Because my head needs to be shrunk again

I don't like being a victim; I'd much rather suffer in silence and be a martyr, I guess. The idea of being pitied is a hard one for me, which I guess is why I don't go to shrinks right away when I notice myself going downhill. I like to pretend I'm just having a bad day or a stressful time and that if I muscle through it it will all go away on its own.
I loved being pregnant. The diabetes sucked, but I loved being pregnant.  I had confidence and every day felt like the day before Christmas waiting to see what the baby was, a boy or a girl. It was great.  Looking back, I think that may have been the last time I felt happy but I could be wrong. Looking back through a fog tends to make everything look foggy. All I know is that I haven't felt happy for a long time, not truly happy and content with my life. I know it's chemical; I've been here before. But I also know it's a long and tedious and expensive struggle to get better so I just never made an appointment. There was always something better to spend the $60 copay on than me going to chat about my feelings to some shrink. And then what, I talk to the therapist 4 or 5 times before I even see the actual doctor and then they write me a script it takes 2 months to ramp up to full dosage on, so that's 4 months right there. And if that script doesn't work they start tweaking the dosage to get it right so there's a month or two more and if it doesn't work you have to taper off of that med and onto a new one and start the whole process all over again with side effects and everything, and most of the time I felt either well enough to think I didn't really need meds or so depressed that just the thought of the whole process made me want to climb in bed from exhaustion.
But now, now I've hit bottom.  There's an opportunity that I know, rationally and objectively, would be good for me and that I would be perfect for. A chance to be published, even if only online, on a comedy website, but I can't muster the motivation or courage to even try.  Most days I can't muster the motivation to even get the kids in the bath. Hell, they love the bath, it's the splashing and fighting over bath toys and struggles when it's time to get out of the tub that I'm not up for, not to mention the fight when I try to wash their hair.  And I don't take them outside because they just get messy in the sand box and throw dirt on each other and it's hot and muggy out and why even bother when I can just throw Ghostbusters in the DVD player instead?
So I called the shrink. Because I don't want to be the mom who just throws Ghostbusters in the DVD player instead of letting her kids play in the backyard, and because my kids deserve better than that.  Last week I went to see the therapist and she agreed to fast track me to the actual psychiatrist but even that means a month and a half wait. But knowing that there's an end in sight, knowing that eventually I will get on meds and they will build up in my system and things will get better, is kind of helping already. Not that I'm happy or have any motivation yet, but I can think of things I'm going to do when I get my motivation back, and I'm excited about it which is a lot for someone who hasn't been excited about anything in almost 2 years.
So I know most of you (all 5 of you?) read this for humor and one-liners and cute things my kids say spelled out phonetically, but today I wrote a little honest truth and I hope you'll forgive me for it.  I promise, I'll write something out phonetically later.

Me, a homeowner?

We're buying our house. I don't like to rush into things, and I have general commitment issues, but after living here for 15 years, I only had a small 2 week panic attack about buying the place. And now my mind is filling with things to do to my former rented home. Sadly, Tom has a say, too, so I can't just start doing things to it all willy nilly and shit.  And I can't install the built in cabinets and floor to ceiling bookshelves because right now our furniture won't allow for it.  But I really do want to refinish the living room and part of the hallway floor, and I want ceiling fans in all the bedrooms and the living room, and new flooring in the kitchen! Maybe refinish the wood floor in there. It has glue all over it so it's be a project, but I think Tom could do it in one weekend. And I'd like a playroom in the basement and a wall down the stairway instead of the open way it is now where the kids can fall off the staircase, and a baker's rack where the dishwasher is now.
Maybe if I told Tom he could rearrange the furniture any way he liked, he'd build me those shelves.

And yet I really want to know

I'm bipolar so sometimes I can't sleep and my mind races for an hour or so while I lay in bed. And while I was trying to fall asleep last night my mind was racing through all of the things I need to buy before school starts this year and one of them was tennis shoes for Ryan. She had 2 pairs but one got thrown away after a particularly muddy cave-exploration field trip and she's detasseling in the other so it's coated with mud, too. But then I remembered buying her another pair last fall, and therein lies my dilemma. I want to ask her, "Hey, whatever happened to the purple shoes we bought before school last year?" And I really really want the answer to be, "Oh my god, I forgot all about those! They're in the bottom of my closet; I'll just wear them again this year!"  But the answer would more likely be something I don't want to know like, "I loaned them to my irresponsible friend and she went swimming in them," or, "I stepped in gum so I threw them in the dumpster behind the school."  So the dilemma is, do I even ask her where they are? Is there any good reason for asking?

Braaaaaiiiiiiins..... Part Two

See where the mouse arrow is on that screenshot? That's a tumor that is outside of the spinal cord but inside the dura. It is very close to where the whole brain radiation (WBR) from last fall stopped, and the radiologist's fear is that the spinal cord it is pressing against may have received some radiation before and that hitting it with more radiation now could cause some sort of damage. Like paralysis from the neck down damage. So they're going to dose her with another round of chemo again, which they couldn't do for her brain tumors because chemo can't go through the dura. Am I the only one who hears that and thinks that the chemo won't affect this spinal tumor because it's inside the dura? Well apparently none of the medical people nor my mom think it means that so I suppose I'll defer to the oncologist if I must. But either way, remission is over.

Pelican hickeys

 

Awesome band name, Pelican Hickeys. That is all.

Am I The Only One Who Sees It?

I am the mother of Keith Partridge. Just sayin.

I really hope that tonight, when I wander half-asleep into the tiny hotel bathroom to pee in the dark, that I don't trip over the side of the bathtub and fall into it, cracking my head against the soap dish on my way down. I don't know how long I was out, but I woke up in the tub and plan to use my head injury as a defense should it ever be necessary.
Also, say what you may about "flyover country", but the zoo in Omaha is AWESOME. Just the look on my kids' faces when they saw a bat attacking Mom was worth the 5+ hour drive.

Just call me Anastasia Beaverhausen

Her death was a tragedy, but ever since they found cocaine in Whitney Houston's system I feel a little safer mixing Xanax with alcohol.

spoooooky

Sometimes Tom doesn't get home until after dark. I wonder how bad it would fuck with him if I painted a handful of rocks from the gravel driveway with glow in the dark paint and then tossed them out there some day for no reason.

Braaaaaiiiiiiins.....

This is my mother's brain, or at least it was last fall. See that weird little truffle-shaped glob in the lower right corner-ish part of her brain? That is a giant brain tumor. But they took it out.

See this? This is my mother's current brain, truffle-free, but with a white blur. See the blur up there slightly left of center? That's bad, and it's too deep to operate on. But the good news is that it was there last fall, just tinier, and they irradiated it last fall. So they're thinking that the chemo that fixed the rest of her body is still effective and she's probably clear from the neck down, and they base this on the fact that this little blur was there before and there are no new blurs that weren't there before, so obviously the cancer isn't spreading. 
So anyway, on Monday my brother will drive her to Iowa City so they can do a new MRI and a CT scan, and then Tuesday I will drive her out for the one day radiation where they will zap her deep in her frontal lobe with what I secretly envision is a cross between a giant laser pointer and the laser Val Kilmer spent the entire Real Genius movie building.

Iowa City

I am awake and showered before 7:00 am so that I can accompany my mother and brother to Iowa City to see what the doctors want to do about Mom's latest MRI, which shows a new/returning tumor in her brain. Remission is over and this horrid dance is starting all over again. There was a time when I thought I might attend the University of Iowa and Iowa City represented hope and independence and adulthood to me, but now it's just surgery and radiation and dumbed down medical jargon and the gag-inducing scent of iodine. When all of this is over, however it is over, I hope to never set foot in that town again.

Wherefor art thou, Jooey-et?

You know those green plastic things that sit under the downspout to direct the water away from the foundation of the house?  Well we have one in our driveway under the gutter off the back of the house, which is kind of dumb because the downspout goes about ten feet away from the house as it is and an 18" plastic tray isn't going to save anything.  But I have no better place to put the tray so I leave it in the driveway.
And under that tray is a hole in the gravel. It's about big enough that I could set a golf ball in it and the tray would still sit flat.
And in that hole lives a toad. A toad Tommy has named Juliet, except it's pronounced Jooey-et. A toad Danny has named Frog. Except it's pronounced Fwock. It's a very important toad, to have so many exotic aliases.

So tonight, when I took the boys to bed, they wanted to sleep in frog-holes rather than beds. So I piled the quilts up in a circle in Tommy's bed to make the walls for a frog-hole, and I turned to do the same in the crib, but Tommy was in the crib. And Danny climbed up into the bed. And it might have worked all night except that I took a shower and the boys yelled because the cat was in their room and when Ryan went to get the cat she switched the boys back to their own beds because 14 year old girls value nothing more than strict adherence to tradition.
Tomorrow I will see if Juliet/Frog has returned to its bed in the driveway and try to take pictures of it. But I have to face the sad possibility that being discovered and renamed by my sons has chased it away for good. It's like white flight but slimier. Fwock flight.

I love my family

I love that Danny is perfectly willing to go outside in nothing but a diaper, but he always grabs shoes and a hat on his way to the door. It might me my bunny slippers and a toy hard hat, but he feels he needs shoes and a hat more than he needs pants. He's like a 1950s sitcom dad, but with bare legs.

I love that Tommy thinks he has more money if he counts the same bills twice. Like currency depends entirely on the numbers you say as you count. I'm confident he will grow up to be a very successful economist some day. He'll probably run Wall Street.

I love that Ryan, with her teenage girl body and her Malibu Barbie looks, is still a 9 year old tomboy sometimes. The other day she came home from a walk and said she found a dead thing by the creek. When I asked her what it was she said it's lower jaw was just bone but the rest of it was "kinda there" but she couldn't get close enough to see what it was because the smell was too bad.  Just when I worry that she's growing up too fast she reminds me that she's not quite at the date nights and curfew extensions age yet.

I love that Tom lets Tommy help him in the kitchen even though it involves spilled flour and an eggy floor.

My son the capitalist

Tommy wants a toy. It's a really cool toy, by 3 1/2 year old standards. A Dinosaur Train motorized train set, complete with time tunnel!  It costs $45 at Paul's Discount Store, and I'm not going to pay $45 on a toy just because. So I told him he could earn the money himself. We wrote his name on an empty coffee can and every time he finds a coin on the floor he puts it in his can. So far he has one dollar, two dimes, and a penny in there. This Saturday is the city wide yard sale and our street is notoriously busy on city-wide day. Ryan has had some stellar Kool-Aid stands on city-wide day, and this year Tommy will, to the best of his 3 1/2 year old ability and attention span, attempt to replicate her success. Right now Tom is mixing up banana bread, cookie dough, and brownies for Tommy to sell, and Ashley the babysitter helped bake cookies the other day to sell as well. I will make muffins tomorrow evening. I really hope Tommy earns a fair amount of money, maybe even enough to buy his toy. I hope he learns that work = reward. I hope I'm not left with 6 gallons of Kool-Aid and 8 loaves of banana bread.

**EDIT.  He earned the money, I was still left with 6 gallons of Kool-Aid, he bought the toy that very night, and when I asked him how he got the money (to try and reinforce the memory that he had worked for it) he said, "People gave it to me." He totally doesn't get that they gave it to him in exchange for something, just that they gave him money and he got a toy.  Remember this, parents, there is a fine line between selling sugar-water and panhandling, and kids don't grasp nuance.

Danny hijacked this blog post. A film review.

Dowie, way aw you?
Jess keep simming. Jess keep simming.
Da oh-sen! Dey simming da oh-sen!
Whale!!
Mommy, I watching Meemo!

When they do, I do differently

When some feel blessed, I feel lucky.
When some thank God for good friends, I thank the friends for being good.
When some lean on God to get them through, I find strength within myself to get through.
When some leave it up to God to decide, I make a difficult decision myself.
When some ask a pastor what God says is right, I follow my heart to what I know is right.
And when some wait for an eternity of reward, I try to live my own rewards now.

Conversation between me and Tom

Me: I'm having memory problems.  I forget things all the time, even when I'm not drinking.

Tom: It's a brain cloud!

Me: It's not a brain cloud!

Tom: You have to jump into a volcano!

Baby names I didn't get to use

Insomnia post part II

Twin girls:
Ivy and Evie (short for Evelyn)

Twin boys:
Joseph (Joey) and Henry (Joey Ramone and Henry Rollins)

Intersex baby:
Casey Lee

boy:
Russell
Donny Lee

girl:

Shane Ellen

I have no names for twins with mismatched junk.  :(

Party Planning

I was just told that Tommy wants a Godzilla party for his birthday and Danny wants a dinosaur party. Now, their birthdays are 2 days apart so it's going to be the first party. And you'd think I could just make one party and tell the other kid that Godzilla is a T Rex or that the T Rex is Godzilla, but I can't.  Tommy knows the difference and he is very insistent that everyone else know it, too. Godzilla has pokey spikes! And he stands up straight like me! 
So I will probably end up throwing a very generic dinosaur party with google image pictures of Godzilla printed out on the invitations and hung on the wall, too. I sense lots of clashing birthday parties in my future.  Much like last year's Spongebob/Gummibar party.  And now, to help with that imagery, here's the Gummibar singing about his pacifier.

maggie jean!

Hee hee. These posts make Maggie's phone beep. I'm drunk with power. Or with xanax and alcohol.  You have no idea what a relif it was when Whitney Houston popped positive for cocaine. I was getting scared there for a couple days.

insomnia. again

Why does porn always get the new tech first.  Video chat, skype, chatroullette, dvds, home video, drive in movies, all of it.  Porn is the true visionary industry of the US. Yay naked capitalism!

A xanax and a half, plus 2 beers, will make you forget not to drink or take xanax. I type slow tonight.

My entire calendar is full of other people's medical appointments. My friend's mammogram I'm watching her kid for. My mom's oncology appointments. My kid's check ups and vaccinations. Yet Tom doesn't even text me when he'll be an hour late because he made a doctor appointment. WTF.

I mowed the lawn to feel all manly and competent, and all I feel is out of shape and sore. Goals always tend to look better from the front than from behind. It's a universal sucky truth.

How come my kids can't say anything coherently expect "More chocolate milk" and "macaroni and cheese"? It's creepy and nutritionally void.

Random thoughts from a sleep-deprived mind

I stopped drinking, and taking Xanax, so I'm having trouble sleeping. So here are some disjointed thoughts from my insomniac brain.

Essential oils aren't essential to anyone. Even a hippy could live without patchouli.  The only thing an essential oil is essential to is the thing they wring it out of to sell it to hippies. So ha ha on all the patchouli loving hippies out there funding an entire industry of patchouli killers. You suck out their essence to rub on the unwashed and then the patchoulies all die! Really, wouldn't a Lady Speed Stick be better for everyone?

WTF is a patchouli, anyway? I know what it smells like, but not what it is.  And for the record, it smells like a Big Lebowski fan, that's what it smells like.

Why is it that you can drink as much as you want if you never want to drink again but you have to stop drinking in order to retain your capacity to drink?  And also, why is it perfectly okay to have a couple glasses of wine after a hard day, but not to drink an equal number of beers, for women anyway? 

Don't hate the player; hate the game.

Okay we're going to play "Who can stay quiet the longest?" Whoever wins gets a strawberry! Starting.....now!

5 seconds later......

*slap*

"OW!"

"I WIN!!!"

Autopsy relief

I was kinda glad when they found cocaine in Whitney Houston's system. It makes me feel slightly better when I wash my Xanax down with liquor.

tipsy anti-school ramblings

You know what school does? It squashes the values you teach kids when they're too young for school. Children's television programs encourage them to be independent, free-thinking, creative people.  Schools teach them to stand in line and act as a herd. If you teach your kid to read before or above his "class level", he'll be ignored wile they work on the slower learning kids. Part of it is because there's no incentive for teachers to work with advanced kids, only punishments for "failing" the kids who are behind.  But part of it is that schools are set up for third graders to work at third grade level. There's no room for third grade kids who work at 6th grade level. I had one of those and when I tried to skip her a grade they gave me the most laughable and outright stupid reasons to deny it. She was smaller than the kids she'd be in class with. So, what?, all kids with dwarfism should be forever trapped in kindergarten, and tall kids should skip middle school altogether?  She was emotionally behind them; they'd eat her alive! Translation: all autistic kids should stay in first grade till they age out of public school at 21.
But I remain opposed to home-schooling. Home schooling teaches kids that when the going gets tough, the tough retreat and make their own rules.  We don't need to remove our kids from reality; we need to fix reality!  I only wish I knew how.  I'm sending Tommy to preschool next year, where he'll be turned into a drop in the amorphous "class" blob.  I hate it, but it's the lesser of 2 very bad evils. I want him to know the rules and learn the skills, but I wish there was a way to do it without stripping him of his individuality.

When will he speak English?

Tommy: Mommy, I need a base bore
Me: What? A baseboard?
Tommy (angry):No! A base bore!
Me: A space boar?
Tommy (irate): A base boy!
Me: What the frak is a base boy and why do you need one?
Tommy: A BASE BOY! IN YOU PUTER!
Me: A space bar?
Tommy: *heavy sigh* Yes! I need a base bar for to play my game!

That's when I hear the tiny DJ Lance voice in the background. "Press the space bar to jump."  If there were an app to translate from little kid to English, I'd buy an iPhone tomorrow.

Damn pandas on thehistory channel

I walk into the living room and see that all of the couch pillows (there are about a dozen of them, in lieu of back cushions) are in a pile on one of the sofas, surrounding Tommy.

Me: Tommy, stop building castles out of the pillows.

Tommy: It's not a castle; it's a wall.

Me: Well stop building walls with the pillows. They're for the back of the couches, not to build with.

Tommy: But, Mommy! I'm playing Mongols! I need a wall.

I need to watch less History Channel with Tommy in the room. Either that or he needs to stop watching Kung Fu Panda cartoons.

Oh if only I could be fatter now

It took more than a month, but I finally got my finger sized and had my ring fixed. (http://notquitecosmo.blogspot.com/2012/03/i-has-dent.html)  Now I am firmly (yet removably) married with my ring as proof. And I'm paranoid as Hell about it! When the ring was stuck I never had to worry about losing it. When it was in the jeweler's safe I never had to worry about losing it. Now that it's on my finger but large enough to come off (but not so large as to slide off on its own) I'm constantly freaked that I'll lose it.
I can't wait until I get fatter and it gets stuck again.

A Pinterest Kind Of Day

Today I baked the eggs for Easter instead of boiling them, like I saw on pinterest. Then I made Chinese tea eggs out of the cracked ones, like I saw on pinterest. Then I made dandelion jelly, like I saw on pinterest. And I learned that while dandelion jelly may turn out to taste awesome (I don't know yet; haven't tried it) it smells horrible.

Also, completely unrelated but Toy Story 2 is on: What is that speech impediment Joan Cusack has? It's like a lisp and marble mouth all together but not as garbled. Either way, it sounds like she needs to swallow some spit.

A long time from now, when I die....

Someday when I die, somebody will have to print up one of those little programs for my funeral. But I am not religious, and it is customary to put a religious verse in the program.  So, in case they read my blog before sending the order out to the printers, this is what I would ideally like my funeral brochure to read:

Words are flowing out like
Endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe.
Pools of sorrow waves of joy
Are drifting through my opened mind
Possessing and caressing me.
 Images of broken light, which
Dance before me like a million eyes,
They call me on and on across the universe.
Thoughts meander like a
Restless wind inside a letter box
They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe.
 Sounds of laughter, shades of life
Are ringing through my opened ears
Inciting and inviting me.
Limitless undying love, which
Shines around me like a million suns,
It calls me on and on across the universe.

I don't care what they say, straight marriage will never be equal to gay

I used to be gay. Not as an orientation but as a lifestyle (orientation stays, statically and fluidly as bi/pan).  I went to gay bars and saw drag shows. My gaydar was always on and I got the joke when Karen threw the keys and neither Jack nor Will moved to catch them (Grace: The gays don't catch.).  But then the woman I fell in love with had a penis and I married him and we settled down into blissful suburbia forever. But sometimes, sometimes I miss my gay card.
I watch Project Runway (Yay, Mondo! Sorry, Austin. Stop crying, Michael Costello), but I've never seen RuPaul's Drag Race.  I've never seen Glee. I barely even know who Lady Gaga is!  I just, I miss the glitter and the disco lights and the men dressed as women with lipstick outside the natural lines of their lips.  I love my husband very very much, but sometimes I wish he were gayer.

I has a dent

If you ever get your wedding set stuck, take it off before it gets really stuck. And if it's really irremovably stuck, get it cut off before it's 3 sizes too small. I had to get my wedding set cut off last week and it sucked. They don't use a pliers cutter thing. No tin snips. No they use a Dremel tool with a guard that slips under the ring. But since the ring is already too tight to come off, the guard pulls it tighter. And every once in a while the spinning blade acts more like a wheel than a blade and pulls the guard further under the ring and the backside of the ring crushes into your finger.  Now I have to wait 2 more weeks for my finger to plump back up to see what size it is so they can fix it for me. If I'd known how inconvenient this was I'd have had the damn ring sized years ago.  I just always assumed that at some point, wedding rings got stuck.  Like little old ladies who've been married for 50 years; I figured their rings were stuck.  When I mentioned that to the ladies at the jewelry store with the Dremel they said that those rings usually are stuck, and the skin's grown over them too.  Eww.  So now I am single to all the men who look for a wedding ring. Right?

Capitalist pig manure makes great fertilizer, I hear.

When Ryan was younger, like 5, she had a vegetable garden. The deal was that she'd grow the vegetables and help with the weeding and harvesting, and then we'd go around to family and friends and sell them and she'd ear her money for the county fair. When I married Tom he got all capitalist about it and was all "Why does she get to keep the money when we buy the seeds?" Men are jerks, right?  So anyway, then she got older and more bored with the garden, and I got to choose to plant things I wanted to eat anyway so I just paid her for them in the end, and she lost interest completely and decided to just beg for fair money instead like all the other kids.

But a couple years ago I was really really pregnant in the summer. Tommy was born in early August so you can imagine how much work that garden was in the summer heat. And  then the yard got flipped upside down* and nothing grew right anyway, and we haven't had a garden in almost 4 years.  But now Tom says he's going to grow a garden.  And what's worse, he says it's his garden so I don't get to plant anything I like in it. But I want tomatoes and broccoli and he's so anal about his lawn that he won't let me tear up a patch for my own garden! (Not very capitalist if you ask me. I demand competition and free market!) So I am going to spend big bucks on an overpriced upside down tomato planter and since broccoli has very shallow roots I will plant it in planters on the back deck. And if he doesn't like it then fuck him. I only had to pay for planters and potting soil and gravity defying upside down tomato plants because he is an anti-capitalist hippy!

*When we had the new section of the house built, they dug the basement and piled all the dirt up in the back yard, then when they were all done they took the dirt and filled in/evened out the hills in the yard. Except that they dug an 8 foot hole and dumped it top down so now the clay layer is on top and the good black topsoil is on the bottom, so nothing will grow right in my yard. We have spotty grass and when we tried to grow vegetables be got white carrots because there was no nutrients in the soil. So sad. Tom plans to put his garden west of the upside down part, though. We'll see.

Boys are dumb

Tom buzzed his hair last night and he tells me today, "I never noticed it before but either my hands are really big or my head is small." Now, he has giant Shrek hands and I've told him that before (his pinky is the size of my thumb) but this time I just said "Your head's getting smaller. I didn't want to say anything but I've noticed." Now he's all paranoid that he's losing skull bone density or something. You'd think, since I didn't marry for looks, that he'd at least be smarter than this.

It's a battle of the billboards.

You know how every few years there'll be a story about some atheist group putting up a billboard or renting space on bus stop benches saying things like "You're right to doubt God" and "There is no Heaven or Hell; Live for today" and all the local churches are on the news talking about how offensive it is and then eventually the signs get taken down for being anti-Christian?
Well that's exactly how it feels to an atheist, or an agnostic, when they see church signs with witty little messages on them like "He died for your sins; what have you done for Him lately?" and "Well it's a good thing He believes in you" and "Jesus is the reason for the season."  They're the same thing: obnoxious attempts to push a particular faith onto people who don't share it.
So I really think that the atheist billboards need to be pointed at the churches with clever signage. And I think the free birth control Planned Parenthoods need to be located across the street from all of the Catholic hospitals that refuse to offer insurance which covers birth control. I think that if the debate is going to descend into tit for tat, we need to keep our tits with our tats. Why offend innocent bus stop bench sitters when you can instead offend the people you're trying to retaliate against?

Did the Chinese just not have wandering missionaries? Were they not good at lion fighting?

People have had religion since the beginning of recorded history. Roman and Greeks had many similar gods.  I'm sure they heard tales from the East and the South of strange and new religions all the time. I wonder what made Christianity the prevailing European religion and not, say, Buddhism.  What made them all convert to a Middle Easter one and not a Far Eastern one.  How different would the world be if Norse polytheism had taken hold instead? Would scores of emo kids on facebook be saying Ohmyloki about everything? Would the Thor movie be more like The Passion Of The Christ and less like Ironman? Seriously, this is the shit I wonder about at almost midnight.
Crap. I gotta go to bed.

Also today I ate

Today I also made supper from the internet and it was SO YUMMY! It was kind of like Noodle Company's thai noodles but no store I went to had sprouts so I left them out. This recipe calls for green onions and cilantro but I replaced cilantro with parsley and would have replaced onions with sprouts but there were none so I just left them out and added more carrots. Being all clever and frugal I bought baby carrots because those get eaten faster in our house but once home I realized that I am an idiot and that shredding baby carrots with a potato peeler is really hard.  But anyway, here's the recipe, which I found on pinterest but will post the original link here:
http://asmallsnippet.blogspot.com/2011/03/spicy-thai-noodles.html

Also, I used 1T of pepper flake and it was so hot, so next time I'll probably halve that. In fact, it made a lot of sauce so I'll probably halve the whole sauce recipe and then take out still more pepper. This was a meal that required a lot of milk.

A goal has been reached

I got 4 inches cut off my hair today, mostly by way of new layers added. It's shorter than I usually wear it but I can still pull it up so all is well. The big thing is that now it's finished. I am fairly certain that it's all my own natural dye-free hair now. No more embarrassing ponytails that don't match my head. No more trying to figure out what colors look good on me because I'm a "cool" tone with my hair up and a "warm" tone with it down. No more hearing "About time to touch up those roots, don't you think?"  It's finally finished, a goal has been met, and it's a very satisfying feeling. My hair is, without the red ends to lighten the look up, darker than I thought it would be. But the gray strands are a silvery white and they sparkle.  Also, as short as it is now, it has waves in it so it almost resembles a deliberate look when I wear it down rather than just middle-parted mom hair. I really like it. I hope I never get used to it and always feel this happy with it as it changes and gets lighter.

My feminist rant against uncomfortable clothes and femal athletes

There's the is insane sexist philosophy out there that says you have to be sexy to compete with me, and conversely if you compete with men you must be sexy. Have you ever watched Xena? Eyeliner and a miniskirt, on a badass babe who did nothing but beat up men the whole series. And then you also have female athletes in male sports. Danika Patrick, that golfer girl, they aren't all that hot, and yet they're TOTAL BABES because there's nothing else with a vagina anywhere near them!
And look at politics. Sarah Palin (against all women's issues) and Hillary Clinton (for all women's issues). One was hot and one wasn't. And Hillary isn't ugly, she just doesn't look like Tina Fey in a hot for teacher video. But somehow hotness counts.  It shouldn't but it does. But to whom? Who gets to decide what counts? And why do we let them decide? If Xena were real she wouldn't waste time on make up, and she wouldn't wear a strapless corset to fight in and sleep on the hard ground in. We need to stop falling for this shit. We need to point out that Wonder Woman would wear sleeves!

There is no danger of this becoming a fashion blog.

I'm a jeans and tee shirt girl, and not in the fitted tee and skinny jeans way. I buy boot cut jeans and boxy tee shirts and that's what I wear every day. If it's cold I'll either throw a flannel shirt over the tee or trade it all in for a sweatshirt.  It's very difficult to go out because I never have anything to wear. I always try to have one brown button up shirt on hand, and I wear it with jeans, chunky heeled boots, and make up. That's my date look.  If it's a funeral I trade the jeans for a long black and brown skirt. I know squat about fashion. But I've been trying. I bought a pair of brown cords, and a couple new shirts (although I can't wear them unless I suck my belly in and remember not to breathe), and I really think I need some black pants, but I'm stuck in between sizes where some brands fit me in a 12 and others fit me in a 14.  I sewed elastic into the waist of my (only) pair of jeans because of this. Now my pants are adjustable like toddler pants. lol
Maybe once my hair grows out the rest of the way I'll know better what colors suit me. Also, I need to learn how to accessorize. I think I like necklaces, and I even like cocktail rings, but I don't think anything looks good on me. I need a personal assistant to tell me. :(

Damn uterus

Diaper bags. Baby Mum-Mum crackers.  Gerber Puffs. Folding the front of the diaper down for the umbilical chord. The Moby wrap.
Oddly enough, I don't want them.  I truly think that even if I won the lottery and all my kids died, I wouldn't want to have a new baby.  I think I'm done.
I want a hysterectomy. 
I'll have to think on it  a while. My Mirena is still good for another 3 1/2 years so I have time. But if I'm done using my uterus, why deal with periods at all?

The birth board

I am in a group online. It started out as a "birth board" 4 years ago when I was pregnant with Tommy, a bunch of women due in August of 2008. At some point we remaining few joined with the July 08 group when ours died down. But for 4 years I've stayed in this group, checking for updates almost daily, with the same women.  But you know me (maybe), and I don't do well with groups.  Groups come with group dynamics and group mentality, and I always feel like I'm on the outside of that stuff.  And now I'm in some stupid feud with some lady in the group who has "anger issues" (who doesn't?) and everyone walks around her on eggshells deferring to her triggers and I stepped on her invisible landmine issue and she went nuts and they all told me to drop it.  So I left the group for a few days.  Now, I know that mathematically she's no more important than me, but I can't help but feel that they'd rather she stay than me, and that it's a choice that has to be made.  Like, someone has to leave so why not be me?  But, why should I cater to her hissy fit?  I'm somehow not allowed to defend myself because she has shit in her life? We all have shit in our lives. That's just life.  Anyway, I'm leaning toward just leaving the group and  moving on.  But then a part of me thinks maybe I should be part of a group, a group I've got a 4 year investment in.  I don't know. It's just drama.  But seriously, we were all supposed to go to Vegas next year and meet in real life. Wtf.

My mother is now art.

This is not my mother. This is a random photo from a google image search. But this is how they do whole brain radiation, which my mother had. They mold a plastic mesh mash to your face and use it to bold you to a table to hold you still, and then zap you with radiation from all sorts of different angles. The thinking, as I understand it, is that by coming at the tumors from all sides they will hit each known tumor with a lot of radiation without having to send such a powerful beam through any healthy brain tissue, but they'll get the whole brain with enough radiation to take care of any loose cancer cells that may be loitering in there.
My mother gave me her mask.  I asked her if they'd let her keep it and mentioned that it'd be a slightly more personal momento when all this is over than a generic colored ribbon car magnet, so she asked for it and gave it to me. But what do you do with an irradiated mask of your mother's face?
I screwed it into the wall in my hallway.  We don't have any "art" on our walls.  We have family photos (a lot of family photos), and one large piece of white cardboard Tommy colored a rainbow onto, but no actual official art.  And now I have my mother's three dimensional plastic mesh head silhouette sticking out of the wall.  It's kinda cool, but it's also kind of macabre.  Because even if she lives to 100 and dies in a home full of other old ladies, I will still be able to squint at this thing and see my mother's face, at least in profile.  Someday it will be all I have, the only way to see her in 3D. This thing they used to bolt her head down with and shoot laser beams through.  Creepy, yet too personal to throw away.

A good Mom update

My mom's post-chemo pet scan results came back and she has no visible cancer in her at all. This is small-cell cancer so she has to amass a pretty big grouping of cells for it to even show up, so the odds are very much in favor of her having cancer still inside her.  But she has less than she did when this whole mess started, so that's good. The bad, though, is that this is a very very fast-spreading cancer. And if the chemo every 3 weeks has been keeping it in check, it could just go nuts and run rampant now that chemo's over. I need to find out when her next scan is, or blood test, or how they're going to monitor this to know when/if to do more chemo.  I'm hesitantly optimistic, but still scared shitless.  This isn't like breast cancer, where you can beat it. This will kill her (unless she gets hit by a bus first or something); it is terminal and the very fact that it spread to her brain makes it stage 4- the worst.  But for right now, she's healthier than she was 6 months ago and that is great.

I'm still the only one who can understand him

"Chetch! Chetch!"  Danny comes walking into the room with a half-deflated miniature basketball held on top of his head. He throws it to me, and I "chetch" it. I half toss - half hand it back to him and he holds it over/on his head again and walks out of the room calling to his brother to play with him. "Tah-ee! Chetch!"

My son has hair

My son has hair. He has what, to me, is a pretty standard little boy hair cut. Longish, shaggy, a hair cut I see in the childrens' sections of sales flyers all the time.  I never knew it was so controversial to have a little boy with hair.
I have been told he looks like a girl, which is ironic because people told me Ryan looked like a boy until her hair was well past her shoulders.  And I hear an awful lot of "I would never let my son have long hair," online.  But the little kids with short hair, they all look like they're ready for church, all prim and proper. My son's hair moves, it gets blown by the wind, it swings and bounces when he laughs.  And it's not that I'm too lazy to have it cut. It would be MUCH easier to have it all sheared off  or to cut it short enough to have room to grow between cuts than to go get his bangs cut out of his eyes every month (he is not good with hair cuts).  But to cut his hair off now would age him so much and I'm not ready for that. He doesn't have to look like a little man. He can look like a little boy for as long as he wants (and by the way, I live by a junior high and a high school and I see dozens of teenage boys with floppy hair walk by the house every day. It worries me, since I have a 13 year old daughter who has a penchant for teenage boys with floppy hair.).  And if Tommy wants to cut his hair short someday, I will let him, and he'll have a hell of a lot more to work with than if I'd kept it short.  But he's three. He doesn't need to apply for a job, or look professional, and no one under 60 has ever mistaken him for a girl (and those were both people who kept their boys' heads shaved in the summer so I think they may have said it on purpose to make a point. An assholey point.)

Which is why I claim to be 52.

I am 35, and I'm fine being 35. I'm fine looking 35 if I do. I don't want to look 45, but I have no issue with looking 35. But I am supposed to want to look 21. Why is that? Why do I see ads all the time telling me a 54 year old grandmother looks 32 and so can I if I pay for her secret? Why is it that we can't look good for our age; we have to look good for our kids' age?  It's setting us up for endless disappointment and struggle. Why do we, as women, fall into the trap? It's preposterous!

Not a bad day

Today it reached 54 degrees outside, so I put Tommy in his rubber boots and let him jump in puddles in the driveway while Danny napped.  Then Ryan got home from school and let me take a shower, and I made mac and cheese for supper. Tom and I are fighting but he's not home tonight so I can pretend we're not. All in all, not a bad day.  I can handle a not a bad day every once in a while.

I like butterflies, he likes bones

Tom and I, trying to decide what to have for dinner.

Me: Well I know I'm making brussel sprouts.
Tom: Would you like pork chops or steak with them.
Me: Steak. I just, I don't like your pork chops. I don't understand them. You can either buy a butterfly pork chop, a full slab of meat, or you can buy one with a bone and connective tissue in the middle of it. Why would you get that kind?
Tom: Price. When you buy the butterfly chop, you're paying around $3.50 a pound.  When you get the regular pork chops you only pay $2.50 a pound.
Me: But you're paying for the bone!  And steak is my other option? Is steak cheaper than butterfly pork chops?
Tom: Well, no.
Me: Then I guess you just lost the "We can't afford butterfly pork chops" argument.

It would be creepy because I'd sign the card, "Grandma"

It's probably a good thing that I'm as broke as I am. I'm too spontaneous and weirdly generous and if I could afford shipping, I'd be mailing anonymous and ridiculous things all over the country.  Last year (2010) we had snow at Xmas and I had a friend in Colorado Springs who was facebooking about how much she missed snow and I spent days trying to figure out if I could afford to mail a freezer bag of snow to Colorado. As it turned out, dry ice is really expensive!  And every once in a while I'll find something that reminds me of my dead grandmother, usually some horrid and cheap hard candy, and wonder for a moment if I should mail some to my cousin. I have one cousin who had that perfect combination of A) living an hour's drive away from Grandma, B) being raised by her borderline Oedipal father to worship Grandma, and C) a selective memory able to completely erase the racism, weight comments, constant criticism, and just plain awfulness of Grandma.  And she will post comments on facebook every once in a while about how much she misses Grandma, which only proves that she has absolutely no accurate memories of the woman, but still if I had the money to do it I would totally order those cheap blue-tinned butter cookies and have them shipped to her.
When your grandmother calls you a whore for having a boyfriend at age 15, on the street, at the top of her lungs, it forms your opinion. Plus, she called every grandkid who wasn't rail thin fat, and told the thin ones they were going to starve to death, and once told my cousin not to sit on chairs anymore because he was going to break all the furniture by being fat.  Seriously, she babysat for a weekend once and had him sitting on the floor the whole time.

Bored and frustrated

I have finished Ryan's quilt top. It is a horrible example of how bad I am at math. My measurements were so off that what was supposed to come out twin- sized is a baby blanket, so I had to add borders to it to make it bigger (I had bought pre-cut packages of fabric so I couldn't just make more quilt).  I would like to sandwich the thing and get going on the quilting, but I only have beige quilting thread so I need to buy some in a more appropriate color. I know what I want, but the closest fabric store is an hour away and I can't go there just to buy 2 spools of thread.  I called the little quilt shop in town and they don't have it.  Ugh.  So why bother laying out the quilt back, blanket, and quilt top and pinning it all together when I can't do anything after that anyway?  So I am frustrated and eager to get going on this. Ugh.

Bootstrap Bill Turner

Tommy walks up to me with a Ken  doll.
"See dis man? He's has bugs in his eyes. And snakes in his tongue. And dey come out his dummack and he's not alive."
I'm horrified and I wonder what on Earth could have given him such violent images. "He's not alive? Why not?"
"He a pirate and he's stuck in the boat in the basement of the boat and he can't leave and he's not alive."
And that was when I decided not to let Tommy watch any more Pirates of The Caribbean movies. Ever.

Toothless Beyonce

All the single lizards! All the single lizards!
If you liked it then you should've put a worm on it!

It's finally done!

My quilt is finally finished. Sorry if you were expecting something with some intricate pattern but I just did triangles. I hand-quilted it, though. If you look at the middle picture close enough you can see that I went all Harry Potter geek on it and made it the Deathly Hallows sign. The last picture shows some of the more detailed quilting. Otherwise I mainly just did loopy little meandering lines all over it.  I like the quilt, Tommy claims it as his own, and I can't wait to start the next one, whatever it may be.

Connie-Monster! Grrrr!

I hope I never forget that Tommy calls Baragon from the Godzilla movie "Giant Monsters All Out Attack" Connie-Monster, even though as far as I can tell, no one in the movie calls it or anyone else Connie. He just looked at this red, bat-eared, mutant stegosaurus and thought, "He looks like a Connie."

A late-night pondering

Kurt Cobain. John Lennon. Hendrix.  Joplin.  Jim Morrison. 

I saw a documentary on Lemmy a couple months ago. The man still lives in a little apartment on the Sunset Strip, and hangs out at a local bar playing video poker.  Fame hasn't changed him (although it did apparently take him out of England).  He hasn't gotten any face lifts or put his face on video games. He;s the same guy he was when he started Motorhead.  I can't help but compare Lemmy, in my mind, to Gene Simmons, the great capitalist willing to sell out for any product placement as long as it gives him a profit, and Steven Tyler now judging reality shows.

If Cobain, Lennon, Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison had lived, I wonder if they'd be Lemmys or if they'd go the other way, capitalizing on their youth.  Or worse, would they be Elvis, slaves to vice and indulgence, fat and sweaty on a Vegas stage trying to relive the glory days? Where does success stop, become enough, or where does it get replaced with greed and aimless ambition?

I feel bad for you, and also unqualified to fix you

I guess this is bad to say, but I'm going to come right out and say it. Depression is . . . depressing. I know many people who are depressed; I battle with it myself; and I've had friends commit suicide.  I do not think that depression is a mood, or something one can just snap out of, or anything to take lightly.  That said, some folks are just way too into it.  They get all emo on facebook all the time, they cling to depression awareness as an identity, and they're just real bummers to be around.  I mean, we all post our down moments, and like I said, I do have depression issues myself.  But when it gets to the point where every single status update is some variation of "Having a horrible day, just want to die, not that anyone cares" or "Sometimes it's the one who holds everyone else up who really needs the support" you just want to sigh and click unfriend.  And I'm talking about years of this.  Depression is not something that a person can just snap out of, or "choose happiness" or whatever BS platitude anyone read on a tshirt.  But it is something you can choose to fight rather than give in to.  And it, like a drunken revelation, is something you can choose not to status update about.  I love my friends, but there comes a point where I can't fish them out of their pit of despair over and over and over and over and over again. They need medication and professional help, not to be fishing for compliments online.  And to be quite honest, while I am happy to be there when they need someone to talk to, it's a huge buzzkill to check facebook and be worried the rest of the day that your friend will kill herself, especially when it happens multiple times a week.

Maybe, but maybe not either

So I have this friend, and she told me today that if I just found a few craft fairs in the area, and sold my craft things there, then I could take time for myself and not feel guilty for it because it would be for work.  Now, I don't consider myself to be "crafty".  I can't make a wreath out of coffee filters and toilet paper tubes.  I can't decoupage a dresser to look like Dr Who's police box. I'm not Martha Stewart.  But I do sew, and I crochet, and I like doing it and often end up with a ton of crap and nothing to do with it.  Maybe I could sell it.  But I don't want to be the person who buys booth space for $20, brings in a bunch of stuff, and then sells only one or two pieces and makes, after the cost of materials, only half the cost of the booth.  But if I were going to make things, I do have ideas in my head.  I want to make something based vaguely on the ugly fringe bracelet on Project Accessory.  And I think I could turn my back pockets into little ID and phone pouches and maybe rig up some way for them to hook to belt hoops.  I think if I had the materials and the time, I could make decent stuff.  But I'm not sure if people would pay money for any of it.  I do purses pretty well

This year Ryan is very interested in Legos.  We got her a couple Lego things for Christmas, a Harry Potter kit and then just a big box of like 1500 pieces, but I wanted her tree ornament to be Lego too.  The problem is, if you start to look around, all the Lego ornaments kind of suck.  Either they're kits to make a Santa or a tree out of legos, or you can make a ball ornament out of legos, but those would be too heavy, and probably fall apart in storage.  So I made my own, which she seemed very pleased with.  First I found someone on ebay selling the 1x1 bricks in bags of 500 and ordered them in orange, because it was either that or blue.  Then I bought 2 (in case I screwed up one) clear plastic ball ornaments at Michael's. Then I sat down with my hot glue gun.  I did learn that it's hard to keep the line straight when freehand gluing legos to an orb, and also that the melting point of hot glue is very close to the melting point of clear plastic ornaments, so if you push them or move them too much you're likely to push a corner right through to the inside of the ball.  But in the end, I think I came up with something good, and not too heavy either.  I give you, Ryan's 2011 Xmas ornament!  I don't know why the color came out so yellowy. It's more true in the picture where I'm holding it.

Basically all I wanted was a porcupine ball made out of legos, and quite frankly I was shocked that there wasn't one you could just buy somewhere, but I think it turned out okay.

Xnax vs pot, the grudge match

I have some hippie friends.  I don't know, maybe hippy's the wrong word.  I have some patchoulli granola friends.  Some of them smoke pot, some don't, and one in particular who does smoke pot isn't hippy or granola at all and is in fact a total yuppy.  I, however, am anti-marijuana.  I don't like it, don't want to do it, don't want to be around people while they do it, don't want to smell it, and sure as Hell don't want it around my kids.  And I take Xanax almost daily, for the same reason most people smoke pot.*
It has been pointed out to me, that some people view this as a hypocrisy.  I've had the word "pharmaceutical" spit at me with a hatred I'd never really heard before.  As in, "Oh, so you'd rather take Xanax than smoke pot. Pot is natural and Xanax is a pharmaceutical, yet you trust it more."   Yep.  Arsenic is natural, too, and I don't want that either.   But for what it's worth, I do happen to trust medications that have been subjected to rigorous testing and double blind peer reviewed studies more than some potted plant from Joe Bob's double wide.  And I really trust that if I'm pulled over and the cops find a pill bottle with my name on it in my purse that it will adversely affect my family and me far less than if they found a baggie of dope.  And of course, I can swallow a pill while holding my son without him getting any sort of intoxication from it, Xanax is much less harsh on my lungs, and it won't cost me a job should I be spot-tested.  But also, I know a lot of people who live their lives like characters from Dazed And Confused, and they don't act that way from Xanax.  They have no motivation, no ambition, and are perfectly happy to just sit on the couch playing video games and eating Fritos all day.  These are people in their 30s and 40s, people with jobs and families, just floating through life contributing nothing and getting high.  Not that I'm the most productive member of society, and not that Xanax doesn't have its fair share of addicts, but I've known more potheads than I have Xanax addicts so I'll take my chances with my legally prescribed pharmaceutical.  And before anyone tries to tell me that marijuana isn't addictive, I'm going to step up and say that I think it is.  I think it's like cigarettes in that for a long time people insisted they weren't addictive either, and like alcohol in that some folks, the majority of folks, can indulge recreationally and be fine but some just get hooked and need it every day to get by.  Yes I think pot is addictive, and yes I think it's worse than Xanax, and yes I can consider myself to be a far-left liberal and still be anti-pot.  I'm anti-ketchup too, and it doesn't affect my politics.  I just don't try to legislate around my own personal preferences.



*I'm not counting cancer patients or AIDS patients or whatever, just people who get high to relax or unwind when they're wound too tightly.

I have the most boring case of multiple personality ever

Deep down I want to be  Sikowitz from VicTorious. Or Spencer from iCarly. Or Phoebe from Friends.  Or  that weird guy from Taxi who became Doc Brown in Back To The Future.  I want to be the funny one who sees things differently from everyone else, a creative person, artistic.  But there is a very, very large portion of my reality that is Bev from Roseanne, and maybe on a good day, when I'm particularly funny, Sophia from Golden Girls.  I'm a fuddy duddy who dreams of being a freak.  It's an inner conflict I fight all the time.  I always see cute little floral wallets and think, "I should buy that to replace my old worn out wallet."  But my old wallet is punk, with nautical stars and crowns and handcuffs all over it.  My mid-thirties is like a second puberty, in reverse, and I have to find myself all over again.  It kinda sucks, in a way.

I feel so bubonic

Ryan was sick on Wednesday with some 24 hour thing, and better by Thursday. Danny puked all over his bed last night and will be better tomorrow. Now I'm having issues too.  So if anyone out there ever sees pictures from my Xmas and wonders why I'm wearing a plague mask- that's why.  Now if you'll excuse me, I need to write plague mask on one all of Tom's paint-fume masks while he isn't looking.

Even though I aced the interview...

I wasn't promoted. It was a pharmaceutical error. I traded in my pentagons and got my ovals back. No pay-raise is forthcoming.  And, despite having already taken 3 or 4 of the pentagon pills, I still received the full prescription of correct non-XR pills. Because I am that awesome! Yay for free xanax.

Mommy number 2

ME: Danny, what are you eating? Oh, just a crayon? Well, bon appetite.
TOMMY: No. Mommy, Danny not eat crayon. It not nummy, Mommy. It not food.

He's a much better mother than I am sometimes.

Happy Hanukkah!

Tonight, for the fist day of Hanukkah, I made latkes.  Ryan told me she looks forward to this all year, which made me all warm & fuzzy.  Since latkes do not a meal make, I made mac and cheese too but I made it from scratch, with roux and grated cheddar, just to try a new recipe.  Still a little grainy but so yummy!  Even Tom ate latkes and he's always told me he didn't care for them.  Tommy of course at nothing and yelled "I want circle crackers!" at the top of his lungs because he's decided to live off of Ritz crackers for the rest of his life.  He got no circle crackers, poor kid.
I love when I actually cook something people like.  It's so rare.

So it's like a promotion, right?

I refilled my Xanax yesterday and Tom ran up to the pharmacy to pick them up for me. My pills have always been little ovals scored down the middle for easy breaking should I only need half but this time they were pentagons with no such score. In fact, they bubble out in the middle which would make breaking them impossible without a pill splitter.  So I googled and found out that I now have extended release Xanax instead of regular Xanax, but in the same dosage. But I don't know why my prescription got changed.  I am choosing to take it as a good sign, as a progression. I've been bumped up, like a promotion at a job. I expect a raise in pay to come any day now.

Merry Christmas, with Rum!

I have, on my mother's side, eight first cousins. Of those eight, two are genuinely nice to me.  Last year I mentioned on facebook my (then) newfound love of rum balls and one of my genuinely nice cousins posted a quick "Feel free to bring me by a batch. lol"  And so I did. This year I am making him some as well.  The thing is his sister, the second genuinely nice cousin, is a recovering alcoholic so she can't have any. In fact, I don't know if there will be any alcohol at all at my extended family's Christmas festivities this year and I don't want to be responsible for some showing up. (I never attend the festivities because of the 1-4 ratio of genuinely nice to me people there so I have no idea what's there or not.)  So now I have to smuggle rum balls to my cousin.  This has become so much more complicated than I thought it would be. 

Plus she's a coke head, which totally kills the appetite anyway.

Kate Moss once said that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. But that bitch never tasted my mom's fudge, which I have recreated. I still swear it's a slightly different shade of brown, but it tastes the same. Yay for mommy fudge!

My husband's ass is a WMD!

My husband ate chilli today. He likes it; I hate it, but he did agree to take his Beano before eating it. Apparently his colon saw the Beano as a challenge, a challenge it won. My house not sounds like a frog-squashin and smells like somebody backed over the gas meter. (I know because I've done that before. You get to call 911. Weeeeeee!)  I think Tom is getting more Beano in his Xmas stocking this year, and maybe some Gas-X too.  Does Gas-X stop the farts? Something needs to stop them. We can't live like this! We'll all need respirator masks!

It's my birthright not to screw this up.

My mother makes fudge every Xmas. My whole life she's been trying to show me how so that when she's gone someone can carry on the tradition, but I never paid attention. Tomorrow I am going to try my hand at fudge, because chemo has made her too tired to do it.  I'll need to borrow her heavy pan, and maybe the plastic cake pans she uses for it to cool in.  Wish me luck, because I heard that if you screw it up you get grainy fudge that never sets up.

I'm not rich, so time passes for me

I think if I had enough money, I might try to stop aging. If I could afford botox and face lifts and eyelid surgeires, I might do it. It would be a battle I could fight. But I'm not a Kardashian, or a Real Housewife of some rich people city, so I don't.  I just hope my hair grows out soon. These orange tips are embarrassing!

Phrases/words that drive us nuts.

Everyone has them, so add yours in the comments.  Please.

1. Anywho.
2. Anyways
3. Irregardless
4. water over the bridge (my mom says this all the time, and the phrase is water under the bridge. Water over the bridge would actually wash out the bridge, making my point that whatever we're talking about was a big deal. Bridge collapse isn't a good metaphor for overreaction, Mom.)
5. It is what it is. Um, what else would it be?
6. Ima, to mean I'm going to. As in, "Ima let you talk in a minute."
7. Innit, to mean isn't it. As in, "It's nice outside, innit."
8. Shabby chic. It's like trashy classy; it's oxymoronic!
9. African American, when speaking about people who aren't, in fact, American at all.  For instance, black people who live in Europe aren't generally African American.  Haitians aren't African American. Black people in Africa aren't African American.  Unless they're tourists, from America.
10. Up Chuck, for obvious reasons.
11. Grammar nazi.  Have we really forgotten the horrors of the holocaust so much that knowing the difference between saw and seen is up there with furniture made from human skin?
12. Breastfeeding nazi. Hmmm, one wants babies to get full nutrition, the other skeet-shoots them. Where's the similarity, there?

I just can't keep track anymore!

I try to be a good liberal.  I care about the environment, and human rights, and the little people.  I don't use slurs, I'm politically correct (although I refuse to give the janitor an honorary degree in engineering just because he likes the title "maintenance engineer" better than "janitor"), and I really do want to do my part and help throw my weight behind worthy causes.  But there are so many of them! I get it, I get it; Walmart is evil.  And then so is Amazon for the same reason; they both kill small businesses for sport.  And Target gives large chunks of its profits to horribly anti-gay political campaigns.  And I'm not supposed to drink Coors because they used to fire people for being gay.  And farm fish are bad for fishermen and the fishermen business, and corporate farms are bad for animals and independent farmers, and ADM pushed high fructose corn syrup on us all so we should boycott them, but they make the corn meal for the dog food so what do I feed my dog?  I could pick the exponentially more expensive meat-based food but I think the meat in that is from corporate farms and even if it's not, is it grass fed or corn fed because apparently grass is better for cows (although have you seen a grass-fed cow? They're scrawny!) and if it is corn-fed is it corn from ADM?
And I'm sorry if I shop at Walmart, but they've screwed the economy to the point where frankly, I can only afford to shop at Walmart.  Or at least, "living within my means", which I try to do, means a far different thing if I never shop at Walmart. Especially since Target isn't an option.  At least I can keep buying my horrible diabetes-inducing dog food at Farm & Fleet, right?

I'm too jaded, I guess

This week's Postsecret has a couple postcards about people feeling horrible about not being able to afford gifts for their kids, and people secretly giving money to people who can't afford gifts for their kids, and I never realized until today just how cynical I am.  I used to have a friend, let's call her Mildred for privacy, who could never afford gifts for her kids.  She worked factory and retail jobs but the sitter took a chunk, and car insurance took a chunk, and rent and bills. But, and here's the thing I always think of when I hear about the poor (and I don't like that this is what my first thought is), she smoked the most expensive brand of cigarettes, and she went to the tanning parlor, and had her hair cut every 5 weeks, and colored, and she always had make up (and make up, in case you're a dude, is NOT cheap) and nice clothes. Or at least, expensive clothes. Leather coat and Harley boots and Victoria's Secret bras.  But her kids got gifts off the charity tree at the bank, assuming people pulled the ornaments with their names on them.  And they couldn't join clubs because the $1 a week meetig dues was too much, and their school clothes came from yard sales.

The economy sucks, and a LOT of people who need help are actually trying to not need help.  But I know more than a few who pay for themselves first and their kids second, who budget out luxuries because they know that food stamps and charity will take care of the rest.

It's just an outfit, for one day!

I can't really be the only mom out there who doesn't much care what her kid wears to school, can I?  I mean, I see facebook updates like, "I'm apparently the meanest mom in the word for not letting my 14yo wear snow boots to school," or "Green pants and an orange shirt with a necktie? I made my kid change this morning and now she hates me."  My question, which I never have the balls to actually ask, is "What does it matter?"  The kid isn't naked, weather inappropriate (no tank top in January), provocative, or gang-related.  So why is it worth a fight, or even a nag?  Kids have so very little control over anything; why not let them at least control their own clothes?  Ryan left the house today, in 18` weather, in a cotton halter dress over black skinny jeans (to make the dress warmer), a cardigan, and black tennis shoes. And of course her winter coat for the walk to school.  If she's too cold today, she'll learn not to wear a summer dress in sub-freezing weather.  If the kids laugh at her she'll either stop wearing dresses over jeans or she'll learn not to care what other people think of her style choices.  But either way, I don't believe that she'll look back on this as the day her mother failed her.  But if I tried to control what she wore all the time I think she would remember that, and rebel in other ways to compensate.  And that could be bad.

If I heard the voices with my ears, there'd be meds for it at least

Sometimes I'm just not ready to get in bed, because I know I'll just lie there talking to myself (hopefully, for Tom, silently) all night.  I can't help it; I get these arguments or conversations in my head, either ones I've had in real life before or just hypothetical ones, or even ones I expect to have in the future. And because it's all in my head it just never stops, and the other person never backs down, and they ask me for answers I don't and can't have. It's like when toddlers go through their "Why?" phases, but endless and with no "Because that's just how it is!" to throw back at them.  It sounds funny but it's not and it goes on for hours and even when I'm frustrated with it and on the verge of crying, this nonexistent debater in my head just never lets up and keeps badgering me and I can't fall asleep.  If I was ever interrogated by the police I would either break immediately just to make it stop or hold out forever because of all this practice.  It's 11:18 pm right now, I've had 3 beers and a xanax, and I just want to go to sleep but I can't.  I'm googling quilt blogs hoping to maybe relax by looking at quilts but it's not working.  I need to find my off switch.

Pointless facebook statuses I posted

An animated moose on Nickelodeon just told me that a cornucopia is a horn shaped basket full of things we're thankful for. I now really want to grab my hot glue gun and make a cornucopia full of Xanax bottles, Spanx, and photos of my children sleeping.

 

You know that thing where you take a drink of something and then halfway down your throat the liquid changes instantly into a solid and suddenly you're swallowing a golf ball? And so then after you finally swallow it and your throat is sore you start coughing and accidentally a little saliva goes down the wrong pipe so now you can't stop coughing and you're choking and you risk drowning on your own spit and having your cause of death simply listed as "Darwinism"? I HATE when that happens.

 

How deep is a shallow grave? When I read that the cops found a body in a shallow grave, I always think maybe a foot of dirt over them, but what if they're under 3 feet of dirt? Still not the traditional 6 feet, but is it shallow enogh to really be shallow?

 

WHAT A CROCK OF S**T..... We can't say Merry Christmas now we have to say Happy Holidays. We can't call it a Christmas tree, it's now called a Holiday tree? Because it might offend someone. If you don't like our "Customs" and it offends you so much then LEAVE I will help you pack. They are called customs and we have our traditions. If you agree with this please post this as your status!! I AM A PROUD AMERICAN CITIZEN... MERRY CHRISTMAS! Do you have what it takes to repost this?

Anyone who wants can say Merry Christmas; that's the first amendment. Workplace rules vary by employer because employers also have first amendment rights and when you're at work, you represent the company, not yourself. Also, there's a rule that says the government can't endorse one religion over another, which makes it UN-AMERICAN for schools and government institutions to push Christmas over, say, Hannukah or Kwanza or Yule. Don't like our CONSTITUTION feel free to move to a country WITHOUT religious freedoms. Some Americans are Jews: deal with it.
And it's called a pine tree. Once you decorate it it can represent you want it to, but it's still a pine. Or spruce or whatever. But Christians don't have the monopoly on pretty trees. The pagans started that one!

 

Just saw yuppy lady in heels walk by in mall chugging beer from the bottle. Ahhhhh, Black Friday continues.

 

The carcasses are rolling in!

 

I have Tom halfway convinced, over the phone, that I poured all his sweet-potato marshmallows into the toaster and turned it on. He believes that A) I would waste his superfluous mini marshmallows (sweet potatoes are already sweet!), B) I would destroy my toaster, and C) I have absolutely no impulse control, because it does sound like a cool way to wreck a toaster.

You explain estrogen to a 3 year old

Today I was crying about something stupid and Tommy came up and asked me why. I said, "PMS."  He looked confused so I told him, "It's a girl thing." Still confused. So I tried to explain girl thing by saying, "Sometimes girls cry because they're girls. Girls are people who don't have wieners." 
He pointed to his crotch. "I hab wiener."
"Yes you do." 
"Daddy hab wiener." 
"Yes he does, and no one is happier with it than Daddy is."
Then he got a really sad look on his face and said, "Mommy don't hab wiener anywhere. Sad Mommy."
So much for explaining PMS, or gender equality.

On Xanax and toddler shit

It's 4:45 and no Xanax so far today. No real reason, just didn't feel the need and now it's gotten to be an "I wonder if I can go all day" kind of thing.  I doubt I'll be able to sleep without it, though.  But we'll see.
Also, my son has shit in his potty 7 separate times today, plus he woke up dry and took off his own diaper to pee in the potty, and has peed all of his pee into the potty since.  So it would seem that he is completely potty trained as long as he is naked at home with a potty in front of the TV.  Sounds completely practical to me.

Black Friday

It is Black Friday today, and I had an awesome time shopping with my daughter.  I did have a sad wake-up call when I thought I saw her (short blond with a bun and a brown jacket) and then Ryan walked past the lady and was about 3 inches taller.  My baby is supposed to be little!

*************

Tommy knows which bookmark gets him to his Cars game, and he knows what to click to get to the log-in page.  His member ID pops up by itself and then he needs to type in a password.  Now, he can see the screen when I type in his password, but he can't figure out why hitting the 8 on the keyboard multiple times doesn't get him into his account.  All he knows, in his simple and innocent mind, is that he needs a long string of asterisks, and that is the key with the asterisk on it. 
Sometimes the screaming, mess-making, red-faced, pants-pooping terror that is my son is just too adorable for words.  And someday I am going to change his password to all 8s, so that he can be right after all.

a life without chocolate requires medical attention

My mom is on a strict chemo schedule.  Three days of chemo every 3 weeks, for twelve weeks.  As long as she sticks to that schedule, she has a decent chance of remission.  If she doesn't, she's got about 6 months.  The main thing that can interfere with her chemo schedule is infection.  If she gets any kind of infection, even a simple cold, they postpone the chemo.  So naturally I now view my children as walking petri dishes full of plague.

My mom wants to have Thanksgiving dinner.  Since she flat-out refused my suggestion that she live in a bubble instead, I have invited her to my house, but only IF my germ-basket children are 100% healthy.  Thanksgiving is one week from today, and I am paranoid like you wouldn't believe.  Is Danny fussy because he's teething or sick? Did he sleep in because of a growth spurt or a cold?  Today he woke up and wouldn't drink his milk.  He'd suck the straw but then cry.  Suck suck scream, suck suck scream.  So naturally, I thought "ear infection" and called the doctor.  I bundled both boys up, drove them out to the clinic, held Danny down so the doctor could look into his head through every direct orifice, and got a verdict of healthy.  "But Dr, he won't drink the milk! He sucks a couple times then cries, like an ear infection. He could kill his grandmother!"  Still, I was sent home with hollow assurances and about a foot of Spiderman stickers.
We got in the house, I took off their coats and shoes, I gave them back their milk cups, and again, suck suck scream.  I was at a loss. The kid drinks his milk out of that cup every morning; what could be different?  So out of desperation, I added a spoonful of Nestle Quick powder to it.  Suck suck smile. 

I just rushed to the clinic, as a matter of life and death, because my spoiled kid decided this morning that he no longer likes plain milk.  Fucking yay.

My daddy said I'm blind with jizz.

You know those little floaters you see in your eyes, the little squiggle things that you can see through/around but they still wiggle in your field of vision?  When I was little my dad told me that when the sperm went into the egg it spilled open and all the genetic material from the father came out of it, and then if you were really unlucky the eyeball would develop around the "skin" of the sperm and you'd spend the rest of your life seeing that little tail bobbing around inside the juice of your eyeball.

Either my mom got knocked up by a LOT of those 2 tailed sperms or I need to see an eye doctor because sometimes lately it's hard to see through all these little floating squiggling shadows in my eyes.  I also wish my first gut reaction wasn't to still think of them as sperm husks.

Apparently not all poop qualifies as poop. Who knew?

ME: Tommy, you stink. Did you poop?
TOMMY: No. No poop.
ME: So if I find poop, then what?
TOMMY: No poop.
ME: (open his diaper) Tommy, there are half a dozen poops here! Where did they come from?
TOMMY: Down near my butt.
ME: Down near your butt? Then why did you say you didn't poop?
TOMMY: No big poop.
ME: Oh, so when the big poop comes, then it will count?
TOMMY: Yes.
ME: Okay, then. You let me know when that one shows up. (fasten new diaper and let him go)
TOMMY: Okay, Mommy.  I will.

Gimme another caycake, bitch!

When I get lazy around here, I make waffles as a meal for the boys.  They walk around, going about their business, and eat them dry, as do I.  Then, after eating all the crunchy edges, they bring me the soft (and therefor inedible) waffle and trade it in for a new one.  Also, because their friend was over one day and he was unfamiliar with waffles but very much liked pancakes, we call the waffles pancakes.  Danny's at that age where he's learning about a dozen new words a week and today it was "pancake".  I'd hear his little voice say, "Caycake" and then he'd throw a floppy nibbled-upon waffle at my chest.  I hope I never forget how the word "Caycake" sounds.

A cancer update, for those who were sick of phonetically written Tommy updates

So my mom has finished her first round of chemo and tomorrow we get to make the drive back to Iowa City (hopefully for the last time) to get her head scanned and meet with the brain surgeon to make sure the 2 weeks of radiation she had actually did shrink her remaining almost-too-small-to-worry-about-but-hey-they're-brain-tumors-so-we-worry-anyway-now-that-the-big-one-is-out tumors. Because no matter how well the chemo goes, chemo won't affect the brain and brain tumors are serious business.

Danny is either A) sick, or B) teething and having a growth spurt. Because he is cranky as all Hell and sleeps a lot.  The problem with this is that they won't administer chemo to anyone with an active infection so if my mom gets sick even a little, the chemo gets postponed and the tumors all grow and spread and I really don't want my petri dish of a kid to be the reason my mom got lung cancer in her spleen.  Also, so we can make the trip tomorrow and sit in the waiting rooms and do all the stuff required to talk to and understand a neurosurgeon (Is it bad taste to say the guy is hot, too? Because dude is smoking!) I am dumping my kids with my "I think I'm getting sinusy" friend for the day.  A week before Thanksgiving.  So tomorrow I am going to wake up early, get dressed, wake up the boys, dress them, boot Ryan off to school, go pick up my mom, go ditch the boys at my friend's house when she gets home from driving her kids to school, and then call my doctor's office and make appointments to hopefully get them enough antibiotics to make them uncontagious by Thanksgiving so my mom can eat turkey at my house.  Then I will drive for an hour and a half to Iowa City to the hospital to talk to Dr McNeuroSteamy and figure out if my mom's problems are just lymphnodey or if they're brainy too.
And I will try to do it all on half a Xanax because a whole one makes me too drowsy to drive.

Just call me Rosetta Stone

Tommy: Deeny need pay t'abus for Keemis.

Me: You're not even trying to speak English anymore, are you?

Tommy: Deeny like pay t'abus. Sanna Quaz bring pay tabus for Deeny.

Me: It's Portugese or something, right. And you do it on purpose.

Tommy: Mommy! Wizzen (listen). Booka me, wizzen. (Look at me, listen.)

Me: Okay. Now explain slowly because Mommy's not bright.

Tommy: Pay T'abus fight Doopin murtz. (now he starts pantomiming karate chops and kicks.)

Me: Ohhh, I get it. Perry the Platypus fights Doofenshmirtz.

Tommy: Deeny like Pay T'abus. Sanna Quaz need bring Deeny Pay T'abus pezzen Keemas.

Me: You think Santa Claus should bring Danny a Perry the Platypus present for Christmas?

Tommy: yes! Okay.

Me: How about if you give him one instead?

Tommy: Okay. Tommy do it.

He gets all his information from the Disney Channel

This is a real conversation Tom and I just had.

Tom: Okay, this is gonna sound stupid...
Me: Possibly.  Go on.
Tom: A platypus is a mythical creature, right? I mean, they aren't real; they're extinct or made up or something.
Me: (google image search platypus) No, they're real.
Tom: (squinting at the computer screen.) They aren't green?

It's a long process of acclimation until I actually become furniture

The human spine has a curve at the bottom of it. It is this indentation that most people refer to as "the small of the back" but which Tommy refers to as "the step stool". As I sit in my desk chair and peruse the internet, he stands on my ass and points at the youtube bookmarks over my shoulder until I relent and let him watch model train crashes without me.  It's very painful, but I've learned the hard way that throwing him off of me just hurts my back more and that shrieking, "Mommies aren't for climbing!" is apparently hilarious.

So there we are, me at the computer, Tommy standing on my ass behind me, when I hear, "Ahhh! Yucky! Mommy, help me!"

Without turning around, I ask what he needs help with. His answer? "My sucker stuck to you head!"  I didn't even know he HAD a sucker back there but yep, it was stuck to my head. Wound around in my hair. And to think, I had thought that having my giant ghetto booty shelf butt used as a step stool was bad enough, but I was apparently wrong.

And "squish" is not a good place to go!

I think my warranty is up. I have sore joints, back pain, migraines, anxiety attacks at the same time every day (12:30 pm and 10:30 pm), I have floaters in both eyes, and the other day when I looked down at the back of my hand, I swear it was my grandmother's.  And then I realize that I am only 35, and if I'm lucky I'm not even halfway through my life yet.  If I'm already starting to crap out now, I'll be a Halloween decoration by the time my grandkids meet me.

You know what's really sad? When you're wearing one of your best-fitting bras and your husband tries to cop a feel and says, "Ooh, no bra?"  Apparently, everything's just gone to squish that badly.   :(