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.   :(

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