The Queen's Rambles

So now people want me to post the number of inches of my foot with a frowny face and no explanation on Facebook to “wind up the men in my life.” How many men would this wind up? And why? The kicker is the end when it says this is to raise breast cancer awareness.

How in the blippity-blim-blam would this raise breast cancer awareness?

I know there was the big buzz about the bra color status thing supposedly raising breast cancer awareness. I only read the first message I received about it and there was no mention anywhere of breast cancer awareness. I don’t think anyone gives a flying flip about the color of my bra and I’m not into cutesy things that are supposed to “make the men wonder.” I’m not 21. I don’t give a damn what the men wonder about.

I am a curmudgeon. And I like it that way.

ETA: I don’t think I explained very well. You would measure your foot, then your status would look like this:

12 in 🙁

Which would lead dirty minded people to think you were unhappy with some man, presumably a facebook friend since we all sleep with all our facebook friends, is not satisfying you in bed with his tiny wiener. Only my feet are 12 inches long, so I would be implying that I am an insatiable maniac in bed that Mike just can’t satisfy. Which would be really great for my mom to see. And my old college professor. And Kisha’s husband. And you. You know, the whole world. It is just ridiculous.

In my travels around the stay-at-home mom circuit I meet moms of all stripes. I honestly haven’t encountered a lot of the helicopter parenting that is so prevalent today, maybe because I don’t usually encounter that class of parent. Of course there is a lot of variety in parenting skills/beliefs/practices, but I haven’t felt judged in a very long time.

Today was a little different.

I took Erik to Playtime at the Plex, a cheap indoor activity that allows the kids to run around. Basically they open up the soccerplex for a couple of hours and let the kids bring in toys and run wild. The plex houses two full size indoor soccer fields, so you can imagine it is pretty big.

Erik took his bike, but it never occurred to me that he would need a bike helmet. I’ll admit we’re bad about making him wear his helmet. I see people who make their kids wear a helmet while riding a trike, but we never did that. I don’t know what the law is, but I guess I am just old fashioned and don’t really see the point of having a kid wear a helmet when he’s only on sidewalks.

Now that he has a real bike (with training wheels) he does have a helmet and I should make him wear it, but I don’t. If he ever road his bike out on the main road I would, but he isn’t allowed to go there. No excuse I guess, but I figure if it is a problem the police officer who lives in our cul-de-sac could come out and tell us to get a helmet on him. I’ve never seen a kid in this neighborhood wear a helmet.

So we go to the playtime and I don’t take a helmet and Erik is the only kid not wearing one. Whoops. Bad mommy.

Some other little kid noticed and his mom made a big deal out of “some mommies have different rules, but we just want you to be safe all the time” while glaring daggers at me. Ok, maybe I deserved that a little bit. I don’t know. But the poor kid! Not only did he have a helmet, he had wrist, knee and elbow pads! Maybe I’m a little too laissez fare, but that seems to be overkill for riding a bike inside a gym.

I’ll be picking up that Mother of the Year award any day now.

At least I talked to my sister on the phone this afternoon. That always makes me feel better about my parenting.

We were talking about the kids and the funny things they do. Erik is testing the limits with his vocabulary, namely by saying “What the hell happened?” or “Jesus Christ!” All things he hears from us, sad to say.

My sister was horrified and asked what kind of soap I use to wash out his mouth.

Uhhhhh.

No.

None.

No way!

He’s four. Testing the limits is what they do. I find a simple, unemotional “those are grown-up words, not boy words” usually stops the problem after a day or two.

Is soap in the mouth always wrong? I’m not sure. If my 11 year old curses me out and calls me a mother-f***** or even bitch, there might be soap in his future, but I it seems cruel to do that to a little kid who is just parroting what he’s heard at home. If we don’t want him to use that language it is our responsibility to not expose him to that language.

My sister goes on to tell me that her four year old daughter’s favorite movie is The Hangover. I’ve seen previews. I’ve heard about this movie. You wash your four year old’s mouth out with soap, but you let them wash this movie every single day, sometimes multiple times??????

My brain just went haywire at the thought.

I know I keep Erik pretty sheltered about the stuff he watches, but I think most responsible parents keep their preschoolers away from R rated movies. There’s a total disconnect in my sister’s brain sometimes.

Me: You let them watch The Hangover?
Her: Yeah, they love it.
Me: Then you wash their mouth out with soap when they repeat what they hear on the movie?
Her: Damn right! My kids know better!

How? How do they know better? I’m so confused.

But at least it makes me feel better about my own parenting.

I’m a judgemental bitch sometimes.

I didn’t have to wait long for my Kohl’s coupon. Big surprise there, eh? Anyway, I was off to the races. . .errrrr. . . the housewares display as soon as I dropped Erik off at preschool.

I had decided to take the advice of Jennifer, a commenter, and get Fiesta Ware even though it is not my first inclination. I go for sparkly. But Fiesta Ware makes a lot of sense and I liked the idea of easily mixing and matching pieces over the years.

Unfortunately they did not have plates available for sale by themselves. They only came in packs with a whole serving place (five items). I wanted eight plates and eight salad plates. I didn’t need an extra eight mugs, bowls and whatever else was in the pack. And I sure as hell couldn’t afford to buy eight full sets, 30% off coupon or not.

I thought my plans were foiled. I couldn’t find anything else I liked at Kohl’s, either. My options were red hot peppers, plain white squares (I love squares but they don’t fit well in the microwave), or red and black bears. Where was the blue? I need my blue!

I headed over to Target, but was distracted by TJMaxx. I never go in there, but I thought they were supposed to have housewares. Indeed they did. Lots of rooster plates.

I tried to escape the store without spending money, but a display of clearance priced girly Christmas clothes. My new baby is now the proud owner for four $2 Christmas outfits.

I ended up getting my new dishes at Target, a set I have been eyeing for awhile. Normally it would not really be my style, but it matches our room really well and has several colors that could go with different color schemes. I was very tempted to get dark blue and white, but they didn’t seem as sturdy and they wouldn’t have matched our color scheme at all.

Aren’t you glad I’m boring you with every detail of the plates? I would take a picture, but they’re all in the dishwasher.

In other news, Erik got a haircut today. I didn’t want to drive all the way down to the mall for a kid’s cut and figured he was old enough to handle a regular ol’ cheap salon cut. Turns out that the cheap salon cuts take a lot longer than the kid cuts, but look much better and cost a few dollars less. The lady actually blended the lines so he doesn’t have a goofy, gradiated look.

I’ve been having Braxton-Hicks contractions the last few nights. I was awake quite a bit with them last night, but finally fell asleep in the early hours. Usually I’m awake when Erik comes into the room, but I was totally zonked out. I was dreaming I was in labor and my mom was trying to get me to the hospital. Only problem? She kept tickling my feet and wouldn’t stop no matter how much I yelled at her.

Erik is very lucky I didn’t kick him in the face. I don’t know how long he was standing at the end of bed, tickling my feet, until I finally woke up.

We’re in a really sweet phase right now. He crawls into bed and tells me how he is going to marry daddy when he’s older and sleep in our bed and go to work with daddy. Awwww! Some days he’ll say he’ll marry me, too. Yesterday he was going to marry baby Elsa. I’m going to miss these days when he’s a teenager and can’t stand to be in the same room with us.

I should have made a bet with someone, but I didn’t have anyone to bet with. You see, my friend and I made play date plans for my house. I knew it would never happen. She is a neat freak to beat all neat freaks and she hates coming to my house. I assume it is because she’s a neat freak. I don’t really know. She’s never actually said she hates coming her, but we’ve known each other for almost two years and I think she’s been to my house three times. I’ve been to her house almost weekly.

I am wondering if I should get a little paranoid or offended, but then I figure it is just as well because I don’t have to clean up or be freaked out by the state of my house.

Anyway, we had a board meeting together this morning and were confirming plans. Erik was there, so she started asking Erik what he wanted to do–go to our house, go to her house, or go to the open gym. He LOVES LOVES LOVES going to her house, which she knows.

Surprisingly, he picked going to the open gym.

It was fine and I was relieved, but I just think it’s funny that I knew she wouldn’t be coming over here. Normally if I know I’m going to have company I do some cleaning–major or minor depending on the person and state of the house. Guess how much cleaning I did to get ready for her visit? Nothing. I was very confident we wouldn’t see her despite our plans.

I know I’m not a stellar housekeeper, but I don’t think the house is that bad. I guess no one ever does, do they?

The kids had fun at the open gym and I didn’t have to clean my house, so it was a win all around. There was one bad batch of siblings, including the meanest five year old girl I’ve ever met. She even made Erik cry, which is not easy. Mama Bear was not happy!

We ended up watching this little girl and whenever she would go near our boys we would go over and hover, giving disapproving looks. At first we had to speak to her and tell her to leave the boys alone, but eventually a mean look was all it took to drive her away. Her mother? Completely oblivious. I was a little worried that she would try to kick our asses. She was a big lady and I think she could have taken us. My friend is really small, but wiry. I’m pretty useless in a pregnant state. Wouldn’t you love to see me on the news for some stupid fight at a kid place?

Remember the stew I was talking about last night? Apparently it didn’t sit well with Erik either, though he didn’t eat a single bite of it.

He came into my room around 7 this morning, complaining that he was really tired because the stew kept him awake all night. I seriously doubt he was awake all night. I’ve mentioned the kid can’t be left alone, right? No way in hell would he lay in his room all night. If he was awake he would be in our room.

He kept going on and on and on and on about the stew. The stew! The stew was bad! The stew!

I told him that Mike took all the stew to work for his lunch (a small lie) so it wasn’t even in the house. He didn’t believe me, so we had to call Mike at work and I had to try to telepathically communicate that he should tell Erik that he had all the stew and he was going to eat all the stew.

Mike is not so good with the childhood lies and exaggerations.

I tell Erik all kinds of crazy stuff all the time, most of which he doesn’t believe. I just like to see his reaction and I believe it is important for kids to get used to being teased and know how to react so they don’t end up getting really hurt later on.

Mike is not so good at this.

In fact, Mike says I’m a liar.

I think I’m hurt.

What’s wrong with trying to convince your kid that you’re a penguin? Especially when they don’t believe it and are enjoying arguing with you?

Ah well. I chalk it up to a difference in our natal homes.

Speaking of differences, I cracked myself up yesterday.

Erik was sitting in the backseat saying “Copenhagen” over and over. I had a mini-internal-freak-out and casually asked him how he knew about Copenhagen. Duh, mom, we just visited there. Duh, indeed! I hear the word Copenhagen and instantly think of Skoal’s chief competitor in the smokeless tobacco department.

What happens when the roads have been salted and all the cars are covered in a nasty gray sludge?

They go to the car wash, of course!

Erik loves the car wash, so after I picked him up from school we hit the gas station and the wash.

Big mistake!

This particular gas station has a really strange set-up. The line for the wash is behind the building so when you enter the line you have no clue if there is going to be a long line or not.

I suspected there would be a line, but I had no freakin’ clue just how bad it would be. We were the seventh car. Each wash took 4-6 minutes, depending on the type of wash selected.

Do the math. We were in that line for thirty five minutes. I hate waiting in line. Hates it! It wouldn’t have been so bad if I was alone and could have listened to the radio. These days I’ll do just about anything for alone time, including sitting in a cold car waiting for a car wash, but I had Erik in the car so it was a big thrill.

We had been in the line for almost 30 minutes when Erik started having a seizure and claimed he had to pee RIGHT NOW.

Mothers, you know what I did, right?

The cars were taking five minutes to go through. A car had just entered the wash. I exited the wash and helped Erik pee in the snow on the side of the road. Lots and lots of cars behind us. Whooo-hooo! The guy in the car behind me rolled down his window and yelled that he had a son so he understood. Nice of him to be supportive. Not that I really needed support. You do what you have to do, right? I was just glad Erik was a boy and could pee with minimal butt baring.

So you know the fly hole in male underwear? Are they supposed to stick their penis through that hole and pee? We’ve never tried that. Maybe it is something we are supposed to be practicing?

After the car wash we had to hustle down to the bowling alley. It is really simple to get there. You go down Road A a little ways, then go down Road B several miles and end up at the bowling alley.

I totally forgot to turn on Road B.

I was driving and driving, unaware that I was lost.

Eventually we got to Point C and I was suddenly confused. I didn’t remember missing the bowling alley, but I knew that if we were at Point C I had missed a turn somewhere. I had no clue what to do, where we were or what the hell I was doing.

Luckily Road A is not straight. It’s a big curve, which meant that I just needed to make a couple of left hand turns and I would end up at my destination without too much trouble. Once I figured out my mistake it was easy to correct. I am still confuddled about how I could totally forget that I needed to turn on Road B. We go bowling about once a month, so it’s not like a new thing.

We came home fairly early because Erik was really hungry. I was really happy that we could walk in the door and dinner would be served. I had a hankering for beef stew during my grocery shop earlier, so had thrown together the stew before I picked Erik up from preschool.

Gag!

It smelled so horrible that I couldn’t eat it. In fact, my stomach is still turning from the smell. Mike says it tasted ok, but I refused to even try it. So much for my hankerings. I guess I’ll stick to my ham sandwiches, pickles and scrambled eggs.

Speaking of food, I have made a quasi-resolution that I’m going to feed Erik better meals. When he was a baby and toddler I was almost a Nazi about the things that went in his mouth. When he hit 18 months and joined the “white foods only club” things started to go way downhill. It got to the point that I didn’t even bother to try because it was just wasteful. When he turned four he started expanding his diet again and we’ve slowly been getting him to eat more and better things. He’ll generally eat what we eat for dinner, but since I don’t really do lunch (just left overs or whatever weird thing I find) I end up throwing mac and cheese or chicken nuggets on a plate and calling it good.

It’s not good.

We have a couple of four section plates, so I’ve decided his lunch must be served on the plate. Each section must contain something different. Today he had meatballs, pasta with tomato sauce, cinnamon apples and peanut butter. Not anything innovative, but certainly a lot more healthy than mac and cheese, even if it is organic.

I need to get a couple more sectioned plates and brainstorm a list of healthier, kid friendly things I can have on hand for lunch. I wish he was more into fruit. Right now he’s just eating apples and bananas. Way more than he was eating before, but I’d like to add more variety.

Also, in the kitchen improvement department, Mike says I can buy new dishes! Not that I need his permission, but it is fairly expensive and not really a necessity. We have dishes, they just don’t all match and we don’t have a full set of anything. Now that we are adults and home owners it would be nice to have a full set of dinner plates and dessert plates. I don’t think we need to replace the bowls or glasses, but new plates would make me really happy. I think I’ll wait for a good Kohl’s coupon to come along and then go shopping.

It’s kind of funny that I used to randomly buy a couple of plates when I felt like it, but it was never a big investment. I also used to buy towels at random, but can’t justify it now. We have a whole closet full! Why would we need new ones? Now I know why you go to established homes (like my mom’s and grandma’s) and find they are using 20 year old towels. It’s hard to justify buying new things when the items you have are perfectly serviceable even if they aren’t pretty. I must admit I like the pretty.

One of the conundrums of pregnancy is the intense need to Get Things Done about the time you hit your third trimester, which is also the time you are feeling heavy, bulky and completely useless in the lifting and hauling department.

I just bought a changing table online. Whoo-hoo! We never had one with Erik because we simply didn’t have the room, but my friend has one and I can see that it is oh so very nice to have a dedicated space with all the baby butt stuff. Where to put it? I think I’m going to be a bad mommy and put it in Erik’s room.

Normally I wouldn’t want to supplant my older child’s room with a bunch of baby stuff, but that room is really a loss. He sleeps in there. That’s it. There are some toys in there, but if he wants to play with them he brings them downstairs. There are tons of books in there, but we either read them at bedtime or he brings them downstairs. I can’t ever recall a single time in the history of the world that he’s voluntarily gone to his room to play. He’s too much of a social creature. The worst punishment in the world for him is to be left alone longer than 30 seconds.

Thus the changing table can go in his sleeping chambers. That will work during the day, at least. If the baby is a night time screamer we may have to just change her on the bed or something so we don’t wake Erik, but at least the changing table won’t cramp up a room that’s already crammed with junk.

I am also trying to figure out where we are going to put everything else. I think I’m going to have to do a serious closet clean out of my own clothes and let Mike put his wardrobe in our bedroom. He currently uses the spare bedroom closet, but I think we’ll have to put Elsa’s clothes in there. My friend introduced me to the idea of hanging all the clothes instead of putting them in drawers. Hallelujah! I’ve been doing that with Erik’s clothes since we moved in and I like it so much better. He actually wears more than just the five things that always land on the top of the drawer, plus things aren’t as wrinkled up and thrown around. It takes a bit longer to hang everything, but is well worth the time investment.

Anyway! Wasn’t that exciting?

We pulled down the rest of the Christmas stuff today so our living room feels a lot fresher and has more room. I love all the Christmas joy, but it’s a relief to go back to normal. Erik kept saying, “Christmas was such a good idea. Let’s do it every year.” Silly goose.

I am very excited to report that he is becoming a real, true helper. He took down almost all the ball ornaments and put them in their boxes then he carried all the small Christmas boxes down to the basement. I bought another toy organizer that required some assembly. Basically you just had to screw a bunch of rods onto a board. Very easy. I set up the screws and he did the majority of the screwing.

I knew that kids eventually became useful, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. Of course he required a lot of supervision and guidance, but it was still amazing to have him actually do a real job and do it right instead of just making more work for me to go back and do when he wasn’t looking.

I’m happy to report that I’m not quite so cranky today. I’m not farting out rainbows and riding unicorns, but I’m not a total psycho bitch either.

My son, on the other hand, could use some Prozac.

I am just waiting for symptoms of some illness to rear their ugly heads. He’s very sensitive and has had several total crying meltdowns today. The child usually doesn’t have a sensitive bone in his body, so it’s a little unnerving.

We had dinner at the Saturn household tonight and he didn’t want to leave. The screaming and wailing was almost unbearable. I was trying to distract him in the car by being silly, but he was having none of it. Finally, finally, finally I got his attention when I told him it was really cold out so we should see if any penguins were walking around on the street.

Instead of finding this amusing, he launched into a full lecture about why there are no penguins on the street here. When I informed him that I was a penguin, he was even more indignant and describe in scientific detail all the reasons I wasn’t a penguin. I have no wings. I am not black and white. I don’t have feathers. I can only swim when I wear a bathing suit. Aren’t you glad you know?

I sometimes worry about his lack of playing along with jokes like that, but then he does other silly things so I know he has an imagination. It just isn’t the same as mine. Today the kids in his class were supposed to come up with a New Year’s resolution to improve themselves. They learned how to fold clothes so they can start by helping mommy and daddy do the laundry. I was looking forward to hearing his big resolution, especially if it involved household chores.

But no.

His resolution is to make lemonade come out of the stars.

I didn’t even know he liked lemonade.

Did you read that? He was at preschool today! I was really worried that our scant inch of snow would shut down school, but they just had a two hour delay. Since he is in the afternoon class, his schedule wasn’t changed. Let’s do a little dance of joy!

I was feeling so good that I even got up the motivation to do some house cleaning. I will never be a good housekeeper, but sometimes it is satisfying to see a room transform from ewwwww to ok. You know would would make it even better? Ripping out the nasty carpets so I wouldn’t have to look at the stains all the time. I really don’t want to have hard floors with a baby that’s learning to walk, so I guess floor replacement will have to wait a couple of years.

In the biggest news of the day, I told my mom that we won’t be visiting this month. With the impending arrival, January was really the last chance of travel until after the baby arrives. And after the arrival? I’m not going anywhere alone with a four year old and newborn.

She was disappointed, but understood that travelling while pregnant is not ideal. I know I could do it, but at this point I don’t want to. Very selfish of me, but there it is. I want Erik to know his relatives. I know they love him very much, even if they drive me insane. But I also know that I am a serious cranky pants and the trip would be miserable. Nothing like the power of positive thought!

I feel like all I do is complain when I travel, but then I realized that I only complain when I travel to visit family. I always have a fantastic time when I travel to visit friends. That’s the problem with family. I love them, but would never be friends with them if we weren’t related. Despite my slight guilt attack, I am mainly tremendously relieved that I don’t have to fit a cross-country trip into my January schedule.

I’ve been in a craptacular mood today. I have had to actively work to bite my tongue. I have so many really rude comments I could make to strangers. And not-so-strangers. Basically, I am seeing everything through a red haze of negativity and I hate that. That’s not the person I want to be. I hope tomorrow is a brighter day and I don’t fantasize about killing anyone.

Erik was really whining and clingy today as well. I don’t know if it was a reaction to my bad mood or part of the cause of my bad mood. Maybe we both just feed off each other. Poor kid had several crying meltdowns the likes of which we rarely see around these parts. At one point he was jumping around on my lap and my fingernail scratched his face. He thought I did it on purpose and cried and cried and cried and kept saying “you hurt me, mommy! Why did you hurt me?” About broke my cold, widdle heart.

He finally had his holiday program today, which felt a little strange since the holiday is over. The original date was snowed out, thus the mid-January date. What a mad house. I couldn’t see anything, but finally I was able to scootch over a little and peek at Erik’s face. He was adorable. He was also the only one in his class who was actually singing. There were several classes combined and some of those classes had singers, but his class is made up of mostly shy kids. I may not have been able to see him well, but I could hear him loud and clear, including his “Am I singing loud, Mrs. Love?” at the end of every song. It probably would have been a fairly pleasant experience if I didn’t have my negative Nelly glasses firmly in place.

Afterwards we went to an open house for another preschool. I really wanted to send Erik to this new preschool next year because the hours made a lot more sense. He would be gone from 9-1:30 every single day. I think he would have enjoyed it and I know it would have been good for me and the baby to have some bonding time.

As soon as we got home from the open house, I filled out the form and wrote out the check to register for his current school. There was just a really off feeling about this other place. For one, they have 20 kids per class with one teacher and one aid. His current place has 12 students with one teacher and one aid. Twenty is way too many preschoolers for two people to handle. It also seemed like it was more of a low income solution. The place we go now is not prestigious or anything glamorous. In fact, it is actually the cheapest preschool we’ve found, but this other place just didn’t seem to have the quality of students that I was looking for.

I’m fairly disappointed because I was so set on those hours, but oh well. Gotta do what’s best for the boy. Well. What would really be best is the super fancy preschool that my friend sends her son to. No way we can afford that! I guess I should say we gotta do what’s best and what’s within our budget.

On a completely different note, Erik has been singing “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” all day long. I’m slightly disturbed, since the Badonkadonk part is supposed to represent a woman’s ass moving in time to the music. I suppose it could be worse. He could be singing “Rockin’ the Beer Gut,” quite possibly the worst song in the history of country music. It’s about a guy who sees a chick with a big beer gut and thinks she’s hot. I suppose that’s a good, fat friendly message, but the lyrics and tune are both painful. I first heard it on the airplane and decided it must be the Swedes idea of country music. I didn’t recognize most of the music they were playing on their country channel. I guess it is not Swedish, though, because they are playing it on the country digital music station. Gag. I’m so glad my local country station hasn’t been playing it. It was probably voted off the air.

I guess I better go to bed and see if I can wake up on the right side of the bed tomorrow. First, I have to go slather aquaphor all over Erik’s face. The kid won’t stop licking his lips and has a huge chapped area underneath his bottom lip. I know it has to hurt, but he won’t wear chapstick or anything like that. He’ll let me put it on, but then he just rubs it all over my shirt (no wonder all my shirts have grease stains) then licks his lips even more. I have to do a stealth night attack, but I’m not sure how much good it does. Last night I think it gave him nightmares because he was shouting “No! No!”

The Good: I ordered a pair of clogs from Endless.com yesterday and had very little hope that they would actually fit. All the reviews stated that they ran narrow. Narrow is a scary word for my poor, giant feetsies. I ordered the 11WW and guess what? They fit! In fact, I may need slightly thicker socks to keep them on. What a relief! I need to learn that I should Just Do It when it comes to ordering shoes from these free shipping/free return places. I have nothing to lose. Mainly, I just hate getting my hopes up that I might actually get a pair of shoes that are more fashionable than men’s athletic shoes. Oh, the woes of the big footed. You people with your normal sized feet have no idea what a luxury it is to be able to go into a shoe store, try on some shoes and come out with something you like that actually fits your foot. At least that means I don’t spend much money on shoes. When I do buy a pair, I usually drop at least $100 on them, but I buy them so rarely that it doesn’t add up to much.

For the curious, I got THIS PAIR. More of a heel than I would have liked, but fairly fashionable for a clog and oh-so-comfortable. I was drawn to the brownish color, but black is more practical in my wardrobe. Now to buy some black socks. My ankle length, white athletic socks just aren’t going to cut it. It’s too cold to go sockless.

Did I really just go on for two paragraphs about shoes???

In The Bad category, I wasted my kid free afternoon chasing down things my town doesn’t offer. Erik is begging for a pillow pet. I didn’t even know what the hell a pillow pet was, but it turns out it is a stuffed animal that unfolds and turns into a pillow. Christmas was two weeks ago. Why they hell would I buy him something new at this point? I don’t know. He so rarely asks for anything that I thought I’d see if I could track down one of these mysterious creatures. I remembered seeing them at Bed, Bath and Beyond before Christmas, so I headed over there but they didn’t have any. Probably a good thing. I don’t need to buy him something like that even if he does keep asking for it. Right?

I am feeling slightly guilty because I believe his Puppy was left in the hotel in Gothenburg. We haven’t seen it since that evening. Yikes! He doesn’t want it often, but when he does want it he WANTS it. You know? At least for now he is satisfied with his Panda named Bucket. Yes. Bucket. Don’t ask. I don’t know.

Strike two was at the bookstore. Carol Berg, my current favorite writer, released her latest book yesterday! She’s not popular enough to have a whole horde of books stacked in the front of the store but apparently she’s popular enough to be sold out of the few copies the store ordered. Bah! Granted, I’m still reading my Juliet Marillier so I have some time to order it from Amazon but I really prefer to support my local bookstore, big chain or not.

I did end up buying Erik a couple of preschool math workbooks that were on sale. He is very interested in numbers and always wants me to add double numbers. “Whats 6 +6? What’s 12 + 12? What’s 24 + 24?” And on and on and on until I get stuck.

He was underwhelmed. “Mommy, this is just boring. Why would a little boy want a book like this?”

Why indeed, child, why indeed?

Other disappointments include my quilting issues. My quilting room/guest room is really not set up very well. I discovered that the afternoon sun is totally blinding, so I can only work with sunglasses on. Not ideal. Plus, the height of the table is uncomfortable. And the outlet situation makes the ironing situation less than ideal. And I can’t find my scissors.

I made a block for Ofenjen’s Batiks on Black lotto yesterday and am not pleased. I have been out of the quilting game too long! I made lots of rookie mistakes and the block didn’t come out the right size. Bah! I’m going to make one more tonight and hope it turns out better. I felt the need to be creative and I love batiks on black so I couldn’t resist entering. I need to flex my quilting muscles more in the upcoming year. How? I don’t know. We need to really think about the arrangement of our bedrooms and where everything is going to go. Where are we going to stick the new kid and all her clothes? Where does my studio fit into all this?

I thought we were going to get a chance to breathe after the holidays, but this week is turning out to be as crazy as ever. Today was my last chance to get my car emissions inspected. Ugh. I blocked out three hours to get it done since that has been my experience in the past, but I lucked out this time! The station I usually go to was closed this summer, so I thought I was going to have to trek way outside of my comfort zone into the middle of the big city.

Then I got smart.

Rare, I know.

I figured out that there was a closer station in the rural county just north of us, so we headed up there. I took snacks, toys, and a good book. I didn’t need any of it! It took about a half hour to get there, but then we were only there about five minutes, including wait time. Happy, happy! I got into a line with a cranky older lady, which turned out to be the best line ever. She may have been cranky, but she was one efficient woman. She had three cars finished in the time it took other bays to go through one car.

Erik’s school is doing their holiday program on Thursday, which was unexpected. I’m glad they are still going to do it since I was so disappointed when it was snowed out, but I had things to do. People to see! Places to go! Ah well. Life just seems to grab me by the throat and take me for a ride. I never imagined I would be this busy.

I really just need to get my butt into the gym, but I’m thinking about freezing my account for now. I don’t know. I am very uncomfortable and standing for long periods of time pulls on my scar. Yet I want to stay in as good of shape as possible to help with the c-section recovery and prevent total fatty build-up.

My gym problem could be solved if only they had a pool. I know I could do swimming or deep water running. The one gym with a pool is really expensive and I’d have to sign up for a whole year. I am 100% comfortable putting the new baby in our current gym’s daycare at six weeks. I don’t know that I would build up such a relationship with the new gym, even if I was willing to pay their prices. Plus, I want to go back to my classes after my postpartum recovery. I looked up the classes at the other gym and they don’t have much at all. Definitely no BodyPump or Zumba. If I have the baby in mid-April I should be back to the gym by June 1. I don’t want to go six whole months without my gym time. I think six weeks will be hard enough. Argh! What problems, eh? I truly lead a charmed life. Who would have thought the shy girl from the dysfunctional family would have ended up so happy and well cared for? Not me!