If this blog were a record of my pet peeves, here's one of them. I hate that when I need to wake up extra early for something, I end up sleeping horribly the whole night. Of course, how could I tell a regular horrible night's sleep from a horrible night's sleep caused by a 5:30 wake up time, you might ask, since I frequently report on the horrible night's sleep that I get. Well, I'll tell you. Take a regular bad night, with one or more children waking up and needing attention, and throw in a not being able to fall asleep until after midnight, plus some having to go to the bathroom, and being hungry but not allowed to eat anything.
This morning was particularly bad because #2 had a nightmare and wanted to come sleep on the floor in my room, and I couldn't let him because our alarm was going to go off in 2 hours. So I laid down on the floor next to him (because he's been sleeping on the floor lately, go figure) and tried to distract him by asking him to tell me his favorite parts of the Star Wars movies. He did, but it wasn't distracting enough, so I asked him to tell me how Lego Star Wars starts, and he proceeded to give me a blow-by-blow account of where you go, how you kill things, which character you need to be, where to use the force, etc. Oh my gosh, he was so thorough that I almost fell asleep on the floor, and eventually I told him to keep talking to himself until he could fall asleep, and I went back to bed.
I got back in bed at 3:52. Approximately 1 minute later, it was 5:30 and the alarm clock was going off (well, it felt like 1 minute later anyhow.) The alarm clock woke #3, who cried out for a minute, but went back to bed, but gave us just enough fright to make absolutely sure we were silent while we got ready. We left the house at 5:45, about 5 minutes later than I had hoped but I didn't really care. What were they going to do, start without me?
I got there about 6:05 and checked in. Everyone I dealt with was very efficient and nice, super friendly for so early in the morning, but I dealt with all women, really, and since I'm pregnant I've got a very obvious topic of conversation available. They had to prick my finger for some reason first (they kindly decided they did not have to give me a pregnancy test, literally crossed it off the order form which amused me) and the finger prick actually hurt, which did not bode well for all the other stuff that was about to happen.
I was called back at 6:30 and given room 23, told to change into a gown and deposit all of my belongings into a brown paper grocery bag. I sat on the bed and listened to my book until it was time for the nurse to insert the IV. My best tactic for dealing with pain is distraction, I try to talk to the nurse about anything at all so that I don't pay attention to the needle and the potential pain. This nurse was friendly and chatty, so it didn't hurt too much when the IV went in, but it was in the side of my wrist and it hurt for a long time afterwards. Like it was touching a nerve or something, I don't know, but I never wanted to move it.
At 7:30 the anesthesiologist came in and we discussed options. He said either local or general anesthetic would be safe for me and the baby, but because we were doing the surgery in two places, they'd have to give me so much local anesthetic that it might be safer to just do the general, since it would be hard to change halfway through. Plus he mentioned that it is safer to do the general because they insert a tube in my throat to stop me from breathing the contents of my stomach (that may be more detail than you needed to know), and I wouldnt' get the tube with local. then there was the kicker - the local is done with all needles being injected, and the general was put into my IV. He asked me if I thought I was stoic enough to handle a local, and I didn't think I could. I've had several injections in these areas for the biopsy and previous removal, and it really, really hurt. As long as the general was just as safe, I felt like that was a better way to go.
8:00 - We are just waiting on my doctor to show up, and then we can get the ball rolling. My room has a big curtain in the doorway, that ends about 2 feet off the ground, and when it's closed all I can see are scrubs-covered calves and feet with plastic clogs walking past. When I saw a pair of jeans and flip-flops stop outside my curtain and drop a backpack on the ground, I knew my doctor had arrived. It could just as easily have been a college student, from the knees down. He whipped out a marker and started drawing on my face and neck (maybe he learned his technique from the Costco door-lady?) and we were ready to go.
Here's where everything gets foggy, and for good reason. I am wheeled into the O.R., and it reminds me so much like the tv show Scrubs, just that long trip down the hallway and through big doors and stuff. I remind everyone in the OR that I'm pregnant, just so everyone is aware, and they all are. I get onto the table and they strap my legs down, electric chair-style, but tell me it's just there to remind me that the table is really narrow and not to fall off. My doctor comes in and is joking with the nurses, the anesthesiologist props me up on one side so that I'm not flat on my back, which is bad for the baby, and goes behind me and fiddles with the IV. The nurse is asking me questions about the baby, and I remember talking to her about the baby as I fell asleep.
The next thing I know, I have a picture in my head of my next-door neighbor standing in my dining room, and then I half-open my eyes and almost immediately start crying, because I can't figure out what the heck is going on. Confused is to gentle a word to describe how I felt. The nurse, a different one, is talking to me to calm me down, I'm not hysterical or anything but definitely freaked out. I ask if the baby is okay several times, and they get out the doppler and we listen to the heartbeat , the baby is fine. I'm trying not to cry, now that I'm waking up for real and have enough wherewithal to get my act together. I'm calmer but I really wish DH was here to hold my hand, not that he would be allowed in even if he was here.
Eventually they take me back to my room, and I'm just so tired and feel gross and emotional. I'm still really groggy, but everyone is so nice to me. A nurse brings me a cup of water and some crackers, and when I look at the clock eventually it is 10:30. I've got a headache so they bring me some Tylenol, and my throat hurts from the tube. Now I'm really starting to wake up and can't believe how not awake I was just recently. I haven't felt the baby move so when the nurse comes back in I ask her to check the heartbeat again, she says I probably don't remember but they just did that 15 minutes ago in Recovery (it's only been 15 minutes?) but she is happy to do it again. The baby's heartbeat is just fine still, and I feel a lot better. I am collected enough to ask for my ipod and when I get it I turn on some George Winston, soothing piano music. It makes me feel better, but I am just so tired I can barely believe it.
After about 15 minutes I am even more awake and decide to turn on my book, I've got about 20 minutes left on it. I polish that baby off, along with the water and crackers - they offer me some other food but even though I was so hungry at 6 this morning, now I am not hungry at all. When my book is done, I just don't have the concentration to start something new. The nurse comes in to give me some instructions for home, but one that the doctor wrote, she can't read, so she has to wait for him to call back before I can leave. He calls back at about 11:45 (the instruction was not to put anything on the neck wound, because of the glue holding the incision together) and the nurse brings me a phone to call DH for him to pick me up.
Time goes quicker at this point, and I get dressed again and hobble over to the bathroom. When I stand up I realize that I'm pretty light-headed and dizzy, but I'm okay. DH calls from the parking lot and a nurse comes and helps me into a wheelchair to take me out to the car. Whenever I've been wheeled out before, I've always felt it's a pretty stupid exercise, because it's always been because I've had a baby two days earlier, and I'm perfectly capable of walking at that point. This time I don't know that I could have made it the whole way out to the car by myself. DH has #3 in the car, and #3 is so cute and happy to see me. His first question is, "Mommy, you crying?" I wasn't but I felt like I could, I still was quite exhausted.
We get home, and I have some croissants from Costco for lunch and lots more water, trying to make my throat feel better. I watch my court shows but I can't focus on it, and by 1:45 I go upstairs for a nap.
I wake up at about 4 pm, and it looks like my face wound bled on my pillow case, so I think a new pillow is going to be in order when this whole ordeal is over. I go downstairs and sit in my recliner for a while and listen to my new book. #1 goes to cubs, #2 is playing with his friend, and #3 is taking a nap, so DH goes to take a nap also, he claims to be more tired than me because at least I slept in the hospital. I told him that kind of sleep doesn't count, but I know he's just joking anyhow. My head is killing me, so I take some more Tylenol - I've got a prescription for a painkiller, but nothing hurts other than my head, so I'll stick with the Tylenol.
At 5:30 my super-fantastic visiting teacher brings us dinner, which tasted great. I wake up DH and we sit and chat over dinner for a while. At 6 I start writing this blog, thinking that I'd just sum up my day with few details because I'm so tired, but as my English professor told me last year, I'm long-winded. DH and I discuss how best to go about building the swingset we bought, the original plan was to do it on Saturday, but it says depending on your experience it takes between 6-12 hours to build. You can imagine how long it's going to take us! So I say, let's lay the pieces out in the garage, keep the garage closed so the kids can't touch anything, and build it one piece at a time, instead of turning it into a marathon building project. Dh thinks this is genius, and as he gets ready to leave for YM, he tells me that despite my deformed, scarred face, my brain has been completely unharmed. I say, yeah, me and Stephen Hawking, that's us.
It's 7:30 now, and the boys are watching Mulan for the 800th time this week, but #3 still giggles during several parts so I like watching him watch it. #2 gave me his opinion on my surgery during dinner, he said "I don't like it because it's a stitch, and it goes like a worm." Meaning that the stitches curve around in kind of a weird shape on my face. When his friend was over earlier, I could see him looking at me curiously, but surprisingly showed some tact for a 5 year old and didn't say anything about it. I'm volunteering in #2's kindergarten class tomorrow, we'll see if the 6-year olds there can keep it together as well. My guess is I'll be the Show-and-Tell item of the day!
I'm wrapping this up now, I don't expect anything else to happen, other than watching the American Idol results show at 8 and going to bed early. I am surprised at how vulnerable and traumatized I feel - I expected localized pain in the surgery areas, instead I feel like my whole body has been through the wringer. I am so amazingly grateful for my general health overall, that I haven't had to do this with any frequency and hopefully will continue to avoid serious illness like this. Man, it is so much worse than I was expecting, not the pain, just the exhaustion I feel now. I'm particularly grateful that the baby seems fine, moving and kicking like normal, so for all of you who are praying for us, thank you.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Snapshot of Life - March 20, 2007
7:06 - The alarm clock hasn't gone off yet, but the phone rings and my first thought was, Who would call in the middle of the night? Then it was a realization that it was not, in fact, the middle of the night but actually morning, and my next thought was, whoever is calling this early has got to have bad news, like they won't be in church and need a substitute, which was immediately followed by a confusing series of thoughts about what day it actually is. It's tuesday, and by the middle of the 3rd ring, Boy #1 has answered the phone. Turns out it's his friend, telling him he'll bring the backpack that #1 left at his house yesterday to school for him. I can't fall back asleep for the next 20 minutes, but that doesn't stop me from hitting the snooze button. After all, I know for sure that #1 is awake, and I can hear him having breakfast in the kitchen.
7:38 - I get up and make sure #1 is indeed ready, and he is. #3 is downstairs also, watching Arthur on tv. #2 comes down at about 8:00 and immediately disappears into the craft room to watch Curious George, which is the same show that #3 is now watching on the big tv, but this way they don't have to be in the same room.
8:15 - DH goes down to watch the kids, and I go up and shower. I come down at 8:40 to find #2 throwing a fit about not wanting to go to school, but I'm fairly full of patience today and don't get mad at him or anything. He's throwing this fit from his bedroom, and he is already half-dressed, so I think this is more a way to get his complaints off his chest, rather than something he intends to really stick to.
I have to email the pictures for my photography class today and look for my camera so I can download the pictures I took yesterday. My stomach turns when I realize that I left it outside last night on the grass next to the swing, where I put it while checking #1's math homework. I think maybe this is the perfect time to get a new one, that can do all the cool things that I'm learning about, but I'm guessing that because I was an idiot and left it outside, there will be a penalty involved, it's not just free camera upgrade time. Fortunately, it works just fine and I'm relieved.
I finish getting #2 dressed and he comes downstairs and together we look at the pictures I took yesterday for today's photography class. Finally the subject matter is something I feel comfortable with, and I have a hard time picking which pictures to submit, since the topic was portraiture and I took pictures of my kids. This distracts #2 easily, and by 9:00 he is perfectly accepting of having to go to school.
9:00 - DH takes #2 to school while my visiting teachers come over. They are fun to talk to, although I get the topic of my surgery brought up and we discuss fear of needles and incompetent needle-inserters, which starts to make me queasy, and finally I have to ask them to change the subject. The surgery itself I'm not afraid of, because theoretically I won't feel it, and maybe won't be awake for it, but it's the IV's, the blood-drawing, and most painful, the band-aids they are going to put over the incisions that will catch all of my neck hairs and have to be yanked off. I actually almost started crying the first time I had the band-aid pulled off of my neck in December, because it hurt that bad. Keep in mind that I have never once cried during childbirth, even with #2 when I didn't get an epidural.
9:40 - #3 is so cute, outside playing in his sandbox. I glanced in there the other day, and didn't actually see any cat poop, which is good as the neighbor's cat spends a lot of time in our yard and I've removed plenty before. I still can't decide which pictures to submit for my class, so I call DH to get his opinion, which is not effective since he can't see the pictures, and doesn't really care one way or the other. I complain to him that either I have to avoid listening to my book on my ipod today or buy a new one. I only have about 2.5 hours left of the book I'm listening to (the sequel to Twilight) and it's a fairly good read, entertaining without having to think about it too much (we're not talking classic literature here) and it would be nice to have a good, reliable book if I have to wait at the hospital for any length of time tomorrow. But I don't have a new book to follow this one up, so I need to ration this one, or search for a new book. DH says that if this is the biggest problem in my life right now, then he doesn't have much sympathy for me. That's understandable, but seriously, who wants to be stuck in a waiting room for any length of time and find out that the new book you downloaded is no good? I picked a bunch of losers lately, or maybe it's just that my attention span is very limited currently and I'm not willing to put up with anything that doesn't absolutely captivate me. And doesn't require deep thoughts.
10:00 - I hop on Audible and start browsing. Maybe some of these vampire books my dad has mentioned? I find them in the bodice-ripper, harlequin romance type section, and they look so stupid I can't really take it seriously. Dad, going from 40-hour war marathons to a book touted as "Sex and the City meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer"? Hmmph. Maybe I'll have to give his suggestions a little less credence from now on. But I still decide to call him and check if Anne Rice vampire books are any good.
10:40 - I call and chat with my mom for about half an hour. Her current book does not meet my brainless requirement (I think she said Washington's Crossing?) so I leave a message for my dad to call me back. She gets to hear first hand the annoying "please" that #3 has been doing lately, this time over wanting some pancakes, which we don't have. I actually had to tell him yesterday to stop saying please, which I can honestly say in my 9 1/2 year stint as a mother I've never said!
11:20 - I sit back down at the computer and respond to some work emails. We finally put a big notice on our "contact us" page saying that we don't do custom animation/illustration projects anymore, so don't bug us about it! Well, it's nicer than that, but that's the sentiment behind it. Anyhow, we still get about one a week who ask for custom work, but they try to be crafty about how they propose it ("We've got this great project we want to collaborate with you on...") I've got a couple of those to reply to, which is not, shall we say, at the top of my priority list, since we did try to tell them once already that we don't do that. But as we have learned, it's always better to be nicer than you have to.
11:50 - Read some google news, consumerist. at 12:00 I make the mistake of telling #3 that we're going to Costco, and he spends the next 17 minutes standing at the door to the garage, saying "I want to go to Costco!" and "Come here, mom, come here!" while I tell him that we need to wait for #2 to get home. Sheesh.
12:20 - #2 comes home while I'm in the bathroom. I come down to find him hiding on the basement stairs and the first words out of his mouth are "I don't want to eat!" I say, "You don't want to eat when we go to Costco? Are you sure?" He's thrown by this development, because clearly he was expecting a fight, so he says, "Okay, but I get to pick the table!" I say that's fine, but he hasn't gotten his aggression out yet, so he says "And I'm bringing this toy!" It's a 4-inch long Lego Bionicle, so again I agree. He apparently can't find anything else to argue about so he happily gets his shoes on and gets in the car.
1:15 - We've finished our Costco shopping and order our food - I've been ordering a whole pizza lately so that I can bring some home for #1 who gets very disgruntled when we have fun while he's at school. I've tried to tell him that when he was #2's age he got to do all of these during-the-day things, and when #2 is 9 he'll be missing it too, but none of that matters. Which makes sense, but still it's frustrating all the way around. The kids do really well sitting and eating, there are no giant smoothie spills this time, and my white shirt manages to stay white. At 2:00 we are on our way out the door, when the pointless door-check lady stops us to check my receipt, and then in one swift movement erodes my authority as a parent - she takes the kids' hands and draws a smiley face on them, with a sharpie no less. There goes every single lecture about NOT drawing on your body (which I have had to give many times) and I wonder if there is a policy in Costco's corporate manual regarding child-defacement. The only redeeming thing is that #3 loves his "happy" and spends the majority of the car ride home kissing his own hand where the graffiti is. That's fine, I guess, but the next time my kid gets the bright idea to color all over himself with magic marker right before, say, church, or a doctor's appointment, or whatever, I'm dropping him off with the door-check lady at Costco.
2:15 - I can't help myself, I plug in my ipod and listen to my book while I'm unloading the groceries from the car. Honestly, what else am I expected to do at a time like that? Not listen to anything? I've thought about resurrecting a discarded book and trying to listen to that instead, and save the good one for tomorrow but that seems like a double punishment. When I finish with the groceries, I sit on the front porch and watch #3 play in the front (where he obstinately plays chicken with my neighbors car until one of the twins from next door finally gets him to move, as I'm yelling at the top of my lungs to try to get him to move. Fortunately the neighbor was yelling at him to move also, so there was no danger ... this time). I finally decide on a new book, which comes highly reviewed, called Water for Elephants. I almost got The Memory Keeper's Daughter, which also comes highly reviewed but was about a woman who gives birth to twins, but one has Down's so without her knowing the doctor gives the baby away and tells her it's stillborn. Maybe a little too depressing subject matter for a woman 2.5 months away from having a baby herself.
2:55 - I'm still sitting on the front porch when DH calls on the ichat to tell me that he's decided what we are doing for our anniversary in 2009. I think this is slightly premature planning, since we don't have plans for Anniversary 2007 yet, which is in 2 weeks, but I humor him. Apparently in 2 years we are going to Dodger's Spring Training, which was my original idea, but in 2009 they are moving to Arizona, which is a substantially more convenient location. I tell him that we can go ahead and pencil it in, and then I tell him about a climbing dome thing I saw at Costco that the kids would love for our backyard. He says, we just spent an arm and a leg on a new swingset, and I say, well this just costs a foot, and it's just something to think about for next year. He concedes that if he is able to plan for Anniversary 2009 I can plan for Backyard Purchase 2008, and we are agreed. My other neighbor comes outside, says hi, and gets in her car before I can explain that I am talking to DH through the computer, I'm not just sitting and talking to myself out loud on the front porch.
3:15 - #3 is going in and out of neighbor's houses so I need to stay outside to supervise, otherwise I won't be able to find him (I can't guarantee he will come home and I don't want to have to call everyone to try to find my 2 year old. Again, the tv announcers voice in my head tells me it's a bad idea.). Lo and behold, one of the tree-trimming companies I called yesterday shows up to give me an estimate! We have fairly bad luck in getting people to show up, mostly because our address is hard to find (every house in, well, Utah has an address that is a directional coordinate: something East and something South - we have a street name, and it stinks.) I've learned to warn people over the phone to either get directions from me or to look it up, because people assume they can just find anything, which is usually true in Utah, but is a misleading notion in our case. The tree-trimmer gives me some great information about the tree in our front yard, a catalpa, and an estimate about the rest of the trees. I like him, he's the guy who does the trees on the BYU campus so you know he's got some experience, but his price was more than 3 times the guy who came yesterday. I think we are going to go with the cheaper guy and possibly just get the expensive guy to do the one in the front yard.
4:00 - I get online and learn even more about Our Fascinating Tree, The Catalpa. I think it's not doing very well, because the internet says (which is the beginning of a very trust-worthy sentence) that these trees have beautiful flowers in the spring and annoying bean pods it drops in the fall. We've seen neither. it also attracts a particular brand of caterpillar which we haven't seen. All of those things are why this tree is considered something of a nuisance, although I've really liked it. Mostly because it's different, no one else around really has one. Lo and behold again, the third guy I called about getting an estimate actually calls me back, so I tell him I think we've made a decision already, I don't want to waste the guys time.
4:30 - It's time to start thinking about dinner, which is, as always, a frustrating time of day, made worse by the fact that I will be at my photography class tonight and therefore cannot bring all of my maternal guilt to bear on my children in an effort to convince them to try the food I've cooked. So I'm trying to come up with an alternative. I think the perfect thing would be pigs in a blanket, but while I have plenty of pigs, I am fresh out of blankets. And unless I can pawn my kids off on a neighbor, I don't think I'm up to going to the grocery store. I bought another new cookbook at Costco today - this one had lots of pictures, which is always nice, and is called "Great Food Fast" which generally means few ingredients and simpler meals that my kids might actually eat, with the bonus that it is by Everyday Food (a part of Martha Stewart Living, back when she was a felon and the company didn't want her name on stuff).
I'm saved by my dad calling and we talk for about an hour. I've said this before, but it's cool when I can talk to my parents like they are my friends. I mean, they are my friends, but with a 25 year age difference or so, it's not like we are exactly peers. But I think as I've gotten older the age difference, and the authority difference between parent and child, aren't really an issue. I feel a little selfish, because I enjoy talking to them so much, and I've got all sorts of time on my hands, but they normally call when it's late on their end, so I know I'm keeping them up. But hey it's not my fault that they are so darn interesting! Anyhow, I have now run my running-out-of-book dilemma that I mentioned earlier to both of my parents and before I could even get past "So, I've got 2.5 hours left but I need something to listen to tomorrow..." they both completely understood the situation! Of course I have to choose between finishing this book today or saving it for tomorrow! Of course I run the risk of picking a boring book and then what would I do in the hospital with -horror- NOTHING TO LISTEN TO!! My dad tells me he's got a book to recommend to me, The Class of 9/11 - which I realize that he not only recommended it to me before, but actually mailed to me on a cd. So I've got an audiobook ready to go.
Maybe it is a selfish thing, to like my parents so much, but not selfish for time's sake, but for the ease with which I can talk to someone who has such a basic, fundamental understanding of me. My family has this communal reservoir of experiences, and memories, and likes/dislikes that I think makes it so that anyone in our family just understands each other better than someone else. I have known my husband for almost 12 years now, and we understand each other pretty well, but I've known my parents for 30 years - maybe it's more just the fact that they created me in their image, in their quirks, in their preferences and pet peeves. I love my husband's family, but there is no way that I'll ever know them the way I know my parents, and I have a feeling that there has been many an occasion when my in-laws probably don't understand me the way my own parents would. Being barefoot, for example, is a non-issue in my family. Or needing an emergency back-up audiobook, in case the first one is too boring. Or thinking a great way to spend a trip to Paris is to sit in a park and read books. Man, I wish they lived closer. Although maybe my family-related quirks would be exacerbated if I saw them more than once a year. I'd take that chance.
5:30 - I missed the call from the hospital telling me when to come tomorrow, so I call back. Turns out my appointment is, hang on to your hats here, at 6:00. Yes, that is A.M. When I told DH, he said, "In the morning??!?" And now we are presented with an instant dilemma - wake up three children, load them in the car at 5:40 a.m., drive to the hospital in Provo, drop me off, turn around, and get home by 6:15. Or do we leave them home, asleep, for 35 minutes or so, and be home about an hour before most of them even wake up. Some of my neighbors are outside, so I run out to ask if any of them happen to be awake at 5:40 a.m. so I could bring over the baby monitor at least for someone to listen to. No dice, but they were all happy to weigh in on the subject, and it was unanimous in the affirmative, we should leave the kids. In fact, I heard all sorts of things that they've done, in order to justify how not a big deal leaving the sleeping kids is. I told them my tv announcer theory, and they laughed, so I made them promise that if the house burns down between 5:40 and 6:15 tomorrow, that they tell Child Protective Services that I thought long and hard about this decision, I didn't risk my children's lives lightly.
6:00 - DH came home when I was calling the hospital, and now I leave him to watch the kids while I go to my photography class. The class starts at 6:30, and 30 minutes is about 15 minutes longer than it should take to get there, but of course I spend many minutes searching for my ipod, and then remember that I have to take the long way because of all the construction between my house and civilization, plus my slow, labored walk from the car to the UVSC building takes a while, so I end up getting there just in time. I'm thinking I've got a pretty good chance at winning this week, but when we watch the slide show of everyone's pictures, one of mine, the cuter one of #2, isn't in there. By the time I realize I ought to speak up, he's already about to take votes, and I don't want to sound like a jerk. Of course the same people won who always win, but you can't win if you've won before, so now he has to go through the pictures and tell us which ones not to vote for. I say, Why don't you just pull out the pictures from the 6 of us who haven't won yet? Everybody laughs, so I feel slightly better. But I don't win, I don't get a single vote, and this bothers me way, way, way more than it should. Especially since I happen to love many of the pictures I took yesterday, and the people that are really ever going to see them will feel the same way. Stinkin' artsy professional photographers slumming in an intermediate class! Seriously, several of them were done with studio backdrops and lighting. I really need to somehow figure out a way not to feel so bad about losing at something that matters so little, but I'm competitive by nature and just can't do it.
8:15 - I head home from class with an assignment to take a panoramic picture, which the teacher will professionally print for us for free. No pressure there, this is something that theoretically I will actually hang on the wall. I have no idea what to take the picture of, so hopefully inspiration will strike at some point. Soon. I have to stop at 7-11 and pick up treats for the kids for FHE (which I was supposed to do yesterday, which was actually Monday, but I blew it). I get home at 8:30 and watch the last little bit of American Idol and start catching up my blog while I drink my slurpee.
9:00 - DH's dad calls and talks to him about his dad's website, so we pause the tape of American Idol which he rewound so I could watch. I put #1 to bed at 9:15 and when DH gets off the phone he convinces me to come downstairs and watch a Weird Al music video on myspace that's an 11-minute song about going to the drive-thru. It is funny just because it is so mundane, and thinking that someone could make a song so long about something so boring. I excuse myself after about 4 minutes to go upstairs and write a mundane, and incredibly long, story of my day, which my guess is won't be as funny as if Weird Al was writing it.
10:00 - Well, I think I'm done here. I'm going to post this, with pictures to prove that despite what the artsy photography class thinks, I take good pictures (at least, I've got an eye for cute subject matter) and then I'm going to bed. Oh, and I'm going to try to download Sunday's Amazing Race overnight and put it on my ipod for tomorrow, so I should have plenty to do to keep myself busy at the hospital. Which means, I'll be seen first and have no time at all to do anything and they'll get me in and out in no time, right? Murphy's Law? If I feel well enough, I'd like to document tomorrow also, just because it is a different kind of day, but we'll have to see how I feel. I was told not to eat anything after 11pm, which incidentally is not the same as being told to continue eating right up until 11pm, which looks kind of like what I'm doing, but I've got 49 minutes left and a brand new box of strawberries, which #1 would devour entirely without sharing if I don't claim some portion now.
7:38 - I get up and make sure #1 is indeed ready, and he is. #3 is downstairs also, watching Arthur on tv. #2 comes down at about 8:00 and immediately disappears into the craft room to watch Curious George, which is the same show that #3 is now watching on the big tv, but this way they don't have to be in the same room.
8:15 - DH goes down to watch the kids, and I go up and shower. I come down at 8:40 to find #2 throwing a fit about not wanting to go to school, but I'm fairly full of patience today and don't get mad at him or anything. He's throwing this fit from his bedroom, and he is already half-dressed, so I think this is more a way to get his complaints off his chest, rather than something he intends to really stick to.
I have to email the pictures for my photography class today and look for my camera so I can download the pictures I took yesterday. My stomach turns when I realize that I left it outside last night on the grass next to the swing, where I put it while checking #1's math homework. I think maybe this is the perfect time to get a new one, that can do all the cool things that I'm learning about, but I'm guessing that because I was an idiot and left it outside, there will be a penalty involved, it's not just free camera upgrade time. Fortunately, it works just fine and I'm relieved.
I finish getting #2 dressed and he comes downstairs and together we look at the pictures I took yesterday for today's photography class. Finally the subject matter is something I feel comfortable with, and I have a hard time picking which pictures to submit, since the topic was portraiture and I took pictures of my kids. This distracts #2 easily, and by 9:00 he is perfectly accepting of having to go to school.
9:00 - DH takes #2 to school while my visiting teachers come over. They are fun to talk to, although I get the topic of my surgery brought up and we discuss fear of needles and incompetent needle-inserters, which starts to make me queasy, and finally I have to ask them to change the subject. The surgery itself I'm not afraid of, because theoretically I won't feel it, and maybe won't be awake for it, but it's the IV's, the blood-drawing, and most painful, the band-aids they are going to put over the incisions that will catch all of my neck hairs and have to be yanked off. I actually almost started crying the first time I had the band-aid pulled off of my neck in December, because it hurt that bad. Keep in mind that I have never once cried during childbirth, even with #2 when I didn't get an epidural.
9:40 - #3 is so cute, outside playing in his sandbox. I glanced in there the other day, and didn't actually see any cat poop, which is good as the neighbor's cat spends a lot of time in our yard and I've removed plenty before. I still can't decide which pictures to submit for my class, so I call DH to get his opinion, which is not effective since he can't see the pictures, and doesn't really care one way or the other. I complain to him that either I have to avoid listening to my book on my ipod today or buy a new one. I only have about 2.5 hours left of the book I'm listening to (the sequel to Twilight) and it's a fairly good read, entertaining without having to think about it too much (we're not talking classic literature here) and it would be nice to have a good, reliable book if I have to wait at the hospital for any length of time tomorrow. But I don't have a new book to follow this one up, so I need to ration this one, or search for a new book. DH says that if this is the biggest problem in my life right now, then he doesn't have much sympathy for me. That's understandable, but seriously, who wants to be stuck in a waiting room for any length of time and find out that the new book you downloaded is no good? I picked a bunch of losers lately, or maybe it's just that my attention span is very limited currently and I'm not willing to put up with anything that doesn't absolutely captivate me. And doesn't require deep thoughts.
10:00 - I hop on Audible and start browsing. Maybe some of these vampire books my dad has mentioned? I find them in the bodice-ripper, harlequin romance type section, and they look so stupid I can't really take it seriously. Dad, going from 40-hour war marathons to a book touted as "Sex and the City meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer"? Hmmph. Maybe I'll have to give his suggestions a little less credence from now on. But I still decide to call him and check if Anne Rice vampire books are any good.
10:40 - I call and chat with my mom for about half an hour. Her current book does not meet my brainless requirement (I think she said Washington's Crossing?) so I leave a message for my dad to call me back. She gets to hear first hand the annoying "please" that #3 has been doing lately, this time over wanting some pancakes, which we don't have. I actually had to tell him yesterday to stop saying please, which I can honestly say in my 9 1/2 year stint as a mother I've never said!
11:20 - I sit back down at the computer and respond to some work emails. We finally put a big notice on our "contact us" page saying that we don't do custom animation/illustration projects anymore, so don't bug us about it! Well, it's nicer than that, but that's the sentiment behind it. Anyhow, we still get about one a week who ask for custom work, but they try to be crafty about how they propose it ("We've got this great project we want to collaborate with you on...") I've got a couple of those to reply to, which is not, shall we say, at the top of my priority list, since we did try to tell them once already that we don't do that. But as we have learned, it's always better to be nicer than you have to.
11:50 - Read some google news, consumerist. at 12:00 I make the mistake of telling #3 that we're going to Costco, and he spends the next 17 minutes standing at the door to the garage, saying "I want to go to Costco!" and "Come here, mom, come here!" while I tell him that we need to wait for #2 to get home. Sheesh.
12:20 - #2 comes home while I'm in the bathroom. I come down to find him hiding on the basement stairs and the first words out of his mouth are "I don't want to eat!" I say, "You don't want to eat when we go to Costco? Are you sure?" He's thrown by this development, because clearly he was expecting a fight, so he says, "Okay, but I get to pick the table!" I say that's fine, but he hasn't gotten his aggression out yet, so he says "And I'm bringing this toy!" It's a 4-inch long Lego Bionicle, so again I agree. He apparently can't find anything else to argue about so he happily gets his shoes on and gets in the car.
1:15 - We've finished our Costco shopping and order our food - I've been ordering a whole pizza lately so that I can bring some home for #1 who gets very disgruntled when we have fun while he's at school. I've tried to tell him that when he was #2's age he got to do all of these during-the-day things, and when #2 is 9 he'll be missing it too, but none of that matters. Which makes sense, but still it's frustrating all the way around. The kids do really well sitting and eating, there are no giant smoothie spills this time, and my white shirt manages to stay white. At 2:00 we are on our way out the door, when the pointless door-check lady stops us to check my receipt, and then in one swift movement erodes my authority as a parent - she takes the kids' hands and draws a smiley face on them, with a sharpie no less. There goes every single lecture about NOT drawing on your body (which I have had to give many times) and I wonder if there is a policy in Costco's corporate manual regarding child-defacement. The only redeeming thing is that #3 loves his "happy" and spends the majority of the car ride home kissing his own hand where the graffiti is. That's fine, I guess, but the next time my kid gets the bright idea to color all over himself with magic marker right before, say, church, or a doctor's appointment, or whatever, I'm dropping him off with the door-check lady at Costco.
2:15 - I can't help myself, I plug in my ipod and listen to my book while I'm unloading the groceries from the car. Honestly, what else am I expected to do at a time like that? Not listen to anything? I've thought about resurrecting a discarded book and trying to listen to that instead, and save the good one for tomorrow but that seems like a double punishment. When I finish with the groceries, I sit on the front porch and watch #3 play in the front (where he obstinately plays chicken with my neighbors car until one of the twins from next door finally gets him to move, as I'm yelling at the top of my lungs to try to get him to move. Fortunately the neighbor was yelling at him to move also, so there was no danger ... this time). I finally decide on a new book, which comes highly reviewed, called Water for Elephants. I almost got The Memory Keeper's Daughter, which also comes highly reviewed but was about a woman who gives birth to twins, but one has Down's so without her knowing the doctor gives the baby away and tells her it's stillborn. Maybe a little too depressing subject matter for a woman 2.5 months away from having a baby herself.
2:55 - I'm still sitting on the front porch when DH calls on the ichat to tell me that he's decided what we are doing for our anniversary in 2009. I think this is slightly premature planning, since we don't have plans for Anniversary 2007 yet, which is in 2 weeks, but I humor him. Apparently in 2 years we are going to Dodger's Spring Training, which was my original idea, but in 2009 they are moving to Arizona, which is a substantially more convenient location. I tell him that we can go ahead and pencil it in, and then I tell him about a climbing dome thing I saw at Costco that the kids would love for our backyard. He says, we just spent an arm and a leg on a new swingset, and I say, well this just costs a foot, and it's just something to think about for next year. He concedes that if he is able to plan for Anniversary 2009 I can plan for Backyard Purchase 2008, and we are agreed. My other neighbor comes outside, says hi, and gets in her car before I can explain that I am talking to DH through the computer, I'm not just sitting and talking to myself out loud on the front porch.
3:15 - #3 is going in and out of neighbor's houses so I need to stay outside to supervise, otherwise I won't be able to find him (I can't guarantee he will come home and I don't want to have to call everyone to try to find my 2 year old. Again, the tv announcers voice in my head tells me it's a bad idea.). Lo and behold, one of the tree-trimming companies I called yesterday shows up to give me an estimate! We have fairly bad luck in getting people to show up, mostly because our address is hard to find (every house in, well, Utah has an address that is a directional coordinate: something East and something South - we have a street name, and it stinks.) I've learned to warn people over the phone to either get directions from me or to look it up, because people assume they can just find anything, which is usually true in Utah, but is a misleading notion in our case. The tree-trimmer gives me some great information about the tree in our front yard, a catalpa, and an estimate about the rest of the trees. I like him, he's the guy who does the trees on the BYU campus so you know he's got some experience, but his price was more than 3 times the guy who came yesterday. I think we are going to go with the cheaper guy and possibly just get the expensive guy to do the one in the front yard.
4:00 - I get online and learn even more about Our Fascinating Tree, The Catalpa. I think it's not doing very well, because the internet says (which is the beginning of a very trust-worthy sentence) that these trees have beautiful flowers in the spring and annoying bean pods it drops in the fall. We've seen neither. it also attracts a particular brand of caterpillar which we haven't seen. All of those things are why this tree is considered something of a nuisance, although I've really liked it. Mostly because it's different, no one else around really has one. Lo and behold again, the third guy I called about getting an estimate actually calls me back, so I tell him I think we've made a decision already, I don't want to waste the guys time.
4:30 - It's time to start thinking about dinner, which is, as always, a frustrating time of day, made worse by the fact that I will be at my photography class tonight and therefore cannot bring all of my maternal guilt to bear on my children in an effort to convince them to try the food I've cooked. So I'm trying to come up with an alternative. I think the perfect thing would be pigs in a blanket, but while I have plenty of pigs, I am fresh out of blankets. And unless I can pawn my kids off on a neighbor, I don't think I'm up to going to the grocery store. I bought another new cookbook at Costco today - this one had lots of pictures, which is always nice, and is called "Great Food Fast" which generally means few ingredients and simpler meals that my kids might actually eat, with the bonus that it is by Everyday Food (a part of Martha Stewart Living, back when she was a felon and the company didn't want her name on stuff).
I'm saved by my dad calling and we talk for about an hour. I've said this before, but it's cool when I can talk to my parents like they are my friends. I mean, they are my friends, but with a 25 year age difference or so, it's not like we are exactly peers. But I think as I've gotten older the age difference, and the authority difference between parent and child, aren't really an issue. I feel a little selfish, because I enjoy talking to them so much, and I've got all sorts of time on my hands, but they normally call when it's late on their end, so I know I'm keeping them up. But hey it's not my fault that they are so darn interesting! Anyhow, I have now run my running-out-of-book dilemma that I mentioned earlier to both of my parents and before I could even get past "So, I've got 2.5 hours left but I need something to listen to tomorrow..." they both completely understood the situation! Of course I have to choose between finishing this book today or saving it for tomorrow! Of course I run the risk of picking a boring book and then what would I do in the hospital with -horror- NOTHING TO LISTEN TO!! My dad tells me he's got a book to recommend to me, The Class of 9/11 - which I realize that he not only recommended it to me before, but actually mailed to me on a cd. So I've got an audiobook ready to go.
Maybe it is a selfish thing, to like my parents so much, but not selfish for time's sake, but for the ease with which I can talk to someone who has such a basic, fundamental understanding of me. My family has this communal reservoir of experiences, and memories, and likes/dislikes that I think makes it so that anyone in our family just understands each other better than someone else. I have known my husband for almost 12 years now, and we understand each other pretty well, but I've known my parents for 30 years - maybe it's more just the fact that they created me in their image, in their quirks, in their preferences and pet peeves. I love my husband's family, but there is no way that I'll ever know them the way I know my parents, and I have a feeling that there has been many an occasion when my in-laws probably don't understand me the way my own parents would. Being barefoot, for example, is a non-issue in my family. Or needing an emergency back-up audiobook, in case the first one is too boring. Or thinking a great way to spend a trip to Paris is to sit in a park and read books. Man, I wish they lived closer. Although maybe my family-related quirks would be exacerbated if I saw them more than once a year. I'd take that chance.
5:30 - I missed the call from the hospital telling me when to come tomorrow, so I call back. Turns out my appointment is, hang on to your hats here, at 6:00. Yes, that is A.M. When I told DH, he said, "In the morning??!?" And now we are presented with an instant dilemma - wake up three children, load them in the car at 5:40 a.m., drive to the hospital in Provo, drop me off, turn around, and get home by 6:15. Or do we leave them home, asleep, for 35 minutes or so, and be home about an hour before most of them even wake up. Some of my neighbors are outside, so I run out to ask if any of them happen to be awake at 5:40 a.m. so I could bring over the baby monitor at least for someone to listen to. No dice, but they were all happy to weigh in on the subject, and it was unanimous in the affirmative, we should leave the kids. In fact, I heard all sorts of things that they've done, in order to justify how not a big deal leaving the sleeping kids is. I told them my tv announcer theory, and they laughed, so I made them promise that if the house burns down between 5:40 and 6:15 tomorrow, that they tell Child Protective Services that I thought long and hard about this decision, I didn't risk my children's lives lightly.
6:00 - DH came home when I was calling the hospital, and now I leave him to watch the kids while I go to my photography class. The class starts at 6:30, and 30 minutes is about 15 minutes longer than it should take to get there, but of course I spend many minutes searching for my ipod, and then remember that I have to take the long way because of all the construction between my house and civilization, plus my slow, labored walk from the car to the UVSC building takes a while, so I end up getting there just in time. I'm thinking I've got a pretty good chance at winning this week, but when we watch the slide show of everyone's pictures, one of mine, the cuter one of #2, isn't in there. By the time I realize I ought to speak up, he's already about to take votes, and I don't want to sound like a jerk. Of course the same people won who always win, but you can't win if you've won before, so now he has to go through the pictures and tell us which ones not to vote for. I say, Why don't you just pull out the pictures from the 6 of us who haven't won yet? Everybody laughs, so I feel slightly better. But I don't win, I don't get a single vote, and this bothers me way, way, way more than it should. Especially since I happen to love many of the pictures I took yesterday, and the people that are really ever going to see them will feel the same way. Stinkin' artsy professional photographers slumming in an intermediate class! Seriously, several of them were done with studio backdrops and lighting. I really need to somehow figure out a way not to feel so bad about losing at something that matters so little, but I'm competitive by nature and just can't do it.
8:15 - I head home from class with an assignment to take a panoramic picture, which the teacher will professionally print for us for free. No pressure there, this is something that theoretically I will actually hang on the wall. I have no idea what to take the picture of, so hopefully inspiration will strike at some point. Soon. I have to stop at 7-11 and pick up treats for the kids for FHE (which I was supposed to do yesterday, which was actually Monday, but I blew it). I get home at 8:30 and watch the last little bit of American Idol and start catching up my blog while I drink my slurpee.
9:00 - DH's dad calls and talks to him about his dad's website, so we pause the tape of American Idol which he rewound so I could watch. I put #1 to bed at 9:15 and when DH gets off the phone he convinces me to come downstairs and watch a Weird Al music video on myspace that's an 11-minute song about going to the drive-thru. It is funny just because it is so mundane, and thinking that someone could make a song so long about something so boring. I excuse myself after about 4 minutes to go upstairs and write a mundane, and incredibly long, story of my day, which my guess is won't be as funny as if Weird Al was writing it.
10:00 - Well, I think I'm done here. I'm going to post this, with pictures to prove that despite what the artsy photography class thinks, I take good pictures (at least, I've got an eye for cute subject matter) and then I'm going to bed. Oh, and I'm going to try to download Sunday's Amazing Race overnight and put it on my ipod for tomorrow, so I should have plenty to do to keep myself busy at the hospital. Which means, I'll be seen first and have no time at all to do anything and they'll get me in and out in no time, right? Murphy's Law? If I feel well enough, I'd like to document tomorrow also, just because it is a different kind of day, but we'll have to see how I feel. I was told not to eat anything after 11pm, which incidentally is not the same as being told to continue eating right up until 11pm, which looks kind of like what I'm doing, but I've got 49 minutes left and a brand new box of strawberries, which #1 would devour entirely without sharing if I don't claim some portion now.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Snapshot of Life - March 18, 2007
7-9:30 - Fill in the typical morning routine here, including, but not limited to - getting up to turn on a video for #3, going back to bed, refereeing a fight between children, coercing #2 to have breakfast (I withheld token-using privileges until he ate), laying in bed listening to my book while #3 jumped in and out of bed with me, etc.
9:30 - DH is in the shower so I start the get-ready-for-church routine. #1 gets dressed without a comment, #2 throws a fit and takes 10 minutes to whine his way upstairs where I help him get dressed, and I pick out clothes for #3. I think #2 must have been hypnotized once while I was not paying attention, because he has an automatic response to the word "church," which is to scream "I don't want to go to church!" and various forms of that statement. He has a similar hypnotic reaction to any insistence that he eat something.
9:45 - My turn to get ready for church. While getting ready once this week I noticed a new thing growing on my shoulder. What the heck kind of freak am I??? Seriously, it's like I'm some kind of mutant! And not the cool, teenage ninja type of mutant, or a crime fighting x-men type either, the creepy kind of mutant that you feel sorry for if you see them on the street. Yikes. My doctor said that things grow faster while you're pregnant, but this is starting to be ridiculous. The only upshot (if there is one) is that this is on my shoulder, so I can have it removed by my regular doctor and not the plastic surgeon I'm seeing.
Speaking of my plastic surgeon, he is way too comfortable with other people's bodies. The first time I saw him to do a biopsy on a lesion on my face, I was laying on the exam table listening to my ipod, which was laying on my stomach. He sits in his chair, wheels it over, and with his elbows on the table, leans his arms on my stomach to reach my ipod and see what I was listening to. I'm a big fan of personal space - crowded places like Disneyland or Costco on a Saturday when all the sample ladies are out make me nuts. I just don't like people touching me generally. So I thought that was weird that he did that. Then this week when I went in again to have him look at the thing on my neck that is re-growing (have we had the mutant discussion already?) I was sitting in a chair, and he wheeled himself over to me and got right up in front of me, to the point where our knees are touching. Not just slightly bumping if we aren't careful, but like 3 or 4 inches of overlap. I turn my head around to show him the thing on my neck and he examines it for a minute. And then he's looking at my face, reaches over and grabs the skin around the lesion on my check and squeezing to check out wrinkle lines around it, that's all fine and expected. So he's talking to me, and decides to check out the neck thing again, but instead of asking me to turn around, he just reaches his hand around behind my head and starts rubbing the thing on my neck.
Now, this is all simply odd behavior to me - I don't feel truly uncomfortable, just that he clearly is different about personal space than I am. Here are my reasons for not feeling uncomfortable:
1. I'm 6 months pregnant, and weigh 200 pounds. I'm clearly not in the most attractive, cheat on my husband with the hot doctor, mode of my life.
2. There's a nurse in the room at all times.
3. All the nurses that work there are well dressed, not your typical chubby women in scrubs that look like pajamas, but more sophisticated scrubs. If there is such a thing.
4. I get the feeling that he is just a friendly, comfortable guy, who wants to make his patients feel comfortable with him, since he is the one going to be chopping me into little pieces on Wednesday. (Can you tell I'm not really looking forward to this on Wednesday?)
But just to recap, here's the things that do make me feel a little uncomfortable:
1. He's good looking. He wears jeans and like a long sleeve t-shirt type of thing, and his hair is done in kind of a Ryan Seacrest kind of messy, spiky, gelled thing. If we were in California still, I'd be sure he's a surfer. Maybe here he's a snowboarder, I don't know if that translates.
2. What if I was going to him to, say, have a breast augmentation done? Would he reach over and grab them to check out how big he thinks they ought to be? Thank goodness I've never needed to be undressed around him before. That would be awkward. Maybe as awkward as realizing I'm writing about breast augmentation on a blog that my parents and grandparents are going to read. Yikes.
3. My real doctor recommended this guy to me by saying that this is who he'd send his wife to. My thought now is, if he knew how comfortable this guy is with peoples' bodies, would he still feel this way? My husband has already said that after this surgery, if I ever need a plastic surgeon again that I have to find someone else. He said this after I mentioned that the guy was good-looking and that I didn't feel uncomfortable, I think he would prefer that I do feel uncomfortable. But in fact, I just think it's weird.
Oh, incidentally, this plastic surgeon was honored with some kind of humanitarian award last year for his service doing surgery in Ghana. I don't know if that is relevant or not, just thought I'd throw it in there.
10:35 - We are all ready to go, the boys were asked to be reverence children in Sacrament Meeting today, which means that they stand up at the pulpit and be an example of reverence for all the grown-ups that come in, talking and being rowdy before the meeting starts. Last time we had this assignment (which is made by the primary secretary), we had a flat tire and got to church totally late. So we made up for it this week by being there about 20 minutes early.
11:00-2:00 - Church. The first words out of #2's mouth when he sat down in our pew after his stint as reverence child was over was "I'm hungry." Maybe I could suggest a reverence child for the entire hour of Sacrament meeting, instead of just the 10 minutes before the meeting starts. Junior primary was as loud and irreverent as usual, I can tell it's wearing on everyone, not just me - our most capable teacher did sharing time today (class presentation) and came home thinking he had done a terrible job because he just could not hold the kids' attention. I was thrilled, actually, that it went as badly for him as it does for me, because that means it's the kids and not me doing something wrong!
2:30 - DH keeps the kids outside while we have a primary presidency meeting with our member of the bishopric at my house. We haven't met for a while and have several things to cover, but it goes well and we get a lot accomplished in an hour, with only a little off-topic conversations. The activities committee talked to my counselor about having the primary organize a children's activity during their upcoming family activity in June. The spin she put on it is, we get to count it as one of our quarterly activities that we are supposed to organize, and everyone will already be planning on going to this, so wouldn't that be great for us? Well, reading between the lines, what she gets is free baby-sitting during a ward activity, and what we get is the primary leaders missing a ward activity so that we can supervise all of the kids. I'm not opposed to this set up across the board - we did it once last year and it worked out well, mostly because we made sure the primary teachers weren't impacted at all, just us as a presidency (and it was and activity that I didn't care about missing). Well, before we could even give an opinion on this particular proposal, the bishopric member pretty much torpedoed the entire idea and was quite vehement about us not being the de facto babysitters at a ward function. He obviously was really passionate about this opinion, and I thought that was fantastic - I love that he really supports the primary and looks like he's willing to fight for us in a case like this.
3:30 - Meeting is over and the family comes back inside. We've been invited over to have dinner with another family at 5:30 and I'm bringing dessert, so I grab some cookbooks to try to find something to make, with the limitation that I only have so much butter on hand. I decide on a new recipe which looks like it's going to be brownies with marshmallows on top. I hear noises from downstairs which indicate an argument over the pod-race game, so I go down and ask if anyone would like to help me make dessert. #2 immediately volunteers and runs upstairs to help - he loves, loves, loves to help in the kitchen. Most of the time. Especially when it's dessert and not dinner we're making. And if there's nothing fun to do instead. But most Sundays it's him who helps me make dessert. #3 comes with him and both of them pull chairs over to the counter, one on either side of me and my KitchenAid mixer. It's quite crowded in there, but I don't complain because this is what being a good mother looks like, and I've got to give this a shot. They both help, to a certain extent, and are happy, #2 especially likes cracking eggs, and he's getting a lot better at it. It's times like this when I can glimpse the future, and it looks good.
4:15 - Our home teachers come over, one is our next door neighbor who is also the teacher I mentioned earlier. We think he and his family are just terrific, and he's so great with the kids. Plus they always bring candy to reward correct answers when they teach the lesson, so #2 usually asks if it's time for the lesson yet, interrupting us as we sit and gab.
5:00 - HT's are gone, and I get the brownies out of the oven and taste one. It's not so good, which is disappointing, and I have to decide whether to use my final stick of butter on the frosting that the brownie recipe calls for, or if I should make an emergency backup dessert of no-bake cookies instead. I'm in the mood for the cookies, and don't want to throw good butter after bad, so I go to make the cookies. At the same time that I'm having my dessert dilemma, DH realizes it's bath night and if we don't get a bath in before we leave, it won't get done. He bribes the older boys with a token each if they take a 5 minute shower, and they both go for it. #2 is in a particularly good mood and doesn't fight over this one. #3, however, is going through a stage where he absolutely hates taking a bath, and will just stand in the water and scream. Friday's bath, which I handled while DH was at Toys R Us buying a new swingset, consisted of him screaming from the minute I told him to come inside for his bath, all through taking him upstairs, running the water, and me depositing him in the tub. He stood there screaming and I went into our adjoining bedroom, because it's so loud and echo-y in the bathroom I just couldn't stand it anymore, and I knew he wasn't drowning as long as I could still hear him screaming. I was hoping he'd calm down and enjoy the bath, but when it was apparent that wasn't happening, I decided to get it over with and just washed him as quickly as I could and got him out. He finally stopped screaming sometime after he was completely dressed. My ears didn't stop ringing for a long time. Anyhow, today's bath sounded about as bad, but quicker, because DH didn't waste time hoping he'd enjoy himself. Once he was out, though, DH called me over to get #3 dressed. When that was done I made a batch of no-bake cookies, which take about 5 minutes with no kids helping (10 with).
5:40 - We leave 10 minutes late for our friends' house, but that's not a big deal. We are having lasagna, salad, rolls, fruit salad, and corn for dinner, lots of different foods that my kids like, which means that they both (Boys #1 and #2) take one look and say they aren't eating the lasagna. DH marches them over to the trays of marshmallow brownies and cookies and asks if they would care for any. They say yes, and he says, that unless they eat their lasagna, they won't be getting any dessert. The real miracle comes in when we load up their plates with a variety of food, and they actually eat it all! No "how many bites," no "yuck," no "is this enough?" They just ate it. And then, hold on to your hats, they both ask for seconds. Granted, it's rolls and fruit they ask for, but hey, they are actually eating enough to make them full! Without me twisting their arm! Then to top it all off, they go and play nicely and I even see #1 pushing #3 in a swing. We get to talk to our friends and have an all-around pleasant time.
7:30 - While we sit around and gab, DH tells me some great news - he has to go camping. While this is normally a cause for great concern and prayer for something horrible to happen so that he doesn't have to go, in this case we are both excited. The date for the campout is the exact same date as the next ward activity, which we were trying to find a reason we didn't have to go. Why, you might ask, would we purposely not support someone else in their calling and what, exactly, could possibly be worse than a campout? Prom. That's right, Prom is our next ward activity. Adults only, and single people are supposed to feel welcome too, although how that could possibly happen is beyond me. The activities committee is trying to encourage everyone to get really into it, you know, with corsages, and maybe go out to a nice dinner beforehand. In Relief Society, apparently the activity was announced and all the women were encouraged to coerce their husbands to go. Could that not be a sign? That people are having to coerce others to attend what is supposed to be a fun activity? And the announcement includes an assurance that we will all have a good time. And that is exactly why DH, a known camp-phobic, is actually excited to attend the scout training campout the same night. His prediction? Low attendance at the Prom.
8:10 - We leave our friends' house and I realize that I sat and talked the entire time while DH handled everything that came up with the kids, so I tell him that I'll put the kids down to bed by myself tonight (usually we tag team). He thinks this is a treat and goes downstairs to play Pod-race with #1. The other two kids go to bed fairly easily - #3 was effortless as usual, and #2 was not bad. I go back downstairs and listen to my book (the sequel to Twilight, which I polished off yesterday and immediately bought the sequel to, for another 2 credits) while I clean up the kitchen and do some dishes. My mother-in-law calls to talk about a work situation - she's dealing with a complete jerk in her department (she's in the pharmacy now) and she's tried to get a transfer to another department but they aren't doing it for her. So it looks like she's going to make some kind of ultimatum tomorrow - get me out of the pharmacy or I'm leaving. Her daughter wrote a letter for her to explain the situation to management and she read it to me to see what I think, and I told her to be prepared for them to show her the door. She thinks it is all probably a blessing in disguise, because she can certainly find a better job somewhere else than Kmart, and just needed a kick in the pants to make such a big change. She's worked there for like 13 years.
9:00 - DH and I are sitting on the couch talking about work, as usual, and other stuff. We are relatively child-free, which is nice, but we can hear #2 up in his room, singing to himself, and counting by 5's to 100 over and over again. He can be such a cute, sweet kid sometimes. I know I complain about him, because there is a lot of drama involved in many things that he does, and when things with him are not dramatic, I am too busy feeling relieved and trying to prevent the next round of drama, that i don't really appreciate what a good kid he is. Today during primary, I looked over to where he was sitting and was surprised to see him trying not to cry. We have a lot of criers in this younger group, but #2 is absolutely NOT one of them. He is one of the best behaved kids in there. I was so shocked to see him looking so sad that I almost started crying too, because I knew whatever he was upset about had to be bad. I walked across the room and took him out into the hallway and asked what was wrong. It turns out he somehow hit his nose on the chair in front of him, and it hurt bad enough to make him cry. I hugged him and hugged him until he was okay again, he got a drink at the drinking fountain and went back in. So many times that he cries I just get frustrated at him or tired of hearing it - I was glad to know I still have enough compassion to see my boy cry and want to cry with him. Makes me feel like I still have some humanity in me, they haven't beaten it out of me yet.
10:37 - I've been writing this blog for probably 1.5 hours - normally I write in bits and pieces all day, but I just haven't had a chance today, and I wanted to get it done tonight and put it up. DH has already gone up to bed, which is not a good sign, as he almost never ever goes to bed first. Oh, by the way, I wanted to mention this gripe - why is it that I hear my mom needs a second opinion on a mammogram from a comment made on my blog??!? Does this not register as important enough to warrant, say, a phone call? I recognize that maybe we don't want to turn this into something bigger than it needs to be until there is more information; I didn't mention my abnormal skin cancer diagnosis until I knew that it wasn't serious, but this seems bigger than that. As the only other person in our family with breasts, I'd think that I have some right to information here, I have a vested interest in the situation. That's pretty much all I have to say on the topic, other than, I can't believe I've used the word "breast" so many times when my DAD is going to be reading this. I think I better just post this and not think about the uncomfortableness that I'm currently feeling - maybe I need to drop in and see my plastic surgeon to feel a little less awkward. :)
9:30 - DH is in the shower so I start the get-ready-for-church routine. #1 gets dressed without a comment, #2 throws a fit and takes 10 minutes to whine his way upstairs where I help him get dressed, and I pick out clothes for #3. I think #2 must have been hypnotized once while I was not paying attention, because he has an automatic response to the word "church," which is to scream "I don't want to go to church!" and various forms of that statement. He has a similar hypnotic reaction to any insistence that he eat something.
9:45 - My turn to get ready for church. While getting ready once this week I noticed a new thing growing on my shoulder. What the heck kind of freak am I??? Seriously, it's like I'm some kind of mutant! And not the cool, teenage ninja type of mutant, or a crime fighting x-men type either, the creepy kind of mutant that you feel sorry for if you see them on the street. Yikes. My doctor said that things grow faster while you're pregnant, but this is starting to be ridiculous. The only upshot (if there is one) is that this is on my shoulder, so I can have it removed by my regular doctor and not the plastic surgeon I'm seeing.
Speaking of my plastic surgeon, he is way too comfortable with other people's bodies. The first time I saw him to do a biopsy on a lesion on my face, I was laying on the exam table listening to my ipod, which was laying on my stomach. He sits in his chair, wheels it over, and with his elbows on the table, leans his arms on my stomach to reach my ipod and see what I was listening to. I'm a big fan of personal space - crowded places like Disneyland or Costco on a Saturday when all the sample ladies are out make me nuts. I just don't like people touching me generally. So I thought that was weird that he did that. Then this week when I went in again to have him look at the thing on my neck that is re-growing (have we had the mutant discussion already?) I was sitting in a chair, and he wheeled himself over to me and got right up in front of me, to the point where our knees are touching. Not just slightly bumping if we aren't careful, but like 3 or 4 inches of overlap. I turn my head around to show him the thing on my neck and he examines it for a minute. And then he's looking at my face, reaches over and grabs the skin around the lesion on my check and squeezing to check out wrinkle lines around it, that's all fine and expected. So he's talking to me, and decides to check out the neck thing again, but instead of asking me to turn around, he just reaches his hand around behind my head and starts rubbing the thing on my neck.
Now, this is all simply odd behavior to me - I don't feel truly uncomfortable, just that he clearly is different about personal space than I am. Here are my reasons for not feeling uncomfortable:
1. I'm 6 months pregnant, and weigh 200 pounds. I'm clearly not in the most attractive, cheat on my husband with the hot doctor, mode of my life.
2. There's a nurse in the room at all times.
3. All the nurses that work there are well dressed, not your typical chubby women in scrubs that look like pajamas, but more sophisticated scrubs. If there is such a thing.
4. I get the feeling that he is just a friendly, comfortable guy, who wants to make his patients feel comfortable with him, since he is the one going to be chopping me into little pieces on Wednesday. (Can you tell I'm not really looking forward to this on Wednesday?)
But just to recap, here's the things that do make me feel a little uncomfortable:
1. He's good looking. He wears jeans and like a long sleeve t-shirt type of thing, and his hair is done in kind of a Ryan Seacrest kind of messy, spiky, gelled thing. If we were in California still, I'd be sure he's a surfer. Maybe here he's a snowboarder, I don't know if that translates.
2. What if I was going to him to, say, have a breast augmentation done? Would he reach over and grab them to check out how big he thinks they ought to be? Thank goodness I've never needed to be undressed around him before. That would be awkward. Maybe as awkward as realizing I'm writing about breast augmentation on a blog that my parents and grandparents are going to read. Yikes.
3. My real doctor recommended this guy to me by saying that this is who he'd send his wife to. My thought now is, if he knew how comfortable this guy is with peoples' bodies, would he still feel this way? My husband has already said that after this surgery, if I ever need a plastic surgeon again that I have to find someone else. He said this after I mentioned that the guy was good-looking and that I didn't feel uncomfortable, I think he would prefer that I do feel uncomfortable. But in fact, I just think it's weird.
Oh, incidentally, this plastic surgeon was honored with some kind of humanitarian award last year for his service doing surgery in Ghana. I don't know if that is relevant or not, just thought I'd throw it in there.
10:35 - We are all ready to go, the boys were asked to be reverence children in Sacrament Meeting today, which means that they stand up at the pulpit and be an example of reverence for all the grown-ups that come in, talking and being rowdy before the meeting starts. Last time we had this assignment (which is made by the primary secretary), we had a flat tire and got to church totally late. So we made up for it this week by being there about 20 minutes early.
11:00-2:00 - Church. The first words out of #2's mouth when he sat down in our pew after his stint as reverence child was over was "I'm hungry." Maybe I could suggest a reverence child for the entire hour of Sacrament meeting, instead of just the 10 minutes before the meeting starts. Junior primary was as loud and irreverent as usual, I can tell it's wearing on everyone, not just me - our most capable teacher did sharing time today (class presentation) and came home thinking he had done a terrible job because he just could not hold the kids' attention. I was thrilled, actually, that it went as badly for him as it does for me, because that means it's the kids and not me doing something wrong!
2:30 - DH keeps the kids outside while we have a primary presidency meeting with our member of the bishopric at my house. We haven't met for a while and have several things to cover, but it goes well and we get a lot accomplished in an hour, with only a little off-topic conversations. The activities committee talked to my counselor about having the primary organize a children's activity during their upcoming family activity in June. The spin she put on it is, we get to count it as one of our quarterly activities that we are supposed to organize, and everyone will already be planning on going to this, so wouldn't that be great for us? Well, reading between the lines, what she gets is free baby-sitting during a ward activity, and what we get is the primary leaders missing a ward activity so that we can supervise all of the kids. I'm not opposed to this set up across the board - we did it once last year and it worked out well, mostly because we made sure the primary teachers weren't impacted at all, just us as a presidency (and it was and activity that I didn't care about missing). Well, before we could even give an opinion on this particular proposal, the bishopric member pretty much torpedoed the entire idea and was quite vehement about us not being the de facto babysitters at a ward function. He obviously was really passionate about this opinion, and I thought that was fantastic - I love that he really supports the primary and looks like he's willing to fight for us in a case like this.
3:30 - Meeting is over and the family comes back inside. We've been invited over to have dinner with another family at 5:30 and I'm bringing dessert, so I grab some cookbooks to try to find something to make, with the limitation that I only have so much butter on hand. I decide on a new recipe which looks like it's going to be brownies with marshmallows on top. I hear noises from downstairs which indicate an argument over the pod-race game, so I go down and ask if anyone would like to help me make dessert. #2 immediately volunteers and runs upstairs to help - he loves, loves, loves to help in the kitchen. Most of the time. Especially when it's dessert and not dinner we're making. And if there's nothing fun to do instead. But most Sundays it's him who helps me make dessert. #3 comes with him and both of them pull chairs over to the counter, one on either side of me and my KitchenAid mixer. It's quite crowded in there, but I don't complain because this is what being a good mother looks like, and I've got to give this a shot. They both help, to a certain extent, and are happy, #2 especially likes cracking eggs, and he's getting a lot better at it. It's times like this when I can glimpse the future, and it looks good.
4:15 - Our home teachers come over, one is our next door neighbor who is also the teacher I mentioned earlier. We think he and his family are just terrific, and he's so great with the kids. Plus they always bring candy to reward correct answers when they teach the lesson, so #2 usually asks if it's time for the lesson yet, interrupting us as we sit and gab.
5:00 - HT's are gone, and I get the brownies out of the oven and taste one. It's not so good, which is disappointing, and I have to decide whether to use my final stick of butter on the frosting that the brownie recipe calls for, or if I should make an emergency backup dessert of no-bake cookies instead. I'm in the mood for the cookies, and don't want to throw good butter after bad, so I go to make the cookies. At the same time that I'm having my dessert dilemma, DH realizes it's bath night and if we don't get a bath in before we leave, it won't get done. He bribes the older boys with a token each if they take a 5 minute shower, and they both go for it. #2 is in a particularly good mood and doesn't fight over this one. #3, however, is going through a stage where he absolutely hates taking a bath, and will just stand in the water and scream. Friday's bath, which I handled while DH was at Toys R Us buying a new swingset, consisted of him screaming from the minute I told him to come inside for his bath, all through taking him upstairs, running the water, and me depositing him in the tub. He stood there screaming and I went into our adjoining bedroom, because it's so loud and echo-y in the bathroom I just couldn't stand it anymore, and I knew he wasn't drowning as long as I could still hear him screaming. I was hoping he'd calm down and enjoy the bath, but when it was apparent that wasn't happening, I decided to get it over with and just washed him as quickly as I could and got him out. He finally stopped screaming sometime after he was completely dressed. My ears didn't stop ringing for a long time. Anyhow, today's bath sounded about as bad, but quicker, because DH didn't waste time hoping he'd enjoy himself. Once he was out, though, DH called me over to get #3 dressed. When that was done I made a batch of no-bake cookies, which take about 5 minutes with no kids helping (10 with).
5:40 - We leave 10 minutes late for our friends' house, but that's not a big deal. We are having lasagna, salad, rolls, fruit salad, and corn for dinner, lots of different foods that my kids like, which means that they both (Boys #1 and #2) take one look and say they aren't eating the lasagna. DH marches them over to the trays of marshmallow brownies and cookies and asks if they would care for any. They say yes, and he says, that unless they eat their lasagna, they won't be getting any dessert. The real miracle comes in when we load up their plates with a variety of food, and they actually eat it all! No "how many bites," no "yuck," no "is this enough?" They just ate it. And then, hold on to your hats, they both ask for seconds. Granted, it's rolls and fruit they ask for, but hey, they are actually eating enough to make them full! Without me twisting their arm! Then to top it all off, they go and play nicely and I even see #1 pushing #3 in a swing. We get to talk to our friends and have an all-around pleasant time.
7:30 - While we sit around and gab, DH tells me some great news - he has to go camping. While this is normally a cause for great concern and prayer for something horrible to happen so that he doesn't have to go, in this case we are both excited. The date for the campout is the exact same date as the next ward activity, which we were trying to find a reason we didn't have to go. Why, you might ask, would we purposely not support someone else in their calling and what, exactly, could possibly be worse than a campout? Prom. That's right, Prom is our next ward activity. Adults only, and single people are supposed to feel welcome too, although how that could possibly happen is beyond me. The activities committee is trying to encourage everyone to get really into it, you know, with corsages, and maybe go out to a nice dinner beforehand. In Relief Society, apparently the activity was announced and all the women were encouraged to coerce their husbands to go. Could that not be a sign? That people are having to coerce others to attend what is supposed to be a fun activity? And the announcement includes an assurance that we will all have a good time. And that is exactly why DH, a known camp-phobic, is actually excited to attend the scout training campout the same night. His prediction? Low attendance at the Prom.
8:10 - We leave our friends' house and I realize that I sat and talked the entire time while DH handled everything that came up with the kids, so I tell him that I'll put the kids down to bed by myself tonight (usually we tag team). He thinks this is a treat and goes downstairs to play Pod-race with #1. The other two kids go to bed fairly easily - #3 was effortless as usual, and #2 was not bad. I go back downstairs and listen to my book (the sequel to Twilight, which I polished off yesterday and immediately bought the sequel to, for another 2 credits) while I clean up the kitchen and do some dishes. My mother-in-law calls to talk about a work situation - she's dealing with a complete jerk in her department (she's in the pharmacy now) and she's tried to get a transfer to another department but they aren't doing it for her. So it looks like she's going to make some kind of ultimatum tomorrow - get me out of the pharmacy or I'm leaving. Her daughter wrote a letter for her to explain the situation to management and she read it to me to see what I think, and I told her to be prepared for them to show her the door. She thinks it is all probably a blessing in disguise, because she can certainly find a better job somewhere else than Kmart, and just needed a kick in the pants to make such a big change. She's worked there for like 13 years.
9:00 - DH and I are sitting on the couch talking about work, as usual, and other stuff. We are relatively child-free, which is nice, but we can hear #2 up in his room, singing to himself, and counting by 5's to 100 over and over again. He can be such a cute, sweet kid sometimes. I know I complain about him, because there is a lot of drama involved in many things that he does, and when things with him are not dramatic, I am too busy feeling relieved and trying to prevent the next round of drama, that i don't really appreciate what a good kid he is. Today during primary, I looked over to where he was sitting and was surprised to see him trying not to cry. We have a lot of criers in this younger group, but #2 is absolutely NOT one of them. He is one of the best behaved kids in there. I was so shocked to see him looking so sad that I almost started crying too, because I knew whatever he was upset about had to be bad. I walked across the room and took him out into the hallway and asked what was wrong. It turns out he somehow hit his nose on the chair in front of him, and it hurt bad enough to make him cry. I hugged him and hugged him until he was okay again, he got a drink at the drinking fountain and went back in. So many times that he cries I just get frustrated at him or tired of hearing it - I was glad to know I still have enough compassion to see my boy cry and want to cry with him. Makes me feel like I still have some humanity in me, they haven't beaten it out of me yet.
10:37 - I've been writing this blog for probably 1.5 hours - normally I write in bits and pieces all day, but I just haven't had a chance today, and I wanted to get it done tonight and put it up. DH has already gone up to bed, which is not a good sign, as he almost never ever goes to bed first. Oh, by the way, I wanted to mention this gripe - why is it that I hear my mom needs a second opinion on a mammogram from a comment made on my blog??!? Does this not register as important enough to warrant, say, a phone call? I recognize that maybe we don't want to turn this into something bigger than it needs to be until there is more information; I didn't mention my abnormal skin cancer diagnosis until I knew that it wasn't serious, but this seems bigger than that. As the only other person in our family with breasts, I'd think that I have some right to information here, I have a vested interest in the situation. That's pretty much all I have to say on the topic, other than, I can't believe I've used the word "breast" so many times when my DAD is going to be reading this. I think I better just post this and not think about the uncomfortableness that I'm currently feeling - maybe I need to drop in and see my plastic surgeon to feel a little less awkward. :)
Friday, March 16, 2007
Snapshot of Life - March 15, 2007
1:00 am - It's the middle of the night and I'm awake again. It's starting to be a habit, and not a good one. I don't think I got to bed before midnight, which never bodes well. As I'm thinking how hard it is going to be to fall back asleep, I fall back asleep.
2:52 - I'm up, and go to the bathroom. A friend of mine and I were reminiscing about the catheters we each had during labor once (me with #1) which sounds gross but actually, when you've gone nine months of sleepless nights because of 2 or 3 trips to the bathroom per night, it is great to have one less thing to have to get out of bed for. I get back in bed, but I'm trying not to think about anything interesting for fear that it will keep me up, so of course, I've got all sorts of interesting things going on in my head. I try my parents' trick of listening to an audiobook on the ol' ipod but the book I've just started is too interesting itself and I have a feeling that I'm going to want to stay up to listen to it. So I switch to music, George Winston, nice soothing piano music, but it's not enough to keep my attention and there I go thinking again. The light from the ipod I think might be bothering DH because he's moving around a lot, so I decide to get up and hopefully get tired enough to go back to sleep.
3:25 - I head down to the kitchen to grab something to eat. I am standing near the sink and glance over at the fish tank, to make sure the fish is still alive. It's a reflex you develop as a fish owner, one that cat and dog owners don't generally acquire, unless it's a really old cat or dog I suppose. Anyhow, I can't find the fish. That's a bad thing, as fish generally can't escape, and this one has shown no tendencies towards becoming a jumping fish. I knock on the glass, hoping that it is just hiding inside the skull that is in there for the fish's enjoyment, or maybe it just fell asleep somewhere I couldn't see it, but no dice. I unplug the filter and walk away, thinking maybe something happened to the fish while I was gone last night and no one told me. A minute later when I looked over, I saw the fish, floating limply underneath the filter - my suspicions were correct, it was sucked up against the filter and stuck there. This would be the 4th or 5th time that's happened this week, and I don't know if there is a more serious phrase than "bad sign" but man, this fish's days are numbered. I don't want to look again, because I really hate being the guy to find the dead fish, and then have to tell Boy #1 about it (they are his fish) but I also hate to have him find it too. But I pull a Lot's Wife and give one last glance over my shoulder and luckily, the fish is hanging out near the top of the tank and it's fins are moving. Whew. The thing about fish is that when they die, they don't float belly-up at the top of the tank, you find them laying on the gravel at the bottom, which means to get them out you have to put your whole arm in the water and scoop it up with a measuring cup (because we don't have one of those handy dead-fish-scoop nets) and inevitably you've got a scoop of gravel in there too, but that's the price you pay.
3:45-4 - I'm burning my latest audiobook acquisition onto cd for a friend, and it is causing my computer to absolutely chug while I try typing this as the same time. It's taking many seconds for my typo's to appear and it's starting to make me nuts. I love my laptop, but once you've got a little money in your pocket it's easy to say, why the heck didn't I get the upgraded version of this laptop? Because I couldn't afford it at the time, but if I were to buy one today I might spend a little more in the muscle department. Same with the minivan - if I had known, I would have ponied up the extra many thousands of dollars to get the next model up that comes with automatic sliding doors. I can't tell you how many fights have broken out because no one (read: Boys #1 and #2) wants to close the door. Boy #1 tries to be especially sneaky by leaping out of the car first, climbing over the other boys in the process, or getting out on #3's side, because I always close that door. But I am grown-up enough to know that automatic sliding doors, while seemingly the answer to all of my problems, wouldn't actually be - they would find something else to fight about I'm sure. Like whether or not somebody has to/gets to push the button. My friend has the auto doors and says that her kids constantly leave the door open, assuming that it will just close by itself. What kind of world to we live in, where we have to teach our kids that not all doors close on their own?
4:16 -I'm finished eating, signed my corporate tax returns that have to be mailed today, and wander around the house listening to my book. I'm scarily awake right now and not sure what to do about it. I want some ice cream but it is outside in the garage freezer, and I am not craving it enough to go out there in the middle of the night. I think I'll go lay down and keep listening to my book, and see if I can't drift off at some point.
6-7:30 - I sleep until the alarm clock goes off, at which time I nudge DH awake and go back to sleep for one more hour.
8:30- I'm awake for real and not as tired as I imagine I will be at, say, 2 this afternoon. #3 is crying for no reason, DH reports that he has been very tempermental today. I'm glad that I have nowhere I need to be today - it looks like the right day to sit at home and catch up on my tv watching (Amazing Race and American Idol).
9:00 - I take #2 to school and drop off the cd's I burned at a friends house. I get home and read the newspaper. At 10 #3 wants to go outside and play, which is fine although it's a little chilly this morning, so we bundle up a little and head out. I bring my breakfast, which is leftovers of last night's dinner, since we have plenty of it due to the fact that no one ate it except me. Grrr. why do I cook again? I also bring my ipod and listen to my new book, Twilight, which I am loving.
10:30-12 - #3 is bored so we go back inside. He is content to watch Barney so I sit on the couch and listen to my book. Turns out the audio version is just as captivating as the paper version of books usually is, and I don't do anything other than sit there and listen. Usually the advantage to audiobooks is that I am so much more productive, but not today. Also I'm sleepy, which doesn't help with the motivation. I'm already halfway through the book and the only thing that makes me not so disappointed at how fast it is going is the fact that the sequel is already out, and I'm willing to fork over another 2 credits for it.
12:15 - #2 comes in, obviously in need of lunch because the first words out of his mouth (practically) are "Can I play Lego Star Wars?" to which I reply, "Sure, after you eat your lunch" followed up with "No!! I don't want to eat lunch!! I'm not hungry!!" He starts to stomp and tries to grab the couch cushion to throw it, but I stop him, so he kicks the bag that the newspaper came in, a fairly ineffectual display of anger but frustrating nonetheless. He asks to watch a movie, I give him the same answer, and he yells "Fine!" in his best disgruntled-teenager, I-can't-believe-my-mom-is-doing-this-to-me voice. He decides on a bowl of cereal which I have to ask him to ask me nicely to get for him (I won't let him yell orders at me, especially when he is perfectly capable of doing it himself). His friend across the street comes over after the first few bites are taken, and after just a few more #2 decides he's done. I still won't let him play until he eats more because half a bowl of Cocoa Krispies is not going to lead to a decent afternoon for us. He isn't happy but controls himself in front of his friend, eats some crackers, and I finally let him go play. I have a feeling that the lack of food is going to be an issue later, but I can't worry about that too much right now.
12:45 - #2 and friend are playing Lego Star Wars and #3 is watching, so I'm off to take a shower and hopefully the house will still be standing when I get out.
1:00-2:30 - Still standing, thank goodness, and I go down to the craft room to get some actual work done while I watch Judge Judy. I reply to some emails, send some of my own, call my insurance company about some charges that I thought should be covered (apparently I thought wrong, the result of a $5000 maternity deductible not being met last year). I also called the plastic surgeon who is going to be operating on me next week, because the basal cell carcinoma that was removed from my neck is growing back, or so my OB and I think. So I want to see if he will remove that one at the same time instead of having to schedule a second surgery. This is going to be a very expensive medical year.
2:30 - #1 comes home from school and is immediately sulky when I tell him I'm going to check his homework today. #3 wants to go outside to play so I open the front door for him and let him go out for a minute by himself while I go to the bathroom. When I get outside to watch him (I don't really trust him quite yet to be by himself, not that he's ever done anything like leave the cul-de-sac but I hear the tv announcer saying "The 2 year old boy was outside by himself when..." which if I heard that I would immediately judge the mother as horribly neglectful) I find him standing on the front porch of our neighbor, ringing the doorbell which has a note next to it saying "Doorbell broken. Please knock." So I knocked, and the kids were in the backyard with their cousins, so they invited us to come back out there. I sat with my neighbor and her sisters-in-law and mother and chatted while the kids played.
3:30 - #1 calls me from our backyard and tells me his math homework is done, can I come check it? So I go over it with him - some are careless mistakes, no decimal point in a money problem, missing a zero, etc, but he's got a serious stumbling block in multiplication, especially when it involves several numbers. I think I really need to go over this more frequently with him, but I just dread the sulking, the sullenness, the moping, the bad attitude.
4:00 - I consider what I'm going to make for dinner, and I decide to give last night's dinner another chance. I wasn't home last night, so DH is not up for a battle over a meal, especially when he doesn't have a horse in this race. I give both kids fair warning about what dinner is going to be, they agree to eat it (which is kind of a joke, I recognize that) and settle back down to my audiobook, after switching the laundry again.
5:30 - DH comes home in the middle of a tantrum thrown by #3, who has just started to figure out this whole cry-really-loud-for-no-reason thing - the other kids were tantrum pros by this age, I guess #3 is just a slow starter. I have a feeling he'll make up for hit in quality of tantrums, and maybe he's just scheduling his peak tantrum throwing season to collide with us having a new baby in 3 months. Kids are crafty like that. Anyhow, he's angry because I had the audacity to put half a sandwich on a plate at the seat at the table where he normally sits. An insult tantamount to slapping him in the face with a pair of gloves, I recognize my folly now. So DH comes home to #3 sitting on the floor crying, and #2 eating his absolute minimum required amount of sandwich, which is half. #1 is outside playing with a boy his age who is going to be driven to pack meeting by me later, along with his brother. The crying gets on DH's nerves, not that I blame him, but how is it that my nerves are able to handle so much more? Well, I take #3 down to my craft room to continue crying behind closed doors. The nice thing is that when #3 flips the crying switch to "off" and walks out in a perfectly pleasant mood 5 minutes later, I'm comfortably ensconced in my lazy-boy recliner with my earbuds in my ear and my audiobook turned up just loud enough to be heard over the racket. I turn the volume back down now that it's quiet and stay down there until it's time for pack meeting.
6:30 - I take Boys #1 and #2, plus neighbor kids 1 and 2 over to the church for pack meeting. We have an awesome cub committee - they are all super dedicated and do just a fantastic job on the meetings, the den meetings, getting the boys to reach their awards, etc. So my complaint is not with them- my complaint is the enforced cheesiness of the cubs program in general. The songs, the cheers, the jokes, just a total cheese-fest. I figured out that we've got 3 years with Boy #1, a 6 month break, 3 more years with Boy #2, another 6 month break, and then 3 final years with Boy #3. It could have been planned better, the timing, could I not have maybe overlapped our nine years of cub scout purgatory? Although that means that I would have had to buy 2 uniforms, and as it is we can get away with just one for all 3 boys.
7:30 - We head home where the boys both promptly break their kites that they made at scouts (the string just comes off, it's fixable) but of course leads to a potential meltdown. I distract #2 (the potential meltdowner) and he asks if he can have a popsicle when we get home. I happen to know for a fact that there are two popsicles in the freezer, but I have three children. There is no need for the spinning red light to start going off in my head to warn me about what is about to happen here - this one is a no-brainer. I tell #2 he can certainly have a popsicle after #3 goes to bed. Which is in 15 minutes. Which means 15 minutes of me trying to get him not to ask me again, so that he won't say the word popsicle in front of said younger brother, who is not stupid and will immediately ask for a popsicle if he hears it mentioned. Finally I put #3 down to bed and popsicle eating ensues.
8:00 - Scriptures, 24 verses tonight. Yikes. I try to be enthusiastic and say "Just think how many blessings we are going to get for this!" but no one really wants to hear it. I'm reminded of the scripture that talks about a gift given grudgingly and does it still count (obviously I'm paraphrasing here). I don't really want to think about that, let's just get this done.
8:25 - DH has put #2 down to bed, #1 is at the table coloring his kite, and DH heads out the door to Walmart to get his allergy prescription refilled, plus a birthday present for the party #1 is going to on Saturday, plus a new transformer that #2 has saved his money for (birthday money plus leftover token money, which he did not waste at Chuck E Cheese's like #1 did, so he actually has $12 whole dollars). I'm instructed to go to bed super early tonight to combat the whole awake at 3 in the morning thing. I've got a copy of the business plan for the team I'm mentoring for the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge that I said I would review and make notes by tomorrow, so I decide to go over that quickly and then head up to bed. My tv shows will have to wait for another day.
8:45 - A member of the UEC team calls to ask some questions about their website and plan. I discuss it with him for a while, and can't help but think that at some point someone is going to figure out that the emperor has no clothes on, or in this case, the business plan competition winner has no practical experience and therefore no reason to be giving anyone advice. So I try to couch all of my advice with a caveat that, you know, this is just my opinion, this is how I'd do it, or I've seen it done, or whatever.
9:15 - I get off the phone and get back to the business plan. DH comes home and puts #1 to bed, then rewinds the tape of tonights new Scrubs episode to watch in the other room. I try to keep reading with my fingers plugged in my ears (which makes scrolling through a word document difficult) because I need to drown out the show and DH's laughing, which is what I'd much rather be doing right now. Eventually I close the laptop and head upstairs and listen to my audiobook while I get ready for bed. This is a mistake, though, because the book is slightly engrossing, as you can tell, and I don't really want to put it off. I sit in bed for about 10 minutes listening to the book and hear DH going through the house, turning off the lights and locking the doors. Well, there's no reason to start reading scriptures now, he's going to be in here in a few minutes to read also, so I use this as an excuse to keep listening to my book and say I'll turn it off when we both read together. Of course, this is going exactly opposite of DH's suggestion that I go to bed at like 8:30 so I can finally get enough sleep in a night, and when he finds me listening to my book he is, I think, a little disgusted at my lack of priorities. Or lack of discipline, I'm not sure. He's never been captivated by a book before, I don't know what I can compare it to for a non-reader, that need to keep reading and the difficulty in putting down a good book. I'm expecting my family to back me up on this one - certainly I'm not the only one in our family to stay up all night reading a book because it is just that good, right? Or in the case of Sphere by Michael Crichton, because I'm so scared by the book that I need to finish it to ensure I don't have nightmares!
10:30 - Scriptures have been read, and lights are off. I think I actually did pretty well for such a bad night's sleep, let's hope tonight is better.
2:52 - I'm up, and go to the bathroom. A friend of mine and I were reminiscing about the catheters we each had during labor once (me with #1) which sounds gross but actually, when you've gone nine months of sleepless nights because of 2 or 3 trips to the bathroom per night, it is great to have one less thing to have to get out of bed for. I get back in bed, but I'm trying not to think about anything interesting for fear that it will keep me up, so of course, I've got all sorts of interesting things going on in my head. I try my parents' trick of listening to an audiobook on the ol' ipod but the book I've just started is too interesting itself and I have a feeling that I'm going to want to stay up to listen to it. So I switch to music, George Winston, nice soothing piano music, but it's not enough to keep my attention and there I go thinking again. The light from the ipod I think might be bothering DH because he's moving around a lot, so I decide to get up and hopefully get tired enough to go back to sleep.
3:25 - I head down to the kitchen to grab something to eat. I am standing near the sink and glance over at the fish tank, to make sure the fish is still alive. It's a reflex you develop as a fish owner, one that cat and dog owners don't generally acquire, unless it's a really old cat or dog I suppose. Anyhow, I can't find the fish. That's a bad thing, as fish generally can't escape, and this one has shown no tendencies towards becoming a jumping fish. I knock on the glass, hoping that it is just hiding inside the skull that is in there for the fish's enjoyment, or maybe it just fell asleep somewhere I couldn't see it, but no dice. I unplug the filter and walk away, thinking maybe something happened to the fish while I was gone last night and no one told me. A minute later when I looked over, I saw the fish, floating limply underneath the filter - my suspicions were correct, it was sucked up against the filter and stuck there. This would be the 4th or 5th time that's happened this week, and I don't know if there is a more serious phrase than "bad sign" but man, this fish's days are numbered. I don't want to look again, because I really hate being the guy to find the dead fish, and then have to tell Boy #1 about it (they are his fish) but I also hate to have him find it too. But I pull a Lot's Wife and give one last glance over my shoulder and luckily, the fish is hanging out near the top of the tank and it's fins are moving. Whew. The thing about fish is that when they die, they don't float belly-up at the top of the tank, you find them laying on the gravel at the bottom, which means to get them out you have to put your whole arm in the water and scoop it up with a measuring cup (because we don't have one of those handy dead-fish-scoop nets) and inevitably you've got a scoop of gravel in there too, but that's the price you pay.
3:45-4 - I'm burning my latest audiobook acquisition onto cd for a friend, and it is causing my computer to absolutely chug while I try typing this as the same time. It's taking many seconds for my typo's to appear and it's starting to make me nuts. I love my laptop, but once you've got a little money in your pocket it's easy to say, why the heck didn't I get the upgraded version of this laptop? Because I couldn't afford it at the time, but if I were to buy one today I might spend a little more in the muscle department. Same with the minivan - if I had known, I would have ponied up the extra many thousands of dollars to get the next model up that comes with automatic sliding doors. I can't tell you how many fights have broken out because no one (read: Boys #1 and #2) wants to close the door. Boy #1 tries to be especially sneaky by leaping out of the car first, climbing over the other boys in the process, or getting out on #3's side, because I always close that door. But I am grown-up enough to know that automatic sliding doors, while seemingly the answer to all of my problems, wouldn't actually be - they would find something else to fight about I'm sure. Like whether or not somebody has to/gets to push the button. My friend has the auto doors and says that her kids constantly leave the door open, assuming that it will just close by itself. What kind of world to we live in, where we have to teach our kids that not all doors close on their own?
4:16 -I'm finished eating, signed my corporate tax returns that have to be mailed today, and wander around the house listening to my book. I'm scarily awake right now and not sure what to do about it. I want some ice cream but it is outside in the garage freezer, and I am not craving it enough to go out there in the middle of the night. I think I'll go lay down and keep listening to my book, and see if I can't drift off at some point.
6-7:30 - I sleep until the alarm clock goes off, at which time I nudge DH awake and go back to sleep for one more hour.
8:30- I'm awake for real and not as tired as I imagine I will be at, say, 2 this afternoon. #3 is crying for no reason, DH reports that he has been very tempermental today. I'm glad that I have nowhere I need to be today - it looks like the right day to sit at home and catch up on my tv watching (Amazing Race and American Idol).
9:00 - I take #2 to school and drop off the cd's I burned at a friends house. I get home and read the newspaper. At 10 #3 wants to go outside and play, which is fine although it's a little chilly this morning, so we bundle up a little and head out. I bring my breakfast, which is leftovers of last night's dinner, since we have plenty of it due to the fact that no one ate it except me. Grrr. why do I cook again? I also bring my ipod and listen to my new book, Twilight, which I am loving.
10:30-12 - #3 is bored so we go back inside. He is content to watch Barney so I sit on the couch and listen to my book. Turns out the audio version is just as captivating as the paper version of books usually is, and I don't do anything other than sit there and listen. Usually the advantage to audiobooks is that I am so much more productive, but not today. Also I'm sleepy, which doesn't help with the motivation. I'm already halfway through the book and the only thing that makes me not so disappointed at how fast it is going is the fact that the sequel is already out, and I'm willing to fork over another 2 credits for it.
12:15 - #2 comes in, obviously in need of lunch because the first words out of his mouth (practically) are "Can I play Lego Star Wars?" to which I reply, "Sure, after you eat your lunch" followed up with "No!! I don't want to eat lunch!! I'm not hungry!!" He starts to stomp and tries to grab the couch cushion to throw it, but I stop him, so he kicks the bag that the newspaper came in, a fairly ineffectual display of anger but frustrating nonetheless. He asks to watch a movie, I give him the same answer, and he yells "Fine!" in his best disgruntled-teenager, I-can't-believe-my-mom-is-doing-this-to-me voice. He decides on a bowl of cereal which I have to ask him to ask me nicely to get for him (I won't let him yell orders at me, especially when he is perfectly capable of doing it himself). His friend across the street comes over after the first few bites are taken, and after just a few more #2 decides he's done. I still won't let him play until he eats more because half a bowl of Cocoa Krispies is not going to lead to a decent afternoon for us. He isn't happy but controls himself in front of his friend, eats some crackers, and I finally let him go play. I have a feeling that the lack of food is going to be an issue later, but I can't worry about that too much right now.
12:45 - #2 and friend are playing Lego Star Wars and #3 is watching, so I'm off to take a shower and hopefully the house will still be standing when I get out.
1:00-2:30 - Still standing, thank goodness, and I go down to the craft room to get some actual work done while I watch Judge Judy. I reply to some emails, send some of my own, call my insurance company about some charges that I thought should be covered (apparently I thought wrong, the result of a $5000 maternity deductible not being met last year). I also called the plastic surgeon who is going to be operating on me next week, because the basal cell carcinoma that was removed from my neck is growing back, or so my OB and I think. So I want to see if he will remove that one at the same time instead of having to schedule a second surgery. This is going to be a very expensive medical year.
2:30 - #1 comes home from school and is immediately sulky when I tell him I'm going to check his homework today. #3 wants to go outside to play so I open the front door for him and let him go out for a minute by himself while I go to the bathroom. When I get outside to watch him (I don't really trust him quite yet to be by himself, not that he's ever done anything like leave the cul-de-sac but I hear the tv announcer saying "The 2 year old boy was outside by himself when..." which if I heard that I would immediately judge the mother as horribly neglectful) I find him standing on the front porch of our neighbor, ringing the doorbell which has a note next to it saying "Doorbell broken. Please knock." So I knocked, and the kids were in the backyard with their cousins, so they invited us to come back out there. I sat with my neighbor and her sisters-in-law and mother and chatted while the kids played.
3:30 - #1 calls me from our backyard and tells me his math homework is done, can I come check it? So I go over it with him - some are careless mistakes, no decimal point in a money problem, missing a zero, etc, but he's got a serious stumbling block in multiplication, especially when it involves several numbers. I think I really need to go over this more frequently with him, but I just dread the sulking, the sullenness, the moping, the bad attitude.
4:00 - I consider what I'm going to make for dinner, and I decide to give last night's dinner another chance. I wasn't home last night, so DH is not up for a battle over a meal, especially when he doesn't have a horse in this race. I give both kids fair warning about what dinner is going to be, they agree to eat it (which is kind of a joke, I recognize that) and settle back down to my audiobook, after switching the laundry again.
5:30 - DH comes home in the middle of a tantrum thrown by #3, who has just started to figure out this whole cry-really-loud-for-no-reason thing - the other kids were tantrum pros by this age, I guess #3 is just a slow starter. I have a feeling he'll make up for hit in quality of tantrums, and maybe he's just scheduling his peak tantrum throwing season to collide with us having a new baby in 3 months. Kids are crafty like that. Anyhow, he's angry because I had the audacity to put half a sandwich on a plate at the seat at the table where he normally sits. An insult tantamount to slapping him in the face with a pair of gloves, I recognize my folly now. So DH comes home to #3 sitting on the floor crying, and #2 eating his absolute minimum required amount of sandwich, which is half. #1 is outside playing with a boy his age who is going to be driven to pack meeting by me later, along with his brother. The crying gets on DH's nerves, not that I blame him, but how is it that my nerves are able to handle so much more? Well, I take #3 down to my craft room to continue crying behind closed doors. The nice thing is that when #3 flips the crying switch to "off" and walks out in a perfectly pleasant mood 5 minutes later, I'm comfortably ensconced in my lazy-boy recliner with my earbuds in my ear and my audiobook turned up just loud enough to be heard over the racket. I turn the volume back down now that it's quiet and stay down there until it's time for pack meeting.
6:30 - I take Boys #1 and #2, plus neighbor kids 1 and 2 over to the church for pack meeting. We have an awesome cub committee - they are all super dedicated and do just a fantastic job on the meetings, the den meetings, getting the boys to reach their awards, etc. So my complaint is not with them- my complaint is the enforced cheesiness of the cubs program in general. The songs, the cheers, the jokes, just a total cheese-fest. I figured out that we've got 3 years with Boy #1, a 6 month break, 3 more years with Boy #2, another 6 month break, and then 3 final years with Boy #3. It could have been planned better, the timing, could I not have maybe overlapped our nine years of cub scout purgatory? Although that means that I would have had to buy 2 uniforms, and as it is we can get away with just one for all 3 boys.
7:30 - We head home where the boys both promptly break their kites that they made at scouts (the string just comes off, it's fixable) but of course leads to a potential meltdown. I distract #2 (the potential meltdowner) and he asks if he can have a popsicle when we get home. I happen to know for a fact that there are two popsicles in the freezer, but I have three children. There is no need for the spinning red light to start going off in my head to warn me about what is about to happen here - this one is a no-brainer. I tell #2 he can certainly have a popsicle after #3 goes to bed. Which is in 15 minutes. Which means 15 minutes of me trying to get him not to ask me again, so that he won't say the word popsicle in front of said younger brother, who is not stupid and will immediately ask for a popsicle if he hears it mentioned. Finally I put #3 down to bed and popsicle eating ensues.
8:00 - Scriptures, 24 verses tonight. Yikes. I try to be enthusiastic and say "Just think how many blessings we are going to get for this!" but no one really wants to hear it. I'm reminded of the scripture that talks about a gift given grudgingly and does it still count (obviously I'm paraphrasing here). I don't really want to think about that, let's just get this done.
8:25 - DH has put #2 down to bed, #1 is at the table coloring his kite, and DH heads out the door to Walmart to get his allergy prescription refilled, plus a birthday present for the party #1 is going to on Saturday, plus a new transformer that #2 has saved his money for (birthday money plus leftover token money, which he did not waste at Chuck E Cheese's like #1 did, so he actually has $12 whole dollars). I'm instructed to go to bed super early tonight to combat the whole awake at 3 in the morning thing. I've got a copy of the business plan for the team I'm mentoring for the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge that I said I would review and make notes by tomorrow, so I decide to go over that quickly and then head up to bed. My tv shows will have to wait for another day.
8:45 - A member of the UEC team calls to ask some questions about their website and plan. I discuss it with him for a while, and can't help but think that at some point someone is going to figure out that the emperor has no clothes on, or in this case, the business plan competition winner has no practical experience and therefore no reason to be giving anyone advice. So I try to couch all of my advice with a caveat that, you know, this is just my opinion, this is how I'd do it, or I've seen it done, or whatever.
9:15 - I get off the phone and get back to the business plan. DH comes home and puts #1 to bed, then rewinds the tape of tonights new Scrubs episode to watch in the other room. I try to keep reading with my fingers plugged in my ears (which makes scrolling through a word document difficult) because I need to drown out the show and DH's laughing, which is what I'd much rather be doing right now. Eventually I close the laptop and head upstairs and listen to my audiobook while I get ready for bed. This is a mistake, though, because the book is slightly engrossing, as you can tell, and I don't really want to put it off. I sit in bed for about 10 minutes listening to the book and hear DH going through the house, turning off the lights and locking the doors. Well, there's no reason to start reading scriptures now, he's going to be in here in a few minutes to read also, so I use this as an excuse to keep listening to my book and say I'll turn it off when we both read together. Of course, this is going exactly opposite of DH's suggestion that I go to bed at like 8:30 so I can finally get enough sleep in a night, and when he finds me listening to my book he is, I think, a little disgusted at my lack of priorities. Or lack of discipline, I'm not sure. He's never been captivated by a book before, I don't know what I can compare it to for a non-reader, that need to keep reading and the difficulty in putting down a good book. I'm expecting my family to back me up on this one - certainly I'm not the only one in our family to stay up all night reading a book because it is just that good, right? Or in the case of Sphere by Michael Crichton, because I'm so scared by the book that I need to finish it to ensure I don't have nightmares!
10:30 - Scriptures have been read, and lights are off. I think I actually did pretty well for such a bad night's sleep, let's hope tonight is better.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
What I Ought to be Doing Instead of Writing this Blog
I ought to be reading a business plan. I've been asked to be a mentor for the a team competing in the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge, which is the business plan competition that I entered two years ago. There are a variety of lectures that the participants are supposed to attend, hosted by the different schools, and I was asked to speak at one at UVSC a few weeks ago. (I was flattered at first, until the professor in charge said that he originally planned to have actual local business leaders speak, but when he couldn't get that to work, asked some former participants to speak instead. He sure knows how to make a girl feel special!) Anyhow, I was asked at that event if I would like to be a mentor for a team in the competition, and I agreed, although now I worry that I'm in over my head. After all, I think I can come across as a fairly professional person, but in reality, we are really a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants operation. I can't imagine that I have any advice for these people, although I think I would make a decent sounding board if nothing else. We meet tomorrow night for the first time, at an event in Salt Lake, so I ought to be polishing off reading the executive summary that I was sent. And maybe making a list of impressive sounding business advice that I can throw out and look like I know what the heck I'm talking about. I'll have to see if there's a website out there, like www.fakebusinessperson.com.
I ought to be getting my glasses fixed. On Sunday I noticed that one arm of my glasses was wiggly, so I got a little screwdriver out and tried to screw it tighter, but it basically just spun. Today it was even wigglier than before, so I screwed it in some more. At 12:30 or so I finally had a chance to take a shower, and put my glasses on the sink, and when I got out I realized that the arm had finally fallen off. I thought I'd try to put it back together, but what are the chances that I could find the 1/4 inch screw, when I can't see a darn thing? Interestingly enough, the screw was sitting right there, on the counter. It was the arm I had trouble finding! I searched all around, in the trash can, under the cabinet, and I finally found it in the laundry basket. So I take my parts and the screwdriver down to the kitchen table to try to fix this mess, and what do I do but drop the stinkin' screw on the floor! It's gone now, and glasses-less I have no hope in finding it. I call DH to see if he knows where we might have some Krazy Glue to glue the arm on, but he doesn't know if we have any, and I remember a fix he made to his glasses once which will work for me now. So as I'm writing this I have a paper clip attaching the arm to my glasses and it is dangling just inside my peripheral vision.
I ought to be cooking dinner. I'm watching a friend's kid while she goes in for an ulltrasound, and then she is going to watch my kids while I have a doctors appointment. My appointment's at 3:20 which means the wait is going to be interminable, and I doubt I'll be home before 5. Then I need to go somewhere to have my glasses really fixed. At 6:00 I should leave for my photography class, which I didn't do the homework for, because my camera can't do the manual things the class requires. I'm tired of this class and want to quit, mostly because it is frustrating not to be able to do the things I'm supposed to be learning. I don't like failing at things, and even though this isn't completely in my control, it still hurts a little. Anyhow, after class is book group, which actually starts at 7:30 so I'll be a little late. We are discussing Mitch Albom's latest book, "For One More Day" - a nice, short read for book group. But there's almost no way that I'll be able to cook a serious dinner inbetween all of that unless I start now. And, since it is now 2:55, I think that decision has been made for me. Fish sticks it is. (Update: I came home from all of that to hear that the kids scarfed down the fish sticks like they had never eaten before. Another successful dinner!)
I ought to be getting my glasses fixed. On Sunday I noticed that one arm of my glasses was wiggly, so I got a little screwdriver out and tried to screw it tighter, but it basically just spun. Today it was even wigglier than before, so I screwed it in some more. At 12:30 or so I finally had a chance to take a shower, and put my glasses on the sink, and when I got out I realized that the arm had finally fallen off. I thought I'd try to put it back together, but what are the chances that I could find the 1/4 inch screw, when I can't see a darn thing? Interestingly enough, the screw was sitting right there, on the counter. It was the arm I had trouble finding! I searched all around, in the trash can, under the cabinet, and I finally found it in the laundry basket. So I take my parts and the screwdriver down to the kitchen table to try to fix this mess, and what do I do but drop the stinkin' screw on the floor! It's gone now, and glasses-less I have no hope in finding it. I call DH to see if he knows where we might have some Krazy Glue to glue the arm on, but he doesn't know if we have any, and I remember a fix he made to his glasses once which will work for me now. So as I'm writing this I have a paper clip attaching the arm to my glasses and it is dangling just inside my peripheral vision.
I ought to be cooking dinner. I'm watching a friend's kid while she goes in for an ulltrasound, and then she is going to watch my kids while I have a doctors appointment. My appointment's at 3:20 which means the wait is going to be interminable, and I doubt I'll be home before 5. Then I need to go somewhere to have my glasses really fixed. At 6:00 I should leave for my photography class, which I didn't do the homework for, because my camera can't do the manual things the class requires. I'm tired of this class and want to quit, mostly because it is frustrating not to be able to do the things I'm supposed to be learning. I don't like failing at things, and even though this isn't completely in my control, it still hurts a little. Anyhow, after class is book group, which actually starts at 7:30 so I'll be a little late. We are discussing Mitch Albom's latest book, "For One More Day" - a nice, short read for book group. But there's almost no way that I'll be able to cook a serious dinner inbetween all of that unless I start now. And, since it is now 2:55, I think that decision has been made for me. Fish sticks it is. (Update: I came home from all of that to hear that the kids scarfed down the fish sticks like they had never eaten before. Another successful dinner!)
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Even Kidnappers Need a Sitter Sometimes
I read an article about a newborn kidnapped from a hospital in Texas on Saturday morning, who was found today, when the kidnapper dropped the baby off at someone's house to be looked after. Did the kidnapper have a date? Or maybe had to run to the grocery store and didn't want to bring a baby with her? An exercise class at the gym? I'm just thinking of all the reasons I drop my kid off at a sitter's house. But if having a baby was going to be so inconvenient to the woman's schedule, maybe she'd just wait and kidnap someone later, after her appointment. Maybe it was a job she had to get to, after all, they don't offer maternity leave to kidnappers.
Read the article on cnn.com here: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/11/newborn.kidnapped/
Read the article on cnn.com here: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/11/newborn.kidnapped/
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Me and Osama - Or, Dinner Out With the Family
It may not be fair to write this when I am as irritated as I currently am, because it may be coloring my vision of the events I am about to relate. We had pretty much nothing planned for today, so we figured after we cleaned the house (our family's saturday ritual) we would go to the Monte L. Bean Museum on the BYU campus. It's free, it's open on Saturday, and it's full of dead stuffed animals, so you really can't beat it. Anyhow, I will share my thoughts on the Bean museum later, but if we could fast-forward to leaving the museum when DH says, "I'm hungry." It is 4:05 which in my mind means, early dinner with no crowds, right? As we are right around the corner from the Creamery on Ninth, a tiny, local diner-type of place with freshly made ice cream and pretty tasty burgers, we decide to go there. I've eaten there once, with my family during Education Week last summer. I think it must have been their last day here visiting, because I remember my dad saying that if he had discovered that place earlier they would have eaten there like every day. And for good reason, as the burgers are almost as good as Coney's, my favorite burger place, their selection of ice cream is immense, and it is dirt cheap, catering mostly to poor BYU students (who must be poor because of the number of cars they own taking up all the parking spots. But I digress.)
So, we head over there, and probably get in the door at 4:15. How long do you think it should take the average family of 5, including two children who most likely won't eat anything anyhow, to eat a dinner consisting of burgers and fries and a hot fudge sundae for dessert? Well, if you said "Close to two hours," by golly we've got a winner! Yes, that is right, a place that doesn't even have wait staff to take your order, where you have to pick up your own food when they call your name, and then throw your own trash away afterwards, took almost two hours start to finish. Which, in normal child circumstances, is not only close to eternity, but is actually longer than most feature-length kids films, and that doesn't even hold their attention through the whole thing. So, what we are talking about is a crisis in the making, right? Close, but throw this in as a factor: My children were almost perfect angels the entire time. The real problem came from our family's worst enemy: low-blood sugar.
it's really hard to understand the gravity of an illness that doesn't have many outward symptoms, comes and goes on an almost predictable basis, can't kill you, and causes no bodily harm, except what might come from the rest of the family members when they have to deal with you. But if you've lived with someone with hypoglycemia, you would wonder why there isn't as much federal spending on hypoglycemia research as there is, say, on the War on Terror. In some ways, low-blood sugar creates little mini-terrorists from whoever it is currently affecting.
In our family, we learned, about a year ago or so, that DH and Boy #2 both are hypoglycemic. Once we realized that, so many of the problems we've had as a family, or really in our relationships with each other, made so much sense. That's why #2 predictably throws a fit at 5pm every day! That's why Fast Sundays are so intolerable at our house! That's why DH and I had our very first argument when we were dating was over where to go out to eat - neither of us realized that he was long past the point of rational thought and just needed to get food in his body, anything at all.
If you can remember all the way to the beginning of this post, you'll recall that DH said the magic words, "I'm hungry." In War on Terror terms, this is the equivalent of Osama bin Laden declaring a jihad on the Simmons family. Unless we make a swift, pre-emptive strike, we are likely to end up with a variety of Weapons of Mass Destruction, all waiting to be unleashed against the Great White Enemy. And I'm sure you can tell that what we did not get was a swift response. We did not get a pre-emptive strike. What we got was a lot of UN negotiations. What we got was some ineffective left-wing pandering. What we got was a 20 minute wait in line, followed by an additional 15-20 minutes of waiting for our food. And that, my friends, is entirely too long for someone with low-blood sugar.
Hypoglycemia rears its ugly head in a variety of WMD's, like shaking, nausea, irrational thought, uncontrollable anger, yelling, and many other things. The WMD that was utilized at the Creamery on Ninth was Migraine Headache. A particularly nasty weapon, for any of you who have dealt with it. Combine the migraine with antsy, wiggly kids in a very loud, crowded restaurant, and there's the real problem. DH sat at a table with the kids while I waited in line, placed the order, got the drinks, and went back to wait to pick up the food (they forgot to take my name so we were afraid we wouldn't know when it was done). We finally got our food, which DH said had better be the most fantastic food in the world for the wait, and by the time I got back from trying in vain to find some mayo, he had totally finished his meal.
Now the wait was for the kids to finish eating so we could pick up our ice cream. In trying to save time, I paid in advance for our ice cream, so as to avoid the humongous line. Boy #1 ate quickly, Boy #3 pretty much refused to eat, which wasn't surprising, and Boy #2 had drunk so much root beer waiting for his food to come that he was no longer hungry for his cheeseburger. We tried to cajole him into eating some of his burger at least, and I think we got a total of about 4 bites in him and called it a meal. Now, at this point, if we hadn't paid for the ice cream already (and, of course, eaten dinner in an ice cream restaurant) we would have just left without it and stopped at a grocery store and picked up a 1/2 gallon of something for $2.50. But no, my efficiency dictated that I now was obligated to go pick up the previously ordered ice cream. The two older kids trooped over to the case and decided on Peanut Butter Fudge for #1 and Vanilla for #2. DH was fine with whatever, at this point he was simply trying not to let his head explode all over the table (which is the kind of thing you'd see on Heroes). You could tell by the look on his face that the whole experience was killing him.
It was approximately 5:30 at this point. I went back up to the counter and marched directly up to a person and announced, kindly, that we had paid already and needed to pick up our ice cream. There was another customer, a guy about my dad's age, already kind of lurking over there where I was (which was past the register, so clearly not in the regular line). While waiting for the person to come scoop my ice cream, I looked at the guy and asked if he was picking up a paid order also - he looked vaguely familiar from the first line an hour ago. He was, but in typical my-dad fashion, he had not marched up to the counter and kindly announced his intentions like any self-respecting woman would have done. I knew my order was going to take a long time and that he was there first, so when the ice cream jockey finally came over to take my order, I pointed to the guy next to me and said that he had been there first. Arrgh. I remember a time when DH and I were very first dating and we met at a Wendy's for lunch. There wasn't anybody in line at the register but in the Disneyland-style line formers a woman was standing, hanging back, still looking at the menu. So DH walked past her and up to the register, and as I followed him I heard her make some noise, I can't remember what she said but I knew she believed us to be cutting in line and was ticked about it. DH totally was oblivious to the whole thing, he'd never cut in line on purpose, but it's been almost 12 years since that happened and I still feel bad. I could have pretended today, as I had that time, that I didn't realize the guy was there first, but I sure as heck don't need another thing to feel guilty about.
The kids see the a cup on top of the ice cream case with regular size spoons, and also a cup of mini-spoons which they prefer to eat with. They would eat every meal with a taster spoon if they could. I wonder if they make mini taster-sized forks and knives, maybe that would be the solution to the no-eating-dinner problem. So #1 and #2 are breathing all over the case and drawing pictures in their breath. I tell #2 to knock it off because it is so germy and gross, so he proceeds to cough all over the thing. I tell #1 that that is why there is glass over the ice cream instead of it just being open. He reaches up to grab a full size spoon (he already has a mini-spoon in his mouth) and knocks the entire cup off the counter. With lightning-quick reflexes, I throw my arm forward and stop the cup against the case while it is still upright, and place it back on the counter. Another father is nearby and sees my fantastic catch and says, "That comes from being a mom!" It was great getting some recognition for the unique skills that mothering requires! It's a rare experience.
After the guy in front of me picked up his 4 kids cones, I placed my order, which consisted of 2 regular hot fudge sundaes and 1 large hot fudge sundae (for me) and a large brownie sundae for DH. I forgot that I had ordered two kids meals, which come with a kid's cone, so we ended up with 6 different ice cream concoctions for the 5 of us. Normally, this would be time to celebrate, but as we were already fairly full from dinner and tired of being at that place, it was just a matter of get it over with, which isn't how ice cream is supposed to be eaten. I personally love ice cream, of all the delicious treats that I could gain serious weight from, ice cream is my favorite. And I got mint chocolate chip with peanut butter tracks (chocolate ice cream with a thick ribbon of peanut butter - yum!). But by then I was exhausted from dealing with everything, I felt like I barely sat the entire time, and just looking at DH made my head want to hurt too, because he was so obviously miserable.
Here's the part that made me irritated, though. I had been handling everything well up until this point and had a fairly good attitude. The Creamery is not just a diner, it also is a mini-grocery store, so that as you wait for your ice cream order, you can lean up against a display of cases of Campbell's soup cans which are on sale. So I said, why don't you just go buy some headache medicine? And he replies, oh, I've got some in the car. What the heck??!? DH is not my mother's child, where the whole game is tough it out until you are just about to throw up from the pain. He has no qualms about taking medicine. So what gives? Why torture yourself if the answer to your problem is sitting in the van, currently parked in the 30 minute parking lot outside? Well, he says, he's been busy watching the kids while I've been up and down dealing with the food and whatnot. Which is absolutely true. Plus, he thought that once he ate it would solve the problem, as it generally does. So it wasn't like it was so obvious for the entire now hour and a half that we've been sitting there. But I am slightly disgruntled, because while the hypoglycemia could not be avoided, it does seem as though the destruction from the WMD could have been mitigated somewhat. In his defense, though, it could have been substantially worse - as he pointed out to me later, he was just trying to sit and be quiet and not yell at the kids or flip out.
The kids are finishing up their ice cream sundaes, #2 of course is pretty bored with his vanilla ice cream and tries some of the extra kid's scoop we've got (English Toffee) but really isn't interested. DH decides to take #2 out to the car to wait for the rest of us to be done. #3 is eating prodigiously, due to the fact that he alone ate almost no real food. #1 had snagged DH's giant brownie sundae instead of his small hot fudge and DH is too miserable to fight about it, or maybe he doesn't really care. But it is way too much ice cream for him too. So we end up with: 1 cup English Toffee, 1/2 cup Candy Bar (#3's leftovers), About 3 spoonfuls of #2's vanilla ice cream sundae, 1/2 of the Brownie sundae #1 started, and 1/2 of the large hot fudge sundae that I started. I combined the two large sundaes into one bowl, which means I've got 4 cups of ice cream to carry out. I make DH and #2 take their ice cream out with them, and they leave. I load #1 up with the first pile of trash to take to the trash can and gather the rest of the trash. When I go to hand him the next load, he is nowhere to be found - he decided to go with everyone else out to the car. Oh, this was it, the completely last straw. Why the heck did I think this whole dinner was going to be a good idea?? I've got #3 covered in chocolate ice cream, a table covered in trash, and a quite full bladder and no way to go to the bathroom, plus a pile of everyone's ice cream to carry to the car. Oh, I am steamed now. I recognize that as a parent, when we go somewhere as a family it is not necessarily the intention of the outing for me specifically to have a good time. It's usually about the kids. But at some point, it has to be at least a little bit about you, too, or else the whole event is nothing but pain. I mean, seriously, I like to go out to eat because it is generally less work than cooking dinner. But this was easily much more work than cooking dinner, and equally unappreciated, as witnessed by the fact that I was just abandoned by everyone able to actually help.
So I clean off the table. I clean off Boy #3. I refill my soda cup so that DH can take some medicine in the car, I know he didn't take his own cup because I just threw it away. I balance the two remaining containers of ice cream in one hand and the cup of soda in the other. #3 is wearing his kid leash so at least I'm not worried about him running too far away from me, but I grab his hand with my pinky and ring finger with the soda hand. A woman in her 60's is sitting at a table next to us alone, saving it for her family which is just starting the wait in line adventure, and she decides to smile and wave at #3, who feels the need to hide his head, thus causing great unbalance in my perfect carrying setup. But that's okay, again with the unique mothering skills I am able to balance all of these things and could probably put a bag of laundry on my head as well.
I have to hold #3's hand even with the leash because it is so crowded and there is no way that he could find the front door through the forest of grown-up legs. We maneuver our way out to the van and DH, who sees me coming, opens his door and takes the ice cream out of my hands so I can get #3 in the car. He climbs in his car seat and helps me buckle his seat belt, and very sweetly says "thank you, mommy!" He is unaware of anyone else's pain, boredom, or frustration, which means that he is the happiest one in the car. It is 6:00 when we drive out of the parking lot. The other two boys are in a decent mood too, and when we get home they go out to play, while DH goes in, takes some medicine, and hides in a dark room, and I start writing this. It is quite therapeutic, I wish I had gotten more out of my system because DH comes down while I'm still a little steamed by the whole evening and he asks me how it went for me. Needless to say, about 15 minutes after that conversation I had to go find him and apologize. But now, #3 is asleep, #2 is in bed after a nice 30 minute soak in the tub followed up by a popsicle, and #1 has a friend over watching a Bill Cosby DVD ("Himself" - the one with the "Dad is great, give us chocolate cake" song I remember from my childhood) so DH and I have been sitting here laughing together for half an hour. Boy, that's one funny guy, Bill Cosby - some of the things he says about parenting are so true that it makes me want to cry, and there was no way that I found those parts as funny as a child.
The kids were fantastic tonight, though, they handled the dinner so well that I don't want to disparage them at all. Really, as horrible as this whole evening could have been, it wasn't, and I'm trying super hard to keep that in mind. Sometimes it is really easy to blame the kids for anything that goes badly, even when they have nothing to do with it, since the fact that they exist and I am their parent can frequently be enough to cause problems. After #1's friend goes home I'm going to ask him what he thinks about dinner, and ask #2 tomorrow, my guess is that they will think the whole thing was great. And then they are going to ask for their leftover ice cream, which might be a problem. :) Oh, and I'll have to follow up this post some other time with my Bean Museum opinions - suffice to say that I am not a big fan of dead animals. But thanks for the vent session, everyone, I feel much better now!
So, we head over there, and probably get in the door at 4:15. How long do you think it should take the average family of 5, including two children who most likely won't eat anything anyhow, to eat a dinner consisting of burgers and fries and a hot fudge sundae for dessert? Well, if you said "Close to two hours," by golly we've got a winner! Yes, that is right, a place that doesn't even have wait staff to take your order, where you have to pick up your own food when they call your name, and then throw your own trash away afterwards, took almost two hours start to finish. Which, in normal child circumstances, is not only close to eternity, but is actually longer than most feature-length kids films, and that doesn't even hold their attention through the whole thing. So, what we are talking about is a crisis in the making, right? Close, but throw this in as a factor: My children were almost perfect angels the entire time. The real problem came from our family's worst enemy: low-blood sugar.
it's really hard to understand the gravity of an illness that doesn't have many outward symptoms, comes and goes on an almost predictable basis, can't kill you, and causes no bodily harm, except what might come from the rest of the family members when they have to deal with you. But if you've lived with someone with hypoglycemia, you would wonder why there isn't as much federal spending on hypoglycemia research as there is, say, on the War on Terror. In some ways, low-blood sugar creates little mini-terrorists from whoever it is currently affecting.
In our family, we learned, about a year ago or so, that DH and Boy #2 both are hypoglycemic. Once we realized that, so many of the problems we've had as a family, or really in our relationships with each other, made so much sense. That's why #2 predictably throws a fit at 5pm every day! That's why Fast Sundays are so intolerable at our house! That's why DH and I had our very first argument when we were dating was over where to go out to eat - neither of us realized that he was long past the point of rational thought and just needed to get food in his body, anything at all.
If you can remember all the way to the beginning of this post, you'll recall that DH said the magic words, "I'm hungry." In War on Terror terms, this is the equivalent of Osama bin Laden declaring a jihad on the Simmons family. Unless we make a swift, pre-emptive strike, we are likely to end up with a variety of Weapons of Mass Destruction, all waiting to be unleashed against the Great White Enemy. And I'm sure you can tell that what we did not get was a swift response. We did not get a pre-emptive strike. What we got was a lot of UN negotiations. What we got was some ineffective left-wing pandering. What we got was a 20 minute wait in line, followed by an additional 15-20 minutes of waiting for our food. And that, my friends, is entirely too long for someone with low-blood sugar.
Hypoglycemia rears its ugly head in a variety of WMD's, like shaking, nausea, irrational thought, uncontrollable anger, yelling, and many other things. The WMD that was utilized at the Creamery on Ninth was Migraine Headache. A particularly nasty weapon, for any of you who have dealt with it. Combine the migraine with antsy, wiggly kids in a very loud, crowded restaurant, and there's the real problem. DH sat at a table with the kids while I waited in line, placed the order, got the drinks, and went back to wait to pick up the food (they forgot to take my name so we were afraid we wouldn't know when it was done). We finally got our food, which DH said had better be the most fantastic food in the world for the wait, and by the time I got back from trying in vain to find some mayo, he had totally finished his meal.
Now the wait was for the kids to finish eating so we could pick up our ice cream. In trying to save time, I paid in advance for our ice cream, so as to avoid the humongous line. Boy #1 ate quickly, Boy #3 pretty much refused to eat, which wasn't surprising, and Boy #2 had drunk so much root beer waiting for his food to come that he was no longer hungry for his cheeseburger. We tried to cajole him into eating some of his burger at least, and I think we got a total of about 4 bites in him and called it a meal. Now, at this point, if we hadn't paid for the ice cream already (and, of course, eaten dinner in an ice cream restaurant) we would have just left without it and stopped at a grocery store and picked up a 1/2 gallon of something for $2.50. But no, my efficiency dictated that I now was obligated to go pick up the previously ordered ice cream. The two older kids trooped over to the case and decided on Peanut Butter Fudge for #1 and Vanilla for #2. DH was fine with whatever, at this point he was simply trying not to let his head explode all over the table (which is the kind of thing you'd see on Heroes). You could tell by the look on his face that the whole experience was killing him.
It was approximately 5:30 at this point. I went back up to the counter and marched directly up to a person and announced, kindly, that we had paid already and needed to pick up our ice cream. There was another customer, a guy about my dad's age, already kind of lurking over there where I was (which was past the register, so clearly not in the regular line). While waiting for the person to come scoop my ice cream, I looked at the guy and asked if he was picking up a paid order also - he looked vaguely familiar from the first line an hour ago. He was, but in typical my-dad fashion, he had not marched up to the counter and kindly announced his intentions like any self-respecting woman would have done. I knew my order was going to take a long time and that he was there first, so when the ice cream jockey finally came over to take my order, I pointed to the guy next to me and said that he had been there first. Arrgh. I remember a time when DH and I were very first dating and we met at a Wendy's for lunch. There wasn't anybody in line at the register but in the Disneyland-style line formers a woman was standing, hanging back, still looking at the menu. So DH walked past her and up to the register, and as I followed him I heard her make some noise, I can't remember what she said but I knew she believed us to be cutting in line and was ticked about it. DH totally was oblivious to the whole thing, he'd never cut in line on purpose, but it's been almost 12 years since that happened and I still feel bad. I could have pretended today, as I had that time, that I didn't realize the guy was there first, but I sure as heck don't need another thing to feel guilty about.
The kids see the a cup on top of the ice cream case with regular size spoons, and also a cup of mini-spoons which they prefer to eat with. They would eat every meal with a taster spoon if they could. I wonder if they make mini taster-sized forks and knives, maybe that would be the solution to the no-eating-dinner problem. So #1 and #2 are breathing all over the case and drawing pictures in their breath. I tell #2 to knock it off because it is so germy and gross, so he proceeds to cough all over the thing. I tell #1 that that is why there is glass over the ice cream instead of it just being open. He reaches up to grab a full size spoon (he already has a mini-spoon in his mouth) and knocks the entire cup off the counter. With lightning-quick reflexes, I throw my arm forward and stop the cup against the case while it is still upright, and place it back on the counter. Another father is nearby and sees my fantastic catch and says, "That comes from being a mom!" It was great getting some recognition for the unique skills that mothering requires! It's a rare experience.
After the guy in front of me picked up his 4 kids cones, I placed my order, which consisted of 2 regular hot fudge sundaes and 1 large hot fudge sundae (for me) and a large brownie sundae for DH. I forgot that I had ordered two kids meals, which come with a kid's cone, so we ended up with 6 different ice cream concoctions for the 5 of us. Normally, this would be time to celebrate, but as we were already fairly full from dinner and tired of being at that place, it was just a matter of get it over with, which isn't how ice cream is supposed to be eaten. I personally love ice cream, of all the delicious treats that I could gain serious weight from, ice cream is my favorite. And I got mint chocolate chip with peanut butter tracks (chocolate ice cream with a thick ribbon of peanut butter - yum!). But by then I was exhausted from dealing with everything, I felt like I barely sat the entire time, and just looking at DH made my head want to hurt too, because he was so obviously miserable.
Here's the part that made me irritated, though. I had been handling everything well up until this point and had a fairly good attitude. The Creamery is not just a diner, it also is a mini-grocery store, so that as you wait for your ice cream order, you can lean up against a display of cases of Campbell's soup cans which are on sale. So I said, why don't you just go buy some headache medicine? And he replies, oh, I've got some in the car. What the heck??!? DH is not my mother's child, where the whole game is tough it out until you are just about to throw up from the pain. He has no qualms about taking medicine. So what gives? Why torture yourself if the answer to your problem is sitting in the van, currently parked in the 30 minute parking lot outside? Well, he says, he's been busy watching the kids while I've been up and down dealing with the food and whatnot. Which is absolutely true. Plus, he thought that once he ate it would solve the problem, as it generally does. So it wasn't like it was so obvious for the entire now hour and a half that we've been sitting there. But I am slightly disgruntled, because while the hypoglycemia could not be avoided, it does seem as though the destruction from the WMD could have been mitigated somewhat. In his defense, though, it could have been substantially worse - as he pointed out to me later, he was just trying to sit and be quiet and not yell at the kids or flip out.
The kids are finishing up their ice cream sundaes, #2 of course is pretty bored with his vanilla ice cream and tries some of the extra kid's scoop we've got (English Toffee) but really isn't interested. DH decides to take #2 out to the car to wait for the rest of us to be done. #3 is eating prodigiously, due to the fact that he alone ate almost no real food. #1 had snagged DH's giant brownie sundae instead of his small hot fudge and DH is too miserable to fight about it, or maybe he doesn't really care. But it is way too much ice cream for him too. So we end up with: 1 cup English Toffee, 1/2 cup Candy Bar (#3's leftovers), About 3 spoonfuls of #2's vanilla ice cream sundae, 1/2 of the Brownie sundae #1 started, and 1/2 of the large hot fudge sundae that I started. I combined the two large sundaes into one bowl, which means I've got 4 cups of ice cream to carry out. I make DH and #2 take their ice cream out with them, and they leave. I load #1 up with the first pile of trash to take to the trash can and gather the rest of the trash. When I go to hand him the next load, he is nowhere to be found - he decided to go with everyone else out to the car. Oh, this was it, the completely last straw. Why the heck did I think this whole dinner was going to be a good idea?? I've got #3 covered in chocolate ice cream, a table covered in trash, and a quite full bladder and no way to go to the bathroom, plus a pile of everyone's ice cream to carry to the car. Oh, I am steamed now. I recognize that as a parent, when we go somewhere as a family it is not necessarily the intention of the outing for me specifically to have a good time. It's usually about the kids. But at some point, it has to be at least a little bit about you, too, or else the whole event is nothing but pain. I mean, seriously, I like to go out to eat because it is generally less work than cooking dinner. But this was easily much more work than cooking dinner, and equally unappreciated, as witnessed by the fact that I was just abandoned by everyone able to actually help.
So I clean off the table. I clean off Boy #3. I refill my soda cup so that DH can take some medicine in the car, I know he didn't take his own cup because I just threw it away. I balance the two remaining containers of ice cream in one hand and the cup of soda in the other. #3 is wearing his kid leash so at least I'm not worried about him running too far away from me, but I grab his hand with my pinky and ring finger with the soda hand. A woman in her 60's is sitting at a table next to us alone, saving it for her family which is just starting the wait in line adventure, and she decides to smile and wave at #3, who feels the need to hide his head, thus causing great unbalance in my perfect carrying setup. But that's okay, again with the unique mothering skills I am able to balance all of these things and could probably put a bag of laundry on my head as well.
I have to hold #3's hand even with the leash because it is so crowded and there is no way that he could find the front door through the forest of grown-up legs. We maneuver our way out to the van and DH, who sees me coming, opens his door and takes the ice cream out of my hands so I can get #3 in the car. He climbs in his car seat and helps me buckle his seat belt, and very sweetly says "thank you, mommy!" He is unaware of anyone else's pain, boredom, or frustration, which means that he is the happiest one in the car. It is 6:00 when we drive out of the parking lot. The other two boys are in a decent mood too, and when we get home they go out to play, while DH goes in, takes some medicine, and hides in a dark room, and I start writing this. It is quite therapeutic, I wish I had gotten more out of my system because DH comes down while I'm still a little steamed by the whole evening and he asks me how it went for me. Needless to say, about 15 minutes after that conversation I had to go find him and apologize. But now, #3 is asleep, #2 is in bed after a nice 30 minute soak in the tub followed up by a popsicle, and #1 has a friend over watching a Bill Cosby DVD ("Himself" - the one with the "Dad is great, give us chocolate cake" song I remember from my childhood) so DH and I have been sitting here laughing together for half an hour. Boy, that's one funny guy, Bill Cosby - some of the things he says about parenting are so true that it makes me want to cry, and there was no way that I found those parts as funny as a child.
The kids were fantastic tonight, though, they handled the dinner so well that I don't want to disparage them at all. Really, as horrible as this whole evening could have been, it wasn't, and I'm trying super hard to keep that in mind. Sometimes it is really easy to blame the kids for anything that goes badly, even when they have nothing to do with it, since the fact that they exist and I am their parent can frequently be enough to cause problems. After #1's friend goes home I'm going to ask him what he thinks about dinner, and ask #2 tomorrow, my guess is that they will think the whole thing was great. And then they are going to ask for their leftover ice cream, which might be a problem. :) Oh, and I'll have to follow up this post some other time with my Bean Museum opinions - suffice to say that I am not a big fan of dead animals. But thanks for the vent session, everyone, I feel much better now!
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