I don't think the doctor is taking my calls anymore

Chris usually takes the boys to his parents house on Saturday morning. It used to be a chance for me to get some extra sleep but sleep is for the WEAK and there is no TIME for weakness 'round HERE! Anyway, I was pairing socks (weird, I think I've mentioned that before in this blog. You'd think it was something I did a lot. It's not. Hence it being the Project of the Morning) and Chris called and told me that Sam had a rash on his skull. I told him that Sam probably didn't have a rash on his skull. He said, no, his skull is REALLY red. And I said, his SKULL is made of BONE and is covered by his SCALP so how do you know what it looks like? And he said, your child has a horrible rash and you are nitpicking about verbiage? And I said, point taken.

So back to the scalp. I'm pretty calm about it because, well, Sam is prone to rashes. He gets them a lot. It's not like I've never seen a rash on Sam, am I right?! Ha! I suggest a bath and maybe we'll put some ointment and keep an eye on it.

Then the boys come home and I look at Sam's head and GOOD LORD HIS SCALP IS COVERED BY THE MOST HEINOUS RASH I'VE EVER SEEN. I'm not kidding. This is Quick-Intake-of-Breath bad. I quickly review and realize that Sam also has had a bad cough, and threw up the day before. And if those symptoms don't add up to impending death, I don't know what does. I grab the phone and call the doctor and send Chris and Sam off for an emergency appointment in a half-hour. (Shout-out to FAB Dr. Senders and Associates!)

Chris calls about an hour later. Guess what? The rash? It . . . Oh, HA-HA! . . . it washes off. She swabbed it and it CAME OFF. It's like, highlighter or something.

That's not embarrassing AT ALL.

And back to real life

See, that was just ridiculous. If you haven't read the below post, go ahead and read that crap and then come back up here to real life.

There is something about the moments in the life of a parent of two (or, I imagine, more) kids when both (all) the kids are asleep. They make the children seem all innocent and lovable. Totally unlike when they are awake. When the children are asleep your life feels full and rich, instead of full of chaos and rich with poop like when they are awake.

But Sam wanted to remind me so he popped out of his room, said, "I better go to the bathroom." Which, I, unfortunately, took to mean he had to urinate in the toilet so I said, "Okay." Which he understood as, "Sweetie, go ahead and hang out in the bathroom like it is an all night rave." The thought process must have gone like this: I think I'll start by urinating on the floor, my pants and the toilet seat. I'll then unroll an entire roll of toilet paper to "clean it up." The only real way to follow that would be to knock over an open bottle of baby oil and try to help "clean that up," too.

And what the hell good is the scent of roasting marshmallows if I don't get to then EAT them?

Good times, good times

The other day, when it was hot as balls, I deliberately took a mental step back and thought about how freakin' cold it was this past January, aka the Month That Would Not End.

It didn't help. It was still hot as balls, and I was still sweaty and uncomfortable. But it did make me think about how in-the-moment life it.

Chris and I celebrated our five year anniversary yesterday. We went to a really nice restaurant (3 Birds, in Lakewood - try the bacon & blueberry pizza), and we started trying to list our top five memories of the last five years with the stipulation that it couldn't include our kids.

We couldn't come up with much.
-Number one, looking at the stars one night in Hawaii on our honeymoon.
-Number two, watching the entire second season of House on DVD right after Sam was born. Wait. That's not very romantic. Also, it kind of includes our kids. Whatever, moving on.
-Number three, our 2nd anniversary dinner. Have we only gone out five times since getting married?
-Number four, going to Becky and Gil's wedding. Oh. Except then you got wasted and I had to call the lobby and make the receptionist go find you and bring you back to our room. That wasn't cool.

See, it's not that I don't have good times with my husband. It's just that time moves quickly people. More quickly the older I get. And what with the getting older and all, I have more to remember but my brain isn't getting any bigger.

So right now, at this moment, my neck hurts because I pulled a muscle painting (shut up) but everything else is in pretty good working order. The smell of roasting marshmallows is coming through the window. Windows I can keep open because it is summer and my Dad installed new screens. My children are asleep. It's been over two and a half days since somebody has thrown up. I love the new paint in the living room. I have three more days before I have to go back to work. I had fun today, taking Owen and my Dad to the West Side Market.

This is a good moment. I don't know if I'll remember it, but I'm going to try. Because remember what it felt like when it had been below freezing for over a month? Neither do I, really, but remembering that it happened helps me appreciate this short-sleeved shirt I'm wearing.

Advertising tie-in!

Hey, so I was just looking at my blog (well SOMEBODY should) and the advertisement was for Pantene, um, naturals? Something like that. Herbal Pantene. Pantene Botanicals. You get the drift. And it totally reminded me about how irritating men can be sometimes!

Can somebody please back me up on this? We bought a Costco size Dove shampoo and conditioner and I really liked it. My hair was soft and shiny and good for twirling. But I've been using this same COSTCO SIZED Dove shampoo every day for about three months and I feel like my hair is getting tired of it and there is no end in sight. I keep picking it up to see if it feels like it weighs less, but this is the never-ending bottle of shampoo.

Am I alone in believing that using the same shampoo day in and day out leads to more grosser hair, less twirlable hair? After about three weeks of hating my hair I gave in and bought the aforementioned Pantene Natural and I feel like my hair is breathing a sigh of relief.

But I totally held off because I KNEW Chris was going to sass me about it. He HATES soapy products. If he were in charge we would have skipped the Costco Dove, and gone straight for a barrel of the Costco brand dish soap and used it for our dishes, hands, clothes, hair, and faces. He is personally affronted by my fickle hair. BUT I CAN'T HELP IT. Oddly, he feels quite differently about cleaning products. I don't even know how many bottles of pine-sol and Lysol and toilet-sol we have. Maybe he's just a sucker for the spray bottle? Or believes that if I actually trip over some Clorox wipes that I will use them to clean something? WELL, IT'S NOT WORKING, BUDDY!

Anyway, he spied the new shampoo in the shower this morning (thought about hiding it, but where??) and was all,

"Did you BUY NEW SHAMPOO?!?!"

And I was all, "Yeah, it's not good for your hair to use only one kind of shampoo for too long."

And he was all (you will have to say this all exasperated and demeaning in you head), "You are just incapable of using one kind of shampoo."

And I was all, "Suck on my balls."

Because that doesn't even make any sense. I mean, that's not even responsive to my point, is it? And if it is, doesn't it agree with my point? I'm not sure, but I think it was just designed to make me feel bad for willy-nilly flinging wads of cash around without thought. Does he KNOW how much poorer we would be if I actually wore MAKE-UP? Clearly this man has never read a women's magazine if he is complaining about DOUBLE SHAMPOO BOTTLEAGE. I didn't even buy the MATCHING CONDITIONER. Can I get some financial credit for the fact that my beauty purchases of the year totaled one tube of mascara and some chap stick?

HONESTLY.

Men are so irritating sometimes. But my hair . . . it is gorgeous.

Oh for Chris' sake

There has been some debate about whether the title of yesterday’s entry was an accident.

Let’s go with nooooo. Of course I wrote Jesus Chris on purpose. That’s what I always say to express shock and surprise.

I like my husband, and I actually even like his name, but it does bother my typing fingers that his name is so close to accidentally taking the lord’s name in vain. I mean, I'm cool with taking the lord's name in vain, but I like to do it on purpose. Conversely, when I DO aim to blaspheme, I’d like to be successful and not just ALL CAPS my husband's name.

At least his name isn’t Christian. Really, it’s a beautiful noun (is it? I think I was asleep when they went over that in English class), but I just don’t understand how it is also a name. Especially when other religions haven’t done so well at the crossover. Can you imagine?

“These are my sons, Christian and Orthodox Jew.”

“So, nice to meet you! And this is my daughter, Seventh Day Baptist.”

Jesus Chris I just had a heart attack

There are these shelves over my desk at work and they are jam-packed full of binders and books. A few minutes ago, I was typing away and then I heard a sliding sound followed by a heavy wooden bang and the sound was coming from my selves and for a second I was SURE the whole business was coming down on my head. You know? Like I was just preparing myself for a cascade of junk on my head. Junk with corners.

Turned out that it was just some stuff falling over onto the actual shelf itself.

But it must have been funny to see me assume my karate chopping position in anticipation of the marauding books.

That’s a lie. I just winced and put my hands over my eyes.

But, man, I felt stupid when I finally raised my head and realized that the sky wasn't falling. I'm sitting there, my heart is racing, my whole body is braced for impact and it was a BOOK. Just falling over. Not attacking.

I'm sure glad nobody knows about this!

Dinner one night

The other day I made a quick ham and egg scramble for the boys to eat for dinner. Usually I just make plain scrambled eggs so my eldest, Sam, looks at me suspiciously and asks, “Mama, what’s dees pieces?”

“Those are eggs, buddy.”

“No, what’s INNA eggs?”

“Oh, well, I put some ham in your eggs.”

“What DO ham?” he asks (that is his standard question when he doesn’t understand the purpose of something. Difficult question sometimes. What DO rocks? Well, I don’t know. But NOT FOR THROWING)

“I just thought you might like it, Sam.”

And Sam looks at the eggs and looks at me and looks at the eggs, pokes the ham with a finger and says to me (and I swear to god I’m telling the truth),

“I do not like these eggs with ham.”

And boy did I laugh. And then I asked him, “Do you like them on a box? Do you like them with a fox?”

And then he said, “I WANT CHICKEN NUGGETS WITH KETCHUP.”

I didn't even know we had a rule handbook

Today I had my purchasing card audit at work. I was a little nervous all morning, though I don’t really know why. I mean, I’m pretty sure I never used it to buy my stash of office booze, because I pay for that with cash.

The woman auditing me arrives at my office right on time. The first thing she does is comment on my pictures of Sam and Owen. Am I paranoid or is that straight out of a manual? “Engage your target – try complimenting pictures of children or commenting on wall art!”

She asked for my paperwork and receipts and then told me I could go ahead and continue with my work as usual. Except, “as usual” means checking facebook and playing solitaire, so I didn’t think that was a good idea. Instead, I start working like crazy lady, slashing through items that have been on my to-do list for weeks. So I’m trying to sit there and work, in a competent and professional manner, as if I do this all the time, especially with someone in the corner JUDGING me, but every time she inadvertently snaps a binder clip, I jump a little and let out a slight scream.

It turned out okay in the end. I was found to be 100% in compliance, and man am I glad THAT’S over.

I'm not laughing AT him

We had some people over Saturday night, and my dear husband had a little too much to drink. It’s been a while since he did that and I’d forgotten how belligerent he can be. When everybody left and we were bickering over chicken salad (thank you, Thomas) he began to get a little emphatic in defending his position. Except his position was NONESENSE. So I told him he was too drunk to talk to anymore. He disagreed. If I recall correctly, he told me I was “pretty good at coming up with biscuses for a person who pussosedly doesn’t even like chicken salad!” I think at this point I would be pretty justified in telling him to shut it, instead I tried to just walk away.

But Chris didn’t want to let it go. In fact, he challenged me to a lil something he called “a remembering contest.” Right there, people, that’s how toasted he was. On his BEST day, Chris couldn’t win a remembering contest with an aging goldfish.

Let’s just say I won the remembering contest because I’m the one who remembered we were having a remembering contest.


And just for old time’s sake, I’m going to throw in this additional Chris story.

Once, I woke up to a loud THUD and looked over to see chris on the floor on his hands and knees. The following is a transcript of the conversation that followed:

“Did you just fall out of bed?”
“No!” (defensively)
“Then why are you on the floor?”
Silence
“Dude. You just fell out of bed.”
“Could be.”

How do you pause this thing?

Well, my 10 loyal followers, it is Friday afternoon. I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but feel happy.

Which is just stupid.

What’s so great about the weekend? It’s not like the children SLEEP LATER. It’s not like I get to sit around watching TV (I just capitalized that for emphasis in case you didn’t catch it). It’s not like I can hang with my peeps and get DRUNK.

On Saturday morning, Owen wakes up at 6:27 instead of his usual 6:41. Sam will pop up at 7:12 instead of having to be dragged out of bed in order to get to daycare on time. If Chris or I happen to be feeling particularly generous, we might allow the other one to sleep until 8:00, but we aren’t very generous people so that doesn’t happen much. And then we get them dressed and they look at us, all, “What now?”

“Ein shide?” Owen will ask in his elf voice. And since we don’t know what the heck that means, we will ignore him until he proclaims, “OL OUT!” And when we don’t get that either, Sam will interpret, “Owii said, ‘roll out.’” And then we can’t ignore them anymore, unless we pretend to be deaf which Chris is super good at.

Really, though, once you get past the waking up early part, weekends can be fun. We go grocery shopping as a family, to the zoo, the children’s museum (haaaate it – makes me want to punch people in the faaaace), the park, visit relatives. We do a lot of stuff and it’s pretty entertaining. But it is not exactly restful. And since the boys worked out a schedule wherein they stagger their naps so that we (the parents) could be supervised at all times, there is no napping for us.

It’s not that I’m tired, exactly. I really have gotten used to the hours I must now keep. It’s just that my life Never. Turns. Off. I’m never done, never really on a break, never really off-duty.

And that’s the hard thing about being a parent

Crap. I just learned a lesson.

So I’ve been pretty busy at work recently and there is a fundamental truth that bosses don’t like to acknowledge that says NOBODY’S PERFECT. Especially when things are busy. I don’t know if I’m incompetent or maybe just one of those people who would NOT make it through a gunfight (I’d be all, oh my god, oh my god, did I go to the bathroom? I think I have to pee. Oh jesus I just dropped my gun because my hands are all sweaty) but I feel like when I try to go reeeeally fast at work I forget about things like, oh, double checking stuff.

Fortunately, I’m senior enough at my job that when I make a mistake I can generally fix it before anyone else notices. But twice recently I have EFFED UP. The more recent of my two errors comes, conveniently, days before my purchasing account at work gets audited. I thought I was keeping "complete and accurate records," but I went back through and, well, long story short, there is a charge I never allocated. I emailed the guy in charge and he said it was too late to fix it. Whoa. I mean, it’s not like I inadvertently hit the red button and launched a nuclear warhead. I’m not hanging in midair after driving off a cliff. I didn't hit "reply all" when talking smack about my friend. How can forgetting to allocate a charge not be fixable? Can’t we just, like, I don’t know, allocate it now? Or reimburse somebody? Anyway, he said, “Well, I guess we just need to be more careful in the future.”

And that’s when I realized I had Learned a Valuable Lesson.


I hate that.

My blog is lacking

While I have now generated a full penny in ad revenue (thanks, guys!) I don’t think this blog is going to be my ticket to fame and fortune. For one, I’m the kind of person who has 28 friends on Facebook. Which means that even if everybody I ever knew read this thing everyday and followed every one of those links (which I am emphatically NOT telling you to do – apparently that would be both immoral AND illegal), I would still only pull in a net gain of about $12 a year. Don’t get me wrong, any person at any time can feel free to give me $12, it’s just that that’s not going to keep the kids in the most current Gymboree line.

But also, I started looking around at other blogs (link at top of the page says “Next Blog” and I wanted to see who my neighbors were. You know, make friends and such. Then we could follow each other’s blogs. Didn’t work out, because apparently it’s different each time and good thing too because the single lady growing an organic garden on her New York balcony didn’t seem that into me) and they are SWEET. They have pictures, and videos and music and a pretty background and layout. This background? I didn’t choose it. It just came with the page. And I wouldn’t BEGIN to know how to put music on here. Not that I think that is necessarily a good idea. Because, you know, sometimes you are at work, looking into a vacation at a "rural ohio bed breakfast bargin" and all of a sudden Hannah's Hideaway thinks they are extra awesome and deserve theme music and BLAAAA . . . all your coworkers know you aren’t creating that spreadsheet like you said unless Exel has offered a new sappy violin option. So I don’t think I would do the music, but I wonder if I should investigate putting up pictures.

I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to go follow another blog. I saw one with a girl who was ostensibly selling clothes because she was into fashion? But each item was just labeled like, “Green Shirt,” or “Long Dress,” and it didn’t say, for example, what size the green shirt was, or how much the long dress cost. She was modeling each item and she was pretty cute, but I feel like that just makes the clothes look used and if she was trying to sell used clothes maybe she should try ebay. There were only 5 items available so I’m not sure what her business plan is, but like me, I think she should probably keep her day job. And then I started wondering if it was some kind of prostitution blog now that they’ve shut craigslist down (in case you were wondering, this is not a prostitution blog – that thing about giving me $12, well, that’s not what I meant. That’s a gift, free and clear). But who knows what you could find if you looked out there! Report back if you find anything fun!

Fair warning – apparently crossing stitching is waaaay more popular than I imagined, as is speaking a language that is not English.

$87

I don’t know how other people get things done. Whenever I try to do things, I get bogged down in the things I need to do before I do those other things. Recently, my husband and I decided we should turn the useless storage room that is off of our bedroom into a closet. This idea appeals to me immensely as I am tired of his crap in my closet. Sharing El Suckos. I am a Bargain Shopper, which means I need room for the cheap clothes that are the wrong color, cheap clothes that are a style I never actually wear, cheap clothes that don’t look good on me anyway. Well, and of course all the clothes that are too small but will totally fit when I lose some weight. So you can see there is no room for all of Chris’s junky-junk, like shirts and pants, in our current closet.

But before we can turn the useless storage room into a closet, we need to clear out all the stuff that we put in there. You know, to store. So we decided to have a family-wide yard sale. Perfect! We will hang out with the family, get rid of debris, and people will pay us money for it!

But, whoa. People, I have seen the economy and the economy is bad.

All day, people, they come, they go, but they do not buy. This one lady picked up two pieces of fabric, a total of about 9 yards. Now, I don’t know from fabric but my mom tells me it would cost $50-$60 in the store. When she said, “How about $3 for both?” the woman PUT THEM BACK. I’m just curious as to what the right price would have been? I know times are hard, people, but if you don’t have $3, you should probably stop shopping. Even at yard sales. Maybe she was thinking she would make her clothes herself? But then decided it would be cheaper to just go ahead and plant some cotton?

Also, we seem to have become a suspicious and stingy society. Even at the end, when we were trying to GIVE stuff away, people wouldn’t take it. They wouldn’t take our crap for free.

Which brings me to another point. I know this is all useless crap that we didn’t want anyway, but the thing is that we DID. At some point, this was desirable to us. And now people are all, “Four dollars? I won’t give you four dollars for that! Bah! I won’t even take it for free!” And I’m all, “Stain? That’s not a stain. That is a valuable reminder of the time my precious first born son had that hilarious poop blow-out. Oh, that was funny! See, we decided to take the baby on his first road trip . . . Where are you going? I can make you a deal! One dollar!"

Anyhow, I’m still eagerly anticipating project create-a-closet.

I can’t tell whether I’m getting old or if I’m just naturally curmudgeonly

My back hurts. I squint all the time. Today I somehow “upgraded” to Internet Explorer 8 and I don’t like it because it is different. I’m confused about how it happened and I’m upset about dealing with change. Also, at work I’ve recently found myself thinking things like, “Sure we could hire a recent college graduate, but experience and maturity really do make a difference.”

I’m pretty sure I didn’t used to think things like that.

How do you teach a 1-year old to punch?

Yesterday Owen came home from daycare with scratches on both sides of his face, indicating that someone grabbed his head with both hands and sharp nails. I’m not overly concerned about the injury, but I did want to follow up because HE’S JUST A TINY HELPLESS BABY. He only moved into the toddler class a week ago so he’s by far the youngest one in there (i.e., fresh fish). So I asked the teacher this morning what happened and she said that she couldn’t “pinpoint” which kid did it because “a couple of kids are picking on him.”

Picking? On Owii? On my poor gorgeous baby Owii? My wonderful, cheerful, defenseless youngest child? Is being picked on?

Oh Hells No.

So my question is this: should I sharpen both his nails AND teeth, or would just one be sufficient?

This daycare thing is hard. You have to balance all these factors. And make decisions like, “If he’s crying because he is just sad I’m leaving, it’s okay, but if he’s crying because this place is killing his soul I’m definitely going to have to talk to the director.” Is it really so much to ask to have a safe place to put my kid while I go to work to earn money to pay them to watch my kid?

Sigh.

The other day, I was reaching in our cupboard and noticed that there were two bottles of wine on top of the fridge, one precariously close to the edge. So I moved it to the counter. You would think that act of courageous and dynamic foresight would count for something around here, but not when you are the wrong side of karma, which, if you’ve been reading, you know I am.

So yesterday, events conspired to allow me a full thirty guilt-free minutes alone in my house. I threw in a load of laundry and skipped through the kitchen on my way to, oh, I don’t know, read a book, watch House Hunters, PAIR MY SOCKS, anything my heart desired! The world was my oyster!

But as I galloped by, I noticed a cupboard door open. Having recently discussed with my sister-not-in-law her compulsion to make sure kitchen cupboard doors are closed, I reached out to shut the door. So I hold Kristi responsible for the CRASH, SMASH, SPLAT which followed. Also, because if she would ever come over and drink my damn wine it wouldn’t be standing on top of my refrigerator, being pushed closer to the edge every day by cereal boxes. So, thanks, Kristi. Thanks a lot.


And boy Jesus Christ on a cracker if you’ve never smashed a bottle of red wine open in your beige kitchen you can’t even imagine the mess it makes. I had to stand there for a full 10 seconds just adjusting to my new reality.

Why is THE MAN pooping on me?

There are times in my life when, clearly, I have wronged some entity larger than myself. A few months back we went through a terrible time of family sickness after we stopped watching Grey’s Anatomy. Coincidence? I think not.

Recently, I’ve been trying to think back and remember if I sassed any older white men because I seemed to have crossed THE MAN. In the past few weeks I’ve been called to jury duty, been notified that my P-card (credit card for work) is going to be audited, and gotten one of those effing camera tickets – you know, where three weeks later you find out that you were caught in a speed trap. We also got our state taxes sent back to us with a “try again” note attached AND I lost a library book. If that weren’t enough, they lowered the limit on our American Express card, and that’s just nothing but THE MAN trying to point out your inadequacies. I mean, what is that if not THE MAN saying, “Hey, loser. You’re a real loser and we don’t want to ‘loser’ our money [THE MAN is a sucker for puns] so we’re lowering your limit. I know you weren’t AT your limit, so you probably wouldn’t have noticed so I decided to send you this letter which is a copy of the email I sent you earlier. Dude, I just felt like pooping on someone and this seemed easiest.”

So, old white dude, I get the point. Let’s call a truce. Next time I’m in the store with my kids, I’ll duct tape them, one each, to my legs so as to avoid any inadvertent touching of your suit pants. But for now, if you would refrain from messing with my mortgage, I’d appreciate it.