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Yesterday I applied for my passport because SD and I are going to Japan in April for his brother’s wedding. I have been in denial that we are going in Japan because I don’t really want to go. I know that sounds awful, and I would try to have a better attitude, but apparently I’m not finished being childish yet.
It really bothers me, because I like to think that I’m a reasonable person who doesn’t get upset about ridiculous things like going on an exotic vacation. That’s like my step-mother complaining about her diamond earrings. You want to slap me, don’t you? I’d want to slap myself if I didn’t know it was me I’d be slapping. I mean, if you put this scenario before me–”there’s this spoiled housewife whose husband is taking her to Japan in the spring, when the cherry blossoms are in bloom, and she doesn’t want to go because it’s ‘inconvenient’ and she doesn’t like Japanese food”–I’d say, “That person needs to be slapped. Why does her poor husband put up with her?” But that’s assuming you’d changed the names and everything, or I’d recognize myself for sure.
You don’t have to sell me on Japan, because I know several people who have been there and loved it, and I understand that it’s wonderful, blah blah blah blah blah, I don’t care. The awesomeness of Japan is not the issue. I accept the awesomeness of Japan in theory. I’m sure that once I get there, I will have a rip-snortin’ good time and not be able to believe that I was ever reluctant to travel there. Maybe I will even slap myself at that time. I’m not ruling it out. It’s just this:
1. We were going to go to Paris.
2. Or Ireland.
3. We have to leave the kids with the babysitter for nine days, which I’m not opposed to in theory. I’d prefer to leave them with family, but that’s not a possibility under these circumstances (middle of the school year, family far away, aged grandparents). I do trust our babysitter–she’s a responsible adult–but something about leaving her in charge of the kids for nine days is really not sitting well with me. I’m afraid that the house will be in ruins when we get back and they will have eaten nothing but corn dogs and pizza for the last nine days and things will never go back to normal after that. It’s irrational, I know, but it’s my fear.
4. We’re going to miss Elvis’s birthday, which shouldn’t make me feel guilty, but it does. I mean, I would feel more guilty about missing my brother-in-law’s wedding, but I didn’t say I was being mature or rational about this, did I?
5. I don’t like Japanese food. No offense to it, but the stuff that isn’t gross is boring.
6. I’m really not much of a traveler in the first place, and even if we were going someplace that I’ve always wanted to go, I would be very nervous about going there.
So there it is. Pretty weak, isn’t it? Do you want to slap me yet? I’m getting better. After all, I applied for my passport. I’m blogging about how immature and irrational I’m being, which is the first step toward recovery. Any minute now I should start feeling good about the whole trip. So don’t worry about me (not that you were). And please don’t tell me how you’ve been to Japan and it’s wonderful and I’m going to have a terrific time because I really don’t need the hard sell on Japan. I just need to be slapped. Go ahead, cyber-slap me.*
*Unless you’re my husband, in which case you should a) not slap me and b) say nothing.
My husband decided that today we should clean off all the flat surfaces we’ve been letting stuff accumulate on for the last several months (*cough* years *cough*)–surfaces like bookcase shelves, tops of bookcases, tops of dressers, desks, etc. So that is how we’ve spent our Saturday thusfar.
Several hours later, I must say that the flat surfaces on the bookcases, the dressers, and the desks look pretty freaking good.
The flat surfaces known as “beds” and “floors,” on the other hand–not so hot.
Until you get rid of about 80 percent of your belongings, you have some choices to make.
Pick one:
1. Clean house OR clean garage. (NO! You cannot have both. You must CHOOSE!)
2. Clean rooms OR clean closets. (NO! You cannot have both. You must CHOOSE!)
X’s & O’s,
The Reality Fairy
P.S. What the hell is all this stuff and why do you have it? What’s the matter with you people???
* My husband offered to make me a grape soda float the other day. I thought he wasn’t serious. He claimed he was. I still didn’t believe him. (Experience has taught me not to believe most of what he says, especially when he claims to be telling the truth.) Then he made himself a grape soda float. He made one for Elvis, too. Some of it splashed on my hand and I licked it off. It tasted like vanilla ice cream topped with Children’s Tylenol. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS??? WHY???
* If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, wonder no longer. Where I’m going is nowhere, fast.
* I can’t seem to let go of this fantasy I have about everyone I know leaving me the hell alone for a week.
* My three-year-old hasn’t had a proper bowel movement in at least three weeks. That was when I started keeping track. I’m afraid the real figure is something more like six weeks. Time flies, etc. We’ve given her laxatives and suppositories. It’s an ongoing problem, so before you tell me to take her to the doctor, let me assure you that she’s been taken, many times. She even had an x-ray once to inform us that she was indeed chock full o’ crap, just as we suspected, and we ought to give her more laxatives. Her pediatrician said, “I know. I consulted the G/E people, and that’s what they said. Just keep stepping up the laxatives until something gives. [shrugs]“ This is modern science, kids. But what we have here is not merely a failure to poop; it is actually a refusal to poop. It’s a triumph of the will. Don’t worry. I’m all done talking about it. For now.
* Three things that shouldn’t last three hours but often do:
1) Movies
2) Church services
3) Children’s birthday parties
* I’ve already been informed that I need a vacation. I’m just going to step up the laxatives until something gives.
* I have a ton of dirty clothes to wash. (By “ton,” I actually mean more like 700 pounds. Not an actual ton.) I haven’t been able to wash the dirty clothes because I’ve had more pressing laundry issues, like the ton of dirty towels that keep piling up on a seemingly-hourly basis. (In this case “ton” is an actual ton because of the water weight that dirty towels have.) Is it wrong that I should make wet, dirty towels a priority over (relatively) dry, dirty clothes? It will be when the underwear runs out. Which is why I have to go do laundry now. I actually should have been doing it all morning, but I was too busy making breakfast and mixing impotent laxative cocktails.
* Someday I’ll write a real blog again, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
I just checked my voice mail, and there’s a message telling me that I don’t need to bring dinner to the in-crisis family tonight because they say they won’t need meals brought in for the next couple weeks or so. Can you believe it? It’s like a call from the governor–a reprieve! That means I only have to figure out what to serve six people, not twelve people. And I don’t have to think that hard anymore because my blog buddies came through for me AS ALWAYS and gave me all these terrific ideas, so now I not only know what I’m feeding my own family, but the next time I say I’m going to bring someone else dinner–like in a couple weeks or so–and I start stressing out over what to make for them, all I have to do is remember the Miracle of June 2, 2009 and GO STRAIGHT TO THIS PAGE. You people are the best!
Oh, and I suppose I technically owe God one, too.
I have to make dinner for a family of six tonight. Oh, and another family of six, since I also have to feed my own family. It wouldn’t be a problem except that I have no idea what to make for dinner. I haven’t been able to think up something to make for dinner in, like, two weeks. I’ve been faking it a lot. I don’t know what the big deal is. I seriously just cannot think of anything to make for dinner. Every day I think, “Dude, what do we even eat?” Why can’t I remember what we eat anymore? The task is even more onerous when you factor in the fact that you need to be able to transport it to some other location.
I said I would bring dinner to this family from church who are going through a very difficult personal crisis, and I knew when I said it that I would have difficulty doing it because I’m having so much difficulty thinking of what exactly people eat these days–including us–but I figured since I was doing God’s work, God would provide..like…an idea of something that I could make for dinner–but so far that God-thing isn’t working. I seriously have no idea what to cook. And it doesn’t help that my husband pointed out that there are teenage boys in this family and therefore whatever I make, there will have to be a LOT of it.
When did eating become so difficult? I don’t like cooking, but I also don’t mind it, so long as I have a plan. I’ve been thinking about this for days–seriously, days–and as of right now, we’re at T-minus-six hours and still there is no plan. No plan!
This is one of those moments when I think how useless it is to ask, “What Would Jesus Do?” Because if I were Jesus, I would just perform a miracle. But I think if I actually make dinner tonight and don’t involve a pizza delivery service and/or corn dogs, it will be a miracle.
Have you ever seen that episode of Scrubs where Turk asks Carla what’s bothering her, and she peels back her scalp and there is a gushing forth of all her neurotic thoughts and obsessions? That’s what this blog is going to be like.
I am doubled over with guilt for the following reasons, in no particular order:
1. Last month I called Princess Zurg’s best friend’s stepmother to see if PZ’s best friend could come to PZ’s birthday party and found out that PZ’s best friend broke her leg in a really bad way over Spring Break and was totally bed/couch-ridden for the next couple weeks and still needed to have another surgery and was going to have limited mobility because of the whole crutches thing for however long it takes to recuperate from a broken leg that’s been broken that badly. So that’s why PZ didn’t have a birthday party this year, because if the best friend can’t come, what’s the point? And the reason I didn’t know about PZ’s best friend’s broken leg before this was because PZ’s best friend lives on the other side of town and her family doesn’t have a car, and so we don’t see her very often at all, especially not since PZ has been going to a different school for the last year. I can count on one hand–probably half of one hand–the number of times PZ has seen her best friend over the last year. That is the state of PZ’s social life. That I felt guilty enough about already, and I didn’t think it was possible to feel much guiltier, but I didn’t foresee the broken leg. When I heard about the broken leg, I felt just awful for PZ’s best friend, and I said I would certainly bring PZ over for a visit, soon. In fact, I penciled it into my calendar for that week. But it didn’t actually work out for that week, and I told myself I would have to pencil it in for some other day the following week, but you know what? I never picked up another pencil, and I never took PZ to see her best friend with the broken leg. It’s been a month. I could still take her–I still want to take her, or think I want to take her, or think I mean to take her, but I’m beginning to suspect that maybe I really don’t mean or want to take her and never actually did because if I really did, I would have done it by now, wouldn’t I have? The truth is that a best friend on the other side of town is much like a starving child in Africa to me, only without a convenient little intermediary organization like UNICEF that I can write a check to and thereby assuage my guilt. No, I have to actually block out some time in my schedule to actually visit the best friend on the other side of town myself, but that is too much work, and that is why I’m a terrible human being. Moving on!
2. Lest ye think the best friend with the broken leg is some kind of aberration in my ordinarily-chock-full-o’-thoughtfulness life, I also have an aunt who lives on the other side of Portland, whom I see about once a year. No, once a year is too generous. I see her about once every year and a half, usually when some other member of my family comes through Portland and says, “I should really see B. while I’m here,” and I say, “Oh yeah, that’d be good, I’ll go with you.” My aunt is getting on in years and is now in a nursing home. I don’t know exactly how long she’s been in the home because I didn’t realize she’d gone there until my older sister mentioned it to me one day. I know she’s only been in there sometime since last July because last July I went to see her in her house (not “the home”), but still, I haven’t been to see her in “the home” and don’t even know which home it is because I haven’t called any of my cousins to find out or get an address to send a frakking Christmas card, should I be so humanitarily inclined this year. I’ve lived a half-hour away from her for the last five years, and I just haven’t gone to see her because I haven’t wanted to think about what to do with the children or when would be a good time to go or calling on the phone and having a conversation–it’s all just been too much, darling, too much, because I’m a terrible human being. But wait! There’s more.
3. After the turbulent elementary school years with Princess Zurg, I have been so relieved and happy that Mister Bubby has done well in school and has never been a problem for anyone and always does his homework and has just generally let me send him off to school and not worry about him for six-and-a-half hours, five days a week. Then a few weeks ago I got a call from his best friend’s mother, who wanted to know if I was also concerned about the fact that our sons have learned exactly nothing new in school this year, that they are still doing the same crap they did in first grade, only with slightly different worksheets. That was the first time I ever really stopped to think about it and realized that actually, yes, now that you mention it, Mister Bubby has been complaining that school is boring and he already knows everything they’re teaching him and why can’t he just go to third grade, and yes, they do have an awful lot of worksheets, don’t they? What the hell is up with the worksheets? I don’t remember doing so many worksheets when I was in school. I guess they can’t afford books and slates anymore because they have to buy computers so our children can be competitive in the twenty-first century. And what are they using the computers for? Hell if I know. The last time I was involved in a child’s education, it was primarily for the purpose of figuring out how I could get myself less involved on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis. All I’ve ever really wanted was to send my kid off to school for six-and-a-half hours a day, five days a week, and not have to worry about anything beyond that. I don’t remember my parents being that involved in my education until I was in high school and the math got harder. I’m feeling a lot of resentment over the fact that I’m devoting all of May 29–paying a babysitter for six-and-a-half hours–to volunteering at the school for “Australia Day,” the annual second grade extravaganza. It’s not like I ever volunteer at the school if I can possibly help it, and usually I can help it quite a bit because our neighborhood school is overrun with parents who volunteer for everything. It’s a very competitive game–who will be the lucky soul who gets to chaperone the field trip to the rock museum???–and I’ve been quite content not to play it. They used to make me volunteer to chaperone field trips because PZ was supposedly so volatile that even being attended by her own freaking aide was not enough, no, she had to have parental supervision if they were going to take her off of school property, and so, yes, I was pleased as punch not to be doing that anymore–but now it’s freaking Australia Day and they need all the helping hands they can get and MB wants me there anyway because I never volunteer and possibly he’s afraid the other kids assume that his mom must be some kind of crack mom because she’s never seen on school property during school hours. And that’s how I got roped into being a group leader in the morning and running the flipping didgeridoo in afternoon, whatever the hell any of that means, I haven’t even looked at my job description(s) yet because I’ve been so preoccupied with the fact that I pay all this money in property taxes and my neighbors spend so much of their time helping out in the school, and my son is still doing first-grade worksheets in flipping May and what the hell does he need a flipping didgeridoo for anyway? I’m so angry about it and yet I feel I have no one but myself to blame because I was the one who wanted a worry-free education for my son–rather, an education for my son that was worry-free for me–and this is just what you get for not worrying: fill-in-the-blank worksheets and mother-frakking didgeridoos. Nice work, Mother. I hope you ate a lot of bon bons this year while your son’s brain was atrophying!
4. We were thinking of sending Elvis to summer camp this year. Rather, Sugar Daddy thought it would be a good idea to send Elvis to this summer camp for children with disabilities, and I had no argument against it because hey, who doesn’t need to get rid of Elvis for a couple hours a day during the summer? So we sent away for an application for this camp, and we got the paperwork in the mail a couple weeks ago, and I started to fill it out because I’m pretty good at filling out paperwork. I did all right with the name and address and emergency contacts and doctors and insurance information, and then I got to the section where I had to describe in detail the extent of my child’s disability and his specific challenges, and I thought, “I can’t do this right now, I’m going to do it later,” because after all this time I still have trouble confronting these facts about my son. I have a visceral response to requests for quantification about his disability. I just can’t handle it. I don’t understand why, but I just can’t, and by “can’t,” I really mean I just don’t want to, and I don’t know why, but I just don’t. But I have to, or he’s not going to go to camp, and I will be sorry later, sometime this summer, when he’s driving me crazy and eating all the popsicles and replacing all the batteries in all of the small appliances and can’t find the right screwdriver and wants me to push him 89 times on the swing but he really means 99 times and he gets frustrated and starts yelling, “aaahhhAAAHHHHaaahhhhAAAAHHHHHaaaahhhhAAAHHHHHaaahhhhAAAAHHHHH” with the full force of his diaphragm behind it for the forty-seventh time that day, and I will probably start screaming myself and want to pop him one and possibly I will actually pop him one because I can’t stand it anymore, and I will only have myself to blame because I was too lazy to fill out the paperwork on time so he could go to camp and make me a little bit less crazy. And I wonder how I can love my son so much while simultaneously not wanting him around very much. Maybe I don’t love him as much as I think I do, unless he’s asleep. That’s just not right. Which reminds me, I need to find that frakking paperwork and fill it out, and now I’m afraid I won’t be able to find it.
5. Girlfriend is almost 42 months old and still needs to be toilet-trained. Sugar Daddy did the heavy lifting with toilet training Elvis, although that was mostly because he finally got the idea that I wasn’t going to do it, and so now he deserves a medal and I need to get on the stick and finally toilet-train our non-disabled child, who has absolutely no desire to use the toilet. In point of fact, she has the opposite of desire. I think sometimes that I was born in the wrong era. As much as I enjoy the conveniences of modern life, I often wish that I could have parented back in the day when adults weren’t supposed to care about scarring their children for life, and if they didn’t do what Ma or Pa said, Ma or Pa could just beat them with a stick and voila, instant compliance–and they didn’t grow up to be serial killers or anything, just average, reasonably-productive citizens who also beat their children with sticks. Not that I want to beat my child with a stick–no, I am far too modern and enlightened to have such feelings, but I admit that I am just plain old weary of trying to figure out how to get my children to do stuff without beating them with a stick. How did toileting get to be so complicated? How did human beings evolve to the point where sitting in their own filth is a preferred state? I have seen each of my children reach the stage where they were interested in the toilet, only to immediately recoil upon being offered a toileting opportunity–and not only recoil, but turn and run in the opposite direction, screaming bloody murder, huddling in a corner every time the word “potty” is uttered–leaving me feeling very much like a guy who’s misinterpreted a pretty girl’s attentions and ends up not only offending her with my romantic advances but turning her into a lesbian besides. What on earth have I done?
6. I am seriously considering giving up my housekeepers because it is so depressing to me to walk around my house and realize that I’ve just been engaging in a bi-monthly exercise of shoving stuff in closets and drawers so someone else can come vacuum and mop, and once the vacuuming and mopping is done, all the crap that we own just comes SPROING!ing out of aforementioned closets and drawers and deposits itself all over the floors and countertops, along with the neverending stream of new crap that finds its way into our house on a daily basis. I am just ready to surrender to entropy already. I caught up on the laundry, sort of–the clothes part, I was mostly caught up on, and then I had this backlog of towels I had to wash, so I’ve washed nothing but towels for the last two days, which is not to say I’ve been continuously washing towels for 48 hours, but towels is all I’ve washed, and now I have an unbelievable backlog of actual clothes that need to be washed again because you just can’t go 48 hours without washing clothes, not when you have six people in your family, all of whom wear clothes. What do I do all day long? Seriously, what do I do? You know how OBL can’t go grocery shopping until she’s organized her pantry? I look in my pantry, which is an unqualified disaster, and I just think, “I would sooner never eat again than try to figure out what the hell is in here,” and then I cram another cereal box in there, close the door real quick-like, and jam a chair in front of it so it doesn’t SPROING! open again. I’m like the anti-OBL. It’s not like I do nothing. Obviously, I am filling up my days with something other than blogging and Facebooking because people still have clean clothes and they have food to eat and there is toilet paper in the house, but on the other hand, there’s all this entropy and long-neglected best friends with broken legs and aunts in failing health and summer camp paperwork unfilled-out and three-year-olds in diapers, and I have to tell you, people, it’s not because I don’t have enough hours in the day. It’s probably because my parents didn’t beat me with a stick more when I was little.
Okay, it was good to get that off my chest. I’m not going to visit anyone’s best friend today, but I think I will do the dishes and start on the laundry and pick up the 47,368 pieces of paper that are lying all over my living room floor. I might even sweep the kitchen floor. I should go to the Target, but I don’t remember why. Somebody’s prescription. Also, I’m pretty sure that since I’ve said the word “frak” about 67 times before 10 a.m. today, it probably means that I should pick up some tampons, too. Incidentally, I feel like “frak” is so much more satisfying than saying the actual F-word, it’s got to be more vulgar somehow. In any case, I should probably stop saying it around my kids. I’ll put that on my list of stuff I “mean” or “want” to do. Damn, I’m gonna eat some chocolate cake now.
12:28 p.m. Start cleaning kitchen.
12:29 p.m. Girlfriend screams for the “blue brush,” i.e. the thing we scrape the ice off our windshield with. I don’t know where it is. I look for it anyway. Can’t find it. Tell her I can’t find it, don’t know where it is, must cease caring now. She is not appeased. I go back to work.
12:34 p.m. Think I hear sounds of mischief emanating from upstairs. Turn down my iPod to get confirmation. None such. Turn iPod back up and continue working.
12:43 p.m. Girlfriend asks for help fixing her car track. I fix the car track. Go back to work.
12:48 p.m. Elvis needs help getting the big box of corn dogs out of the freezer in the garage. I ask Mister Bubby if he’d also like a corn dog for lunch. No response. I go back to work while Elvis makes himself a corn dog.
12:48 p.m. Elvis needs help with the corn dog. I help him. I go back to work.
12:53 p.m. I am temporarily stymied by my discovery of a mysterious plastic cap. I can’t tell what it’s supposed to go to, or if it is disposable. It says very clearly on the cap “Lift Off Replace.” What does that even mean? Can I throw it away? Will I regret that later?
12:55 p.m. Girlfriend asks for a corn dog. I make her corn dog. I go back to work.
12:56 p.m. Girlfriend screams for mustard. I look for the mustard.
12:57 p.m. Elvis screams, “Stick is broken! Stick is broken! Mommy, come take a look!” I say I’ll look as soon as I get the mustard for Girlfriend.
12:58 p.m. I have misapplied the mustard to Girlfriend’s plate. She is so upset that she can’t properly explain how I can rectify the situation. I have Mustard FAIL, and Elvis is still screaming for me to look at the broken stick. I finally get a mustard-ketchup combination that Girlfriend can live with, then go upstairs with Elvis to see that he has drawn a picture of a corn dog with a broken stick. I make appropriate comments and go back downstairs to continue working in the kitchen.
1:02 p.m. Elvis screams. I ignore him.
1:04 p.m. Elvis is downstairs screaming, “Draw pickle!” I am in the middle of sorting various papers and debris on the phone desk and can’t give him my full attention.
1:06 p.m. Elvis is still screaming, “Draw pickle!” I am still sorting and say I’ll be there in a minute, just as soon as I finish this one thing, which technically isn’t one thing but many things rolled into one, but I keep thinking it won’t take longer than ten seconds if I can just hear myself think for that long.
1:08 p.m. Elvis is still screaming, “Draw pickle!” I find a copy of a “Tens Go Fish” math game that Mister Bubby’s teacher sent home for us to play together. The pieces haven’t been cut out yet. I feel guilty because I never played Tens Go Fish with him even though MB doesn’t need any help with his Tens and the likelihood of him being interested in Tens Go Fish is absolutely nil. I wonder why I can’t shake the guilt. I finally give in to Elvis’s screaming and go upstairs to see that he has drawn a picture of a pickle–a very fine picture of a pickle. I make appropriate comments and go back downstairs.
1:10 p.m. Elvis screams, “I erased it!”
1:11 p.m. I realize that I’ve finished cleaning the kitchen, but there is still this pile of crap I don’t know what to do with yet. I realize that I feel guilty about the Tens Go Fish because it is printed on such high-quality card stock and it seems a shame to just recycle it without putting it to some good use. I think the back side is theoretically still usable, but I can’t think of anything I could use it for in the next five seconds before I give up and recycle it. But I can’t recycle it. Even though it’s the teacher who started killing the trees, not me, I can’t shake the guilt.
1:12 p.m. Mister Bubby asks, “Are the corn dogs almost ready?”
I was forced to clean out my church bag this morning. Remember when I cleaned out my purse and you couldn’t believe all the crap I managed to fit in there? Well, my church bag is this full-size backpack that houses all the snacks,water bottles, books, papers, crayons, diapers, wipes, etc., crappedy crap crap CRAP that I haul with me to church every week and it makes my purse look like…something really empty. Anyway, I had to empty it this morning because I knew that my keys were in there somewhere, so I turned it over and shook all the contents onto my living room floor. I wasn’t ready to do that. Yes, it definitely needed to be done, but I was not ready to do it, mentally or physically. I just wanted to find my keys so badly, damn the consequences.
(Note to self: Never ever EVER put your keys in the church bag again. Ever.)
So now there’s a pile of debris about six feet high on my living room floor. Imagine the contents of my purse times twelve and covered in a thin film of Goldfish cracker dust. I haven’t cleaned it up yet because, as I told you, I was not and am not prepared to tackle that job. I did find my keys, though. Which will come in handy tomorrow, when it’s Housekeepers Eve and you still can’t see the floor for all the clutter and I just get in the car and drive off and never come back.
I probably shouldn’t have announced those plans publicly.
Sugar Daddy recently replaced Princess Zurg’s bookcase with a desk and also built a shelf for her to put her great-gobs-o’-stuff on. The problem is that the desk and shelf will not hold all of the great gobs o’ stuff that have been displaced by the removal of the bookcase. My mission, should I choose to accept it–or not, like I really have a choice?–is to find a place to put all of that great-gobs-o’-stuff before Wednesday morning. You like how I referenced Mission: Impossible because it IS impossible? There’s no place to put all of that stuff. That’s why it was crammed into a bookcase in the first place.
Do you know that we have boxes of stuff that was packed up after the fire that are still sitting unopened in our garage? What’s in there? Heck if I know. I don’t remember, and I don’t care. I had to go into the garage this morning to look for the box that housed my scrunched-up fitness ball because I’ve decided that I’m finally going to use my fitness ball, about fourteen months after I bought it. Yeah, you scoff, but just wait. Seriously, just wait. I will use it eventually. I have to use it because I worked so hard to re-inflate the #$*(# thing, and I’m not giving my husband an excuse to deflate it again. But now I’m off-topic. I went into the garage, and it was so depressing I almost wanted to set fire to my house again.
Not that I set it on fire the first time. That was totally not my fault and not on purpose either. So, ah…hey look at that over there!
It’s hard to simplify your life when you’re holding on to so much crap for psychological reasons that you don’t even know about. I know I suffer from “I might need/want that someday” syndrome. I know that most likely I won’t need or want any such thing, but for some reason I can’t…let…GO…of it. Because I might need or want it someday. Like the day after I throw it out. I’m totally going to want/need it. It’s happened! Very rarely, but still. It’s happened. I thought, “I think I’m going to need that someday, but I haven’t wanted it for the last 10 years, so why would I want it ever?” So I got rid of it and BAM, three days or three years later, I was thinking, “Dude, where did I put that thing I was never needing or wanting until right now?” And I couldn’t find it. And I eventually went out and bought a new one. And then I remembered that I never really got rid of it in the first place because there’s the original staring me in the face again. So yeah, never mind. That story proved exactly nothing except that I’m addicted to owning stuff.
Is there a twelve-step program for people like me? Packrats Anonymous? I’m sure there is one, but I’m actually not as bad as a lot of other people I can think of, and I don’t want to go to a meeting with folks who are still figuring out how to throw out their third-grade spelling tests and their lucky soda pop bottle lid collections. Maybe there’s another group, Packrats-Who-Think-They-Aren’t-Packrats Anonymous? That would be the one for me.
Well, I’d better go rake some personal effects off the living room floor or strengthen my core muscles. Whichever seems easier.
Still thinking…
P.S. Okay, bouncing on this fitness ball is way so much funner than cleaning, it’s not even funny. I don’t think it’s doing anything for my core, but I’m having a good time. You should seriously get one of these if you haven’t already. Only you should pay somebody else (not me) to blow it up for you because that part is the opposite of fun. Sorry, can’t bounce and blog at the same time. See ya, suckahs!
Every Christmas my mother-in-law gives me a calendar for the new year. At least one–sometimes she gives me two. Once, I think, she gave me three. I mean, sometimes there are a lot of really good calendars out there, you know, and you can’t pick just one. Well, this was the year of lean kine, so far as calendars were concerned, because my MIL had a really hard time finding a calendar for me. She didn’t see any that she really liked, but she finally settled on the one she thought would be most useful for me.
It is one of those “busy family” calendars, and it has all the days of the months in rows and there are columns for individual family members–up to five. (Because what “busy family” has time for more than five people in it? Seriously.) But she figured that the younger two kids could share a column, since it’s not like they have that many extracurricular activities. I thought that made enough sense. And it’s got pictures of cute animal families, so it’s attractive, too.
Uno problemo: I CANNOT WORK WITH THIS CALENDAR.
It sounds all well and good in theory–a rectangle for each person for each day, all the activities organized into a single column for each individual–but no. No. No. No. It’s not good. It’s not well. It’s too new. It’s too different. I can’t get used to it. I’m thirty-seven years old, and I’m used to looking at my months a certain way. Specifically, I need seven days across, with a big box for each day, all 30 or 31 or 28 of them. Everything that’s happening in one day has to be in the same box. I can’t deal with these five little boxes in a row. That’s too much. To me five boxes = five days. I can’t see it differently. I’m trying, and it’s just not working. I look at my calendar and I can’t tell what’s Monday and what’s Thursday. I look for Friday, but it’s not Friday, it’s Mister Bubby. What the hell? Where IS Friday? It’s down there, where Sunday the 25th ought to be. No. No. It’s not working for me, I can’t deal.
I keep telling myself to try harder because my MIL did go to all the trouble to buy me a calendar, and it wasn’t even on sale yet because it was still December, so I owe it to her and to the principle of conservation and to my ancestors who lived through the Great Depression to make good use of this fine calendar that was specially designed for busy families like mine (well, families like mine, minus one person). So I continue to write stuff down on it. I practice looking for Friday on Sunday. I find myself increasingly aware of just how many extracurricular activities my eight-year-old is suddenly involved in, and how not busy my ten-year-old is. I start to remember that weekends are shaded in purple.
But then somebody calls and asks me if I can do X on which day or when am I going to be free to do something else whenever, so I glance over at my calendar and hell if I can tell what day is which and where the blank spots really are and what they mean–is that Thursday, or is it Mister Bubby? Is it Princess Zurg? I’m free on this Monday, but not on that Elvis and/or Girlfriend. No. No. NO, THIS WILL NOT DO!
It may have been PMS, but I just about had a nervous breakdown on the phone last week when I tried to schedule a play date. It may be a personal problem, but it can’t go on. It’s only January 14, but I must buy a new calendar.
Apparently it really is the calendar year of lean kine because when I looked at the Target the other day, all they had were Hannah Montana, the Jonas Brothers and Dale Earnhardt Jr. I very nearly went for the Dale Earnhardt Jr., but then I thought, “No, Mad, you’re on the rebound right now, don’t do anything hasty.” I wanted to get one of those enormous desk calendars that you can also hang on the wall, but they were all out of them. I must not be the only one with calendar issues this year. So I ended up not buying any calendar, and I figured I could just live with this one for a while longer.
Then I had to write something on Mister Bubby’s Thursday, and I nearly lost it again. Seriously. Not another day. I can’t stand it another day.
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