I Wouldn't Bother Reading This If I Were You

I started writing this post on Friday, with the intention of, you know, finishing it at some point that day. Apparently I was so tired and grouchy that nothing I wrote even seems remotely amusing to me, so read this at your own peril. Hopefully you don't end up as grouchy as me on any given day. That's my disclaimer, and I'm sticking to it.


6:10 - I wake up and see that the hall light is on, which means that Boy #3 is awake too early. I could get up, find him, corral him back into bed for an hour, but I think, what's the point? Bag it, I say, and go back to bed.

7:25 - Alarm clock goes off and I nudge DH awake (who, in addition to the white noise machine, also has earplugs to help him sleep through the night) and tell him to get up with the kids. He does and I fall back asleep.

7:50 - Boy #1 is off to school, so DH climbs back into bed and hugs me, which wakes me up. Not exactly what I intended by "get up with the kids" - I kind of had in mind more than 25 minutes of extra sleep. The kids are being good downstairs so we can stay in bed until 8:30, by which time I am seething, absolutely fuming over the fact that I'm awake and that he has the audacity to be touching me. Wait a sec, those are some pretty powerful emotions for not having had any contact with people yet today. I can only come to the conclusion that I DON'T WANT TO BE PREGNANT ANYMORE!!!!! I'm not an overly emotional person in general, but I've been crying and yelling, alternately, this whole week. Someone should just lock me in a closet for the next nine weeks.

8:30 - DH gets out of bed and I lay there, trying to think of things other than how irrationally angry I am. I think about how grateful the whole family probably is that I'm not interacting with them today, but that's not a cheerful thought. So I think maybe I'll call my parents - they are always fun to talk to, and I finally watched last Sunday's Amazing Race and we can discuss who got kicked off. But it's kind of a jerky thing to call someone and say, "I'm in a really horrible mood, so if you don't want to bear the brunt of it, you'd better start cheering me up right now." Then I think, maybe I'll blog this day, my dad has said it's been a while since I wrote about my day. Somehow that makes me slightly less grouchy and I think maybe the family can handle me if I get up now and try not to talk to people too much.

9:00 - I take Boy #2, who seems perfectly happy today, to school. He's turned into the shoe-tying pro, not only has he mastered the two-bunny-ear method but today figured out the one-bunny-ear method and yesterday, as he reported, he tied a triple knot! He and his carpooling friend trade stories about how many times they can tie a knot in their shoes. We've figured out that if we get to school only 3 minutes earlier than normal, we avoid almost any traffic in the parking lot/drop off area and today we sail through, a stroke of luck.

9:10 - I get home and Boy #3 wants a cup of milk. The bad mood is back when I look at the mountain of dirty dishes in the sink and the floor in the living room, which is littered with empty sippy cups. I know without looking that there are no clean sippy cups. And yesterday was my day to do dishes so I have no one to be mad at for that except me. Although it sure would have been nice if DH had done them for me yesterday... that's not fair and I'm back to being mad at myself. Grrr.

9:30 - I get an interesting phone call from Qwest saying that my recent order, to upgrade the speed of my internet, has been completed. That's funny, I didn't notice a blazing fast connection - it must be so fast that it seems slow! Ha ha, what are the chances. I go to CNET and do a bandwidth test, it claims that I'm functioning at 215 kbps. Just so everyone's clear, I used to have a 256 kbps connection, but I upgraded to 1.5 mbps which was supposed to be working on April 5 (yesterday). Yesterday we got an email claiming that our order is complete, so DH went to mlb.com to test our speed to see if he can buy mlb.tv and watch baseball games on our computer. It was something like 125 kbps. I ask DH to give me that link and I'm testing it right now - looks like we're up to 192 kbps. All right, my favorite tech support family, what's going wrong here? Is someone going to tell me that, in fact, I need a new modem or router or something? or that it's because I'm using a wireless connection? Or could it be my internet filter slowing things down? Oh, I can feel that bad mood creeping in again... And if this leads to an actual phone call to a Qwest employee, it might push me over the edge. Keep the knives away from me.

10:00 - I check our own site and try to download a file - it's downloading at 25 kbps. I'm calling my dad.

10:05 - Dad's asleep, mom takes a message and asks if I am really okay with my brother coming to stay here all summer? I say, we're fine with it, I can't imagine why he'd think it'd be fun staying here with what will soon be 4 kids. The plan is for him to get a job for the summer, somewhere local so he can ride a bike there and so that he isn't sitting around the house all day. Right after I get off the phone, the washer repair company calls to say that the technician is on his way and will be there in a few minutes. I better get dressed.

10:30 - One of #3's friends comes over to be babysat and I send them outside with strict instructions to share and not fight and not hit. It goes like this: "Are you going to fight?" "Yes!" "No, no fighting! Are you going to hit?" "Yes!" "NO, no hitting! Okay, so are you going to hit?" "No." "That's right, no hitting."

10:33 - The friend is crying outside and I see him walking towards the house from the swingset. Another swingset induced accident? No, both boys agree that Boy #3 kicked him. I guess my instructions weren't explicit enough. Next time I'll include kicking and maybe poking in the eye. And any other 3 Stooges behaviors I can come up with.

10:45 - The repairman shows up and gets to work on the washer and dryer. At 11:10 - I get the verdict - $375 to repair both, but he says they are in good enough shape that they should last a while yet once these things are fixed. I figure when I'm ready to buy new appliances, I'm going to want the biggest capacity washer/dryer in existence, and that won't be cheap, so we'll fix this one this time.

11:20 - I call my dad who is now awake and he confirms that yes, this looks like the speed we ought to be getting. It has to do with the number of bits and bytes and divide by 8 when there's a full moon and that's how fast it's supposed to be. I tell him I was looking for blazing fast speed, and he says, well, it is blazing fast compared to what it was. I tell him it's like I was at turtle speed before and now I'm at turtle on amphetamine speed. But it's still a turtle. He suggested I try downloading a book from Audible and see how much faster that is. Now I'm second guessing myself as to how much of a difference the fiber optic network will make when it's installed - I've kind of looked at that as my internet salvation, but maybe I've got my expectations too high.

11:30 - My friend comes over to pick up her son. Fortunately he is no longer crying from when #3 was climbing on his couch and may or may not have stepped on him. We chat for a while about not getting enough sleep - she is also pregnant and has 3 kids already too so she is the perfect person to commiserate with.

12:00 - #3 is playing outside in the front yard so I prop the front door open and sit on the couch so I can see him out the window. We are waiting for some Home Depot gift cards that we got with our credit card rewards points to come in the mail so that we can buy a screen door. Until then, however, we are hoping that not too many bugs come in, or criminals for that matter. I had a neighbors cat come in yesterday - I'm not sure which DH would prefer, the cat, the bugs or the criminal (he really doesn't like cats).

12:15 - Boy #2 comes home and runs outside to water his plant - a sunflower seed in a cup that he brought home from school 3 days ago and has included in his prayers ever since. Also, I see a box of chicken broth out on the counter, with a half-full cup next to it. The cup might contain chicken broth, or it could contain apple juice, but I'm not willing to taste it and see. I leave it on the counter so I can interrogate every child who can speak well enough to possibly confess to drinking chicken broth. Not that they will get in trouble for it, it's mostly so I can laugh at them. Like the time I had a Propel water bottle filled with homemade salad dressing that I had warned #2 not to drink, but #1 had already taken a swig of and had to go spit and rinse his mouth out. That'll teach them to get into my stuff without asking!

12:30 - The repairman is finished and comes upstairs to settle up. Ends up being $400 after tax. I throw in a load of laundry and realize that I can't hear it! Hooray!

1:00 - DH comes home for lunch because the people who rented the office next door moved out yesterday, and took the microwave with them. Which he didn't realize until he had a bowl of oatmeal ready to put into the microwave. So he came home to eat and then took the car to the doctor's office to get some new allergy medicine. I didn't realize how lucky I was that I never have had allergies - I can see from DH and Boys #1 and #3 that they are miserable. He leaves and I turn on Judge Judy.

1:30 - I decide, since People's Court is a rerun, that I'll start working on my sharing time for sunday.

2:30 - DH comes home with the car from his doctor's appointment and a subsequent trip to the Orem Owlz box office to pick up tickets to tomorrow's Easter Egg Hunt there. The person he is working with (through our only client - he gets passed around to different employees there) is home sick today, so DH hasn't gotten an assignment from him, and it doesn't look like he's going to. Since we switched to the cell phone, the advantage is that he can be called at home if there is work to be done, and it looks like today he lucked out. So he decides not to go back into work, one of the few luxuries of self-employment.

He finds me looking at Qwest's website, trying to find an email address to ask someone there if they can confirm how fast my internet connection really is. I tried my dad's Audible download suggestion, and it was downloading at around 23 kbps. The same with everything else I downloaded today, and it feels like about the same as before, although I don't have documentation to prove that allegation. There doesn't look like there's any way to avoid actually calling and talking to a human, which I want to avoid at all costs, so eventually I find an email address under "Billing" and decide to take my chances with that. The automated response says they'll respond within one business day... but it's Friday ... so it will be Monday before they tell me there's nothing they can do.

3:00 - DH says he'll go grocery shopping for me if I make a list. Bingo! That's great! He is primarily trying to staunch the flow of junk food into the house, which I support, mostly. This is in response to my rant about my doctor making me feel bad about my weight gain. DH is very supportive of me, always has been, but is always watching what he eats because he gains weight like within minutes of eating an Iceberg shake. I told him that the bad-food situation would be better if I didn't buy it in the first place, and that if he did the grocery shopping that would stop a lot of it. I also said that I could give him my debit and credit cards to stop myself from going to, say, the gas station and loading up on junk there. But that sounds a little extreme, so we haven't gone there yet.

So I watch people's court while I make a shopping list, and I call out to DH a case about a woman who doesn't want to pay half of the electric bill because she claims that she doesn't use as much electricity as her roommate, as she comes home and sits in her dark room and doesn't watch tv or anything. The judge laughs at her, and so do we. But the next defendant reminds us of a particularly nasty client that we had last year, and DH tells me to hurry up with the list so he doesn't have to think about her. I send him on his way with a rather extensive but junk free list. As soon as he leaves I realize that there's no Easter preparations in the house, including egg-dyeing supplies or egg-filling candy (what I bought supposedly as easter candy is pretty much gone- don't tell me this hasn't happened in your house too once!)

4:30 - I get Boy #3 in the tub after a small argument, and start making Garlic Lime Chicken for dinner, which DH loves.

5:15 - I am 30 seconds away from having dinner finished, when I realize that I'm out of lime juice. I call my neighbor and miraculously she has a bottle. It, unfortunately, expired in April 2005. So if they find 5 bodies in our house tomorrow, you know why. Well, someone will probably not eat it and therefore survive.

5:20 - DH comes home with our Home Depot gift cards and a package of egg-dyeing supplies. One more reason I'm glad I married him. Oh, and $197 worth of groceries.

5:30 - Oh my gosh, someone mark the calendar, this is the second night this week that dinner was eaten by every opinion-bearing child without complaining! Earlier this week I made White Pizza which I haven't made in a while, and the kids - I'm not making this up - literally cheered when I told them! And they ate it like crazy, too. Of course, this is all a big set-up, so that next time I make White Pizza they are in prime position to mess with my head by not eating a single bite and whining that they hate this food, it's yucky, and can't we have a bowl of cereal instead?

6:00 - We all pile into the car and head to a BYU baseball game. It's been a while since we've been to a game - last September, I think. We remembered that Boy #1 loves the games and actually watches, Boy #3 sits really well for longer than we expect, and Boy #2 is ambivalent to the whole thing. It's funny how 7 months can change your perception of reality. In reality, Boy #1 watches, mostly. Boy #3 sits well for about 10 minutes, then gets in and out of his chair until we leave. But when he is sitting, he does actually pay some attention, he cheers and claps at appropriate times, although not necessarily for the correct team. Boy #2 is not ambivalent, he is pretty much anti-baseball games. Almost the first things out of his mouth are "I'm hungry" which I know is baloney because he ate dinner 45 minutes before. What he really meant was "I'm bored." And, "I don't want to be here." Also, "I need more attention than I'm currently getting, because everyone else in my family actually has the attention span to watch this boring game and I would rather they pay attention to me. Which I will get, one way or another." Not that he says anything but "I'm hungry" - the rest you have to read between the lines. We got to the game at 6:30 or so, paid $15 for a family pack of tickets, and left by 7:30, after about 3ish innings.

8:00 - We get home and get #2 in bed, and nothing else eventful happens as we get the other two to bed at 8:30 and 9. DH decides that this would be the perfect night to watch "The Illusionist," a movie we borrowed from our next door neighbors about 2 weeks ago and have yet to watch. Of course, by the time all the puttering around the house is finished (including me getting my pajamas on, the family room at least getting straightened up, laundry getting switched, etc.) we don't start the movie until 9:30. This is bad news, because I'm already contemplating what time I can get to bed, and thinking it should be soon, but I can't say that out loud, for a variety of reasons.

10:30 - The movie, which is good, is halfway over and the stupid dvd player chokes and won't continue playing the movie. Must not be up to it's high standards, after all, a dvd player can't be expected to play just anything can it? I say, this would be the perfect stopping point and we can watch the rest tomorrow, but DH says, But we're halfway through! I don't want to stop now! The grouchiness comes back, because this is a perfect example of two people being on completely different wavelengths. There is nothing in the whole entire world more important, in my mind, than me getting enough sleep. It's the reason I've been so grouchy and depressed and eating too much junk. Unfortunately, the only other family member who has any input into this situation doesn't quite grasp the importance of sleep. I mean, if you asked him, he'd tell you that I need more sleep, that I complain about it a lot, that he definitely knows how important that is. But when push comes to shove, I don't think that the actions always match up to the words. And it's tough for both of us, because it's not like I want to go to bed early every night - I like having some amount of time to talk to him without kids interrupting, and I instigate staying up too late as much as he does.

11:30 - We finish the movie and head to bed. It was a surprisingly good movie - I hadn't really heard about it, but it was a good one, I'd recommend it. And in the days since then, we started the audio commentary by the writer/director and it was surprisingly good too. I was starting to drift off towards the end of the movie but the ending totally woke me up, it was that good. We went upstairs and had to rehash the movie, then have the obligatory middle of the night conversation about something that seemed really important at the time but I can't remember what it was now, then read scriptures. By the time I went to bed it was 12:30. As an example of the pain this caused, I was so tired and grouchy all day Saturday that it isn't until now, Sunday afternoon, that I am finishing writing this, much to the consternation of my dad and brother, who I hear have been checking for updates to my blog every two minutes. So I'm rushing to polish this off and post it, although my guess is they have gone to bed by now anyways. Dad and little brother, this update's for you!