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Slow and steady

by Mir on May 11, 2012 in Ottomatic For the People, Woohoo!

Otto never tires of telling people the joke about how it was an easy decision for us to have a small, family-only wedding ceremony without all of the traditional hoopla. “We’ve both already been to the wedding where she wore the big white dress,” he’ll deadpan, then sit back and wait for that to sink in.

In a few more months, Otto and will have known each other for 23 years.

Today, we’ve been married for 5 of them. [Aside: OH MY GOD look how tiny the children were!!] Just 5 years; our marriage is only embarking on kindergarten, and in some ways I’m still holding its hand to cross the street, tucking it in at night, and trying to convince it that there are no monsters hiding in the closet.

Make no mistake: for me, our marriage definitely fears there’s a big hairy beast either in the closet or under the bed, just waiting to pounce. Except in this case the hairy beast is “One day Otto wakes up and realizes it’s maybe not supposed to be this hard, this much of a slog, this kind of endless grind,” and then he tells me that he can’t do it anymore. (more…)

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Comments { 53 }

My favorite child

by Mir on April 28, 2012 in Offspring: ecstasy and agony, Oh look! Something furry!!, Ottomatic For the People

Did you know that school is finished for the year here in just a few weeks? (And before the usual slew of “No fair! You get out so early!” comments that this usually brings, allow me to point out that the kids went back to school the first week of August. They’ve had a whole year.) Anyway, it’s true. School is nearly out for the summer.

Just a few more weeks to get through, which means that everyone’s Great Big Hairy Meltdown is right on schedule for… now.

This happens every year. I have no idea why it surprises me, every time. But the children are… oh, a little on edge, let’s say. Moreso than usual. And my tried-and-true rule about only one child having an issue at a time seems to go out the window, this time of year. Or, you know, THIS ENTIRE YEAR. (See also: hurry the hell up, 2013.) (more…)

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Comments { 19 }

It’s true, we totally rock (updated with a pic)

by Mir on April 25, 2012 in It's not a regret, it's an "experience", Ottomatic For the People

You may remember that one piece of my recent weekend of doing pretty much nothing included a landscaping estimate. This is because my darling husband seems to believe that the outside of our house is supposed to look a certain way.

I’m not saying he’s wrong, I’m just saying I’m a lot better at, shall we say, selective visual fields than he is. Why, the weekend before the do-nothing weekend, Otto had declared a family yard pick-up day, and I’m not saying it didn’t look great when we were done, I’m just saying that this is a Mars/Venus issue.

What I think when I look at the front yard: Grass! Birds! Pretty!

What Otto thinks when he looks at the front yard: Maybe today we can pick up all of the sticks and branches that fell up by the big tree and then along the sides, there, and drag it all back into the debris pile in the woods. Then we can trim the bushes, rake all of the leaves and other crap out of the front beds, trim all of the greenery, weed, and spread new pine straw when that’s all done. And finally I’ll ride around on the mower for a while, because the grass has grown a full half an inch since the last time I did that.

(In my defense, I did pick up a LOT of sticks that day.) (more…)

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My big fat gluten-free corneal abrasion

by Mir on April 19, 2012 in It's not a regret, it's an "experience", Ottomatic For the People

[Thank you for the sweet comments yesterday. I'm pleased to report that the day did indeed improve, thank God, and a good time and a massive chocolate-cake-stupor was enjoyed by all yesterday evening. Go make this flourless cake immediately, whether you're gluten-free or not. I may never make anything else again.]

So I’ve been meaning to tell you this story for a while, but it was while rereading yesterday’s post and saying to my husband, “HAHA! You can’t tell I’m off my meds at all from that! HAAAAA!” that I realized it was time for a good-size dose of levity—the kind of levity that only 1) confused people and 2) me being a dork can provide.

(You’re welcome!)

Anyway, perhaps you have gleaned that due to recent events I am in full-on hermit mode. I mean, I drive children to doctors’ appointments and stuff, but I do not socialize. I do not dress up. I do not go anywhere I don’t HAVE to, because every ounce of energy is currently focused on keeping the particles in my body from spontaneously breaking off and shooting into space due to stress. (Well, no, that’s never happened, but it COULD, right?) Of course in the midst of this, my husband had to go win a big award. (more…)

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Comments { 36 }

Mir and Otto’s big shopping adventure

by Mir on March 17, 2012 in Ottomatic For the People, Retail Therapy

You may perhaps remember that during the last few months of last year—having no idea how much 2012 was going to suck, and how much less I’d be working—we decided to give all of our spare moneys to our favorite contractor so that he and his guys could rip down our sagging deck and replace it, and then of course it ended up taking forever, including failing the first building inspection in January because the handrail on the stairs ends on the second-to-bottom step instead of the bottom step. (TRUE STORY!) (Know how you fix that? Your contractor comes over and attaches a piece of two-by-four to extend the railing, and uses a couple of pieces of scrap wood to anchor it to the existing railing structure, and then after the crabby building inspector signs off on it, the contractor takes it off again. VOILA!)

Anyway, that’s all been resolved for months, and the new deck is lovely, and the dog has decided that the $29 doggie door we installed so that she can let herself out of the screen porch to the great outdoors is the best thing in the whole wide world.

As the weather’s improved, we’ve spent more and more time out there, though we’re sitting on folding camp chairs and using a card table for when we need to play a rousing outdoor game of Balderdash, because it turns out that… we don’t really have any deck furniture. And we, you know, spent all our money on the deck construction. Whoops. (more…)

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Comments { 27 }

It’s not contagious

by Mir on January 23, 2012 in Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, Ottomatic For the People

We had a pretty uneventful weekend, here. We watched football (go Patriots!). We grumbled about the weather. I swore I was going to do laundry and go grocery shopping and then I did lots of laundry but neglected to go grocery shopping, which meant that this morning I packed everyone a delicious lunch of various odds and ends, and have hereby sworn that TODAY, no really, today, I SWEAR, I’ll go get groceries.

The kids saw their dad. Chickadee’s quiz bowl team defeated their most loathed rival team at Regionals but ultimately didn’t go on to State. While they were doing that, I was at play rehearsal and Otto staked out the District Science Fair, where all the kids who were busy at the Bowl were winning at the Fair but couldn’t be there. (Chickadee’s project—which was a DRAHHHMAAAAHHH of epic proportions for several months—has now taken first place in category at both school and district levels, and she is now on to Regionals still vowing that nothing less than first place will do. So glad she’s not putting any pressure on herself. Ahem.)

Otto and I didn’t do anything special, really. We shuffled the kids around and worked in our respective offices and played with the dog and ate popcorn and tended to the minutiae of daily life, and never once did I stop to think OMG OUR MARRIAGE COULD IMPLODE AT ANY MOMENT. (more…)

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Comments { 48 }

I guess now it’s Christmas

by Mir on December 28, 2011 in Health is overrated, Ottomatic For the People

The thing is, there are lots of things to love about Georgia, but it’s really far away from our families, which is kind of a drag. I mean, it’s not as bad as when I lived in California—we’re all in the same time zone, at least—but it still means that visiting is kind of A Production, and there are times when that’s difficult.

So when we first moved down here, we said hey, we’ll come back for Christmas every year. The first year we had a good trip, though I did end up getting an ear infection and calling my doctor back in Georgia to beg for meds and sending Otto out looking for an open pharmacy on Christmas Eve. (Deck the Halls with Zithromaxes, fa la la la laaaaa….)

The second year, well, Nearly Nickless shared his stomach bug with me, and we spent Christmas Eve in the ER.

After all of that big fun, the third year we decided to just stay home. We promised to alternate years, and return the next year. (more…)

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Comments { 38 }

Insert various/sundry fawning here

by Mir on December 5, 2011 in Ottomatic For the People

Yesterday was Otto’s birthday, and lo there was much celebration and rejoicing!

Except… there was no way I was going to manage to top last year’s surprise (and subsequent party and extravaganza), plus Otto was out of town for most of the weekend, plus life is completely overwhelming right now for various mostly uninteresting reasons, plus I just generally sort of suck.

So, we love him to bits and all, but I’m afraid that as birthdays go, it wasn’t a terribly exciting day. I mean, there were presents, and we went out to dinner, and I told him I love him about a billion times, but I still feel like I kind of dropped the ball. And that is only partially because I discovered we were out of candles and made him blow out a match on top of his cake so he could make a wish. (more…)

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Comments { 49 }

A night out

by Mir on October 28, 2011 in Aspi(e)rations, Offspring: ecstasy and agony, Ottomatic For the People

Otto and I are going on a real live genuine date tonight, in just a little bit. I am drinking a large cup of coffee by way of preparation, because the sad truth is that my idea of a perfect evening, lately, is sitting on the couch watching TV for a while before going to bed at about 9:30.

I’m not sick. I shouldn’t be tired. But I am exhausted, mentally, and that’s bleeding over into everything else. I’ve taken to shutting off my alarm in the morning and going back to sleep; on the rare occasions when I used to do this, before, I would just get up 15 minutes later when Otto’s alarm went off. Now I often lay there until the last possible minute, and one day this week when Otto offered to pack lunches and shuffle children I just let him and stayed in bed.

It didn’t help. So tonight I’m doing my best to slough off my now-comfortable shroud of “I am just so TIRED and OVERWHELMED” and instead I’m going out with my very patient husband, and I may even put on mascara. (more…)

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Comments { 55 }

White trash fondue, yo

by Mir on October 24, 2011 in It's not a regret, it's an "experience", Ottomatic For the People

So this is a THIRD post about food in a row, which means the planet has officially been jolted off its axis. Or that these things come in threes and I’ll stop after this. Probably.

This weekend was stressful for a variety of reasons, and about halfway through yesterday as I was ranting to Otto that I AM ON ANTIDEPRESSANTS I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO FEEL LIKE THE MOTHERFUCKING SKY IS FALLING WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? he gently asked me if maybe, possibly, I had missed a dose? And I had. So it’s possible the sky doesn’t require expletives and maybe is just drooping a little, not crashing to the ground, and also the moral of the story is that right now I am Lexapro’s bitch. So! Lesson learned.

Anyway, in the midst of the stress and the weeping and the general angst, I not only had to figure out what we were having for dinner last night, but I realized we had to have fondue. (more…)

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Comments { 31 }
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