Since Boy turned two years old, I've been asking Husband to go on a short vacation. A family vacation. Not to anyplace expensive (like Madrid or Malaysia) or anyplace unrealistic (like St Petersberg of the African savanna). Local to a certain degree. Not Disneyland (I don't believe it is cost effect to take any child under the age of six to Dland - they aren't tall enough for the vast majority of the rides and some scare the crap out of them). But to Legoland. Or Yosemite. Or to visit friends in Phoenix. Or to Bryce National Park or Grand Canyon.
But his answers always seem to be kind of ridiculous. "Boy is too young to enjoy (fill in the blank)." "What is there that is worth seeing?"
In Husband's mind, the best vacation is going back to his hometown and hanging out with his friends. He's already said that next summer, we will go back to his hometown and hang out with his best friend and his best friend's young family. Which means Boy and I will hang out with the wife and kid while Husband and his best friend go off to the best friend's fishing shack for three days of drinking and general stupidity. A howling great time for them, but seriously boring time for the Mommies who will spend their time chasing toddlers and trying to guess when they will get to eat a meal. Or he wants to go to Vegas without Boy but of course, in his mind, that means my Mom will have to take care of Boy for five days which is about four and a half days too long.
My in laws moved from where Husband grew up to where my Father in Law (FIL) grew up because they could buy more for their buck. They have a big piece of land with a nice house in the middle of nowhere. They didn't grow up in happy households and left home as soon as they possibly could, joining the military. While my Mother in Law (MIL) left the military after ten years to raise Husband, my FIL stayed in, growing increasing unhappy. The more unhappy he was, the more he and MIL drank.
When Husband and I were dating, my MIL gave me a photo album of Husband. It was 50 pages long but there were maybe 10 pictures of Husband and the rest were dizzy pictures of drunken revels. They would have a party any night that FIL didn't have to work the next day. Because there was little money in the house, their family vacations were spent at home with days of cleaning up and nights of drunken revelry. If they went anywhere, they were car trips from where they lived in the Midwest to where FIL grew up. Hours spent in a car with smoking parents who were upset about the expense.
Even before Boy was born, we would visit my in laws and our week was spent in the house doing nothing. My FIL would work on his classic truck or go down to the local garage to help out. My MIL would work around the house or go to her women's club meetings or sit around smoking and reading. After awhile, I would get stir crazy. It wasn't like I could walk into town (the town a half mile away consists of a general store, two churches and a post office) to find amusement. Or any local sites. I suggested one time we drive to a famous landmark two hours away in a famous town which we did. My FIL spent the entire drive grim and angry. It was off season and almost everything was closed. His attitude was that since I proposed it, I should have done the research in finding things to do there.
I grew up with a Father who had the attitude if someone came to visit us, we should get out to show them the area. He also believed that we should enjoy the area within 300 miles of our home as much as possible since we lived in California. My early memories are of being carried out to our station wagon late at night on Thursday night and driving for a couple of hours on our way to one of my parents' friends homes. We'd stop half way, have sandwiches, then drive on to their houses. We'd spend the weekend having fun before driving home on Sunday so Dad could get to work on Monday. I saw Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Sea World, the redwoods, etc before I was ten because we'd have friends and family visit and my Dad would pack us all up so we could see everything.
Boy is nearly three years old. We've seen the redwoods only because I insisted. I had asked that Husband ask his parents to stay an extra week so we could go to Yosemite since Husband has been wanting to see it since he moved to California almost a decade ago. The blank stare from Husband. My in laws are coming for their customary one week (you can sent a watch by it). No trip. It'll be five days (day one is a travel day in and day seven is a travel day out) of them being inmates of our home. FIL will do odd jobs around the house Husband can't or won't do. MIL will go buy books then sit in the house reading our library of books. She might accompany me to Target to buy things for Boy or to Costco. But for the most part, there isn't a whole lot else that they have in mind to do. Husband works the entire week they are here and sees very little of them.
In retrospect, the idea of Yosemite with them is ridiculous. They complain of their physical problems that restrict them from doing anything like walking around to admire the park. My MIL has found excuses since Boy was nine pounds to not hold him. My FIL has a bad back so he can't sit in a car for that long. Despite the fact I was born with congenital issues with my legs and I have arthritis in my back, I keep on keeping on. My friends know that I can walk for 45 minutes without a problem but I have to rest for at least 15 minutes so my legs and back can get a break. I refuse to let my physical problems slow me down.
My Mother has proposed to spend some money she is getting from an inheritance on a family vacation. An Alaskan cruise next year. She is willing to pay for our cruises and a couple of nights of hotel stays before and after the cruise. We have to cover airfare and all our extras on the ship. I mentioned it to my in laws (without telling them about my Mom paying for a bulk of it) and they said NO! Husband says they are worried about the expense. Even if my Mom covers the most expensive part of it. Husband has shown little interest in an Alaskan cruise ("what is there to do?") which frustrates me.
Finally, in a fit of frustration, I told my Mom about all of this. She also remembers the vacations we took to Virginia City, Tombstone, Yellowstone and Tillamook cheese factory. They are part of her memories as well as mine. She can't understand Husband's reluctance to go out and spend some of our savings on a trip. I agree that he would rather spend $500 on a gadget than spend it on a trip to Legoland or a long weekend in Yosemite. It's not as if he doesn't have a lot of vacation time - he gets two weeks and this year, has used two days. (Yes, it's August and he's used two days. If he'd gone to his hometown like he wanted to for his best friend's 40th birthday part he would have taken an entire week off.)
So, my Mom has decreed that next year, she will take Boy, her and I on a trip to Alaska on a cruise even without Husband if he finds he can't get away from his job. And we'll go visit friends in Phoenix. And go to San Diego to Legoland and Sea World. Which I'm over the moon about.
I was six months pregnant when Husband said he didn't want Boy to have the childhood he had. He wanted to make sure he was home more than his Dad was. He was going to be more affectionate than he parents were. He wanted Boy to have a better childhood than he did. I took that as a sign that he wanted to make sure that great memories were a part of it.
Now, I find that he's pushing back by not wanting to do things based on his own desire not to do them. Boy would have memories of vacations consisting of us visiting his Grandmom (my Mom) every couple of months for 48 hours before driving back so Daddy could get back to work. Or going to Grandmom's house for a four days because Mommy wanted to go visit. It's good that he'll have these great memories of spending time with his Grandmom but I want him to have memories of seeing things that were interesting and grand.
Why is a vacation so hard?
Monday, August 11, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Down into the rabbit hole
I have a Facebook account. I got it because Husband has one and a few friends had one. Mostly I abuse it for Scrabulous and it's successor, Wordscraper. My friends and I play against each other for shits and giggles.
But, I made a mistake. I didn't think that I'd end up finding myself down the rabbit hole of the past. I found old friends from high school. Most of which I wanted to find again. Some I wanted to tell how I felt about them and how I never had the courage to tell them when we were young that I thought they were amazing human beings. Others I just wanted to share a few good memories. One wanted to rehash a relationship he had with one of my high school best friends and what went terribly wrong with her. It was a little more painful to have to lay out this young woman's life in detail because I didn't know how to tell him that he was being played then and he still lets her play him now. I have no idea what became of her after the age of 19 when I cut her loose. I couldn't deal with her using people and expecting me to clean up her messes.
And from that man who is now in his 40s, married with kid, I find another friend who was a basket case. Her family life was sordid at best. She was unloved at home, as was her tortured psyche sibs, and desperate for attention. She was like one of those kittens or puppies at the animal adoption fair that is really trying to get your attention but seems to be just a little off. One of the last baby pets to be in the basket at the end of the fair and you adopt her then you find out that she's going to be the pet that isn't going to share you with anyone.
The story that says the most about her was one that I was told in high school from a friend. He was a year younger than me (she was a year older than me) and we were sitting around a camp fire on one of my yearly end of summer beach dos I threw. Don said that she had come on to him heavily when he was 15 and she 18. They had been at a party, drunk on cheap beer (Mickey's Wide Mouth I believe) and he had decided that if she wanted to have sex, so be it. So, they scampered off to her room where he started to have sex with her.
"She lay there like a board," he said, annoyed. "She just didn't want to be there."
So he got up and left her, unfinished. She said some things about him so in retaliation, he spray painted something unkind on the sidewalk in front of her house. A single word, quite blunt in his surmise of their few minutes of fumbling intimacy, that her parents took literally months to finally try to erase from their sidewalk.
It took me a half hour of thinking to decide if I wanted to admit her friendship on the arms length joys of Facebook. Right now, I've got a 'friend' on Facebook that hunted me down that I shared a post lay off class with who just never learned to get over his anger that he had been let go. He took it personally that he jumped on the tech bandwagon late in the game and didn't end up being a millionaire overnight. It never occurred to him that he was let go, as I was, along with 40K other people in our company. It can't be personal at that point. You're just a number to the leaders.
But in the case of this young woman that I shared 18 months of school with, there was more than annoyance at listening to tales of how screwed they got by a company. This woman had a rather complicated and tragic past (her youngest brother, adopted, reminded of it constantly by their distant parents, manufactured his version of his biological parents and when he finally hunted them down at 16 and found out that they were junkies, he came back to the only home he knew and took his own life). Would I find out after I had accepted her request for friendship now that we're in our 40s that she is still a broken human being?
I said yes.
She's still broken. New information poured in. She's still single. Recently re-singled. She has the classic sign of a single woman in her 40s: cats. Thankfully, she lives several states away so it will be tough for her to show up on our doorstep with a cat carrier or three to visit. Part of me wonders when she'll send me a note to say hello and ask about the high school best friend (that she also considered her best friend) that I cut loose at 19. Part of me wonders at what point am I going to have to find a cyber restraining order for her. Maybe I'll get lucky and she'll just send me pieces of flair.
But, I made a mistake. I didn't think that I'd end up finding myself down the rabbit hole of the past. I found old friends from high school. Most of which I wanted to find again. Some I wanted to tell how I felt about them and how I never had the courage to tell them when we were young that I thought they were amazing human beings. Others I just wanted to share a few good memories. One wanted to rehash a relationship he had with one of my high school best friends and what went terribly wrong with her. It was a little more painful to have to lay out this young woman's life in detail because I didn't know how to tell him that he was being played then and he still lets her play him now. I have no idea what became of her after the age of 19 when I cut her loose. I couldn't deal with her using people and expecting me to clean up her messes.
And from that man who is now in his 40s, married with kid, I find another friend who was a basket case. Her family life was sordid at best. She was unloved at home, as was her tortured psyche sibs, and desperate for attention. She was like one of those kittens or puppies at the animal adoption fair that is really trying to get your attention but seems to be just a little off. One of the last baby pets to be in the basket at the end of the fair and you adopt her then you find out that she's going to be the pet that isn't going to share you with anyone.
The story that says the most about her was one that I was told in high school from a friend. He was a year younger than me (she was a year older than me) and we were sitting around a camp fire on one of my yearly end of summer beach dos I threw. Don said that she had come on to him heavily when he was 15 and she 18. They had been at a party, drunk on cheap beer (Mickey's Wide Mouth I believe) and he had decided that if she wanted to have sex, so be it. So, they scampered off to her room where he started to have sex with her.
"She lay there like a board," he said, annoyed. "She just didn't want to be there."
So he got up and left her, unfinished. She said some things about him so in retaliation, he spray painted something unkind on the sidewalk in front of her house. A single word, quite blunt in his surmise of their few minutes of fumbling intimacy, that her parents took literally months to finally try to erase from their sidewalk.
It took me a half hour of thinking to decide if I wanted to admit her friendship on the arms length joys of Facebook. Right now, I've got a 'friend' on Facebook that hunted me down that I shared a post lay off class with who just never learned to get over his anger that he had been let go. He took it personally that he jumped on the tech bandwagon late in the game and didn't end up being a millionaire overnight. It never occurred to him that he was let go, as I was, along with 40K other people in our company. It can't be personal at that point. You're just a number to the leaders.
But in the case of this young woman that I shared 18 months of school with, there was more than annoyance at listening to tales of how screwed they got by a company. This woman had a rather complicated and tragic past (her youngest brother, adopted, reminded of it constantly by their distant parents, manufactured his version of his biological parents and when he finally hunted them down at 16 and found out that they were junkies, he came back to the only home he knew and took his own life). Would I find out after I had accepted her request for friendship now that we're in our 40s that she is still a broken human being?
I said yes.
She's still broken. New information poured in. She's still single. Recently re-singled. She has the classic sign of a single woman in her 40s: cats. Thankfully, she lives several states away so it will be tough for her to show up on our doorstep with a cat carrier or three to visit. Part of me wonders when she'll send me a note to say hello and ask about the high school best friend (that she also considered her best friend) that I cut loose at 19. Part of me wonders at what point am I going to have to find a cyber restraining order for her. Maybe I'll get lucky and she'll just send me pieces of flair.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Past will come back to get you
I've been starting and not finishing a few posts. They are saved somewhere in here and I'll probably end up deleting them because the righteous anger than started them has dissipated like steam in the desert.
Right now, I'm contemplating my past.
I'm on Facebook. I got dragged in by Husband and some friends. I play Scrabulous with friends, talk smack with others, have a little green patch I update daily. And I'm discovering a past I thought I had left behind.
But, you never leave your past behind, do you? You can change your name, your look, your location but you still find yourself a little haunted by who you once were. Then you get to a certain point in your life where you realise that you don't care about the person people thought you were. And you are willing to say hello to the people you liked, the people who you should have told that you thought were fabulous or the people that you moved away from emotionally and socially when you were a teen.
I've connected with people who have known me nearly four decades. It's strange to have conversations with people who have settled into the familiar of our old home county with lives less ordinary. To chat amicably about people who made your life difficult in your youth and wonder what became of that pain in the ass. I get contemplative in this world.
There are people who I wasn't close to in high school but whom I admired. When I connected with them via Facebook or Classmates or whatever, I have told them that I admired their spirit, their sense of self, their sass. They are surprised, some times even a little touched, that I even felt that way because they had a sense of self that was completely hidden from view. One of the women I recently connected with on Facebook said she hated going to school in our little white washed world. She considered herself a great actress for pretending to enjoy life day to day in a world where she was paprika in a field of sea salt. I understood but in a different way. She's a success in her life but I detected a small sense of apology that she wasn't married or had any kids to show for our four decades of life. I told her that it's not that important as long as you are happy with the life you're in.
Another friend I connected with on Facebook dated the two girls I was best friends with. One for a matter of months and the other for two years. We chatted for several days via email about how one was vanilla with a sprinkling of jimmies and the other was just nuts. The nuts one seemed to linger in his mind the longest and therefore, our conversations. I told him I had to cut her loose not long after we graduated from high school because I couldn't be the person she wanted me to be. Her life was too damaged and she wanted me to be the person to fix it all up so she didn't have to take responsibility for it. But after awhile, I couldn't deal with her pleading for me to pick her up from yet another stupid error she made (like having her battered old sedan towed away because she parked it in a no parking zone 15 miles from her house but 100 miles from where I lived). It was hard enough for me to figure out who I was going to be away from the cage of the small town I grew up in without having to be a Mother to a woman/child.
This guy who had been her boyfriend for two years had run into her a couple of years after graduation and said she had found some peace in her life with a guy in the Bay Area. She apologized for the flaming hoops she had put him through and he said she seemed to be happy for once in her life. I think there is a part of him who was still enraptured by the sprite quality she liked to use to ensnare people. Having been her best friend for three years in high school, I knew her routines well.
She has gone deep undercover. I've tried to hunt her down to no avail. I found the other best friend (who I also axed that fateful summer after high school simply because she and I were geographically challenged and that she wanted me to put my graduation trip on hold so I could amuse her for three days after I had told her that there was no way I would do it). She is living a life similar to the one she was living when we were young. She is engrossed in a world of make believe with her husband who she met via her ethereal sensibilities. Another damaged soul who survived a Dad who had a local celebrity status and a Mom who alternately basked and hated that glow because she wanted it on her own. This Mom would send out yearly letters to other friends' parents about how her family was doing so beautifully - how her eldest son was working in the kitchen of a top chef (rather than say that he was a dishwasher at a restaurant because he had flunked out of community college) or how her youngest son was researching alternative forms of education (rather than say he flunked out of high school and wanted to follow Phish in a VW Eurovan).
Tonight, I happen to see that Facebook had found some more of the names from my past. People I have always wondered where they had gone to. I'm too timid to find out if they would take an email from me since they held me in great disdain when I was a high school student. One I would love to tell that a cartoon he drew for our school paper really helped me get perspective in life and helped me deal with my teen years better than I might have done otherwise.
In fact, I think I will...
Right now, I'm contemplating my past.
I'm on Facebook. I got dragged in by Husband and some friends. I play Scrabulous with friends, talk smack with others, have a little green patch I update daily. And I'm discovering a past I thought I had left behind.
But, you never leave your past behind, do you? You can change your name, your look, your location but you still find yourself a little haunted by who you once were. Then you get to a certain point in your life where you realise that you don't care about the person people thought you were. And you are willing to say hello to the people you liked, the people who you should have told that you thought were fabulous or the people that you moved away from emotionally and socially when you were a teen.
I've connected with people who have known me nearly four decades. It's strange to have conversations with people who have settled into the familiar of our old home county with lives less ordinary. To chat amicably about people who made your life difficult in your youth and wonder what became of that pain in the ass. I get contemplative in this world.
There are people who I wasn't close to in high school but whom I admired. When I connected with them via Facebook or Classmates or whatever, I have told them that I admired their spirit, their sense of self, their sass. They are surprised, some times even a little touched, that I even felt that way because they had a sense of self that was completely hidden from view. One of the women I recently connected with on Facebook said she hated going to school in our little white washed world. She considered herself a great actress for pretending to enjoy life day to day in a world where she was paprika in a field of sea salt. I understood but in a different way. She's a success in her life but I detected a small sense of apology that she wasn't married or had any kids to show for our four decades of life. I told her that it's not that important as long as you are happy with the life you're in.
Another friend I connected with on Facebook dated the two girls I was best friends with. One for a matter of months and the other for two years. We chatted for several days via email about how one was vanilla with a sprinkling of jimmies and the other was just nuts. The nuts one seemed to linger in his mind the longest and therefore, our conversations. I told him I had to cut her loose not long after we graduated from high school because I couldn't be the person she wanted me to be. Her life was too damaged and she wanted me to be the person to fix it all up so she didn't have to take responsibility for it. But after awhile, I couldn't deal with her pleading for me to pick her up from yet another stupid error she made (like having her battered old sedan towed away because she parked it in a no parking zone 15 miles from her house but 100 miles from where I lived). It was hard enough for me to figure out who I was going to be away from the cage of the small town I grew up in without having to be a Mother to a woman/child.
This guy who had been her boyfriend for two years had run into her a couple of years after graduation and said she had found some peace in her life with a guy in the Bay Area. She apologized for the flaming hoops she had put him through and he said she seemed to be happy for once in her life. I think there is a part of him who was still enraptured by the sprite quality she liked to use to ensnare people. Having been her best friend for three years in high school, I knew her routines well.
She has gone deep undercover. I've tried to hunt her down to no avail. I found the other best friend (who I also axed that fateful summer after high school simply because she and I were geographically challenged and that she wanted me to put my graduation trip on hold so I could amuse her for three days after I had told her that there was no way I would do it). She is living a life similar to the one she was living when we were young. She is engrossed in a world of make believe with her husband who she met via her ethereal sensibilities. Another damaged soul who survived a Dad who had a local celebrity status and a Mom who alternately basked and hated that glow because she wanted it on her own. This Mom would send out yearly letters to other friends' parents about how her family was doing so beautifully - how her eldest son was working in the kitchen of a top chef (rather than say that he was a dishwasher at a restaurant because he had flunked out of community college) or how her youngest son was researching alternative forms of education (rather than say he flunked out of high school and wanted to follow Phish in a VW Eurovan).
Tonight, I happen to see that Facebook had found some more of the names from my past. People I have always wondered where they had gone to. I'm too timid to find out if they would take an email from me since they held me in great disdain when I was a high school student. One I would love to tell that a cartoon he drew for our school paper really helped me get perspective in life and helped me deal with my teen years better than I might have done otherwise.
In fact, I think I will...
Monday, June 2, 2008
Barely breathing
I can't be sick! I'm a Mommy!
There is no good time to be sick when you're a Mom. Especially a stay at home Mom. Especially a stay at home Mom who has a husband leaving the country for a week.
Boy threw up in the car the day before Husband left for overseas. The day Husband left for his trip, I started feeling the signs of a cold coming on. But since Boy was starting to feel better, I figured that it would be a short lived illness. Besides, my Mom was coming up the following day so she could watch Boy for a morning while I slept off a Tylenol Cold pill.
Don't I wish it was that easy?
Boy got a raging cold. He was coughing, runny nosed and was running down for him. M was pissed off that Boy was coughing at school even though he had been fine all morning. Boy had spent all night coughing his little lungs out and seemed to be doing fine. But alas, it wasn't so.
After six days of lack of sleep (I'd averaged about two hours of sleep each day), my body finally just broke down. I couldn't move on Thursday morning. My Mom took over Boy while I lay feverishly in bed. For the previous four days, I had been so congested, nothing I had taken had been able to break up the blockage in my head. In one day, I managed to go through three boxes of tissues. I was so listless that just moving from bed to bathroom was painful. So having to get up four or five times a night to comfort a miserable Boy was asking an awful lot.
Friday morning, after picking up Husband at the airport, we went home. Boy was over the moon at seeing his Father's return. After Husband had his shower, he took on Boy. I passed out, trying to get my nose to let me breathe. That night, my head started to clear a smidge. Enough that I was able to get a small chance at rest.
I still need more sleep. But Boy has been feeling needy so he requires Mommy at night still. Too hard to sleep with him when he decides he has to sleep in the middle of the bed and spread his legs out so I have to sleep at the end of his bed. But if I walk away, he cries pitifully until I come back. Husband finally took over so I could rest.
How do you be sick and be a Mom? You're not suppose to be sick, ever. But when you are, there is that shell shocked feeling and the shell shocked look on your family as they realise they have to figure this one out on their own.
Ears are popping. Thank God. Maybe I'll be able to get clear sinuses next.
There is no good time to be sick when you're a Mom. Especially a stay at home Mom. Especially a stay at home Mom who has a husband leaving the country for a week.
Boy threw up in the car the day before Husband left for overseas. The day Husband left for his trip, I started feeling the signs of a cold coming on. But since Boy was starting to feel better, I figured that it would be a short lived illness. Besides, my Mom was coming up the following day so she could watch Boy for a morning while I slept off a Tylenol Cold pill.
Don't I wish it was that easy?
Boy got a raging cold. He was coughing, runny nosed and was running down for him. M was pissed off that Boy was coughing at school even though he had been fine all morning. Boy had spent all night coughing his little lungs out and seemed to be doing fine. But alas, it wasn't so.
After six days of lack of sleep (I'd averaged about two hours of sleep each day), my body finally just broke down. I couldn't move on Thursday morning. My Mom took over Boy while I lay feverishly in bed. For the previous four days, I had been so congested, nothing I had taken had been able to break up the blockage in my head. In one day, I managed to go through three boxes of tissues. I was so listless that just moving from bed to bathroom was painful. So having to get up four or five times a night to comfort a miserable Boy was asking an awful lot.
Friday morning, after picking up Husband at the airport, we went home. Boy was over the moon at seeing his Father's return. After Husband had his shower, he took on Boy. I passed out, trying to get my nose to let me breathe. That night, my head started to clear a smidge. Enough that I was able to get a small chance at rest.
I still need more sleep. But Boy has been feeling needy so he requires Mommy at night still. Too hard to sleep with him when he decides he has to sleep in the middle of the bed and spread his legs out so I have to sleep at the end of his bed. But if I walk away, he cries pitifully until I come back. Husband finally took over so I could rest.
How do you be sick and be a Mom? You're not suppose to be sick, ever. But when you are, there is that shell shocked feeling and the shell shocked look on your family as they realise they have to figure this one out on their own.
Ears are popping. Thank God. Maybe I'll be able to get clear sinuses next.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
System breakdown
I'm slammed with the flu and a head cold. I feel like ten sacks of shit in a three pound bag right now.
For the last month, it's been one thing after another. Family visits. Disagreements with M about Boy. Husband laying down the law about household spending but going out to buy a new expensive toy for himself and not cashing checks. So it's not wonder that Boy's cold jumped to a new ship and mutated.
My in laws came for a visit - the usual one exact week visit they do. God love 'em but they really come to sit and read in a different environment. They watch Boy for a couple of hours one night so Husband and I can have a meal in peace but for the most part, I'm chasing Boy around. My Father in law is happiest with the various things that have fallen apart in our house that he can fix. They didn't bother to watch the Weather Channel or check online to see the weather forecast which would have helped them pack reasonably. They packed for cool weather. It was ragingly hot. So they had to buy some short sleeved shirts and shorts which they left behind. More stuff that I have no space for in my house.
A cousin came to visit for a day from out of state. She and her husband were staying at a hotel closer to the City which meant one less thing that I had to think about but I had expected them to come by after lunch. They arrived at ten am. Our landlord had come over to fix some odd things in the house with his son and they left to pick up more supplies. What should have been a half hour took them three hours blocking my car in the driveway to I couldn't take my cousin out to lunch (since I had nothing to prepare for them since I had planned only to make dinner). My landlord sounded annoyed that I called asking him to quickly return to move his car out of his driveway.
We have orientation at Boy's new school next week. Hallalujah. If I'm lucky and can get Boy potty trained by August, Boy can start school without a problem. If I'm not successful, I have a new list of places that won't be a rip off to take Boy to. Boy needs an environment that will help him take his energy and channel it correctly. That will continue to intrigue his brain which clearly isn't happening anymore at M's school.
I've been running on adrenalin for the last three weeks. Dealing with Husband deciding to buy a new toy for himself that meant that I had to rethink buying ahead for Christmas (I see something interesting on sale, I buy it and hide it so that I can give it later). Boy needed a new car seat so $300 later, we were even further in debt. And don't start with me about the taxes.
So my system, a few days after the in laws left, decided to collapse. Husband was on a plane overseas and I just barely was able to keep up with Boy. Thank God I've got my Mom a couple hours drive away who can help me out.
For the last month, it's been one thing after another. Family visits. Disagreements with M about Boy. Husband laying down the law about household spending but going out to buy a new expensive toy for himself and not cashing checks. So it's not wonder that Boy's cold jumped to a new ship and mutated.
My in laws came for a visit - the usual one exact week visit they do. God love 'em but they really come to sit and read in a different environment. They watch Boy for a couple of hours one night so Husband and I can have a meal in peace but for the most part, I'm chasing Boy around. My Father in law is happiest with the various things that have fallen apart in our house that he can fix. They didn't bother to watch the Weather Channel or check online to see the weather forecast which would have helped them pack reasonably. They packed for cool weather. It was ragingly hot. So they had to buy some short sleeved shirts and shorts which they left behind. More stuff that I have no space for in my house.
A cousin came to visit for a day from out of state. She and her husband were staying at a hotel closer to the City which meant one less thing that I had to think about but I had expected them to come by after lunch. They arrived at ten am. Our landlord had come over to fix some odd things in the house with his son and they left to pick up more supplies. What should have been a half hour took them three hours blocking my car in the driveway to I couldn't take my cousin out to lunch (since I had nothing to prepare for them since I had planned only to make dinner). My landlord sounded annoyed that I called asking him to quickly return to move his car out of his driveway.
We have orientation at Boy's new school next week. Hallalujah. If I'm lucky and can get Boy potty trained by August, Boy can start school without a problem. If I'm not successful, I have a new list of places that won't be a rip off to take Boy to. Boy needs an environment that will help him take his energy and channel it correctly. That will continue to intrigue his brain which clearly isn't happening anymore at M's school.
I've been running on adrenalin for the last three weeks. Dealing with Husband deciding to buy a new toy for himself that meant that I had to rethink buying ahead for Christmas (I see something interesting on sale, I buy it and hide it so that I can give it later). Boy needed a new car seat so $300 later, we were even further in debt. And don't start with me about the taxes.
So my system, a few days after the in laws left, decided to collapse. Husband was on a plane overseas and I just barely was able to keep up with Boy. Thank God I've got my Mom a couple hours drive away who can help me out.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Mother's Day is over - get back to work!
I almost had an entire night of uninterrupted sleep. Boy came into the guest room where I was dead to the world after he couldn't rouse his Daddy from the marital bed.
"Mommy."
I dragged myself out of bed, followed the little striped body back to his room and hoisted him back into his Big Boy Bed. He snuggled beneath his comforter and into his pillows, clutching his sippy cup of water. As usual, I checked to see the status of his diaper. A little pee, nothing to drag myself out of bed to get a fresh diaper for. He sucked down his water and then fell to slumbers, his small feel shoved into my rolls of fat for warmth. After a couple of minutes, I got up, went to the kitchen to get him another half cup of water to put in his room before going back to bed.
Around six am, he came in, found my back to him then went in search of Daddy. He apparently crawled into bed with Husband and snuggled into him. Then after a few minutes of conversation, went to sleep until about 730am when he announced to Husband, "Wet." Not just "my diaper is wet, Daddy, please rectify the situation" wet but "my diaper is hypersaturated and your bed is now wet, Daddy." Boy didn't exactly scamper off his soggy place but lay there for a few more minutes before clambering off the bed with Husband feeling the grim truth.
I heard them awaken, Boy asking plaintively for more soy milk and Thomas the Tank Engine with Husband saying, "Shhhh, Mommy is still asleep" and closing the door to the guest room. Even though Husband for some reason will close the hall door when I'm asleep in the master bedroom or Boy's room (which share a common wall with the living room so I hear everything anyhow), he doesn't when I am slumbering in the guest room. So hearing Boy shout "Thom-US!" at the top of his tremble voice echoes down the hall and through the hollow core door the room.
Half asleep and half awake, I managed to get to quarter to ten before rousing myself to get ready for the day. In 45 minutes, Husband and I managed to get clean and fresh plus getting Boy into some nice clothes before heading out the door to join some friends for an impromptu Mother's Day brunch at a restaurant. Afterwards, I headed home to drop my boys off and headed off to the movies so I could do what I love best: lose myself in someone else's world.
In a former life, I went to the movies frequently. I worked retail so I could go during the bargain matinee shows and embrace the world on film. Living in LA is surreal in the fact you can be watching a Woody Allen flick on DVD (or at the time I lived there, on VHS) and the next day, be asking Diane Keaten if she would like to have her purchase wrapped. After awhile, you learned to just treat the people you just paid $6 to see on the screen (this was a long time ago) like the ten other people who you helped before them.
The theatre was holding 20 people for the movie (in the top ten ranked this weekend so it wasn't a stinker flick) when the lights went down. For two hours, I enjoyed myself immensely. The reviews for the movie weren't great but it was one I had been wanting to see for awhile. It's one we'll own on DVD simply because I really enjoyed it. Sorry, Mick Lasalle, I know you didn't like it but I did. We agree to disagree.
Afterwards, I picked up groceries at Safeway then headed home. Husband took us out to dinner at a burger restaurant where Boy managed to run off a few times making dinner as usual a challenge. We came home and life went back to its usual Sunday night rituals:
I gathered all the recycling in the house and put it on the curb in its green box.
I shredded documents and got all the brown paper bags of recycling to the curb.
I got the yard waste in the big green rolling bin to the curb.
And I gathered all the trash and dirty diapers and put it in the trash can. And rolled them to the curb.
That's when Husband asked if I needed any help.
As he does every week.
When I was eight months pregnant, I waddled out the door every Sunday afternoon, taking all the recycling and trash to the curb to the astonishment of my neighbours. They couldn't believe that this pregnant woman was doing all this without her husband's help. Of course, Husband was with a company that sent his ass out of town every week so most of the time, he wasn't home. And when he was, it wasn't something he really thought about or was thorough about. (We'd end up with full bags of trash in the house and the following week, he'd gripe about how our trash can was too full - duh.) I think the one time he took trash out during my pregnancy was the day before I went in for my C section.
So as much as the holiday gets the Hallmark moment gloss of being a day where Mom is queen, life isn't that way at all. There are not a lot of breakfasts in bed and dinners out. Most of us get an awkward brunch with our Mom and Mother in law as they try to decide who is the better Grandparent. While they decide where your kid's propensity for flicking mashed potatoes at them is from, you're wondering what to make for dinner that night. And you are making dinner that night. It's not your husband throwing a filet mignon on the barbeque and baked potatoes with sour cream and chives, it's you figuring out if you made lemon chicken Friday or was it the week before?
Mother's Day is over. I'm back to work.
"Mommy."
I dragged myself out of bed, followed the little striped body back to his room and hoisted him back into his Big Boy Bed. He snuggled beneath his comforter and into his pillows, clutching his sippy cup of water. As usual, I checked to see the status of his diaper. A little pee, nothing to drag myself out of bed to get a fresh diaper for. He sucked down his water and then fell to slumbers, his small feel shoved into my rolls of fat for warmth. After a couple of minutes, I got up, went to the kitchen to get him another half cup of water to put in his room before going back to bed.
Around six am, he came in, found my back to him then went in search of Daddy. He apparently crawled into bed with Husband and snuggled into him. Then after a few minutes of conversation, went to sleep until about 730am when he announced to Husband, "Wet." Not just "my diaper is wet, Daddy, please rectify the situation" wet but "my diaper is hypersaturated and your bed is now wet, Daddy." Boy didn't exactly scamper off his soggy place but lay there for a few more minutes before clambering off the bed with Husband feeling the grim truth.
I heard them awaken, Boy asking plaintively for more soy milk and Thomas the Tank Engine with Husband saying, "Shhhh, Mommy is still asleep" and closing the door to the guest room. Even though Husband for some reason will close the hall door when I'm asleep in the master bedroom or Boy's room (which share a common wall with the living room so I hear everything anyhow), he doesn't when I am slumbering in the guest room. So hearing Boy shout "Thom-US!" at the top of his tremble voice echoes down the hall and through the hollow core door the room.
Half asleep and half awake, I managed to get to quarter to ten before rousing myself to get ready for the day. In 45 minutes, Husband and I managed to get clean and fresh plus getting Boy into some nice clothes before heading out the door to join some friends for an impromptu Mother's Day brunch at a restaurant. Afterwards, I headed home to drop my boys off and headed off to the movies so I could do what I love best: lose myself in someone else's world.
In a former life, I went to the movies frequently. I worked retail so I could go during the bargain matinee shows and embrace the world on film. Living in LA is surreal in the fact you can be watching a Woody Allen flick on DVD (or at the time I lived there, on VHS) and the next day, be asking Diane Keaten if she would like to have her purchase wrapped. After awhile, you learned to just treat the people you just paid $6 to see on the screen (this was a long time ago) like the ten other people who you helped before them.
The theatre was holding 20 people for the movie (in the top ten ranked this weekend so it wasn't a stinker flick) when the lights went down. For two hours, I enjoyed myself immensely. The reviews for the movie weren't great but it was one I had been wanting to see for awhile. It's one we'll own on DVD simply because I really enjoyed it. Sorry, Mick Lasalle, I know you didn't like it but I did. We agree to disagree.
Afterwards, I picked up groceries at Safeway then headed home. Husband took us out to dinner at a burger restaurant where Boy managed to run off a few times making dinner as usual a challenge. We came home and life went back to its usual Sunday night rituals:
I gathered all the recycling in the house and put it on the curb in its green box.
I shredded documents and got all the brown paper bags of recycling to the curb.
I got the yard waste in the big green rolling bin to the curb.
And I gathered all the trash and dirty diapers and put it in the trash can. And rolled them to the curb.
That's when Husband asked if I needed any help.
As he does every week.
When I was eight months pregnant, I waddled out the door every Sunday afternoon, taking all the recycling and trash to the curb to the astonishment of my neighbours. They couldn't believe that this pregnant woman was doing all this without her husband's help. Of course, Husband was with a company that sent his ass out of town every week so most of the time, he wasn't home. And when he was, it wasn't something he really thought about or was thorough about. (We'd end up with full bags of trash in the house and the following week, he'd gripe about how our trash can was too full - duh.) I think the one time he took trash out during my pregnancy was the day before I went in for my C section.
So as much as the holiday gets the Hallmark moment gloss of being a day where Mom is queen, life isn't that way at all. There are not a lot of breakfasts in bed and dinners out. Most of us get an awkward brunch with our Mom and Mother in law as they try to decide who is the better Grandparent. While they decide where your kid's propensity for flicking mashed potatoes at them is from, you're wondering what to make for dinner that night. And you are making dinner that night. It's not your husband throwing a filet mignon on the barbeque and baked potatoes with sour cream and chives, it's you figuring out if you made lemon chicken Friday or was it the week before?
Mother's Day is over. I'm back to work.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Celebrity eco warriors
In the last year, I've been reading more helpful comments from the celebrity eco set. For years, I've been amused with the extremes of Ed Begley Jr and Leonardo Di Caprio's Prius when he's not out with his posse scouting the chicas. But now, I have to admit that some of the soap box meanderings are getting on my nerves.
I'm usually the one who goes a little overboard with the recycling. I make sure to dig out the soap box or the shampoo bottle Husband threw in the trash to put in the recycling bins. Recently, I went to the 'net to find out who takes the deep fryer oil I have so I can make sure it gets to be biofuel (no one wants to cop to it). Lately, I try to only do my errands on days when Boy has school at the academy so that I can conserve fuel in my SUV.
But, seriously, some of the advice is contradictory and some times, not really realistic, that these eco celebrities are mouthing off in the magazines or on tv.
Some time ago, I read that Cameron Diaz believed that you should not rinse off your dishes before popping them into the dishwasher. And I'm sure that she and her staff do that. But they also probably have a much better dishwasher than I do. Because when I've missed a bit of stickiness on my dishes, it requires me an extra 15 minutes of scrubbing in the sink after I've run the dish through the dishwasher because it's now baked on. How much water is getting wasted now?
Another piece of advice I got from another mag and a celebrity Mom is that I should have a stack of a dozen dishcloths for the sole purpose of wiping up messes rather than go through the Costco sized Bounty paper towels that I buy for that purpose. So I tried that. I ended up going through all dozen in half a day and having to do an extra two loads of laundry that week. Sorry, landfill, I'm putting Boy's Huggies and the Bountys in you. Which means more water gets 'wasted' and I'm using more laundry detergent (sorry, the eco stuff doesn't do a great job of getting orange strawberry banana juice out of towels). Next?
It's sort of difficult for me to take with a straight face all the eco celebrities who spout of on the environment and what they are doing to protect it when I sort of wonder if they are really practicing what they preach. I'm sure they tell their staff to do so but what happens when Celebrity X goes off to Larry King Live to preach during April's eco awareness month? Do they come home and dig through the trash to see if their maids only used cloth to wipe up messes rather than that Costco container of Bounty like I do? Do they really send their nannies out to buy the eco friendly diapers at Whole Foods and think that the nanny is changing them all the time? Or that they use those cloth diapers religiously so that the maid can wash them? Or have the service pick them up?
Real life is a far more challenging proposition when you don't have a staff.
I'm usually the one who goes a little overboard with the recycling. I make sure to dig out the soap box or the shampoo bottle Husband threw in the trash to put in the recycling bins. Recently, I went to the 'net to find out who takes the deep fryer oil I have so I can make sure it gets to be biofuel (no one wants to cop to it). Lately, I try to only do my errands on days when Boy has school at the academy so that I can conserve fuel in my SUV.
But, seriously, some of the advice is contradictory and some times, not really realistic, that these eco celebrities are mouthing off in the magazines or on tv.
Some time ago, I read that Cameron Diaz believed that you should not rinse off your dishes before popping them into the dishwasher. And I'm sure that she and her staff do that. But they also probably have a much better dishwasher than I do. Because when I've missed a bit of stickiness on my dishes, it requires me an extra 15 minutes of scrubbing in the sink after I've run the dish through the dishwasher because it's now baked on. How much water is getting wasted now?
Another piece of advice I got from another mag and a celebrity Mom is that I should have a stack of a dozen dishcloths for the sole purpose of wiping up messes rather than go through the Costco sized Bounty paper towels that I buy for that purpose. So I tried that. I ended up going through all dozen in half a day and having to do an extra two loads of laundry that week. Sorry, landfill, I'm putting Boy's Huggies and the Bountys in you. Which means more water gets 'wasted' and I'm using more laundry detergent (sorry, the eco stuff doesn't do a great job of getting orange strawberry banana juice out of towels). Next?
It's sort of difficult for me to take with a straight face all the eco celebrities who spout of on the environment and what they are doing to protect it when I sort of wonder if they are really practicing what they preach. I'm sure they tell their staff to do so but what happens when Celebrity X goes off to Larry King Live to preach during April's eco awareness month? Do they come home and dig through the trash to see if their maids only used cloth to wipe up messes rather than that Costco container of Bounty like I do? Do they really send their nannies out to buy the eco friendly diapers at Whole Foods and think that the nanny is changing them all the time? Or that they use those cloth diapers religiously so that the maid can wash them? Or have the service pick them up?
Real life is a far more challenging proposition when you don't have a staff.
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