The Queen's Rambles

So my new jacket is a bust. I thought I could live with a pinkish-purple coat, but it is the most vile shade of pink I’ve ever seen, so I didn’t remove the tags. I wanted to take it out on a cold day and give it a test, just in case it was amazing. I know the weather around here can change on a dime, and it did so this week. We went from 70s to snowing in about 24 hours. I tested the jacket out and it did not keep me as warm as I had envisioned. I’m sure it is a perfectly nice jacket for a cool day, but I thought it was going to be warm like my unattractive make-shift layers. I think I just have to buck up and realize that layers are warm because. . . they are layers. Or something. I don’t even know what I’m talking about. My head is spinning after explaining the suspension of dibelief to Erik.

Erik is obsessed with reading the Magic Tree House books. I’m glad he’s obsessed with reading something and I guess they are supposed to be good for kids, but they drive me crazy. For those who don’t know about these books, they are about these two American kids who find a magic treehouse that sends them on adventures. It turns out that the magic treehouse is the creation of Morgan Le Faye from Camelot and she needs these two American kids to go and learn things (I’m not sure why because Erik likes big numbers, so he will only read the later books, not measly number 1 or 2). Later Merlin sends these kids on missions to do things like convince Charles Dickens to not stop writing. Because MORGAN Le FAYE of CAMELOT is going to build a treehouse. A treehouse that ends up in rural Pennsylvania in the year 20XX. What? IT MAKES NO SENSE.

Tonight the white bread American children are in ancient Japan, trying not to stick out. No one seems to notice the two very white kids in middle of the kingdom that is closed off to all foreigners. One master samurai guy even helps them without even asking them where they are from, what they are doing, or why the girl has blonde hair. ARGH!

I know, I know. They are children’s books. They are vehicles for children to learn about different times and places. They don’t have to make any sense. I should let it go; suspend disbelief; realize I am not the target audience.

Tonight Erik was even asking me why the people they meet want to tell them all about the place they live. “So if the people they meet think they are just normal people who are walking around, why do they start telling them all these facts? Shouldn’t they already know all those facts if they live there?”

Yes, yes indeed.

I tried to explain the whole suspension of disbelief thing to him, but he didn’t get it. He generally doesn’t enjoy fiction anyway because it isn’t real, so I am not surprised he is starting to question the very thinly constructed conceit behind these books.

Anyway, I cleaned the house today–thrill a minute. We went grocery shopping and it was so cold that I couldn’t face going back out for a trip to the gym. If it was just me, that’d be one thing, but Elsa is such a pain to get loaded into the van when the howling wind is ripping my face off. She has to hold her pretzels, water cat and at least one random toy (today it was her “blue mermaid” which is actually purple). She also has to wear her gloves, but she changes her mind about which gloves she wants to wear half-way to the car and sits down screaming until everything has been remedied to her satisfaction. And, of course, she has to go FIRST. You can’t scootch ahead of her. If there is any trash or newspapers or random objects on the way from the house to the car, she has to carefully examine them and possibly lick them (and we wonder why she’s always sick?).

I still needed to work out, but I have been researching fat burning and know from personal experience that a lower heart rate during exercise burns fat (but does not necessarily provide cardio). I decided to do a cleaning “work out” instead of going to the gym, which was kind of nice since it resulted in clean cabinet doors. The whole thing with cleaning though, is that it just sucks. Big revelation at 5! Stay tuned! It is so disheartening to look around thirty minutes later and see that everything that looked great is back to looking like a bunch of rampaging baboons went through the house.

Ok, maybe not *quite* that bad. Erik is pretty good with helping me pick things up, but Elsa is equally good at dumping toys all over the house just for the thrill of dumping them. I’m about to go medieval on her and take away everything but a single doll.

She really is a sweet little thing. She plays so happily and likes to sit on my lap and pretend she’s a dog. She’s just stubborn and has her very particular way of doing things. Nothing strange or noteworthy. She’s a toddler and she acts like one. A very cute, frustrating, delightful, silly toddler.

Oh, and why do shoes have pee in them? When a little girl pees her pants the urine runs down her legs and pools in her shoes. Thankfully that hasn’t happened in a while.

Gross gross gross gross gross.

I just found the source of the mystery smell.

There was a bag in the closet (does anyone else hang bags on hangers in their hall closet so they don’t lose the stuff and the kids don’t get into it? I have my MOMS Club bag, my EBay bag, and a few other bags). This particular stinky bag was full of Christmas gifts that I have ZERO recollection purchasing. As I dug into the bag (Jake and the Pirates puzzle? Ariel Barbie? Purple toddler digital camera????? Where the f— did this stuff come from????) the smell got worse and worse. I was so confused. Do things wrapped in plastic eventually smell this bad from all the evil plastic chemicals? WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE????

Then came the discovery.

An almost gone, completely rotten, moldy, black, smelly banana. Ohhhhhh, my friends, you should be glad you did not have to see the thing I saw in that bag.

As luck would have it, it is in the mid-60s this morning! Windows are wide open and I hope the smell dissipates now that the problem has been removed. I never knew a rotten banana would have such a chemical smell. Too bad it completely ruined what looked to be a brand new reusable grocery bag.

Notice the part where I said it was in the mid-60s? I heard it is supposed to get up to the 70s this week. And my new super warm winter coat just arrived! Perfect timing. It was a pretty sweet deal for the coat, so I won’t complain.

And now Elsa’s birthday gifts are purchased (if I remember the bag of mystery items exists in about three months)!

So much for “buy nothing new” month. I have been much more mindful of my purchases, but there were a few things that I couldn’t push off. Namely, clothes for Erik.

He was supposed to be getting dressed yesterday morning, but instead he was crying that none of his clothes fit. I went up to try to get him to stop being so ridiculous and just put his danged clothes on, but he was right. We worked together to try to get a pair of pants on him, but even shaking him in like a little toddler didn’t work. He was like the Hulk, busting out of those bad boys. How did my itty-bitty-widdle baby get so big?

We ended up pulling a pair of dirty sweats out of the laundry. I’m just glad we had those! In the past I’ve bought 10 pairs of the exact same brand of pants, so they are all outgrown at the same time. The only reason I didn’t do that this season was because it was almost impossible to find size 7s in the store. Now I’ve learned a lesson: buy different brands so you don’t have a Hulkesque emergency three minutes before the bus is due to arrive (even if you do send a kid in dirty cloths. Niiiiiice).

I also had to buy new socks for both the kids. I just found out he hates ankle socks. I only buy ankle socks. Whoops.

I’m going to buy a new recliner this weekend. My poor chair bit the dust months ago, but we are a slow people and just deal with a chair that has an arm at a right angle to the seat. Makes it easier for the whole family to jump on in! Now the chair smells like paint or something with a distinct chemical odor. I don’t know what, but I can’t sit in it. That sucker is getting dumped and I am getting a new chair. SO THERE! Except. . . ugh. Hopefully we can find a chair in stock and not have to wait six weeks for an order to come through.

Now for the funny stuff.

My son, my son.

We had “the talk” a few months ago but that was just the beginning of the conversation. Truly, we’ve been having conversations about biology for years and years. The Talk was just the moment of announcing that the penis went into the vagina. He doesn’t want to talk about that, but he does want to talk about how babies come out.

I wouldn’t wrestle with him tonight because I was having cramps, so I was trying to explain my “tummy ache” to him. I didn’t mention my period, but he remembers and asked if I was having my “bloody time”. He is absolutely disgusted that girls have to have a period every single month. “Mom, I just don’t get it. Why doesn’t your brain just tell itself it doesn’t want a baby and make the blood and egg and everything stop?”

Don’t we all wish it was that simple?

Apparently he’s been talking about gender differences with a girl at his table. She says girls are best because they can have babies and babies are sooooooo cute. He has explained to her that child birth hurts really badly and that she is going to have blood every month and being a girl is horrible. (I did not tell him being a girl is horrible, that’s his own conclusion). “Mom, she just won’t listen to me. She’s going to have a baby and be screaming when it comes out because it is going to hurt worse than hard poop and she’ll think ‘Hey, Erik was right. I should have listened to him!'” You probably had to be there, but I couldn’t quit laughing.

He also hypothesized that if he tried to have a baby come out of his penis it would “break [his] nuts.”

I hope we have started these lessons young enough that he internalizes them and preventing unwanted pregnancies* is completely natural and normal. Please, please, please. He is so loving and touchy-feely that I worry about his teen self.

*And STDs of course, but we have not had a conversation about those yet.

Thanks everyone, for the Land’s End recommendations. I didn’t buy anything from Land’s End, but I came very close. Ha!

Actually, when Erik was a toddler we got a hand-me-down Lands End jacket and that thing was the bomb. I just saw it on a kid last week (at least the fifth toddler to wear it!) and it’s still going strong. At the time I thought Land’s End must be the bo-shizzle (I have no idea what that means or why I am talking like this), so I bought some other things from there and they were all really crappy. Seams falling apart, material on boots flaking after one wear, etc. I found out the super-jacket was from Pre-Sears days and all my crappy purchases were Post-Sears. Sooooooo. . . I’m a little scared to buy stuff from Land’s End. It sounds like you guys all have positive experiences with Lands End, though?

However, it reminded me of LL Bean (and someone else mentioned LL Bean) so I’ve been waffling on spending a hundred bucks on a new jacket. They have the EXACT thing I was thinking of–fleece with an internal wind resistant layer!–but that’s a lot of money to spend in my “buy nothing new” month.

I just checked the jacket again and it’s on sale! Only $45! I bought it. They only had one color in my size, which I am not very fond of (a purple with pinkish tones) but if it keeps me warm I’ll learn to deal with it.

New topic: We did an art project that Erik actually enjoyed, today. Amazing! He normally hates art, but this one captured his interest. Each year Camp Fire hosts an art competition with a different theme. This year is print making. To get your badge you have to learn about the process as well as submit a piece of art. This is the reason we toured the money factory last week.

I’ve been trying to come up with a project that was a little more fun than cutting an apple in half and making prints. I finally read enough about printmaking to feel confident in letting him go to town. My bonus child was here, so I let her have fun too. She always makes Erik enjoy things more. She’s a very happy, fun child. She’s also a middle child so she knows how to be a mediator and go with the flow–much needed in our household!

The art project turned out to be pretty simple once we got started. I bought some washable block ink (should have just used paint), a roller and some foam sheets. The kids used Erik’s three styluses (styli?) from his DS to draw designs in the foam sheets. Then they rolled the ink on a cookie tray to really cover the roller, then inked the foam sheet to cover the design. Then we pressed the foam onto paper and they had a pretty reverse-picture! I bought some nice quality paper for the art competition, but we did most of our prints on butcher paper to test them out. They each made several and Erik said it was the most fun art thing he’s ever done. I was very surprised by the easy clean-up. I’ll try to post some pictures later.

Next topic: My house smells so bad. I notice it most when I am sitting in my living room chair, which makes me wonder if my neighbors left some trash in their house before they left on their month long trip to Pakistan. I can’t figure out what else it could be. We cleaned the crab tank, cleaned the house, put clementines down the garbage disposal. I really hope they didn’t leave trash out. We don’t need a cockroach infestation. We live in townhouses, so what one neighbor does effects the whole row, unfortunetly.

It has been cold out! Big excitement, eh? I live in the DC area so I’m really spoiled when it comes to the weather. This 15F with biting wind is freeeeeezing. Funny that when I lived in Sweden I could go out when it was -15C and be ok. Of course, I had clothing made for the cold and that makes all the difference.

What’s the point of talking about the weather? I want you to help me! I’ve discovered that I stay super warm if I wear my old, ratty maternity fleece jacket under my much-too-large water proof, wind resistant rain jacket. The fleece keeps me cozy, the rain jacket keeps the wind out.

As you can imagine this is a super sleek, super sexy looking silhouette that really compliments my slim figure. Hahahahaha. I’ve already got extra padding, I don’t need to dress this poorly. I love my regular winter coat, but it is only good in our normal winter weather. It is not cutting it in this crappy cold, windy month.

So, surely some person way smarter than me has come up with a fleece/windcoat combo that is much more attractive than my home made version. Give me reccs! Plus-sized reccs! Your regular sized stores probably have a lot of cute things, but those reccs mean absolutely nothing to me since I can’t wear them. It’s like showing a child a picture of a big birthday cake and then saying “but you can never have it because it’s not your birthday! Hahahahahaha!”

I do understand that when people give reccs to clothes that I can never, ever wear they are not intentionally being cruel. I don’t think most non-plus sized people truly understand the lack of options their plus-sized friends face. There are a lot more options today than there were ten or twenty years ago, but when it comes to something specific there is often NOTHING. Or maybe one choice that you can either suck up and get even if you don’t like it or just do without.

Also, any reccs for plus sized long underwear would be awesome. I am using my Swedish pair and they are falling apart.

I’ll probably get all this stuff ordered and the sun will come out. We’ll be in short sleeves in February. But at least I’d be prepared for next year, right?

Ok, guess I better go help Erik with the soil preparations for the hermit crabs. They don’t need their soil changed often. They are very clean animals, but one died and it is getting kind of moldy smelling because I can’t find the itty bitty pieces of food that they hide away in their very hot, humid tank. It’s quite a process and I am willfully trying to make Erik do a good chunk of it to teach him responsibility. That’s not working out so well. He just stands in the middle of the living room and turns around in circles instead of actually looking for the pink bucket. But why can’t we use the green bucket? Or the orange bucket? Or the blue bucket?

THEY ALL HAVE HOLES, CHILD!

I finally had him take all those buckets to the sink to test them out and he learned that sometimes mommy does know something. I feel like everyone around here thinks they know more than me, when I’m the one doing the vast majority of momming all the creatures and I know what needs to be done and the secrets that make life easier. We can not leave the house without an adequate supply of pretzels or water cat (name of Elsa’s water bottle). Those shoes don’t work. Those gloves look ok, but in about ten minutes we are going to have a meltdown if the bubble gloves are not on standby. Those buckets have holes. That crab hides inside that shack and hangs upside down. The popcorn must be unsalted. You need three drops of blue. Those shoes have pee in them. And so on.

Here’s my big problem in life: I want to be more motivated, but the longer I sit the more I think I am losing productivity and the more I hate myself and the less I am motivated. Makes so much sense! Our house is in desperate need of interior paint, but that is a job I am not up to tackling. Sooooooo much work. I don’t even know where to begin.

Maybe I can begin by pressing post, then going to do some laundry.

What a day! Our Camp Fire club traveled down to DC and took a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the place that prints money. It was extremely interesting. First we watched a little movie about how the process works, then we went behind the scenes on a cat-walk and watched the whole process. We couldn’t photograph anything on the tour. With the threat of having a federal police officer confiscate my camera it wasn’t even a temptation, though I certainly wish I could have documented it for my photo books.

It was quite a sight to see hundreds of hundred dollar bills (the new hundreds will be blue toned!) on the printer, and bricks of money that probably totaled in the millions. Can you imagine the security checks the employees must go through? The last set of guys were sitting in their room, fanning out stacks of hundreds to make sure they were all regular. All that money, and none of it yours! Wasn’t there a movie with Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah stealing money for the BEP?

Have you ever seen a bill that has a star in the serial number? The very last step of the money making process is having a human being manual thumb through a stack of bills and make sure it is static–there shouldn’t be any movement like when you flip through a children’s book meant to mimic a cartoon. The bills have the serial numbers stamped on and are done if they can pass this manual spot check (even though they’ve been through a thorough electronic check). If the stack fails, it is shredded and then substitute bills have to be made for those serial numbers. The substitute bills will have the star on them.

We took the metro down, with some of our friends. Our friend has a four year old little boy, so she was a little freaked about keeping him safe. Naturally she didn’t want him running ahead or getting out of her grip in the big city. He is a lot like Erik was and likes to run. Erik just REFUSED to listen to me. He was doing things that I would probably have let him do if we weren’t with a four year old and needed to all be on the same page about staying together and not wandering up the road. It was so maddening. He just completely REFUSED to stop or obey me. I swear I was ready to rip my arm off and beat him about the head on the metro platform. I ended up grabbing his hood and using it like a leash. A very, very short leash.

It was really embarrassing to be “that” mother, pulling my kid close and scream-whispering dire threats in his ear with an ugly, angry face. I hate my angry face. I look scary. He has lost TV, computer and DS privileges for a week. I don’t know who is being punished more. Now I’ll have him in my face all week, talking non-stop. I love the boy more than anything, and he is probably a little too spoiled, but he sure can work my nerves.

It was freezing out (18F) and we got lost on the way back to the metro. They had big signs out from the inauguration so we decided to follow the signs instead of going back to the stop we started at. Huge, huge mistake. We never did find the stop they were trying to direct us to, but the kids enjoyed walking past the mall and seeing some more of the sights, even if we all were freezing. I was very glad I found my long johns from my days in Sweden.

We were watching Max and Ruby on the way home (kill me now; I can’t stand that show and we’ve been watching it in the car for three weeks) and Grandma made a double fudge chocolate pie. Erik wanted to try his hand at pie making and I wanted him to stop badgering me so I set him to work. Oh, people, this pie is soooooooo disgusting. Erik made the crust by himself. It was his first ever attempt at a pie crust and he did not have a light touch. I’m proud of him for trying it (even though he had no idea that most people will never make a homemade pie crust in their entire life!) and I’m sure some day he will be a fabulous pie maker. But that someday is waaaaaay in the future. We put in a layer of chocolate chip/sweetened condensed milk fudge and a layer of pudding made from a box. Boxed pudding is one of the most disgusting things ever. Why did I even have it in my cupboard? Of course, he liked it because he could make it by himself. I don’t think he could have made homemade pudding on the stove. It requires too much constant stirring. At least this way I won’t be tempted to sneak a slice of this pie.

I shouldn’t talk bad about his food, I guess. It’s not like I told him it was not to my tastes. I told him it was great and he was very, very proud of his handiwork. He’s so high energy he might make a great chef someday. Except he really needs to do something where he makes good money. I’m thinking lawyer, he’s so fond of arguing.

And now it is waaaaaay past my bedtime and I’m super tired (toddler decided to scream and lay on me from 5:30 till we just got out of bed at 7:30). It is going to be hard to go back to the real world after a four day weekend!

I had a meeting with several friends yesterday. The kids all play beautifully together, so of course two of the friends came up with a plan to continue the fun–lunch at Chick Fil A. I have swore that I will never eat there again. I support my gay friends even if I am a boring ol’ straight hausfrau who doesn’t do anything edgier than licking sweetened condensed milk off the sharp part of the lid.

They wore me down, though, and I abandoned my principals with a sinking feeling in my stomach. Damn those chicken fryers for having the only toddler friendly indoor playground in town.

There was an unsupervised little boy in the play area. Of course. Isn’t there always?

He was the same size as Elsa, so really too young to be unsupervised. He was mean and we were trying to correct him, but just how much discipline can you give to a random kid in a play area? His caregiver, an ancient grandma, was sitting outside the play area talking on a pink cell phone.

He screamed in children’s faces. Pushed a girl off a ledge. Hit a boy. And then he pulled Elsa’s hair. You can bet your ass nice, understanding Carrie disappeared and Mama Bear started roaring.

I took care of Elsa, then I started tapping on the window to get the ancient grandma’s attention. She didn’t care, so I opened the door and told her, rather rudely, that she needed to come supervise her child because he was hurting the other children.

You can guess how that went.

She came in, said something to him for about three seconds (in a language I didn’t understand, so who knows what it was she said) and left.

I was pretty hot under the collar after this happened so kept my eye out. Two seconds later the kid hit another child, so I went and got the manager. It was an exercise in futility. She came in, told the boy to be nice, talked to the grandma for a second and left. She came back about ten minutes later and wanted to know how things were going. Me and three other moms (two of my friends, one stranger) all bent her ear about the kid and she said “well, it looks like he is being fine now.” We pointed out that the kids had learned to run away from him. My friend also pointed out that if you have four moms all telling you the same story it is time to ask that family to leave. She ignored us and walked away.

We all started packing up and leaving. Elsa and the boy were the only ones left up in the play structure and the screaming started. I couldn’t see what was happening and was panicking. Elsa was very distressed. I started yelling “leave her alone, leave her alone! Elsa come down.”

Elsa came down and had tears, but the boy was screaming even more and sounded like he might actually be hurt. I hope that means Elsa gave as good as she got. He was still crying when we left, so as we walked out I told the lady she needed to go check on her kid because he was screaming and was too young to be left unsupervised. I did not say this in a nice or sweet tone.

She informed me that he was not her kid.

I informed her that I didn’t care who she was, if she was in charge of him it was her job to keep him from hurting other kids or himself and that she was failing miserably.

She called me a bitch.

Elsa and I walked away.

Whew!

One of my friends later told me she was freaking out and went into fight or flight mode. I can see how that would make someone uncomfortable, but when someone messes with my kid I snap. The old me never would have done such a thing, but the new me is tired of being a doormat and letting people get away with crappy behavior just to be polite. The woman wasn’t polite. She was not worried about hurting feelings. She did not deserve consideration of polite society. At first I suppose she could have been excused for losing focus and not paying attention because it is boring to watch a kid play, but after it was brought to her attention she still refused to take responsibility or even pretend to care. Someone had to call her on it. Might as well be me. Maybe I need a cape. I can be a playground superhero.

Mike is supposed to get in around 2 am this morning. I will be so glad when this single parent gig is over! It has not been as awful as it could be, but it has not been all sunshine and snuggles and rainbow farts either. Nights have been nothing short of horrible, but I knew that would happen.

I thought I would keep the house clean and it was looking great on Wednesday. As the week wore on and my nerves wore out my plan to be awesome slowly faded. It is not as bad as it could be, but it is a far cry from clean.

When do I get my week long vacation?

Not that it was a vacation for him. I guess I would rather spend time with my children even without night support than do a presentation in front of the big space acronym people.

We are having something of an emergency tonight, but once again it was Facebook to the rescue. One of our hermit crabs has finally molted (I guess) and is too big for his preferred shell. I have provided the tank with plenty of shells that meet the criteria set forth by dozens of webpages put together by hermit crab lovers. My crabs will not use any of them. Tonight Lightening finally came out of a six week seclusion and was missing his shell. I didn’t even see him at first–I thought he was part of a pile of wood chips. Naked hermit crabs are pretty nasty looking.

He doesn’t like any of his shell options and I hate to leave him in there exposed to the other crabs. What if they eat him?

One of my friends saw the poor creature’s plight on FB and was at my door with a basket of shells a half hour later (she called first). Isn’t that just the nicest thing ever? Shell delivery service!

We picked out the ones we thought would be most likely to succeed and boiled them up. That was a few hours ago and so far two of the new shells have been claimed by two of the other crabs, but Mr. Nekkid is still shell-less. I’m worried about him. I don’t like the crabs. I wish we didn’t have the crabs. Yet I worry. I don’t want any creature under my care to suffer. Being eaten by your friends sounds like a whole lot of suffering.

Time for bed. It’s 10:55 and Miss Rotisserie has not had her nightly wake-up. Probably because she went to sleep super, super late. She refused to get into bed and at some point I said “eff this noise” and sat down on the floor with the sleep music playing, while messing around with my FB games. Won’t someone please help me unlock the next episode of Candy Crush? Erik has me addicted to these stupid games that require three friends to help you move on past certain levels. Ugh.

Anyway, I was sitting on the floor with my feet out and she was rolling and rolling inside my legs, screaming like a banshee. Then suddenly she wasn’t. She was fast asleep, I don’t know how a person can go to sleep in mid-scream like that, but it was quite a relief. How am I supposed to concentrate on matching lost jewels with a kid screaming and carrying on? That’s a joke, btw. Sort of.

Remind me to tell you about me almost getting into a fight and having to get the manager at a fast food restaurant. I have to go to bed tonight, but if I remember I will tell you the story tomorrow.

I’m sitting here in Elsa’s room, with deep sleep music playing on the YouTube, about to fall asleep. My brain is so tired it can’t even figure out how to post an entry. I keep thinking I should click a link, but then it just. . . falls away. Obviously I have solved that problem now, but I tell you about it to give you an idea of where my brain is. Will this entry make any sense?

Why am I in Elsa’s room? Why not? She wakes up a lot in the early hours of night and it is easier to sit here and do computer stuff, patting her back down before she fully wakes up. My other option would be to watch my shows in the basement, two floors away from her, and not come to her until she’s in full scream mode (when I start hearing her) and much harder to put back to sleep. Kinda sucks though, since my DVR is filling up. I am going to be really cryin’ tomorrow when I miss the series finale of Fringe! Mike better be prepared for abandonment on Saturday. I’ve got TV shows to watch, gosh darn it! I’m going to get a box of tissue and cry my eyes out while my favorite show ends.

I had my pilar cyst removed today. Joy, joy. My poor head hurts right now. You know one good reason to do home surgery on these things? Sticking an exacto knife in your head may hurt in the moment, but the recovery isn’t as painful (not as deep a cut, I guess? And no stitches?).

I had a different surgeon today, but the same bitchy old lady nurse. I really hate this woman. Every time I’ve been in there she’s had some rude remark about my moles or my cysts or whatever. I think she must be very bitter. She works in a med spa and is very unattractive. That could give an old woman some insecurities, I guess.

She told me she was going to have to shave a huge patch off my head and the doctor got really angry at her. He drew a circle around my cyst (I guess, I couldn’t see) and told her she was only allowed to shave inside the circle. They had a little spat about it, but I assume he won. When he left the room she pretended she didn’t know which cyst she was supposed to shave and kept saying she would just shave them all. You guys would have been proud of me. I got pretty aggressive with her, something I never would have done just a year ago. Damned if this woman was going to shave big patches of my hair for shits and giggles.

I really liked this doctor. I thought he was really young, but he has a 9 year old so he is probably not a whole lot younger than me. Sure, he could have started having kids a lot sooner than me, but I don’t know many doctors who start popping out babies at age 18. Of course, he works in a medspa, so he probably does all kinds of treatments on himself. I really liked that he was joking around, but also understood my concerns. He didn’t talk down to me at all and was telling me stories about other cysts he’s removed. Sounds gross, but there are worse topics. He was really impressed that I had a teratoma. I guess they are pretty rare. I’m nothing if not a medical wonder.

They thought they would have to wrap the wound with a big bandage turban, but it wasn’t bleeding so they taped gauze in my hair. I am glad I didn’t have a head wrap, but the tape is going to be a bitch to get out tomorrow.

They showed me the cyst afterwards and it was pretty bizarre. It looked like a clear, plastic sweet potato (only much smaller, of course. Maybe 2 inches long. He said it was causing me pain because it had ruptured on the bottom and had an infection brewing, so now I have to take antibiotics for 10 days. Ugh. Better than having my head rot off, I guess. The cyst was on the back of my head, so he thought the rupture was caused by normal pressure of sleeping on it and leaning back in chairs.

You know what the best thing was?

I didn’t have to work at finding a babysitter! It is SO NICE to have my social network built up so well that I didn’t even think about finding a sitter when I scheduled the appointment knowing Mike was out of town. I had three people offer to take her before I could even ask anyone. I have at least three other people who probably would have taken her, plus our new babysitting co-op. Life is so much easier with friends.

Ok, I better stop writing and get myself to bed. Elsa has done much better the last two nights, but she still has wake-ups (thankfully no screaming at me, just general screaming.

Last night she woke up moaning and rolling around like a rotisserie chicken (her hair was a nightmare to comb today, even with spray and an ouchless brush). I was patting her and comforting her. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw another person in my bed. I screamed a little and then woke up enough to realize it was Erik. That was all he needed to get going. We were awake, so why weren’t we talking? Chatty Cathy over there wanted to talk about the spots on the ceiling, why colors look different in the dark, why Elsa was so wiggly, yadda yadda yadda. I had to put a pretty firm stop to it. I don’t want a Chatty Cathy in my bed at 2 am.

Speaking of my silly boy, he had his first indoor winter soccer session tonight. I am not around him in big groups of kids all that much anymore so I’ve convinced myself that he is not any more energetic than most children.

Hahahahahahaha.

I wasn’t crazy thinking he was “extra” when he was little. He really WAS that high energy and demanding. He played soccer for 45 minutes. His body never stopped moving. Every time the coach was talking or they were taking a break, he was JUMPING up and down over and over and over and over and over. None of the other kids were doing anything like that. I need to talk Elsa into being so high energy. If I was chasing her all over tarnation I’d be losing a lot of weight.

Erik really is a wonderfully sweet boy and excellent big brother. He has been a big help this week and has been trying so hard to do what I ask him to do. He told me he is going to teach Elsa everything in the whole world and that if she doesn’t understand something he’ll just tell her, “sorry, Elsa, but I’m your brother and if I can learn it you can too.” Love that kid, even when he is driving me completely batty. He is even letting her win some of their silly little competitions and I know that is a huge, huge sacrifice for him because he is Mr. Competitive personified.

Elsa is a sweet one, too. I was really proud of her yesterday. We were at a MOMS Club event and a little 11 month old got in her space. She was so mad that she was shaking in rage and clearly wanted to hit the girl, but she checked herself and didn’t do it. She is also really good about “choosing happiness.” You now that new-old trope that everyone is talking about? You just have to choose to be happy!

There is a lot of truth in that, of course, but it is easier said than done. Elsa cracks me up because she’ll start to cry, then she’ll look at me and say “I’m going to be happy. I won’t cry.” I have no idea where she got it, but I wish she could teach it to me and Erik.

I knew nights without Mike would suck, and I was not “disappointed.” Last night took the term “sucky” to a whole new level.

Of course the kids didn’t want to go to bed. Of course Erik did not want to give up a single moment of mommy time so mommy could help Elsa go to sleep. Of course Elsa did not want mommy anywhere near her, but SOMEBODY had to do the routine. I don’t have a pet parrot to walk her through her paces “Polly do a puzzle! Polly do a puzzle!”

Eventually all three of us sat on her floor and did her puzzles. I turned on the 80’s music, she crawled in to bed and aggressively shut her eyes and eventually fell to sleep while I put Erik to bed.

The fun really began around 10:30. She started coughing, despite having Vicks on her feet. She was crying and snotty, so I did what my mama instincts told me to do and tried to lovingly comfort her with gentle hands and words. My brain knew this wouldn’t work, but I just wanted to snuggle my poor, sick baby.

She smacked me, screamed at me, and pinched me. “No no no NO NO NO no no no NO NO NO no no no NO NO NO” was all I heard for a good 15 minutes. Eventually I decided that I couldn’t love her to sleep, so left the room. All was quiet for ten minutes, then I heard her pittering pattering feetsies in the hall way. She came into my room, looking for daddy. She crawled into my bed, determined that I was hiding her daddy. She looked everywhere, but he wasn’t there. Round two of screaming NO NO NO NO NO NO NO began. If I went near her she was a wild animal. Snot and tears were streaming down her face. She was so tired that she was like a little weeble wobble, listing from side to side as she shouted no. I was sure she was going to fall over backwards and land asleep.

Eventually I carried her to her own bed and she instantly fell asleep. After all that screaming and carrying on I’m sure she was tired. I know I was.

All was well until 1:30 am, when the coughing started again. She came into my room, yelled at me a little, went back to her bed, then I guess decided I was better than nothing and came in to snuggle with me. She couldn’t seem to quit coughing, poor thing, so I gave the Vicks another try. This time it worked and there was no more coughing.

She’s still asleep, a good hour past her usual wake-up time. Maybe I should go crawl in with her. Today is her parent’s day out program–my four hours of freedom!–but that is obviously not happening. They’d send her and her snotty nose straight home, I’m sure (and they’d be right to do so).

To top all this fun stuff off, I couldn’t find Erik this morning. His bed was empty. The downstairs was completely empty, basement was cold and dark with no TV on. I was in full blown panic mode. I grabbed the phone and was going to call 911 after making one more sweep of the upstairs, but I couldn’t imagine where he was. Our townhouse is tiny!

The little turkey had decided his room was cold and Elsa’s room was cozy, so he was hidden deep in her pile of blankets and pillows. I am glad he revealed himself because I never would have looked there. I would have had police officers here trying to calm this hysterical mother. How embarrassing would that have been? I suppose any police officer in the world would rather have the kid crawl out from a pile of covers than deal with a real kidnapping.