I'm starting to lose her already. If I say something she doesn't agree with she'll reply "blah blah blah". She's told me she wants to live at her friend Madelyn's house and wishes she'd grown in Madelyn's mommy's tummy so they could be sisters. She asks me to just drop her places and leave without spending time there. This leaves me sitting around wondering how I could have done this differently, but no do-overs so I just sigh and move on.
We're doing Brownies again this year. I've committed to being a troop leader for the 2008-2009 year. This year I'm co-leading with two other moms and we'll be eligible to do fall product sales and cookie sales for troop revenue.
We attended the area leader meeting last night and received some materials that I didn't have last year. There's a special achievement a troop can earn called "Super Trooper" with a check list of activities to complete. It's long and looks totally daunting.
I regularly feel completely unqualified and inept when looking over the materials for Girl Scouts. I can barely make DINNER, how am I going to help a bunch of little girls become Super Troopers? I'm too scared to submit my writing, what am I doing teaching kids how to feel better about themselves? I often refer to myself as a unsentimental cynic and I'm going to use the rubric to determine if the girls are 'connecting' a value/moral/lesson to whatever badge we're earning?
Last year, my goal was to give the girls a positive experience, meet girls they didn't go to school with and give them some fun activities to do. Looks like I've got to set my sights somewhat higher. I may get a crick in my neck.
Anyway, I went to the place by my house yesterday to get a pedicure and an eyebrow wax. I've been waxing my eyebrows since I was 16 as they tend to be bushier than I like and I'm ham-fisted with the tweezers. When we're strapped for cash I use Nads. But I keep my brows groomed because that's the kind of girl I am.
I get the super-deluxe spa pedicure where I get to soak my feet in the little jacuzzi tub and receive the hot stone massage after they scrub my legs with sea salt. Then my feet are slathered with lotion and wrapped in hot towels. I remain trapped like this for up to twenty minutes while the staff tends to other customers. I don't mind because this gives me time to read Cosmopolitan magazine.
Once my feet are done I say I'd like an eyebrow wax. Yesterday, I went back to the little room with the table to lay on and got myself all comfortable. Then the woman who does the waxing looked closely at my face.
"We'll do this too?" she asked me and touched the area in front of my ears.
"Oh, do you think I need it?"
She extended her index finger and brushed my upper lip, "Here too." Then she said softly, almost apologetically, "Yes."
I flashed on how my high school boyfriend used to drape his arm over my shoulder, rub his hand on my face and chant "You have facial hair! You have facial hair!"
"Um, okay. Go ahead."
There are things that hurt worse than having your facial hair removed via wax. Childbirth, obviously. Back spasms, I think. Hitting your thumb with a hammer, well, maybe.
But, my upper lip and where my supposed sideburns were are all hairless now. The only difference I notice is that that area is shiny.
I came home and told Scott all of this. He wonders why the ladies don't just say "Have you always been this ugly? One hundred dollars and we'll fix that."
The sick part of this equation is that I'll go back in three weeks and let them paint my toes again. I'm going to practice saying no in the meantime.
- Mood:Pretty!
We get all ready and all loaded up in the car. Aaaand, the car won't start. The lights came on and then it sort of purred. But no vroom vroom.
I called my friend Sarah, thinking it was my battery. She and her dad came over to try and jump it. Nope, still just purrs. Now my car is half way out in the street since I had to let it roll down the driveway so Sarah's dad could get his car close enough to mine.
Car won't start. We can't go. Cue twenty minutes of yelling and screaming and gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair and 'I don't want to stay home!' and general dissatisfaction with the situation. They're now trying to milk me for all it's worth, asking for popcorn and a movie.
My car is still half way out in the street. I tried letting it roll down the driveway, thinking I'd cut the wheels, get it pointing down hill and park at the curb. I only succeeded in get my car ALL the way out in the street. Driveway goes up hill and the street in front of my house is crowned.
I get my next-door neighbor Kelly to come help me push it. We rocked it back and forth and cut the wheels the other way and did get it up into the driveway, sideways, but in the driveway!
I will now go call the mobile mechanic and see what he tells me.
Last night I turned it on, instead of leaving the room as he usually does, Scott watched with me a little while. Haunted house, blah blah, hate the basement, blah blah, we hear music, blah blah. Then the psychic showed up and said that all the information about the family wasn't out in the open, they didn't have all the information. (Let me tell you this other thing. I was watching my ghost show one day and the medium is wandering around. Scott says "If we had issues with spirits I wouldn't want a medium. I'd want at least the extra-large." So now we call all psychics on TV extra-larges.)
They do dead time (a seance basically) with the family present and press them to tell what they haven't brought to light. The wife states that her husband called her at work to say the ghost was bothering him and it wanted him to kill his family.
I turned to Scott and said "You know, if you called me and said that the voices were telling you to kill me and the kids I don't think I'd say 'Oh, sounds like a ghost. I think we should smudge the house.' I'd call 911 and have you taken away. I mean, I love you and all but if you said that the first thing I'd do wouldn't be to google paranormal investigators."
Scott looked at me "What? You mean you'd take me for a psychiatric evaluation before you called in an extra-large?"
"Well, yeah. Sorry."
And then we went to bed.
Enigma
Originally uploaded by Pafuts
Will tore up a little paper fan that Zoe has. She was distressed so I told her I'd take her to Toy Joy to get a new one. I needed to buy a gift anyway so we went off after our afternoon naps.
And it just so happened that the people pictured above were there at the same time we were. I mean, they weren't doing THAT. Enigma, the green guy, was in jeans and a hat and obviously wasn't "on". He was just boppin' around the store looking at all the wonderful things Toy Joy has. The staff ran up to him at one point and he was very soft-spoken and gracious.
When we were done at the counter (and I was done with my regular chit-chat with the people who work there) we had to walk right by him. Zoe froze for a second. Not that I blame her. He's tall, over six feet and he's tattooed green with a bunch of facial piercings. I told her to say excuse me and she did and he and I smiled at each other.
I chatted very briefly with his assistant (a stunning woman with big black dreds and beautiful tattoos) as we were walking out. She had a gorgeous tattoo on her right foot that I commented on and I asked if they'd been in town for the tattoo show over the weekend. She said they had and were hanging out to shop. I said this was a great store and have a good time in Austin. We said bye and went on our way.
I was both impressed with my ability to say hello and not be a drooling fan girl and saddened by how un-cool I am.
But no worry! We have a new fan and a mini-disco ball that I'll be blogging about tomorrow.
Sad will
Originally uploaded by Pafuts
We have a toddler at Casa de 'Burbs. We've had one for about a year now, walking, talking, screaming, throwing his dinner on the floor when it does not please him.
Scott says that living with a toddler is like living under the control of an ancient Mayan god. You make sacrifices. If the sacrifices are accepted you are allowed to go about your normal life. Not up to par? Punishment rains down!
If you want to eat your salad, you must give the little deity all the croutons. Write an email? Goldfish crackers and The Upside Down Show. But if he's not in the mood for croutons or goldfish crackers then you are given screams and hits and kicking feet. Your plans for dinner or correspondence are interrupted at least until you find the thing he's looking for. Sometimes it's not anything you're willing to give him, like a Sharpie marker or a steak knife. Those times you just bow your head and take what's coming to you.
Our little deity has also taken to resisting being picked up when he's not in the mood to be carried. He does this by relaxing his entire body. My mom calls it going limp-noodly. Others call it going boneless. Whatever you call it it works. It's simply impossible to pick up a toddler who's gone limp.
And no one teaches them this trick, where do toddlers learn it? I mean, it's obviously some kind of Darwinian survival thing, but survive what exactly? If they go stiff, like they do when they throw a tempter tantrum (but, of course, you ignore them like you're supposed to) they're really easy to pick up. But if they're upright and they see your hands descending to lift them in order to carry them back to the car *M-BLOOP* child may as well be made of water-weenies. The only tight thing in their bodies is their vocal cords, shrieking they don't want to go home.
Toss in your diaper bag and all the crap they had to bring to the park along with the other moms watching to see how you handle this and you've got a perfect recipe for an anxiety attack. Do you leave the gear and man-handle the child into his car seat? But then you have to leave him in the car seat to come back for your gear. Do you take the gear and hope the kid follows you to the car? What if he runs the other direction?
This is where the older sibling comes in really handy. You're willing to put up with the bigger kid whining just to have the extra hands for all the sand toys. And weren't those a waste of money because you're never coming back to the park since it's such a production.
My friend Carla liked to say that Gandhi developed his non-violent, non-cooperative actions by watching a woman try to pick up a 32 month old child who didn't want to be picked up.
Now, when my son goes all loosey-goosey, I say "And Gandhi was inspired!"
If only someone would be inspired to tell me how to counteract non-violent, non-co-op I'd be inspired to thank them.
We were watching this clip when Zoe asked "What's this dance called?"
"Poppin'"
"I'm gonna call it bones loose."
I think her name is better .
When I returned I had a bunch of blank pages. Where was my wonderful letter? Still trapped in the computer, THAT'S where it was! I did all the trouble-shooting I knew how to do and as you will recall, that's means I turned everything off and on and tried again. I did check the properties to make sure they were correct. They were. This printer has gone toes up and isn't going to respond to CPR or whatever it is that you do to printers to try and get six more pages out of them. Want to know what the real pisser is? I just bought ink for the friggin' thing.
I went down to the garage and hauled an extra printer we just happened to have out there upstairs and hooked it up. Oh, this one is so old that it's not even listed as something my machine will recognize. And my machine ain't brand new if ya know what I mean.
Fine! Fiiiiiine! I have ANOTHER printer. We'll just see about this!
(And just as an aside, when I was under the table unhooking the old-old printer I was reminded of when I was selling new homes in So. Cal. and there was a company that supplied all our computers and did all our tech support. This woman I worked with once said about the support person assigned to our division "She doesn't know as much as she thinks she does." Which made me laugh because the lady who said it didn't know how to pump gas and paid me to do all her data entry because she couldn't get it figured out. Anyway.)
I hauled out the printer/faxer/scanner/wash your car/give you a pedicure device from the office closet and get that hooked up. Print. Wait with baited breath. Success!
Wait.
The letters are all fuzzy. *I* can't even read this, my 90 year old grandparents are really not going to be able to read it.
I am going to have to find a pen and a pad of paper and actually hand write this letter to my grand-folks.
Kickin' it old school! Just like in 10th grade when I spent the majority of biology class writing notes to Kristi about how hot Wes was when he wore his grey suit with the cropped, double-breasted jacket and the pegged pants. Oh, and the whole Flock of Seagulls hair thing was pretty dorky but it worked on him.
This may take a while, I'd better get started now.
- Mood:
frustrated
Do you miss anyone right now? What past experiences with this person, or these persons, make it easy for you to miss them? Submitted by |
It's so odd that this is the writer's block question. I've been moping around the last couple of days missing my girlfriends in Cali. Women I could call and speak to in Amanda-gibberish, then they would respond "I totally understand. You feel better now? You want to come over?"
It's not like we don't have friends in Austin. We just had a dinner party on Saturday where people ended up outside and one of the men sat on Will's tricycle. When he came inside I told him I'd pointed out to Scott that we needed more outdoor chairs so that our tricycle didn't have to be pressed into service as seating. He replied that he was fine sitting on a tricycle.
I then said "We just weren't planning on having this many friends." His wife said that we'd moved so much we probably resisted making friends because we had the whole moving possibility that we've become conditioned to.
I have a friend here who was in a big crisis and the person she called was me. As I said, it's not like we don't have friends here.
What's going on is that I've been looking at other people and their connections to their friends and deciding that I don't have that connection with anyone and I am therefore unlikeable and have NO friends and besides who wants to be friends with someone who writes in run-on sentences?
Take today. We have a playdate in the morning. And we have a playdate in the afternoon. And I'm inviting other people over one day this week.
Scott has band rehearsal once a week, sometimes twice. He counts them as close friends. If he wanted to get a bunch of men together to go out drinking he could.
We actually have quite a nice social circle here. I need to stop kicking my own ass about dumb stuff because it hurts.
Nothing to see here! Move along!
I opted to make Bananas Foster as the dessert course. Since we had eight adults, I had to make a couple of batches. Oh darn.
Allow me to explain. First, melt butter in a large pan. Add brown sugar, cinnamon and banana liquer. When it's all bubbly add bananas sliced the long way. Let the sauce bubble up between the fruit. Let the 'naners cook for one minute on each side then remove them to a plate.
Now, turn off the heat and pour in 1/4 cup of dark rum. Make sure it's the kind that has the flammable caution on the bottle. Use a long match or lighter to ignite the rum.
FLOOOM! WOOSH! FIRE!
Shake the pan around until the flames go out. Then pour the sauce over the bananas and serve with vanilla ice cream.
I love to make this. I mean, it's really tasty. But the show of making it is great. I like to shout 'Fire in the hole!' before I light it up.
I've invested in the big bottles banana liquer and rum, so I can make it at the drop of a hat. So, if you're ever in the neighborhood and happen to stop by Casa de 'burbs, I can give you dessert and a show.
Just call before you come over so I can make sure I have bananas.
summertime girl
Originally uploaded by Pafuts
I got a call from a friend on Sunday night and my friend was crying. She'd just gotten a call from her mom. My friend's grandmother had taken a turn for the worse and they feared she would pass away soon.
I offered to come over and hand my friend tissues while she figured out what she was going to do. I explained to Scott what I was doing and got ready to go.
I kissed the kids goodbye. As I did, Zoe asked me "Is her grandma dying?"
"Yes honey." I answered. "Her grandma's is pretty old and very sick. So she's getting ready to pass away."
"Oh." my daughter answered and went on with her life.
I went and helped my friend research airfares, book flights for herself and her son and get started packing. The next morning the kids and I took them to the airport.
Zoe asked me again "Her grandma's dying?"
"Yes honey. So she's going to go and see her and tell her grandma goodbye." I told Zoe.
"Oh, that's so sad." she took the plush dog she'd opted to bring with us that morning and made the doggie put it's paw up to it's eye. "Look Mommy. Valentine Puppy is sad too."
We took them off to the airport and then went home. My friend called during her trip to tell me that her grandmother passed away not long after she'd arrived. But, she'd been at home, in her own bed, surrounded by her family that loved her.
Last night I went back to the airport to pick them up. Before I left I smooched Zoe goodnight.
Zoe asked me where I was going. I told her I was going to the airport to pick up our friends.
"Did her grandma die Mommy?" Zoe asked with a very earnest look on her face.
"Yes honey. Her grandma died."
"Oh mommy, that makes me sad." the corners of her mouth turned down and she looked somewhat stricken.
"Do you want me to tell her that it made you sad her grandma died and you're sorry she had to die?"
"No," Zoe told me, "I don't want to hurt her feelings."
"Oh no, sweetie, it won't hurt her feelings. It's okay to tell someone you're sorry that their grandma died."
"Okay, then yes, tell her I'm sorry her grandma died."
And I did.
Just before I got married I had to switch my birth control prescription as I was getting breakouts. But, again, a breakout wasn't much and was easily treated.
Not these lumps that popped up on my forehead. Nasty, under the skin stuff that just grew and grew and never came to a head. Being me, I tried to squeeze them into submission and only succeeded in creating a bunch of scabs on my face. Great. Now I look like I have chicken pox.
I did some research on the web and in the book "Don't Go To the Cosmetics Counter Without Me". I got a bunch of stuff from the drug store. I used it all for a week and continued to break out. Again, great.
I turned to the web, yet again. Somehow I stumbled across a site out of Australia that touts the benefits of an all-natural skin care regime. Her advice was somewhat shocking to me.
Stop washing your face with anything but water. And by all means don't use benzoyl peroxide. Use the oil cleansing technique one to three times a week. Drink water, eat well, exercise, keep your stress level to a minimum. Try various make-ups until you find one that doesn't make you break out by asking for samples. And don't pick your face. She pointed me to a long article about the bad things that happen when you pick your face.
What do you mean don't pick my face? I've always picked my face. I don't have many vices. I don't really drink. I don't smoke. I don't compulsively charge stuff I don't need. I watch trash television and I pick my face. Every time I pass a mirror I check out my face and pick at it. I pick my face at stoplights. I pick my face multiple times a day. I find popping a zit to be one of the most satisfying things EVER. Don't pick my face. Don't talk crazy.
Then I read the long article. It told me about the huge PSI that's put on the dermis when you squeeze. And the stuff that comes out isn't generally what's trapped in your pore, it's usually subcutaneous tissue you've forced out. Fluid will then rush to that area, trying to heal the damage which causes a bump. You squeeze the bump and force out more tissue and eventually you end up with a scar. Picking also transfers the bacteria around, causing new breakouts. It also points out that people who have low self esteem are more likely to pick at their faces. Battered women often will have faces that have been scarred and bruised from their picking.
Therefore, I've spent the last four days trying to not pick my face. With the exception of one spot up in my hairline, I've been successful. I've looked. And I've done some stretching of my skin. But I haven't squeezed.
To accomplish this, I've been keeping myself busy and free from boredom. I cleaned out the kids toy box. I cleaned the kids room. I've gotten caught up on all the laundry. I organized the pantry. I ordered a replacement part for the stove.
I've run out of the bathroom before I can look in the mirror. I've flicked myself on the inside of my wrist. I've talked to myself about how great my skin feels now that it's not being abused.
It's taken all the willpower I can muster. And I'm so proud of myself I feel a little pathetic, truth be told. I'm proud of myself for not picking my skin? Are my accomplishments so small that I have to pat myself on the back for THAT?
Well, yeah. If I was quitting smoking (which I've never done without the benefit of being pregnant so I have no idea how hard that really is) I'd be no less proud. I'm trying to end a bad habit and I deserve some props for that. Go me!
I've also upped my water intake and my exercise. I've gone to bed at a reasonable hour. I take deep breaths when I find myself stressed out. I play with my kids.
And, damned if it's not working. My face is clearing up.
So, if you'll excuse me, I need to refill my water glass.
I'm thrilled with the results and I'll be doing the upkeep on it for the foreseeable future.
I get compliments and comments from lots of kids. Children in the grocery store point at me and say "Look mommy, she has pink hair? Why does she have pink hair?" One mom was stumbling around trying to answer that question as I pondered the spice display nearby.
I finally turned to the little girl in the shopping cart and said "It's just the color my hair is today. Tomorrow I might decide to make my hair a different color."
Mostly I get little girls who say "I like your pink hair." To which I reply "Why thank you!"
I also get a fair amount of stares from adults. After spending a few years in the Invisible Woman Over the Age of Thirty Club, it's weird for me to catch someone looking at me. I always wonder what they're looking at before I remember my hair.
I don't react in the Taxi Driver, aggro way of "What are YOU lookin' at?". It's more of a "What ARE you looking at?" honest query. Then it dawns on me that they're examining my hair.
I live in Austin. It surprises me that anyone would look once, let alone let the gaze linger. Still, I like it. I think I'll keep it awhile.
Then my wonderful next-door neighbor Kelly came over to babysit and we headed off to have dinner at the Shoreline Grill. Situated on Ladybird Lake you can sit at your table sipping wine and watch the bats fly by. We had a great dinner, split a bottle of wine and the bats flew right by where we were sitting. We didn't see the stream so much, but the individual bats fly right by the patio and catch bugs in midair. They zip through the trees and we got a nice look at the little guys.
After dinner we went down to walk along the water, where we had bats flying right over our heads. We walked across the Anne Richards bridge and all the way down to Amy's on South Congress. We ate ice cream on our trek back up Congress. We marveled at the view of the Capital building. We said hi to people on the street.
We drove back to Casa de 'burbs and had a long chat before we headed off to bed.
It's nice to be reminded of the benefits of being a grown person.
Yesterday, we went to her second session of lessons. They take place at a different time with a different instructor. Zoe wasn't all that interested and was downright refusing to show the new guy her kickboard skills. I intervened and tried everything I knew how to cajole her into it.
I told her I'd buy her a My Little Pony. I told her it was okay to be scared but she still needed to try. I counted down from three. I told her to do it. I then counted to ten and told her that she needed to choose to do the kickboard or choose to go home. She just sat on the top step and stamped her feet and grunted.
I finally pulled her out of the pool and we went to sit on a chair to talk while Will played in the toddler pool. It turned out that Zoe was scared because the new instructor wasn't holding the kid's hands while they were on the kickboard. I explained to her that she needs to use words to tell someone what she wants. She didn't do that, so it just looked like she was having a tantrum.
That's not okay. She needs to say what she needs. If she'd said "Can you hold onto my hands?" or had said to me "I need him to hold my hands." Then we would have known what she wanted. But since she didn't do that and she didn't do what mom or the teacher said, now we had to go home. Which is what we did.
It made me feel like an asshole.
We're going to talk more today about swim lessons. If she still wants to go. If she will listen to the teacher. If she will use her words. If we go back I'll tell the seventeen year old guy what it is that she wants and how she's skittish. But, dang, there are days I want this to be easier.
We've got a guest coming into town on Tuesday so I'm going to be picking up today. I've also got to make the children's bathroom shareable. I just did this not that long ago so it won't take long. We're making plans to take her to see the Captains rehearse, the bats fly and various other Austin landmarks/stuff.
And in ten days it's going to be August and I'm not sure how that happened.
I had enough time to wash my hair before Will came charging in yelling "Sho-yer! Sho-yer!" and yanking at his diaper. He got the tabs undone and his diaper dropped onto the bathroom rug.
Now, a couple of factors came into play next. The first is that I'm nearsighted. I can negotiate through rooms without my glasses but I can't drive or see very far in front of me. The other is that Will had been having, well, pebbly poops that day.
When he looked at his diaper and said "Ew in mah d'per." I figured it was the pebbly kind and I'd be okay to let him in without a wipedown first. And I couldn't see that far anyway. Therefore, I opened the shower door and let him in.
His poo had not been pebbly nor firm in anyway. It was also stuck to his bum in a big clump that fell off when the warm water hit it.
I was then standing in the shower with a lump of doo between my feet and a two year old who's backside needed cleaning off. Oh well, what was it that Stephen King says? "Shit washes off"?
I kicked the offending pile down towards the drain and got Will's behind cleaned off. This was not easy. It was sticky. After he was cleaned off he looked around my legs and said "W're ew? W're ew? Dat ew? I see ew?"
I sat down on the floor of the shower to prevent him from picking up his own solid waste and I washed both of us off with Dr. Bronner's Peppermint soap.
At this point Zoe ran into the bathroom. She peered through the glass shower door before shouting "There's poop in the shower! Mommy! Look! Poop in the shower!"
I assured her that I knew about the poop in the shower while I turned off the water and got us out and dried off. I freed Will to have a little naked time and got the offending stuff into the toi-toi. Then I ran the hottest water I could for a little while.
Then I needed a rest. A drink would have gone down well but I didn't want to make myself dizzier. Then Scott came home and I went to bed.
So I make the following announcement:
The time has come to start our sign ups for the Great Ornament Exchange of 2008!
If you'd like to participate send your real and LJ name and snail mail address to:
Christmasgoddess at gmail dot com
Feel free to repost in your own journal or forward to anyone you think would like to participate.
I also didn't get online as much as I usually do. Therefore, I didn't receive the phone calls or email from the mother of one of Zoe's friends asking if I was still going to take the girls to the Girl Scout event that night until it was all over.
Shit. I thought that was on Friday. Nope, I wrote it down wrong. I was supposed to take them and I fucked up. Now I feel horrible and embarrassed in addition to still not feeling great.
I sent email to the mom saying I had it written down wrong and offering to take them to do something on Saturday, but I'm mortified. I hate messing up. It makes me feel, I don't know, it just makes me feel shitty. I'm never one to say 'Oh, wow, sorry I really spaced that.' and move on. I feel bad about it for a while. Then I feel the need to make up for my mistake.
I'm feeling better today, as long as I'm sitting down. If I get up and walk around I get a little dizzy and lightheaded. But my knees aren't hurting as much and my hives have gone down. I'm going to continue with my rest, stretching and water today.
We're going to skip swim lessons as I just don't have the energy to get both kids ready, take them over there, play in the pool with Will, keep Will from leaving the toddler pool, haul both kids back to the car, drive home, get everyone ready for a nap and put them to bed. The mere thought of it makes me a little sick to my stomach.
- Mood:
disappointed
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pafuts- Amanda Snyder
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