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.   :(

A rant you'll most likely want to skip.

"I don't need this right now."
"I didn't sign up for this."
"God doesn't give you more than you can handle."

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!  Nobody signed up for anything. You were, without exception, either yanked out of an abdominal incision or squeezed out through a vagina without signing any sort of contract at all.  You get whatever the universe gives you, usually as a direct result of your own previous actions and choices but often times just due to random circumstance.  No universal force cares what you need, or ever promised to only provide what you need, or even to provide anything you need at all. You have a right to a happy life, but that doesn't mean you'll get it.  And aside from the whole "is there or isn't there a God" debate, where did it say He only gave people what they could handle? Or that He was the only one handing out fates anyway?  He fucked with Job for years and killed off his entire family just to make a point about loyalty.  And aside from even that, people get things they can't handle all the time. Terminal illness, sudden massive heart attacks, the gruesome sights of war. People die or have mental breaks every day in the world; they are given things they cannot handle.  Because the world is a random place and the universe has no intent. No one is concerned with what you get, no one decides what happens to you or not, or what you want or need or think you signed up for.

Go local city/state sports team!

I hate this goddamned town.  About 4 years ago our local baseball team made it to state, or regionals, or just learned to lace their own shoes, I don't know, and when they got back into town from it the bus and the parents' cars and two freaking fire engines drove all around town, meandering up and down streets at parade speeds, with sirens blaring and horns honking.  They do this multiple times a year, whenever any team comes home from regionals, or play-offs, or state, any team in any sport, no matter what time of day or night they return.  And I dared to complain about it on the city website one night after 2 11:00 pm fire truck wake-ups inside of one week.  And I just found out that the convoy now intentionally slows down in front of my house because of this.  Because I have no school spirit; I'm 35; I have no school.

fun does not equal happiness

plat-i-tude  n,  
A flat, dull, or trite remark, especially one uttered as if it were fresh or profound.

I hate  platitudes. Don't get me wrong; I love words of wisdom.  It just seems that inevitably, when you over-simplify something down into a bumper sticker motto, you lose important details in the translation.  For instance, I keep seeing this little moronic sample on facebook:
We do not stop playing because we grow old; We grow old because we stop playing.

This pretty much sums up, in my eyes, what's wrong with the world today.  Or at least my little corner of it.  For one thing, this idiotic idea that age can be avoided, that somehow one can stop growing old,  needs to go away. I understand fearing death. But death can come at any age, although it is admittedly guaranteed closer as we age.  I just don't understand fearing wrinkles and gray hair and loss of dermal elasticity.  Sitting on my Great Grandma's lap, with a scrotal-wrinkly cleavage to snuggle against and blue-veined tissue-like hands to hold, those are some of my fondest childhood memories.  Why would I resist becoming her? Plus, why would I want to look like the people who resist aging?  Have you looked at Joan Rivers lately?  Or Wayne Newton? Oh My God!
   

What the stupid facebook quote should say is, "We don't stop playing because we grow up; we grow up because we mature enough to stop confusing momentary pleasures with lasting happiness, and thus we choose one over the other."  But the populace prefers its platitudes.  Mottoes spewed forth in the form of motivational chants in arenas around the country, etched into key chains, screen printed onto tee shirts, and plastered onto bumpers all across this nation.  People want to think that the key to happiness is eternal youth (because they confuse the happiness with the young age rather than with the ignorance of responsibility that came with it), and that such happiness can be theirs again if only they could return to their youth.  No, adult happiness is a whole different animal.  It comes from recognizing reality and responsibility, not shying away from it, and from meeting it head on.  Adult happiness is not playing, or toys, or momentary pleasures and temptations but from being able to look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and know that you are a person you respect, from knowing that you made the world a better place somehow, even if your contributions are small.  You helped raise a child who will impact the world, you donated to a cause, you volunteered to better someones life, or you just resisted the urge to kill a hooker (some people have bigger problems than I do, okay?).  It's about recognizing that there is something bigger than yourself, that you have an impact upon it, and trying your damnedest to make it a positive one.  And no, I don't mean religion.  Religion is an easy answer, but not the only possible one.  Family is a good one. Community is, too.  But whatever keeps you grounded and purposeful, that's what makes you happy.  And forgetting or hiding from your responsibility to it will make you unhappy.  And if the thing you're working with now isn't working, try another one. 

Because I've warped him this much already

See this happy little snowman family, making a snowman themselves?  Oh how bucolic and wintery this scene is, how happy and tranquil and fun.  Unless you're my three year old, that is.  If you're him you throw down the Xmas catalog and start crying and screaming about the snowmen who have ripped their friend to pieces. 
And Oh My God the baby snowman is holding a decapitated head! 
Seriously, it took me half an hour to calm him down about this.  It was like he'd stumbled into a screening of the latest SAW movie.  I'm starting to think we should rename his college fund. Maybe therapy fund would be more accurate.

Spoiler alert for new Pirates Of The Carribean movie

Me: (grabbing the Little Mermaid box) You boys want to watch a mermaid movie? Your sister used to love this movie so much. It was her favorite.

Danny: Yaaaaaa

Tommy: NO! I scared of mermaids!

Me: (looking at the happy cartoon fish on the box) How can you be scared of mermaids?

Tommy: Monster mermaids.  Deeny scared of monster mermaids.

Me: No, mermaids aren't monsters. They're happy singing girls.

Tommy: (and this took a while for me to translate and decipher) Monster mermaids with boobies pull the pirates in the water and cry in the bottle and she needs a shirt and I scared of monster mermaids!

Me: Well this one is different and your father doesn't get to rent movies for you boys anymore.

more on the afterlife. (a small concession to the religious)

Humans create electric current.  It is a scientific and medical fact. And when we die, that current does away.  It is also a scientific fact that energy cannot simply disappear. Nothing can disappear. When you burn things you get soot and smoke; when you vaporize things you get vapor, etc etc etc.  So when we die, some bit of electricity is released.  I don't know where it goes.  Maybe it sticks around as static and zaps people who walk on shag carpet in their socks. ("Grandma, are you fucking with my hair again?")  Maybe we kill off millions of human souls every time we put a Bounce sheet in the dryer.  Maybe the strongest tool at the Ghostbusters' disposal was a can of Static Guard.  Or maybe we just hang around forever, occasionally having big old soul orgies and zapping lightning rods.  Either way, something goes on after we die.  I want to clarify that I do believe that.  I just don't think it has a face and consciousness.

He can only piss into the back of Cookie Monster's head.

Our diapers (the kids' not mine and Tom's, because we don't wear diapers not because we have different ones) have Sesame Street characters on them.  The kids don't even really watch Sesame Street unless I forget to change the channel after Cat in The Hat, but they pee on them.  Anyway, last week (I suspect just to fuck with me) Tommy decided to only ever wear Cookie Monster diapers.  Which is like 1/4 of the diapers because he's completely taking Elmo, Big Bird, and Ernie out of the rotation!  Well, he says he'd be willing to wear Grover diapers, but since Pampers doesn't make Grover diapers I think this is a false promise.  So now Danny gets all of the "off" diapers, and Tommy gets all the Cookie Monster diapers, and then when we run out of Cookie Monster diapers I have to force him into an Elmo one against his will and explain that if he'd use the potty he'd never have to wear Elmo again.
If anyone ever comes up with a sleep-away camp that potty trains your kid for you, they'd make millions.  Seriously. I'd be willing to ship my kid all the way to, say, Philadelphia for that. Business class, too.  Not coach.

The religious folks might not like this one

It'd be so nice to believe in an afterlife. To believe that I will see my mother some day even if/after this cancer kills her, that I will see my dad someday at all.  But I don't.  I don't believe that there's a Heaven, or a Hell, or anything like that. I think that when an animal dies, any animal be it insect or human, it's just out like a burnt out light bulb.  I have family who walk around funerals saying annoying things like "I'm going to miss him from now until I see him again in the Kingdom" and "it's not goodbye, it's just 'See you later'".  I'm sorry, but we are no more complex or miraculous than any other species. We are, as a species, relatively weak and vulnerable. Our mastery of tools is really the only thing we have that they don't, and until you can give IQ tests to fish there's no way to know we're all that much smarter than animals either.  SO the idea that a God made us, and gave us souls, and that those souls are so super-special that they can never die, is just arrogance. If biology is enough to explain cockroaches, it's enough to explain us.  We're organic life-forms capable of dying, not never-ending invisible spirits who will live on forever with our friends and family depending arbitrarily on our behavior for a mere 80 or so years in the beginning. 
I will miss my mother when she dies.  I miss my dad now. And when I die, my kids will miss me. But it's not "See you later".  It's "goodbye".  And even though I truly believe that, I hope I'm wrong.  I also hope wishing on shooting stars will work, too. But I don't think either of those are likely or all that plausible.  But it would be really nice if they were.

A conversation with Tommy

Tommy:  Ah-bus wace.

Me:  What?

Tommy:  I watch mooey. Ah-bus wace.

Me:  What movie?  Apples race?

Tommy:  No. Ah-bus wace.

Me:  I don't know what that means. Apples race? Applesauce lace? Can you say it a different way?

Tommy: A boat with pirates, and ah-bus wace.

And finally, I figured it out.
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present Octopus Face:

I mean, it's not the recipe, but it's a decent math analogy

Tom let the boys eat donuts, ice cream, and candy bars for supper tonight, and Danny puked in the basket of Hot Wheels five minutes after Tom went to bed. Then my mother's chihuahua ate a whole bowl of cat food and shit some sort of biological warfare all over my kitchen. And Tom, who won't be home tomorrow at all because he has to deliver in Missouri on Tuesday morning, told me on his way to bed that he not only ordered 2000 crickets by mail, but also 150 live meal worms. As a treat! 
Every day I swear, no beer tonight. And then every night I have just one more beer. Dog shit + toddler barf + live meal worms = beer.

It is nothing if not effective.

Tommy:  I want strawberry shake.

Me: Ask your father.

Tommy: He in potty.

Me: He could put chocolate chips in it, too. We have some. You should ask him to make you one when he gets back.

(Tom walks into room. I leave.)
Tommy: I want strawberry shake with chocolate chips.

Tom: What? No.

Tommy: Mo-om! He said no.

Tom: You don't tell Mommy on me. You tell me on Mommy!

(I walk back in.)
Tom: Did you hear what he said? He wanted some sort of shake, and then when I said no he told on me.

Me: Yeah I know. (to Tommy:) Did you say please?

Tommy: Pweez

Me: Did you say, "Daddy, I love you,"?

Tommy: Daddy, I yuv you.

Tom: (laughing) I'm not making a shake.

Me: (to Tommy) Tell Daddy he's young.

Tommy: Daddy, you yum!

Me: Now tell him he's skinny.

Tommy: Now you kinny.

Me: (looking down at Tom's knee brace) And not at all crippled.

Tommy: And you not kipple.

Tom: I can't believe you're teaching him this! Turning our son into a suck up!

Me: And it's working, isn't it?



Ten minutes later, Tommy is drinking a strawberry chocolate chip milkshake, served to him by his yum and kinny father.  And I am getting a raspberry one, too. lol

fun with teens, part two

Ryan is 13, which is that magical age where she no longer calls me her best friend, and is simulaneously humiliated to know me. I try to temper the heartache of the first part by totally taking advantage of the second, which is why Ioften embarrass her in public on purpose. Or at least, I don't try to avoid it like I probably should.  Case in point: we were walking through Walmart and she was walking much faster than I, about ten feet ahead, desperately hoping no one would know I was with her. I assume the alternative was that some fat gray-haired lady just randomly decided to stalk this uber-cool and independant 13 year old who happened to be at Walmart by herself with no cart.  Anyway, there she was, power-walking while I practically ran to catch up, so I just had to talk to her. Loudly. About stupid stuff.

Me: Hey, let's get you a Lady Gaga poster!
Ryan: No! I don't like Lady Gaga!
Me: But honey, she was born that way! As a motorcycle handlebar. And she's overcome it! She's a role model!
Ryan: Mo-om!

"I hate when people who aren't me do that!"

Newsflash! Being thought about isn't the same as being abused.  If a pedophile looks at your kid in the park, if a gay person lusts after you in the gym showers, if a fat chick licks her lips while staring you up and down in the check out line at the grocery store, no abuse has taken place.
"I just found out a sex offender lives on my street! What if he looks at my kid?" "I don't want gays in the military. Would you want them in the showers with you?"  "Your friend better quit looking at my boyfriend before I kick her ass." 
Until you are willing to admit that you have personally assaulted and raped whatever celebrity you currently crush on, you have no leg to stand on in your quest to avoid being masturbated about. You left your house, people saw you, and maybe some of them committed that vision to memory for later use. Don't think about it and if you do think about it, realize that no damage as been done and move on with your life.

I wish I could write like her

Wanna know what cheers me up most days?  This shit.

well, crap

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/small-cell-lung/healthprofessional/page1

Are you FUCKING serious?

A woman with a tumor in her brain the size of a chicken egg walks, with the help of both of her children, into a hospital for seven hours of neurosurgery. A nurse asks, "So what are we doing today?" and the patient answers, "They're just going to pop a little thing out of the back right here," and points at her head.

It is so hard to sift through the layers of denial and euphemism and sugar-coating to get a straight answer from my mother.  She drove herself to the hospital for a week of treatments- and we let her- because the radiation guy told her they would make her tired but she could continue to drive as long as she took a nap first.  Now she needs a ride home because she is unsteady and can't drive, but the radiation guy warned her that that would probably happen so she's not worried.

And you can't scream, "OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK!?" at someone with cancer because they are sick and do not need the added stress.

And on a completely unrelated note, Congrats to my brother and his wife on the birth of their daughter.

Well none of them smell nice.

Tommy: (during a diaper change, pointing at his junk) What's dat?

Me: Your ball

Tommy: (pointing slightly lower) No, dat.

Me: The bag your balls are in?

Tommy: (pointing much lower) Dat.

Me: That's your butt hole.

Tommy: Yeah, my butt hole. My butt hole dinks.

Me: (laughing) You get that from your father.

I see your Stephen Hawking, and raise you a Pamela Anderson!

I hate pink ribbons. Everything has a pink version, or sends proceeds to breast cancer research, but nothing has gray ribbons, or brain research. So I kinda resent all the pink bullshit. Brain cancer is the ugly younger sister of breast cancer. Tits outvalue brains, but we all knew that, didn't we.

It's a vagina, not an identity

Finally, barrettes for baby girls with no hair. Because it would just be the mark of a HORRIBLE MOTHER to let your child be androgynous, or just to put girl clothes on her, I guess.  And no, jabbing spikes through her ears isn't an obvious enough sign of gender conformity so don't try pulling that "But I turned them and cleaned them 6 times a day and they got infected 3 times just so people would know she was a girl!" crap with me!
But I have the answer.  In case you want to know.  Do you want to know? It beats out gluing bows to your baby's head (yes, people actually do that), strapping satellite-dish sized polyester dahlias to her head, putting wigs on her, and even buying overpriced no-hair-needed barrettes. So if you want the super secret answer to all of your androgynous baby problems, here it is.

Yep, I'm still on the apostrophe thing.

Do you know how much it costs to buy one of these things? A big boulder, engraved or just painted, especially with a design like those flowers, can set you back hundreds of dollars. And somebody paid hundreds of dollars in this case, for an incredibly heavy typo!
Either a family named Gardner bought it with no idea how to pluralize, which is admittedly the most likely scenario, or a gardener with a lot of pride in his job title bought it (see how the flowers fit in, now?) and then misspelled the job title.  Either way, it's proof that the personalized yard boulder industry needs an editor.

Ahhhh, Monday

It's a loud day.  I'm not sure what that means; I don't see lights so I don't think a migraine is necessarily coming.  But the TV volume is set to 10 (out of 99) and it sounds way louder than it normally does, the boys seem to be screaming even when they're just talking, and I can't find a volume for the bluetooth that is loud enough to hear yet still quiet enough to be comfortable.

Mom starts her radiation today, and will find out if the chemo starts today too, and may or may not be admitted to the hospital for it, depending on the chemo schedule, method, and of course her insurance company's Death Panel.

My mother's two (seemingly) cocaine-addled chihuahuas (Sgt Puppers and Day Tripper) are bouncing off my walls, eating every crumb my kids drop, and barking maniacally at my cat. This is stressful to me.

I need to remember to call my doctor today and ask for a prescription for supplemental anxiety medication. If I keep taking Xanax at this rate I'll become a junkie.

I accidentally touched the iron with my arm yesterday and now it hurts like a motherfucker.  I keep bumping things with it and I honestly never knew how many things in a day came into contact with that 3 inch stripe of skin.

Tom is going to be out overnight tonight, so there is no cavalry coming, no shift taking over tonight, no help in sight.

It is 10:30 am and I am already ready for a nap. The xanax probably didn't help in that regard.

"More special last cocoa please"

While my mother was staying here after her brain surgery, she would often sit quietly at the table and drink coffee. This was very boring for the kids to watch, so they of course decided that it must be amazingly fun to do, since nothing could ever actually be that boring.  So Tommy would ask to drink "copy" with Doan (it's what we call her. long story) and I would make him some hot cocoa and he would sit there quietly with her and hold his head up with his hand like she did, and pretend that he had a big owie under his hair too, and then he'd get bored and go play. But they bonded so it was okay.
Now that she is gone, and the sweet "bonding with Grandma" thing is done for the moment, he still wants to drink hot cocoa all the time. (How did I not see that coming?) So at least a couple times a day I give in to his incessant begging and give him a cup of Swiss Miss.  Today Tom left to play golf and 3 hours later I caved and went to make the damn cocoa and guess what! Tom had made the last of the cocoa, not told me, and now I was the one who said yes but wasn't going to be able to follow through. I think Tom set me up.
I briefly contemplated making actual cocoa on the stove, but then I remembered that I had bought a pouch of overpriced peppermint flavored cocoa mix 5 years ago and it was smashed into a ball in the back of a cupboard.  SO I told Tommy I could make him only one cup of cocoa, that this was special cocoa, the only one of its kind in the entire world, and he would have to savor it and drink it slowly because after that there was no more cocoa in the house anywhere at all. Got it? He agreed.
Ninety seconds later he handed me an empty and oddly clean cup and asked for more special cocoa. 

More things I've learned about myself from my Spam folder

1. I need to get BIGGER through supplements. (I think this spambots thinks I'm a guy.)
2. I need to be smaller through supplements. (This one just thinks I'm fat. How does it know?!)
3. I need a $10,000 scholarship.
4. I need to find senior housing.
5. I may qualify for disability benefits.
6. I need an iPad, but I only have $25 to spend on it.
7. I need Canadian drugs.
8. I have an Asian fetish. I assume that's a fetish for Asian people, not a fetish I ordered from Asia.

And this is why people unfriend me

Heather: I found a small dead mouse next to my couch this morning. Gross!

Me: Whatever you do, don't try to imagine what might have killed it.

Lynn: A bigger mouse!

Me: genetically modified lab rats!

Heather: I wasn't thinking about that until now. Double Gross!!

Me: Maybe it was a mousey gangland turf war.

Kim: It doesn't take much to cause the little buggars to have a heart attack... Maybe one of you stumbled into the bathroom last night and scared the crap outta it.

Me:  If they drink beer, they die. They can't burp and their stomachs explode.  You probably spilled a drop of killer beer in the recycling bin.

Heather: I don't drink at home.

Me: If I were you, and I lived in the middle of a rodent gangland turf war, I'd start.

Will we never learn?

"Mommy, my canny!"  He is trying to extract a Sucrets from the blister pack. Again. Because he has the memory of Dory, the blue fish in Finding Nemo.

"This is not a candy. It has never been, nor will it ever be, a candy. You don't like this. You've done this before, quite often in fact, and you have never liked it and have always spit it out."

"Mommy, my canny!  Pwees!"

"Fine. But just please try to remember to bring it back to me when you learn again what the phrase medicinal lozenge means." And with that, I hand him the shiny red throat drop.

"Okay, Mommy." And off he goes, with a Sucrets in his mouth.  I expect to see him again in about a minute and a half.

*UPDATE* His mouth in empty.  Somewhere in the house, plasticised to the carpet, is a Sucrets with my son's teeth imprint in it. Because I have the memory of Dory, the blue fish in Finding Nemo.

Or it could all just be random and without meaning at all.

If God really did never give us any more than we could handle, wouldn't we all be immortal?  I mean, He gives us cancer, and sometimes it kills us so obviously we can't all handle that.  And He gives us depression, which some of us can't handle. In fact, if I really did believe that some dude was deliberately handing out every random occurrence in my life, I think I'd be pretty pissed off that He handpicked the "brain cancer in her 60s" card for my mom.  Because really, what a prick!

It's like having far too much coffee, but without the coffee

I wish there were some sort of definitive test for fucked up minds.  I'd happily go into an MRI machine or give blood or even spinal fluid. But all they can do is ask me questions and tell me that if I get 5 out of 6 answers right, I have this disorder.  Except that the 5 I got right are also on the list for this other thing, and t4 of them match this problem over here.  So do I have bipolar disorder, or anxiety, or just some sort of panic problem?  I don't know. All I know is that right now I have restless everything syndrome, I'm wringing my hands (yes, while typing! Because I'm that awesome!), and my mind is racing a mile a minute about everything and noting. So, hypomania or what?  Because I'm on my second beer in an hour and it's not fixing it and I don't wanna become a xanax junkie.;  I think maybe I need time and space to jog.

Women's Health Centers Rarely Offer Neurology Services. Because We Don't Have Brains.

I am not my uterus.  Even were I to lose my uterus (where did I put that damn thing again?) I would still be me, and I would still be a woman.  It is for this reason that I detest Planned Parenthood budget cuts being referred to as "an attack on women's health."  An attack on birth control, abortion, and pap smears, yes. And all of those do affect women's health. But they are not the entirety of women's health and the implication that women's health as a whole would be jeopardized if Planned Parenthood disappeared bothers me.  Would more women die of heart disease? Stroke? Colon cancer?  Probably not.
Women are intricate pieces of biology, not just walking uteruses, no matter what politicians, or tampon commercials, would have you believe.

but she's my Mommy, and some part of me thinks she may ground me

I guess most people grow up knowing that some day their parents will, gods willing, be old and they'll have to take care of them.  We expect to outlive our folks and we expect that at some point the balance of power will shift and they'll be the kids and we'll become the parents.  But try pulling rank on a woman who isn't shitting herself, who does remember you, and every stupid thing you've ever done to call your judgment into question.  Try putting on your stern face and saying "No!" to someone who will always, because experience dictates it, hear your voice say that word in a whiny teenage tone.  Mom's being pretty good about listening to me enforce the doctor's orders, but I am well aware that I possess no more rank than she permits me to have. If she really wanted to take a shower, stitches and all, I'm not sure anything short of body slamming her in the hallway could convince her otherwise.  And this is all (so far) temporary, so if we're all lucky things will go back to normal soon and I'll be her kid and she'll be a parent of an adult with no real authority but still the ability to make me feel guilty with a stern look, and I won't have to worry about it.  But it also means I can't burn any bridges right now.  I can't just say "You're a sick old lady and I'm the one without a big gash up the back of my head so listen to me or be put in a home!" or whatever else you say to parents when they get all sassy.  At least she's lucid.  I can't even imagine how hard this would be if she didn't understand why I was pulling rank, or if she tried to fight me physically.  If she gets Alzheimer's, I'm shipping her up to my brother in Chicago.  We don't get along well anyway, so I won't worry about burning that bridge.  :D

the xanax really does help

I get it, Dr Oz did a show on how there's arsenic in the apple juice and now you're scared to give your kids apple juice. But then someone (me) gave you like 4 quick links to various sites explaining how there's inorganic arsenic (the bad kind) and organic arsenic (a not-so-much bad kind) and how Dr Oz's show only tested for total arsenic so they deliberately skewed the results (and then verbally explained it to you as well) because panic = ratings. And then you said you didn't care and didn't want to know what he did; you were just going to panic anyway. Because willful ignorance is a goal we should all strive to achieve.

I understand that a school is a machine. I get it that your job is to assign redundant homework, collect it, flog the kids who don't do it, and then bitch about "uncooperative" parents who encourage independent thought and all. But my kid is sleeping on the floor while her cancer-ridden unable-to-bath grandmother snores the sleep of the Oxycontin in the bed next to her, spending more than her fair share of homeowrk time babysitting her brothers so I can shuttle her grandmother to appointments and back and forth from her house to collect mail and pay bills.  So maybe you just cut her some fucking slack this one time on some of the bullshit.

I appreciate that you don't consider work to be "a break from the house". I love that.  But as someone who has been a working mom and a stay at home mom, I can tell you that it is a break from the house, whether you see it that way or not.  There have been days where I would have gladly held a soldering iron in a poorly ventilated factory for ten hours for free just to get away from kids who only eat one color of the multi-colored goldfish crackers, or who scream when you put their milk in the fridge after they throw the sippy cup over the baby gate 3 times.  Some days I would like to get to take a break from the house. If only got to do it enough to have the luxury of not even thinking of them as breaks from the house. Ahhhhh, to dream.....

Limitless information, at my unwilling fingertips

It just occurred to me that I could probably google the survival rates for metastatic brain cancer. But I can't. And yet now that I know that it's out there it makes it kinda worse. I really really hate my uncle for making me say all that out loud yesterday. It was easier before I said it out loud.

hahaha I think I broke my uncle.

So "Emmanuel" called me last night wondering if I wanted to ride with him when he went to visit Mom today and I had to tell him that she didn't want visitors.  At all. No exceptions. So he got all sad and pouty on the phone. Then he asked how she was doing, so I told him what I thought was good news. I said that she's recovering wonderfully and could come home now except that they want to keep her to run some more tests because they can't figure out where the cancer came from so they're just gonna do another scan.

"She has cancer?"

*shake my head.*  *smack my forehead*
"Emmanuel, she just had a brain tumor removed. She has cancer.  Didn't she tell you that?"

"She said they didn't know what it was or where it came from."

"They don't know where it came from. It's not brain cancer; it didn't start there. It spread to the brain and they don't know where it started or where else it is."

"But they took it all out, right?"

"They took out the big tumor. They couldn't get to the little ones so they're going to get them with chemo and radiation and hope that gets them wherever they came from."

"I don't know what that means. What do you mean, where it came from? And what other tumors?"

"Em, this isn't something they caught early. She has Stage 3 or 4 cancer. It is spreading throughout her body and is in her brain  now. She has cancer and they say she's had it for a while, and they can't find all of it."


Sometimes it's funny to mess with idiot family members.  Sometimes it's just sad.  I think I'll just text "Sheila" if I ever have anything really bad to tell him. On the bright side, though, Mom called me today while I was at the grocery store and told me I needed to come pick her up because they were sending her home today anyway.  But just in case you've never tried to get into the University of Iowa Hospital as a University of Iowa football game let out directly across the street, let me just advise you never to try. The fucking cops won't let you in the parking garages, there are tailgaters in there if you do manage to sneak in, and the football fans all act irritated that the hospital doesn't just shut down for them.  We live in a really fucked up society when football trumps hospitals as a priority.

A letter to unnamed members of my family

I shall call her Sheila, and he Emmanuel, because those are in no way their names so if they ever read this they can't really sue me.

Dear Sheila,
I realize that you still blame me for reporting you to the state for medical neglect, even though I didn't report you and you were totally guilty of medical neglect, for the time you joked on facebook about how your diabetic 4 year old's blood sugar was in the 400s and it was so cute that he didn't understand why he felt sick while you didn't take him to the hospital, and then followed up with the fact that you were told by his doctor to take him to the hospital at 300 but just wouldn't.  Yeah, that happened but I forgive you.  For the accusation, not for being an awful mother, but we'll let the state handle that.  Anyway, about your dad.
He's a vagina. Sorry to be blunt but he's a big weepy ball of mess.  I understand that you hero-worship him in a way bordering on creepy and West Virginia, and that he's totally the most wonderful man ever to gut animals for fun, but he needs to stop blubbering on my mother about my mother. Seriously, you cannot call someone who is scared for her life and bawl incoherently into the phone about how scared you are for her life. This isn't about him, and she had about a million more important things to focus on than making him feel better. Give him a xanax, tuck him into bed (because I totally believe you do that already) and take away the cell phone.

Also, I text. When I get news about mom, I go through my phone and send out one update to about half a dozen people.  If Emmanuel doesn't know how to text, or can't afford to text, then he doesn't get updated. Not just because he makes me want to punch him in his weepy face, but because I simply do not have the time to call everyone who wants updates. I am not going to tell a brain surgeon to hold on while I call your father. Not gonna happen. Because I'm a bitch that way.

So, good luck with the whole reverse Oedipal thing, and the son you'll make blind before he becomes a teenager, and I'll text you updates if I feel like it. Or not. Whatever.

Love,
the black sheep

a quick update

I have no patience these last few days. I have this big huge thing in my life to think about and it just seems like the bullshit minutiae of life should step back for it but it doesn't.  I still ave to unload the dishwasher and come up with something for lunch and dinner every day, and why doesn't all this crap just take care of itself? I have brain tumors to google!

My mother uses a walker now, which is great because now she doesn't have to walk along walls to keep from falling down, but it also makes her look old and frail. As we walked into the Iowa City hospital I suddenly realized how we looked to people. The frail and unsteady woman being held up by her paunchy and balding son, accompanied by her overweight, gray-haired daughter. I had an almost overwhelming urge to tell the doctor that this wasn't real. That's not who we are.  My mother is strong and independent. My brother and I are young. His thinning hair is a joke because it doesn't fit him, and my grays are quirky and premature. We aren't old and we aren't sad or pitiful and the doctor has to make everything right again. Mom doesn't stand between us for support. She stands between us as support, and we need to get back to that again.

I'm lucky that they match that way.

My house smells like pot roast. I am infinitely fortunate that I happen to be cooking pot roast, because otherwise I'd spend all day wondering where that smell is coming from.

I swear, I plan to update you

Big whole blog posts swirling in my head. The involve hospitals and neurologists and one psychotic car salesman from LA who may or may not have coined the term "tv" but who definitely did name his daughter Tee Vee. 

I don't want to know

Tomorrow we go to Iowa City to talk to the neurosurgeon. I am so scared.

It's like a fashion.

Oh my god! Cancer is a big industry. I mean, you see the ribbons on cars and everything (around here it's all pink and teal, because my town is full of breasts and ovaries) so you know there are shops selling car magnets and silicone bracelets, but I never knew it was so huge. There are multi-colored ribbons, and animal print ribbons because they've run out of colors.  And it must be difficult to A) come to a generally agreed upon consensus as to which color means which cancer, and B) keep it all in good taste.  I mean, breast cancer is pink because boobies = girls, but you can't make colon cancer brown because ewwww. And what if I decide I want mesothelioma to be yellow with pink polka dots but then some group in Colorado wants it to be green and red stripes? What governing board hears our appeals? Who makes the car magnets and silicone bracelets? It would be anarchy!

So I actually clocked something that said "Shop by cancer type" and scrolled through all of the ridiculously colored ribbons (bladder cancer is marigold, blue, and purple, because pale yellow was in poor taste.)  And oh my god there is a brain cancer gift basket!  For only $50 I can buy my mom a whole basket full of crap to constantly remind her of the dangerous chicken egg sitting inside her skull!  Of course, I'm not buying that because we don't know what kind of cancer she even has. It could be from anywhere!  Can you imagine the faux pas of showing up at the chemo office with the wrong car magnet, silicone bracelet, t shirt, necklace, keychain, Swarovski crystal bracelet? It would be mortifying!

It's Nawt A Too-mah!

I don't consider myself to be a hypochondriac, but I can be a tad panicky about some things. My father died from colon cancer and now every time I get a slight intestinal cramp I think to myself, "I need a colonoscopy!"  My mother has MS and I'm always afraid I have it whenever my leg falls asleep for a little longer than normal. 
I get headaches.  I've been popping 800mg Motrins a couple times a day for months now.  And I forget words, and call people by the wrong name, and I tell Ryan to hurry up and do her homework when I mean get ready for bed.  I think I need a peace of mind MRI.  I think for the rest of my life  I will worry that I have brain cancer every time I get dizzy or forget something.  In fact, I'm kinda worried about it already.

more disjointed brain thoughts

I met this guy one time who liked to chat. I worked at a convenience store and he was a customer and one day I tried to sell him some new candy bar or something and he kind of chuckled at me. He told me he hadn't eaten chocolate in ten years. His wife had had brain cancer and either the cancer or the treatment had robbed her of her sense of taste, except for chocolate. The guy asked me, "Do you know what happens when you can't taste your food? You gag and choke on it." So he said they had to just dump Hershey's syrup on everything. Steak, salad, chicken noodle soup, all of it coated with Hershey's syrup. For over a year every meal he had with his wife smelled like chocolate, until she died. He said the worst part was, she didn't like chocolate; it was just the only thing she could taste. I don't remember the segue but he said in the end she died because the tumor outgrew her brain. He said they cut away her skull bit by bit to relieve pressure until her head was huge and then when she ran out of scalp to cover it the doctors said they could make more room by removing the brain around the tumor.  He said no and the tumor grew and she died.

This story has been in my mind since 4:00 pm today. That man chuckling at the candy bar, telling me about his wife eating meal after meal doused in chocolate she didn't like, and eventually doctor's offering to cut away her mind just to keep her body alive. It's the only brain cancer story I know, except that Dom Mucci had a brain tumor removed in his teens and woke up left handed. So I guess there's hope there.

The ribbon for brain cancer is gray. As in gray matter. As in the most depressing color in existence.

mom

My grandmother lived into her 80s. She'd been "praying for Jesus to take" her since her mid 70s. She was a hateful old woman who insulted her grand children and sat in judgment of everyone.

My mother is a good woman. She is 63. Today they found a tumor the size of an egg in her head. Hateful woman- 80s. Good woman- early 60s?  This is how I know there is no god.  Well, that and logic.  And cramps.

Go Local City/State Team!

NFL starts tonight. Tom and I have negotiated the terms of football season down to 3 games a week.  I am going to try to hate televised football less openly this year because while I do hate televised football enough to want to kill it, I love my husband and want him to be happy and he enjoys it. And knowing that it's only 3 games a week should help.  And I do love all the other football things. I love bratwurst, and beer, and hooded sweatshirts. I just hate watching people actually playing football.*


*but mostly I hate playing single parent so that Tom can devote his full attention to not missing any of the game.

A Very Good Day

Today seemed to go slow. I made lunch for the boys at 10:00 because they were hungry and it just felt like lunch time. It was another open-windows day (third in a row after a heat wave summer all cooped up in the AC) and the boys were relatively well-behaved. I put them down for naps at 1:00 and took my hoop quilt and needle out to sit on the porch and only had to get up twice to tell Tommy to stop standing in his bedroom window banging on the glass with a toy garbage truck.  I almost pulled off being stern, but he was adorable standing there in the window smiling down at me and I burst out laughing.  So Tommy never got a nap but I got an hour or so on the porch in the fresh air. Then Tom got home at a decent hour, I made supper, the kids actually ate, and then Tom let Tommy help him work on building the shed in the back yard.  Ryan went out to help/watch and I brought Danny out and he played in the yard. In fact, he and Tommy played quite nicely in the sand box side by side with no crying or fighting or pushing at all!  Then both boys got baths and play time before bed, and everyone, including Tom, was in bed by 9:45.  And once I get done with my nightly wind-down web surfing, I will go to bed as well.  All in all, a very good day.

An Interview with The Child

Tommy, what's your favorite color?

"Bwoo." blue

What's your favorite animal?

"A dock." a dog.

What's your favorite movie?

"Won. Won. Won Weezy!" Ron. Ron. Ron Weasley!

What's your favorite toy?

"A my weiner. I has one!"

Xmas, not Christmas

So far the well-meaning denizens of the internet have corrected me twice in the past 2 weeks when I've written "Xmas". The first just pointed out that when you write Xmas, you leave Christ out. The second actually told me it offended her.  Well, the sad truth is that I do it deliberately to leave the Christ out, although not to offend anyone.
See, Christmas has been commercialized and secularized in our society. It has become, in many respects, a holiday celebrating peace, goodwill, family, generosity, and not the birth of any lord and savior. It has become Frosty The Snowman, and Santa Claus, not Jesus and a Nativity. And it is that secular goodwill that my family celebrates. So I spell it Xmas.  Because I don't celebrate a birthday. I celebrate a rather more obtuse mixture of vague wishes and emotions. And I do it with a tree and stockings, not church services and hymns. SO while I'm very sorry if having your religion's personal holiday celebrated on even the federal level isn't enough, and if my misspelling it and bastardizing it offends you and makes you feel like maybe the world is so cruel as to only mention you in 90% of all media for 4 months a year, I'm not going to put the Christ back in Christmas.  Because in my household, the Earth's Revolution Is The Reason For The Season. Since, after all, seasons are brought about by the passage of time, not the birth of future carpenters.

*yawn*

Lately I've been having trouble sleeping.  I always have trouble falling asleep, but once I'm asleep I'm usually fine. I can wake up to roll over, check the clock, pee, whatever, and fall right back to sleep.  But the last week or so, after I wake up at all I'm just up. 
I have friends who have insomnia and they get things done.  They clean their houses or read books or whatever. I just  lie in bed with my thoughts racing, occasionally dozing just enough to have racing-thoughts dreams that leave me more tired than before.  I wish I could be a productive insomniac.   I wish I could get things done.  But most of all, I wish I could just sleep!

Harsh Reality: Mr Right wants you to take your Prozac

I have a lot of friends who suffer from depression. It's the law of averages that I will, since I have friends and depression is common. And I see a LOT of moping on facebook, which is fine since facebook is full of pointless comments and vents and is therefor kind of designed for moping when one is feeling mopey. But then I see this kind of stuff and it jumps out at me: "All I want is to find Mr./Ms. Right."

Here's the hard, cold, reality. Mr./Ms. Right does not want you. Nobody wants someone mopey and depressed who sits around on facebook posting status updates about how they need someone to make them happy. Mr./Ms. Right wants an already happy person to share time or life with, not someone who will put the responsibility for their happiness on their shoulders.  Do you want the guy at the end of the bar staring forlornly into his beer?  No one else does either. 

Again, depression is common. But YOU need to fix your own depression.  Take pills, get a hobby, do all the things you need to do. People, especially the Rights, want to share happiness, not provide it.  As long as you are dependent on another person for your happiness in life, you aren't what they want. Mr./Ms. Right wants to be a partner, not a crutch.

Awwwwwwk...Waaaaaard

Got a call the other day inviting the whole family to a giant cookout at my in-laws' house. To celebrate (in part) my ex girlfriend's birthday.  And her children's birthdays, one of whom is the daughter of my deceased ex boyfriend.  How could this possibly be awkward?  I shall keep y'all up to date.

Turns out I'm a bitch

It's strange, my new quilting habit. For one thing, it keeps pulling me away from my more pressing and urgent habits.  I have a niece coming in October and I'm still a skein away from finishing her baby afghan, and I haven't even started her Xmas stocking yet!  But also, while it is the one thing I really just don't care if I get right, I totally judge other people's quilts!  I google pictures of quilts and it turns out I have really specific taste in quilts.
I don't like borders. People piece together a crib quilt, add a ton of borders to it, and then say they made a double bed quilt.  No you didn't!  It's all filler!
Same with sashing.  In the right quilt it can look good.  If you make it too wide you just look like you stuck postage stamps to a sheet of printer paper.  More filler. It's practically cheating.
I also don't really care for it when a quilt top is all pieced and then the person quilts it with really dark thread that overpowers the fabrics, but that's more of a preference than an actual dislike.

Labor day is coming up, you know.

If I believes in an immortal soul, I would sell mine for a 3 day weekend alone in a hotel with good lighting and room service.  I would stitch my quilt, crochet the baby blanket I'm making for my brother and his pregnant wife, and let other people cook for and serve me whatever I feel like eating.  I would sleep in, poop with the door open, and never have to utter the words, "Why is the baby crying?" or, "Thomas, stop it!"  It is my dream.

8th grade

It's the first day of school.  She's in 8th grade.  I remember 8th grade.  I remember what I was doing in 8th grade.  It makes me want to home school her, remove her from society completely.  But then I remember that she is not me, she is smarter than me, and she has far less of that desperate need for approval no matter the cost that I had, and I feel better.  But still, I remember 8th grade and it scares me as a parent.

Same old Same old

This week is the local county agricultural fair.  Cow judging, carnival games and rides, fried and/or sugar coated foods, you know the drill.  Ryan has a season (5 day) pass for admission courtesy of my mother and new this year is a carnival Megapass which allows you, for the low price of $45, to ride all of the rides as much as you want. She got that by babysitting her brothers.  She's been at the fair pretty much every day, drinking lemonades, eating cheese fries, and meeting the President of The United States.  Standard small-town kid things.

The Secret Service wouldn't let me in, because there were already too many people in line to be scanned before Obama was leaving anyway.  Probably a good thing, too, since I had forgotten that my seam ripper was in my bra (that's where I keep it, okay?) and having the Secret Service bust me trying to get in to see the president with a tiny jabby pokey thin crammed in my bra probably would get me put on a list somewhere.  So I lived vicariously through Ryan, who got an autograph and photos, but no photo of her with POTUS himself.  But still, awfully cool day around here.

Right back where I started.

Today I learned that if I keep the presser foot up, I can quilt all sorts of loopy swirly patterns with my sewing machine.
Today I also learned that if you keep the presser foot up it completely fucks your tension and you end up with cluster fuck knots of plastic invisible quilting thread all over the bottom of your quilt.
Today I learned that the ratio of putting stitches in to taking them out is about half an hour with the machine vs 3 hours with the seam ripper.
Tomorrow I learn to start all over. Perhaps I was meant to hand quilt.

The difference between you and a good mother

The difference between you and a good mother is not the search but the motivation.  A good mother searches for a diagnosis for her child because she wants to know what the problem is and what can be done to cure, treat, or work around it.  You want to be assigned a diagnosis so that you can tell people what's wrong with your kid and get the sympathetic look and "A ......... child?  You're a better mom than I; I could never handle that."  And despite all of the evidence against it, you're really hoping someone will tell you it's autism, because that's the most fashionable disorder for parents, er, I mean kids, to have. Autistic kids are the new adopted black kids after all.

Winter yet?

The heat index today was 100`, and I am thinking of cardigans and quilts and Xmas stockings.  I'm so sick of this heat and swamp-like humidity.  I'm ready for 3 foot snowdrifts and ice in the windows.  Who's with me?

Psychodyke

Once, a thousand years ago, when I had neither children nor commitments, I had an admirer.  And she was a freaking psycho!  Not in a "call the cops cuz I'm scared" sort of way, but in a "Jesus shitting Christ she's put $1 of gas in her car 6 times today waiting for me to come on shift" sort of way.  And I affectionately named her Psychodyke.  Which was cool back then because they didn't completely revoke my gay card until I married Tom, and gay people can say dyke. 
I found her again.  On facebook.  And to prove that I am never too old to make completely predictable mistakes I will always regret, I clicked the "send a friend request" button.  Because before she became a psychopath with a lot of time to waste at a gas station, she actually was my friend.  And for a new kid in the 12th grade at a school 4 times the size of her old one, a friend was pretty cool.  Until the KD Lang music and visible underwear part turned friendly into creepy.  Then I just ran!  Update undoubtedly to come!

Curtains

My sons' birthdays are coming up, so we are planning a party.  I have only just reached the phase where I obsess about my house being ready for company (it's not) now that we've ordered and received the gifts.  I realized on Friday, 8 days before the party, that my kitchen curtains were a bedsheet, and had been a bedsheet for about a year now.  It started out innocently enough; I couldn't find fabric I liked for curtains.  I wanted tan fabric with coffee cups all over it.  And all the stuff I found was either too light or too dark or the coffee cups were really teeny for quilting and would just look like oddly shaped polka dots to anyone who wasn't standing with their nose pressed into my curtains.  But now I had a party to throw and I could not let people come over and see my house with a bedsheet in my kitchen window.  Luckily I had recently ripped off Douchenozzle, so I was prepared!

Okay, a backstory.  I was looking through classified ads online and found one for a yard sale with sewing fabric, so I of course wanted to go. But then I noticed who posted the ad and it was DN. So I called my friend, who hasn't given me permission to use her name here so I will call her Pam Dawber, even though she is decidedly not Pam Dawber.  So I called the non-Pam Dawber and she said she'd go with me, because she likes yard sales and my discomfort would amuse her.  But it turned out that DN wasn't even there.  I bought a ton of fabrics, some in very large quantities, and the teenage kids who sold it to me was all "Two dollars for all of it" even though I was really hoping it wasn't much more than $20. Clearly, the kid had no clue what 15 yards or more of fabric is worth, but who am I to correct DN's kids at their own house?  So I gave them the $2 and hauled ass out of there before they realized they had been robbed. 

So, now I needed curtains, and had enough of a very high quality drapery fabric of questionable beauty, so I whipped up a set of curtains and padded valance for my kitchen.  I'm still not sure if I love them or hate them, but I'm stuck with them now since the valance is bolted into the wall and it would look really strange with another set of curtains hanging from it*.  So, here is what I did this weekend.

Today I tackle cleaning while Tom tries to make some way for me to get the frogs and crickets out of my kitchen, and the bearded dragon off my TV.


*Also, I stapled the fabric to the valance upside down. Is it as noticeable as I think it is?

My cruel and hateful opinions of school spending

Apparently, I have very unpopular opinions.  Like the time I posted on the city website that maybe the fire trucks shouldn't drive parade speed through residential areas at 11:00pm with lights and sirens blaring just because the baseball team got home and was accused of hating local teenagers.  (Really?! Firetrucks waking me up in the middle of the night, and I'm supposed to assume it means good news?)

So here's what I stepped in this time.  Two teenage girls were detassling when they were killed. Somehow they came into contact with an irrigator and they and several others were shocked, and the 2 girls died.  It is horrible and tragic.  And for all of the other kids there who saw it, it was undoubtedly traumatic.  I got a text message from the school that said "Due to detassling accident counseling is available at the junior high.."  An hour later I got another one that said, "Information about accident on (city website) - school has no info."  I checked the city website and it said, in part, that the school counselors were at the jr high to help any local students who may have witnessed anything horrifying.

So while I am very glad that kids from town who might have seen something are getting counseling, I really just have to wonder why it falls on the school to offer it.  And I posted that sentiment on facebook. Why does the school have to pay for counseling for these kids who saw something traumatic outside of school?  And then a holy shitstorm opened up because apparently what I said was "Fuck all these kids my tax dollars shouldn't pay for anything and they don't need counseling anyway."  Which is odd because that's not what I said at all.

A nearby town immediately set up counseling in a city building.  I applaud them.  Our town did not do that.  Our town did not call all the local therapists (I can think of one right off the top of my head) to come down to the library, and bus the kids straight there.  No, the school did it.  The same school that fired the jr high band teacher 2 years ago.  The same school that raised the price of school lunches this year.  The same school that pleads poverty if you dare ask about any advanced programs.  So I have to wonder why the school was the responsible party for this counseling.  Local churches could have done it; aren't pastors supposed to be trained as counselors?  The city could have done it.  Ideally, the goddamned detassling company should have done it since the kids were killed on their watch.  But somehow, of all the unrelated institutions, the school was left holding the bag.  And people see this as the natural order of things.

Also, just to nitpick, I really do have a problem with schools involving themselves at all with non-school-related issues.  I think it's a huge overreach when a school disciplines students for things like cyber bullying, or drinking, or even just when they involve themselves in things that have nothing to do with school.  I know a parent who got a call from her kid's principal alerting her to the fact that her daughter may be a lesbian.  Because somehow that was the principal's business at all?!

Here is my very unpopular and apparently horrible view of schools.  They should teach kids academics.  If they have extra time and resources after that, they can move on to extras like social clubs and programs.  But if they are cutting the academics, I don't think they should be doing ANY social niceties at all. And that includes offering counseling to traumatized detasslers.  The kids were students, but they weren't JUST students.  Somebody else could have carried that burden.

Now, for the record, I was told that it was all volunteer work by the counselors and that none of this cost anyone anything, so my whole original point was null and void.  I just couldn't believe how many people posted things like "You should just be glad they're getting counseling" as though I suggested they shouldn't get any help at all.  I did tell Tom, for the record, that should I die and the kids need counseling, be a fucking parent and get it for them yourself; don't wait for the school to step in.  Because seriously, if my kid saw a coworker electrocuted in front of her, I think I'd arrange for her to get help if she needed it myself. Because like I said, it's not the school's place to do it for me.  And I think that the implication that if the school didn't offer counseling to those kids then they'd never get it is just an outright insult to the parents.  Because really, you wouldn't go get your kid help unless the principal did it for you?

His choco aches

"Tommy eat your spaghetti!"
"Choco meelk!"
"You can have milk after you eat. I'm tired of you only drinking milk; you have to eat lunch!"
"Cookies! My cookies!"  He climbs up onto the chair to reach for the long-empty cookie jar on the counter behind it.
"There aren't any cookies. We stopped putting cookies in there a long time ago.  If you start eating your lunch and dinners again, maybe we'll buy cookies again.
He reaches to open the cookie jar. "My cookies!"
"Fine.  Look all you want.  There aren't any cookies."  I take the lid off the cookie jar and tip it for him to see. He reaches in.
"My aches!"  His what? His ex?  He pulls out two Cadbury eggs and opens one.

Who the Hell hid Easter candy in the cookie jar and forgot about it?!  Now he's eaten his lunch, but it was a Cadbury egg, not spaghetti!

Another quilt post; just skip it

I know I'm talking this to death and no one who reads this blog is interested, but even fewer people in my real life are interested so it seems better to type it out here where you can skip reading it than to talk someones ear off about mitered corners vs rounded and half square triangles vs 9 patch blocks.
 
Apparently the word quilt is not nearly as descriptive as I always thought.  I'm reading up on quilts and quilting and I'm looking at photos of quilts by the thousands as well as lurking on message boards reading up on tips, and there are a lot of quilts out there I just don't consider quilts.  Or at least, they aren't what comes to mind when I think of quilts.  To me, quilts are blankets made out of a bunch of pieces of fabric sewn together.  Just about any pattern or design, but many pieces making one blanket. In its most basic form, this:

But there are applique quilts, where you just take one big sheet of fabric and then sew other little ones onto it to make a pattern, or make your blocks out of identical pieces of fabric with different little pieced on pictured in them, like this:

And embroidery quilts are the same as applique quilts except instead of piecing on little shapes you embroider them on.  So it's one sheet of fabric (or blocks of the same fabric) with embroidered pictured on it, like this:

And finally there are whole cloth quilts, where you take 2 full sheets of plain fabric, put the batting in between them, and then the actual quilting- the sewing of the layers together- is the art. And people will get really intricate with this, with swirls and butterflies and flowers and everything, just sewn into these sheets, sometimes in the same color thread as the sheets are so that you can hardly see it.  Like this:

I think my quilts will be all patchwork, probably all in plain patterns of squares or triangles, or maybe stripes if I feel fancy enough.  And while I've been looking around the net at zillions of quilts, I've come to realize that I like faded fabrics, muted colors.  I can't really afford to buy fabric (it's $10/yard here in town and $5/yard if I want to spend $30 in gas to go to a fabric store) so I think I will just look for clothes and sheets to tear apart at garage sales.  And if anyone out there has any hideous old sheets or whatever that they want to mail me, I think most of you have my address to ship them to. If nothing else, I can always use them for the back of the quilt, since it's hard to even buy anything wide enough to do a big quilt.

That had to taste terrible

Tommy had to take a benadryl.  I had long ago given up on getting him to swallow the liquid stuff.  He had somehow turned his throat into a shooting mechanism and could cough it right back at me as I forced it past his uvula.  So I bought some solid adult-dosage pills, broke them in half to get the right dosage for his age, and was going to hide one in his ice cream.  I was so clever.
He would eat any bite of the ice cream except the one I put the benadryl in!  "Don't you want this bite?"  I would ask.
"No, you eat it." 
"It's melting.  Better gobble it up right now."
I fed it to him and watched it slide right back out onto the spoon, painfully close to melting and exposing the hidden pill.
"Pleeeeease eat this bite of ice cream.  It's the bestest bite!"
"You eat it, Mommy."

Finally, after a while more of this, he just spit the damn glob of cookies and cream onto the floor and I threw it away.  Desperate, I tried the impossible.  I showed him the other half of the benadryl and asked him, "Will you please eat this?"

He popped it in his mouth and chewed it up, then gave me a look as if to say, "I only ask that you be honest with me.  Is that too much to ask?"  He chewed a pill. Who does that?!

Sewing room obsession, continued

I'm really getting into this sewing room project, and it's all in my head.  Someday some shrink will tell me that this habit of mine of jumping into hobbies or projects is the manic side of manic depression or something but I don't care.  It's not like I blow tons of money on them or anything.

I told Tom to figure out where he wants to put the playroom in the basement and then I'll find my corner and have him clear his stuff out of it.  I want to put paneling on the walls (nothing sturdy, just nail some 2x4s into the ceiling/floor joists and then screw the paneling into them to cover the cement walls, and then I have an old formica table I can use for a cutting table, and an old laminate kitchen table I could put my sewing machine on.  Then I could use the room while I let garage sales and auctions get me my shelves and drawers for material.  I like tearing apart old clothes for fabric so I might put a closet rod up in there, too.  And I'd hang curtains or shower curtains or something to block off Tom's storage shelves (if I get the corner I have my eye on) and then over time replace them with quilts on curtain hoops.

I think every wife should have a sewing room, even if she doesn't sew.  A few years ago all the talk was about Man Caves, and how men should fill their garages and basements with neon beer signs, pool tables, and flat screen TVs.  But what about the women?  Whether it's scrapbooking, sewing, collecting teddy bears, whatever the hobby, a woman needs a room to sit quietly in.  And no, floral curtains in the living room do not mean she already has her own room, not as long as you're going to go tramping through and eating Fritos on the sofa!

My grandma used to have a sewing room.  it was this tiny little walk-in closet off the bathroom but it was where her fabric could sit undisturbed and no grandkids would stomp on the pedal of her sewing machine or unwind her thread spools.  I envy her that little room. I hope to get one myself here very soon.

Sew near, yet Sew far away.

I've started quilting.  I can generally scrounge a few hours a week to sit at the sewing machine, or kneel on the floor to cut fabric, or iron in the narrow space between the closet and the bed.  I wish I had a sewing room.

I've always made curtains, and Halloween costumes, and the occasional pillow for my kids.  I like to sew and it makes me feel all June Cleaver to be able to give the kids something that not just anyone with a Walmart gift card can pick up.  But keeping my scissors and thread and other little things in the drawers of what's basically supposed to be a hall table to toss your keys on, and all my fabric in plastic storage totes in the basement gets old.  I really want a sewing room, and I know how to get one.  If I can move enough storage stuff out of the way I could set all my stuff up in the basement.  Then I'd just need a cutting table and a sewing table, and maybe dressers and shelves from garage sales.  I get so impatient when I can visualize a goal.  I want to start looking for tables and shelves now, and setting everything up.  Unfortunately, Tom has the corner I've picked full of baby clothes for next year's garage sale, all laid out on sawhorse tables.  So I am going to drop endless not at all subtle hints that a sewing room is what I want for Xmas this year.  I don't care if it has walls, just give me a space I don't have to arrange around a king size bed.

Beyonce the dragon. Rawwwwrrrr!

One dog resulting from Tom's sister bringing her dog over while ours was in a friendly mood, one cat rescued by lesbians, one turtle kidnapped from the New Mexico desert, one albino catfish that survived by eating all the goldfish, two parakeets in a teenage girl's bedroom, two tree frogs (the last of their kind after a mass pool-cleaning genocide killed off the rest of the tadpoles), and now a bearded dragon inherited from a friend's daughter who got tired of upkeep when the novelty wore off.  I thought Tommy would love the lizard (I've named it Beyonce) since he loves dragons. But he alternately tells me that dragons are scary in real life (he has a point, there) and that dragons fly, therefore this must be a "Caymen" (chameleon, which just means small lizard to him).
So, maybe Beyonce's a bit much for this house.  It's not a large house, and the tank it came with is huge, and as we learned this morning, not at all cat-proof.  So I asked on facebook if anyone would like it.  I got an almost immediate response from a friend whom I've known for 15 years, but by then Tom was talking about maybe keeping the thing so I said I'd have to get back to her.  Then this morning, after we fished the cat out of the tank admit screams of "Tee tat, don't bite my caymen!" I got another response.  My half-brother, who will not speak to me because I remind him of my father whom he never knew, has children I have never and may never meet. And my brother's wife says their oldest son would LOVE to have a bearded dragon.  So, if we do get rid of the thing (and it's looking like keeping it would require buying a whole new tank with a cat-proof lid, there's a slim chance I could meet my unknown nephew, and maybe my half-brother if he comes to get it.  And I would love to get to know my half-brother, or at least see him once.  He looks just like my dad, and he's a close enough relative that he's on the list of people I need to suck up to if I ever need a kidney transplant, and I like to know relatives that close.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go chase the cat off the top of the entertainment center again. He's peering into Beyonce's tank.  I think he just wants the crickets, though. When he was in there earlier, he never even looked at the damn caymen.

It's sad

 

This is Sam Pucket, from Nickelodeon's iCarly. This is what TV thinks a bullying tomboy with a chip on her shoulder who comes from a bad home looks like.  Notice the curled hair, the lip gloss, the pink shirt. This is a 14 year old tomboy!

 

This is from Xena: Warrior Princess (retro, I know).  These women are rogue warriors trying to make it in a man's world. Notice the cropped top on one, the bustier with boob-centric ornamentation on the other, and the mini skirts on both. You can't see it really well here, but both have extensive eye make up, which they applied every day back in 500BC.  Because when you're waging war and on your guard against constant attack, you have to have eye liner and a push up bra.  No really.

I have always hated this, and apparently I'm the only one who notices it. Strong women, women who don't go for the frail=beautiful notion of femininity, always end up somehow looking like they put every thought in their head into impressing men.  The tough FBI agent, the hardened cop, the CEO who clawed her way to the top; in movies or TV they all look sexy as hell.  Because above all else, women have to cater to men's ideals.  What does it say to young girls when Lara Croft has to look like a porno Barbie?  What does it tell them when they look around the media and even the non-superficial role models have to fit the superficial criteria?  Everyone important has sex appeal.  If you want to matter, or carry any weight, in anything, you better turn men on. Men can be ugly, or even just average; women can't. They have to be thin, and beautiful, and extensively groomed.  No skipping the blush for these workaholics.  No flat shoes or sensible pants suits. No, it's long lean legs and underclothes made to accentuate.  Remember, even in 500 BC, it was eyeliner and mini skirts.

What am I becoming?!

I want to make quilts.  I'd love to crochet if Tommy would leave my projects alone and not unravel them.  I see a shirt with ruffles and think, "That's cute."  I look at soda and see thick goopy corn syrup.  I shop for bras and look for coverage and support, not sex appeal and fashion.   I read about politics and the economy, not celebrity gossip.  I think dark lipstick looks tacky.  I think hickeys look trashy ('cause they do).  I watch PBS and documentaries. I wear sweaters if the temp gets below 60`.  I regret my tattoos.  If given a thousand dollars, I'd probably go shopping for household goods like sheets and towels, or maybe a new handbag. 

I fear what the future holds.  I think I'm becoming an elderly Jewish woman, at least from what I've seen on the TV.  You want I should bring you a jacket?

Better sorry than safe

There's a chance that there's a god, I suppose, although the more I think about it the more I suspect that the only reason a supernatural creator even exists as a possibility is because you hear it nonstop from all directions. I mean, if we weren't constantly brainwashed to believe it, would it occur to us to assume there's some invisible anthropomorphic being pulling the strings?  Anyway, I guess it's possible that there's a god.  And I guess it's possible that he gives a shit about what happens in his ant farm. And I guess it's possible that he has put down some random arbitrary rules of conduct to make sure we stay in line, and that he only lets people who follow the arbitrary rules into happyland later. I also guess it's technically possible that he would design a horrifically terrible place full of pain for people who don't follow the random and arbitrary rules.  I suppose that each of these things could happen.  And I guess that's the reasoning behind the "Better safe than sorry" argument for worship (which only makes sense if there's only one religion, but you never hear of someone who worships ALL gods just to be safe).
But even though a very distinct possibility exists that the Christians have it right and that I will eventually regret living my life outside of the cone of protection afforded by choosing a religion and hoping it's the right one, I cannot help but fall back to playing the odds.  There's a slight chance I'll go to Hell and wish I'd done things differently.  But what if I lived my whole life in self-denial? What if I refused to do things I wanted to do, and refused to love people I wanted to love (as in the case of gays who remain celibate because of their churches), and followed all of the rules both explicit and implied, and then it turned out to be nothing? What if, in my last moments of life, right on the cusp of death, it became clear that all we have is our one life, and I had wasted so many opportunities? What if life is just a series of small pleasures and happy moments, and I had walked away from some of them in hopes of a reward that would never come?
There might be an afterlife, but there is a life.  I've known people who don't allow themselves to fully experience one in the hopes of being allowed to experience the other.  But we're guaranteed to have one, and only vaguely suspicious that the other one exists. (Sure there are folks who claim to know, but the whole point of faith is believing in what you can't really know.)  So when people (family) say "Better safe than sorry", my first instinct is to throw back the whole "What if the Jews are right, or the Buddhists, or the Shintos?" argument, but the real reason I'd rather be sorry than safe is because if there is a god he gave me this life, and I don't want to squander that gift on the off chance that he weighted it down with a ton of random and arbitrary rules.
Also, even if St Peter is the bouncer turning people away from the club, what's to say he's forcing people to go into another club instead?

It's just not worth the payback

I went shopping with my friend on Friday.  I shouldn't have. I should have remembered that this is the same woman who takes her 2 year old with her when she goes shopping and doesn't get home until after 10:00. We exist on different schedules and I should have remembered that before leaving at 2:00pm, but I didn't. I got home at 9:00pm.
Tom went golfing on Saturday morning.  He always golfs one weekend morning and then I get to sleep in the other morning. He told me that he had to make the painful decision to actually turn down golf (insert mock pain here) when some guy was looking to set up a game on Sunday and Tom had to say no, his wife only lets him golf once a week. I made the comment that I'd almost be willing to let him go again if he gave me some time to work on my quilt in return. Part of the joke was a sincere desire for free time to sew, and part was me just not liking the whole "My wife won't let me" comment.  Either way, we went back to watching TV.
Tommy went down for his nap at the usual time and I started working on something here at the desk, in the living room.  I printed out Ryan's name in huge font, cut the letters out, and was pinning them to fabric, to iron and sew as appliques, when Tom told me to just go ahead and go back to the bedroom (where my sewing machine is) and do it without the distraction of Danny reaching for the scissors and pins.  I probably got 2 hours to do stuff, with the boys banging on the bedroom door, before Danny started crying for me and I gave up and came out.
So last night, at 11:00pm right before bed, he says, "So since I gave you time for your quilt, I get to play golf in the morning again, right?"  I got 2 hours of listening to my children cry and bang on the door while their father ignored them and for that I have to give up my only day to sleep in all week?  But again, I'm not his mother and I kind of resent the implication that I have to "let him" do things.  I just told him to do whatever, that if he was gone when the boys woke up in the morning that I'd get up with them.  So sure enough, he left before 7:00 am, and the boys woke up not long after.
I'm not going shopping any more. Or working on quilts. Or doing just about anything else that's fun and just for me.  It's not worth the price.  Anything I get, or get to do, comes back to bite me in the ass because I have to pay for it, later, at a cost I never agreed to in the first place.  Tom has his golf, and his wood working, and his 12 hours a week of televised football all fall and winter, and I'd just like to be able to leave the house without screaming children, and piece together old t shirts and sheets for fun (can't afford to buy fabric), and it turns out that a hobby is too much to ask for.

Maybe my next tattoo. Maybe

"Mommy! Looka me! I'm Meeos*!"  Tommy comes lumbering into the room, in slow motion, making stomping noises with every step.  He's smiling ear to ear and waiting for me to say "One, two, three, Roast Him!" and then fire imaginary proton packs at him. I really never want to forget that he did this when he was little.


*Meeos is how Tommy says marshmallows. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is a Mar Meeos Man, or Meeos for short.

So now he knows why.

There are days when after dealing with a toddler, an almost-toddler, and a sullen teenager, I need a beer.  I feel that this is okay. I put the baby down, I know I have hours until he'll want milk again, so I have a beer. Tom looks at me sideways but he doesn't say anything. And yet I know he disapproves (not because of the nursing but because he disapproves of drinking in general).
Yesterday I left at 2:00 pm and got home at 9:30 pm.  He got the boys up from their naps, made dinner, fed them dinner, cleaned up after, and then dealt with the pre-bedtime and bedtime routines. When I got home, he had a beer.
Life is funny.