I can't be the only mother who ever...

1. Poured beer in a coffee mug to watch the kids play out on the front lawn at 10am...on a Tuesday.

2. Wiped a snotty nose with my sleeve and then rolled it up.

3. Threw away an outfit rather than wash the poop off of it.

4. Counted Cherry Kool Aid as one of their 5 fruits/vegetables for the day.

5. Fed a cold and starved a fever.

6.Dropped a kid off at a birthday party without a present and spent the time they were at the party shopping for and wrapping the present.

7.Sent the kids to bed without a bath. 

8. Used the kids as an excuse to get out of something I didn't want to do.

9. Turned the radio way up to drown out the crying.

10. Dressed a boy in pink sleepers.

11. Painted over the yogurt smeared wall rather than try and wash it off.

12.  "Lost" a particularly irritatingg toy.

13. Did not chase after the bus on the first day of school. 

14. Got my money's worth out of a diaper. 

15. Raided a piggy bank to pay for the pizza.  

Take 9 minutes


and watch this.   It's inspiring and funny and worth it. 

Ellen's Commencement Speech to Tulane University

(no, I'm not ready to start back to blogging just yet - it's crazy busy around here and each time I think I have something interesting to say I lose my train of thought and decide that it wasn't important and that it would only bore you silly....consider yourself lucky...) 

The To Do List


1. Keep studying for next part of training I'm teaching next week.

2. Take dog to veterinarian to figure out what weird bumps are...while there update shots and get flea/tick prevention.  Figure out how to squeeze $200 from a stone.

3. Shop for birthday presents for the 3 parties this weekend.

4. Buy tiny toiletries for plane trip.

5. Take #1 to swimming.

6. Go to mall and try to find suitable business attire that doesn't cost more than I'm making on this training.

7. Clean car.

8. Clean dog.

9. Clean house.

10. Take #2 to baseball practice.

11. Take #3 to soccer practice.

12. Take #2 and #3 to swimming.

13. Go grocery shopping.

14. Make dinner.

15. Clean up after dinner.

16. Yell at #2 for whining about his homework.

17. Apologize (but not really mean it)

18. Read email and discover that bullshit does indeed baffle brains since I passed that teaching exam.   Only two more to go...and several online seminars on abusing children...um...child abuse. 

19. Have mole removed.

20. Attend day long meeting about training next week maybe get answers to important questions like what we're actually doing.

21. Scratch behind.

22. Behind what?   C'mon...you know you were thinking it...

23. Apologize to blog readers for being so flakey lately. 

24. Mean it.

25.  Go to bed....

Saturday Morning Laziness

What follows is an old monologue I wrote for a class many years ago - I'm feeling lazy and have so much to do that I'm recyling old material for the blog.  I promise to write new stuff soon. I was reminded of it when a friend who's just had her second baby mentioned that she'd love a third arm.   

 

 

"I have kids. 

 

 I know it’s a shocker – with this rock star body and all.  But yeah, I have three kids.  When people find out that I have 3 kids they ask if we’re done yet…duh…I already have more children than arms.  

 Now, that would be a useful evolutionary advance – sprouting a new arm with each child instead of a bigger ass. 

People are either amazed when I’m out with all three – Wow, you really have your hands full!  Or else somehow I turn invisible.  

Even though I am pushing a stroller the size of a tank no one will hold the fricking door for me. 

See that’s when the extra arm would really come in handy…so I could balance the baby, push the stroller and flip the bird. 

 

G’ah,  I  suck at being a parent. 

 

 I’m the queen of “do as I say and not as I do” parenting.  I’m pushing vegetables on the kids while scarfing back a Snickers.  I’m not responsible enough to be in charge of their food.  

My youngest is 11 months old so he’s at the age where they will put anything they find on the floor in their mouths – I’ve taken to scattering Cheerios around in the hopes that he’ll actually put something nutritious in his mouth.  

 

My husband worries more about their eating habits than I do – that’s because he’s at work all day so the poor man misses out on all the good stuff …playing dress up, finger painting, fishing cornflakes out of their nostrils.   He’ll come home from work and ask what they had for lunch and I’ll say “3 rocks, a scoop of play doh and a crayon…”  usually I’m only half joking. 

 

As if the food thing wasn’t bad enough I’m apparently supposed to be the guardian of everyone’s bladder.   I’ve had three kids…I’m barely able to control my own bladder but there I am “Did you  pee, do you need to pee? Everyone go pee before we go, who needs to pee? Please pee…”   The bumper sticker on my minivan says “In case of the Rapture, we should all try to pee…” 

 

 No, that’s not true.   I don’t have a minivan.

 

You know what else?  I don’t care who had it first.   It’s hard to break up the fights when I just don’t care who had it first.  I tried the King Solomon approach.   – you can’t decide who had the Barbie first so we’re going to cut it in half and you’ll each get a half.   But they thought that was coooooool.   They’re either going to be surgeons or psychopaths. 

 

I think my parenting problems stem from me being the youngest in my family.  I never had anyone to taunt, so now my kids seem like the prefect targets.   It’s hard to resist holding half a Barbie over each of their angelic little heads and forcing them to jump for it.  Now that I have three kids though, someone is getting left out of the mommy taunting. 

 

  If only I had that third arm."   

When life gives you lemons...

um.  I guess then you'll have your vitamin C for the day. 

I'd love to rant.  I'd love to do one of those delicious curse filled rants about all the rotten things going on in my life.   They're minor....but they're irritating.   I would like to rant about the weather and that stupid exam and the sleepover where no one slept and about how it's weird to have someone else's child staring at you when you're trying to sleep and how I can't do anything about NYS property taxes so squawking to me about them is kind of a waste of breath and that I do not enjoy the bags of poop aspect of owning a dog and that when I've got something planned for dinner it's pretty rude of the green pepper (a key ingredient for the planned dinner) to go rotten just when I'm about to use it and that taking on a training job that requires flying when I'm out of Xanax which requires another doctor's appointment when I hate doctor's appointments is kind of stupid but what can I do since it's money and I like money and that the Fit by Forty programme seems to have hit a wall even though it was going to be back on track today until the school called to say that #2 wasn't feeling well and could I come and get him (instead of going to the Y) and I'm trying to put ads up on this thing but I can't figure out how to do it and I do so carry my cell phone with me it's just that you always call when I've walked away from it for ten minutes and I always come back to the little voice mail thing - maybe you ought to be explaining to me just how you know that I've walked away from the damned thing rather than me explaining why I don't answer when you call it, eh?  Eh?  

I'd love to rant but there's just nothing to rant about.  

 

This Week

3 Exams (4 hours each)

Child Abuse Prevention Workshop (online 2 hours)

Fingerprinting

Tracking Down Transcripts for both degrees

Requesting Copy of Ontario Teaching Qualifications Letter

Waiting 6 to 12 months to hear

Getting to supply teach in the State of New York...price....uh...kind of a pain in the ass, really.

What's Your Damage, Mommy?

#3 went through a phase where he was playing with Pokemon or Digimon or Bakugon or Tampon or some such thing and each little character had an amount of "damage" it could do.   This little plastic creature could do 10 damage or 15 damage and so #3 would come up to me and ask what my damage was...the Dude found this very funny.  

The past few days have got me wondering what my damage is though.

I seem to be stuck in the mud and unable to motivate myself beyond barely functioning.   At the same time I have a million and one things to do and they're just not getting done.   Today I am supposed to be studying for an exam and I decided to climb up on the roof and clean out the eavestroughs.  Who does that?  You've got to have a very well developed avoidance muscle to think that balancing up on the roof clearing out enough pine needles to build a hut would be better than going back over Bloom's Taxonomy (who thought I'd ever need that again?).      Does it mean that I really should not be even trying this exam if I'd prefer to be out on the roof?   

Part of my problem is that I come from the land of "Suck it up, Sister" and too much reflection on just why you're having trouble functioning is not encouraged.   Drown your feelings.   Walk it off.   Who wants ice cream?     Identify the problem and fix it.    Just frickin' do it.    

It's identifying what exactly my damage is that's the problem at this point.  

So, what's your damage?  

So Proud

 Spock Backs Star Trek Premiere in Vulcan, Alberta

Okay, when you read that article you need to know that the tourism director for Vulcan, Alberta is a good friend of mine from high school.  I'm so proud of her I'm almost bursting.   

You can go join the facebook group to bring the Star Trek premiere to Vulcan - go...do it...it's so cool... 

I'm strangely happy about this week's turn of events for Vulcan. 



I've got a bad feeling about this....

d'ja ever get yourself into a situation that you just knew wasn't going to end well?   D'ja ever have to ask people to do something that required a fair amount of understanding and sort of making them bend over backwards to accomodate someone else but you knew that the end result of the bassackwardness wasn't going to be great?   It was just going to result in ruffled feathers and a possibly extra large stain on your reputation?    All in the name of experience?  

No?  Me neither.  

If I only had a brain

Tough week.  

The good news is that Scruffy II is here now and very comfortable in his new life as #3's most cherished possession.   Oh and also kind of awesome is that I had emailed the company that gave the little stuffed dogs out as a promotional item before I emailed the preschool parents and had told them the whole sob story about Scruffy being lost.    A lady from the company emailed me and asked for the address so she could send #3 a new Scruffy - she even called him by name.  It was beyond cute and super kind - I can just imagine she's somebody's mommy and she understood the whole lost love object feeling.     So if you should need flea control for your dog think about the one with the little yellow lab puppy with the blue bandanna...  I not going to do a real promotion for them since I don't actually use their product but a kind deed is worth my giving a half-assed endorsement, non? 

Happy Birthday to my sister - forgot that one this week.  I really shouldn't forget it since I drank with her age of majority card for years and the date ought to be burned into my memory.    

The Dude came down with a wicked illness - might be the plague...who knows.  It must have made him a really popular guy on his flight to Minnesota.    He's having a crappy week too since there's nothing quite so awful as being sick away from home in a generic hotel room without your mommy to put a warm sock with Vick's Vapor Rub on it around your neck.    

I'd love to feel sorry for him but since he's in Minnesota...I'm here with the kids.  Dangling at the end of my rope as it is and with the addition of the Odyssey of the Mind weekend...well, here's what happened

IMG_4846 Get it?  It's a bottle of wine with My Name on it.    I know...when I'm left alone with three kids and a dog and an ill tempered cat I get up to no good.    

The Dude's step-grandfather passed away on Friday.  He'd been ill for some time and it wasn't unexpected but he was a wonderful, kind man and it's a sadder world without him.  

And jumping off from there...why is it next to impossible to find a nice respectable dress for a 10 year old to wear to a funeral?    Not everything they do requires sparkles, designer people!    Just a nice, simple dress without spangles or "I ROCK!" written on it would be fine.   

So that's kind of disjointed and weird...but check back on the picture and you might understand why. 

Happy Sunday Night  y'all!