Craptastic

The past few days have just been shitty. It started on Wednesday night when I smacked the side of my head on a wall shelf hard enough to knock me on the ground. Then, yesterday, I cut my palm pretty deeply with a steak knife trying to pry frozen pancakes apart. I know that wasn't the smartest thing to do in the world but I was distracted by two kids yelling two different demands at me and I hadn't had any coffee yet. I ended up going to the doctor's office yesterday to get a tetanus shot, bandaged up and antibiotics. Despite her bandaging my wound keeps reopening and bleeding. Joy. Then, today things were going all right. I did some cleaning and a whole bunch of laundry and managed to keep a positive attitude despite the pain radiating off of my palm. Yay me. I finally got some coffee into a cup this afternoon and I hear that sound I hate - the dog's body thumping on the floor. Yup, she's having a seizure. My son is oblivious to it (thank God) because he's so involved with Go Diego Go. This was a bad seizure for Molly. It lasted over a couple of minutes and then she just laid there not responding or moving. She blinked and panted but that was about it. She stayed like that for several minutes. I called my husband and he said just get her onto some hardwood so she's off the carpet. I'd already taken care of that. The next step was to get her outside in case she has to pee/poop. Got her outside in the rain and she's miserable. She's winding herself around my legs and whimpering. I had a lot of pity for her but I was afraid she'd knock me on my ass so I backed away but made sure she could still hear my voice. I'm not sure if she lost her sight like she usually does. She decides she wants to go back inside and I'm more than happy to accomodate her. I get inside, look at my hand, which is throbbing, and notice to my horror that my bandage is now dirty and damp from all this. I'm not supposed to get it wet until tomorrow and I'm relatively sure that dirt and grime are a no no as well. On top of all this my son is freaking because Diego was over and he was ready for a new one. This day better improve or I'm going to snap. I did briefly consider adding Bailey's or Kahlua to my coffee but figured that wouldn't really help anything. Would it?

Oh, I forgot to mention my phone call with my Mom this a.m. That's always good fodder for a post. We're driving up to Pennsylvania on Sunday to celebrate my Nana's 95th birthday with my mom, aunt, uncle and cousins and Nana, of course. My Mom sounded kind of funny on the phone like something was bothering her but I chose to ignore it with everything else filling up my mind. Finally, I hear her say "I know my saying this might bother you..." Oh goody, this should be fun. "But I'd appreciate it if you could refer to your aunt as Aunt Rose Ann rather than just Rose Ann." Um, ok. In my defense I only started calling her Rose Ann because she teased me several times for still calling her and her husband my Aunt Rose Ann and Uncle Jim. Whatever. Finally, my Mom got to what was really bothering her. Apparently, she thinks that because I dropped the "aunt" title when talking to my aunt, my cousin Jennifer has started calling my mom Joyce instead of Aunt Joyce. This really bothers my Mom. Anyway, I was so irritated by her approach to all this I didn't bother mentioning my knife trick to her. I figure that would just send her into a tizzy. We can hold off on tizzies until Sunday. Lord knows, there will be enough of them given the way my relatives are.

Procrastination... what else is new?

My husband's Aunt and Uncle are dropping in for a visit on Saturday morning. So, I have the ambitious plan to get the whole downstairs spic and span over the next couple of days. I'm going to clean the living room, family room, dining room, kitchen and powder room (half bath). Which one should I address this afternoon? Dust and vacuum the three easier rooms or address some of the scrubbing that needs to be done in the bathroom or kitchen? How about none of the above? I'm so not in the mood to clean and I can't motivate myself to get moving. I know these rooms aren't going to clean themselves and I will be horribly embarrassed if these people show up on Saturday and the house is in its current scuzzy state. My butt remains planted in my office chair. Sigh.

My grandmother (I call her Nana) turns 95 tomorrow. I guess I have a bit of good genes in my blood. We'll be celebrating with her on Sunday. So, yesterday I got my haircut. It's much shorter than I'd wanted but I think it's actually kind of nice. Check out my new profile pic. It's not looking as nice as the stylist had it yesterday but it's not too bad for not using a hairdryer or any styling tools, eh?

Fatigue Sucks

This was going to be a post about chronic fatigue syndrome and how it's affected my life. By the way, if you're a mom with CFS or fibromyalgia please check out my group on cafemom.com at http://www.cafemom.com/group/12347. We have a great bunch of women there offering information and support.

Anywho, this post is going to be a vent about my husband instead. I'm very angry right now so this may come out kind of harsh. We're both very tired (thus the title fatigue sucks) so I suppose I should give him a little leeway but I'm feeling cranky so he gets nothing.

This afternoon I sent my son into my daughter's room ahead of me after she woke up from her nap. He gets a kick out of being the first one in there and getting to play with her toys while she's still in her crib. She doesn't complain and I'm usually in there within a few minutes so it's not a problem. Today I took the time to go pee first and take my thyroid medicine so he was alone with her a little longer than usual. When I got in there he had managed to snag her butterfly mobile from pottery barn kids with a toy and had pulled a butterfly off of it. Here's PBKs pic of it.



I got very upset and started yelling at Joshua. My husband, who had been working outside all day and didn't have to deal with the kids at all, came in to see what was going on. When I explained how upset I was (with big tears rolling down my face as I struggled to fix the mobile) he began to lecture me on how it really wasn't that important if it was broken and to basically get over it. I know it was just a mobile and not worth the tears but I didn't need to be told that. I needed some sympathy. So, after trying to explain why this meant something to me and how expensive it was and blah, blah, blah he kept interrupting me. Finally I blurted out "stop talking to me like I'm a mental patient!" I then tried to explain more why this was such a big deal but he grabbed my daughter and stomped out of her room leaving me stunned and alone with my son who kept asking me what was wrong. When I finally yelled "don't walk away from me" he told me he couldn't talk to me right now in a very pissed off tone. So, I got my son out of my daughter's room, got him downstairs and grabbed the car keys. Then, I left the house and all this crap and went for a little drive to the post office. I wish it could've been something more exciting than that but I did have a package to mail for Ebay.

Real mature, eh? I just couldn't believe that my husband had walked out on me during a discussion. I used to get yelled at him for doing that very same thing in the beginning of our relationship and now here he was doing the same thing. Why is that acceptable all of a sudden?

Now he's acting like everything's peachy keen and back to normal but I'm still pissed. I don't want to just pretend that everything is ok when it's not. However, I feel like that's kind of immature. However, I know he's not going to bring this up or bother trying to apologize and frankly I'm too irritated and tired to try to work this out.

How can he just let something like this drop without trying to resolve the discord? He must know I'm still pissed.

Anyway, I managed to fix the mobile and warned my son never to touch it again.

I sooooo need to get a good night's sleep tonight.

Just When You Think You've Seen It All...

Thanks to the end of Daylight Savings Time today my kids woke up at 6:30 instead of 7:30 so we were able to get out the door to enjoy the morning. I decided to take them to a local park where there are hiking trails and a playground. We took our hike first and that was a lot of fun. Although it was cold outside (mid forties), the sun was shining and we were moving around a lot so it was pleasant. We didn't see any wildlife but my son had fun pointing out the trail blazes on the trees for me and we got to say "hi" to a few other people out for a hike. One of those folks was a woman hiking with her yellow lab. She didn't say "hi" back but I figured maybe she was one of those folks that aren't too keen on kids or something. I forgot about her and we finished our hike.

The kids were thrilled to have the whole playground to themselves. I guess other people's kids observed the time change and obliged their parents by sleeping in. Anyway, we were having a blast and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the antisocial woman and her dog emerging from one of the trails. To my surprise she headed right for the playground. I was a little ticked that she was walking her dog across a playground (people aren't supposed to do that in case the dog poops or pees on the play area). However, I was in for an even bigger surprise when I heard her talking to her dog and saying something about slides. Yup, you guessed it. She had her dog walk up the stairs and pulled the dog's lead until it went down a slide. WTF? The dog had no desire to go down the itty bitty slide and she really had to baby talk to it and pull its lead to get it down. She did this several times until she'd had her fill.

How bizarre is that? Don't get me wrong, I love my pets and I've done some things that my neighbors must have thought odd like putting a harness on the cat and walking it around the backyard. However, this seemed a little more on the weird side than I felt comfortable with, ya know? Oh well, I guess people really do march to the beat of a different drummer.

On another note, I just wanted to say I had a blast on Halloween. My kids and I got dressed up and went trick or treating with my husband. The kids happily traded their candy in for new toys and now my husband and I are flying on sugar highs. Lovely. Anyway, here's pic of me in my pirate costume. It was nice having long hair again. LOL.

Please vote November 4

And if you're going to vote, please vote for Obama/Biden. For the first time in my life I made a contribution to a political candidate. This is the first time I actually believe that a person I'm voting for is going to make some changes for the better. Initially, I voted for Clinton in the primaries but when it became clear that she had no chance of winning I started learning more about Obama. The more I learned about his beliefs and how passionate yet calm he was I truly believed that this was the person who should be our next president. Like him, I believe that we have to repair our relations with our allies in the world. Our unilateral actions over the past eight years have done so much harm. The United States, although a powerful and wonderful country, cannot do everything alone. We need the support of our allies and we need to use diplomacy to get things done. In addition, we need someone who is willing to learn and work hard. I don't see McCain doing this. He is too busy insisting he is a maverick and sounds like he's just going to be bull-headed like Bush was for eight years. That is not going to help our economic woes. The next president is going to have a huge impact on the Supreme Court. If one or more of the justices retires the president will be choosing their replacement(s). This could swing the court to becoming even more conservative or could put some liberal justices in there. Having liberal justices would ensure the protection of rights such as Roe v Wade. I'm a grown woman and I don't want anyone telling me how to live my life. I could go on as to why I'm supporting Obama over McCain but I hear little howler monkeys (my children) clamoring for my attention. Feel free to send me a comment or message if you want to discuss this further.