A Two Martini Knotty Grrl

Rearends.

I am a ninny.  I rear-ended a lady today  (8-29) coming home from work.   

Taken on too much . . . maybe?

My decidedly slow posting schedule is  coinciding with the fact that I think I may have overextended myself.  Again.  Turns out that I have either a) a superiority complex which makes me think that I can do everything all at once or b) an inability to say no when asked to perform a task. 

Currently, I am working.  That's not too bad right?  Just 16-20 hours a week.  Problem is that the personnel got all screwed up, and now Bug can't stay with me like it was originally agreed, and that's screwing up all of her schedules.  It's always screwing up Frog's schedule.  But I'm not sure that's so bad especially since he's back into workaholic mode at his job.  I'm still steamed at the employees who bring their sick kids into work too.  I have now donated my own bottle of sanitizer and I spray down every surface before I set my child down anywhere.  I'm not a germaphobe but these kids seem to breed super viruses.  My Bug has now had a fever for 8 days.  She had to be catheterized and have blood drawn for them to tell me that it's a virus. 

We're big on letting our kids find their natural schedule and then pretty much making it law, at least in the beginning.  Until they change it again anyway!  By the time they get to be Bean's age (he's currently 3 but this rule has been in play since he was 2), the schedule is the schedule and that's just that.  There are days when we do family things and stay out way past his bedtime, but if you never get to break the rules then you never get that special feeling, right?  That's my view of it anyway.  Rules are meant to be broken sometimes, it's in our very natures.  Or at least mine and Forage's.  :o)  A healthy disrespect for toeing the line your entire life is a good thing.  I'm still working on that.  I have to give more credit to Frog for helping me to enjoy those times instead of worrying about what might happen. 

Anyway,  I also start back to school on the 28th.  I thought that this on-line thing would be perfect, mostly because I can't find care for Bug yet.  I'm not really ready to let her go anyway, because she's not fully mobile, and I have fears of her just being put in some device and left to scream for ages.  But now I'm worried that I won't be able to actually find the time I need to devote to the class, between her naps and all the other duties that come with attending to her and her brother. 

Unrelated but she and I just hung out on my bed today and laughed and she rolled over and then wanted back on top of me to roll off again, and she kept laughing with that gummy mouth . .. it just slayed me.  It was the among the best minutes of my day.  Second time was when I got quality time tonight was with Bean.  We took a great big whirlpool bath together and just laughed and popped bubbles and slid around.  I want to remember these things when they are teenagers and then gone.  It all flies so fast.  It's so cliche but so true at the same time.

I don't notice the first med the doc put me on working at all.  The anti-anxiety is the only thing that seems to put the demons at bay but I'm only supposed to take it at night.  I think I may need something different or an ability to maybe break them up throughout my day.  Why do I always lose my mind at 4 months PP?  Pretty sure there will not be a third.  This makes me said but the odds are too high for me to feel comfortable rolling the dice right now.  Maybe when I get better educated it will change.  At any rate, this does leave me open to be a gestational surrogate which I have always felt a calling to do, especially since I have wonderfully easy pregnancies.  Can you think of something more great than being the vessel that gives some parents the child they want so much?  I can't.

Off to do dread maintenance now.  Not my favorite thing but it's a necessary evil.  Oh, reconnected with an old acquaintance this week and that was really nice.  Reminded me that I'm not a total oddball and maybe, just maybe, I've been trying to fit in with the wrong crowd before.

Oh, and Vote No on TN 1.  Or whatever backwoods amendment your state has cooked up to take rights away from citizens.  Period.  Constitutions were meant to give freedoms, not take them away.

Of me and meds.

It turns out that I'm not really good at posting when I run out of meds and then finally refill the script, only to then forget to take them.  I also stop sleeping and get really pissy because of the withdrawal. 

Some news came down the pipeline about Bean the other day and I'm still having trouble dealing with it.  It doesn't help that Froggie keeps "poo-poo'ing" it in it's entirety.  Sometimes he makes me completely crazy.  This new diagnosis means a new IEP and fighting with the school district for more therapies.  Ugh.  I'm so tired.  I know it's my job to make sure that my kid gets what he needs to be successful in life but damn it all, the hits just keep coming.  I feel like a blow up clown that we had as kids; it had a weight in the bottom so when you hit it it would go down but then it would pop right back up.  Only I'm having trouble with the popping back up part.

I think that Bug has an ear infection that was probably gotten from a virus brought by one of the women's kids at my job, because this particular woman will not keep her sick children at home.  AARRGGGHHHH.  At any rate she has a fever and a personality to match a prickly pear at the moment so I get to go to the stupid ped's office AGAIN tomorrow.  She is making me very angry because she won't let me put her down at all.  Stupid of me to get angry at someone who can't help it.

I know I promised to talk more about myself but I have to go because she won't stop screaming.  Fuck.  This just sucks.

Home changes.

If I actually stop to think about it, the idea of houses is really quite amazing.  Just sticks and (sheet) rocks put together to form rooms and space that we decorate and breathe and love and fight in.  In some places, Kenya comes immediately to mind, some of the houses are still actually sticks and mud with some hay thrown in.  I wonder who the first human was who said, "Enough of this shit.  I'm tired of being beat up by the weather.  Let's get something (a roof) over my head!"  It is these thoughts that prevent forward motion in my brain.  Froggie pulled out our bathtub today and it was just some 2x4s and the floor so it made me start to think.  Can you tell that we're remodeling our bathroom finally?  I did make him replace the defunct shower head in the downstairs shower first, because I don't care how many times he "swears" that the tub will be functional by Sunday, the universe has it's own ways and I like to shower daily, and I'm not taking any chances.  We blew a little over half our budget today alone buying stuff for the remodel.  We have it all set aside in cash but it's still hard for me to drop that kind of money all at once.  Froggie swears that we'll get it back in value when we finally sell this place though.

We have a water damage in our living room.  Again.  It stinks like mold and my frog had to take out EVEN MORE of the pad under the carpet.  Now, instead of a 6 foot by 2 foot section, we have a 6 foot by 8 foot section of pad removed.  We also had to unplug everything, including my brand new tivo, and move the entertainment center.  Ugh.  The water damage was cause by the same wicked thunder storm that killed out my router.  The router that was one month out of warranty.  So now we're wireless and my phone seems to be working better.  It cost me a pretty penny to replace though and I was none to pleased about it.

Books for my classes this fall are outrageously expensive.  It cost the same as half my tuition just for my books.  They aren't even large books!  If I have to spend that kind of money I really like to see a lot more for it.  It'll be worth it in the end but right now when money is so tight it just blows.  I'm really only bitching because the brake system went out on my car in the beginning of July and that set us back.  We'll make it, because we always do, but I would like to feel like I'm more ahead then I do right now.

Of naps and work.

I would like to set the record straight.  I love naps.  I always have.  I believe that they should be a mandatory part of every day.  This happens not as frequently as I would like with two kids on different schedules in the house so I'm very tired right now.

I started my new job yesterday.  I hadn't even worked a full shift and I was told that the only perk to this job may be taken away.  Which means that I may not be working there much longer.  I was also told that my hours are being cut in half already.  The big perk is that I can bring my kids with me.  And the other one is that some of the work I can do from home.  That's especially helpful right now since the amount of paperwork and training films I have to watch is outrageous!  That means I don't have to pay for daycare and the money I make can actually come home to pay bills.  They are only paying me slightly more than minimum wage, so it really would not be cost efficient if they say that I can't bring them.  Funny thing is that ALL of the staff work there because of the "bring your kid(s)" bonus.  It certainly isn't the money by itself!  I definitely feel weird about working so soon after having my daughter.  My husband came and picked her up for the last two hours of my shift yesterday and it was really odd to wonder how she was doing.  As it turns out that she was not doing so well and that made my heart hurt when I got home.

In other news, I've decided on pseudonyms for my family members:  My husband shall be referred to as Frog or Froggie, my son will be Bean (as in jumping since that was my nickname for him in utero!), and my daughter will be Bug (as in cute as!).  I'm just lazy and tired of writing out husband, son, daughter so there.

I am also attempting to write more about me and less about them.  So in the news of I'm years behind the rest of the planet . . . I picked up a Sudoku book at one of the multiple airports we went through on our vacation and I love this game!  Admittedly, I suck, but I think it'll be good to try and rewire my brain this way!  By I suck, I mean it's an EASY level book and I can take up to 15 minutes to do one puzzle.  Hey, everyone started somewhere.

Also, I was approached by the director that I performed for earlier this year in my college's performance of The Vagina Monologues and she said that she really hoped that I could be involved again.  I had Bean in a stroller and Bug on my chest in a carrier when she said this and I just thought that it was hilarious.  I'm not sure that'll happen.  I was a million months pregnant for the last production, and I was one of two, out of 10, that was actually doing any work for it. I love the idea and we raised a little over $1,300 for the local women's shelter but I have to learn when to say no and this may be where it starts.  Also, no one who said they would come and see me perform, except for my beloved Frog, came out and that hurt my feelings more than I told anyone.  The only one who is exempt is my friend X. (she can choose her own pseudonym) who is Kenya serving the Peace Corps right now.  I got it on DVD for her once she comes back.  :o)

Final Note:  Meds not working.  I don't see the NP again until next week.  No idea where to go from here.

It figures . . .

I finally move to a new blog and then I go on vacation and don't post for over two weeks.  I would have but I'm not sure if I want to share this with my husband yet, so shoot me - we don't always see eye to eye, and we shared tight quarters for 10 days with no real opportunity for me to do anything without him over my shoulder or a kid crying for something.  I'm leaning towards giving him the address because I feel like he needs to see all the parts of me but it's a big decision for me.  This has been my outlet for years now, and even though I plan to do less specific bitching I'm just not sure yet.

Anyway, we went to Denver and had a wonderful great good time.  My only complaint is that something about either the food or the altitude really messed with all of our digestive systems.  We're just now returning to normal and we've been home for two days.  Also, I need to look up whether it is possible to have reverse altitude affects.  The morning after we came home I was lightheaded and I felt like the air wasn't moving around me correctly until well into the afternoon.  The only thing about going up that happened was when we went up to about 8K and I was sweating just from breathing.  I thought it was just because I'm fat until my skinny husband had the same complaint!  We stayed in a hotel suite for the last 5 days we had full run of room service, the dining room, and the bar.  We spent about $500 feeding three, and drinking for two!  Dang it but my martinis are expensive.  They almost always taste better when someone else is buying though! 

The trip out was horrifying mortifying not very good at all.  My son completely lost it between the two hours layover in Chicago and the fact that the laptop died in the middle of his movie while we were in the air.  The breakdown occurred on the plane when my husband decided to test wills with him and it was ugly on both sides.  The guy works so much that he doesn't really get to see everything that I deal with concerning our son on a daily basis.  It was much better on the flight home because we got to take a nonstop and it was so easy. 

My daughter did a really great job anytime we weren't in a car.  My lord that child hates her car seat.  She screams like there are poisonous darts in the belts.  We drove to Laramie, Wyoming, for the  weekend while we were out in Denver, and she screamed for two straight hours before she finally passed out.  I stopped to nurse her twice and those were the only silent times in the car until she dove into unconsciousness.  Poor little bit, and poor me.  The sound of my children crying physically hurts me, and it trips some switch in my brain where it is completely possible for me to irrationally flip completely the fuck out.  It sucks.

Everyone is sleeping now but my brain is racing and mostly because I haven't been able to brain dump for more than two weeks.  I realize now that this is a vital part of who I am.  I need to get this stuff out of my brain to get some peace and quiet up in that skull of mine.  I am afraid that I'm swinging back into mania after all the trip nonsense.

I think entirely too much about poop.  I am someone who never even mentioned anything that had to do with a bathroom function for most of my life.  I didn't even say the word fart until I was 25 years old.  According to family legend I potty trained myself because I couldn't stand being in my own filth.  I was 18 months old.  But now, I can't get away from poop.  What is it about being a mother that turns some of us into poop connoisseurs?  Does anyone else look?  Why do I have these nasty thoughts?  Ugh.

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I finally got my dread maintenance done while we were in Denver.  The woman who did my hair was fabulous and her assistant was great too!  I had it done at a salon that is normally the type of place that I feel too toad-like to feel comfortable in, because I'm not anything other than average, but everyone that I dealt with made me feel right at home.  It was great and a big shout out to Lisa for all her time and care with my poor hair.  They are coming along quite nicely now.  My husband and I have waxed a few times and used a tightener that rocks and some of the very early ones are very knotted already.  I figure in about a year they should be just how I want them.  I highly, highly, highly recommend the products from Knotty Boy.  I've tried other stuff and it's been greasy or totally ineffective and smelly, in a bad way.  Everything from KB has a wonderful scent and it's easy to work with and their other products are wicked cool too.  I feel like I'm advertising but they totally deserve it! I'll post some pictures of my hair once I can take some decent pics.  My husband and my mom keep taking all the pictures from an underneath angle, so I have four chins and you can see right up my nose.  They are hardly what I'd consider flattering pictures.

Oh, I got the job I was trying for and I go pee in a cup on Tuesday.  It's a good thing I don't do anything that could pop me on a test anymore, or the fact that they told me about this last Thursday might have been frightening!  :o)

Girlchild is crying, I'm out.