If there is such a thing as post-traumatic camping disorder, I am suffering from it today. It is three parts sleep deprivation, one part laundry, and two parts I DO EVERYTHING FOR YOU AND DO YOU APPRECIATE IT? NO! YOU DON'T! I'M JUST YOUR MOTHER, SO OF COURSE YOU DON'T! Yes. It's like that. I totally NEEDED those marshmallows, man. Also this glass of wine that Otto so kindly placed on the corner of my desk before retreating to the safety of his own desk. In addition to my PTCD, I am also somewhat gripped with a screaming disorder today. Every other sentence out of my mouth is turned to...
The process of adjusting to our new home and different life is very much like playing my least-favorite board game, Candyland. Ten steps forward, two steps back. Sixteen steps forward and OH NO! Back to the beginning, sorry! Seven steps forward, four steps back. Eight steps forward, back to the---screw this. This is the point in Candyland where either a child completely melts down and I have an excuse to pack the game up, or I "accidentally" bump the board. With my foot. Hard. Unfortunately, it's rather less practical to pack up the game when this pattern is playing out in real life. This...
I'll confess; I'd been feeling a little sorry for myself this week because I wasn't planning to attend BlogHer. The week was going well and I was, frankly, starting to question my decision not to travel this summer "for the good of the family." My family was FINE! And I was going to miss out on a trip to Chicago! And then yesterday my daughter's head actually spun all the way around and I realized that if I HAD gone to Chicago, Otto would likely never speak to me again when I got back, and assuming that the kids were even still alive, that would be yet another scar on their tender psyches....
So, um, we bought this house about a month ago. We moved in three weeks ago. We are rapidly approaching the time when piles of boxes in the middle of every room is less "golly, there's so much to do and we've just moved in" and more "holy hell, what is the matter with you slobs?" Otto and I decided to set a goal of Finishing Unpacking this weekend, because it just seemed like it was time. And we are... well, it's close. I can't quite say we're DONE, but it's much better than it was. We even hung some stuff on the walls! Yay us! Really, I've had only two things to focus on this weekend:...
This week has been a slippery slide into "I hate everyone and everything" territory, much to the chagrin of my family. Whoops! Not you! I don't hate YOU! Except when you talk to me in that tone of voice. Or look at me that way. Or breathe. Do you have to do that quite so LOUDLY? I think we all hit the wall this week, and it's right and good and necessary, but that doesn't make it fun. We are all cranky and feeling adrift, I think. I would like a vacation. What? You say this IS my vacation? Oh. Right. Please kill me. Ahem. So in an attempt to get out of my current rut (that lovely low spot...
Things I need to stop doing: 1) Thinking it would be a good idea to bake bread in the middle of the day when it's a zillion degrees outside. 2) Trying to reach a human at my bank. 3) Shouting "WE LOVE YOU, POOL MAN!" Hey, guess what! The pool's fixed. The. Pool. Is. Fixed. For once, it wasn't the worst case scenario. We were totally primed for "the liner's cracked, the pool was built on top of a fault line, fire ants are eating the plumbing, there are corpses clogging the filter." Something like that. The pump is going to require some repair, but it's working for the short term, at least,...
We are totally all moved in now. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I am so funny. Well, we did manage to finish unpacking the kitchen. We ate so much take-out that I started whining about how I was sure I was getting scurvy, or maybe rickets, I couldn't be sure, and DAMMIT we needed to get back to eating like moderately healthful humans. So we put everything away in a flurry of negotiations (whose wine glasses get to go in the rack? do we keep both crockpots?) and then the kitchen was ready for use at last. We celebrated this auspicious event with a trip to Kroger to spend what little money we haven't already...
Hello! Did you know that most people, when they move, hire some people to come move them, and the people come, and their stuff gets moved, and other than maybe a missed box or a broken chair or something, it's pretty straightforward and uninteresting? Those people do not have blogs. Also those people are not me. If you are me, it has to be a long involved process which may or may not end with your stuff being loaded on a truck for later delivery. Who knows! It's an adventure! And we lived, so I guess it's okay. Last Friday a nice lady came to my house to pack up my grandmother's china and...
Last week I remembered that my deep freezer would need defrosting before the move. Actually, a frost-free deep freezer should be defrosted once a year or so. So naturally, the last time I defrosted it was sometime in 2002. I'm talking there was stuff on the top shelf that was frozen TO the shelf and then covered over in a frosty freezer- snowbank. Defrosting the freezer means the freezer needs to be emptied out. Which means I needed to get over the fact that yes, it's wasted money to throw away the burritos I bought on sale in 2004, but it needs to be done. Likewise with the bag of frozen...
