Woulda Coulda Shoulda

So the good news is that I feel confident that I’m now firmly on the road to Less Crazy, thanks to the miracle of modern pharmaceuticals. (And all God’s people—or at least the ones who have to live with me—said AMEN.)

The bad news is that this seems to be being accomplished by rendering me narcoleptic, and I am simply unable to stay awake long enough to be significantly depressed and/or anxious. Now, it’s true that prior to this I hadn’t been sleeping well for a few weeks a month two months a really long time, but you would think that eventually I’d be caught up and could stay awake for 16 consecutive hours, no? I’m apparently not there yet.

The kids are with their dad for the weekend and Otto and I had big child-free plans that have been mostly thwarted by inability to stay awake. Today we’re off to The Big City and I’m hoping that if I sleep all the way there he won’t have to carry me around when we arrive. Wish me luck.

1) In honor of the Super Bowl, I not only made Stephanie’s crock pot spinach and artichoke dip (which is, truly, one of my favorite ways to evoke a cheesegasm), I bought my family a fresh-baked loaf of pumpernickel bread to eat it with. (I ate tortilla chips and veggies.) For the most part, eschewing wheat is now so much a part of my life that I barely even miss it, but for some ready, TODAY that half-eaten loaf of pumpernickel is TAUNTING me. It’s almost unbearable. And I have no idea why. To make matters worse, an unbidden voice that sounds a lot like a bad parody of Freud keeps asking me what the pumpernickel REPRESENTS. Sheesh.

2) While quickly checking through my spam comments to make sure I wasn’t deleting anything that wasn’t actually spam, I came across one where the comment was “Blogging is pure vanity.” Of course, the spam link was for… increasing your seminal volume. Um, at least MY vanity doesn’t make a mess, dude.

(You’re welcome.)

1) We are going to the county fair today. We planned to go first thing; it is now 3:00 and we haven’t left yet. Which is a pretty good summary of life with children, really.

2) I’m having a terrible time with my skin right now (and I haven’t been eating wheat, so either I’m intolerant to something new or my skin is just finicky, or BOTH, AWESOME) and that always results in a weird amalgamation of both acne and cracking/peeling dry skin. (Me so sexy.) This morning while putting on earrings I discovered my earlobes are peeling. MY EARLOBES ARE PEELING. My new death metal band is called Scaly Earlobes.

3) A couple of nights ago I inadvertently let some weird huge bug into the house when I came in, so being the mature adult I am, I commanded Licorice to eat it. She obliged—sort of—by grabbing it and bringing it into my office and LEAVING IT ON THE COUCH FOR ME. She is so grounded.

If we do not leave for the fair in the next 15 minutes I am not buying anyone a funnel cake. IT IS TIME TO HAVE FUN, DAMMIT. HURRY UP.

I used to regularly post about the search terms that brought people to the site, and somewhere along the way I stopped doing it. Probably because 1) I stopped actually checking my stats all that often, because once you’ve passed the “Hey, I think people other than my parents and my best friend are actually visiting my blog!” point, it just isn’t all that exciting, and 2) it’s entirely possible that I realized it was uninteresting.

Today, however, I’ve got nothing. Well, nothing other than my dog decided to cry and howl at midnight for no discernible reason and I was immediately catapulted back to those horrible first-time-mother newborn days when I spent a lot of time wondering if maybe my baby was in terrible pain and I was the world’s worst mother for not knowing how to fix it.

[In this case, apparently the dog had to pee, and then once we did that she just thought it might be a good time to play. I think. When I sent a panicked email about it all to the Dog Whisperer---now THERE's someone who's doubtless wishing she could un-know me right about now, with my Puppy Angst and hysterical middle-of-the-night emails---she suggested a squirt bottle full of battery acid to quell rowdiness if it happened again.] (more…)

So we spent the day checking out Gettysburg, which was really just enough time for us to realize that we should’ve planned to spend at least two days here, if not a full week. Nevertheless, we crammed as much into the day as we possibly could (and I will tell you about it soon), and finally capped off the adventure with ice cream at an old-fashioned malt shop before coming back to the campground.

After a day spent wandering around in the heat, learning more Civil War history than a person can reasonably be expected to digest, ice cream is the perfect reward, no? Well, perhaps not if you’re saddled with meanies for parental units who settle the negotiating over various confections by pointing out that a single scoop of ice cream in a waffle cone costs exactly the same as a double scoop on a regular cone, and probably has an equivalent amount of sugar, too.

Given a choice between the two, which do you then choose for the most optimal, bang-for-your-buck dessert experience? Please show your work.

Funny thing about taking a mini-vacation from your stress: It’s right there, waiting for you, when you get back. Hmph.

And so today I can only offer this COMPLETELY hypothetical question, inspired by someone else, someone who is NOT ME:

Have you ever actually pulled a muscle in your arm while attempting to get into your “slimming” bathing suit? And if so, clearly that’s an indictment of the suit, and neither your arm nor the ass the suit got momentarily snagged on, right?

I’m just curious. Because I’m a seeker of knowledge. Yes.

It’s supposed to be 89 degrees here today. EIGHTY. NINE. DEGREES. In April.

(Nope, I don’t think I will ever get used to it. That’s some craziness, right there.)

When we did the big closet clean-out a few weeks ago, we took a load of the kids’ outgrown clothes to our local consignment shop, and picked up a few new things. Amongst them was a smocked sundress for Chickadee, suitable for Georgia summer, but completely UNsuitable for the 50- and 60-degree weather we were having at the time. She has asked to wear that damn dress every single day since we bought it. Yesterday I checked the forecast and she said, “NOW can I wear my new dress tomorrow??” I said sure, and now I’m the greatest person in the whole wide world. (Until I do something that offends her, of course. I’ve got that scheduled for about five minutes after the kids get home from school today. I figured I’d give her time to have a snack, first.)

Also, my garden is growing by leaps and bounds and the pollen is starting to dissipate a bit, but none of these things are the reason why I know it’s summer. (more…)