The Queen's Rambles

Let’s see if I can bust out an entry with a broken space bar. It works, but only if I really pound it. I am in dire need of some computer maintence. I have an extended warranty and they’ll send someone to my house, but first I need to find theDVD drive that fell out so they can see I am not just jacking parts to sell in a shady online enterprise. Because I look shady, don’t I? Of course, one would assume that the most successful criminals and scam artists look completely honest. We just don’t know it, because they haven’t been caught.

As long time readers know, I have big lumps on my head. They are called pilar cysts and are nothing to worry about. They are sacs filled with keratin. I spent many, many, MANY years poking at them with sharp things. I was reading a post on a forum about someone who was poking at her cyst with a sharp thing and I wanted to tell her how dumb that sounded. Ummmm. So I am dumb and everyone must think I am dumb. What was I thinking, doing home surgery with an exacto knife? Mainly,I don’t want to have my head shaved. That’s worth a lot of dumb points right there.

I actually had success last year with a cyst that was right on the surface. Turns out there is a reason you can’t just lance and drain them. Keratin is not fluid. The cyst looked and felt like a hard plastic pebble. When I cut into it the innards were powdery and dry. Not at all like a giant pimple!

I currently have a cyst that has doubled in size and has been very sore for about a month. I haven’t poked it at all! Instead, I was sensible this morning and called the doctor. I had a consult two hours later and will have surgery on Thursday. I couldn’t get an appointment with my regular dermatologist for six weeks, so I was seen by the PA. She thought she was going to come in and lance it/drain it. She was quite surprised when she realized my diagnosis and action plan was 100% correct. It will be so lovely to have a shaved spot on the back of my head. Better than in my bangs, like the last two times.

I was not expecting surgery this week! I thought it might happen sometime in March. The surgeon had a last minute cancellation, so I was able to get in quickly. I have a babysitter for Elsa, so that shouldn’t be a problem. I guess I will have to recruit Erik to nurse duty if I need anything. I have a feeling a 7 year old will not make a proper nurse.

Mike is out of town this week. Did I mention that? Because it really, really sucks. He is nothappy either. He has to do a big presentation in front of a bunch of people from Famous Government Space Acronym Place (you can put two and two together, can’t you?). I don’t know why he is so nervous. He said there will be no real, live astronauts in the room.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with Elsa in the evenings. Mike always puts her down and deals with her wake-up cries. Not because I don’t want to (but let’s face it, on baby number 2 I am more than happy to turn over that responsibility), but because she refuses to allow me to help her in any way. She yells at me, throws things at me, slams the door in my face. Not good. She also has a pretty miserable cold, which means she was in our bed last night, snoring and losing her breath when her nose was too plugged up to breathe.

At least she wasn’t coughing! She started coughing and couldn’t quit, so I grabbed the Vicks and tried to figure out how to get it on her chest. I remembered reading all over the internet that putting Vicks on a kid’s feet is some kind of miracle cure, but that sounds incredibly implausible and makes NO SENSE. I must have sense!

But I couldn’t get to her chest, so I slapped Vicks on the bottoms of her feet and hoped for the best.

Shocking news: it worked! She didn’t cough at all after that, at least not hard enough to wake me. I don’t understand, but I’m not complaining. I need to google the science behind such a strange phenomenon.

*My mail man is extremely impressed with me. I just got a package–registered mail from Singapore. He was completely intrigued. Should I have told him it’s just a lady’s razor?

Years and years and years ago I fell in love with the Gillette Sensor Excel for Women. They discontinued them over a decade ago, but I held on to my handle and can still by blades for outrageous prices. I’ve tried several of the currently available razors, but none of them work nearly as well as this particular piece of plastic. My poor razor is covered in mildew and is completely disgusting. I’ve had it for at least 15 years. Yes. That’s a helluva long time to hold onto something so silly, and something so mildewy.

About a month ago I realized that people sell all kinds of crazy things on eBay. Maybe, just maybe, someone had an old stash of razors they were trying to offload.

Unfortunately that was not the case, but fortunately these razors are still made for the Singapore market and they are readily available for about $20 including shipping. At first the price turned me off, but then I sternly told myself “Dude, you’ve had this gross, mildewy razor for 15 years. You are worth twenty bucks.”

So now I have a new razor! And the mailman thinks I have something fancy from Singapore!

*We got five new windows today! They are completely amazing and do all kinds of things that windows should do that I never knew windows needed to do. They fold in, out, up, down. The screen goes different directions. There are all kinds of thief out/child in details. They are freakin’ amazing. Freakin’ expensive, too. They have a lifetime transferable warranty, so hopefully they will be worth it. If anything ever happens we just call a number, tell them which window and they bring out a new sash that pops right in.

Elsa has stuck her fingers in the wet caulk three times. The third time I spanked her, then we had a two hour recovery time while she screamed and cried and hated me. Spanking is not something I want to do and I am disappointed in myself. Now she doesn’t trust me and is angry. But she hasn’t put her fingers in the caulk again. She is much more sensitive than Erik ever was, and much better behaved in general. She doesn’t get in trouble very much and doesn’t know how to handle it when she does get in trouble. This is good and bad, of course. Good because maybe she will not be a troublemaker. Bad because what if she is like me and terrified of authority and misses opportunities because she’s afraid to ask?

*I was just introduced to the world of “busy bags” which are basically small activities for kids that fit in a ziplock bag. People are amazingly creative and love to share their ideas. I think I’m going to host a busy bag exchange since it would be a lot easier/cheaper to make 10 of one type and trade, then 10 different little bags.

The only problem is the blogs I’m finding these things on. What a rabbit hole I’ve gone down! I’m used to snark and honesty, not idealistic homeschoolers who are probably lying their pants off about their 5 year old taking a three hour nap every day. Or else they are drugging their kid. I don’t know. Maybe there are five year olds that like sleep. Even my kid who LOVES sleep stopped napping shortly after she turned two.

I can’t quite handle the braggy, crafty, home-schooling, money saving, Bible quoting blogs. It’s not any one thing, it’s everything combined. The shine of smug perfection. No one likes smug.

Plus, these kids don’t seem very real. I like the idea of the busy bags and the quiet time bins, both filled with things that the children can theoretically do alone. I just can’t quite imagine it working out so nicely. I can’t be the only one that has a kid attached to my leg 24/7. Elsa does play quietly by herself, but she certainly needs some modeling on an activity that has a specific purpose. That whole corner of the blog world is so unfamiliar to me and kind of horrifying. Kind of like the Mormon fashion blogs.

Plus you have to click through a million things to find the craft. No one seems to have an original idea. They all link to someone else’s work, who has linked to someone else’s work, so you can never find the directions, just the picture they’ve all stolen. Pintrest is horrible for this. I sort of hate pintrest. There. I said it. I’m a hater. It’d be great if there was a way to pin the original post, but hunting down a post that isn’t properly credited and leads to an error page makes me ragey.

I am so frustrated with someone right now. As you know, I do a lot of volunteer work and have moved up the ladder a bit in some of my enterprises. I can’t tell you what’s happening because I’ve long ago learned that a public blog is. . . well. . .public. Anyone can read it, including the people you are bitching about.

Instead, I present you with an analogy so that you can feel my frustration. Trust me, the details are boring and meaningless. The analogy is much more fun.

Pretend, for a moment, that I’m a waitress in a vegetarian restaurant. A customer comes in, takes a seat, peruses the menu, and indicates she’s ready to order.

“Hi, I don’t see beef stew on the menu, but that’s what I’d like. I’ve been craving beef stew all day! And I want to take a big ol’ to-go container with me for all the ladies at the office. They were just telling me that they’ve never tried beef stew, so I want to teach them all about the wonders of beef stew!”

As a skilled, well-qualified waitress I handle the situation with ease. “Beef stew surely is yummy, but unfortunately we are a vegetarian restaurant. We have oodles and oodles of vegetarian soups and stews. Can I bring you a few samples? Here, try this lovely mushroom risotto, how about this quinoa and black bean chili? Yadda yadda yadda. I’ll let you think about it and be back for your order.”

While I’m off taking care of another table, the cook comes up with the manager in tow and says “Ummmm. Why is this lady coming into the kitchen, ordering beef stew for her whole office? Please handle her.”

So I go back to the customer and clearly explain and also send a text to the whole office of ladies expecting beef stew:

“Hello dear customer, I think there was some misunderstanding before. We don’t have beef stew. We have no meat. We are a vegetarian restaurant. If you’d like beef stew you can go on down the road to the House o’ Meat and they may have what you are looking for. Please let me know your decision.”

One office employee texts back “Whoa. Ok. Thanks for the info. We don’t need beef stew.”

But the lady, the customer in front of me, completely ignores my existence. She goes back to the cook and tells him “Ok, I’ve decided on my order. I’m having the beef stew. I’m anemic.”

At this point I’m out. The manager has stepped in.

By now you must be saying, “but Carrie, surely your analogy is too simplistic and can not reveal the depths of this problem. Surely there is a reason this woman thinks she can order beef stew at your vegetarian restaurant?”

No, truly. The analogy is pretty much exactly what is happening, involving a very simple rule that can not and will not be changed nor should it be changed. Yet the lady completely ignores us and believes she is going to get what she wants even though it won’t happen. There is no clearer way to tell her that it won’t happen. She doesn’t seem to understand the word no.

I wish the manager luck and am glad it is out of my hands. I wanted to crawl through my computer and grab the lady by the ear, asking her “is this thing on? Does your brain work? What’s your major malfunction?”

We have been half-assing our Camp Fire program this year. I’ve found it really hard to get motivated when the kids don’t seem to love it and I’ve got so many other commitments. We realized that we were supposed to have a meeting on Sunday (we meet every third Sunday so it is hard to keep track) and no one wanted to host. We were lamenting the fact that it was freezing outside since we were supposed to do a fitness unit and it would be perfect to go to a park and make the kids run around in an organized fashion.

Then lightening struck!

There’s a gymnastics center that has open gym on Sunday evenings. It’s crazy expensive, but it was the answer to our problem. No hosting duties for anyone, running wild for the children. Score!

I used to go to this gymnastic center’s week day open gym all the time when Erik was toddler, but had never been on a Sunday night. Week days are preschoolers with bored caregivers. Sunday night? Whoa, dude. There were a few non-gymnasts burning off energy, but it was mainly honest-to-goodness gymnasts honing their art. Some of them were little girls doing things you’d expect little girls to do, but a lot of them were completely awesome ninja teens. This is an actual, serious gym. They’ve trained Olympic gold medalists. I have a friend who has a daughter on their elite team and she is expecting her daughter to be in contention for the Olympic team in a few years. They don’t mess around at this place.

There were these big, bearded teenagers (just the vision you have, when you think ‘gymnast,’ right?) who set up a bunch of big bolsters in an obstacle course, then went around jumping over them in mid-air flips with no arms involved. They were rolling all over the floor in crazy ninja ways, while I was watching with a dropped jaw. I can see why guys would enjoy gymnastics–it was like something out of a Mission Impossible movie.

They had little tween girls climbing ropes with their legs straight out to the side. Those girls could climb to the top of the rope by using arm strength only. Even if those girls never stand on the podium and receive an Olympic gold medal, they are completely amazing in my book. I can’t imagine how much time they must spend, developing those types of muscles.

I think I’m going to put Elsa in a real gymnastics class this fall (vs. the mommy and me pseudo-gymnastics she currently takes). I always felt so left out when I couldn’t do a forward roll or cartwheel. My mom always told me I was clumsy and couldn’t learn to do one, but I think that was a lie. I bet I could have learned to do some basic tumbling if I was given the opportunity to learn. My sister got to take gymnastics, but it was obviously not for me, the fat one. I had a lot of jealousy about this, but believed what I was told and continued to be the clumsy fat one. I have no idea if Elsa will ever be a world class athlete (kind of doubt it, since I don’t have the drive or dedication required of a world class athlete’s parent) but the kid can learn to do a flip and enjoy playing around with kids in the neighborhood.

I would kind of like to sign Erik up as well. Learning some gymnastics skills couldn’t hurt, right? He’s not interested, so I guess I’ll save my money. But he could be a real life ninja! I’d stress that he could only use his skills for good. No assassinations–unless the victim was super-bad.

Ok, nothing like the abrupt ending, right? I need to go to bed. I forgot I am hosting playgroup tomorrow so I’ve got a lot of housecleaning to do in the morning. Yikes! I’m just happy I can put away the stupid chamber pot style potties. They are so gross to have hanging around when you have house guests. Elsa is doing her business in the real toilet, which is soooooooo nice. A little flush is much easier than the pot scrubbing. Yuck.

Currently our only potty training problem (knock on wood) is that she wants to change her pants even though she is totally dry. She can’t be convinced that her dry pants are fine, so I find her standing naked in middle of the store, screaming because she can’t get her pants off over her shoes.

I love this age. I really do. But irrational creatures are just so. . .irrational.

I’ve generally calmed down in my old age. I don’t get so ragey anymore. I rarely want to punch someone in the face. Hahahahaha.

No. Really. I’ve learned that everyone has a journey and they might be going through something hard. I try not to judge based on a random interaction.

Really! Why don’t you believe me?

I’ve almost retired my fantasy face punching tendency.

Then Elsa and I joined a horrible mommy and me class. Ugh.

We’ve been going to these classes for over a year and for the longest time they were my very favorite hour of the week. There were other moms to talk to and it was delightful to see her hang from bars, listen to directions, and thoroughly enjoy herself.

When she turned 2 1/2 I had to switch her out to a class for older students. The class itself is great. It is developmentally appropriate, well thought out with the perfect balance of social skills and physical skills presented by well trained, happy leaders. It would be every bit as wonderful as her old class if it wasn’t for the posse of bitches that bring their super speshul snowflakes and refuse to supervise them or follow the rules.

Did I say I want to punch them in the face?

Scratch that.

I want to do a super ninja spin kick and plant my foot right in their ugly faces.

It’s not every mom, of course. There’s a group of about six moms who all seem to know each other. They all wear velour sweat suits, though only one of them ever looks like she goes to the gym (not a comment on their weight–they are all super skinny. She is the only one who comes in with sweaty hair and no make-up). Most of them have perfect, flat ironed hair, a thick patina of make-up spackled on their face, and huge rocks on their fingers.

They sit or stand around in a circle, talking so loudly that we can’t hear the instructor. They do not chase after their children. They do not make their children take turns, share, or be kind. They pay no attention at all, except to make sure their kid gets extra turns on the trampoline.

Last week one of the ladies brought in her older son. There’s a rule that no siblings are allowed in the class, so the older kids sit and do whatever it is their parents bring for them to do. It was Christmas break last week so I made sure Erik had his DS and a packet of math problems. He was desperate to come play with us, but I pointed out the sign that said “No Siblings on the Carpet” and he was ok with it.

You can guess where this is going, right?

Asshole mom let her speshul snowflake asshole son into the play area. He was “helping” his younger brother. I was about to explode with anger. The instructors were just whispering and not doing a damn thing about it. I should have said something, but I hate to be that person, but someone needs to be that person. Why didn’t I make a stink instead of stewing inside?

Afterwards I thanked Erik for being so polite and following the rules. We had a talk about how people who don’t follow the rules might not get in trouble right away, but other people don’t like them and eventually they will need help and no one will want to help them and they won’t have any friends.

Of course, this kid is probably from a wealthy family, so maybe he’ll just be a complete jack-hole his whole life because his parents allow it and sycophants cater to them. At least I can be proud that I am raising polite, articulate, good little people.

But I’d really love to ninja kick that mom right in the face.

Today was another bad one. I can’t pin-point anything specific, it’s just the whole hour of these kids running wild while the moms stand around and don’t do their jobs.

I think I’m going to have to give up my Thursday BodyPump class and start going to the Thursday class. I may not build up any muscle, but at least I won’t have a heart attack out of anger. Today I was so enraged that I felt tears burning in my eyes. I don’t cry when I’m sad, I cry when I’m angry. I just hate them. I don’t care what their major malfunction is. I don’t care if their husbands are cheating on them, they are pressured to look fancy, someone tells them they need plastic surgery. They are horrible people and they don’t even know it. They think they are such hot shit. Ugh.

Ok, let’s focus on something positive.

I booked Elsa’s birthday party! She’s having it at her favorite place on earth and all I have to provide is a cake. They have two people running the party, so I don’t have to do a thing but flit around the adults and make sure everyone feels welcome. It’s going to be brilliant.

Now, for the tricky part–figuring out the guest list. It was so much easier when I just had Erik and all his friends were only children. Now those same families have a kid Erik’s age, have a kid Elsa’s age and often have a kid in between. So the question becomes do I leave out the older siblings and just have it be a 3 year old party? That’s my preference, but when they are good friends of the family it gets tricky. Of course Erik will be there

(hogging the show, I’m sure, though we will have a talk about that), so he needs someone his age to play with.

I hate the politics of birthday party invites. It gives me such a headache.

I do know one thing. I’m not inviting her whole playgroup. That will be rough since I’m inviting part of her playgroup, but I’m certainly not inviting a racist bitch to the party. There’s a couple of others that we are not close to either and I don’t think they really merit an invite. Can I trust everyone to keep their trap shut about the party and not post pics all over FB? No? Oh well. People have to learn that they don’t get invited to every party, right? No one cares, right? It is just one less present they have to buy, right?

We finally went to see The Hobbit today. We’ve been trying to go for a couple of week now, but between a snow storm and a sick babysitter it hasn’t happened. I didn’t think it was going to happen today either, because the babysitter was late. I’m glad I told her to be here 30 minutes before the show started. She was 15 minutes late (she got lost), so we got to the theater just in time. I was shocked at how crowded it was. I was not shocked to see small children in the audience. I should have been, but that shock has long since worn off. Do people not even care if their young children are terrified and suffer from nightmares? Apparently not. There are always young children at inappropriate movies.

Many of you know that I am a major fantasy fan, but my little dirty not-so-secret is that I don’t care for JRR Tolkien. I need action, not 100 pages of singing a song about a tree. I did enjoy the LOTR movies, but this movie? Ugh. I was squirmy and wiggly and just wanted to be home, reading Flame of Sevenwaters, seeing if all my predictions about the plot were correct (almost all of them were, of course). I do love me some Juliet Marillier.

There were a couple of interesting movie previews. There was a Tom Cruise sci-fi movie that looked pretty good–Oblivion. I haven’t seen a Tom Cruise movie since he went crazy and was jumping around on Oprah’s couch. Maybe the time for my boycott has passed, especially since I can’t really remember why I was so dead set against him. Something to do with Scientology, I think. He must have got me good and riled, but that was ten years ago.

Maybe I’ll boycott the Stephanie Meyer movie instead. Is it a boycott when it’s something you wouldn’t want to watch anyway? Is there a rule that actresses in a Stephanie Meyer movie must look completely lifeless?

Our MOMS Club just started a babysitting co-op, so maybe we can start going to more movies. Who can afford a movie and a sitter? And really, what kind of date is a movie? You can’t even talk. I guess if it was a really bad movie you could make out. But who wants to pay for that? I like the idea of the babysitting co-op in theory, but in practice I don’t really want to babysit anyone’s kids. Except I already occasionally babysit several of the children in the co-op, so it will be nice to have some official recompense I suppose. Currently we just trade in a topsy-turvy fashion when we have medical appointments.

I guess I better wrap up this totally disjointed entry and take Erik up to bed. I hate our bedtime routine. He’s a seven year old boy. He doesn’t want to go to sleep. He wants to play hide and seek, jump all over me, hide under the blankets, hold me down when it is time to leave. It can never be a simple “read, kiss, bye bye.” I try to remind myself that I am his mother even when I am tired. It is not fair to be cranky about him being him and doing what is fun for a seven year old. But man. I sure could be cranky (and often am). Ugh.

I should have named my daughter Clementine. You know that old song? Oh my darling, Clementine? It would suit her perfectly, even though it is awful. I’m sure someone loves the name, even though it’s up there with Gertrude and Bertha in my estimation. Of course, my mom told me the name Elsa sounded like a cow’s name so what do I know?

Why the sudden desire to change her name? The girl will NOT stop eating clementines. She has eaten three box fulls in the past three days. That’s something like 60 clementines! Craziness.

At first I was concerned about what it would do to her. . . output. The only problems seem to be incredibly stinky farts and an increased need to pee. She even wet her bed one night. Thankfully it was early in the night while she was still in her bed.

The first day I was peeling the clementines for her, but now she peels them herself and gleefully throws the orange bits all over the floor. Don’t you wish you lived here? It’s a citrus jungle. Maybe it will make my house smell fresh. Silver lining, right?

Happily she thinks it’s great fun to pick them all up and throw them in the trash, so maybe I won’t have to have a vein burst in my forehead.

Subject change: This summer I was in Gymboree and randomly decided to start an eBay business selling Gymboree clothing. Apparently I am the only fool willing to part with way too much money for last year’s Gymboree collection because my business is not the money maker I was dreaming about. I think I broke even on the batch of clothing I invested in, which was obviously not the goal.

Perhaps a business plan needs more than a whim to buy super cute fleecey pink elephants?

The fleece elephant went quickly, but I can’t sell a cute purple penguin sweater to save my life. Purple! Penguin! What’s not to love? I would buy a whole purple penguin wardrobe (and did, last year) if I could find it in Elsa’s size. People have told me I have unusual taste in girls’ clothing, so maybe that is the problem. I don’t think I have unusual taste. I’m not shopping at. . . I don’t even know. What would be a strange place to buy toddler clothes? Hot Topic? Just shorten the hem and a lot of those teeny tiny teen clothes would probably fit Elsa just fine.

Anyway, I shop at Gymboree, Kohl’s and Penny’s for the most part. I usually make a rule that I am not going to buy anything pink. Not because I have a war on pink or hate pink. The reason is two fold 1) Elsa looks terrible in pastel pink and 2) I love everything girly so have to have some discriminating factor that helps me save money. Having a no pink rule makes it much easier to not buy every single item in the store. I hunt for the blues and purples. It is not always an easy or successful hunt, which seems so wrong. Why can’t girls wear blue and purple? I literally danced with glee in Crazy 8s when they had a couple of the most beautiful turquoise colored items last week. The clerk probably thought I’d lost my mind when I started jumping up and down and clapping.

Ummmm.

I’ve got issues.

And my issues are getting even bigger now that Elsa insists on picking out her own clothing. For some reason the idea of being my little doll doesn’t appeal to her. She won’t let me do her hair either. Imagine that!

I guess I better stop writing and start chopping up some potatoes. I’ve been torturing myself with the most delicious smelling Colombian beef stew in the crockpot today. I don’t like my potatoes to fall apart, so I put them in a couple of hours before we eat. I should have done it an hour ago so I can go snarf on this stew sooner rather than later. My period started yesterday and my whole “I will track points and not eat M&Ms!” big push for the New year has gone straight down the gutter. I need to fill up on real food or I’ll turn into a chocolate bar.

I hope you all had a wonderful New Year’s Eve and are looking forward to a great 2013! I don’t know what this year holds for me, but I’m hoping we continue on the upward trend! Both 2010 and 2011 pretty much completely sucked for me, health wise. I got a baby out of the deal–the sweetest, roliest-poliest, bestest little baby in the world. But it still sucked.

The past year has finally delivered a lot of healing after I had emergency surgery to remove a teratoma from my ovary in April (though my back is still killing me), plus life has just improved significantly. The newborn stage makes life tough. We’re quickly approaching three years old. True, three is much more hellish than two, but so far even two hasn’t been that bad (let’s forget the four weeks that I was prepared to sell her to gypsies given the right price). These days we are mostly getting enough sleep, our life doesn’t revolve around nap schedules, no more diapers are involved and we can expect the kids to be pretty well behaved and listen when we go places.

We also had a really, really wonderful family vacation. We took a road trip up to Mystic, CT and I’ve determined I never want to travel by air again. Nor do I ever want to stay in a hotel again. Private rented cottage is the way to go!

I also let go of the guilt of not spending all my vacation time with my family of origin. I need to focus on making myself and my little family happy. Freedom from guilt has been a beautiful gift. I am not and can not be responsible for their happiness.

I finally found a weight loss program that works for me. I’m tired of it and I don’t want to do it, but I know it works. I’ve lost 24 pounds since August. Could have been more if I would have stuck with it, but it definitely feels good to have those 24 pounds off!

Erik is enjoying school much more this school year (not all of 2012), so that’s a huge HUGE relief. We just have to cross our fingers that his second grade teacher clicks with him as well as his first grade teacher. *mutters darkly about inflexible, pregnant kindergarten teacher*

I’ve immersed myself in volunteer work, which I usually love even though it overwhelms me sometimes. I’m an Area Coordinator for MOMS Club International and really enjoy that role. I communicate with 8 chapters and try to help them stay on track. I appreciate MOMS Club and think it does so much good for stay-at-home moms that I’m happy to give back.

I must admit I am tired of Camp Fire. Our Council is not well run and it drives me crazy when people are not dependable. It is also very draining to do everything and plan everything and not have the children really enjoy it. I think they will enjoy it next year when it is more focused on camping, but I am not sure if I even want to continue next year. Erik is not all that into it and it’s a helluvalotta work.

Oh! We also saw the Rockettes! How could I forget that? It was so much fun to see all the iconic New York sites, but it was also a place that I did not find attractive other than the “gee whiz” quality. I have no need to go back.

I don’t know what 2013 has in store, but here are a few resolutions:

1) Stick to Weight Watchers. TRACK MY POINTS!
2) Buy nothing new in January and February (except consumables, obviously) [wildly successful resolution last year!]
3) Use weekly and daily to-do lists to make myself more productive
4) Make my photo book spreads for the previous month by the 7th of each month (major, major fail on this last year. I didn’t make a single spread. Still haven’t started the 2012 book)
5) Go on one date night a month. Elsa is potty trained so we can drop the kids off at various Date Night babysitting services or we can hire a babysitter now that I have interviewed a few. (Failed big time with this same resolution last year)

We also have our 10 year anniversary this year and we want it to be great! I don’t know the budget or the plan, but surely we can come up with something. Originally we wanted my mom to come out and watch the kids while we went off somewhere warm and exotic, but I don’t think that will happen. My mom is not that dependable thanks to my sister. She needs to be on stand-by to make sure my niece and nephews are cared for.

Maybe a family cruise that has babysitters and kids’ activities? The thought of a cruise is not all that appealing because of my intense fish phobia. Are there resorts that have babysitters and family activities? And I don’t mean Great Wolf Lodge. Ha.

Ok, I just looked it up and there are resorts with daycare provided. We’ll have to look into that.

So did any of you do anything thrilling last night?

I made a little appetizer dinner with cheese, crackers, cocktail wienies, chips, etc. We had our bonus child, her brother, and our little family. I don’t usually let the brother in the house since he is a pill, but we had a MOMS Club hot chocolate party earlier in the day and I couldn’t very well tell this one kid he wasn’t allowed in my house when I had 10 other kids running around, eating cookies, drinking hot chocolate, etc. He behaved himself just fine, I think. I forgot to have him turn out his pockets when he left, but all of Erik’s DS games are locked away in my room so hopefully the sticky fingers didn’t stick on anything too valuable (or anything at all, really!)

The little girl refused to eat the cocktail wieners because she thought they were literally wieners of the penis variety. I’m not sure if she thought they were from an animal or little boys, but she was NOT going to eat them even after reassured they were not actual mini-penises.

That certainly gave me a good chuckle. Reminded me of when I was a little kid and was also soooooo embarrassed on Wednesdays because the radio station kept going on and on and on about it being “hump day” and I didn’t think little children should be hearing about that sort of thing. We lived in a small town close to lots of cattle ranches so we would often see cows or dogs humpin’ away. I guess sex is not quite the same mystery when you have that visual.