all of it. I can get frustrated to the point of tears sometimes when I get home and my house is a mess. I wish he could pitch in more, but we work through it. By the way, I know I also get crazy psycho. I was clingy when we started dating. I had fights with his ex wife. I have done plenty of crappy stuff. We have a relationship. We work through tears and arguments. I have had situations with him that sure, some of my friends may have not gone through. But I trust their insight. Even though they may not have had the exact situation happen to them, they have dealt with pain and frustration and anger and sadness, and they can in fact, help me.
I am very pleased that people come to me with their problems. I love being their email shrink. I take great pride in knowing they trust me enough to tell me all of it. I know that they don’t always take my advice, but that is ok. I don’t expect them to use it all. I am kind of like the confessional that also is the Devil’s advocate. I try to present both sides of the coin because let’s face it, that is the only proper way to solved something.
So when people get on me, tell me I am siding against them or telling me that I just have no frame of reference on their issue, I take offense to that. I have not always been happy in love. It doesn’t fucking matter if it was yesterday or 15 years ago. It all still counts.
There is a Scrubs episode where Carla is telling Elliot and Keith that their issues are not special. They tell her she is so wrong, that she doesn’t get it. Carla, who has been part of a long term relationship with her idiot husband who is sometimes more married to his best friend, who has a kid who also is the best damn nurse in the hospital, sure, they are right, she has no life experience to be able to offer some advice. I feel for Carla. I am not her by any stretch of the imagination, but I know that I have lived through things that allow me to say I understand.
Look, come to me and tell me you just killed a guy, I may not know how to respond. But tell me the boy you love isn’t communicating the way you need him to, yes, I get it. You are worried that you will be alone forever? Been there, and even to this day, I worry something will happen that Ken will trade me in for someone younger and uber hot, and then where will I be? Ahh, yes, self esteem, my old friend. I, too, can feel despair. I have stories to tell, and emotions that I have felt that yes, make me qualified to comment on other people’s problems.
A friend of mine told me something super hurtful this morning. It was harsh, and honestly, I had a hard time coming back from that. It made me feel as though I should just be happy that I have Ken and the kids and not to bother anyone else ever again. Probably one of the meanest things anyone has ever said to me. Look, I can take criticism. I know I don’t always say the right things. The comment actually was derived from ongoing pain in my life, and I was shocked.
People say I don’t understand what they are going through. I worry that perhaps no one understands me.
Ok, clearly I was venting because I don’t even know if any of that made sense.
What is boils down to, is for the first time in a long time, I have felt like a useless friend.
On a totally unrelated topic, Dax grew like 3 inches in the last few months. Bobby, only about an inch, but man, those kids are getting big!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Visit with Dani and walks with the fam
10-26-09
My relaxing weekend didn’t seem quite so relaxing.
Friday night was mellow. Ken and I watched Observe and Report. I think we will give it a thumbs down if only mostly due to pace. It just was such a slow film, which was a shame. It had gobs of potential. Great cast, and some very funny parts. But over all, it was long and drawn out, with certain scenes that just seemed pointless. There was one part that I was sure would be one where it was bad, but came back around to being good, but instead, I actually almost had to leave the room because it was so annoying to me.
Saturday was supposed to be chores and just hanging out. Instead, at around 9 am I got a phone call. It was Dani! I assumed that it was just a catch up call since we don’t get to talk much since she moved to Texas. Instead, she tells me she is in Orange County. She was in California! She was in the midst of a Scentsy convention.
Let me explain. She sells these Scentsy candles. It started off as a hobby for a few exta bucks. A year later, she is some kind of a director and travels a bunch to these home conventions. She is quite happy and I am proud of her.
She was at the OC Fair Grounds and wanted to know if I could come by just to say hello. Of course! I think the last time I probably saw her was the day Dax was born. She had come to visit me in the hospital. She was moving very soon after, and with her family mostly out that way, she doesn’t come into town much. And let’s face it, I don’t really get out to Texas much. LOL!
I told Ken the scoop and he gladly (that is why my man rocks) helped me change our plans to be able to get out there. We headed out after nap time. We had a quick stop at a Target (What, we hadn’t been in a whole week!). and got there around 3. We went and found her first. The boys were antsy since we walked past the fairgrounds which included a giant bouncer and other fun things. I assured them we were going to go in afterwards. We headed over to the home show and found her booth. I was glad to be able to see her. We chit chatted a bit about her product (it is actually quite cool, and I am considering getting a couple) and about the kids and some basic stuff. Obviously she was working so it was tough to talk for too long. But it didn’t really matter since we got in quite a bit because we have known each other for so long.
I did tell her to be on FB more than just on farms, and she said she would try. The boys were getting bored. In fact, Ken snapped a pic of Dani and I chatting and only later that night did I notice in the bottom of the pic, a shot of the boys in a wrestling match where Bobby looks like he is about to kill Dax. Of course, Dax is cracking up, so you know it was them in full little boy mode, but still funny.
We said our goodbyes and headed towards the aquarium show which was next door. The boys loved seeing the 10000 Nemo’s and a handful of Dory’s. We also came upon a bug lady. She had gobs of tanks with spiders, cockroaches, beetles, etc. The boys were thrilled. Mommy? Not so much. One lady pointed out these ginourmous flying cockroaches, and I convulsed. The bug lady was great, though. She started asking me questions about what part of the bugs creeped me out. She started talking me through it a bit. Then, she started praising me for being so good about my fear with the boys. I had been pointing out all the bugs, despite how freaked out I was, to the boys, telling them how cool they were. She said that was great and called me a wonderful mommy. You know how that makes me feel. It was like giving me some crack. At this point, she started talking to other people, including Ken. Ken and her actually determined she might be an excellent part of Ken’s after school programs. They talked for a bit and then Ken joined me and the boys. She was quite excited when she realized the 4 of us were together.
It was time to get to the fairgrounds. At the very least, the boys were starving. We walked over there only to see them taking down the thing. It was 4, and I guess that was when they closed. There were still some of the swap meet shops, and the boys got a couple of toy motorcycles, but we did determine we needed to come back at some point soon. Or at the very least, hit up some swap meets local.
We went over to the BK that was down the street. We had planned on going to Denny’s (Kids eat free!) but the BK next door caught their eye because of the playground. We had tormented them by dragging them to OC, it was the least we could do to take them there.
Bobby is clearly interested in being an older kid. There were these three in there, and he gravitated towards them. He even asked them if he could play with them. Their game was a crude kickboxing game, that Ken and I quickly told Bobby he would not be playing in. It did make me realize preschool will be very good for him. Although he adores Dax, he needs to be his own person, too.
Sunday was more mellow. Sure, we bowled, but the rest of the day was mostly hanging out at home. The boys and dogs played outside. I still can’t get over how odd it is to write dogs instead of dog. LOL! Ken worked on the sprinklers. He is moving some of them and putting in more efficient ones. Of course, this meant there was dirt, wet and mud. Luna, whom I had just given a bath to, was pretty filthy. I am not used to having a dog who isn’t a duck. Lycos has fur that repels dirt. It helps she is black, but her fur also dries instantly. Luna, not so much.
In the afternoon, we headed out to get some boxes for Ken’s Lego, and also stopped by the Cotton Shop. We spent a considerable amount of time there, looking at fabrics and patterns. We found one pattern for a skirt for me. We also found a Tin Man costume pattern. We did not get the Tin Man makings only because it would have cost about $50, and we would not have it in time for Halloween. Plus, we figure let’s give Bobby a little more time to determine if his Tin Man obsession will go away.
The uber cute lady at the Cotton Shop who helped us was in awe of the fact that I have a husband wanting and willing to make me clothing. She was quite jealous. She also complimented my kids. Dude, I could stay in there all day!
Starting this week, I think I need to start doing more corrections with Luna on our walks. For now, we have basically had the boys going at their own pace with scooters, Lycos running on her leash more, and Luna pulling with all of her might to keep up. I have not used the choke chain too much yet. I have corrected her just on the leash and she does seem to listen, if only for a few minutes. But that is a start. She just loves being with us on the walks. The boys love their scooters so much. Lycos is thrilled, too, since she gets to do these outings. The boys actually have both lost a couple pounds (which is probably due to walking). The plan is for walks nightly, or at least most nights. Otherwise, we just play in the yard, which gets everyone tired.
My week looks like it should be busy. Wednesday is Bobby’s speech and language interview. Saturday is Halloween. Crazy! I don’t know what the plan is for Halloween, yet. I know trick or treating is in order. We will go through the whole neighborhood. We have a wagon, so I think we will be fine. I don’t think we will bring Lycos, but we may bring Luna just because she might be scared at home, and it will be good socializing for her. My parents are coming too (no hiding the dog, then), so I think there will be plenty of folks watching the boys.
I am considering doing the Wilson Park Fair. Since I think it starts at like 4, we might go there first, spend like an hour or so there, then come back home and do the neighborhood rounds. Crap, I just looked it up. It costs $5 to get in? Lame. Then again, maybe you don’t have to pay for some of the other things in there now. And I just read more, the parents don’t have to pay. It is $5 for the kids and they get a wrist band. Dude, I bet they can then play unlimited games. Cool. So I think that is a plan.
I will probably dress up for work on Thursday, but of course, the first year I have no real crazy costume people here so in theory I could win a costume contest, I have a weak sauce costume. It isn’t really a character or anything. Just my own crazy in my head. Well, I guess I will just have to rock what I have and go from there.
I have been uber clumsy the last 2 days. Yesterday, I managed to bang into the screen door not once, but twice. And hard, too. I don’t know what I was doing. Door was open, I smacked my arm into the side of it and it still hurts. The second time I actually cried a bit. Mostly that was frustration. Then this morning, walking out to my car, I tripped in a hole. Right to the ground on that one. Ouch. I was not thrilled. On the plus side with that, no one saw me do that.
Today will be slow at work. I should set up my reports. I don’t think I have done that yet. Tomorrow is my busy day, filled with reports.
This upcoming weekend will also allow me to get a new bra. I think on Sunday we will head out to the mall so I can get a couple of new bras. The ones I have barely have any support left. I figure we will need to hit up the Halloween sales (Target usually has 50% off things, and I want to pick up those towels if they still have them) and Ken can probably keep the boys entertained in the mall for a few minutes while I pick up what I need. Then again, he may just send me out on my own to do the shopping. I never know what to do with myself when I am shopping alone. Perhaps I should try it. It is good practice in general.
I really wish I knew how to sew, or that we had more time. There were lots of cool fabrics I saw that I wanted to make things out of. The fleece they had would make such cute little comforters for the boys. Especially when it is cold out in the winter, they love having lots of blankets, and if I made a couple from some of the material I saw there, they would be so freaking cozy! And then just all the fun patterns and things. I have no artistic ability when it comes to this stuff, but I just feel like I want to do something! But I think I will stick with the things I do know how to do.
Ken backed up my computer, and got me an external hard drive. It means I can start scanning more pics. Woo hoo! We are still trying to organize the desk. I even entertained thoughts of making the boys share a room so we would have a room for all of Ken’s Lego stuff. But what it boils down to is just we need to get rid of a couple things, and then it will be better. Ken got some boxes for Lego, and I may have him go get a couple more so I can box up books. Then I can get rid of those shelves once and for all. Plus, I think we need to consider using one of the little shed containers as a place for the boys’ scooters and eventually bikes. They are in the entry way for now, and this is a poor place for them. So over this week, my plan is to work on things. Not that I have any idea where these boxes of books can go. Maybe just under our bed. There is nothing under there right now, and it seems like a good place for simple boxes. Hmmm….had not considered the under the bed. I am inspired! I just need to see if the paper boxes we have fit under there. Of course, I could also buy the under the bed boxes. I see Target.com has a set of 5 for $70, which isn’t too bad. I just don’t want to spend $70. LOL!
We cut the boys’ hair. Not much. Dax needed a trim. His hair was getting so tangled. He fought it at first, more out of fear of pain. But once we showed him it didn’t hurt, he was on board. He had been complaining about his hair in his eyes. I may still need to do his bangs this afternoon since it will be dry then, but for now, his back won’t be as unruly to comb in the morning.
Bobby’s hair has been a bitch to brush. We did take off a couple inches. He still has long hair, but even he seemed totally ok with this trim. He hates the pain of brushing in the morning. I had been braiding his hair nightly so the morning brush is easy. But with this new cut, I don’t think that you can put it back as easily. We will see how it feels this morning. His slightly shorted hair will also make putting on his mask easier since the elastic was getting tangled in there.
My office is all stuffy and warm today. I hate this time of the year in my office. Give it another month and it will be fine, but when the weather is not sure if it wants to be hot or cold, the office has similar issues, going the way opposite extreme from what the outside temperature is. So when it is freezing out in the morning, it is freakishly hot at my desk. We have always had temperature issues in here, and technically I now have a fan and a heater, with no one sharing my circuit so I don’t even need to run the extension cord. But the other real problem with our thermostat is that it doesn’t know how to stay on one constant temperature. Even as I am typing this, I noticed that the air kicked on and the hot is transforming to cold. They say to wear layers in the fall, and let me tell you, you have to wear layers all year long here. I actually have a jacket that I keep at my desk just in case.
Audit time at work, apparently. I am always in this loop because I am the one who can create the reports needed quickly. There is someone else here who could do it, but they like to have me do it for some reason. I should take it as a compliment, I guess. The boss is not very efficient in how he doles out responsibility on these audits. For instance, they tend to need copies of a handful of invoices. Instead of just having one person print them all out, they make the list, figure out which rep handles the account, and then has them print them. What a waste of time? I just volunteered to the girl who makes these arrangements to go ahead and be the point person to get copies so she doesn’t have to wait on everyone. Sure, there may be some data the reps need to supply, but why have them do the mundane stuff? To some degree, there really should only be one person in the dept handling auditing correspondence. Instead, they have all of us somewhat involved. I get first wave only because I am the report girl. But the two other folks, they act like they are all important for doing this audit, despite doing very little. Very frustrating. I am not suggesting I should do it, mind you. I just think that it would make more sense to put one person in charge. And really, one of the people they have in semi charge is an idiot. She can’t keep up with her own stuff, let alone a new project. Plus, she will just strut around like she is queen bee, and man it is annoying!
Luna tried to assert some authority on Saturday. She got snippy with me when I had told her no to her biting. She growled a bit, flashed some teeth. I growled back and pinned her down for a moment. She quickly realized that she had made a mistake with alpha dog. She has calmed down significantly since then. She seems to have also figured out that Lycos is top dog in the house, and bows to her accordingly. Lycos has been much more patient with her. I don’t think I will need to do any full on dominance training with her. She seems to mellow to need too much. I didn’t mind her actually challenging me, either. Let’s face it, we have a lot of heads on our totem pole. She just wanted to see who was top. She respects Dax to no end. That kid has her number. She adores the shit out of him and even with Bobby, she has been less mouthy. I wonder how long that phase lasts. Hopefully not too long. Once she calms a bit on that, I think the boys will enjoy her even more. Luna seems pretty happy with Ken and I. When we sit in the living room, she often will sit at my feet, head resting on my foot, with the occasional licking of my feet. Very sweet. The next adventures we need to take with her are all socializing. She is a little small for dog park, but I think once we enroll in a puppy class, she will be quite happy.
My tacos are too spicy for my kids. Such a shame. I would have so thought they would be less upset about that. Especially since they say kids are more inclined to ear spicy when the mom while preggers is eating spicy. But who knows. I also have blanded them down a bunch with kid friendly food. On the plus side, they can’t get enough of their fruit these days. I may need to make some new recipes. Rice is going to make an appearance, and maybe some kind of roast beef.
Do you ever get the feeling like you give the world’s worst advice on things and that you must be horribly out of touch with other people? I have several analogies concerning Carla and Scrubs that come to mind, but they are too complicated to spell out. All I know is, I think I need to not offer advice anymore.
A few years back, I made the conscious effort to no longer say “Bye Bye” when I hang up with someone. A simple “bye” was ok. The double seemed so childish and almost condescending when said wrong. It was unprofessional to say it twice. Since that time, I am amazed at how many people say it, and how hard it truly is to not. I have mostly trained myself not to, but there are times, especially when you know a customer well, that you don’t end the call with a “Ok, bye bye!” It must not be that unprofessional when I have heard managers, presidents and every Tom Dick and Harry use the phrase. I now wonder if the singular goodbye is actually colder and rude.
If these skirts work out well, and Ken enjoys working on them, I am thinking I may need to get one of the catalogs of dresses and maybe have him make me a full on dress!
It cracks me up when Ken’s mom sends me jokes in email that have a slightly sexual nature.
Why can’t they design lollipops that don’t stain your tongue the color of the flavor?
I have been jonzing for a new parents magazine. It is always so happy making. I know. I am weird.
My relaxing weekend didn’t seem quite so relaxing.
Friday night was mellow. Ken and I watched Observe and Report. I think we will give it a thumbs down if only mostly due to pace. It just was such a slow film, which was a shame. It had gobs of potential. Great cast, and some very funny parts. But over all, it was long and drawn out, with certain scenes that just seemed pointless. There was one part that I was sure would be one where it was bad, but came back around to being good, but instead, I actually almost had to leave the room because it was so annoying to me.
Saturday was supposed to be chores and just hanging out. Instead, at around 9 am I got a phone call. It was Dani! I assumed that it was just a catch up call since we don’t get to talk much since she moved to Texas. Instead, she tells me she is in Orange County. She was in California! She was in the midst of a Scentsy convention.
Let me explain. She sells these Scentsy candles. It started off as a hobby for a few exta bucks. A year later, she is some kind of a director and travels a bunch to these home conventions. She is quite happy and I am proud of her.
She was at the OC Fair Grounds and wanted to know if I could come by just to say hello. Of course! I think the last time I probably saw her was the day Dax was born. She had come to visit me in the hospital. She was moving very soon after, and with her family mostly out that way, she doesn’t come into town much. And let’s face it, I don’t really get out to Texas much. LOL!
I told Ken the scoop and he gladly (that is why my man rocks) helped me change our plans to be able to get out there. We headed out after nap time. We had a quick stop at a Target (What, we hadn’t been in a whole week!). and got there around 3. We went and found her first. The boys were antsy since we walked past the fairgrounds which included a giant bouncer and other fun things. I assured them we were going to go in afterwards. We headed over to the home show and found her booth. I was glad to be able to see her. We chit chatted a bit about her product (it is actually quite cool, and I am considering getting a couple) and about the kids and some basic stuff. Obviously she was working so it was tough to talk for too long. But it didn’t really matter since we got in quite a bit because we have known each other for so long.
I did tell her to be on FB more than just on farms, and she said she would try. The boys were getting bored. In fact, Ken snapped a pic of Dani and I chatting and only later that night did I notice in the bottom of the pic, a shot of the boys in a wrestling match where Bobby looks like he is about to kill Dax. Of course, Dax is cracking up, so you know it was them in full little boy mode, but still funny.
We said our goodbyes and headed towards the aquarium show which was next door. The boys loved seeing the 10000 Nemo’s and a handful of Dory’s. We also came upon a bug lady. She had gobs of tanks with spiders, cockroaches, beetles, etc. The boys were thrilled. Mommy? Not so much. One lady pointed out these ginourmous flying cockroaches, and I convulsed. The bug lady was great, though. She started asking me questions about what part of the bugs creeped me out. She started talking me through it a bit. Then, she started praising me for being so good about my fear with the boys. I had been pointing out all the bugs, despite how freaked out I was, to the boys, telling them how cool they were. She said that was great and called me a wonderful mommy. You know how that makes me feel. It was like giving me some crack. At this point, she started talking to other people, including Ken. Ken and her actually determined she might be an excellent part of Ken’s after school programs. They talked for a bit and then Ken joined me and the boys. She was quite excited when she realized the 4 of us were together.
It was time to get to the fairgrounds. At the very least, the boys were starving. We walked over there only to see them taking down the thing. It was 4, and I guess that was when they closed. There were still some of the swap meet shops, and the boys got a couple of toy motorcycles, but we did determine we needed to come back at some point soon. Or at the very least, hit up some swap meets local.
We went over to the BK that was down the street. We had planned on going to Denny’s (Kids eat free!) but the BK next door caught their eye because of the playground. We had tormented them by dragging them to OC, it was the least we could do to take them there.
Bobby is clearly interested in being an older kid. There were these three in there, and he gravitated towards them. He even asked them if he could play with them. Their game was a crude kickboxing game, that Ken and I quickly told Bobby he would not be playing in. It did make me realize preschool will be very good for him. Although he adores Dax, he needs to be his own person, too.
Sunday was more mellow. Sure, we bowled, but the rest of the day was mostly hanging out at home. The boys and dogs played outside. I still can’t get over how odd it is to write dogs instead of dog. LOL! Ken worked on the sprinklers. He is moving some of them and putting in more efficient ones. Of course, this meant there was dirt, wet and mud. Luna, whom I had just given a bath to, was pretty filthy. I am not used to having a dog who isn’t a duck. Lycos has fur that repels dirt. It helps she is black, but her fur also dries instantly. Luna, not so much.
In the afternoon, we headed out to get some boxes for Ken’s Lego, and also stopped by the Cotton Shop. We spent a considerable amount of time there, looking at fabrics and patterns. We found one pattern for a skirt for me. We also found a Tin Man costume pattern. We did not get the Tin Man makings only because it would have cost about $50, and we would not have it in time for Halloween. Plus, we figure let’s give Bobby a little more time to determine if his Tin Man obsession will go away.
The uber cute lady at the Cotton Shop who helped us was in awe of the fact that I have a husband wanting and willing to make me clothing. She was quite jealous. She also complimented my kids. Dude, I could stay in there all day!
Starting this week, I think I need to start doing more corrections with Luna on our walks. For now, we have basically had the boys going at their own pace with scooters, Lycos running on her leash more, and Luna pulling with all of her might to keep up. I have not used the choke chain too much yet. I have corrected her just on the leash and she does seem to listen, if only for a few minutes. But that is a start. She just loves being with us on the walks. The boys love their scooters so much. Lycos is thrilled, too, since she gets to do these outings. The boys actually have both lost a couple pounds (which is probably due to walking). The plan is for walks nightly, or at least most nights. Otherwise, we just play in the yard, which gets everyone tired.
My week looks like it should be busy. Wednesday is Bobby’s speech and language interview. Saturday is Halloween. Crazy! I don’t know what the plan is for Halloween, yet. I know trick or treating is in order. We will go through the whole neighborhood. We have a wagon, so I think we will be fine. I don’t think we will bring Lycos, but we may bring Luna just because she might be scared at home, and it will be good socializing for her. My parents are coming too (no hiding the dog, then), so I think there will be plenty of folks watching the boys.
I am considering doing the Wilson Park Fair. Since I think it starts at like 4, we might go there first, spend like an hour or so there, then come back home and do the neighborhood rounds. Crap, I just looked it up. It costs $5 to get in? Lame. Then again, maybe you don’t have to pay for some of the other things in there now. And I just read more, the parents don’t have to pay. It is $5 for the kids and they get a wrist band. Dude, I bet they can then play unlimited games. Cool. So I think that is a plan.
I will probably dress up for work on Thursday, but of course, the first year I have no real crazy costume people here so in theory I could win a costume contest, I have a weak sauce costume. It isn’t really a character or anything. Just my own crazy in my head. Well, I guess I will just have to rock what I have and go from there.
I have been uber clumsy the last 2 days. Yesterday, I managed to bang into the screen door not once, but twice. And hard, too. I don’t know what I was doing. Door was open, I smacked my arm into the side of it and it still hurts. The second time I actually cried a bit. Mostly that was frustration. Then this morning, walking out to my car, I tripped in a hole. Right to the ground on that one. Ouch. I was not thrilled. On the plus side with that, no one saw me do that.
Today will be slow at work. I should set up my reports. I don’t think I have done that yet. Tomorrow is my busy day, filled with reports.
This upcoming weekend will also allow me to get a new bra. I think on Sunday we will head out to the mall so I can get a couple of new bras. The ones I have barely have any support left. I figure we will need to hit up the Halloween sales (Target usually has 50% off things, and I want to pick up those towels if they still have them) and Ken can probably keep the boys entertained in the mall for a few minutes while I pick up what I need. Then again, he may just send me out on my own to do the shopping. I never know what to do with myself when I am shopping alone. Perhaps I should try it. It is good practice in general.
I really wish I knew how to sew, or that we had more time. There were lots of cool fabrics I saw that I wanted to make things out of. The fleece they had would make such cute little comforters for the boys. Especially when it is cold out in the winter, they love having lots of blankets, and if I made a couple from some of the material I saw there, they would be so freaking cozy! And then just all the fun patterns and things. I have no artistic ability when it comes to this stuff, but I just feel like I want to do something! But I think I will stick with the things I do know how to do.
Ken backed up my computer, and got me an external hard drive. It means I can start scanning more pics. Woo hoo! We are still trying to organize the desk. I even entertained thoughts of making the boys share a room so we would have a room for all of Ken’s Lego stuff. But what it boils down to is just we need to get rid of a couple things, and then it will be better. Ken got some boxes for Lego, and I may have him go get a couple more so I can box up books. Then I can get rid of those shelves once and for all. Plus, I think we need to consider using one of the little shed containers as a place for the boys’ scooters and eventually bikes. They are in the entry way for now, and this is a poor place for them. So over this week, my plan is to work on things. Not that I have any idea where these boxes of books can go. Maybe just under our bed. There is nothing under there right now, and it seems like a good place for simple boxes. Hmmm….had not considered the under the bed. I am inspired! I just need to see if the paper boxes we have fit under there. Of course, I could also buy the under the bed boxes. I see Target.com has a set of 5 for $70, which isn’t too bad. I just don’t want to spend $70. LOL!
We cut the boys’ hair. Not much. Dax needed a trim. His hair was getting so tangled. He fought it at first, more out of fear of pain. But once we showed him it didn’t hurt, he was on board. He had been complaining about his hair in his eyes. I may still need to do his bangs this afternoon since it will be dry then, but for now, his back won’t be as unruly to comb in the morning.
Bobby’s hair has been a bitch to brush. We did take off a couple inches. He still has long hair, but even he seemed totally ok with this trim. He hates the pain of brushing in the morning. I had been braiding his hair nightly so the morning brush is easy. But with this new cut, I don’t think that you can put it back as easily. We will see how it feels this morning. His slightly shorted hair will also make putting on his mask easier since the elastic was getting tangled in there.
My office is all stuffy and warm today. I hate this time of the year in my office. Give it another month and it will be fine, but when the weather is not sure if it wants to be hot or cold, the office has similar issues, going the way opposite extreme from what the outside temperature is. So when it is freezing out in the morning, it is freakishly hot at my desk. We have always had temperature issues in here, and technically I now have a fan and a heater, with no one sharing my circuit so I don’t even need to run the extension cord. But the other real problem with our thermostat is that it doesn’t know how to stay on one constant temperature. Even as I am typing this, I noticed that the air kicked on and the hot is transforming to cold. They say to wear layers in the fall, and let me tell you, you have to wear layers all year long here. I actually have a jacket that I keep at my desk just in case.
Audit time at work, apparently. I am always in this loop because I am the one who can create the reports needed quickly. There is someone else here who could do it, but they like to have me do it for some reason. I should take it as a compliment, I guess. The boss is not very efficient in how he doles out responsibility on these audits. For instance, they tend to need copies of a handful of invoices. Instead of just having one person print them all out, they make the list, figure out which rep handles the account, and then has them print them. What a waste of time? I just volunteered to the girl who makes these arrangements to go ahead and be the point person to get copies so she doesn’t have to wait on everyone. Sure, there may be some data the reps need to supply, but why have them do the mundane stuff? To some degree, there really should only be one person in the dept handling auditing correspondence. Instead, they have all of us somewhat involved. I get first wave only because I am the report girl. But the two other folks, they act like they are all important for doing this audit, despite doing very little. Very frustrating. I am not suggesting I should do it, mind you. I just think that it would make more sense to put one person in charge. And really, one of the people they have in semi charge is an idiot. She can’t keep up with her own stuff, let alone a new project. Plus, she will just strut around like she is queen bee, and man it is annoying!
Luna tried to assert some authority on Saturday. She got snippy with me when I had told her no to her biting. She growled a bit, flashed some teeth. I growled back and pinned her down for a moment. She quickly realized that she had made a mistake with alpha dog. She has calmed down significantly since then. She seems to have also figured out that Lycos is top dog in the house, and bows to her accordingly. Lycos has been much more patient with her. I don’t think I will need to do any full on dominance training with her. She seems to mellow to need too much. I didn’t mind her actually challenging me, either. Let’s face it, we have a lot of heads on our totem pole. She just wanted to see who was top. She respects Dax to no end. That kid has her number. She adores the shit out of him and even with Bobby, she has been less mouthy. I wonder how long that phase lasts. Hopefully not too long. Once she calms a bit on that, I think the boys will enjoy her even more. Luna seems pretty happy with Ken and I. When we sit in the living room, she often will sit at my feet, head resting on my foot, with the occasional licking of my feet. Very sweet. The next adventures we need to take with her are all socializing. She is a little small for dog park, but I think once we enroll in a puppy class, she will be quite happy.
My tacos are too spicy for my kids. Such a shame. I would have so thought they would be less upset about that. Especially since they say kids are more inclined to ear spicy when the mom while preggers is eating spicy. But who knows. I also have blanded them down a bunch with kid friendly food. On the plus side, they can’t get enough of their fruit these days. I may need to make some new recipes. Rice is going to make an appearance, and maybe some kind of roast beef.
Do you ever get the feeling like you give the world’s worst advice on things and that you must be horribly out of touch with other people? I have several analogies concerning Carla and Scrubs that come to mind, but they are too complicated to spell out. All I know is, I think I need to not offer advice anymore.
A few years back, I made the conscious effort to no longer say “Bye Bye” when I hang up with someone. A simple “bye” was ok. The double seemed so childish and almost condescending when said wrong. It was unprofessional to say it twice. Since that time, I am amazed at how many people say it, and how hard it truly is to not. I have mostly trained myself not to, but there are times, especially when you know a customer well, that you don’t end the call with a “Ok, bye bye!” It must not be that unprofessional when I have heard managers, presidents and every Tom Dick and Harry use the phrase. I now wonder if the singular goodbye is actually colder and rude.
If these skirts work out well, and Ken enjoys working on them, I am thinking I may need to get one of the catalogs of dresses and maybe have him make me a full on dress!
It cracks me up when Ken’s mom sends me jokes in email that have a slightly sexual nature.
Why can’t they design lollipops that don’t stain your tongue the color of the flavor?
I have been jonzing for a new parents magazine. It is always so happy making. I know. I am weird.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Shots fired!
10-23-09
My hair is now super dark. I got word from daycare when I picked up the boys that apparently their Halloween party is actually tomorrow. So this meant she needed me to bring cupcakes. Not a huge deal, but it did mean we needed to go get cupcakes. So Ken and Dax went to the store and picked up cupcake mix. I showed Ken the pic in the magazine of the shade that I had decided on and he picked up some hair color for me. I know, super brave to send a man to get hair color, but he did an excellent job. I colored my hair last night and man, it is in fact quite dark, but I like it. I am pretty sure it will lighten a bit as it normally does. I just hope that I can pull this off.
I didn’t cut my bangs, which I think I am angry about this morning only because the style I opted on really requires shorter bangs. But since I have other styles that need longer bangs, I have not decided what to do. I think I need a curling iron as that might help some things.
I also did my eye makeup all extreme today. Mostly because MaryAnn and I were talking about eye makeup yesterday and I wanted to show her this style. Plus, might as well rock the new hair with awesome eyes, right?
And all of this will hopefully help me in getting the flu shot in a couple hours. Yes, I signed up to get the free flu shot work is offering. I am not looking forward to it. It is going to hurt like hell. Plus, I worry I will feel all sick afterwards. Some people get the flu after the shot. Poor Scotty passed out once after getting the shot. The boys were fine aside from massive bruising pain in their arm for a week. My dad also had some soreness. I am pretty sure I will be fine. I just get nervous.
I feel pretty rested today thankfully. We had the pact to get to bed by 8, and we were in fact in the bedroom at 8. Now mind you, not all of the getting to bed was just for sleep. The last week, we had been getting to bed so late so our “grownup time” was kind of limited. I wanted to have some actual intimacy, so 8 o’clock would allow us that and get me to sleep at a reasonable time.
If the shot does make me woozy, I so can warrant going home. Hell, even if it doesn’t, I so can say it does! LOL!
In theory, I will be a little more busy than normal today. With it being the last true day of our fiscal month, people will want to do a lot of applications, which means I have work to do. The reps tend to hold all of these till the last minute, which annoys the hell out of me. They claim they don’t have time. These are the same folks who dink around during the day.
I really hope the boys don’t get cupcake on their costumes. Not that it is a huge deal. It will come out, but what a pain in the ass.
Work is doing their costume contest on Thursday of next week, proving that clearly the world doesn’t know how to cope with a Saturday Halloween. The only appropriate day to do things like costumes if it has to be before Halloween on a weekend, is the Friday before, not days before. Sheesh people.
Ken made me a giant Cecilia chart. I am so happy. I need to put one of them (he made a couple copies) in a frame. I want it up in my house.
Miss Luna stayed outside yesterday. She seemed fine. It was nice fresh air for both her and Lycos. I am sure she got to run and explore a bit more. I didn’t see her having caused any problems. When I got home, she was sleeping on the porch. She did seem a little less than thrilled about saying outside when we were home. I put her out for a bit to pee, and she just whimpered a bit. She was happy to hang out in the living room while the boys played with a bunch of Lego, though.
She and Bobby had an incident. She mouths and jumps up a lot. She isn’t being mean, she is being a puppy. Well, Luna jumped up on Bobby while he was sitting on the floor. Bobby just can’t seem to master the art of authority with her. Dax will put her in her place quick. Bobby just crumpled. I felt bad because I didn’t want him to get upset, yet on the other hand, I wanted him to be forceful with the puppy. He eventually did, but it took some showing him. I had to actually use his hand to push her away and use the tone for him. He got more forceful, but I know it will still take some time. It is one of those things we have to get Luna to listen to quickly since right now she is tiny. If she gets big and then is still doing this, then it is gobs harder to work with.
Ok, so far two people said my hair looks good. That seems positive! Another girl saw my hair but didn’t mention it. Of course, I was showing off pics of Luna, so I am ok with her not saying anything. LOL!
In one hour I get poked with the shot!! I am scared!! Yes, I will be the first to admit, I am a huge wuss. Although, people who say, don’t read this, might not know that. Seriously, I am super cocky at work. I poke fun at the whole thing and I don’t like to come across as weak. But when I get over there, I can tell you for sure, I will be shaking.
I found myself being worried mommy yesterday. I sometimes forget my kids are too young to appreciate a movie like Jurassic Park without say being scared. Or more realistically, I seem to forget that it isn’t just a cool movie with dinosaurs. It is a movie about nasty dinosaurs that try to kill people. I showed Bobby parts of the movie where they were being nice, but then freaked since he wanted to see more, but the rest had the T-Rex eating a goat. I was thinking that might be a bit much for the 4 year old. Why do all the cool movies have things that I think will mess with their heads???
I am pretty sure the boys will go to bed later than normal tonight. Friday night is our late night. Now I just have to figure out what our evening family adventure will be. We have been going to dinner, but I don’t think we will do that. Maybe just an FFY night and we can eat out back. That way the dogs can keep playing, and we can take advantage of the last of our evenings where it isn’t too cold. This morning I was met by gobs of fog when Luna went out to pee.
LOL!! So my hero in IT has been messing with my boss by parking in his space (not his space anymore since there are no assigned parking anymore). So the boss has been parking in this other spot. Well, this other broad (Can’t stand her, but she just got some points) just parked in the spot he had started parking in since his old spot was gone. AWESEOME!!
My hair in the bathroom looks almost black. I am not sure that is a good thing. I do hope it fades a bit. I am sure it will. But still!
Crap! Only 20 more minutes. It will be quick. Shoot, I have had worse done to me. I would imagine IV’s are worse.
LOL!!!! Boss just parked in his boss’s spot. Seriously, I am dying here. So freaking funny. Someone is going to yell today. I just hope I get to hear it.
I did it, I got the shot! I went over there and I walked in the lunch room to find it empty. So odd. So I walked out and asked Sunshine at the front desk. Apparently they were late. Ethel, my HR girl tells me they called like 9:25 for the address. Nice. First appt was at 9:30. Luckily they were only a few blocks away, but still! Plus, don’t piss off a spunky little pregnant chick. She tore into them a bit when they arrived. Not good for me since I was a little nervous they would then take it out on us! LOL!
I filled out the consent form and was first in line. I apologized to the room up front for in case I swore. Only a few laughed because I think many were nervous. He swabbed me with the alcohol wipe and I was continuing to chat with the girls in line. Next thing I know, he is putting a bandaid on me. No joke. I didn’t even feel the thing! What the heck? I was so happy! I sat down, as instructed for my 5 minutes and chatted it up with the one lady (that was shockingly nice. This is Devil Woman that I can’t stand. Apparently in a non work setting, she is nice) I know and another chick I see a lot. DW also said it didn’t hurt, whereas Asian Girl (Now referred to as AG) said it hurt a lot. We then proceeded to talk about flu shots, and I was shocked when AG was so inquisitive about what I have done for the kids. She has a kid it sounds like and she just seemed like a newish mom or something. So I chatted it up with them on the way back to our building. Always odd.
My arm does hurt a touch. I am glad I got it in my right arm cause lord knows if my left arm hurt I would assume heart attack. I felt a little flush, but I assume it was nerves. I feel ok now, with the occasional light throbbing in my arm. Not bad! I get so worked up on things. It is sad, really. Then again, nothing is as bad as it seems like it will be. So I guess that is a plus.
I feel so wound up now. That was a lot of adrenaline pumping in me from the anxiety.
I suppose it is a good sign I am hungry, not nauseous.
Why is it the number one question people ask you when have children. “So, are you done or are you thinking of having more?” It is especially odd when I think the average amount of kids people have is 2, right? So I have 2, so why would people ask about more? And truly, it is kind of rude to ask people with only one kid if they want more since, let’s face it, nobody knows why they only have 1. Fertility problems or something bad may have happened so they stopped at one. It isn’t polite as a stranger, or even a colleague to ask. Now, I don’t mind people asking me. I take it as a compliment that people A) think I am a competent mommy to handle 3, and B) that I must love my kids enough that I would consider adding a third to the mix. Plus, people always ask you when you have two of a kind of you will try for that opposite sex. I want a little girl, I do. But then I see things in the Avon catalog where they have dolls with the same outfit that you can get your little girl and something about it creeps me out. I clearly have been playing with my boys for too long. They burp and fart and seriously, they are in hog’s heaven with that. Mud, bugs, anything gross is awesome. Plus, they are both sensitive enough to enjoy a small amount of girly things to satisfy my desires for now. But yes, a little girl would be fun. At the very least, I love the idea of a little girl being bossy like me and putting my two boys in their place. And just the idea of them kicking the shit out of potential suitors for them rocks.
No worries, folks. My IUD is firmly in places, and trust me, with Luna, that is all the daughter I can handle right now. Maybe when I win that lottery or something, I will go ahead and get myself knocked up again. But for now, I am good.
I do feel a bit off. I will chalk it up to the flu shot for now. I know it is nothing, but it is a little unsettling.
Ok, and hour later, my pep is finally starting to wear off. I am back to being a little tired. I am better at that level. I do kind of wish I was in jeans and a tank top instead of my fru fru dress, but I have plenty of time for jeans when I get home.
Crap, I over peppered my lunch. I just hope I can eat enough to not be hungry anymore!
Ok, took my hair out of the clips and redid the bangs to be more happy with me. It seems to work. I only have a couple more hours of this place and I am free! No sickness as of yet. I would imagine if I was going to get sick it would have happened already. It is just about noon, so a couple hours after the shot. I may be in the clear! Woo hoo!
My hair is now super dark. I got word from daycare when I picked up the boys that apparently their Halloween party is actually tomorrow. So this meant she needed me to bring cupcakes. Not a huge deal, but it did mean we needed to go get cupcakes. So Ken and Dax went to the store and picked up cupcake mix. I showed Ken the pic in the magazine of the shade that I had decided on and he picked up some hair color for me. I know, super brave to send a man to get hair color, but he did an excellent job. I colored my hair last night and man, it is in fact quite dark, but I like it. I am pretty sure it will lighten a bit as it normally does. I just hope that I can pull this off.
I didn’t cut my bangs, which I think I am angry about this morning only because the style I opted on really requires shorter bangs. But since I have other styles that need longer bangs, I have not decided what to do. I think I need a curling iron as that might help some things.
I also did my eye makeup all extreme today. Mostly because MaryAnn and I were talking about eye makeup yesterday and I wanted to show her this style. Plus, might as well rock the new hair with awesome eyes, right?
And all of this will hopefully help me in getting the flu shot in a couple hours. Yes, I signed up to get the free flu shot work is offering. I am not looking forward to it. It is going to hurt like hell. Plus, I worry I will feel all sick afterwards. Some people get the flu after the shot. Poor Scotty passed out once after getting the shot. The boys were fine aside from massive bruising pain in their arm for a week. My dad also had some soreness. I am pretty sure I will be fine. I just get nervous.
I feel pretty rested today thankfully. We had the pact to get to bed by 8, and we were in fact in the bedroom at 8. Now mind you, not all of the getting to bed was just for sleep. The last week, we had been getting to bed so late so our “grownup time” was kind of limited. I wanted to have some actual intimacy, so 8 o’clock would allow us that and get me to sleep at a reasonable time.
If the shot does make me woozy, I so can warrant going home. Hell, even if it doesn’t, I so can say it does! LOL!
In theory, I will be a little more busy than normal today. With it being the last true day of our fiscal month, people will want to do a lot of applications, which means I have work to do. The reps tend to hold all of these till the last minute, which annoys the hell out of me. They claim they don’t have time. These are the same folks who dink around during the day.
I really hope the boys don’t get cupcake on their costumes. Not that it is a huge deal. It will come out, but what a pain in the ass.
Work is doing their costume contest on Thursday of next week, proving that clearly the world doesn’t know how to cope with a Saturday Halloween. The only appropriate day to do things like costumes if it has to be before Halloween on a weekend, is the Friday before, not days before. Sheesh people.
Ken made me a giant Cecilia chart. I am so happy. I need to put one of them (he made a couple copies) in a frame. I want it up in my house.
Miss Luna stayed outside yesterday. She seemed fine. It was nice fresh air for both her and Lycos. I am sure she got to run and explore a bit more. I didn’t see her having caused any problems. When I got home, she was sleeping on the porch. She did seem a little less than thrilled about saying outside when we were home. I put her out for a bit to pee, and she just whimpered a bit. She was happy to hang out in the living room while the boys played with a bunch of Lego, though.
She and Bobby had an incident. She mouths and jumps up a lot. She isn’t being mean, she is being a puppy. Well, Luna jumped up on Bobby while he was sitting on the floor. Bobby just can’t seem to master the art of authority with her. Dax will put her in her place quick. Bobby just crumpled. I felt bad because I didn’t want him to get upset, yet on the other hand, I wanted him to be forceful with the puppy. He eventually did, but it took some showing him. I had to actually use his hand to push her away and use the tone for him. He got more forceful, but I know it will still take some time. It is one of those things we have to get Luna to listen to quickly since right now she is tiny. If she gets big and then is still doing this, then it is gobs harder to work with.
Ok, so far two people said my hair looks good. That seems positive! Another girl saw my hair but didn’t mention it. Of course, I was showing off pics of Luna, so I am ok with her not saying anything. LOL!
In one hour I get poked with the shot!! I am scared!! Yes, I will be the first to admit, I am a huge wuss. Although, people who say, don’t read this, might not know that. Seriously, I am super cocky at work. I poke fun at the whole thing and I don’t like to come across as weak. But when I get over there, I can tell you for sure, I will be shaking.
I found myself being worried mommy yesterday. I sometimes forget my kids are too young to appreciate a movie like Jurassic Park without say being scared. Or more realistically, I seem to forget that it isn’t just a cool movie with dinosaurs. It is a movie about nasty dinosaurs that try to kill people. I showed Bobby parts of the movie where they were being nice, but then freaked since he wanted to see more, but the rest had the T-Rex eating a goat. I was thinking that might be a bit much for the 4 year old. Why do all the cool movies have things that I think will mess with their heads???
I am pretty sure the boys will go to bed later than normal tonight. Friday night is our late night. Now I just have to figure out what our evening family adventure will be. We have been going to dinner, but I don’t think we will do that. Maybe just an FFY night and we can eat out back. That way the dogs can keep playing, and we can take advantage of the last of our evenings where it isn’t too cold. This morning I was met by gobs of fog when Luna went out to pee.
LOL!! So my hero in IT has been messing with my boss by parking in his space (not his space anymore since there are no assigned parking anymore). So the boss has been parking in this other spot. Well, this other broad (Can’t stand her, but she just got some points) just parked in the spot he had started parking in since his old spot was gone. AWESEOME!!
My hair in the bathroom looks almost black. I am not sure that is a good thing. I do hope it fades a bit. I am sure it will. But still!
Crap! Only 20 more minutes. It will be quick. Shoot, I have had worse done to me. I would imagine IV’s are worse.
LOL!!!! Boss just parked in his boss’s spot. Seriously, I am dying here. So freaking funny. Someone is going to yell today. I just hope I get to hear it.
I did it, I got the shot! I went over there and I walked in the lunch room to find it empty. So odd. So I walked out and asked Sunshine at the front desk. Apparently they were late. Ethel, my HR girl tells me they called like 9:25 for the address. Nice. First appt was at 9:30. Luckily they were only a few blocks away, but still! Plus, don’t piss off a spunky little pregnant chick. She tore into them a bit when they arrived. Not good for me since I was a little nervous they would then take it out on us! LOL!
I filled out the consent form and was first in line. I apologized to the room up front for in case I swore. Only a few laughed because I think many were nervous. He swabbed me with the alcohol wipe and I was continuing to chat with the girls in line. Next thing I know, he is putting a bandaid on me. No joke. I didn’t even feel the thing! What the heck? I was so happy! I sat down, as instructed for my 5 minutes and chatted it up with the one lady (that was shockingly nice. This is Devil Woman that I can’t stand. Apparently in a non work setting, she is nice) I know and another chick I see a lot. DW also said it didn’t hurt, whereas Asian Girl (Now referred to as AG) said it hurt a lot. We then proceeded to talk about flu shots, and I was shocked when AG was so inquisitive about what I have done for the kids. She has a kid it sounds like and she just seemed like a newish mom or something. So I chatted it up with them on the way back to our building. Always odd.
My arm does hurt a touch. I am glad I got it in my right arm cause lord knows if my left arm hurt I would assume heart attack. I felt a little flush, but I assume it was nerves. I feel ok now, with the occasional light throbbing in my arm. Not bad! I get so worked up on things. It is sad, really. Then again, nothing is as bad as it seems like it will be. So I guess that is a plus.
I feel so wound up now. That was a lot of adrenaline pumping in me from the anxiety.
I suppose it is a good sign I am hungry, not nauseous.
Why is it the number one question people ask you when have children. “So, are you done or are you thinking of having more?” It is especially odd when I think the average amount of kids people have is 2, right? So I have 2, so why would people ask about more? And truly, it is kind of rude to ask people with only one kid if they want more since, let’s face it, nobody knows why they only have 1. Fertility problems or something bad may have happened so they stopped at one. It isn’t polite as a stranger, or even a colleague to ask. Now, I don’t mind people asking me. I take it as a compliment that people A) think I am a competent mommy to handle 3, and B) that I must love my kids enough that I would consider adding a third to the mix. Plus, people always ask you when you have two of a kind of you will try for that opposite sex. I want a little girl, I do. But then I see things in the Avon catalog where they have dolls with the same outfit that you can get your little girl and something about it creeps me out. I clearly have been playing with my boys for too long. They burp and fart and seriously, they are in hog’s heaven with that. Mud, bugs, anything gross is awesome. Plus, they are both sensitive enough to enjoy a small amount of girly things to satisfy my desires for now. But yes, a little girl would be fun. At the very least, I love the idea of a little girl being bossy like me and putting my two boys in their place. And just the idea of them kicking the shit out of potential suitors for them rocks.
No worries, folks. My IUD is firmly in places, and trust me, with Luna, that is all the daughter I can handle right now. Maybe when I win that lottery or something, I will go ahead and get myself knocked up again. But for now, I am good.
I do feel a bit off. I will chalk it up to the flu shot for now. I know it is nothing, but it is a little unsettling.
Ok, and hour later, my pep is finally starting to wear off. I am back to being a little tired. I am better at that level. I do kind of wish I was in jeans and a tank top instead of my fru fru dress, but I have plenty of time for jeans when I get home.
Crap, I over peppered my lunch. I just hope I can eat enough to not be hungry anymore!
Ok, took my hair out of the clips and redid the bangs to be more happy with me. It seems to work. I only have a couple more hours of this place and I am free! No sickness as of yet. I would imagine if I was going to get sick it would have happened already. It is just about noon, so a couple hours after the shot. I may be in the clear! Woo hoo!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Again, I almost forgot to post this. Dude!
10-22-09
Once again, I am in a mini coma. I know I slept a little since I had dreams that honestly, this morning I thought were real events. Like some conversation I had with someone in which we decided that we were going to start drinking coffee. I also had dreams though in which Barney from HIMYM went with me on some random nostalgic reunion type adventure where my friend Scott Book said I had been a huge wuss, yet a bit of a bitch in high school and was somewhat impressed with my new confidence.
But there was a chunk of the night in which I know I was “sleeping” yet I also know I was up since I could not get comfortable. It was like I was uncomfortable in the midst of my dream. I remember sleeping on some kind of horrible feeling thing. It was rough. So I am pretty sure that explains my sleepiness this morning. Oh, and the fact that once again, I got to bed at like 10!!
That part is my own fault. All afternoon, we played out in the yard. The dogs ran, the boys ran, and we bbq’ed burgers. It was good. We also set up the yard to be able to let Luna stay outside today. We thought the dogs would appreciate some more running room during the day.
By the time we got inside to eat, it was after 6. We ate, showered the boys, watched a quick show and did the bedtime thing. After that, we had some chores and gobs of FB games, and finally we got to bed.
There was incident, though.
I had been trying to tell Ken something and the boys or the dogs or any number of things kept interrupting me. The boys are notorious about doing this. I will be talking to someone and they will do the “mom, mom, mom, mom, mom” and get louder with each repetition. I have told them not to do this 100 times. Last night, I was cranky, and tired, and frankly, annoyed with the constant interruption. In my frustration, Dax got the brunt of it. He interrupted me while I was talking. I ignored him until the third mom when I spun my head around and practically bit his head off. I barked at him not to interrupt. I knew my mistake instantly. He didn’t cry, but he got very quiet. His lip quivered. I asked him if he was ok. He shook his head no, I asked if he would like a hug, and he nodded. So I held him tight for a while. He never cried, but he was upset.
Later, when he was in bed, he looked upset. I asked him what was wrong. He said, “I didn’t hurt myself”. This is Dax code for something did in fact hurt. I pressed for a while, trying to be as sweet as humanly possible. He finally opened up. “You hurt me, you yelled at me.” I am the worst mom ever. He told me he was going to put me in a time out and that he wanted to kick my butt. I did allow him to spank me, which cracked him up. I apologized again for yelling, but I also made sure to explain why I got upset. He seemed loads better, and he cuddled up with me while I sang. It was sweet. I hurt his feelings, and he was able to express this, so in hind sight, I think I am glad it happened if only to show him how to do this. I still feel bad, though. Poor kid.
Have I mentioned how great the show Glee is? Seriously, it is wonderful. I was memorized last night when we watched last week’s episode. There was a song at the end in which the subtle and yet not so subtle looks between the 3 actors in the scene were amazing. I was actually almost moved to tears. It was brilliant. I am thrilled that last night’s episode is at home waiting for us later!
Our plan is to aim for an 8 o’clock bedtime tonight. I don’t anticipate it happening, but we can dream, right?
Bobby’s drawings of people have evolved. Up until recently, his person would essentially be a giant happy face with arms and legs sticking out from it. On one of the recent drawings, his drawing of himself had a nose, and one he dubbed Ronald McDonald had a giant round nose. And I also have one that is of me in which I have not only a body, but a separate head and hair!!! I am so proud. Who knew stick figures would be so wonderful?
I am not feeling well. I am sure it is the sleep deprivation.
A moment of silence, please, as Nigel, Brandy’s kitty died last night. Yes, this means 2 of her beloved cats passed within 4 days of one another.
Ok, and one last note on Glee, but this just hit me again because it was funny as hell. The guy suggested they name their kid Drizzle. Almost died it was so funny.
Monarch had his first real run in with Luna. Luna was shockingly fearless despite the giant black and white cat in front of her. Monarch ended up backing down first and took off. He was less than thrilled. He did, however, still sleep at my feet, so he isn’t so mad at me that he has abandoned me or anything. I do look forward to Luna being a bit more calm if only so Monarch can sit on my lap for a while. He and Ittles hang out with me in the bathroom in the mornings and I give them lots of lovin so they know I have not traded them in for a little golden furball.
As much as I want to go home, I have suck it up. My goal is to be here every day between now and Thanksgiving.
The Thanksgiving plans have been more finalized. We are meeting Ken’s folks and Andy and Scott at 8 am, which is when the park opens. Apparently the park is open longer that week because it is a busy day. Not the best first experience for them in terms of crowd, but I think we will manage. That evening, we are going to this hotel place in Newport Beach where we will stay till Sunday. Not sure what the next couple days will be. Perhaps we will find things to do between now and then so that we have some plans. They may have plans, too, but who knows. Chris will check in on the dogs, as I am sure Luna will be pretty upset with us being gone. We don’t go on a lot of long trips, sans dog, so I think she will be ok. Plus, it isn’t like we can’t check in on them if need be. Newport Beach isn’t that far away. It isn’t super close, but I think it is reasonable to check in on the dogs. Hell, maybe we will look into it and see if we can take her.
I need to wake up!! I keep zoning out on different daydreams. Nothing exciting. Perhaps that is my problem. I should not be daydreaming about redoing the hallway. I should be maybe dreaming about some exciting adventure. Perhaps that would get me pumped.
Our Hometown Fair fish all died. So sad. They did quite well for a while. They were in too small a tank, really. Luckily, the boys are just as interested in dead fish as live, so they were not traumatized.
I have dog baths in my future. Lycos is one of those dogs that she never looks dirty. Plus, you can hose her off and she is dry in a couple minutes. It is nice to have a dog with fur like duck feathers. Luna, on the other hand, doesn’t have the luxury of looking all clean. She ran out in the dirt and mud yesterday and looked filthy. She also still has some flea dirt and crud on her ears I am working through. She needs more baths, and she has to be dried special because I guess their ears are more sensitive. Luckily this weekend is a warm weekend, so I should be able to bathe them both and Luna won’t get too cold.
I think my weekly visit to Target will include hair dye. Woo hoo! I think I am going to go back to a richer, deeper brown. I need something warm looking. I have not been thrilled with the current hair tone I am sporting. I have become bored with my hair again. It happens a lot. I want to trim it. I want to cut it. I want to color it all kinds of colors. I want to grow out my bangs. I want to trim them back to a manageable length. Right now, the bangs and I are fighting. They are much too long for my standard style I had been doing, but I have been playing with some other styles. The problem, though, is when I am not in a styling mode. Case and point yesterday. Bangs were all over the place while I was trying to make hamburgers. I have to wear a head band at home. I look silly. I can rock a slip, I suppose, which is today’s choice. And it isn’t like anyone in my house cares how my bangs look. But we do head out for things enough I like to look presentable.
Well this has been all of the sudden a hectic morning! Woo hoo! Not complaining at all. I am dealing once again with this uber annoying customer who sure, we issued some wrong credits, but have since corrected them and yet he is still belly aching. The real problem isn’t him so much as his advocate her on my side. She is the one issuing credits to correct the mistakes by this other broad that is no longer here. So she seems to feel like the world is picking on him. She said, oh, poor guy is trying to run a business and do the books and everything by himself. Dude, that is what EVERYONE DOES!!! He needs to suck it up. We had this issue before, but it just is always something. Luckily, I now have control in a sense, so anything new on the account will no longer be a problem. He likes to apply credits to invoices. Well, he is now going to get a check for all of them so he just has to pay. And if he doesn’t, I can shut him down.
Mmm…Dave Navarro. I had not heard that name in a while. I forgot how freaking yummy he is.
And Adam Lambert’s new CD comes out soon! YAY!!
Long live guyliner!!
And of course, as quickly as the crazy began, it has calmed down to a lull.
I love the fall. I love it because it means holidays are here. I love the whole Halloween feel. Thanksgiving gatherings, and Christmas decorations. It all makes me so dang happy. I have like 3 solid happy months. January, I get a little bummed. Kind of like a post partum depression. I don’t have gobs of holiday cheer and gatherings ahead of me. Don’t get me wrong, I then have things like Bobby’s birthday and my anniversary, but those don’t always involve gobs of people. But I think Bobby’s birthday this year will be big. He is going to be 5, so I think we need a real party.
Is it very mom like to be rockin out to Justin Timberlake’s Sexy Back in the mini van?
I need to trim Dax’s hair. Maybe tonight. His curls just get so tangled. I only have to cut off maybe an inch right after a shower. It won’t make the curls go away, but it will stop some of the tangle. At the very least, I need to do his bangs. Perhaps that adventure will happen tonight.
I am now working on a new report. It is a report Tammy used to do. It basically calculates out how many calls each rep does. The problem with this report is, none of it is straight forward. This of course makes no sense being that how hard is it for AT&T to tell me that ext blah blah blah called out 300 times? It shouldn’t be. But it gets better. We have 4 reports that are given to me that each have different numbers. From what I can tell, these 2 are what Tammy used to calculate numbers from. Yet the corresponding report she sent to the reps (I never looked at them before since I could give a shit how many calls I make) appears to be the actual calls made. Yet the total there is way higher than what is put on the stats. On top of that, the 4th report I think is inbound calls to 800 numbers listed in our dept. There are 6 employees listed on said report who are not with the company. Shoot, one lady has not been here in 6 years. No joke. The others have been gone at least 3. And, they have my name spelled wrong, another lady’s name spelled wrong, and once again, none of these numbers fucking matter!! It is a joke. A total joke. They are getting me set up in the system to see what AT&T sends us and I will have to figure it out from there. Leave it to me to not only open the can of worms, but to opt to go ahead and dump them all out, spread them out, and then pour gravy on top.
Maybe I need styling gel. I can bring back the windbreaker bangs look. Or at the very least, rock a faux hawk. Perhaps a hair style magazine needs to come home with me. Yes, yes, because lord knows I need more freaking magazines to not read. LOL!
I am amused that in every picture I have of Ken and I on my desk, I look different in every one, yet he looks the same. LOL!
Once again, I am in a mini coma. I know I slept a little since I had dreams that honestly, this morning I thought were real events. Like some conversation I had with someone in which we decided that we were going to start drinking coffee. I also had dreams though in which Barney from HIMYM went with me on some random nostalgic reunion type adventure where my friend Scott Book said I had been a huge wuss, yet a bit of a bitch in high school and was somewhat impressed with my new confidence.
But there was a chunk of the night in which I know I was “sleeping” yet I also know I was up since I could not get comfortable. It was like I was uncomfortable in the midst of my dream. I remember sleeping on some kind of horrible feeling thing. It was rough. So I am pretty sure that explains my sleepiness this morning. Oh, and the fact that once again, I got to bed at like 10!!
That part is my own fault. All afternoon, we played out in the yard. The dogs ran, the boys ran, and we bbq’ed burgers. It was good. We also set up the yard to be able to let Luna stay outside today. We thought the dogs would appreciate some more running room during the day.
By the time we got inside to eat, it was after 6. We ate, showered the boys, watched a quick show and did the bedtime thing. After that, we had some chores and gobs of FB games, and finally we got to bed.
There was incident, though.
I had been trying to tell Ken something and the boys or the dogs or any number of things kept interrupting me. The boys are notorious about doing this. I will be talking to someone and they will do the “mom, mom, mom, mom, mom” and get louder with each repetition. I have told them not to do this 100 times. Last night, I was cranky, and tired, and frankly, annoyed with the constant interruption. In my frustration, Dax got the brunt of it. He interrupted me while I was talking. I ignored him until the third mom when I spun my head around and practically bit his head off. I barked at him not to interrupt. I knew my mistake instantly. He didn’t cry, but he got very quiet. His lip quivered. I asked him if he was ok. He shook his head no, I asked if he would like a hug, and he nodded. So I held him tight for a while. He never cried, but he was upset.
Later, when he was in bed, he looked upset. I asked him what was wrong. He said, “I didn’t hurt myself”. This is Dax code for something did in fact hurt. I pressed for a while, trying to be as sweet as humanly possible. He finally opened up. “You hurt me, you yelled at me.” I am the worst mom ever. He told me he was going to put me in a time out and that he wanted to kick my butt. I did allow him to spank me, which cracked him up. I apologized again for yelling, but I also made sure to explain why I got upset. He seemed loads better, and he cuddled up with me while I sang. It was sweet. I hurt his feelings, and he was able to express this, so in hind sight, I think I am glad it happened if only to show him how to do this. I still feel bad, though. Poor kid.
Have I mentioned how great the show Glee is? Seriously, it is wonderful. I was memorized last night when we watched last week’s episode. There was a song at the end in which the subtle and yet not so subtle looks between the 3 actors in the scene were amazing. I was actually almost moved to tears. It was brilliant. I am thrilled that last night’s episode is at home waiting for us later!
Our plan is to aim for an 8 o’clock bedtime tonight. I don’t anticipate it happening, but we can dream, right?
Bobby’s drawings of people have evolved. Up until recently, his person would essentially be a giant happy face with arms and legs sticking out from it. On one of the recent drawings, his drawing of himself had a nose, and one he dubbed Ronald McDonald had a giant round nose. And I also have one that is of me in which I have not only a body, but a separate head and hair!!! I am so proud. Who knew stick figures would be so wonderful?
I am not feeling well. I am sure it is the sleep deprivation.
A moment of silence, please, as Nigel, Brandy’s kitty died last night. Yes, this means 2 of her beloved cats passed within 4 days of one another.
Ok, and one last note on Glee, but this just hit me again because it was funny as hell. The guy suggested they name their kid Drizzle. Almost died it was so funny.
Monarch had his first real run in with Luna. Luna was shockingly fearless despite the giant black and white cat in front of her. Monarch ended up backing down first and took off. He was less than thrilled. He did, however, still sleep at my feet, so he isn’t so mad at me that he has abandoned me or anything. I do look forward to Luna being a bit more calm if only so Monarch can sit on my lap for a while. He and Ittles hang out with me in the bathroom in the mornings and I give them lots of lovin so they know I have not traded them in for a little golden furball.
As much as I want to go home, I have suck it up. My goal is to be here every day between now and Thanksgiving.
The Thanksgiving plans have been more finalized. We are meeting Ken’s folks and Andy and Scott at 8 am, which is when the park opens. Apparently the park is open longer that week because it is a busy day. Not the best first experience for them in terms of crowd, but I think we will manage. That evening, we are going to this hotel place in Newport Beach where we will stay till Sunday. Not sure what the next couple days will be. Perhaps we will find things to do between now and then so that we have some plans. They may have plans, too, but who knows. Chris will check in on the dogs, as I am sure Luna will be pretty upset with us being gone. We don’t go on a lot of long trips, sans dog, so I think she will be ok. Plus, it isn’t like we can’t check in on them if need be. Newport Beach isn’t that far away. It isn’t super close, but I think it is reasonable to check in on the dogs. Hell, maybe we will look into it and see if we can take her.
I need to wake up!! I keep zoning out on different daydreams. Nothing exciting. Perhaps that is my problem. I should not be daydreaming about redoing the hallway. I should be maybe dreaming about some exciting adventure. Perhaps that would get me pumped.
Our Hometown Fair fish all died. So sad. They did quite well for a while. They were in too small a tank, really. Luckily, the boys are just as interested in dead fish as live, so they were not traumatized.
I have dog baths in my future. Lycos is one of those dogs that she never looks dirty. Plus, you can hose her off and she is dry in a couple minutes. It is nice to have a dog with fur like duck feathers. Luna, on the other hand, doesn’t have the luxury of looking all clean. She ran out in the dirt and mud yesterday and looked filthy. She also still has some flea dirt and crud on her ears I am working through. She needs more baths, and she has to be dried special because I guess their ears are more sensitive. Luckily this weekend is a warm weekend, so I should be able to bathe them both and Luna won’t get too cold.
I think my weekly visit to Target will include hair dye. Woo hoo! I think I am going to go back to a richer, deeper brown. I need something warm looking. I have not been thrilled with the current hair tone I am sporting. I have become bored with my hair again. It happens a lot. I want to trim it. I want to cut it. I want to color it all kinds of colors. I want to grow out my bangs. I want to trim them back to a manageable length. Right now, the bangs and I are fighting. They are much too long for my standard style I had been doing, but I have been playing with some other styles. The problem, though, is when I am not in a styling mode. Case and point yesterday. Bangs were all over the place while I was trying to make hamburgers. I have to wear a head band at home. I look silly. I can rock a slip, I suppose, which is today’s choice. And it isn’t like anyone in my house cares how my bangs look. But we do head out for things enough I like to look presentable.
Well this has been all of the sudden a hectic morning! Woo hoo! Not complaining at all. I am dealing once again with this uber annoying customer who sure, we issued some wrong credits, but have since corrected them and yet he is still belly aching. The real problem isn’t him so much as his advocate her on my side. She is the one issuing credits to correct the mistakes by this other broad that is no longer here. So she seems to feel like the world is picking on him. She said, oh, poor guy is trying to run a business and do the books and everything by himself. Dude, that is what EVERYONE DOES!!! He needs to suck it up. We had this issue before, but it just is always something. Luckily, I now have control in a sense, so anything new on the account will no longer be a problem. He likes to apply credits to invoices. Well, he is now going to get a check for all of them so he just has to pay. And if he doesn’t, I can shut him down.
Mmm…Dave Navarro. I had not heard that name in a while. I forgot how freaking yummy he is.
And Adam Lambert’s new CD comes out soon! YAY!!
Long live guyliner!!
And of course, as quickly as the crazy began, it has calmed down to a lull.
I love the fall. I love it because it means holidays are here. I love the whole Halloween feel. Thanksgiving gatherings, and Christmas decorations. It all makes me so dang happy. I have like 3 solid happy months. January, I get a little bummed. Kind of like a post partum depression. I don’t have gobs of holiday cheer and gatherings ahead of me. Don’t get me wrong, I then have things like Bobby’s birthday and my anniversary, but those don’t always involve gobs of people. But I think Bobby’s birthday this year will be big. He is going to be 5, so I think we need a real party.
Is it very mom like to be rockin out to Justin Timberlake’s Sexy Back in the mini van?
I need to trim Dax’s hair. Maybe tonight. His curls just get so tangled. I only have to cut off maybe an inch right after a shower. It won’t make the curls go away, but it will stop some of the tangle. At the very least, I need to do his bangs. Perhaps that adventure will happen tonight.
I am now working on a new report. It is a report Tammy used to do. It basically calculates out how many calls each rep does. The problem with this report is, none of it is straight forward. This of course makes no sense being that how hard is it for AT&T to tell me that ext blah blah blah called out 300 times? It shouldn’t be. But it gets better. We have 4 reports that are given to me that each have different numbers. From what I can tell, these 2 are what Tammy used to calculate numbers from. Yet the corresponding report she sent to the reps (I never looked at them before since I could give a shit how many calls I make) appears to be the actual calls made. Yet the total there is way higher than what is put on the stats. On top of that, the 4th report I think is inbound calls to 800 numbers listed in our dept. There are 6 employees listed on said report who are not with the company. Shoot, one lady has not been here in 6 years. No joke. The others have been gone at least 3. And, they have my name spelled wrong, another lady’s name spelled wrong, and once again, none of these numbers fucking matter!! It is a joke. A total joke. They are getting me set up in the system to see what AT&T sends us and I will have to figure it out from there. Leave it to me to not only open the can of worms, but to opt to go ahead and dump them all out, spread them out, and then pour gravy on top.
Maybe I need styling gel. I can bring back the windbreaker bangs look. Or at the very least, rock a faux hawk. Perhaps a hair style magazine needs to come home with me. Yes, yes, because lord knows I need more freaking magazines to not read. LOL!
I am amused that in every picture I have of Ken and I on my desk, I look different in every one, yet he looks the same. LOL!
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
blog time
10-21-09
This morning may change quickly depending on how Bobby is feeling. I was just on the phone with Ken since he was trying to track down his cell phone. Bobby got up during said conversation, and said he wasn’t feeling well. I got on the phone with him and he burst into tears. Poor darlin. So depending on if he was just tired or sick, we will see if I need to come home.
I would be ok with a mellow day at home. I don’t seem to be getting enough rest. It may just be I am still recovering from the long weekend of adventures.
I went to my folks last night. We did not discuss the puppy, nor was her existence even brought up. I know they will know at some point, but for now, I am not going to even go there. My mom knows. Whether or not she told my dad is hard to say. I can say she didn’t since my dad said nothing and I think it would not be something he couldn’t make just one minor dig at me.
They are going to Grammie’s house on Saturday. I think we will skip the outing. Mostly just because I have other things that need to be done around the house. Plus, Luna doesn’t need to be left another day. I figure between cleaning the house and playing out back, a free weekend is a good thing.
Tonight is actually a free night. It means I can take care of some clutter and be ready for the weekend.
It is so sweet! I got an invite from Adreanna to her son’s first birthday party. I knew her from when I was a kid. She and her brother lived up the street from us, and they went to Madison, too. I didn’t hang out with her, but I knew her, if that makes sense. Through the power of MySpace and Facebook, we connected. Since then, I have watched her struggle with having a baby, and then being fortunate enough to have her little boy last year. It was so heart warming! Plus, she and her husband just seem like the nicest people. So from a few comments here and there, we have become Facebook buddies. I thought it was so nice to get an invite to his birthday party.
Gore is having a going away party. Gore is this giant inflatable gray guy my dad picked up at a Halloween sale a couple years ago. He dresses it up for Halloween as a monster guy. Last year, Bobby dubbed him Gore. This year, he is back. Dax wasn’t thrilled with him at first, but once they stripped him down to be naked Gore, he was less threatening. He has been allowed to put on his shirt and pants, but no evil clown mask. Anyhoo, the boys now love them some Gore. With Halloween almost here and done, he will once again be placed in his box. So my mom has planned a whole party. There will be Dancing with Gore games, pin the tail on gore (I don’t think it is a tail, but it is that kind of game), cake, and lots of stuff. Can you now see where my crazy creativity comes from? What was really sweet is Bobby asked my mom if I could come.
What an interesting debate on K&B this morning. It is concerning whether or not the net is being abused with people and their twittering and blogging. Ralph is all up in arms saying most people don’t have interesting stuff to say. Ok, this may be true. But who cares? I would imagine my little blog here is only interesting to a handful of folks who know me, and maybe the occasional looky loo. But for those people, whom I appreciate more than you know if you are reading this, they are getting something out of it, so who is he to judge what is interesting. Plus, you don’t need to read all the blogs. You don’t need to follow Twitter. Hell, I have a Twitter acct, but I hardly use it. Even my personal lord and savior, Kevin Smith, tweets like every 30 minutes, and despite trying to follow it even on my phone, I got bored. And I would listen to him for hours if I could. But I know that there are other things to me right now that are more important. I don’t feel upset that he is still tweeting. I prefer Facebook since there is better interaction and more info. But I know that not everyone cares for the format. So that means they are not there. Facebook has given me old friends, kept me in better contact with current friends, and has connected me with family that I really only got to see once a year. My blog allows the folks who read it a whole lot of insight to my days, and honestly, it allows me to spend more time listening to them tell me about their days or problems or fantastic news. I can feel less selfish when I email with them later and I can let them do the talking since they know all my stuff. Not that I don’t want to share more, but I really like being there as the sounding board for folks. Plus, Ken has a whole list of everything he did for the day here, since let’s face it, his memory isn’t top notch. Love you, babe!
Maybe since we have Saturday free, we can go to the fabric store and I can look for my skirt material.
Luna loves to go on the walk with us. Last night, we went on another family walk. Ken with Lycos, me with Luna. And really, Ken with Bobby on his scooter, and me with Dax on his. Ken had the more experienced members. Bobby is quite good on his scooter. Lycos knows the ropes on walking. Dax is not quite 100% on his scooter, and Luna is still pulling hard on her leash. It is cute, though, I was making sure I was behind Dax and keeping Luna away from potential crashes from Dax. But when Dax would stop, so would Luna. She was always waiting for him. When he started going good, so would she. I think she really likes Dax. Dax also seemed to know how to be more forceful with pushing her off him or the table. Bobby is a bit more timid, so Luna doesn’t know that it is as wrong. I am a firm believer that dogs appreciate authority and prefer people to be in charge. So Luna knows not to bite me as much, but still is all lovey with me.
The morning routine went well this morning. I got ready, came out and peed the pup, then fed her. This kept her entertained while I did my facebooking. The last couple days were her whinning a bit since I wasn’t in there with her. So this morning’s new plan seemed to work well. She got a little visit in, and food, and was happy I was there.
She does well with her potty training, too. We have puppy pads, which is where she has piddled when she did pee inside. Side note, why is pee suddenly piddle when it is a puppy and piss when it is a cat? And kids, it is always potty. I think I have also used the term poopy for Luna’s poo, poop just for the kids, and crap or shit for the cats. Hmmm..
Anyway, the potty training goes well with her. She only pooped once inside, so that isn’t bad, really, and that was the first day. She now will pretty much always poop the minute we take her outside. And she tends to pee as well. This weekend will be the start of crate training, since it will mean our poor felines will once again regain use of the living room at night. One of them was rather annoyed at the VIP status of the room and went ahead and pissed (see, not piddled) on our counter. I understood the gesture, and we are making sure they know they are way cooler than the dog.
We are not sure where her crate will go for now. There is talk of putting her in Dax’s room since Dax can sleep through a lot of things, and truly, she would be quite happy in there and would be closed in so there would be no danger of dog attack. No, I am not concerned about that, but let’s face it, she is a dog, he is a kid, kids and dogs go together like peanut butter and jelly, but sometimes there is a squished sandwich and things go a little kooky. Either way, I don’t think she will go in there at first only because she still is awake and playful after Dax goes to bed. I also think her hanging out with us in the living room would be nice for her. Same with Lycos, and since her bed is in with Bobby, that kind of puts a damper on the whole plan. But with our new walk schedule, we may look to bedtime for everyone as a smidge later, maybe story time and everything done no later than 8, which would give the dogs time with the fam, and give Ken and I a little bit of grownup time before I really need to get my ass to bed.
It is another semi slow morning. I did a bunch of work, and I know I have some other stuff that can be done, but it is super monotonous so I am leery or lulling myself into a sleep mode. I may work on that tomorrow morning since then I also won’t be a backup for someone, which I am doing today.
Bobby was fine, btw. He apparently does this song and dance (or I suppose, sob and shuffle) many mornings where he seems to think if he says, “I’m not feeling very well today” that perhaps Daddy will either let him tag along with him, or that Mommy will come home and coddle him. I am shocked that he doesn’t bring up the penis issue.
Bobby has his speech and language testing next week. Should be interesting. It sounded to me like it wasn’t this IEP thingy my mom was talking about. Especially since the lady said this was something kind of new that is a quicker way of assessing what needs to be done. I wonder what kind of therapy he will get. I really feel that once he is in school, he will actually do quite well. I am looking forward to January when he can do some more formal preschooling. Of course, with us doing this testing, we may be able to get some kind of help in finding a school that specializes in speech therapy, and is one of those free state sponsored schools. Woo!
An old friend of mine from Madison just became a grandma. Mind you, she is 34. Damn! I only just became a mommy!
I don’t know why I get cheese bread. Especially since I just dip it in marinara sauce. Isn’t that essentially a cheese pizza? Shouldn’t I just get that?
Seriously, what did we do before instant communication? As of right now, I know that my one friend is sick, another friend’s sister is celebrating an anniversary, and yet another is annoyed at work. I also have spent much of the morning emailing with Jenni, ironically enough about her boyfriend not using the technology we have. I wonder if we are abusing the instant. If someone doesn’t text us back within a few minutes we assume the worst. Yet only 10 years ago (maybe even 2 for some of us), we didn’t even text. Hell, email was the quickest method when it came to that, and even that always was slow. Yet did we consider that even 10 years before that we didn’t even have that ability. I was still writing hand written notes and leaving them on my porch. Sure, we phoned people through the years, but at one point, if someone wasn’t home, you could not get a hold of them, period. And we dealt with it. That being said, I love the technology offered, but sometimes I think we all get a little too excitable about it when it doesn’t provide the info as quick as we might be accustomed to. I know I am guilty of this. I sat in the car yesterday waiting on Ken to text back to let me know if I should use cash or the card for gas, and I got impatient. Never you mind that it had been all of 2 minutes. This isn’t good! I get on Bobby for always saying things are taking too long. Perhaps I need to get on me!
This morning may change quickly depending on how Bobby is feeling. I was just on the phone with Ken since he was trying to track down his cell phone. Bobby got up during said conversation, and said he wasn’t feeling well. I got on the phone with him and he burst into tears. Poor darlin. So depending on if he was just tired or sick, we will see if I need to come home.
I would be ok with a mellow day at home. I don’t seem to be getting enough rest. It may just be I am still recovering from the long weekend of adventures.
I went to my folks last night. We did not discuss the puppy, nor was her existence even brought up. I know they will know at some point, but for now, I am not going to even go there. My mom knows. Whether or not she told my dad is hard to say. I can say she didn’t since my dad said nothing and I think it would not be something he couldn’t make just one minor dig at me.
They are going to Grammie’s house on Saturday. I think we will skip the outing. Mostly just because I have other things that need to be done around the house. Plus, Luna doesn’t need to be left another day. I figure between cleaning the house and playing out back, a free weekend is a good thing.
Tonight is actually a free night. It means I can take care of some clutter and be ready for the weekend.
It is so sweet! I got an invite from Adreanna to her son’s first birthday party. I knew her from when I was a kid. She and her brother lived up the street from us, and they went to Madison, too. I didn’t hang out with her, but I knew her, if that makes sense. Through the power of MySpace and Facebook, we connected. Since then, I have watched her struggle with having a baby, and then being fortunate enough to have her little boy last year. It was so heart warming! Plus, she and her husband just seem like the nicest people. So from a few comments here and there, we have become Facebook buddies. I thought it was so nice to get an invite to his birthday party.
Gore is having a going away party. Gore is this giant inflatable gray guy my dad picked up at a Halloween sale a couple years ago. He dresses it up for Halloween as a monster guy. Last year, Bobby dubbed him Gore. This year, he is back. Dax wasn’t thrilled with him at first, but once they stripped him down to be naked Gore, he was less threatening. He has been allowed to put on his shirt and pants, but no evil clown mask. Anyhoo, the boys now love them some Gore. With Halloween almost here and done, he will once again be placed in his box. So my mom has planned a whole party. There will be Dancing with Gore games, pin the tail on gore (I don’t think it is a tail, but it is that kind of game), cake, and lots of stuff. Can you now see where my crazy creativity comes from? What was really sweet is Bobby asked my mom if I could come.
What an interesting debate on K&B this morning. It is concerning whether or not the net is being abused with people and their twittering and blogging. Ralph is all up in arms saying most people don’t have interesting stuff to say. Ok, this may be true. But who cares? I would imagine my little blog here is only interesting to a handful of folks who know me, and maybe the occasional looky loo. But for those people, whom I appreciate more than you know if you are reading this, they are getting something out of it, so who is he to judge what is interesting. Plus, you don’t need to read all the blogs. You don’t need to follow Twitter. Hell, I have a Twitter acct, but I hardly use it. Even my personal lord and savior, Kevin Smith, tweets like every 30 minutes, and despite trying to follow it even on my phone, I got bored. And I would listen to him for hours if I could. But I know that there are other things to me right now that are more important. I don’t feel upset that he is still tweeting. I prefer Facebook since there is better interaction and more info. But I know that not everyone cares for the format. So that means they are not there. Facebook has given me old friends, kept me in better contact with current friends, and has connected me with family that I really only got to see once a year. My blog allows the folks who read it a whole lot of insight to my days, and honestly, it allows me to spend more time listening to them tell me about their days or problems or fantastic news. I can feel less selfish when I email with them later and I can let them do the talking since they know all my stuff. Not that I don’t want to share more, but I really like being there as the sounding board for folks. Plus, Ken has a whole list of everything he did for the day here, since let’s face it, his memory isn’t top notch. Love you, babe!
Maybe since we have Saturday free, we can go to the fabric store and I can look for my skirt material.
Luna loves to go on the walk with us. Last night, we went on another family walk. Ken with Lycos, me with Luna. And really, Ken with Bobby on his scooter, and me with Dax on his. Ken had the more experienced members. Bobby is quite good on his scooter. Lycos knows the ropes on walking. Dax is not quite 100% on his scooter, and Luna is still pulling hard on her leash. It is cute, though, I was making sure I was behind Dax and keeping Luna away from potential crashes from Dax. But when Dax would stop, so would Luna. She was always waiting for him. When he started going good, so would she. I think she really likes Dax. Dax also seemed to know how to be more forceful with pushing her off him or the table. Bobby is a bit more timid, so Luna doesn’t know that it is as wrong. I am a firm believer that dogs appreciate authority and prefer people to be in charge. So Luna knows not to bite me as much, but still is all lovey with me.
The morning routine went well this morning. I got ready, came out and peed the pup, then fed her. This kept her entertained while I did my facebooking. The last couple days were her whinning a bit since I wasn’t in there with her. So this morning’s new plan seemed to work well. She got a little visit in, and food, and was happy I was there.
She does well with her potty training, too. We have puppy pads, which is where she has piddled when she did pee inside. Side note, why is pee suddenly piddle when it is a puppy and piss when it is a cat? And kids, it is always potty. I think I have also used the term poopy for Luna’s poo, poop just for the kids, and crap or shit for the cats. Hmmm..
Anyway, the potty training goes well with her. She only pooped once inside, so that isn’t bad, really, and that was the first day. She now will pretty much always poop the minute we take her outside. And she tends to pee as well. This weekend will be the start of crate training, since it will mean our poor felines will once again regain use of the living room at night. One of them was rather annoyed at the VIP status of the room and went ahead and pissed (see, not piddled) on our counter. I understood the gesture, and we are making sure they know they are way cooler than the dog.
We are not sure where her crate will go for now. There is talk of putting her in Dax’s room since Dax can sleep through a lot of things, and truly, she would be quite happy in there and would be closed in so there would be no danger of dog attack. No, I am not concerned about that, but let’s face it, she is a dog, he is a kid, kids and dogs go together like peanut butter and jelly, but sometimes there is a squished sandwich and things go a little kooky. Either way, I don’t think she will go in there at first only because she still is awake and playful after Dax goes to bed. I also think her hanging out with us in the living room would be nice for her. Same with Lycos, and since her bed is in with Bobby, that kind of puts a damper on the whole plan. But with our new walk schedule, we may look to bedtime for everyone as a smidge later, maybe story time and everything done no later than 8, which would give the dogs time with the fam, and give Ken and I a little bit of grownup time before I really need to get my ass to bed.
It is another semi slow morning. I did a bunch of work, and I know I have some other stuff that can be done, but it is super monotonous so I am leery or lulling myself into a sleep mode. I may work on that tomorrow morning since then I also won’t be a backup for someone, which I am doing today.
Bobby was fine, btw. He apparently does this song and dance (or I suppose, sob and shuffle) many mornings where he seems to think if he says, “I’m not feeling very well today” that perhaps Daddy will either let him tag along with him, or that Mommy will come home and coddle him. I am shocked that he doesn’t bring up the penis issue.
Bobby has his speech and language testing next week. Should be interesting. It sounded to me like it wasn’t this IEP thingy my mom was talking about. Especially since the lady said this was something kind of new that is a quicker way of assessing what needs to be done. I wonder what kind of therapy he will get. I really feel that once he is in school, he will actually do quite well. I am looking forward to January when he can do some more formal preschooling. Of course, with us doing this testing, we may be able to get some kind of help in finding a school that specializes in speech therapy, and is one of those free state sponsored schools. Woo!
An old friend of mine from Madison just became a grandma. Mind you, she is 34. Damn! I only just became a mommy!
I don’t know why I get cheese bread. Especially since I just dip it in marinara sauce. Isn’t that essentially a cheese pizza? Shouldn’t I just get that?
Seriously, what did we do before instant communication? As of right now, I know that my one friend is sick, another friend’s sister is celebrating an anniversary, and yet another is annoyed at work. I also have spent much of the morning emailing with Jenni, ironically enough about her boyfriend not using the technology we have. I wonder if we are abusing the instant. If someone doesn’t text us back within a few minutes we assume the worst. Yet only 10 years ago (maybe even 2 for some of us), we didn’t even text. Hell, email was the quickest method when it came to that, and even that always was slow. Yet did we consider that even 10 years before that we didn’t even have that ability. I was still writing hand written notes and leaving them on my porch. Sure, we phoned people through the years, but at one point, if someone wasn’t home, you could not get a hold of them, period. And we dealt with it. That being said, I love the technology offered, but sometimes I think we all get a little too excitable about it when it doesn’t provide the info as quick as we might be accustomed to. I know I am guilty of this. I sat in the car yesterday waiting on Ken to text back to let me know if I should use cash or the card for gas, and I got impatient. Never you mind that it had been all of 2 minutes. This isn’t good! I get on Bobby for always saying things are taking too long. Perhaps I need to get on me!
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
I almost forgot to post this!
10-20-09
I don’t plan on another novel of a post today, so your eyes can rest easy.
I smell like puppy this morning. Luna felt that my shower didn’t clean me enough so she went ahead and finished the job. She has the most fowl puppy breath ever. Although it is getting better. We think that the food she ate before us did this. The only real problem with the food we use for her now is that it stinks. Ok, I am really the only one who notices this. It specifically smells like formula. And formula is one of those smells that always made me ill. It may have been psychological, being a uber breast feeding mommy, but either way, her kibble isn’t pleasant on my nose.
Luna is doing well. Lycos can’t seem to decide if she wants to be in charge or just a big ole wuss. I have now found her on the couch when Luna is in there. She looks like some 50’s housewife who just saw a mouse.
We gave Luna all of the dog toys in the house. Lycos has never liked most of them aside from her lion, so everything else is fair game. Luna seemed appreciative of the chew toys, and it meant she wasn’t chewing on everything else in sight.
She is in crazy chewing mode still. So much so it made the boys pull a Lycos where they also were up high on the couch so that Luna could not mouth them. I showed the boys what to do with her when she did this. Dax seemed to get the hang of it more so. He has a more forceful “no”. Bobby was a little spooked, but also enjoyed playing with her. Once the mouthing goes away, I think it will be a little easier for them.
We took Bobby back to the doc for his follow up after the procedure. Doctor Lesser said the stitches looked good and was pleased. Bobby had to pee, so we told him he could show the doc how much better it was. Bobby was shockingly pleased to do this. So we got a couple of cups and he stood up on the table. He started peeing in the cup, and the doc was pleased with the stream. Of course, Bobby had way more pee than needed to show this. The cup started filling up fast and it didn’t seem like he was going to be done soon. We all started yelling to have him stop. The stream stopped just as the cup was at maximum capacity. Ken put another cup under, and Bobby proceeded to fill that one up as well. It felt like we were all yelling at Forest Gump when he ran on the football field. Luckily, Bobby thought it was all amusing, and the doc was pretty impressed with his ability to stop and then start again. We do have to start putting the tip of a catheter in, well, the tip of Bobby. It is just to make sure it all stays open and healed. The doc wasn’t too concerned and told us he felt it looked good.
When I had first picked up the boys, I took the them and the dogs out in the yard to play. We were out there for a bit, but I knew we needed to come in soon since we needed to get to the doctor for Bobby. The boys were also being a bit cranky, specifically Dax. After he pitched one fit over some toy I decided it was time to go in. I needed them calm for the doc. So I announced it was time to go in, and Bobby and the dogs headed to the house. Dax, however, flipped out. In true 3 year old fashion, he kicked, he screamed, he even tried to reason with me. As the rest of us were walking in the house, Dax was still standing firm and saying to me, “Mom, I stopped crying! I want to stay outside!’ I calmly explained I appreciated his lack of tears but that it was time to come in. He still held firm, with the slow inching towards the back door. I went in with Bobby and the dogs and got them settled in the living room. Dax by now was standing on the back porch, screen door wide open, screaming he wanted to go outside. It had become comical. At one point, he was banging on something, and I was a little concerned he was going to hurt himself. So I went up to him, picked him up and placed him in the kitchen. At this point, he pretty much flung himself to the ground, screaming the whole time. I had to try very hard not to laugh.
eHeI closed the screen and he charged the door. I held it shut, and he kept trying to open it. So I opted to close the back door. This door is a bitch to open as a grownup. So the 3 year old, in all his efforts, could not open it. I stood there, and watched his tiny struggle. He finally stopped for a second, looked at me and says very seriously, “it’s locked, mom!” I nodded, and he pouted for a moment. He started screaming again, and at this point I said to him that he had to the count of 5 before he would need to take this tantrum into his room. I didn’t even get to 1. He is really good at stopping suddenly on that. He holds in all of his anger and screaming in order to not be in trouble. I then told him I could get him some milk if he went and sat down. He agreed, and I could tell he was better when he saw something on the ground and said, “Somebody (sniff) dropped (sniff) this here (sniffle), mom,” I told him I would take care of it. And he happily trotted off. Such a trooper.
Ok, I am not going to get into it, but I have a question. Ok, more of a discussion topic that I may need to visit later.
Jack Johnson, a highly successful black boxer from the early 1900’s, was arrested and served prison time in 1912 for essentially dating a white woman. Now, some senators are trying to get his a posthumous pardon for said crime. Look, I totally understand that we were a young, and if possible, even more stupid country back then. We had bad laws, we had bad morals, and let’s face it, we were still learning. But bottom line, the guy broke a law that was in effect. I am not suggesting it wasn’t wrong that the law existed, but aren’t there better things our senators can be spending time on? A dead guy who broke a stupid racist law from almost 100 years ago doesn’t need time spent on him to get a pardon. I think that we need to start thinking about how we spend our time and efforts. A pardon, I suppose will make his family feel vindicated, but does it bring him back from the dead? Does it mean he didn’t actually have to serve time back then? Does it mean that we should apologize to every family member who had people in that era who were convicted of really stupid laws? Racism is an ugly thing. What good does it do, though, to concentrate on correcting it with a guy who isn’t around anymore? Why can’t we look to the future? Why doesn’t John McCain, who is one of the senators leading this cause, maybe look at helping some poor black neighborhood with all of the money and time he spent on this case? Sure, there is symbolism in pardoning this man, but I think that you would find that no matter how symbolic the gesture is, it doesn’t mean that it is going to keep a-holes today from being racist tomorrow.
Dammit! I forgot my stack of magazines at home. I knew I had put them in a not so good place because I knew I would forget them there. Dang! Oh well. I will live, I just would have liked to read them at lunch.
As I get older, I have noticed more and more people calling me Gen. You would think it would be the other way around. Odd.
If I were skinny, I am pretty sure I would end up dressing like a skank. Not saying I will not strive to be skinny, but I wonder if I would just end up flaunting it.
When our year is done with the sex every day, I wonder what we will do then.
We went by the pumpkin patch that had the pony rides. They want $6 a ride! Lame! In fact, most of the stuff costs, so I think just a pumpkin from Ralphs may be this year’s pumpkin.
I want a tattoo of a small heart on my hip.
There is a little part of me that wishes I sang beautifully. Sure, my kids don’t mind my singing, but I think they are just being nice.
Clearly I work with a set of people that can appreciate my crappy taste buds. I am eating my mac and cheese with tuna, and several people have told me it smells yummy and have eaten the same thing. LOL!!
I don’t plan on another novel of a post today, so your eyes can rest easy.
I smell like puppy this morning. Luna felt that my shower didn’t clean me enough so she went ahead and finished the job. She has the most fowl puppy breath ever. Although it is getting better. We think that the food she ate before us did this. The only real problem with the food we use for her now is that it stinks. Ok, I am really the only one who notices this. It specifically smells like formula. And formula is one of those smells that always made me ill. It may have been psychological, being a uber breast feeding mommy, but either way, her kibble isn’t pleasant on my nose.
Luna is doing well. Lycos can’t seem to decide if she wants to be in charge or just a big ole wuss. I have now found her on the couch when Luna is in there. She looks like some 50’s housewife who just saw a mouse.
We gave Luna all of the dog toys in the house. Lycos has never liked most of them aside from her lion, so everything else is fair game. Luna seemed appreciative of the chew toys, and it meant she wasn’t chewing on everything else in sight.
She is in crazy chewing mode still. So much so it made the boys pull a Lycos where they also were up high on the couch so that Luna could not mouth them. I showed the boys what to do with her when she did this. Dax seemed to get the hang of it more so. He has a more forceful “no”. Bobby was a little spooked, but also enjoyed playing with her. Once the mouthing goes away, I think it will be a little easier for them.
We took Bobby back to the doc for his follow up after the procedure. Doctor Lesser said the stitches looked good and was pleased. Bobby had to pee, so we told him he could show the doc how much better it was. Bobby was shockingly pleased to do this. So we got a couple of cups and he stood up on the table. He started peeing in the cup, and the doc was pleased with the stream. Of course, Bobby had way more pee than needed to show this. The cup started filling up fast and it didn’t seem like he was going to be done soon. We all started yelling to have him stop. The stream stopped just as the cup was at maximum capacity. Ken put another cup under, and Bobby proceeded to fill that one up as well. It felt like we were all yelling at Forest Gump when he ran on the football field. Luckily, Bobby thought it was all amusing, and the doc was pretty impressed with his ability to stop and then start again. We do have to start putting the tip of a catheter in, well, the tip of Bobby. It is just to make sure it all stays open and healed. The doc wasn’t too concerned and told us he felt it looked good.
When I had first picked up the boys, I took the them and the dogs out in the yard to play. We were out there for a bit, but I knew we needed to come in soon since we needed to get to the doctor for Bobby. The boys were also being a bit cranky, specifically Dax. After he pitched one fit over some toy I decided it was time to go in. I needed them calm for the doc. So I announced it was time to go in, and Bobby and the dogs headed to the house. Dax, however, flipped out. In true 3 year old fashion, he kicked, he screamed, he even tried to reason with me. As the rest of us were walking in the house, Dax was still standing firm and saying to me, “Mom, I stopped crying! I want to stay outside!’ I calmly explained I appreciated his lack of tears but that it was time to come in. He still held firm, with the slow inching towards the back door. I went in with Bobby and the dogs and got them settled in the living room. Dax by now was standing on the back porch, screen door wide open, screaming he wanted to go outside. It had become comical. At one point, he was banging on something, and I was a little concerned he was going to hurt himself. So I went up to him, picked him up and placed him in the kitchen. At this point, he pretty much flung himself to the ground, screaming the whole time. I had to try very hard not to laugh.
eHeI closed the screen and he charged the door. I held it shut, and he kept trying to open it. So I opted to close the back door. This door is a bitch to open as a grownup. So the 3 year old, in all his efforts, could not open it. I stood there, and watched his tiny struggle. He finally stopped for a second, looked at me and says very seriously, “it’s locked, mom!” I nodded, and he pouted for a moment. He started screaming again, and at this point I said to him that he had to the count of 5 before he would need to take this tantrum into his room. I didn’t even get to 1. He is really good at stopping suddenly on that. He holds in all of his anger and screaming in order to not be in trouble. I then told him I could get him some milk if he went and sat down. He agreed, and I could tell he was better when he saw something on the ground and said, “Somebody (sniff) dropped (sniff) this here (sniffle), mom,” I told him I would take care of it. And he happily trotted off. Such a trooper.
Ok, I am not going to get into it, but I have a question. Ok, more of a discussion topic that I may need to visit later.
Jack Johnson, a highly successful black boxer from the early 1900’s, was arrested and served prison time in 1912 for essentially dating a white woman. Now, some senators are trying to get his a posthumous pardon for said crime. Look, I totally understand that we were a young, and if possible, even more stupid country back then. We had bad laws, we had bad morals, and let’s face it, we were still learning. But bottom line, the guy broke a law that was in effect. I am not suggesting it wasn’t wrong that the law existed, but aren’t there better things our senators can be spending time on? A dead guy who broke a stupid racist law from almost 100 years ago doesn’t need time spent on him to get a pardon. I think that we need to start thinking about how we spend our time and efforts. A pardon, I suppose will make his family feel vindicated, but does it bring him back from the dead? Does it mean he didn’t actually have to serve time back then? Does it mean that we should apologize to every family member who had people in that era who were convicted of really stupid laws? Racism is an ugly thing. What good does it do, though, to concentrate on correcting it with a guy who isn’t around anymore? Why can’t we look to the future? Why doesn’t John McCain, who is one of the senators leading this cause, maybe look at helping some poor black neighborhood with all of the money and time he spent on this case? Sure, there is symbolism in pardoning this man, but I think that you would find that no matter how symbolic the gesture is, it doesn’t mean that it is going to keep a-holes today from being racist tomorrow.
Dammit! I forgot my stack of magazines at home. I knew I had put them in a not so good place because I knew I would forget them there. Dang! Oh well. I will live, I just would have liked to read them at lunch.
As I get older, I have noticed more and more people calling me Gen. You would think it would be the other way around. Odd.
If I were skinny, I am pretty sure I would end up dressing like a skank. Not saying I will not strive to be skinny, but I wonder if I would just end up flaunting it.
When our year is done with the sex every day, I wonder what we will do then.
We went by the pumpkin patch that had the pony rides. They want $6 a ride! Lame! In fact, most of the stuff costs, so I think just a pumpkin from Ralphs may be this year’s pumpkin.
I want a tattoo of a small heart on my hip.
There is a little part of me that wishes I sang beautifully. Sure, my kids don’t mind my singing, but I think they are just being nice.
Clearly I work with a set of people that can appreciate my crappy taste buds. I am eating my mac and cheese with tuna, and several people have told me it smells yummy and have eaten the same thing. LOL!!
Monday, October 19, 2009
Of course it is long, I am writing 4 days worth of material!
10-19-09
Never has so much happened in 4 days!
Wednesday night when I went home, I had no idea how long my weekend would be. I knew there was stress, but I didn’t know about the laughter, the joy, the sad, the funny, the nostalgic, and well, just all around great weekend we would have.
Let’s start with the happenings on Thursday first.
I got up normal time on Thursday morning, ready to get the household up to head over to the hospital. The boys were in good spirits, which was great for me. Bobby didn’t seem too nervous. That may have been because he was tired. Either way, there was no fighting, not chaos. It was pretty mellow.
We got to the hospital a little after 6 am. The place was a ghost town. Ever since they moved the Emergency Room, you didn’t really have to walk through gobs of sick people to get anywhere.
My parents got there as we did, and our troop headed towards the wing in which Bobby was going to be worked on. As we approached, you could see there were people in there. We had no idea it would be a full house!
Scores of people. Seriously. Apparently out patient surgery is a 24 hour affair. The people in this waiting room were not just there waiting to be worked on. Many were waiting on their family members to be done, and it wasn’t even 6:30. Part of me wished we could have gotten him in at 4 am.
There were also other kids. One infant. Lots of older folks. Luckily, we found a group of chairs, and we set up shop, waiting for his time, and watching the sun come up.
My mom had packed them little goody bags full of toys, so they were quite jazzed for Grandma time.
They called his name about an hour in, and we bid our goodbyes to Dax, who was quite upset that we were leaving. Bobby wasn’t thrilled, either. Both brothers didn’t want to be separate, which is quite endearing, really.
We got into the staging area where we were ushered into our little curtained area. We had the standard barrage of questions that were verifying Bobby was Robert, born in Feb of 2005 and was getting his penis worked on. He was a little nervous, but kept it together quite well. We didn’t have a bed in our cubby yet, so we had a little bit of room to work as we put Bobby in his hospital jammies. They were cute, way cuter then the grownup ones. They had little sleepy tigers on them, and looked quite comfy. Us grownups get the silly dresses that our booty hangs out (which sucked that Bobby didn’t get this, being this was a selling point).
After he was dressed, they needed to do weight and height. This was going well until they decided they also needed his blood pressure. They put this little bandage thing around his arm before they put the actual arm balloon went on, and Bobby lost it. Sobbing and truly scared for the first time. Luckily, all of it went quick so he was better. Plus, they brought him his bed, so that gave him some distraction.
Once he was in bed, the doc showed up, and we discussed with him the plan. In reality, Ken talked to him, while I kept Bobby distracted from the goings on. Dr. Lesser assured us the whole procedure was going to be super short, and we were told Bobby would not have to have an IV until after he was asleep. Awesome! He would be given this oral medication that would mellow him out, then he would be gassed. This sounded great, because really, one of the biggest issues I was having with the whole thing was that an IV sucks.
Bobby was given the oral meds. It was like a fourth of a shot, but whatever it was, he sucked in down, and within 20 minutes, we had the makings of a college kid who had inhaled. He was goofy, he was giggly, and wow, was he stoned! As much as it probably should not be funny, it was hysterical. He laughed a lot, and just seemed so tired and happy. It was perfect.
The anesthesiologist came over and this is where our first jolt of not so great hit us. He informed us that we would not be there when Bobby went under. Apparently the hospital told us wrong. I wasn’t thrilled, and we mulled over the whole thing for a bit, and Ken told me it was really up to me. As much as I wanted to be there for him, I also knew based on his stonedness right at that point, he would probably be fine. No point in going through all of what we had done, and then stop to only do it again. I would be able to walk him to the outside of the OR, and he would be put under pretty quickly. He also would not remember any of it. So I said ok, and we were on the countdown.
Ken busted out his Nano and let Bobby watch Yo Gabba Gabba. It seemed appropriate since it is the show college kids watch when they are stoned. The nurses seemed amazed at this, as if no other kids have come in with something to watch while they waited to be worked on. So odd. They even let him take in into the OR so he would be distracted from being away from us for a few minutes before being asleep.
We thought that we had to wait another hour, when they came up like 5 minutes after this information and said it was time. We wheeled him to the hall and could see the OR door a few feet away. We said goodbye, and he looked a little upset, but seemed to keep it together. I also kept the tears to a minimum. I had my little wash cloth to dry my face as I assumed it would be bad to return to a waiting room full of family and patients, crying since it may make them all more nervous.
We both were going to go to the cafeteria to eat and find Dax and my parents, but we were told only one of us could leave. So Ken told me to go find Dax, because he knew how important it was for me to find him. I headed up to the cafeteria, only to not find them. So I sent a text only to discover they were pretty much by the waiting room. Oh well. I headed back, sans food. I couldn’t eat anyway. I was still too nervous.
Dax was thrilled to see me, and ran down the long hall towards me with such enthusiasm, it made me so happy.
The hospital, and the city, was in the midst of a earthquake drill that was going on for a couple hours. They had triage and “injured” people wandering around, which was fun.
The doc came out in what only seemed like a few minutes. He was in great spirits and told us his procedure went way well. He would not in fact have to have a catheter, and the stitches were really small. He didn’t have any other growths in the rest of the urethra, so it was all kinds of good. Woo hoo!
About 10 minutes later, if that, he was ready for us. I was in the midst of explaining to my folks, and they had to yell at me (Ken and everyone) to tell me he was ready. Clearly, I was out of it.
Not as much as poor Bobby. They told us when kids come to, be warned. They are in the world’s worst mood. They were not kidding. Although, in all fairness, he was less pissy and crazy compared to his night terrors. Who knew those sleepless nights would be good training! Bobby was positively calm compared to those thrash fests. We comforted him, and he had a popsicle and some juice. He didn’t share my opinion on it being the world’s best, but perhaps I am just odd on that.
It was strange watching him come to. He would cry, then all of the sudden fall back asleep. I stroked his head, and made sure he had his blanket. They said he might vomit, but only once was I concerned this would take place. We had to be in recovery for about 2 hours total. He finally came to, and was calm. He asked for Dax, which, by the way, so cute. We brought Dax in, and Dax sat at the base of Bobby’s bed, looking all concerned. He said, “Bobby has a boo boo but is all better?” The boys bonded quietly, and really, you could see Bobby perked up with his little brother being there. My mom came in at one point, as did my dad. He continued to improve and we knew it would be soon.
They wanted him to pee before we could leave. Makes sense. You mess with the peeing tool, you want to make sure it still works. Bobby tried. He really did. He went into the bathroom with us, and all the tricks to help didn’t work. Running water, he stood, he sat, Ken peed, etc. Nothing. So we went back to the bed where he continued getting IV fluids and he finished off his apple juice. Kid was uber hydrated, just no pee.
We told him he could pee in one of the pee bottles, which he thought was funny and a great idea until the thing was around him. He just couldn’t do it. Finally, we talked to the doc, and he told us Bobby could go home. We just needed to let him know if he peed (or didn’t). Sure enough, the minute we got home, he went and peed. Woo hoo!
Our adventure was over, and he was just told to take it easy when we got home. Easy we did. Both boys crashed out hard after some oatmeal (Bobby’s request), and I also fell asleep. I was beat.
I woke up to the balloon boy drama, and we actually found ourselves watching the balloon, wondering if when it crashed if there would be a dead kid. I kind of assumed he wasn’t, but you could never be too sure. I find it humorous that it was a big hoax.
The rest of the afternoon was spent mellow. Bobby would have preferred to run a bit, but he was tender. He has to put ointment on 3 times a day, and even that bugs him a bit. On a plus note, you can tell how much easier it is for him to pee now. It was that clear even from the first pee.
That night, though, it took Bobby some time to settle. He kept coming out of his room, so I told Ken that he could sleep in our room since let’s face it, he had a big day. Ken brought him in so the two of them could watch the hockey game. I crashed out. Ken did take him back to bed after the game, and I think he mostly settled, but it was late.
Friday was Bobby and my day of fun. Sort of. I mean, he couldn’t have gobs of fun with a hurt unit. But we managed. We watched The Wizard of Oz. He loved it. He became slightly obsessed with the Tin Man. I had rented the flick from NetFlix, so I may now need to go purchase it, as Bobby showed the movie to Dax later, and Dax enjoyed it, too.
Ken didn’t have to leave till later, which worked out great since at 10 am I had my LA Unified phone interview for Bobby’s speech and language evaluation. The lady who called for it was so much better than the dude I was originally going to talk to. She asked me questions like how my pregnancy was all the way up to things about his vocabulary. I am supposed to be getting a packet in the mail shortly, which will get me an evaluation from the testers he will see. The lady made me feel better, and made sure I knew that there was nothing to stress about yet. Although, my mom seemed to indicate that Bobby is harder to understand then I realize, which bugs me.
After the movie and my phone interview, Bobby and I went to Target, and then to get lunch. I was going to get him lunch, but since I told him he could have whatever he wanted for food all day, he said all he wanted for lunch was sports candy (which means any kind of fruit). When he wanted breakfast earlier, I asked what he wanted, so he said a sandwich. I don’t think he expected me to actually make him one, but he was tickled when I presented him with it. The fruit made him super happy, too. I on the other hand treated myself to hot dogs from WeinerDude. On a random happy making note on that, they also gave me two sodas even though I only paid for one! Yay!
The rest of the afternoon was spent with me helping him build the Lego pirate ship we have. It is actually Duplo, but it is mega cute. He was thrilled with this, and played with it all afternoon. I had some trouble with parts of it, and luckily, Ken got back from classes and was able to help me.
At 3:30, Bobby and I retrieved Dax and went to my parent house. The boys were able to ride bikes and get out some energy, which was great. It was fresh air for all.
When we got home, I so didn’t want to cook, so I looked up the Kids Eat Free restaurants and determined that IHOP was our option. So we headed over there. It was a pleasant meal, with me feeling like we need to start having dinner together more all sitting down as a family. The boys, although they do eat at a table, I don’t think it is good enough when it is just the two of them.
We stopped by Petco to get some crickets for the new lizard we found (the boys dubbed him Sparky). The boys and I rocked out in the car to the Beatles and Rush, and Ken went inside to get the crickets. He came out with crickets, some fish supplies, and a Golden Retrievers magazine for me. I laughed.
Let me explain.
Lately, with this bug up my ass about wanting a Golden, I had gone a little stupid. On Wednesday night, I had been thumbing through the Penny Saver and came across an add for Golden Retriever pups for sale. I thought I would call to see if we could go look at them. I figured, what the hell. I wasn’t truly in the market for one, but I wanted to get a feel for breeders and what was out there. I have been looking at shelters for a few weeks now, so this was just another option. I called the guy, who was quite nice. He told me we could come by around 6. Perfect. I sent Ken a text to see if we could go look, and he agreed.
We went by his place. They had 11 pups. We got to meet the mom and dad dog, both total sweeties. The puppies were great. All good size, and all looked healthy. The guy, and some woman we are unsure of if it was his mom or maybe his mom in law, were nice. We played with the pups a bit and then said our goodbye after some general questions. I liked them, and thought that we could hold on to his number for the next litter they had. We headed home, and truly, my mind went back to the following morning’s activities.
I had the pups in the back of my head, and I just knew they would be a good batch. But of course, they were pricey, and I didn’t think Ken wanted a pup at this point. I couldn’t blame him. We just finally got the kids to sleep and pee on their own. So why get another “baby”?
So when he presented me with the magazine, which was basically all about Golden’s, I laughed and told him it was sweet of him to get me puppy porn.
I figured that was the end of it for now.
Saturday morning was a morning of chaos for some reason. Ken had a birthday party to go to, and the boys were restless. Ken headed out, and I opted to go ahead and build the Duplo castle set for them. Way more complex then the boat, but they both loved it. At one point, I asked Bobby if he wanted to help me and he says, “No, you look like you are doing great, Mom.” Awesome.
I finished the castle, the boys played, and I got them some lunch. I finally sat down at the computer while they were eating. Ken had called a bit before saying he had screwed up and that the party was actually Sunday. I laughed, and he said he would be home after a couple errands.
I was doing some game on Facebook when he walked in. I didn’t look up. He had stuff in his hands, but I assumed it was party stuff. He shuffled off to the kitchen and so I called out, asking him where he stopped. He said he had to pick up something. I asked what, still not looked. He came back into the room, so I turned to face him. Instead, what I would see was this puppy sitting in the crook of his arm. OMG!
Ken had decided to go and get one of the pups after the party. He really did think the party was Saturday, but the fact that it wasn’t kind of made it even funnier. He picked the smallest girl, which was what we thought would be the best. He made an excellent choice.
The boys went to nap, which allowed Ken and I to sit with the pup a bit. She is quite sweet. Very mellow, aside from her constant mouthing, which I know is puppy-ness. She is only 2 months, had one set of shots so far. She has not been spayed yet, so we have to set that up. She shockingly didn’t whine the way I expected. Don’t get me wrong, pup can whine. We put her in a box while Ken and I hung out in the living room, and she howled. We ended up letting her wander the living room, where she passed out. It had been a big day for her!
We went through names. As much as we wanted the boys to help, we were only going to let them “help”. We wanted to come up with a list of pre approved names, and we would let them decide. I had Mabel in my head for a bit, but it had already been rejected by both boys. Kiera was a possibility, which Ken and I both liked. We started going through other Star Trek names, Star Wars, books like Princess Bride, etc. We then came to the land of Harry Potter, and Ken suggested Luna. LOVE IT! So it was between Kiera and Luna. But with the boys asleep, we had already settled on Luna. Dax woke up first, and we asked him if he liked the name, and he did. Bobby woke up not long after, and he too thought it was good. So it was decided. Luna was our new pup!
Lycos isn’t 100% on this new acquisition. She isn’t outright upset, but she isn’t happy. She had made it clear to Luna several times through bark that Luna is not the alpha, which is really what we wanted Lycos to do. We want Luna to be somewhat submissive. Lycos, though, has let Luna take a ball from her several times, so this looks like it will be an ok friendship after a little time.
The cats, though, are not as thrilled. IO and One10, as predicted, just steer clear. Both of them are veterans of our revolving door of animal and don’t bat an eye. Monarch was so unsure what to do. This is his first new housemate since his arrival. I always thought he was a big cat. Now expand his fur 10 fold, and that is how big he can get. Holy crap! He touched noses with Luna, and luckily there was no incident. Monarch ended up leaving, but you could tell Luna was not about to mess with him at this point.
Ittles, on the other hand, despite being nervous, has been the one to really approach Luna and smell her a few times. I don’t anticipate a long lasting friendship, as our cats just never have been dog lovers, but it was nice to see they were ok together.
Luna loves the boys. They played out back on Sunday and had a ball. At one point, Dax fell off the ladder and screamed out. I ran back and discovered Luna eating his hair. Luckily, it was not Luna that had upset him, it was just the fall.
Bobby seems more nervous about the mouthing. But I know that will go away soon.
We went on out first walk with Luna last night. The boys took their scooters, Ken had Lycos, and little Luna pulled at her leash like crazy with me, wanting so badly to keep up with the whole family. Seriously, I feel so happy about this whole little outing.
We did have to take her leave for a bit on Sunday. It gave Ken some time to bond with her, though, as he was showing up right as I was heading out.
I had made plans to meet my friend, Alyssa, for lunch on Sunday. I had not seen her in years, and she, her two munchkins and mine, were meeting at the Kettle, hers and my old stomping ground. She had a charity walk in the morning, we had bowling (yes, we went again this week). I didn’t know what time she would be done. So I didn’t eat.
I also didn’t let the boys eat much. I knew lunch was coming, so I wanted us to be hungry. I gave the boys a snack, and had not intended on napping them, since I knew the minute I put them down, they would not only fall asleep, they would have to get right back up. By the time it hit almost 11:45, they were so crazy, I had to put them down for at least some quiet time. Within 10 minutes, both boys were sound asleep. In fact, my whole house, aside from me, was asleep.
Luckily, Alyssa didn’t call until 1:30 or so. We decided to meet around 2:15 or 2:30. This gave me time to wake the children slowly, and get us there with time to spare.
We got there, and we waited in the outside waiting area. Dax was thirsty, and was having a diva moment as he laid, splayed out on the bench, hand to his forehead in toddler agony. It was funny, actually.
Alyssa showed up, and we all went in and proceeded to have a nice visit. The boys were pretty high strung, as it was a long time to make them sit. Especially since Alyssa’s son, Logan, is not much older and the three of them were fast friends. We decided that clearly they needed to come to Park Brenan soon.
One of the craziest things I was told at lunch was the Alyssa said that I am one of the most confident people she has ever met. No way! She said she has known me professionally and as a friend, and in both situations, I just ooze confidence. Mind you, she didn’t say ooze since she hates that word. I can understand work, since let’s face it, I am downright cocky at work. But as a person? As me? I had no idea since truly, she always intimidated me because of how strong she was. I take this as a huge compliment and I hope that I can find some of that confidence!
We got home and I let the boys loose in the yard, which was awesome for me and the dogs. Wow, I can now say I have boys, dogs and cats. Everything is plural now.
My weekend also consisted of some stress concerning my relationship with Brandy. I have not talked about it in my blogs, but since the only people who read this already know, it isn’t like I am breaking any news here.
A couple weeks ago, on the day of Ken’s reunion, I went online to Facebook to see that Brandy had responded to a question Ed had posted to her. I had also commented on the post, and was curious about the answer. Ed asked her how Vegans feel about breastfeeding. He was not trying to be a smart ass about it. He was curious. I posted that I assumed it was ok since it was all natural, but the question had merit. Sherri had commented on all of this saying we were “special”. I ignored it.
Brandy finally responded. She mostly commented saying where was the short bus when we needed it.
I was done.
Look, I know that Vegans are not all crazy. I know that their main reason for not eating meat or dairy is to protect animals, but I wasn’t sure if they wouldn’t prefer to keep babies from any kind of milk so that weaning them off of it would be easier as they got older. Not all vegans, but some may truly feel that way. I was really trying to ask a serious question.
Her comment sent me through the roof. Don’t make fun of serious questions. I thought that week we had been doing so much better. We were not bickering over differences of opinions, but really discussing them and conversing. It was awesome. Now, to basically shut me down on my question, I felt like she didn’t respect me in any way, shape or form.
I commented back. I said that it didn’t help her cause to recruit more people when she was going to mock serious inquires on their beliefs. I left it at that.
She proceeded to respond with saying she didn’t think Ed and I were actually considering becoming Vegans and that she didn’t get that memo. She also posted to my wall, If I have so much extra time on my hands, why don’t I go feed the homeless. She deleted it soon after, but I had already gotten the post on my phone.
Ken commented on the post a few times, and they I guess went back and forth. I don’t remember all that was said on that since I didn’t write it. I was getting ready for the fair. She sent me an email in FB, but I was still too pissed to respond.
I didn’t care for the lack of respect given to me asking a friend a real question. It felt like it negated years of friendship. Why in the world do I have to walk on eggshells around a friend? Why in the world do I need to ask 3 people before I say something for fear that she may take it wrong? I didn’t have an answer for this. I did know I needed to cool off before I could talk to her. I knew that I could go into some long email about why I was pissed, which would just lead to a bigger fight. So I chose to be silent. I should have probably said something sooner, but honestly, I didn’t know what to say.
She sent me emails all week, inquiring where I was. I didn’t answer. I know, super childish on my part. I was just so angry.
Finally, a few days into the week, she yelled at me. She said she had gotten more closure with Alex, she said it was interesting that while her cat has been sick he has been the supportive one and not me. It made me even angrier. No reason for digs like that.
I responded. I told her I was sorry to hear about her cat. I truly was. I also then told her I didn’t have anything to say to her right now because I was angry, disappointed, and frustrated with her. I said I had not words right now. And this was true. I really didn’t know what to say still.
She responded by telling me to fuck off.
An hour later, she emailed me again, continuing to yell at me. She said that Ed’s question was silly and she didn’t understand how I could be mad at her ignoring his question. Mind you, I wasn’t angry at her ignoring it. I am angry at her calling me an idiot for asking it.
She then suggested that my post back to her was accusing her of not taking her life decision seriously.
She then said, “Have I ever accused you of not taking something personal like MOTHERHOOD seriously? Like "how is it that you can spend so much time online and how are you interacting with your children while you are playing FB games?" not taking it seriously?”
I filed away the email and once again, stayed silent. I wasn’t going to continue this anymore.
I have thought long and hard about it since that email. There was more in it. Something about comparing me asking her about breast milk was the same as her asking me as a carnivore if I eat my own young. Awesome. They were childish quips. She was angry. I am angry. It was going to happen, which is why I opted to not respond. How would this help anything? It would not.
Honestly, I think I might have cooled off if I felt like she really cared that she had possibly done something to upset me. Not once did I get the impression that she was worried she had done something wrong. She did ask how I was. She asked where I was. But when I told her I was angry, instead of maybe saying, Ok, let’s work through this, I got the impression she was pissed at the very idea of me being pissed. Like I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion on the matter. Honestly, had she perhaps responded with maybe asking why I was mad, or saying she was there when I was ready to tell her, I probably would have responded right there and then. It would have diffused the whole thing. She said rude things to me. And yet she was mad at me.
What makes all of this so hard is this last week she has had the week from hell. Clorox, her rockin cat passed away. He car was broken into, and she has two other kitties who are sick. Not fun for anyone. I want to be there as a friend, but honestly, I don’t know that I can. I don’t feel like she appreciates the friendship. I feel like I clearly don’t give what she wants and that the stuff I give she thinks is lame. So why in the world should I bother?
But I have guilt. I have tremendous bad feelings like I need to push aside my hurt feelings to help someone, whether or not it means we will some day be little old ladies together going to the early bird special. It is the right thing to do. It isn’t pity. It is family. You do things for family even though they may tease you, or nag you or anger you to the point of wanting to kill them. But you still love them and you want them to be happy despite your own. So what is holding me back?
A few things, I think. One, I don’t think what she needs right now is to deal with the drama of us while she handles her own crappy week. Lord knows that is something that can wait. Another, is the fear that we will just come right back to this crossroad. It was probably a year ago that we did this same song and dance? Twice in one year, too. We are very different people, with a lot of similarities. We have a sorted history that not only draws us together, but pushes us apart.
Man, we both are fucking lame. LOL!
So I am stuck right now. I don’t anticipate she will read this, but I wouldn’t be shocked if she did. I don’t know if she would be angry or indifferent, or hell even ok with what I have written. I am not even sure I know what I want her to think about it. Hell, if she hates it, then it makes that decision for me. If it opens up dialogue, then I suppose then I have a little more interaction and it isn’t all my thoughts. For now, I am leaving it be. I know I need an apology. I know I need to know that she won’t just disregard my feelings. I will be glad to apologize if I think something I did was wrong. But for now, it is me who is needing a little back and forth.
Ok, new topic. This week clearly is going to be all kinds of good since Kevin Smith is guest hosting on Kevin and Bean. I love that! I love him and K&B, so what a fantastic treat for me. Now if people will just leave me alone from 5:30 to 10 every morning except in commercial breaks, I should be fine.
Luna apparently is staying inside today. We were going to give her a pinned in area in the back yard, but for now, she is inside. It is not for too long, and she went out this morning for a bit. When I get home, both dogs can then go outside and play since I will also pick up the boys. We need to go to the doc this afternoon, but other than that, we are pretty much on dog duty.
I have been here at work mainly writing a journal all day. Don’t get me wrong, I have done work, too, but ultimately is has been me doing this. I suppose I should do something else. But that is tomorrow. I had a lot to update.
I have to say, I am a little frustrated with the disapproving looks from my mom about the dog. I had not planned on telling them yet, but Bobby, all proud of his new pup, told my mom at bowling. She looked at me and asked me if the new pup he was speaking of was a real dog. I nodded and she looked annoyed. Look, I understand she doesn’t think all of my choices are ideal. Sure, we are not that financially secure, and getting an additional mouth to feed isn’t super responsible. But that being said, we seem to be fine. Sure, it may have been a bit impulsive, but shoot, my parents do stupid things all the time. I am not allowed to say anything about their stuff. Shoot, Matt at bowling continues to be crazy in front of my kids. God forbid I mention this to them without getting glared at. I think my dad should not nag me about Bobby’s hair, Dax’s hair, hell, Ken’s hair. Yet he does. I get constantly told that my choices aren’t always good, and frankly, it gets old. I don’t ask my parents for money. I hardly ask them to even watch the kids. I invite Matt to things despite wanting to kick his ass. I make sure they are involved all the time, yet I still get the look. It sounds like some bad romantic comedy or something where the girl always has to deal with her parents thinking she is going to screw up. I know I am not alone. I hear this from every friend I have. Their parents just kind of get down on them. And I know that realistically, I will end up doing the same thing to the boys for the rest of my life. I just need to suck it up and let them nag. I will take Luna tomorrow to meet them. I am telling them to be good. I don’t want to hear their negativity. The boys hear it, and truly, it doesn’t do much good for them to hear how their mother disappoints their grandparents since then it just undermines everything I do.
My day is almost over, now that it is just about noon. I have some net time ahead of me, and that should help my last couple hours fly by. Woohoo!
Never has so much happened in 4 days!
Wednesday night when I went home, I had no idea how long my weekend would be. I knew there was stress, but I didn’t know about the laughter, the joy, the sad, the funny, the nostalgic, and well, just all around great weekend we would have.
Let’s start with the happenings on Thursday first.
I got up normal time on Thursday morning, ready to get the household up to head over to the hospital. The boys were in good spirits, which was great for me. Bobby didn’t seem too nervous. That may have been because he was tired. Either way, there was no fighting, not chaos. It was pretty mellow.
We got to the hospital a little after 6 am. The place was a ghost town. Ever since they moved the Emergency Room, you didn’t really have to walk through gobs of sick people to get anywhere.
My parents got there as we did, and our troop headed towards the wing in which Bobby was going to be worked on. As we approached, you could see there were people in there. We had no idea it would be a full house!
Scores of people. Seriously. Apparently out patient surgery is a 24 hour affair. The people in this waiting room were not just there waiting to be worked on. Many were waiting on their family members to be done, and it wasn’t even 6:30. Part of me wished we could have gotten him in at 4 am.
There were also other kids. One infant. Lots of older folks. Luckily, we found a group of chairs, and we set up shop, waiting for his time, and watching the sun come up.
My mom had packed them little goody bags full of toys, so they were quite jazzed for Grandma time.
They called his name about an hour in, and we bid our goodbyes to Dax, who was quite upset that we were leaving. Bobby wasn’t thrilled, either. Both brothers didn’t want to be separate, which is quite endearing, really.
We got into the staging area where we were ushered into our little curtained area. We had the standard barrage of questions that were verifying Bobby was Robert, born in Feb of 2005 and was getting his penis worked on. He was a little nervous, but kept it together quite well. We didn’t have a bed in our cubby yet, so we had a little bit of room to work as we put Bobby in his hospital jammies. They were cute, way cuter then the grownup ones. They had little sleepy tigers on them, and looked quite comfy. Us grownups get the silly dresses that our booty hangs out (which sucked that Bobby didn’t get this, being this was a selling point).
After he was dressed, they needed to do weight and height. This was going well until they decided they also needed his blood pressure. They put this little bandage thing around his arm before they put the actual arm balloon went on, and Bobby lost it. Sobbing and truly scared for the first time. Luckily, all of it went quick so he was better. Plus, they brought him his bed, so that gave him some distraction.
Once he was in bed, the doc showed up, and we discussed with him the plan. In reality, Ken talked to him, while I kept Bobby distracted from the goings on. Dr. Lesser assured us the whole procedure was going to be super short, and we were told Bobby would not have to have an IV until after he was asleep. Awesome! He would be given this oral medication that would mellow him out, then he would be gassed. This sounded great, because really, one of the biggest issues I was having with the whole thing was that an IV sucks.
Bobby was given the oral meds. It was like a fourth of a shot, but whatever it was, he sucked in down, and within 20 minutes, we had the makings of a college kid who had inhaled. He was goofy, he was giggly, and wow, was he stoned! As much as it probably should not be funny, it was hysterical. He laughed a lot, and just seemed so tired and happy. It was perfect.
The anesthesiologist came over and this is where our first jolt of not so great hit us. He informed us that we would not be there when Bobby went under. Apparently the hospital told us wrong. I wasn’t thrilled, and we mulled over the whole thing for a bit, and Ken told me it was really up to me. As much as I wanted to be there for him, I also knew based on his stonedness right at that point, he would probably be fine. No point in going through all of what we had done, and then stop to only do it again. I would be able to walk him to the outside of the OR, and he would be put under pretty quickly. He also would not remember any of it. So I said ok, and we were on the countdown.
Ken busted out his Nano and let Bobby watch Yo Gabba Gabba. It seemed appropriate since it is the show college kids watch when they are stoned. The nurses seemed amazed at this, as if no other kids have come in with something to watch while they waited to be worked on. So odd. They even let him take in into the OR so he would be distracted from being away from us for a few minutes before being asleep.
We thought that we had to wait another hour, when they came up like 5 minutes after this information and said it was time. We wheeled him to the hall and could see the OR door a few feet away. We said goodbye, and he looked a little upset, but seemed to keep it together. I also kept the tears to a minimum. I had my little wash cloth to dry my face as I assumed it would be bad to return to a waiting room full of family and patients, crying since it may make them all more nervous.
We both were going to go to the cafeteria to eat and find Dax and my parents, but we were told only one of us could leave. So Ken told me to go find Dax, because he knew how important it was for me to find him. I headed up to the cafeteria, only to not find them. So I sent a text only to discover they were pretty much by the waiting room. Oh well. I headed back, sans food. I couldn’t eat anyway. I was still too nervous.
Dax was thrilled to see me, and ran down the long hall towards me with such enthusiasm, it made me so happy.
The hospital, and the city, was in the midst of a earthquake drill that was going on for a couple hours. They had triage and “injured” people wandering around, which was fun.
The doc came out in what only seemed like a few minutes. He was in great spirits and told us his procedure went way well. He would not in fact have to have a catheter, and the stitches were really small. He didn’t have any other growths in the rest of the urethra, so it was all kinds of good. Woo hoo!
About 10 minutes later, if that, he was ready for us. I was in the midst of explaining to my folks, and they had to yell at me (Ken and everyone) to tell me he was ready. Clearly, I was out of it.
Not as much as poor Bobby. They told us when kids come to, be warned. They are in the world’s worst mood. They were not kidding. Although, in all fairness, he was less pissy and crazy compared to his night terrors. Who knew those sleepless nights would be good training! Bobby was positively calm compared to those thrash fests. We comforted him, and he had a popsicle and some juice. He didn’t share my opinion on it being the world’s best, but perhaps I am just odd on that.
It was strange watching him come to. He would cry, then all of the sudden fall back asleep. I stroked his head, and made sure he had his blanket. They said he might vomit, but only once was I concerned this would take place. We had to be in recovery for about 2 hours total. He finally came to, and was calm. He asked for Dax, which, by the way, so cute. We brought Dax in, and Dax sat at the base of Bobby’s bed, looking all concerned. He said, “Bobby has a boo boo but is all better?” The boys bonded quietly, and really, you could see Bobby perked up with his little brother being there. My mom came in at one point, as did my dad. He continued to improve and we knew it would be soon.
They wanted him to pee before we could leave. Makes sense. You mess with the peeing tool, you want to make sure it still works. Bobby tried. He really did. He went into the bathroom with us, and all the tricks to help didn’t work. Running water, he stood, he sat, Ken peed, etc. Nothing. So we went back to the bed where he continued getting IV fluids and he finished off his apple juice. Kid was uber hydrated, just no pee.
We told him he could pee in one of the pee bottles, which he thought was funny and a great idea until the thing was around him. He just couldn’t do it. Finally, we talked to the doc, and he told us Bobby could go home. We just needed to let him know if he peed (or didn’t). Sure enough, the minute we got home, he went and peed. Woo hoo!
Our adventure was over, and he was just told to take it easy when we got home. Easy we did. Both boys crashed out hard after some oatmeal (Bobby’s request), and I also fell asleep. I was beat.
I woke up to the balloon boy drama, and we actually found ourselves watching the balloon, wondering if when it crashed if there would be a dead kid. I kind of assumed he wasn’t, but you could never be too sure. I find it humorous that it was a big hoax.
The rest of the afternoon was spent mellow. Bobby would have preferred to run a bit, but he was tender. He has to put ointment on 3 times a day, and even that bugs him a bit. On a plus note, you can tell how much easier it is for him to pee now. It was that clear even from the first pee.
That night, though, it took Bobby some time to settle. He kept coming out of his room, so I told Ken that he could sleep in our room since let’s face it, he had a big day. Ken brought him in so the two of them could watch the hockey game. I crashed out. Ken did take him back to bed after the game, and I think he mostly settled, but it was late.
Friday was Bobby and my day of fun. Sort of. I mean, he couldn’t have gobs of fun with a hurt unit. But we managed. We watched The Wizard of Oz. He loved it. He became slightly obsessed with the Tin Man. I had rented the flick from NetFlix, so I may now need to go purchase it, as Bobby showed the movie to Dax later, and Dax enjoyed it, too.
Ken didn’t have to leave till later, which worked out great since at 10 am I had my LA Unified phone interview for Bobby’s speech and language evaluation. The lady who called for it was so much better than the dude I was originally going to talk to. She asked me questions like how my pregnancy was all the way up to things about his vocabulary. I am supposed to be getting a packet in the mail shortly, which will get me an evaluation from the testers he will see. The lady made me feel better, and made sure I knew that there was nothing to stress about yet. Although, my mom seemed to indicate that Bobby is harder to understand then I realize, which bugs me.
After the movie and my phone interview, Bobby and I went to Target, and then to get lunch. I was going to get him lunch, but since I told him he could have whatever he wanted for food all day, he said all he wanted for lunch was sports candy (which means any kind of fruit). When he wanted breakfast earlier, I asked what he wanted, so he said a sandwich. I don’t think he expected me to actually make him one, but he was tickled when I presented him with it. The fruit made him super happy, too. I on the other hand treated myself to hot dogs from WeinerDude. On a random happy making note on that, they also gave me two sodas even though I only paid for one! Yay!
The rest of the afternoon was spent with me helping him build the Lego pirate ship we have. It is actually Duplo, but it is mega cute. He was thrilled with this, and played with it all afternoon. I had some trouble with parts of it, and luckily, Ken got back from classes and was able to help me.
At 3:30, Bobby and I retrieved Dax and went to my parent house. The boys were able to ride bikes and get out some energy, which was great. It was fresh air for all.
When we got home, I so didn’t want to cook, so I looked up the Kids Eat Free restaurants and determined that IHOP was our option. So we headed over there. It was a pleasant meal, with me feeling like we need to start having dinner together more all sitting down as a family. The boys, although they do eat at a table, I don’t think it is good enough when it is just the two of them.
We stopped by Petco to get some crickets for the new lizard we found (the boys dubbed him Sparky). The boys and I rocked out in the car to the Beatles and Rush, and Ken went inside to get the crickets. He came out with crickets, some fish supplies, and a Golden Retrievers magazine for me. I laughed.
Let me explain.
Lately, with this bug up my ass about wanting a Golden, I had gone a little stupid. On Wednesday night, I had been thumbing through the Penny Saver and came across an add for Golden Retriever pups for sale. I thought I would call to see if we could go look at them. I figured, what the hell. I wasn’t truly in the market for one, but I wanted to get a feel for breeders and what was out there. I have been looking at shelters for a few weeks now, so this was just another option. I called the guy, who was quite nice. He told me we could come by around 6. Perfect. I sent Ken a text to see if we could go look, and he agreed.
We went by his place. They had 11 pups. We got to meet the mom and dad dog, both total sweeties. The puppies were great. All good size, and all looked healthy. The guy, and some woman we are unsure of if it was his mom or maybe his mom in law, were nice. We played with the pups a bit and then said our goodbye after some general questions. I liked them, and thought that we could hold on to his number for the next litter they had. We headed home, and truly, my mind went back to the following morning’s activities.
I had the pups in the back of my head, and I just knew they would be a good batch. But of course, they were pricey, and I didn’t think Ken wanted a pup at this point. I couldn’t blame him. We just finally got the kids to sleep and pee on their own. So why get another “baby”?
So when he presented me with the magazine, which was basically all about Golden’s, I laughed and told him it was sweet of him to get me puppy porn.
I figured that was the end of it for now.
Saturday morning was a morning of chaos for some reason. Ken had a birthday party to go to, and the boys were restless. Ken headed out, and I opted to go ahead and build the Duplo castle set for them. Way more complex then the boat, but they both loved it. At one point, I asked Bobby if he wanted to help me and he says, “No, you look like you are doing great, Mom.” Awesome.
I finished the castle, the boys played, and I got them some lunch. I finally sat down at the computer while they were eating. Ken had called a bit before saying he had screwed up and that the party was actually Sunday. I laughed, and he said he would be home after a couple errands.
I was doing some game on Facebook when he walked in. I didn’t look up. He had stuff in his hands, but I assumed it was party stuff. He shuffled off to the kitchen and so I called out, asking him where he stopped. He said he had to pick up something. I asked what, still not looked. He came back into the room, so I turned to face him. Instead, what I would see was this puppy sitting in the crook of his arm. OMG!
Ken had decided to go and get one of the pups after the party. He really did think the party was Saturday, but the fact that it wasn’t kind of made it even funnier. He picked the smallest girl, which was what we thought would be the best. He made an excellent choice.
The boys went to nap, which allowed Ken and I to sit with the pup a bit. She is quite sweet. Very mellow, aside from her constant mouthing, which I know is puppy-ness. She is only 2 months, had one set of shots so far. She has not been spayed yet, so we have to set that up. She shockingly didn’t whine the way I expected. Don’t get me wrong, pup can whine. We put her in a box while Ken and I hung out in the living room, and she howled. We ended up letting her wander the living room, where she passed out. It had been a big day for her!
We went through names. As much as we wanted the boys to help, we were only going to let them “help”. We wanted to come up with a list of pre approved names, and we would let them decide. I had Mabel in my head for a bit, but it had already been rejected by both boys. Kiera was a possibility, which Ken and I both liked. We started going through other Star Trek names, Star Wars, books like Princess Bride, etc. We then came to the land of Harry Potter, and Ken suggested Luna. LOVE IT! So it was between Kiera and Luna. But with the boys asleep, we had already settled on Luna. Dax woke up first, and we asked him if he liked the name, and he did. Bobby woke up not long after, and he too thought it was good. So it was decided. Luna was our new pup!
Lycos isn’t 100% on this new acquisition. She isn’t outright upset, but she isn’t happy. She had made it clear to Luna several times through bark that Luna is not the alpha, which is really what we wanted Lycos to do. We want Luna to be somewhat submissive. Lycos, though, has let Luna take a ball from her several times, so this looks like it will be an ok friendship after a little time.
The cats, though, are not as thrilled. IO and One10, as predicted, just steer clear. Both of them are veterans of our revolving door of animal and don’t bat an eye. Monarch was so unsure what to do. This is his first new housemate since his arrival. I always thought he was a big cat. Now expand his fur 10 fold, and that is how big he can get. Holy crap! He touched noses with Luna, and luckily there was no incident. Monarch ended up leaving, but you could tell Luna was not about to mess with him at this point.
Ittles, on the other hand, despite being nervous, has been the one to really approach Luna and smell her a few times. I don’t anticipate a long lasting friendship, as our cats just never have been dog lovers, but it was nice to see they were ok together.
Luna loves the boys. They played out back on Sunday and had a ball. At one point, Dax fell off the ladder and screamed out. I ran back and discovered Luna eating his hair. Luckily, it was not Luna that had upset him, it was just the fall.
Bobby seems more nervous about the mouthing. But I know that will go away soon.
We went on out first walk with Luna last night. The boys took their scooters, Ken had Lycos, and little Luna pulled at her leash like crazy with me, wanting so badly to keep up with the whole family. Seriously, I feel so happy about this whole little outing.
We did have to take her leave for a bit on Sunday. It gave Ken some time to bond with her, though, as he was showing up right as I was heading out.
I had made plans to meet my friend, Alyssa, for lunch on Sunday. I had not seen her in years, and she, her two munchkins and mine, were meeting at the Kettle, hers and my old stomping ground. She had a charity walk in the morning, we had bowling (yes, we went again this week). I didn’t know what time she would be done. So I didn’t eat.
I also didn’t let the boys eat much. I knew lunch was coming, so I wanted us to be hungry. I gave the boys a snack, and had not intended on napping them, since I knew the minute I put them down, they would not only fall asleep, they would have to get right back up. By the time it hit almost 11:45, they were so crazy, I had to put them down for at least some quiet time. Within 10 minutes, both boys were sound asleep. In fact, my whole house, aside from me, was asleep.
Luckily, Alyssa didn’t call until 1:30 or so. We decided to meet around 2:15 or 2:30. This gave me time to wake the children slowly, and get us there with time to spare.
We got there, and we waited in the outside waiting area. Dax was thirsty, and was having a diva moment as he laid, splayed out on the bench, hand to his forehead in toddler agony. It was funny, actually.
Alyssa showed up, and we all went in and proceeded to have a nice visit. The boys were pretty high strung, as it was a long time to make them sit. Especially since Alyssa’s son, Logan, is not much older and the three of them were fast friends. We decided that clearly they needed to come to Park Brenan soon.
One of the craziest things I was told at lunch was the Alyssa said that I am one of the most confident people she has ever met. No way! She said she has known me professionally and as a friend, and in both situations, I just ooze confidence. Mind you, she didn’t say ooze since she hates that word. I can understand work, since let’s face it, I am downright cocky at work. But as a person? As me? I had no idea since truly, she always intimidated me because of how strong she was. I take this as a huge compliment and I hope that I can find some of that confidence!
We got home and I let the boys loose in the yard, which was awesome for me and the dogs. Wow, I can now say I have boys, dogs and cats. Everything is plural now.
My weekend also consisted of some stress concerning my relationship with Brandy. I have not talked about it in my blogs, but since the only people who read this already know, it isn’t like I am breaking any news here.
A couple weeks ago, on the day of Ken’s reunion, I went online to Facebook to see that Brandy had responded to a question Ed had posted to her. I had also commented on the post, and was curious about the answer. Ed asked her how Vegans feel about breastfeeding. He was not trying to be a smart ass about it. He was curious. I posted that I assumed it was ok since it was all natural, but the question had merit. Sherri had commented on all of this saying we were “special”. I ignored it.
Brandy finally responded. She mostly commented saying where was the short bus when we needed it.
I was done.
Look, I know that Vegans are not all crazy. I know that their main reason for not eating meat or dairy is to protect animals, but I wasn’t sure if they wouldn’t prefer to keep babies from any kind of milk so that weaning them off of it would be easier as they got older. Not all vegans, but some may truly feel that way. I was really trying to ask a serious question.
Her comment sent me through the roof. Don’t make fun of serious questions. I thought that week we had been doing so much better. We were not bickering over differences of opinions, but really discussing them and conversing. It was awesome. Now, to basically shut me down on my question, I felt like she didn’t respect me in any way, shape or form.
I commented back. I said that it didn’t help her cause to recruit more people when she was going to mock serious inquires on their beliefs. I left it at that.
She proceeded to respond with saying she didn’t think Ed and I were actually considering becoming Vegans and that she didn’t get that memo. She also posted to my wall, If I have so much extra time on my hands, why don’t I go feed the homeless. She deleted it soon after, but I had already gotten the post on my phone.
Ken commented on the post a few times, and they I guess went back and forth. I don’t remember all that was said on that since I didn’t write it. I was getting ready for the fair. She sent me an email in FB, but I was still too pissed to respond.
I didn’t care for the lack of respect given to me asking a friend a real question. It felt like it negated years of friendship. Why in the world do I have to walk on eggshells around a friend? Why in the world do I need to ask 3 people before I say something for fear that she may take it wrong? I didn’t have an answer for this. I did know I needed to cool off before I could talk to her. I knew that I could go into some long email about why I was pissed, which would just lead to a bigger fight. So I chose to be silent. I should have probably said something sooner, but honestly, I didn’t know what to say.
She sent me emails all week, inquiring where I was. I didn’t answer. I know, super childish on my part. I was just so angry.
Finally, a few days into the week, she yelled at me. She said she had gotten more closure with Alex, she said it was interesting that while her cat has been sick he has been the supportive one and not me. It made me even angrier. No reason for digs like that.
I responded. I told her I was sorry to hear about her cat. I truly was. I also then told her I didn’t have anything to say to her right now because I was angry, disappointed, and frustrated with her. I said I had not words right now. And this was true. I really didn’t know what to say still.
She responded by telling me to fuck off.
An hour later, she emailed me again, continuing to yell at me. She said that Ed’s question was silly and she didn’t understand how I could be mad at her ignoring his question. Mind you, I wasn’t angry at her ignoring it. I am angry at her calling me an idiot for asking it.
She then suggested that my post back to her was accusing her of not taking her life decision seriously.
She then said, “Have I ever accused you of not taking something personal like MOTHERHOOD seriously? Like "how is it that you can spend so much time online and how are you interacting with your children while you are playing FB games?" not taking it seriously?”
I filed away the email and once again, stayed silent. I wasn’t going to continue this anymore.
I have thought long and hard about it since that email. There was more in it. Something about comparing me asking her about breast milk was the same as her asking me as a carnivore if I eat my own young. Awesome. They were childish quips. She was angry. I am angry. It was going to happen, which is why I opted to not respond. How would this help anything? It would not.
Honestly, I think I might have cooled off if I felt like she really cared that she had possibly done something to upset me. Not once did I get the impression that she was worried she had done something wrong. She did ask how I was. She asked where I was. But when I told her I was angry, instead of maybe saying, Ok, let’s work through this, I got the impression she was pissed at the very idea of me being pissed. Like I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion on the matter. Honestly, had she perhaps responded with maybe asking why I was mad, or saying she was there when I was ready to tell her, I probably would have responded right there and then. It would have diffused the whole thing. She said rude things to me. And yet she was mad at me.
What makes all of this so hard is this last week she has had the week from hell. Clorox, her rockin cat passed away. He car was broken into, and she has two other kitties who are sick. Not fun for anyone. I want to be there as a friend, but honestly, I don’t know that I can. I don’t feel like she appreciates the friendship. I feel like I clearly don’t give what she wants and that the stuff I give she thinks is lame. So why in the world should I bother?
But I have guilt. I have tremendous bad feelings like I need to push aside my hurt feelings to help someone, whether or not it means we will some day be little old ladies together going to the early bird special. It is the right thing to do. It isn’t pity. It is family. You do things for family even though they may tease you, or nag you or anger you to the point of wanting to kill them. But you still love them and you want them to be happy despite your own. So what is holding me back?
A few things, I think. One, I don’t think what she needs right now is to deal with the drama of us while she handles her own crappy week. Lord knows that is something that can wait. Another, is the fear that we will just come right back to this crossroad. It was probably a year ago that we did this same song and dance? Twice in one year, too. We are very different people, with a lot of similarities. We have a sorted history that not only draws us together, but pushes us apart.
Man, we both are fucking lame. LOL!
So I am stuck right now. I don’t anticipate she will read this, but I wouldn’t be shocked if she did. I don’t know if she would be angry or indifferent, or hell even ok with what I have written. I am not even sure I know what I want her to think about it. Hell, if she hates it, then it makes that decision for me. If it opens up dialogue, then I suppose then I have a little more interaction and it isn’t all my thoughts. For now, I am leaving it be. I know I need an apology. I know I need to know that she won’t just disregard my feelings. I will be glad to apologize if I think something I did was wrong. But for now, it is me who is needing a little back and forth.
Ok, new topic. This week clearly is going to be all kinds of good since Kevin Smith is guest hosting on Kevin and Bean. I love that! I love him and K&B, so what a fantastic treat for me. Now if people will just leave me alone from 5:30 to 10 every morning except in commercial breaks, I should be fine.
Luna apparently is staying inside today. We were going to give her a pinned in area in the back yard, but for now, she is inside. It is not for too long, and she went out this morning for a bit. When I get home, both dogs can then go outside and play since I will also pick up the boys. We need to go to the doc this afternoon, but other than that, we are pretty much on dog duty.
I have been here at work mainly writing a journal all day. Don’t get me wrong, I have done work, too, but ultimately is has been me doing this. I suppose I should do something else. But that is tomorrow. I had a lot to update.
I have to say, I am a little frustrated with the disapproving looks from my mom about the dog. I had not planned on telling them yet, but Bobby, all proud of his new pup, told my mom at bowling. She looked at me and asked me if the new pup he was speaking of was a real dog. I nodded and she looked annoyed. Look, I understand she doesn’t think all of my choices are ideal. Sure, we are not that financially secure, and getting an additional mouth to feed isn’t super responsible. But that being said, we seem to be fine. Sure, it may have been a bit impulsive, but shoot, my parents do stupid things all the time. I am not allowed to say anything about their stuff. Shoot, Matt at bowling continues to be crazy in front of my kids. God forbid I mention this to them without getting glared at. I think my dad should not nag me about Bobby’s hair, Dax’s hair, hell, Ken’s hair. Yet he does. I get constantly told that my choices aren’t always good, and frankly, it gets old. I don’t ask my parents for money. I hardly ask them to even watch the kids. I invite Matt to things despite wanting to kick his ass. I make sure they are involved all the time, yet I still get the look. It sounds like some bad romantic comedy or something where the girl always has to deal with her parents thinking she is going to screw up. I know I am not alone. I hear this from every friend I have. Their parents just kind of get down on them. And I know that realistically, I will end up doing the same thing to the boys for the rest of my life. I just need to suck it up and let them nag. I will take Luna tomorrow to meet them. I am telling them to be good. I don’t want to hear their negativity. The boys hear it, and truly, it doesn’t do much good for them to hear how their mother disappoints their grandparents since then it just undermines everything I do.
My day is almost over, now that it is just about noon. I have some net time ahead of me, and that should help my last couple hours fly by. Woohoo!
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