Monday, May 18, 2009

Playdate Cancelled

I just got off the phone with one of the SAHMs that I sometimes hang out with. For the most part I like her- she and I have some of the same basic philosophies, however she is one of those moms who plans to NEVER go back to work EVER (which, while I try not to judge, seriously? what is her life going to be when she is 50?). I find her a little judgmental- she makes it quite clear when she does not agree with my parenting- but who isn't really? She is also kind of boring- like tapioca pudding. There is not much you can add to it to spice it up, and it isn't bad, sometimes you just aren't in the mood. Our kids are the same age so we have spent quite a bit of time together, but as they get older Abby isn't interested in her daughter (who is kind of mean in a somewhat innocent way, as well as very competitive with Abby for some reason) and I have been finding myself avoiding playdates with them lately.
Se we were just talking about the recent drama our school district has faced. We ahve elected some new board members which has led old ones to retire, and we are getting a new superintendent. Last week we got an automated call from the current superintendent announcing that the incoming superintendent has received a DUI, and that her future employment is under review. Later this weekend we got another call saying that she has resigned and the search for a new superintendent is on. So we were talking about this and I made the comment that it wasn't like she was a pedophile or anything, and that while this DUI is bad, I think the woman should be given the benefit of the doubt until it is decided if she will be convicted of it or not (she is pleading not guilty). This led to the most insane tongue lashing I have ever received. She went on and on about how permissive I am and that I may have lower expectations for the education of my kids, but she didn't. It then went into this whole thing about how she went to Northwestern and that education was valued in her home and was not trusted to someone who would make such a bad decision to drink and drive. When I tried to defend myself she called me irresponsible and said that she couldn't believe that I was pro-DUI. What?!
I ended the conversation by basically pinching Nora and telling her I had to go and "poorly parent" my kid, but now I am dreading seeing her this afternoon when I pick Abby up from Daisy Scouts. What od I do here? Do I go off the next time I see her? Do I send her an email telling her that she is insane? Do I just ignore her attack? Thoughts?

Saturday, May 02, 2009

Defending the Caveman

I find it difficult to blog about my spouse without making him sound like a total asshole. And I guess if he sounds like an asshole, he kind of is one, but I think that is more a product of his upbringing than anything else. Seeing as he was raised as the only son of two of the most selfish, dysfunctional, ridiculous beings in the universe (I believe this is a documented fact somewhere) he really had no hope from the get go.
As I raise my kids, I often feel like I am raising my husband as well. He is currently struggling with the idea that he is not the only person of importance in our household, and this is hard for him. Cases and points:
On our recent family vacation he had a mojito induced temper tantrum about how he feels that my sister is more important than he is (I told you about this, right?). And the truth is that she is not MORE important than he is, she is EQUALLY as important as he is- a hard pill for him to swallow seeing as he is used to being Simba.
I was recently approached about a part time job working three days a week for the company I have worked at for years. This is a big decision seeing as it will shift our family dynamic quite a bit. When I first brought it up he kept telling me that it wasn't the time to talk about it (keep in mind my kids were with my mother in law and there were no other distractions at the time) and that we would have to talk about it later. When push came to shove and I had to give my boss an answer I was forced to corner spouse with the question "are you willing to help pick up the slack of me going back to work?". The answer was quite disappointing. I won't go into detail (I don't want you to totally hate him before you meet him), but you can assume that it was close to 'no', maybe even a 'hell no'. When he asked me why I was still sulking days later and I recapped our talk he had little recollection of it. This leads me to believe what I have known all along, his mouth and brain do not act together, and if they do then it is the result of them marinating on what to say rather than just saying whatever self centered idiotic thing that first pops into his head.
We have this stupid red Jeep that is parked in front of the entrance to our back yard from our garage. When I asked if it could move to a more inoffensive location, like into the garage his response was something about how the garage was for his car and I could just move the Jeep when I needed to get into the back yard. yeah, it is so fun and easy to back a car out every time the kids want to play in the yard.
And don't even get me started on the what is for dinner conversation. This is not a cruise ship. You don't get home in time for the only seating you are on your own. Eat what is here, scramble an egg, do something, I don't care. Just don't ask me at 9:30 at night if I am going to "make dinner" seeing as I have already done so for the other 3/4 of the family, leaving more than enough for you. And yes, shells and cheese is in fact a meal. Don't like it? Then take you happy ass to the grocery store, buy what you want (hell, just give me an idea when I say "I am going to the grocery store- is there anything you want?") and make it yo' damn self.

Despite his short comings, we had an excellent talk the other night about Mother's Day. Usually I get stuck having to do something with his mom that takes the better part of a day and is really quite annoying. She has to insert herself in whatever I do with my mom, as well as be carted around on a pillow all day being honored because, after all, she is the mother of Simba (and we wonder how Tim ended up with the worst case of Only Child Syndrome EVER). She usually wants to go buy flowers for her pots then watch me plant them, then complain that we didn't get enough/got too much/the colors don't match the pots and so on. All while she feeds my kids candy then yells at them not to run around.
I told Tim that this year, I was out. My mom will be out of town, and I will do nothing more than buy his mom some crappy Hallmark card (that I will have to recycle when she dies seeing as she saves every. single. card. ever given to her). His response was "Ok, the girls and I will take her to brunch/lunch/whatever and you can stay home". Really, I don't have to hold court with her?
Sometimes I remember why I married him.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Unhealthy Obsession

(Blogging twice in 24 hours- who am I? What is next going to Blogher and publishing a book? Probably not...)

I have many unhealthy habits- nail biting, wine,candy, as well as an unquenchable interest in pop culture. I think the fascination with celebrities is unnecessary, but that does not stop me from logging onto Perezhilton 10 times a day to see what everyone is up to. I draw the line at anything supported by TMZ, however, because I feel that they are a bit too intrusive (I do love the thing they have of Deepak Chopra saying that if he married Oprah she would be Oprah Chopra which still makes me giggle). Anyway, while I feel that the famous still deserve privacy I am sickly fascinated by things like the Real Housewives.

My obsession du jour, however, is starting to get a little out of hand according to my husband. My interest in all things Zac Efron (including lengthy monologues about his career trajectory) is starting to bug Tim and I am wondering if it is bordering on being as unhealthy as my interest in eating Easter candy rather than actual meals. It is no secret that this house is all about High School Musical. We resisted the franchise until Abby and I went to see #3, and while that was all that was allowed for a while we have since broken down and committed ourselves to being those people who can sing along with every single song from every single movie. That is fine- we are in the Disney machine, but my affair with Mah Boo (I am stealing Michael K's name for Anderson Cooper) has really blossomed since I Netflixed Hairspray (side note- we need to talk about all the nouns/brand names that have become verbs lately- Netflix, Google, etc. I am a big offender on this one). He has this weird little twitchy wink thing that he does that makes me think he might be able to act, and from the few interviews I have seen he is not a total moron. The fact that he is pretty doesn't hurt either.

So why am I an 11 year old girl about this? Tim is worried that I am going to start plastering our walls with Troy posters that I am going to start signing things like our taxes with his last name. Neither will happen, but I will still continue to worry about his career more than I worry about going to the grocery store.

Monday, April 13, 2009

A Message from the President....

Right now I should be writing a thing to put in the program of this women's group that I am the president of. There are many reasons why I am not doing that right now, the primary one is that I just don't fucking feel like spewing a bunch of bullshit all over my computer right now. If I were to write exactly what I thought it would go something like this:
Thank you all for coming and supporting the _______ scholarship recipients tonight!
It has been another year with the same old group of hens who have so little in their lives that they worry about every incessant detail of this nonsense way too much. Being president of this group has been an albatross that I am thrilled to be ridding myself of in a few short weeks. While I appreciate what we do here as something good to keep people interested in the greek system, I pretty much can't stand being in the same room with most of you (you know who you are), and I am disappointed that we have decided to take our big fundraising event to the trailer park next year with a fashion show from the Dress Barn. (what Wal Mart wasn't available?)
I am sad that we lost a member to cervical cancer this year, and I really appreciated that you all were assholes about the whole thing. Don't worry, we got the binder back.
Hope you all had fun- I know that you are just as excited as I am that I will not be presiding over meetings next year!
Kisses!

Yeah, that is so not going in the program.
I feel badly that I am this unpleasant about the whole thing, but whatever. They did not elect me to this office, and it has been something that I have had to endure just as much as they have. Whatever....

Monday, April 06, 2009

Forcing my Hand

An old friend of mine who lives no so close by has asked if she can borrow my baby furniture and it has presented a real conundrum. Do I "lend" it to her and acknowledge the fact that I will most likely never see it again without a lot of headache and deal with it that we will not be procreating again? Do I tell her no and continue to allow this stuff to take up as much space as it does in my basement until I decide that we are or are not having another child?
I am marginally attached to the crib only because it belonged to a child I babysat for and I love the idea of it being handed down (and still safe) and cradling so many babies (there was the girl, her brother, a friend of theirs' twins, another baby and my two girls).
Why is this difficult?

Friday, April 03, 2009

Coincidence

Today is Judy's birthday so off the girls and I went to fete her with Steak and Shake and gifts from Williams Sonoma.
She had saved all her gifts to be opened with us- she lets the girls help and it is more fun than doing it alone. Her neighbor had given her a gift wrapped in pages from an old magazine which for whatever reason intrigued me. I was looking at the magazine pages- Modern Homemaker copy write 1941- and was reading about Kerr's canning supplies and I noticed the address on the magazine. It was addressed to Mrs. C.V. Mossrush of Slippery Rock Pennsylvania, who just happens to be my great grandmother on my dad's side.
How would my mom's best friend's neighbor get a magazine from my great grandmother on my father's side's home?
My clairvoyant says there are no coincidences, so what is this?

Thursday, April 02, 2009

ER

Tim and I are parked in front of the final episode of ER, and I am kind of sad. We haven't been watching much this season, but tonight I had to soak my jankey toe (the results of a bad pedicure) which means I have to sit for a half hour watching tv in real time (was there life before Tivo?). While I am recording this on all the televisions, I decided to tune in and promptly got sucked in, as did Tim.

On the first day of our recent tropical vacation Tim had about 10 to many mojitos which led to a tremendous temper tantrum. A tantrum complete with wall punching (no damage done, thank heavens), screaming, crying (his, not mine), and the surfacing of a whole host of issues he has kept bottled up for way too long (apparently he is jealous of my relationship with my sister). While we were able to salvage the vacation (despite Nora's "vacation gastroenteritis") and we have kind of worked some things out, a lot of what he said has kind of stuck with me.
Being married to an only child is hard. Not like breaking your ankle hard, but like living without a leg hard. I love him so very dearly, but he is missing so many life lessons from not having a sibling and having parents who provided mere supervision. I joke about having three kids a lot (Tim being my third), but lately it has felt like I am the one responsible for rearing him as well. While I don't really mind, it is a tremendous amount of work. He is more stubborn and resistant than my three year old, and more ridiculous and immature than the six year old. But I love him.

So here we sit, like we have so many other Thursday nights, in our respective seats on the sofa watching the trials and tribulations of life at County General. As I said, we haven't been watching this season, but it doesn't matter. All the episodes are pretty much the same. There is something comforting about this show and our Thursday routine of watching it. To be honest, I am going to miss having it as a reminder. A reminder of episodes past (when we were worried about Abby Lockhart's drinking and Carter losing his baby) when we would sit on the couch silently watching crappy drama. I would sit and write thank you notes from shower/wedding/baby gifts and Tim would actually sit still for 50 minutes (we usually tuned in late or fast forwarded commercials). This show presented us an image of our potential future- of us being that old couple facing terminal illness, or, God forbid, us being the parents with the sick kids who have fallen out of trees, eaten rosaries or drank to much. The bad recreation of the human drama would bring Tim and I together for an hour a week and in a way it would remind us that life was not so bad, and I am going to miss having this as a way to spend Thursday night. BUt hey, there are always DVDs, right. I mean, we have to figure out when they brought Jerry back. Didn't he die?

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

He lives on the second floor.....*

I need to blog about my vacation, my toe, and some other random topics, but I'll get to that later.

The ladies are having a dress up tea party complete with Blue Danube china and costumes. The eldest will be having a wedding later and just got mad at her sister for telling me that the wedding will involve her marrying 'Luca'. This is the first interest Abby has had in "marrying" anyone other than me, her sister or the cat.

I think we have turned a corner into crushes on boys and I would like to turn back please.


*Name that tune

Thursday, March 19, 2009

The Reason

While I was driving to Target after an unsatisfying haircut this morning I remembered why I didn't publish that last post when I wrote it- it wasn't finished.
While my dentist was drilling the hell out of my molars he was expounding on his belief that homosexuals should not be allowed to have children in any capacity because it is "unfair" to the children.
Yeah, because his scandalous, messy, public divorce was so fair to the three kids he had before he knocked up his assistant and added another kid into the mix. Now he has 4 kids who he can be 'fair' to and complain about to anyone who listens- the oldest is a disappointment because he can't find a job post college, the girl has an eating disorder and has been to rehab twice since her 14th birthday, the youngest has trouble at school, and the baby is coddled by his mother. I think he just doesn't want to be shown up by gay parents.

At least he refilled my valium prescription.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Drill Baby Drill

On Sunday I knocked Abby's front tooth out. We were horsing around and she unfortunately took an elbow to the front tooth. It was like watching Rocky in slow motion-blood splattering, tooth flying, excruciatingly pained expression. So if you were in doubt before, my kids will need the most therapy when they are older.
We then went to the dentist on Tuesday. I lost a filling and needed a teeth cleaning and Abby needed a check up. Apparently the soft economy is getting to the dentist because he felt it necessary to take it out on my mouth. I almost needed a root canal and two crowns, but alas I just have 2 really huge fillings. As I was leaving he promised that I would be back in 4 months for the actual root canal.


Why didn't I publish this when I wrote it???

Friday, February 27, 2009

HSM

I have officially seen/heard High School Musical 3 about 11924 times and have yet to get sick of it.
I think Zac Efron is the bomb, and I am curious to see what he does once he is out of the Disney machine. I also really like Martha (the token fat chick). Tim asked me the other night why this movie is not nearly as offensive as he thinks it should be, and I have no answer. It is like Disney has put some sort of subliminal something in it to make it tolerable. The fact that I have a lot to say on this subject makes me feel like I need some hobbies or to pick up a book or something.
In other Disney news.... Tim and I watched the Barbara Walters special from the Oscar's last night (finally) and can I say I was mortified through the whole thing? Why are we discussing the sex life of a 16 year old boy and his brothers? Can we just let the Joans Brothers go on being totally creepy without worrying about who they are not sleeping with until their star fades?
And also, why are they famous?
Also in that Barbara Walters special I was mortified by her asking Anne Hathaway to talk about her parent's sex life, as well as the lap dance Hugh Jackman gave her at the end. So creepy. That was one of the strangest hours of television I have ever watched.

This is a totally uninspired and disjointed post because I keep having to get up and referee then I get sucked into HSM3.... there has to be a support group for people like me.....

Friday, February 13, 2009

A question for the ages

Why do 15 year old girls have the market cornered on being overly emotional?

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Alpha Parent

In my quest to begin blogging again I made the decision to not spend a lot of time bitching and instead celebrate the little things that go on here.
Fuck that.
So it is winter and my little princess (who just turned 3!) is sick. At 12:23 am on January 17th the coughing started. I don't ever mean to be that mom who rushes to the doctor with every sniffle sneeze and cough, but the last 2 winters have brought pneumonia to my babe's lungs and I want things to be different this year. So at her 3 year check up the doc (told me she was overweight*) prescribed an antibiotic for a lingering sinus infection which was supposed to stop the nighttime coughing (and vomiting due to coughing). This eased things a bit, but she still sounds like Typhoid Mary (I need a shirt for her that says "I'm Not Contagious!"). She is also a total pain in the ass.
At first I was thinking that it was that she is just a willful 3 year old, but I really don't think that is it. I think the antibiotics are messing with her. I think that the issues she has had at school and with her sister are because she doesn't feel right, and when you don't feel right you don't act right. Right? While I don't think she is asthmatic, I think she is having a reaction to this medicine and it needs to be addressed.
My co parent disagrees. He believes that she is just a terrible stubborn child who refuses to do anything for herself and that she needs to be disciplined. (Question: How do you discipline a child who is in a vicious cycle of hysterics because she can't calm down enough to regulate her breathing which causes her to cough which causes her to vomit which causes her hysterics?)

Which leads me to my point: I am the alpha parent. I am the one who gets up with the darlings, who schedules the darlings, who nurtures the darlings, who kisses boo boos, who makes sippy cups of milk and provides the "best water from the fridge", who dresses them, cleans them, and who plays seemingly endless games of Candy Land, the Duckie Game, and Uno. I am the one who has learned all the words to High School Musical 3 and Free to Be You and Me so that when the CD skips I can keep singing. I am the one who tucks them in on the countless nights that he works late, and I am the one who makes the medical decisions.
I am not asking for an award, or a vacation, or anything, really, just an acknowledgment of the fact that I might know when our kids need discipline versus when they need to be held and rocked and loved.

So really I have no point, I just needed to get it out there that, in fact, I do sometimes know what I am doing when I am not reprimanding a frightened little tot who has just puked her guts up (all over me) and instead of a time out I am giving her a little TLC.

Sometimes I hate co-parenting.

*So my doc told me that he is not worried that she is overweight, but that I should try to curb the upward trend in her weight to height ratio. He told me the same thing with the other one too. So my stalker tendencies kicked in and I decided to check him out on facebook. Here is what I learned: the good doctor who is so worried about the upward trend of Nora's weight has two little chub-scouts of his very own as well as a wife who looks like she knows her way around the ice cream truck. So here is what I have to say to him... Make sure no one eats in front of the TV and that you are providing plenty of fruits and vegetables as well as whole grains at every meal. Also make sure that you all do some vigorous activity, like dancing or bike riding, every day....

Monday, February 02, 2009

The Lost

Abby lost a tooth this weekend. It was a blood bath. Apparently she was wiggling it (do you remember that feeling?) but it wasn't ready to come out yet and the little one moved suddenly and it was yanked out of its comfy nest in her gums. Hijinks ensued.
The tooth fairy brought a $2 bill (she has this thing about bringing weird money)- an extra dollar for the trauma of the loss.

I have been missing blogging lately and have been trying to find a new method/place/outlet that suits my life/schedule/motivation. I forget to twitter. I don't want to be one of those constant over sharers who plague Facebook. Blogger seems daunting.

I'm going to figure something out, but as for now I just wanted to remember that Abby waking me up Sunday morning was one of the best things that has ever happened to me.