Because I’m the meanest
They say you should be careful what you wish for, you know. Sometimes I think I WISH MY CHILDREN WERE MORE SELF-SUFFICIENT and then… I have to learn how to let them be more self-sufficient, no matter what that looks like. It’s kind of agonizing. Because if they would JUST… it’d be so much easier IF… but don’t you SEEEEEEEEE…?
Hell hath no fury like a control freak thwarted, is my point.
But hey, my kids will be adults in just a few short years (hang on, I just need to breathe into this paper bag for a minute), and time marches on whether I like it or not. As scary as it is, I’m turning over the reins more and more, even when I know it’s not going to go the way I want to.
Hey, at least it affords me good blogging material. Come on over to Alpha Mom today to read about how I’m letting go of lunch, even if it kills me (and it might).
Apparently not Australian
It comes as no surprise to anyone who’s known me for any length of time that my favorite topic of conversation is dogs. Specifically, my dogs. Because they are smushy wuvvy fluffy balls of ridiculousness.
When the bible talks about pure love and devotion, I believe it’s referring to something nigh unto impossible to achieve among fellow humans, but something that naturally occurs with pets. Just looking at them lowers my blood pressure by at least ten points. They’re the BEST.
Even when they’re, y’know, not. read more…
Sleeeeeeeeep, glorious sleep
Sleeping is my very favorite hobby. This is what happens when you never get enough of it, I guess.
My kids don’t get enough sleep, either. At least, one of them doesn’t. The other one has a way of figuring it out, but try as I might to encourage a mind meld between the two of them, this talent doesn’t appear to be contagious. Dammit.
If you worry about sleep and your teenagers, come join in the angst with me over at Alpha Mom today. Spoiler alert: I don’t really have any answers, but at least I’m very, very tired.
Coffee and not-so-snappy one-liners
It’s been… kind of a hard month. February, man. February just blows chunks, under the best of circumstances. I don’t know why, but we should probably just accept that as fact. The days are short, the weather is wonky, etc. (Mind you, I do not miss the endless days of snow we had in February up north, but even here in Georgia, the weather is confused and unpredictable. TIME FOR A SNOW DAY = no snow at all. SUPER WARM DAY is then followed by CARNIVAL OF ICE, and so on.)
The other day, Otto and I were headed out to An Unpleasant Event (first rule of Vague Club: We capitalize things to pretend we’re not being vague) and it was even worse than necessary because we were out of coffee. THAT IS HOW BADLY FEBRUARY SUCKETH, we ran out of coffee beans and no one noticed and/or had the fortitude to replenish our stash in a timely manner. And now we were faced with heading into hard things without caffeine… unless we stopped for coffee. (Otto is a problem solver. I was all OH NOES, NO COFFEE, EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE, whereas Otto said, “We can stop and get coffee.” This is why I love him.) read more…
Older, wiser, tireder
Sometimes I look back on things I’ve written before and just… cringe. It doesn’t happen too often, but still. Hindsight, growth, etc.
Because I am still trying to grow as a person and life still sometimes sucks, I wrote you a piece about taking care of yourself during a life crisis. I hope it is an improvement over the time I word-barfed about someone being thoughtless towards me during a difficult time. I think it is.
February goes out with a loud sucking sound
I started off the week thinking, “Huh. It’s almost March. THE SUCK IS NEARLY OVER.” But I guess I forgot I still had a whole week to get through and that I am me.
This past week included: Taxes, a giant box of ordered-on-the-cheap Christmas candy which turned out to have a short expiration date (and Amazon gave me my money back but now I have 15 pounds to lose and a GIANT FREAKING BOX OF DELICIOUS CANDY ABOUT TO EXPIRE), the disappearance of several key lunch-packing containers (but no one knows anything about that! IT’S DARK MAGIC, they just DISAPPEARED), a snow day completely void of actual snow, a planned teacher dinner for which shopping and cooking had already happened but then, you know, SNOW DAY OF NO SNOW, so things had to be rearranged (and this was not my job because I am not in charge—honestly, who would put me in charge of anything, right? RIGHT—but I had whipped out my crock pot and cooked up several pounds of food no one needed anymore, so that was great), canceled teacher conferences which meant I was receiving emails of “proposed schedule for next year” and sending emails that said things like, “Who put this together? Because I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure Monkey didn’t ask to take Zoology, just a thought,” and life in general was giving off a lot of THINGS ARE NOT GOING THE WAY YOU THOUGHT THEY WOULD sorts of vibes. You feel me?
It was a long week, is my point. Also, I am old and feeble and stupid so I injured myself. That wasn’t even this week; it was weeks ago. ANCIENT HISTORY.
But this week it got worse and I made a two-pronged error: I both
1) Googled my symptoms
and
2) crowd-sourced information.
Rookie moves. In case you’re wondering, I’m probably dying. read more…
Crossing their furry little legs
It snowed this morning, which was Terribly Exciting. School was not canceled, however—SAD FACE—which was Terribly Disappointing. My poor, poor children, reared in snowy New England for the first half of their lives, complained that they would surely DIE on the school bus because of the tragic winter weather. There was an actual dusting of snow on the ground! THE HORROR!! Because we are suckers, Otto drove them to school.
Tempting though it is to declare the kids the wussiest wusses of Wussville in the face of this Major Weather Event, that title actually goes to the four-footed family members. You see, there is SNOW just sitting there ON THE PORCH. This is unacceptable. This means the dogs have ventured out just far enough to determine that OUCH OUCH COLD PAWS HELP OHNOES and then they run back inside. This means that it’s nearly lunchtime and neither dog has been outside to pee yet today. They have tiny bladders of steel, true, but I am still very afraid I’ll be stepping in a puddle sometime very soon. (So far they’ve just been sleeping here in my office, though, because Not Peeing uses up a lot of energy and they need naps.)
While we wait for His and Her Highness to deign to venture out for the ceremonial bladder-emptying, let us discuss the miracle of raising smarticles. Specifically, I’m examining a particular Very Dumb Thing a lot of bright kids do, over at Alpha Mom. I did it. My kids are doing it now. It’s making me INSANE. Please come tell me how to make them stop. Or lure the dogs outside. Either one.
Ice day!
Sure, you people in the northeast have been trapped under a dozen feet of snow for a whole month, but here in Georgia we had a teeny bit of freezing rain last night and now the world is ending. School is canceled! Trees are falling over! The power flickered on and off all night and we tried to sleep to the dulcet tones of distant transformers exploding! It was super fun.
And did my darling, charming, best-thing-that’s-ever-happened-to-me husband leap out of bed in the middle of the night, insisting that there was someone in the room with us? He sure did. And it had been quite a while since he last had a late-night freakout, plus I like him a lot, so I let him live. (Fascinating observation: Now that we have a house alarm, I was not worried in the slightest, and calmly talked him back into bed, knowing full well there was no one in the house who didn’t belong here. BUT! Once he put his head on the pillow and pulled the blankets back up, I exhaled and my body released a flood of adrenaline so overwhelming that I actually began to shake. Even though I knew everything was fine. BRAINS ARE WEIRD.)
In other, unrelated, news, I’m afraid I suck at raising healthy children. I wrote about our collective exercise and sports failures over at Alpha Mom because I’m pretty sure the Internet exists to solve my problems. (I read that on the Internet once, so it must be true.)
Maybe it’s just… February
The other day a dear friend said something along the lines of “Maybe I’m not a horrible person and maybe the world isn’t awful. Maybe it’s just February.” (I am paraphrasing a little, I think.) This struck a chord with me, because everything does seem particularly awful right now, but doesn’t it EVERY February? And aren’t I just as surprised, every single time, to discover that JUST POSSIBLY it’s a Calendar Thing rather than a Life Sucks Thing?
I am a slow learner, is my point.
Calendar or not, this “short” month is feeling particularly long, not the least of which because it always seems to be in February when I decide that’s IT, I am really going to get in shape now, seriously, I am, because my pants don’t fit and it’s cold out and I require pants. The problem is that at various daily intervals I also decide I require: cookies, chips, a second helping of whatever I had a good-sized serving of already, or a Random Piece Of Cheese. I’m not one of those “I work out daily and eat right and goshdarnitall I cannot figure out why I’m not losing weight” kinds of people. I am one of those “I do not exercise nearly enough and also I eat constantly so SURPRISE, I weigh more than I should but, you know, Sour Patch Kids are delicious” kinds of people. I start working on it (daily exercise! sensible eating!) and then life gets hard and I remember that chocolate makes everything better. Whoops.
Anyway, I’ve decided that yes, I’m totally going to blame it on February. Why not? Hey February, you are disgruntled and a little pudgy. You remind me of myself! Let’s be friends. Or let’s just move on to March. Whatever. But first: a moment to pause and appreciate Valentine’s Day. read more…
Maybe she’s my spirit animal
This week has just about eaten me alive, but I did take a few minutes out to admit that I might be seeing an apparition in our yard. I’m sure it’s a REAL dog. It’s just that… I’m the only one who’s ever seen her. That’s not weird. Not very weird. I mean, plenty of things are weirder.
Does a ghost dog explain my relative silence? Not really, but sometimes life is like that.