The Queen's Rambles

I was trying to find out some information to help me with Christmas shopping, so I went delving deep into my journal. I knew what I wanted to know happened when we were in Oregon this summer. What a depressing lot of entries to read. My dad was dying, I was super sick and my sister was completely off her rocker. I’d honestly forgotten most of the crap she pulled, probably because I was so sick and upset that I have sort of blocked out all those memories. I’m glad I had them written down and I’m glad I decided to re-visit the entries because it made one thing very clear. I can not ever go to Oregon again (at least not my home town). If a friend of mine posted everything I had posted, then continued to visit I would write off my friend as completely clueless. I would very quickly lose sympathy for a person who continued to put herself in such situations and I would wonder why she would ever, ever, ever allow her children to be put in harm’s way. It’s time to end it. My sister has absolutely no respect for me or anyone else.

I was in this mindset last night when I came across her latest FB post, crying that it was so sad her children couldn’t sing songs about Jesus during their school Christmas program.

I may have started some Facebook dramaz. Nothing too bad, just a comment that it’s called separation of church and state and that there is nothing sad about it. Her children can sing as many songs to God as they want when they are at home or at church. It’s fun arguing with someone who has no clue about history. She didn’t even know what the term separation of church and state means. Literally. Did. Not. Know. That’s what happens when you spend your high school years running away from home, selling drugs and your body.

Now I have a whole slew of known drug dealers, ex-cons, current cons, parents of multiple children born out of wedlock to different partners, cheaters, and abusers praying for my soul and telling me I should leave America and go straight to hell where I belong. Because they are very Christian, you know.

Let me make this clear: I have nothing against the truly Christian among you posting thoughtful things about your faith. Or even flippant, funny things about your faith. You live your life that way and that’s who you are. Sometimes it is even interesting to me. Sometimes I even agree with the sentiment, if not with the source.

I just have a real problem with people who in no way live anything resembling a Christian life constantly posting about how much they love Jesus, want to praise him, live for him, love him, so on and so forth. And by the way! I can finance a mission trip to Fiji for my sister. Wouldn’t that be great! It’s sickening. I think I would hate it even more if I was still a Christian.

When I was a Christian I took my faith very, very seriously (part of the reason I can no longer be a Christian, I was very much in the all or nothing camp). It is a mockery to have these people saying they will pray for me. My sister and her husband defrauded my grandma for over $200K and are only free due to the severe deficiencies of the criminal justice system. And they are praying for my soul because I get irritated with their constant FB hypocrisy.

I solved the problem. I just unsubscribed from her feed. Now I can be less irritated in my life. Why didn’t I do that sooner? I almost want to block her, but I don’t want her calling here.

I also announced to Mike that we are not traveling to Oregon this summer. No way. No how. It’s my 20th high school reunion, so my family was hoping to get me back there to participate in that, but I don’t give two hoots about any of the people who are planning on attending. It would be fun to see some of my old HS friends, but as far as I can tell they are not going. I don’t blame them. I don’t want to go either. My hometown is a hell hole. We’ve all managed to make our escape and don’t need to go running back for any reason. I’ve informed Mike that he must forbid me from buying tickets, no matter how addled guilt makes my brain. I believe he is a very happy husband right now.

My mom and sister are both afraid that I’ll never go back now that my dad and grandma are dead. After reading through those last entries, they are right. I won’t go back. Why should I? Why should Mike and I spend our vacation time and money on a bunch of people who are dangerous and disrespectful lunatics? My mom can come out here to see the kids. I feel bad for my niece and nephews, but I seriously doubt if they care that much.

If my sister wants to see my kids so badly, she can get a bleepin’ j-o-b and make arrangements to meet us in a fun destination spot. How about Denver? It is not my financial responsibility to make sure she can pretend to love my kids for five minutes.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Ok, just needed to get that all out.

You guys will not believe the birthday party we went to today. It was gross-tacky. It was a 6 year old’s party at a bouncy house from 10:30-noon. In my peer group, this means that parents wouldn’t stay unless they were family friends. It also means that food would be provided for all guests, parents included.

I asked if it was a drop-off party and it wasn’t. Fair enough. There were 26 kids and 24 adults. In-frickin-sane.

The boy is in Erik’s class, so I didn’t really know the parents. The hosts always act hoity-toity and I know they live in the McMansions by the school. That doesn’t mean jack these days with everyone losing their shirts in the mortgage crisis, but I get the idea these people really want to keep up with the Joneses.

So they force the parents to stay. They don’t serve the parents a single drop of water, offer a bite of food or even a piece of cake! I’ve never been to a party like this that didn’t have at a minimum a veggie tray and cooler of bottled water for the parents. One guy asked where the drinks were, and the dad joked and said we could go drink out of the sink in the bathroom. I wanted to vomit.

Sheesh, people. If you can’t afford a big, fancy party then don’t plan a big, fancy party. Skimping on the food makes you look worse than opting for a small party.

Erik had fun, but it was certainly a miserable 90 minutes for me. I had other things to do and there was not a reason on this earth that I needed to be standing around with all these strangers while a bunch of college kids supervised the party.

Ok, gotta finish making some cookies. I really need to sit down and make a to-do list for this week. I’m starting to get panicky because I don’t have a to-do list and the panic makes me procrastinate so I don’t make a list so I panic. Clear as mud, right?

I’m finally sort of feeling better. I can’t leave the house right after I eat, but I did risk a trip to Target this morning and didn’t have any problems. Mike and I are starting to think that I had food poisoning. Last night we thought Elsa was coming down with the flu, but that never materialized (I have never been so happy to be wrong). I don’t see how I could be this sick and not infect anyone else. Must have been something at the restaurant we ate at on Saturday.

I spent almost 5 days eating nothing but rice. I had protein for the first time today. I didn’t even feel hungry until about 6 pm tonight. I was starting to seriously consider going on an extreme diet and living on rice for the next several months. I could be skinny! It’s easy to plan out when you have absolutely no desire for food.

Back when I was having gallbladder problems I ate nothing but rice and beans and Wasa crackers for almost a month. I lost 20 pounds. A diet is a lot more successful if you know you will suffer immediate, debilitating pain. That’s what scares me about lapband surgery. I am not educated enough to know how it works, but I think it works by making you sick if you overeat. I don’t want to be sick if I overeat. I don’t want to be scared to eat things I enjoy. I guess things do taste better than being thin, Oprah. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been thin.

I’m pondering starting a low-fat diet and seeing if I can stick to it, now that I’ve had a five day purge of everything I usually crave. I bought the ingredients for the recipe I posted above. I’m tired of my chicken and spinach wrap lunch, so maybe vegetarian burritos will be my new thing.

I’m looking back at my recipe blog and wondering why I never make some of those things anymore. The couscous salad is delicious. I think I stopped making it because Erik created such a mess when he would eat it. I guess I don’t need to get out cookbooks to add a little variety to our menu plan–I just need to go back and figure out what we used to eat.

Speaking of Erik and his messes. That boy. Argh!

I swear his sister can eat more neatly with a spoon than he can. And she’s 1. And she’s not a neatness prodigy. Did I spoon feed him too long? I stopped when he was 3. At that point I refused to do it any longer, even though Mike would still spoon feed him his dinner. Now that I’m seeing my 1 year old can spoon feed herself just fine, I’m wondering what the heck I was thinking.

Of course, that girl has never let me put a spoon in her mouth at all. We had major food issues in the beginning and I gave up on purees. That was a major part of our problem; she didn’t want assistance. She certainly doesn’t have food issues now, though she still doesn’t want assistance. With anything. Ever.

I can’t believe I’m still sick. Stomach flu shouldn’t last this long! Thankfully it is not a full flu happening with both ends, but it is still not very pleasant.

We were supposed to go to Mike’s holiday party tonight. I even arranged for a babysitter. I called to cancel earlier this morning, so at least that means I don’t have to try to clean my house and go and buy party clothes and make-up and figure out my hair all on a day when I can’t leave the bathroom. I would have done several of those tasks on Sunday, but on Sunday I was buried in my bed under every blanket in the house. I’ve never been so cold in my life.

At least the fever portion is gone, right?

Last night was hell. Elsa decided she didn’t want to sleep. Mike and I both refused to get up, so we alternated patting her and rubbing her and telling her to lay down. I probably should have got up with her so Mike could sleep, but that didn’t occur to me in middle of the night. Lay down and shut up, was all that was occurring to me.

I really thought we were going to make it to the party tonight, so I risked a short excursion last night. I had to get my brows waxed. No way I could go to a party with my wild brows.

Now here’s where you either praise me for my problem solving skills or tell me I’m the biggest dork ever.

Probably the biggest dork ever.

I was feeling pretty good, but I knew if I put any pressure on my stomach all hope would be lost. My closet is really dark and the super cheap LED light I installed does nothing but shine on two shirts. I knew I had a stash of fat pants in the closet, but I couldn’t find them.

And I never did find them, but I found a pair of maternity pants.

Yup. I wore maternity pants to get my brows done. It was ridiculous. I always moan and complain and say my belly is bigger than it was when I was pregnant, but my maternity pants tell a different story (probably helps that I have eaten nothing but rice for three days). I could pull those things up to my neck.

Everyone was out getting all their kids haircuts for the holiday season. I need to get my kids hair cuts as well, but who has time? I thought I was going to have to dash out of there before they even called my name.

It was an awful experience and I ended up with an awful eyebrow stylist. I don’t know what she did, but I’ve never had my brows so swollen and angry red after a waxing. Yes, they are always red, but never swollen. It was bizarre. They are still swollen this morning. I need to stop going to the cheap place and find a real salon. The brow lady used to be really good, but I haven’t seen her the last few times.

^^^^^^^^^

All the above was written this morning. It has been a long, long day. I am still not 100% well, though am doing much better. Elsa now has the stomach bug. It is looking to be a long, long night.

And my eyebrow area is still swollen, so maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t make it to the party. I look like a neanderthal with my eyebrows hanging over my eyes.

My new neighbor doesn’t care that we have the stomach flu. She wants to talk. She must be seriously desperate, because I bolt the door against anyone who tells me there’s the remotest possibility they might be carrying a stomach virus. She brought me dinner one night–a plain chicken soup that I couldn’t stomach (I didn’t tell her that). It was a very kind gesture.

She watches by the window, and comes out as soon as the kids get off the bus. She wants me to go into her house, which is fine on a normal day but I hate to spread my virus in her breathing space. She’s pregnant and has two babies. Her choice though, I guess.

I guess she wanted to know how old I was. It was kind of funny how she took a very round-about way to ask my age. She wanted to know what year I got married, then how old I was when I got married. Tricky!

She’s 24. She came home from school one day when she was 17 and her father announced that she was engaged. She was engaged for two years, but never set eyes on her husband until their wedding day. Even then she couldn’t see him (I think because she was heavily veiled). She didn’t even know what he looked like when he came into the bedroom at 2 am on their wedding night. I am just so horrified. She said it was the most terrifying moment of her life. I know if I was 19 and about to be forced to have sex with some guy who was my new husband and in complete control of me for the rest of my life I would be terrified too! She had no idea what he would do to her.

She was going to tell me more, but her husband arrived home from work unexpectedly. I don’t know how old he is, but if he’s under 40 I’ll eat my hat.

When my Hindu neighbor was telling me about her arranged marriage I got such a different vibe. I still found it bizarre and terrible, but at least she did have a lot of control. She chose her own man, even though she didn’t know him. They interviewed people who knew him and a bunch of other stuff to try to insure he was a decent human being. It was more like a very high stakes Match.com date of her choosing than a forced marriage.

I know a ton of American women who do online dating on the various sites. They have to go through a lot of toads to get their princes. Can you imagine having such high stakes in the dating game? Pick one, marry him, hope it goes well. Yeesh!

Not that our culture is perfect. I went down a windy internet highway and ended up on a site about the Quiverfull movement, the fundamental Christian movement popularized by the Duggars. You want some batshit crazy, you should read some of that stuff. Of course it is just a very small minority of Christians who go that far. Also, that site is a little extreme. They basically say that all homeschoolers will eventually turn into quiverfull families and beat their kids with PVC pipes. I know many homeschooling families of all religious stripes and that is not even a possibility for any of them. I think the moms I know would be more likely to beat the quiverfull people with a pipe if they suggested they discipline their child in such a manner. Obviously, though, these ideas come from somewhere and the posters on that site have lived it. There is a whole manual out there about how to beat your kids the Christian way. Truly disgusting for any true Christian or any one who has ever proclaimed to be a Christian.

Why am I even bringing it up? I lost my train of thought.

Oh yes. To remind myself that it is not just my neighbor’s culture. Things like that can happen anywhere. That anti-quiverfull site was an eye-opener. The difference, of course, is that in America there are escape systems in place. It is really hard, though, when you are raised to believe you will rot in hell if you take advantage of those escape systems. Not that all the women were raised that way. One of the saddest stories on there was about a woman who was raised by two feminist lesbians. Her act of teen rebellion (skipping college and marrying an ultra-“Christian” dude) cost her 25 years of complete unhappiness.

Aren’t I just a ball of fun these days?

Heck, I am a ball of fun. I made cookie dough on Saturday and didn’t have a chance to actually make cookies until tonight. I still felt like crap, but was well enough to roll out the dough and let Erik take care of the rest. I couldn’t find my camera, so the whole point was ruined. No photos! I need photos!

The fun came when I forgot that Elsa was roaming free. I went down to the basement to talk to Mike. I knew Erik was very happily working on the cookies. When I came back up, Elsa’s face was stuck in a bowl of green frosting and she was double-fisting sprinkles. And I can’t find my bleepin’ camera!

I am always on the search for a tasty soft sugar roll out cookie (I have the recipe for the best ever drop sugar cookie). My search this year failed me big time. Very, very soft. Very bland. Bah! And it even had a bunch of spices in it, so I don’t understand.

Yeah, yeah, I could go the easy route and roll out store bought dough. It would save a lot of aggravation, but have you seen the ingredients list? Nasty. I did it one year, but it wasn’t worth it.

Ok, I think I better head for bed while I have the chance. Maybe I can sleep for a bit before the evening fun starts up.

Oh man. I am sick. Yuck yuck yuck.

I got a flu shot last week and now I have the flu? Or something like the flu? I am not against vaccinations and don’t like to feed into the “the shot gave me the flu!” but it certainly feels like suspicious timing. I know it is not a live virus, so it can’t actually cause the flu.

Thankfully I have not been feverish today, just achy and having problems with my tummy. Yesterday I couldn’t get out of bed, so this is major progress.

I’m so glad Elsa is such a calm, happy girl. She is content to play by herself and wander around talking about her hair. She’s obsessed with patting her head, saying “hair, hair, hair, hair, hair.” She loves her mommy, but she does not feel the need to be attached to me every second of the day. If you have to be a mommy when you’re sick, Elsa is the perfect child to have around.

Not really looking forward to the bus coming in 2 hours. Erik forgot his lunch box at school, so he had to eat the school lunch. He is always grouchy-hungry when he gets home on the days he eats school lunch. I plan on feeding him the second he gets in the door and giving him a major gift: unlimited video game time. Hopefully that will let us survive the afternoon.

I want to thank you all for your advice and insights regarding my new neighbor. Most of you know that I cross-post to livejournal and my queenoframbles.com blog. I had some really great insight from commenters on both sites and I really, really, deeply appreciate it. The poor girl has herself in quite a pickle and I’m certainly not going to be able to fix that. I will be able to lend her support if she needs it, I hope. I am guessing she is under 25. I’m 37. I’m totally wrapped up in my kids. She wants to go shopping and do make-up. She says her 2 year old only drinks Coke. My six year old has never had a soda. We are very different.

But I am going to let her show me how to do my make-up. I’m going to invite her and the kids on some adventures (I have enough car seats–just have to install them). I printed out a list of English classes in the area, so maybe she will be able to do those. They all have weekend hours, so maybe her husband will be able to drive her.

I can’t become her whole support systems–I have a very busy life of my own. But I can definitely relieve a little bit of her loneliness, in my own clunky way. I’d really love to get her hooked up with people who have more in common with her. I think she and my Indian neighbor would be a great friendship match. Too bad her politics won’t allow that.

I invited her over for a bit the other afternoon and it was fine, if awkward. She commented that it is so hard to be herself in English and I tried to tell her I understood since I was an immigrant once myself. It is hard. So very hard. I guess we’ll see what happens. Not that it is any of my business, I suppose.

Her eyes did about fall out of her head when she saw the amount of toys we have in the living room. I didn’t even tell her that our living room hardly had anything. The majority of the toys are in the basement. And we have a lot less toys that many of my friends since we don’t have any family members buying toys as presents. My mom does buy toys, but only if she asks us first and we talk about what would be useful for the kids to have. She doesn’t go overboard, like many of my friends’ parents an inlaws.

I don’t think I have a camera problem. I think I have a never-sitting-still-child problem. And maybe a photographer problem. I’m really disappointed I couldn’t get a clear shot of Elsa and her little ponytails, but this will have to do. I will try again when I’m feeling better because it is so danged cute I can hardly stand it!

I’ve had a weird fear about trying to do her hair because I have fat fingers and very poor fine motor skills. Basically I thought it would be a total fail, so why even bother? I watched a few “how to” videos and quickly realized that it doesn’t have to be perfect. No one can perfectly groom a toddler. Yesterday she was standing on Erik’s stool, happily playing in the bathroom sink so I took the opportunity to wet a comb and practice ponytails while she was happy and distracted. The execution sucked, but the look itself was very cute. Maybe with time I can improve my skills. As I always tell Erik, you can’t be good at anything the first time.

But the whole point of this entry is Erik’s reaction. She is cute obviously, but I would take some better pictures and post them if it was just about the ponytails.

Erik saw her and his eyes lit up. “Wow! Look at her hair, mom! Wouldn’t it be cool to snip those things right off!”

Not the reaction I was looking for. Honestly, I didn’t expect a reaction from him at all, but for him to declare that he wants to snip off her cute little ponies? Oh noes! I had to nip that right in the bud.

I very, very, very sternly told him that he would do no such thing and that if he did he wouldn’t have any video games or TV time until after Christmas (since Christmas seems like an eternity away for him). I hope the lecture stuck very deeply in his mind because I will have such a fit that Santa himself won’t be able to hold me down if Erik decides to see how fun snipping off those ponies might be.

Erik is way too smart for his own good. During the lecture he kept saying “It’s just hair. What’s the problem? It’s just hair.”

One thing is for certain, the child is no shrinking violet. That’s the biggest source of strife in our family. He is very self-confident and believes he is 100% right about everything. I love him. I love that he knows his mind. I think his attitude will take him far in life. However, it makes parenting him extremely frustrating at times. Shocking though it may be, sometimes mother does know best.

On a completely different note, we were going to bake our Christmas cookies today. I hate making sugar cookie cutouts. Hate hate hate. So much work for so little payoff (I have yet to find a recipe I really enjoy). UGH. But it is really fun for kids, so I do it every year. Gotta have those experiences, right? I remember how much I loved doing Christmas cookies when I was a little girl. My mom would never do them with us, so I always did them with the pastor’s wife.

Yesterday I mixed up some dough and we were going to do the rolling, baking and decorating today but I woke up achy and sick. Every time I think that maybe I am feeling better, I get up and walk around. I am quickly reminded that I am sick and shouldn’t be moving around.

Erik has been trying his best to help me, which is very much appreciated from an intellectual and mommy-heart stand-point. In reality? Not so helpful.

First he told me I just needed to eat, so he went down and ordered Mike to come upstairs and cook me something. “Mommy, I’ll solve the problem! When my belly hurts it’s because I’m hungry. Problem solved!” So he does listen to me sometimes. I’m glad to know he listens, even if it takes time for him to realize I know what I’m talking about.

Then he wanted to massage my legs, so he and his sister got into a fight over who was allowed to touch my legs. I finally gave up and went to upstairs to escape, but he wouldn’t let me go so easily. I feel really guilty, but I had to trick him out of the room and lock the door behind him. He is very compassionate and sweet. He’s also six. So, you know, not your go-to massage person.

Ugh. I am feeling really poorly so better wrap this up. I wish we had a nice soaking tub. We are in the process of prioritizing things that we need to buy/do to the house. I think a nice soaking tub is pretty much on the bottom of the list, but I wish it could be bumped up. We were going to get a new dining table this month, but I think we have decided to hold off on that (I recovered the chairs so it is not as bad as it was) and get new furniture for the basement instead. The couch and chair are falling apart. To be even semi-comfortable you have to make yourself a nest of out pillow pets. This can be a tricky business, especially if you forget to pay attention to the unicorn’s horn.

Today was the kind of day that made me extremely grateful to be born in a time, place and culture that respects women. Yes, blue collar American women have their fair share of problems. There’s inequity in the workforce; there’s inequity in home-work balance. We are lagging behind other countries in regards to health care, mat leave, and a host of other issues that wiping out the middle class. But compared to many of the woman in the world, both past and present, we have it made.

My new neighbor is desperately lonely and has been coming outside when everyone is out for bus drop off in order to have a conversation with a grown adult. I invited her to my house today, but she refused and wanted me to come to her house. That worked out better for me anyway since my house is . . . lived in.

I feel so horrible for this poor woman. She barely speaks English, but I managed to get the gist of her life story. She’s from Pakistan. Her husband is from America. When he decided to get married, he had his relatives find him a young wife over in Pakistan. They met on their wedding night. They have a just turned 2 year old, a 7 month old and she is 3 months pregnant. She is miserable about it and doesn’t want that many kids.

Can you even imagine? I want to drive her to a women’s shelter right now.

That’s the other thing. She has no driver’s license or car. She’s stuck at home all day with the kids. She doesn’t even have a double stroller. I was telling her some places that are in walking distance, but I don’t think that will work without a double stroller. They are close enough for an adult walk, but too much for a little 2 year old’s legs to handle.

It’s such a nightmare situation. It’s hard to believe that such things happen in America in 2011, but it is more common than you think. She’s not the only neighbor I know who has an arranged marriage. In fact, I have tried to connect the two but the other neighbor is Indian and the Pakistani woman wanted nothing to do with her. I knew about the political situation, but I didn’t think it would be bad to introduce them. We used to have a Pakistani neighbor who always hung out with the Indian neighbors. They would all laugh and say the war was between the politicians, not the people. This new neighbor is very obviously Muslim (she has her head covered outside, but took off the covering when we went into her house) and the Indians are Hindu. I think the other Pakistani neighbors were Muslim, but the women didn’t cover their heads.

It’s easy to think this is just an immigrant problem, bu what about all the women in fundamentalist cults right here in America? I’ve been doing a lot of reading about polygamist cults and it is so horrifying. Of course in America they could choose to leave and they could find help, but how can you leave if you sincerely believe you will be damned to hell if you don’t allow yourself to be repressed? If you sincerely believe that God has decreed this lifestyle to be the one that will make you happy and holy?

And it’s not just the fundy Mormons. When I was in college we had free will, of course. But a lot of the girls were from very, very conservative homes and were taught that the only acceptable mates were future pastors. Some of the male ministry students would go up to the girls of their choice and claim God said they were meant to be together. Most of us found this totally gag worthy, but some of the girls from the more conservative homes totally bought into it and felt like they had to date these guys because it was the word of God. Awfully convenient for God to tell these guys this information but forget to tell the girls. Obviously that wasn’t nearly as bad as the situation this Pakistani woman is in, but it just makes me grateful that I never bought into anything like this in regard to my choice of husband. I’ve never believed that a man should be able to control me (for the longest time that meant I believed I wouldn’t ever get married at all. Thankfully I met Mike!).

My family may have been dysfunctional and my dad didn’t respect women at all, but at least no one expected me to follow their rules regarding finding a mate and living my life for myself. My dad wouldn’t pay for college since I had a waitressing job and that should “be enough” but he didn’t stand in the way of me going away to college. Instead, my mom actively discouraged me from dating or marriage. I guess there are worse messages in the world.

I’m going to try to be friendly with this young woman (and she is very, very young), but it is not going to be easy. She told me that she needs to teach me to wear make-up so I can look beautiful. She also insisted that I drink a glass of orange juice even after I declined. I know hospitality is very different over there.

Her house was totally spotless. It was a very different set-up. We are in town houses, so they are pretty small. Her living room had a huge U-shaped sectional all around the edges and that was it. Not a single toy. Her dining room had another couch and an open floor plan.

I think I need to stop thinking about her. It is one thing to read heart wrenching books about oppressed women. It’s another thing entirely to have one living next door and to see the pain in her eyes. I’ll be keeping a close ear on their house and call the cops if I ever suspect physical abuse happening

Deep, cleansing breath.

Erik is so weird about karate. I didn’t take him on Tuesday. I asked him if he wanted to go, he said no, I said ok and that was that. Later that evening he was really mad at me for not taking him. Go figure.

Tonight when I asked if he wanted to go, he jumped right up and got ready. I didn’t take his sword for leadership class because I wasn’t going to deal with that meltdown. So as we’re leaving class? He wants his sword so he can do leadership. And he wants to go to a leadership workshop tomorrow (they are learning a sword dance routine for their graduation next week). I guess Mike can take him. Is the kid just a master manipulator or does he really not know his own mind? I’m assuming the later. What six year old does know his own mind?

All I know is, I am not paying any more money to this place. I am very unhappy with the quality of their classes. The 4-5 year old class was good, but this whole business of having ages 6-adult in the same class is ridiculous. Instead of dividing it by age, they divide it by level. There are enough nights in the week that they could have leveled and aged classes.

At least we didn’t have a fight tonight. That’s the most important thing. I’m tired of friction in our home.

I walked over to the Amish market during his class and picked up some fried chicken. My stomach is not thanking me. It’s so tasty, but leaves me feeling so sick afterwards. I need a gallbladder if I’m going to eat greasy food.

They have two bakeries in this Amish market. One is actually called a bake shop and has everything–breads, pies, cakes, cookies, etc. The other is a cheese shop. They only have cake and cheesecake (plus lots of other random stuff like table runners and doily dolls). I hate the bake shop because everything tastes like lard. It’s pretty nasty. I love cake from the cheese shop, so I never even go in the bake shop anymore.

Tonight as I walked by the bake shop I noticed they were doing some remodeling. They had a bunch of their stuff out in open view. My jaw hit the ground. They had big stacks of Duncan Hines cake mix!!!! Talk about a scam! You think you’re getting homemade Amish cooking and you’re getting a big, fat boxed cake? I guess they don’t care if they scam us since we’re all “English” in their eyes.

What else happened today?

Oh! We had quite a moment in Safeway. I keep forgetting to get a flu shot, but today was the day. We were waiting in the pharmacy alcove and Elsa was having a fine time playing peek-a-boo. A normal looking man walked up and started looking at a sign over Elsa’s head.

She completely flipped out. Screaming, crying, hysterical. She ran to me and buried her head in my arm pit. The guy felt terrible and skee-daddled as soon as the siren wails started. You’d have thought someone had broken her arm. The cries were just pitiful.

I knew she was shy, but that was off the hook. When Erik was that age he probably would have crawled up the guy’s leg and called him daddy.

Poor Elsa was sad the rest of the day. She takes everything to heart and remembers it all. With Erik, I could always yell at him. In fact, that’s often the only way he would respond to me. I don’t like yelling, but I don’t think his ears work. If I tell Elsa “no” in a stern voice, she hangs her head and hides her eyes in the best of circumstances or starts crying in a very ashamed, sad manner in the worst of circumstances. I need to modify my parenting strategies, big time. Erik doesn’t have a sensitive bone in his body.

You should have seen her at the neighbors house. I didn’t have to make an excuse to leave. After she ate her goldfish, she put on her shoes, got her coat, grabbed Erik’s backpack (he was outside). Have I ever mentioned that she’s very determined? She’s not even a baby anymore. She’s talking and making decisions. She’s going to ruin our shoe cabinet. When it’s time to go, she pulls out the two drawers and climbs up on the bottom drawer to get my shoes out of the top drawer. The cabinet is attached to the wall, but she’s probably going to snap the drawer right off.

I’ve had an eye half on Community while typing this. Why have they destroyed this show? It was so funny the first season. It was pretty good the second season. It is almost unbearable this season. It’s about one episode away from being deleted from the DVR.

You know what show I miss from last season? Outsourced. I also sort of miss Traffic Light. I don’t know how Happy Endings made a second season and Traffic Light got cut. Other than them being on different networks, I suppose.

I’ve been listening to an 80s song for the past twenty minutes. Over and over and over. I don’t know the name. Something about “how do I get you alone?” Or maybe there are different songs. I don’t know. They all sound the same to me.

Mike’s super secret getting-Elsa-to-sleep mo-jo is all about the 80s music. It doesn’t work when I try it, but when he holds her and blasts the YouTube videos, she falls alseep like a little angel. I’m just glad one of us can get her down. At almost 20 months, the magic power of boobies is coming to an end.

It’s supposed to snow tonight so I bet there won’t be school tomorrow. Maybe we can go to the mall for Santa pictures. I saw a really cute idea about taking the Santa pics and turning them into ornaments. That’d make a lot more sense than their current location (in Erik’s baby book). I already bought the picture package via Groupon. I just have to find time to go to the mall and have them taken. Kindergarten kind of sucks. We don’t have time to run to the mall in middle of the day just for pictures. I can see some distinct advantages of homeschooling. Who knew having a child in elementary school could be so stressful? Granted, it wouldn’t be quite as stressful if I didn’t have another kid at home who needed to nap on schedule.

My friend is moving to Virginia right after Christmas and is in for a huge adjustment. Kindergarten in her new school is only 3 hours. I’ve often said I’d like a half day kindergarten, but now that I’m used to full day kindergarten I would hate to go back to such a short school day. It’d be nice to reclaim some time with my child, but I don’t know if it would feel like he was learning anything.

We had a wonderfully productive MOMS Club meeting today. We are required to have one business meeting each month and vote on all our issues. We often don’t have anything to vote on and it’s hard to get people to come to these meetings. Sometimes we have a guest speaker, sometimes we have a party, sometimes we don’t really have anything special planned. I had nothing for today, so decided I’d bring in our new member packet supplies and have everyone help put them together. I’ve been putting it off for a couple of weeks because I knew my kids would just destroy the papers and I didn’t really have enough room to spread everything out.

It sounds so silly, but it turned out to be a great meeting because everyone felt productive and useful. Everyone was smiling as they were putting the packets together and they were asking what other work we could do as a group. I have been avoiding doing a bunch of hole-punching and filling up binders, so I think next month I will ask people to bring hole-punches if they have them and we will get our files in order.

I started addressing Christmas cards tonight. I usually use labels, but it feels so impersonal to have labelled addresses and pre-printed cards. Even though I didn’t write on any of the cards, it felt nice to actually take the time to hand write the addresses. Erik used our stamper for the return address, so some of them are on the creative side. Then Elsa came along and tried to stamp, so things got even more “creative.” I hope they all make it to their destinations.

I can’t believe Christmas is in 18 days. I still don’t have our photo book or calendars made. I should be doing that right this second instead of updating you about all the super fun and exciting details of my life.

I want to get a smartphone just so I can have autocorrect fails with Mike. We’ve both been obsessing over Damn You, Autocorrect the past week. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. I guess the only problem is you have to type the words to get them into our phone and I don’t think Mike are I would be typing in most of the words that make hilarious autocorrect fails.

My sister called this afternoon in a state of complete, hysterical joy. “Guess what, guess what, guess what!!??!!??!!” was all I heard.

I thought I was going to puke. Surely she must be pregnant again to elicit that much joy.

Thank dog she is not pregnant! She got an A on her math test. Much, much more appropriate and worth celebrating. It’s very exciting to see her care about school and her grades and have a life plan. I don’t know if she will ever be able to get into the medical imaging program that she’s dreaming about, but at least she has a goal. She’s been on the straight and narrow since July. I know it won’t last forever, but it is a relief that things are going well for the moment. It sounds like her kids are doing a lot better, too. Stands to reason that having a sober mother in the picture would make a kid’s life a lot better. I just hope she gets the “let’s have a baby to make everything ok” mentality over with and gets her IUD put in again. You’d think she’d figure out that none of her kids have solved any problems. I love children, but children are stressors not solutions.

Life has been crazy the past few days. Our days are on a very tight schedule revolving around sleep and bus pick-up. Elsa’s decided she hates the schedule. Instead of her normal 1 pm nap, she wants to nap at 3. That doesn’t work because I have to pick Erik up from the bus stop at 3:20. ARGH! A 20 minute nap doesn’t cut it.

I end up with a screaming, cranky, no-sleep toddler for the rest of the afternoon. Combine that with a cranky kid (he’s always cranky if I don’t let him spend the whole afternoon watching TV) and you end up with a mother who is ready to run away from home. I need some Zen in my life. Or some ear plugs. But would ear plugs stop them from poking me? I am so tired of sharp little fingers poking me for attention.

I ran away to Kohl’s tonight. I need new pants. I was thinking I needed to size up, but all the sized up jeans were ridiculous clown pants. So that was good for my self-esteem, but it doesn’t help me any on a practical level. My other pants are too tight. Bah. Guess I need to go on a diet. Maybe not bake a bunch of Christmas cookies or pie or fudge. I love chocolatey, pepperminty Christmas goodness . Like a diet will really work at this time of year. I’m going to have to get a mu-mu and call it good. Then I can make up a mu-mu fashion blog and post pictures of myself every day. Did you know people do this? Maybe not with mu-mus, but with other outfits? I find it perplexing. Why do I care what they are wearing? I guess you can blog about anything.

I bought Elsa some new shoes yesterday. There’s a kids shoe store in the mall that always sort of creeped me out because it was dingy looking. I’ve never been in there. I guess I prefer cheap, online shoes that don’t involve talking to an actual person. With Elsa’s extra wide feet I was desperate. I haven’t been able to find a single pair of winter boots that work for her. We may not need winter boots. Maybe there will be no snow. But if we do have snow I know she’s going to want to play in it. Too bad, so sad for her I guess.

But! I really liked the shoe shop and will have to go back. They had a ton of extra wide shoes, so I bought her a pair of good fall shoes. They had more extra wide styles than Zappos, Endless and Shoe Buy combined. And they were nice to talk to. They were family owned, so it’s nice to support small business. Even if that doesn’t jive with my frugal side.

But I still don’t have a winter boot solution. I just heard on the news that it’s going to snow tomorrow. Bah.

I also bought Elsa some new stuff at Gymboree because they were having a great sale and I had a big ole’ coupon. I have a lot of friends who make fun of me for shopping at Gymboree and they always tell me Target is cheaper. I have never seen a $5 pair of seasonally appropriate PJs at Target. The original prices are cheaper than the original Gymborree, but they don’t have sales. And the clothes fall apart. And Gymboree makes clothes that fit a larger frame. Elsa has larger frame issues.

The same friends also make fun of me for making sure Elsa is always wearing cute, matching clothes.

Ummmmmm.

Why wouldn’t I dress my daughter as cute as possible? Ugly clothes cost just as much as cute clothes. Seriously, this one lady had her daughter in a Fair Isle sweater and a pair of tye dyed leggings. And she’s making snarky comments about Elsa wearing a matching outfit? I guess it comes down to jealousy or inferiority or something? Is it just too much effort to find matching clothes? I always put outfits together when I hang the laundry, so I don’t have to put effort into it when I’m dressing her.

Other things that irritate me:

I am so over Erik’s karate class. It’s a huge money pit. HUGE> They are instituting new uniforms and a new curriculum after the new year. It’s over $200 for a new uniform and equipment. How in the bleepity bleeping hell does a karate uniform cost over $100? That’s some crazy ass mark-up.

Now that he’s in the 6 years-adult class, it’s a lot of work and very little fun. I guess adults and teens don’t want to play obstacle course or “Ninja, Ninja, Dragon.” He hates it. The fun has been sucked out of it. He cries and screams when it’s time to go. I have to entertain Elsa and keep her quiet while we’re there. It’s a bleepity bleepin’ nightmare. I think Mike needs to go inand ask for a refund. Isn’t it nice of me to throw Mike under the six degree black belt bus? Even if we lose the money, it still might be worth it to cut our losses now. Do I really want to have two rotten nights each week because of this stupid money pit class?

I also hate it because they don’t correct the students. The teacher stands up front and does the moves or watches and shouts out what they are supposed to do, but no one comes by and tells the kids when they are using the wrong hand or kicking in the wrong direction. Drives. Me. CRAZY. They are doing this sword dance routine that is super cool when the black belts do it, but not super cool when Erik does it. He doesn’t understand how to position his hands, he won’t listen to me, and no one will walk over and SHOW HIM. It would take them a minute. How can they stand there and watch him struggle so badly and not do anything about it? I fume when I go to the classes.

Something happy:

Mike’s company has their holiday party next week. I found a babysitter on Craigslist. I hope I’m not stupid to be using a craigslist sitter, but that’s the way I usually find sitters. We met her at the mall this weekend and she seems normal. She’s single, 27, and has a full time job. I hope that means she doesn’t have time to fantasize about playing mommy with children that she kidnaps from her babysitting jobs. I’ll take her picture and a picture of her car when we leave. She did well with Erik and didn’t push into Elsa’s face, so that was good. I hope this works because it would be nice to have an occasional evening out. I don’t know how she will do with Elsa wanting to sleep on her lap. She’s making enough money that she should be able to deal with it. I really want to switch out the crib to the toddler bed and teach Elsa to sleep there. Dreams. . . .

Currently the crib is filled with cloth diapers. What am I supposed to do with them all? It makes me mad to look at them, knowing that every time I don’t use one I’m just costing myself money. But what do you do when a very strong willed toddler refuses to wear them?

I’m going to go through all the gender neutral ones and send them to Jenn, but I will still have a whole stash of girly ones that I need to get rid of. I am tempted to just give them all away, but that would be really stupid. I guess I need to start cleaning them all up and start listing them on Craigslist. I have about 15 large FuzziBunz that have been used less than five times each :-(. So much for cloth diapering being so great for baby. Since we’ve stopped using them, we’ve gotten rid of all Elsa’s diaper rash issues.

And now it’s time for bed. I hope I can sleep tonight. I often have recurring dreams about tigers and lions chasing me and trapping me in the house. The latest Castle episode was somewhat related to that nightmare. Just thinking about it again is making my heart rate go up. No nightmares, brain, pretty please?

We had a fun little dinner party tonight. We invited over one of Mike’s former co-workers and his wife, so maybe it wasn’t so much a party as dinner guests. I made Asian peanut chicken and bought pastries from a local bakery, so it was super easy (except for the part where Mike worked his butt off cleaning the house. But that was super easy for me. Poor, abused Mike).

We have a little bakery just down the street from us (literally, I could walk there in about five minutes) that I’ve never gone to before. It’s called Royal Bagel Bakery and I’m just not that into bagels. Plus, I can be really weird sometimes and not want to go into places that aren’t familiar. Why? I don’t know. It’s not like they are going to take away my birthday if I don’t stand in the line in the correct fashion.

I guess it is an Italian bakery, so I didn’t know what most of the stuff was. I asked them to recommend a few things, so I ended up with an assortment of pastries that I cut into smaller bits and we all sampled everything. The best: chocolate cigars. It was rich chocolate ganache rolled in a flaky pastry. Yum!

The other reason I’ve never gone there? I didn’t want to know what goodies were contained in a bakery within walking distance. I don’t need any more temptations. I’m already as big as a house and can’t seem to lose any of it. I keep growing and growing and growing–and we’re not talking vertically. I’m using food as a therapeutic outlet, so the more unhappy I am with my body the more I eat. In the past I’ve been able to reign it in and make up rules that limited my eating, but I guess I’m not motivated enough yet. I am currently in a loop of bad eating=unhappiness=bad eating=weight gain=unhappiness=body hatred=bad eating repeat repeat repeat. It’s hard to help yourself when you hate yourself.

Anyway, we haven’t seen our guests for well over a year. We’ve known them since we moved out here–seven years. They’ve always been wonderful, loving parents. Tonight they scared the ever living shit out of me. They have two teenage daughters and it sounds like they have been through hell this past year. They didn’t give us a lot of details, but they’ve had to hospitalize one of their daughters and then move her to a very small private school. They looked worn out, beat down, and ready to give up.

As the saying goes “bigger kids, bigger problems.” I never wanted to have kids because I knew what my mom went through with my sister. I convinced myself that we wouldn’t have to deal with those types of problems because we are good parents who present a united front. We don’t have dysfunction in our family unit. We will nip trouble in the bud. We will be kind, loving, and set firm boundaries while still fostering independence. Seeing a nice, engaged, loving, formerly happy family going through this sort of ordeal makes me want to crawl in a hole and never come out. Or stick bricks on my kids’ heads so they can never grow up.

Let’s think of something happier.

I started getting eczema on my hands when I was 16. It’s gone through good cycles and bad cycles. I’m always trying to find the culprit since it has become very apparent that it’s an allergic reaction, but I have never come up with a long term solution. I just can’t figure out what triggers the reaction. At one point I even thought I was allergic to my engagement ring, which was so sad!

My hands usually clear up when I go on vacation, so I’ve tried changing everything from my body wash to shampoo to hand soap. I have tried eliminating certain foods from my diet. I’ve tried different lotions. I’ve even blamed the humidity.

Still, my hands have been in horrible condition ever since Elsa was born.

My hands started healing when we went on our Thanksgiving adventure. When we got home, I found a big laundry basket full of wadded up clothes. I assumed they were dirty, but Mike said they were clean. Why would I leave a pile of clean clothes out? I hate wrinkled up clothes?

I started folding this huge pile and my hands started itching. It became unbearable. I had to use some of my cortisone cream to stop the itching, and I only do that in a worse case scenario. It’s great for stopping the itching, but if you use it too much it destroys your skin. Your skin just sort of disintegrates, leaving gaping wounds that take months to heal. Fun! I’ve had better luck using a cortisone based lotion instead of the straight cream, but it still scares me.

Maybe the laundry is the problem! Doh!

When Elsa was born I dramatically altered our laundry routine because of her diapers. We’d used All Free and Clear for years, but switched over to Tide Free and Gentle because it supposedly doesn’t leave a build up in the washing machine. I use a special diaper friendly detergent on the actual diapers, but don’t find it effective with regular laundry. I also use an allergy friendly dryer sheet because I don’t like static cling and can’t keep track of dryer balls.

Since I’ve figured out it may be the laundry, I’ve stopped using the Bounce and started using the dryer balls again. I have also been washing my hands really well after handling the clean laundry. I’ve always avoided unnecessarily washing my hands because I thought the wetness made the problem worse. So far my hands are looking great. I hope this was the answer. It is so frustrating to know that there’s a solution to the problem and not be able to find the solution. Sure, I could go to an allergist, but in order to be tested for an allergy you sort of have to have an idea of what they should test you for. Let’s cross our fingers and our toes and hope that I just need to stop using bounce and be mindful of laundry residue. It would be amazing to have hands that didn’t hurt all the time.

I got my first note home from school today. Apparently Erik was “acting silly” and when his teacher corrected him, he “gave her the evil eye.” I shouldn’t laugh, but I know the exact look she’s talking about. It’s pure evil, no doubt. No wonder he got in trouble. I assume the teacher handled it so I didn’t need to do anything more than talk to him. He was asked to leave his reading group, which meant he needed extra help with his reading book tonight. I think that’s why she sent a note home.

Elsa was also in fine form today. She’s over the biting phase. Now she walks up to people and slaps them in the face or upside the head. Very attractive behavior. She only does it with people she likes, so that’s. . . good? Guess she has some social learning to do. I need to remember that she doesn’t respond to “no hitting” but she does respond to “gentle.” I guess it’s true–children really do respond better when you tell them what they can do as opposed to what they can’t do.

One of the most helpful pieces of advice I ever got during a teacher in-service day related to this. They said always put a positive spin on thing. The big example that worked so well it was like a miracle: Don’t tell kids they can’t borrow a pencil. Instead, tell the kids they could borrow a pencil from anyone in the room but you. You would be amazed at how well this simple little trick worked. No hurt feelings. No whining. Someone always had a pencil they could borrow. I didn’t have to spend my entire paycheck on pencils for the classroom.

I am wondering if Elsa will potty train soon. She hates diapers. HATES. She totally refuses cloth diapers, and fights pretty hard on regular diapers unless her daddy changes her. Today she said, clear as a bell, “leave me alone” when I tried to put a diaper on her. I just started laughing. Erik couldn’t really talk until he turned 2, so it feels strange to have a baby express her thoughts so clearly. It’s not so funny when she kicks me in the stomach. That girl has some powerful muscles.

Today she pulled off her pants and her diaper and sat on the potty. I was really hoping something would happen, but it didn’t. Dang it!

We let her go naked quite a bit and she’ll come up and ask for a diaper when she’s ready to go potty. We try really hard to make her go on the potty, but she refuses and will hold it until she gets a diaper on. What a waste of a diaper! But this is a good sign for potty training readiness, at least. I am a cheapskate and hate paying for diapers.

She’s also very picky about her clothing. I bought a really nice purple stripey sweater from Baby Gap a few months ago (I don’t hate spending money on cute baby clothes) and she refuses to wear it. She screams and cries if I come near her when I am holding it. One day she was totally focused on her baby show, so I slipped it on her without her realizing what was happening. It was adorable! But then she noticed she was wearing it and had a full on melt down. She was screaming, crying, clawing at the buttons, rolling on the floor trying to get it off. It was craziness. I can’t figure out why she hates it so badly. She has another sweater like it, only in a different color that she wears all the time.

Since the sweater had never been worn, I put it in my consignment shop bag today. I don’t like consigning things because I don’t like my local consignment shop, but I also hate selling clothes on ebay or Craigslist. Even if they are new with tags, you hardly get enough to make it worth the effort. Normally I just give stuff away, but I had several like new Christmas dresses and a few toys that Elsa never plays with that I thought might be worth a little money. I also wanted to look around and see if they had any decent toys for Christmas. The toy prices are usually great, and you don’t have to assemble them or remove them from anti-theft packaging.

I scored big time. You know those kiddie roller coasters that are basically a low-grade ramp and a push car? They retail for around $120. I got one that looks brand new for a mere $60. That means Elsa’s Christmas is pretty much taken care of. I’d really like to get her this super fancy playhouse, but I’m not made of money.

I think I just have our photobooks/calendars, stocking stuffers and something for Mike left on the list.

I think I saw a sister-wife at Elsa’s gym class yesterday. There was a lady wearing a lavender t-shirt with a black tank top over the top of it. Why? WHY???? It is so unattractive. Is that really a look, now? I’ve only seen it on Sister-Wives, so I don’t think it’s a fashion statement. If it is, one of those fashion shows needs to nip it in the bud.

I do understand the sister-wives are supposed to be modest. Apparently they have to wear very old fashioned, long sleeved magic Mormon underwear, not the more modern short sleeved Satan repelling underwear that LDS Mormons get to wear. That still doesn’t explain WHY they would put a frilly blouse over the top of a long sleeved t-shirt.

They think this show will make people more open to polygamy, but it is heartbreaking to see them living this lifestyle and thinking that it is the only way they can get to heaven.

But back to fashion! I don’t understand why they don’t wear a nice, long sleeved blouse and put a cami under it. When I was looking for pictures for this post, I found pics from the first season and that’s exactly what they were doing. It is much more flattering.

Look at me, dishing out the fashion advice like I know anything. I don’t know much, but I know ugly. Send those ladies to my house and I’ll get them straightened out with some decent looks. It’s sad when I could be a fashion consultant to someone. I can barely be a fashion consultant to myself.

Why do I keep talking about this show? I just can’t stand those layers! The show itself is dull as dirt, but it’s like a train wreck caused by a hyperactive conductor in desperate need of a haircut. I think he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Last but not least, I’m thinking of getting an Elf on the Shelf. I have resisted in previous years because I like doing an Advent activity calendar, but this year we don’t really have time to do an activity every day. School has sucked all the fun out of mommy and Erik time. Now it’s rush to get ready, rush to the bus, get home, get a snack, do homework, cook dinner, bedtime. Crazy.

OH NO! I just realized tomorrow is Dec 1! I bought a Star Wars Lego Advent calendar. Am I supposed to put together a whole friggin’ Lego thing tonight? I hate Legos. I have very poor fine motor skills. I guess I better go see what I’m supposed to do before it gets much later. I’m just glad I was searching through my closets this weekend to see what all I’ve bought over the course of the year. I had totally forgotten about buying the Advent calendar. I buy things on super discount, then forget they exist. I had gifts in there for Elsa’s third birthday. I’m nuts.