Caller ID enriches my fantasy life
Because I signed myself up for the Do Not Call Registry as soon as it became available, instead of receiving eleventy billion unwanted calls every day, I only receive one or two. This reduction is a good thing. However, it has rendered my standard methods for dealing with telemarketers rather rusty.
It used to be, if I saw an “Unavailable” or unfamiliar number on the caller ID, I would scoop up the phone, say hello, and if there was even the slightest pause, I would hang up. That pause is when the person manning the Telemarketronic A5000 machine realizes there’s a human on the other end and scrambles to pick up the line and sell you something, you know. Nowadays, I’m off my game. Those unfamiliar calls might be job leads. They don’t come with enough regularity for me to identify and reject them as quickly as I used to.
Today, the phone rang and the Caller ID said only “UTAH” along with the phone number. Since I was pretty sure I hadn’t applied for any jobs in Utah, I figured this wasn’t a call that was going to change my life. And yet… I picked up the phone.
“Dooce? Is that you?”
Silence.
She must have been stunned into speechlessness by my charm and precognition. That’s alright. It turned out that Target called me about five minutes later to ask me for an interview, so it was a good thing I wasn’t on the phone (being sold something useless or having an imaginary conversation with one of the only normal people in Utah).
On the other hand, I’d love to know what she thinks I should wear to my interview.
Let them eat sushi
You know what’s really, really cool about being a parent? Children are an endless source of entertainment, and you can torment them in endless ways that are not technically considered abuse.
This morning at breakfast–horror of horrors!–we had Thomas’ Toasting Bread but no cream cheese. Because I am a horrible, negligent mother. Chickadee shouted down the stairs as I offered Monkey cinnamon toast with butter that she wanted some, too, but with green cheese.
“Green cheese???”
“No, CREAM CHEESE. Geez.”
“Green cheese please???”
“MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!! CREAM. CHEESE. Comes in a big plastic thing?”
“Oh. Okay, sure thing.” I went and rummaged in the fridge. “Um, Chickie? Bad news. We’re out of cream cheese. Butter?”
Well, she handled it pretty well. She stomped and pouted and whined and complained, of course. But she ate her toast with substandard, inferior butter and we made it to the bus on time. As she boarded the bus, I called out, “Love you, honey. Have a great day!” She turned around with a smile, and my own grin spread in anticipation of the reciprocal farewell.
“GO BUY SOME CREAM CHEESE TODAY!”
Okay then.
I had a pretty busy day while the kids were at school. Not too bad at all, really. Here’s what I did:
* not sleep
* drink a lot of tea
* chat with the prednisone demons
* shave my legs
* blog about shaving my legs
* apply for a job at Target
* drop off a load of stuff at the consignment store
* pick up a Halloween costume for Chickadee
* putter around the house
* completely forget to buy cream cheese
Oops.
So the time came to get Chickadee off the bus, and I was trying to get her all jazzed about this fantastic costume I’d found for her, and she wanted to know if I’d been to the store. She’s single-minded that way. I have no idea where she gets that. (Shut up.) I did a quick time check: if we left to pick up Monkey straight away, we would have time to run to the store (there were a few other critical items we needed, as well), come home and have dinner, and still make it to Open House this evening. Fine; let’s go.
We flew through the store, grabbing essential items here and there. Monkey demanded to visit the lobsters. I obliged, and found myself staring into the sushi case. I love sushi. I almost never splurge on sushi.
Did I mention the whole not sleeping and general self-loathing thing I’ve had going on lately? I picked up a package of sushi. Cuz I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, I like sushi. Take that, prednisone!
Back home, I scurried to fix the children sandwiches (their request) and hurry them along so that we could head back over to school. Everything was fine until their meals were in place and I sat down at the table with them. As soon as I opened my container, all eating ceased. It was demanded that I demonstrate my chopstick prowess (I did). The ingredients of the individual rolls needed to be listed (with the inherent segue to convince Monkey that yes, it’s real seaweed and people do eat it). I managed to talk Chickadee out of tasting a hunk of wasabe, but she did accept a few grains of rice soaked in the soy/wasabe mixture and declared it… okay. Monkey wanted to eat the little strip of spikey green cellophane that separates the ginger from the sushi.
Confessions: I handed it over and told him to go ahead. And I was disappointed when he figured out it wasn’t food before he put it in his mouth. Then I gave Chickadee a piece of pickled ginger and told her I was sure she’d like it (she didn’t).
See, I’m like the poster child for finding the silver lining, really. I could sit around and bemoan the fact that my child is a scrawny, undernourished, picky eater… or I could continue to delight in the bizarre ways that he approaches discerning what is acceptable nutrition and what isn’t. Conversely, I could just appreciate having a child who’ll eat almost anything that doesn’t eat her first, but instead I consider it my personal mission to ferret out the few foods that will disgust her; just because it’s entertaining.
Don’t worry. I’ll get mine. After the Open House, we came home and I got the kids to bed. I cleaned up a little bit, and while I was thinking about how much I enjoyed my sushi, I thought Gee, I’m really glad Chickadee was so adamant about going to get the cream cheese.
And then I realized… they’d eaten the last of the cinammon bread at breakfast. And I didn’t buy more of that.
In which I accept fatigue
I love prednisone, yes, I really really do, because my leg, it very nearly looks like a leg, today. It doesn’t even itch. See? Here I am, not scratching! Hurray!
But, oh how I hate the prednisone. Hate hate HATE. The prednisone? It is opposed to sleeping. The prednisone says, let’s stay awake a really long time so we can fully enjoy the mess we’ve made of your already precariously balanced emotions. Why waste this time sleeping, says the prednisone! There are things to regret! Things to worry about! Countless opportunities for feeling inadequate! Sleep is for people who like themselves! And while the prednisone is coaching me through this misery, I don’t even feel tired. So, sure, I stay up, until I look at the clock and think, Damn, I need to get up in about… um… 5 hours, sleep might be a good idea. And then I turn out the light and lay there. And lay there. And turn over. And lay there some more. And finally doze off! And wake up again. Etc.
So I dragged my sorry self out of bed this morning and made breakfast and packed lunches and got one kid to the bus and the other one dropped off at school and came home and crawled back into bed. And lay there. And turned over. And lay there some more. And got up again.
And drank an entire pot of tea. And determined that exhaustion was not going to be an obstacle to my day! For I am brave, and strong! Sleep is for the weak!
What better way to invigorate myself and lift my spirits than to have a nice long shower and shave my legs? I’ll let you in on a little secret. Come closer. This will just be between me and you (the entire internet). I hadn’t shaved my legs since the incident with the mowing and the wasps. That was two and a half weeks ago. But my afflicted leg was so lumpy, and painful; I couldn’t bear the thought of trying to shave it, and shaving just one leg seemed even weirder. So today, buoyed up on more than my usual helping of self-hatred and about two hours of sleep, I dared to survey my legs.
Have I mentioned that I am a very dark brunette with very pale skin? And that I am descended from hairy stock? (Sorry, Dad. I won’t tell anyone about the hair on your ears.) (Whoops.) As I gulped my caffeine and worked to focus my eyes, I realized I had two options: shave my legs, or go buy some little colored beads and start braiding. Never in my life have I been so grateful to be single. Yeesh. I put a fresh blade on my razor and hopped in the shower.
When I got out? The prednisone said, You suck! You’re a loser! But Oh my your legs are so nice and smooth! And then I was happy for a minute. See? The prednisone loves me, really. It doesn’t mean to be mean.
Then I took my smooth, loser legs down to Target and filled out a job application. Because back when I was a highly paid engineer I’d thought to myself, Self, this is quite nice, but wouldn’t it be more fun to someday be divorced and broke and unable to find a job befitting a person of our education and intelligence simply because we prioritized the raising of children over the climbing of the corporate ladder? And perhaps I didn’t fully imagine the part where having clean-shaven legs would, in fact, be the pinnacle of my existence; but all in all, the experience today did serve to make me feel that at some point I inadvertently slipped through a rift in the space/time continuum and am no longer living a life I recognize as my own.
On the bright side, there is no hair growing in my ears. Yet.
I think I forgot to eat supper
Low blood sugar, you know. In addition to the crazy prednisone. So that’s what I’m going to blame the following random thoughts on, if pressed. But don’t press me; I prefer to be gently squeezed. (Also blaming that last statement on the lack of food, because it reads a lot dirtier than I intended, but I am too lazy to rephrase or delete it.)
Chickadee fell asleep on me while we were reading in my room before bed tonight. That hasn’t happened in… ummm… I couldn’t even say. Years. She grinds her teeth in her sleep. She is six-and-a-half years old and she grinds her teeth in her sleep. I sent Monkey to wait for me in his room and carried Chickadee’s leaden, sleep-warm body down the hall to her room. Once there, I sat on the edge of her bed, just cradling her in my arms with my lips barely brushing her forehead. She makes my heart ache.
Monkey and I have a bedtime kissing ritual which must follow a strict pattern. I kiss him, first. Cheek, other cheek, first cheek again, second cheek again. Forehead. Nose. Chin. Then a nice loud *smack* on the mouth. We giggle, then he does the same to me. Except he is laying in bed, and I am leaning over him, so I pretty much have to “offer” the proper spots for him to reach. If I’m feeling very silly, I keep offering my cheeks in rapid succession, over and over, until he is laughing so hard that he can’t kiss me any more. Most of the time I just offer both cheeks twice. Sometimes I do something inbetween. No matter how many times I offer my cheeks, no matter whether I offered each one the same number of times or not (usually I do), when I try to offer my forehead Monkey will scold me for not having the same number of kisses on each cheek. And then whichever cheek he kissed last he will shove to the side so as to kiss the other one once more. Usually this drives me batty. Tonight it was exactly what I needed.
In an effort to shake off my melancholy, I retreated to the basement to do some more organization. I figured I’m on a roll and should go with it. Several minor heart attacks later, I concluded that once you’ve had a mouse problem, every scrap of insulation said mice have torn down is masquerading as a twisted rodent corpse. Gah.
Is John Edwards kinda sexy or have I just experienced too much trauma this evening to think straight? Or perhaps my vision is colored by the fact that I have to look at him next to Dick “Pod Person” Cheney? This is way more entertaining than the presidential debate was.
Just a day of recycling, driving, and dealing
Another fine excursion to the dump, today. My car was packed to the gills with recycling; I’ve cut another path through the basement and expanded the walking room in the garage with the number of cardboard boxes I removed. The stack of discarded Boston Globes no longer threatens to topple out of the garbage cabinet and knock me senseless every time I go to throw something away. The “Still Good” shed offered up some bakeware (I defy anyone with children under the age of 12 to say there is such a thing as too many mini-muffin tins) and a few comparable plastic pieces for the kids’ kitchen. I hit pay dirt in the book shed, scoring the two Shel Silverstein books we needed to complete our collection, two trivia card sets, and about half a dozen other kids’ books. Grabbed a little piece of fluff for myself and called it a day.
Thus invigorated, I then embarked on the Shuffling of the Children. Due to poor planning on my part (surprise!), I’d forgotten I was going to the dump today when I’d written the note for Chickadee to be excused early for a doctor’s appointment. The dump is on the same side of town as her school. Our house is on the side of town where Monkey’s school is located. But as I am a moron, and decided I wasn’t up for arguing with the nazis in the office about removing Chickadee even earlier than requested, I drove across town to fetch Monkey, then back across town again to get Chickadee, then back the other way once more to the doctor. Phew.
At the doctor I got to confess to having changed Chickadee’s medication dosage without approval. I rushed to blame it on her therapist having suggested it last week, adding that I had made an appointment as soon as possible to get official sanction. Luckily, I am brilliant and the doctor is pretty easygoing; she agreed that was the thing to do and didn’t have a problem with it. That was a relief, because I strongly suspect that if Chickadee hears another adult tell me that I am wrong about something it will only serve to confirm all her suspicions that I am not only the dumbest person on the planet, but possibly trying to poison her, as well. She’s charming, that way. We do not need to present this child with any more evidence to support her hypothesis that I should be ignored.
This doctor keeps a continuum of smiley faces from 1 to 10 on her bulletin board. Number 1 Smiley Face looks like he’s had some extremely good weed and is currently watching the sunset and eating brownies. Cheesecake brownies, perhaps. It’s that kind of smile. Duuuuuuuuuude, says Number 1, I can’t stop smiling! Number 10 Smiley Face has just lost his entire family to the raging inferno that consumed his home. Perhaps the firemen came too late, and–upon realizing the house and family couldn’t be saved–decided to pass some time by taking poor little Number 10 out back for some non-regulation activities. Number 10 is far too busy wailing and gushing tears to say anything at all. You kind of want to scoop up Number 10 and comfort him and tell him everything is going to be okay, but on the other hand, you look at his face and feel like nothing will ever be okay for him ever again. Plus, he’s just a sketch of a face. Anyway, you get the idea. The faces go in degrees of emotion from Number 1 down to Number 10, with Smiley Face Number 5 being the Switzerland of Smiley Faces.
Monkey demands to see the Smiley Chart first thing every time we go to this office. It’s not his appointment, but he is mesmerized by that chart. The doctor is always game to indulge him, and asks him to please point to the face that best describes how he feels on the inside. Without fail, Monkey chooses Smiley Number 1, every single time. Monkey is high on life. Yay Monkey! Unfortunately, in the year that Chickadee has been seeing this doctor, she has chosen Smiley Number 10 more times than I like to recall. We’ve had a rough few weeks and so I steeled myself as the doctor ruffled Monkey’s hair and said, “Okay, Chickadee, your turn! Show me which one is you, today.” Chickadee studied the faces for a moment and then turned away and flopped down in the chair next to me.
“None of them,” she declared. The doctor raised her eyebrows and asked Chickadee to look again, and pick the one closest, even if it wasn’t exactly right. “None of them are even close,” she insisted. I exhaled. Loudly.
“Chickadee, honey, please just try to pick one,” I urged.
She picked Switzerland. Smiley Number 5 probably winked at her and said, “You and me, kid. They can’t crack us. We’re inscrutable!” (And Chickadee, being Chickadee, then thought to herself, “I have no idea what inscrutable means, but it sounds good.”) All in all, it was kind of a relief. Except for the part where I imagined the Smiley and my daughter chatting. But that’s not really her fault. We talked a bit, finished up with making our next appointment, and headed out to Daddy’s house for dinner.
I have now had an entire hour all to myself and I have no idea where it went. But I do know that I am totally going to have nightmares about disturbing Smiley Faces tonight.
Tuesday’s Child is full of grace
Look! Up in the sky! What is that? It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s–
Oh, wait. Did I say up in the sky? I lied. Look down there on the floor. Do you see it? Do you??
Yeah. That’s right! It’s… my ankle! Still puffy, in fact covered with black and blue marks (apparently the next time I really want to hurt someone? I should scratch them), but fairly readily identifiable as an ankle.
And there was much rejoicing! Even though the crazy prednisone caused me to wake up every hour last night. No matter. (And, side note to RC: I do know better than to call the doctor’s office and complain that the medicine isn’t working fast enough. Clearly the people who do that do not have blogs and reading audiences who will hang on their every grumpy, whining word.)
So. Recovery appears to be underway.
To celebrate, I’m going to the dump. With a friend. Never let it be said that I don’t know how to par-tay! I know I’ve waxed philosophical about the dump before, so I won’t bore you again. The important thing to note about today’s trip is that I have been inspired by recent events to finally finish cleaning out my basement. In addition to my usual recycling, my car contains about a gazillion flattened cardboard boxes and several items for the “Still Good” shed. I am going to get the basement cleaned out or at least get some serious aggravation going in the process.
I stood in the shower this morning under the hottest water I could stand, willing myself not to scratch; trying to empty my mind and just float like the steam that surrounded me. It sort of worked. Then, of course, when I got out I realized I’d stayed too long and we needed to leave for the bus immediately if not sooner. We ended up running the last little bit while the bus driver chuckled at us, and I felt tears well up. So I guess my prednisone-altered mood is still pretty fragile. Oh well. If you need me, I’ll be the one weeping over by the comingled containers.
P.S. I really was born on a Tuesday. And I’ve been accused of being full of a lot of different things over the years, but grace was never one of them. I cannot imagine why not.
Prednisone, emissary of evil
So, the doctor told me that I could split up my daily dosages of prednisone into two or three sittings, if I liked, because it might be hard on my stomach. Naturally this caused me to pick up my prescriptions at Target and then stand there in the checkout line swallowing all five pills at once. Because, I don’t know, for some crazy reason my priority is to make my leg stop swelling and itching, please, for the love of all that is holy.
I came home and puttered around a bit, then fell face-first into my keyboard as a wave of exhaustion overtook me. Huh. Maybe the prednisone makes me sleepy? So I caught a nap for an hour before I had to go pick Chickadee up at the bus stop.
During that hour, the evil prednisone army of emotional instability appears to have taken over mission control. Not–mind you–that I’m claiming to have been an archetype of emotional stability previous to this, but trust me. If I am feeling worse than usual in such a marked way, it is time to hide your children and valuables and pretend that you don’t know me.
The general course of the rest of my afternoon follows.
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Next time I’d prefer the lightning bolt
I got about three hours of sleep last night. It’s very difficult to sleep while in the act of scratching or while trying not to scratch. And it turns out that if you do manage to fall asleep, you will then scratch hard enough to wake yourself up. Ow.
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How not to make Kira’s molasses cookies
Pre-dough preparation:
Spend the day tending to whiny children, and scratching your leg. And telling whiny children to please stop telling you to stop scratching your leg. And wishing you had something yummy to eat. Read Joshilyn‘s account of her so-called Virtue Cookies and think to yourself, “Self, that is a tragedy. Those things are an insult to all that is cookie-like.” (Joshilyn rocks, for real; but flax seed? In cookies?? Oh sweetie, NO.) Get kids to bed, and be thrilled to be able to scratch your leg in peace. Look again for yummy things to eat in the pantry. Find none. Decide to make cookies.
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Date night aftermath
I had a wild date last night, and I’m paying for it, this morning.
We smuggled drinks into the theatre, you see. We passed the bottles back and forth while we giggled, and by the end of the movie? The popcorn was gone, the bottles were empty, and we were up way past our bedtimes. Flying high on our mischief, I guess you could say.
This morning? My head is screaming in protest. Church was out of the question, in my sorry shape. (Cue the lightning bolt.) I’m dragging around and feeling my age… twice my age, that is.
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