Bee Stings and Head Bonks

When you have more than one, it gets a little bit crazy. As you’ve probably witnessed on any given occasion when my kids and I are around. Today was no exception. After fitting in a little “me” time at lunch, I come back to my office and start checking my voicemail. One is from the school secretary, but I notice that on my other line, it’s the school calling. Thinking its some catastrophic event caused by one or both of them since the school NEVER calls me twice in a row, I cancel my unheard voicemail to talk to the live person. It was the OTHER secretary calling me to tell me my son fell on the playground and hit his head and was in the nurses station. Is it bad? I ask. They tell me not really but it’s a head injury just the same so they’re keeping an eye on him. He told the nurse he wanted to go back to class, so I’m thinking OK, no problem. But I wanted to talk to him just the same. That cute little voice gets on the phone “hey mom.” And proceeds to tell me what happened and he wants to go home. OK. Get to the school and take care of checking him out of class. While I’m there, the secretary tells me that Tyler got stung by a bee on her lunch. Super. She’s been stung before so we weren’t too worried about it. When I get to his classroom, he’s eating his snack, but is out of his chair and getting his back pack the minute he sees me. Off to mom’s we go with him chatting up a storm the whole way. His head doesn’t hurt any more, he feels great. Figures. Kid, I have a meeting in 30 minutes. You’ve already made me late once. Now I have to take an extra hour off of work besides lunch. But, you’re mine and I love you, so whatever. We get home and I start going through his bag for the day and that’s when he tells me that Tyler took his glasses off of his face this morning and hid them. WHAT!!!!???? The $260 glasses I just bought are gone? Are you shitting me? I call the school and put out an APB on them. The secretary says she’ll check with Tyler’s teacher. I call their dad FUMING and asking him to have a conversation with her about that shit. I want to rip her arms off of her and beat her with them. So I sit and stew for a little while at the office and think of things I can do to try to teach her to be nice for once in her life. About 5 minutes after they get off the bus, I get a phone call. Glasses were put into a pocket on the back pack. Now I really want to rip her arms off but this time, I’m beating BOTH of them! Oh, and the voicemail that I never got to listen to? It was the one letting me know Tyler got stung by a bee.

Rabid Bitches

The Goonies, Kids Incorporated, Mickey Mouse Club, Ferris Buhler, whatever you want to call them, it was a bunch of kids getting together to hang out. Sometimes brilliant careers were launched: Britany, Justin, dude whose step mom is Barbara Streisand. Sometimes people faded into obscurity. Since they’re obscure and faded, I have no examples for you. Bottom line was when you watched them on screen they clicked and had a good time. Much like my best girlfriends J and E. E and I have been BFF’s since kindergarten and since we’re in our 30’s now we’ve noted occasionally that we’ve been friends longer than many marriages these days. J and I met at E’s wedding as we were bridesmaids together. We call ourselves the Butt Crack Bitches.

While the name really is not above board and sounds like some chick biker gang, we dubbed ourselves, along with two other girls, this wonderful moniker one cool fall morning while waiting for our ride to wine country. It was the butt crack of dawn and we were tired and without caffeine since our ride had the Starbucks hookup. Because of this we were very bitchy. Hence the name. Once we started having kids, we shortened it to BCB. And speaking of kids, we are all still butt crack bitches, but for an entirely different reason. Once content to get up at 5 AM to ride for 6 hours to Eastern Washington and drink wine all day pretending to know what tannins are and the difference between oak and steel aged chardonnay, we now rise at 5 AM for feedings, diaper changes, and elementary school.

Tonight was BCB dinner. Once a month we get together for dinner to catch up, drink wine, eat a shit load of food guaranteed to make you fat, celebrate our successes since no one else cares we got a cashmere sweater for $60,  and bitch about our significant others. Tonight was different. J told us that she is preggo with rug rat #2. E is already three months into her incubation of drape ape #2 as well. I am ecstatic for both of them. They are fabulous mom’s already. Plus now I’ll have two babies to snuggle and then give back.

I am melancholy however. Maybe it’s the wine from dinner, or the semi food coma I’ve put myself into from too much spaghetti and dessert. Or maybe I have a small case of the green eyed monster. I’m done having babies. I enjoyed being pregnant and didn’t have any issues, but my kids are finally independent enough that I don’t have to do everything for them. While that sounds selfish, it’s not meant to be. I love that they can make toast for themselves while I’m taking a dump. It saves time. Any way. I called FFB who is travelling – again – and we chatted for a bit after they left. He was winding dinner down so I gave him the Sports Center version that my friends are breeding and its cramping my style.

But it makes me a little jealous, and here is why. I always thought I’d have at least one friend to experience pregnancy with, and I didn't. It something that women bond over – child rearing, labor, money, and sex. It’s the four corners of conversation. Walk into a room full of women and I can guarantee that at least one topic is related to ONE of those things. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Anyway, it made me a little sad that I’m not going to have my own little baby #3 at the same time as my friends so we can all be miserable together. I imagined us three sitting together while our three kids who were born around the same time experienced the same things together: puberty, driver’s licenses, prom, graduation, weddings, and babies. And, I have to admit, for a split second, I honestly thought about doing it again, just so I could be part of that. The way they smell, all of the “firsts”, the snuggling, and (my favorite) when they fall asleep on you. But I can’t for one and immediately came to my senses for two.

I love my kids. I love FFB’s kids. I love my BFF’s kids. But there is something to be said for a Sunday afternoon where you can sit on the couch in your sweats and watch football while your kids fend for themselves because they are old enough to. Granted the kitchen usually looks like a pack of rabid dogs went through it.



The Butt Crack Bitches
E, J and Me



Shit my mom never said

About a week ago FFB was on the road for what I swear was three months but those around me say it was only four days. Lets just say when he came home, I was balled up in the corner of the walk in closet repeating "It puts the lotion in the basket." I knew I was in for it when I discovered his youngest had been eating pop tarts in bed whenever we're not home. One particular meal I had with the kids followed a particularly vicious fight on the trampoline between my daughter and my son in which I looked up from the kitchen window to see my daughter holding my son down and punching him in the garbage. Repeatedly. So I took it upon myself to tell the boys, that the penis punching has to stop. I thought that FFB's oldest was going to spew milk out of his nose. My mom never had to have that discussion with me or my sisters. E.V.E.R.

I also recently was bestowed with a new cell phone. I  use the word bestowed appropriately because it took me three months, a failed upgrade, and five phone calls to tech support for the frickin' geniuses at my cell company, whose name rhymes with T-Horrible, to realize that my POS was really a POS. Any how, it has this cool  app that will take dictation. After a few glasses of champaign at my friends Mary Kay party and $95 later, I realized I bought a product I'm not going to use only after I also dropped $100 on dance shit for Tyler. To minimize the damage I texted my friend Rox who moonlights as a Mary Kay non-Nazi. She asked me if I wanted to add some product my mom bought onto my order and I said the words "no, I just dropped $100 getting Tyler kitted out for dance." however, this "cool" new toy that I have translated it to "no, I just dropped $100 getting tyler k** it out for sale." The damn thing  comes in handy when I'm driving, but it doesn't use cuss words and apparently wants to sell my daughter. Which sometimes is a thought that crosses my mind.

Some things come out of your mouth as a parent that you never thought you would ever say.
"Don't call her "dude", call her grandma."
"Don't jump like that because you're going to slip and fall and hit your garbage on the tub."
"Get your hands out of the back of your pants when you're in public."
"Stop playing with yourself in grandma's chair. She doesn't want to see that."
"Stop licking the windows on my car. No, Chad is wrong. Its not funny."

Fail For Today

You know how you order the “spicy” salsa from one of those places in the mall knowing full well that tobasco is way hotter, so you take it back to work and toss a bunch of Tapatio on it so you at least have a little heat? Well, that really wasn’t the case today and I think I have burned off my taste buds.

Dam Dutch Brothers Anyway!

So I just got back on Monday night from a mad dash trip to my sister’s house. She’s about a 13 hour drive from my little home here in the PNW all the way in California’s version of the PNW. Lets just say my Sissy Poo Poo is closer to Oregon than San Francisco. BTW,  no self respecting Californian calls is San Fran. Anywhoo.

I spent 14 hours alone on Thursday driving down. I stopped for dinner at this Mexican restaurant on the way that I swear to GOD puts cocaine in their food. Every time I drive through this little California coastal town, I stop to eat. Its better than anything I’ve ever eaten. Coming back was a shorter trip because I didn’t stop to eat. I snarfed down fast food and coffee only to leave myself with the worst stomach ache that ensured my inability to sit up straight for at least a day.

My niece got married – which is the reason for the mad dash down and back. I love the kid like a sister – which is the only other reason that I made the mad dash.

My mom and niece.
Thanks to Chris Tuite Photography for the beautiful pic.

I forced my parents to leave the day before I did because my dad drives like a crazy idiot. He’s deaf, so he can’t hear my mom’s screams from the passenger seat. And to put it into perspective: they left around 5:30 Wednesday and got to my sisters around 7 on Thursday night. I left at 8 AM Thursday and got there by 10 PM. They stopped less and I know for a fact that I was only averaging 10 MPH over the speed limit through the three states I had to travel and only caught air in my car once. And that was CalTrans fault for making a slight change to the hill by Chazem Rd. on 299.

So, in 100 degree weather I cooked food for two days for 75 people for a wedding with about 35 people in attendance. My mother, even tonight, complained that my sister and I wouldn’t let her help. It’s not that we wouldn’t LET her help. It’s that there was nothing she could do easily from the arm chair her cancer ridden backside was resting in. It makes both my sister and I sad to see how she's changed just in the last 6 months. She's gained weight, loses her train of thought much easier, forgets everything and needs a cane to get around.  Her and I agreed to just enjoy the weekend with everyone feeling good since mom is supposed to start a new Chemo on Thursday. The last one wasn't very much fun, so this one we know won't be a picnic.

During the drive I noticed a lot of things like people who pick their nose. Who the fuck does that? Just because you’re in a car, doesn’t mean I CAN’T SEE YOU. You are not John Cena, so don’t pretend. In Washington, drivers suck. I never hit my breaks and lost the ability to use my cruise control more times than I did in my home state. They ruined my driving chi more times than I care to mention. In Oregon, the rest stops are gross. Rest areas are dens for germs and bad sanitation anyway, but they’re worse in Oregon. I’d rather pee on the side of the road and drip dry than enter one of their rest stops. In fact, going down, I purposely dehydrated myself so I would only have to stop once or twice. Coming back, not so lucky thanks to a stop at Dutch Bros. Dam them anyway.

How does that not go up your ass?

Two of FFB's kids are totally into wrestling. And by that I mean the oldest has a boy crush on the "U Can't See Me" dude. I really can't say that I blame him. I'm sorry but dude is JACKED and fucking hot. What else I find incredible is that there are all these jacked up guys running around in Speedo's playing grabass and at NO TIME do said speedo's ride up their ass or even move. I'm sorry, I can't walk three steps without having one side of my underwear slide off my ass cheek and into my crack. NOR do these guys show up with bruises and bumps the next day. Which I find a little hard to believe. Who do you know on this planet that can get tossed out of a wrestling ring into a folding table, get slammed in the back with a metal chair then picked up and spun around before being thrown at the announcers and not have a single mark on them during the next week's Monday Night Raw? Who? Tell me because really, if there is someone like that, they are aliens. FFB's dog put her paw on my leg and I wound up with bruises from her toenails. And what is with the oil and spray tan? I realize that the spray tan  makes you less reflective for the cameras and hides imperfections, but isn't it a little much? I equate oil and spray tan with a different kind of wrestling.

Opinions, Assholes, and Crap

I’m not big on putting my personal life out there for people to look at. I like a little anonymity with what goes on at home with the exception of some of the crazy kid shit that goes on. Privacy is nice and this is the internet after all. We all have our reasons for doing things and it drives me bug-shit crazy when I do something and it gets picked apart by other people. Yes I buy frozen spinach in the hopes that I will do something with it. I realize that the brick has been in the freezer now for three years but that doesn’t give you the right to bitch at me for wasting $1 three years ago.

Opinions are like assholes: everyone has them and many of them spew out ridiculous amounts of crap. I’m right in my heart and mind that the decisions I’ve made through the course of life are right for me. Now that I have the kiddo’s these decisions are weighed a lot more carefully and I base the major ones on how it affects them as well as me.

One decision made almost a year ago is one that a particular someone still thinks was wrong and selfish but the more time that goes by the more I realize that this person is completely wrong. But he’s entitled to feel that way. So this big ass rant comes to my mind this morning when I read an excerpt from J.Lo’s interview with Vanity Fair. I would rather read about what antics celebrities are up to rather than read about parents killing their kids, the debt ceiling, and our never ending quest to be the worlds Jehovah’s Witnesses. Anyway.

J. Lo said something that hit home for me. It was eloquent and summed up why I did what I did. "Sometimes we don't realize that we are compromising ourselves. To understand that a person is not good for you, or that that person is not treating you in the right way, or that he is not doing the right thing for himself – if I stay, then I am not doing the right thing for me."  http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/08/jennifer-lopez-september-cover.html

At some point well over a year ago, I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't be the person that someone I thought loved me no matter what wanted me to be. I was being asked to compromise myself to be who he wanted me to be. It wasn’t a selfish request on his part because I fully admit that I was asking him to compromise himself to fit into something I wanted him to be. Bottom line was that I left because we were both trying to get each other to be someone we weren’t and that’s not fucking fair.