The Queen's Rambles

When we moved in to our house four years ago we paid some seriously bad painters to paint the house. I don’t know how they consider themselves professional painters, but they screwed us over big time.

The former owners had painted over all the light switches and outlet covers. We were first time home owners. I’d never paid attention to light switches before. I guess I just thought that was what you were supposed to do.

You see where this is going?

We let our totally crappy painters paint right over those switches again, really sealing them in.

It has bugged me for 4+ years. If there’s ever any question of removing the switch plates or just painting over them, REMOVE THEM. For the love of all that is holy, don’t paint over them! Ugh!

Four years.

That’s how long it takes me to get off my butt and do something to fix a small irritant.

In my defense, I thought it would be super hard to get the plates off the wall since they were painted on. I’ve since discovered all it takes is a razor blade, a flat head screwdriver, and a lot of elbow grease. As we paint the main level, we are replacing light switches and the switch plate covers. Did you even know there was a modern look for light switches? I didn’t. But there is! I bought a bulk pack of fancy new switches and Mike has been installing them. I am too scared of electricity to try it myself.

Our bedroom switches were making me nuts b/c they are also painted over, but I have no plans to paint those rooms (our room and Erik’s room are in desperate need of a paint over, espescially Erik’s booger wall, but let’s do one thing at a time). Today I spent a good 20 minutes prying the old ones off the walls, then announced to Mike that he had a job to do.

You have no idea how happy it makes me to see a pretty white switch one each of those walls. SO HAPPY! Mike thinks I’m nuts, but the ugliness was building up my anger every time I looked at those stupid things.

I’m still slowly working on my painting project. I hate taping, so Mike has been taping off sections for me and I do all the spackling/sanding/painting. I am antsy to complete the project because the fresh paint on the bottom half of the walls makes the trim and top half look about 10000000 times worse. It doesn’t help that Elsa got ahold of my address stamper and stamped our address all over one of the walls. Maybe I should use it as a teaching moment and teach her to spell our last name. The stamp has our last name in really big letters at the top.

The other thing that makes me ridiculously happy?

My random purchase of a year’s supply of Costco brand Claritan. Due to my reaction to Benedryl (I pass out hard for 12 hours), I though allergy meds were not realistic for me, but these said “non-drowsy” so I gave them a shot.

Changed.

My.

Life.

I didn’t even know my allergies were that bad!

I could tell I forgot my pill this morning because as soon as I started walking around my nose started burning and I filled up with snot. I haven’t felt like this in a month. It’s so crazy.

I have no idea if this is related, but I have zero eczema right now. None. NADA.

My hands look like a normal person’s hands.

I’ve done so much through the years to control the eczema. I have to be very careful of any product that touches my skin. I can’t use dryer sheets (Woolzies are a great alternative). I keep Cortizone 10 Intense Healing Lotion and O’Keefe’s Working Hands on every floor of the house. All of this kept it to a manageable level (maybe a quarter sized patch instead of the whole hand being covered), but I don’t think I have been completely eczema free since I was a teenager.

Again, I have no idea if this is related to the allergy meds, but the theory is that eczema is caused by allergies so it might be.

Or it might be the baking soda. The only way we can keep Elsa’s private area from being red and angry all the time (I think she’s allergic to her own pee), is to give her a baking soda bath every night. When we first started I noticed instant relief of my eczema. Now my eczema is gone.

Yup. It’s the little things in life. Baking soda, pills and clean light switches.

So I had to let that breakfast conversation stand on its own for the most punch. Sometimes a fake writer has to do what a fake writer has to do. It would not have had quite the impact if I was posting OMG OMG OMG lalalalalalalala. . . fingers in ears. . . I want to hide under the table. . . is this really happening?????

Yeah.

Those conversations are not comfortable for me. I am somehow able to pull them off, but the whole time we are talking about it my blood pressure is rising, my heart is racing, and I can feel prickles of sweat popping out on my hairline. When he asked if I enjoyed it (what 7 year old talks like that? Seriously? Did I ENJOY it? I credit his Maggie and the Ferocious Beast obsession from his preschool days with his prim questioning. Hmmmm. . .I need to get Elsa interested in this show, STAT!) I thought I was going to hyperventilate. I did not actually hear the bus. We got to the bus stop about five minutes earlier than usual and he thought the bus driver was super late since he had a lot to time to play tag with his friends.

Every thing I’ve read says the best way to give a child a healthy attitude towards sex is to openly and honestly answer all their questions, but only answer their questions. Stop talking and don’t elaborate on anything. That’s the approach I’ve taken and I’m really proud that he feels no shame or hesitation in asking me anything. I may be freaking out on the inside (as most parents would, I assume), but at least I can play it cool on the outside.

I sincerely hope he doesn’t ask his teacher if she enjoys her husband’s penis. I’ll have a CPS call on my hands.

Hopefully Elsa waits until she’s much older to start having questions. Erik was 4 when I had Elsa, so it is only natural that baby making was on his mind. Where did this tiny, fat, hairless creature come from? He didn’t find out that the penis went in the vagina until six months ago, I think. Yesterday was the first time he’s ever brought it up since that initial conversation when he declared it “gross” and said he was never going to do it. Believe me, I was very VERY glad of his grossed out reaction. I was scared he was going to want to try it out right away.

What am I going to do when I have teenagers in the house? I think I grow a gray hair every time I think of it. I suppose I will do what I always do and carry on. Think of England. Try to be Swedish about the whole thing you have to start watching at 2:05 if you don’t want to watch the whole thing.)

And now to the happy update! We have mulch! I saw the landscaper’s truck roll by about 10 am and danced a little jig. I drove by the playground around 12:30 and it was mulched but there were big piles of trash everywhere. I tried to remain calm and told myself it was lunchtime. Surely they would be back to clean up. Surely!

And they did. No need for my panic.

Now I just need to see if someone will fix all the loose screws and boards. I hate to say it, but I think I am going to have to become a regular at the board meetings. It was incredibly boring, but our street needs an advocate. Our community is chopped up into four small courts plus our long street (which dead ends). The board members are all from the other courts so there is no representation from our street. The community manager told one of my neighbors that they don’t care about us because we don’t attend meetings. She made it sound like there were huge meetings with everyone in those neighborhoods in attendance. LIE! But even if I was not on the board, just having my voice there could be beneficial. Plus, I’d really like to keep an eye on the lying liar who lies.

I’m not really sure how the whole board thing works. I know the community manager is a paid employee of the board. She works for a place called Community Associations. She manages several communities in the area, so my neighbor and I are planning a drive-by of those communities to see if they are as shitty as our neighorhood. The website for the company says that our manager is a “company principal” so I wonder if that means she is one of the owners of the company she works for? My plan is to talk to as many people around here as possible, get an idea of how community management works, join the board and try to fire this management company. They are doing a crap job and lie to our faces. Time for a change!

When will I have time for this? I have no idea. I enjoy tasks like this, but maybe I should put my efforts towards paid employment.

Erik, 7, completely out of the blue: It must be really hard for a dad and a dad or a mom and a mom to get any kids.

Me: Yes, it is very difficult, but there are some ways they can do it. They can adopt a baby like [our friends] did, or they can do some medical procedures to get babies.

E: What kind of medical procedures?

Me: Well, dads can find a nice lady or two to help. One can donate her egg–the doctor has to go get it with a surgery. Then the other lady can grow the baby in her womb. The doctor can put it in her tummy. If it is two mommies, they can just find a nice man who has extra sperm and the doctor can put it in her tummy and hope it grows a baby.

E: That seems like a lot of trouble for the moms. Why don’t they just tell the nice man to put it in the old way?

Me, dying: Well, sometimes they probably do that if they don’t have the money for medical procedures but ladies who love other ladies think it is yucky to have a man’s penis in their vagina. Plus, they don’t love the man so that makes it extra yucky.

E: Hmmm. Well, that’s what I’d do if I was a mommy who wanted a baby.

Me: Ooooookkkkkkaaaayyyy.

E: Wait a minute! Did you like it when daddy put his penis in your vagina? I know he did it twice because you have two children! Did you enjoy that?

Me: Oh! Look at the time! The bus is almost here!

I don’t get the whole thing with jar recipes. I understand the salads, I guess. Somehow if you layer things correctly, the glass is better than plastic and everything stays crisp. I can get behind that idea if you need to take a salad in to work.

But dessert in jars? Why? WHY??? Yes, a cake or pie in a jar is cute, but it is completely impractical. It would be difficult to get the ingredients in the jar, espescially if you are going to try to layer pie crust up the side, then it would be really hard to eat. All in the name of cuteness?

It says they are for a picnic, but it sounds like a major pain to take a bunch of glass jars in your basket. What if they break?

I’m all for cute, but not when it comes to getting every last bite of cake!

I made a stand tonight. I put on my best jeans (I’m so fancy) and a clean blouse, trying to look half-way decent for my impromptu presentation. I arrived at the building a few minutes early and found three old men sitting on a bench. They were the HOA board.

Eventually we were given a room number, so the four of us rode the elevator to the room and waited for two more board members and the community manager.

The manager was 15 minutes late. As we were sitting there, the five board members started bitching about the things I wanted to address–mud pits, trash everywhere, lack of grass.

The community manager, a paid employee, finally arrived so the meeting got started.

I went first and gave a little speech about the disgusting state of our play area and the lack of safety (screws sticking out, no mulch for two years, etc). I also told them about a glass table that had been broken over the playground in October and never taken care of by the community. The effin’ community manager tried to tell us that the lawn contractors came out and took care of it, but I argued right back that another resident and I cleaned it up. Then she said that there was no graffitti on the playground and I argued with her, citing specific things that are written on the stupid playground. It’s not gang tagging, but it’s unsightly.

I pointed out that I’ve sent multiple e-mails to both her and the board about the situation. The board members were confused and said they didn’t even have an e-mail address. I told them the address that’s on the pamphlet I got when I moved in and they were still confused. The manager said that she checks that e-mail and puts the e-mails in their monthly packet. They had never seen any of my e-mails, or any e-mails at all as far as I could tell.

I was pretty aggressive in getting my point across and they all agreed that it needed to be mulched, and should have been mulched and inspected months ago. They moved on with the meeting and it was soooooooooooo boring. We spent 45 minutes talking about various ways to re-finish the parking lots now that Montgomery County has banned all coal tar products.

At the end I asked how they would take action to get the mulch taken care of. They all said it was a part of the landscaping contract so it would be taken care of this week. The community manager said to call her if it wasn’t done by Friday. Then she said she had to check the contract and that she was confused and it was not a part of the contract. Everyone started yelling at her to get it done regardless of the cost. She said they had to vote for it at the June meeting and all the board members starting yelling at her to get it done and they would worry about contracts later. Then she said “Oh, yeah, it’s right here!”

Soooooo. . . we shall see. She is a lying liar who lies. I am going to be all up in her business until it gets done. This is going to be exhausting!

I have been reading through my journals starting with Erik’s third birthday. I sound like an insane person. What was I thinking? I had myself so worked up over things that I have zero recollection of now. Also, I should have been going back and doing proofreading because even I, the person who wrote the words, can’t follow the plot of some of the posts.

Apparently Erik was randomly peeing on things in anger around his third birthday, including his piece of birthday cake. What the hell? I have no memory of this. I wouldn’t lie about it in my journal, so it must have happened. I was also talking about hypothetical baby number 2 a lot. I didn’t think I wanted a baby when he was 3. It’s so strange how your brain can completely forget the reality of the past.

I feel a lot calmer these days. Frazzled, yes, but happier and more in tune with reality. When Erik was little I thought every little thing he did was super high stakes and a bad day meant he was going to end up being some kind of illiterate backwoods moonshine brewer. These days I know bad days happen. They are not fun to live through, but they don’t have much long term meaning.

We ended up having a really great afternoon. We met up with some friends at the park and the kids ran like crazy for two hours. Elsa didn’t have a single crying fit! My friend and I got to sit and talk about some serious issues she’s having.

I remembered to start dinner in the crockpot before we left, so there was no stress when I got home. I need more crockpot recipes that I enjoy–crockpot cooking makes life so much easier, but everything tastes the same! Mike broke my old crockpot a few months ago so I finally got a new one and I love it! My old one was HUGE. It was much, much too big for a family of four. The food didn’t come out right because there wasn’t enough in it to fill it properly. The new one is only 4 quarts and is perfect for our needs. I’ve noticed a difference in the quality of food coming out of the pot.

I guess I better go to bed. I just discovered a new show that I’m enjoying: Orphan Black on BBC America. I’ve only seen one and a half episodes but it’s very promising. I’m going to try to talk Mike into watching it with me.

Oh man. I am completely wiped out and tired of this week. Three is here with a vengeance and I’m ready for things to steady out. I need to go back and read my journal from when Erik was three to see what his major malfunction was. I think it was a lot of screaming and not cooperating.

Elsa’s major malfunction is taking everything so personally and crying uncontrollably over every real or perceived problem. Don’t you dare look at her. If she decides it hurts, she’ll cry so hard you’ll be looking for the bee that stung her.

We had 45 minutes of hysterical screaming because she didn’t want lemonade. Completely random. I don’t drink lemonade. She was not offered lemonade. She’s never been offered lemonade. She’s never HAD lemonade. We’ve never discussed lemonade. She was sitting on the floor, playing with toys. Suddenly she was screaming about not wanting lemonade.

Someone better grant me some patience, STAT. Mike is stressed out over work and working super late, which gives me almost no time to cook a proper dinner. Erik is having behavioral issues at school (talking, non-stop. Shocker). My house is a pigzaster, which I should be working on right now. I want to re-organize my kitchen, but first I need to sand down and paint a book shelf that someone gave me that is a key part of the plan. It is raining right now so I can’t start that project.

Woe is me, woe is me.

Life is not bad, it is just irksome. I need to break out a to-do list and calm myself down. I always forget how much that helps me focus.

I also need to stop with the afternoon socializing. That’s my cleaning time and I’m giving it up to go on playdates. I much rather socialize than scrub a toilet, but I guess there are times in this life when a toilet really needs to be scrubbed.

Also, I hate being a giant, fat cow. Eating chocolate all day to relieve the stress adds to my self-hatred. Looks like I could figure out that I need to stick to the damned diet, but I am a super cranky person when I’m dieting and am mean to my kids. Given the option of a slightly less fat, but grumpy mom or a fat, nice mom I am guessing they are going for nice. Now, just tell that to my damned pants. Maybe I could start by quitting the chocolate habit. I don’t want to hear one single hint, tip or weight loss crap. I know it is a problem with my own brain and I am my own worst enemy. I can’t seem to stop myself.

(I wrote this yesterday, sitting on my cabin’s deck while watching my kids go nuts on a jumping pillow. Pictures tomorrow if you’re lucky. TL:DR–go to Jellystone Park for a fun family vacation)

If you know me at all, you know I hate camping. You also know that I will do just about anything for my children. My son begs to go camping. . . . somehow I’m going camping.

Of course there is no way on god’s green earth that I’m going tent camping. Let’s not be ridiculous. I refuse to sleep on rocks and have a thin veil of fabric protecting me from all the ills of the world. How do campers get out of the experience alive? Or at least unbruised? I’m all about creature comforts.

Last year I scored us a deal on cabin camping at a state park. It was not awful but it was not exactly fun. There was nothing to do except camping type stuff. I didn’t think the nature was even all that pretty, but I’m from Oregon so I’m biased. The cabin didn’t have a bathroom or anything like that. It was just a couple of bunk beds and a couple of chairs. All cooking was done outdoors and the hike to the bathroom was about ¼ mile.

This year I found a deal for a place called Jellystone Park. I grew up on Yogi Bear so I got the joke, but didn’t really expect much. The deal was great so I just checked to make sure I could get a cabin with a bathroom and bought the deal—didn’t do much research at all.

Last night as we were driving here in the pouring rain, going about 100 miles on tiny little Virginia country roads I was cursing myself. Why were we going camping? Why were we going camping in the POURING RAIN? The weather had said scattered showers, not hours of intense downpours.
We got here at 10 pm and couldn’t see anything. We managed to get into our cabin, look around and see that it was pretty danged nice, and fall into bed. Elsa is my daredevil child and spent the whole night in the top bunk (it has rails). Erik won’t go up there for love or money.
This morning all was revealed! This is not a campground! It’s a family resort! I mean yes, it is a campground. You go can as primitive as tents or get a super deluxe cabin that goes well beyond ours (and we have a TV with a DVD player!).

There’s laser tag in the woods (bad idea on a wet day. Erik started off the day by getting a huge gash in his side), mini golf, a water slide, two pools, a splash park, two jumping pillows, arts and crafts, family kickball games, bingo and much more! Some of the things cost money (mining and certain crafts), but most of it is included.

Too bad it is freezing! We’ve been to the pools twice and it was miserable. The kids had a good time, but my legs were completely numb. Thankfully the kids couldn’t hold out long. Yogi, Boo Boo and Cindy (was she actually in the show?) have been hanging around various places. The kids have been having a great time. We’ve been having a great time. There’s not been a whole lot of nature to contend with, though we certainly could have went down some hiking trails or fished in the small lake (we chose paddle boating instead).

If you’re looking for a family friendly, low key family vacation I’d highly recommend Jellystone Park in Luray, VA. Cost varies greatly depending on your willingness to rough it. I found our deal on Certifikid or Groupon several months ago. I had no idea what I was getting us into!

*Did I ever tell you about Gwynnie Bee, the Netflix of clothing (sizes 10-26)? I got a trial subscription and it was really fun to get new clothes in the mail. Unfortunately very few items are appropriate for the life of a stay-at-home mom who spends hours on a playground so I cancelled my account. If I ever go back to work I would sign up. It’s really fun to get clothes without commitment. Too bad they were all cleavage baring.

*We had a really great playdate today! I am not really a fan of Elsa’s playgroup, but today only half the people showed up and we all clicked really well. We had a late lunch at Chick-Fil-A (I know, I know, I don’t go there, but I did today) and were the only people with kids in the play area. We let our four munchkins run and play for two hours while we sat outside the play area and talked. It was kind of amazing. I need more playdates like that.

*Elsa had her 3 year appointment yesterday. She is 37 inches tall and weighs 37 pounds. Though her BMI is high, the doctor was not at all concerned about her weight. She says she looks exactly like a 3 year old should–chubby with a little belly. I told her my plan and she agreed it sounded like a good one, but suggested I give her some protein every two hours to help with hunger pangs. She says she is not a fan of strict scheduling because children know when they are hungry and their hunger cues should be respected, but that it sounds like Elsa is getting into boredom eating.

*Elsa is completely in love with her little friend, Connor. It’s almost disturbing. She wants to wear red clothes because his favorite color is red. They cry for each other all the time. They both constantly pretend to talk on the phone to each other. If there is an event that one of the kids attends and the other doesn’t attend, the kid will not participate and will cry and cry for the other one. But then we get them together and they basically ignore each other. Kids are weird.

*I can’t find my ipod charger so I can’t go to the gym (unless I go to a class). I just ordered a new one so I hope I get it by Friday. I tried to put my music on my phone but even though I followed directions it doesn’t seem to be working. It’s making me grumpy. I don’t know how much data usage it would take to stream music on the phone, but maybe I can do that tomorrow. Isn’t the digital world supposed to be easier than this?

*I can’t quit watching the news out of Cleveland. I was enjoying Charles Ramsey’s interviews because he tells a great story, but I am not impressed that people are autotuning him and making him a joke. Yes, he is obviously not the most educated man around, but he is a hero. He deserves some respect, not being turned into a clown. I saw him on a news show earlier today and the poor guy looks completely haggard and beat down. He’s off his adrenaline high and exhausted after the whirlwind of everything that has happened. I hope people leave the poor man alone. I know we want to celebrate what he did–it is always nice to have a hero with some natural charisma, but some of the things I’m hearing are veering off from admiration into a very uncomfortable racial voyeurism.

*I’m officially the PTA Vice-President starting on July 1. It makes me extremely nervous because the new president has only been two meetings and knows NOTHING about education or the way the school system works. We sat down with the two former presidents and they were giving her a lot of advice while I listened in. She was so naive and . . well. . rude. She basically said she’d heard really bad things about our school and she was going to clean it up. Really what people who have been working their butts off for years want to hear, right? I don’t see this ending well. I don’t know what scares me more–working with her as her VP or having her bail, leaving me holding the bag.

*My mom is trying to guilt me into visiting or moving back to K Falls. I thought we were past this (especially the moving back part! Why would I want to move away from a place that has been named top 24 small city to live in and go back to that hell hole????), but apparently not. It used to work on me. She’d mention how she’d like to see the cousins grow up together, how much she missed us, yadda yadda yadda. I’d start thinking about it and three weeks later I’d have tickets to take Erik and myself out to the crazies. I thought I was doing it for him–keeping him with family. I didn’t realize I was teaching him to trust people who are not trustworthy. I was not keeping him safe. If I wasn’t related to those people there is no way in hell I ever would allow my children in the same room with them (except my mom–she’s just an enabler, not an addict).

I’m completely over that now. I’ve had a total mental shift and there is no guilt left. What kind of mother takes her children into a disaster like that? There’s the potential for drugs and violence. Everything is completely unpredictable. I’m miserable. Heck, I don’t like to eat off the plates or eat the food b/c basic food safety is not followed. My mom thinks that she can leave food sitting out in the winter because it’s cold outside. Dude! She has indoor heating. The kitchen counter is not a refrigerator. I don’t want to eat cooked meat that’s been sitting out all night.

It has been so freeing these past 18 months to let go of all the familial guilt. I don’t owe my mom anything. I do love my mom, but I can recognize that she has made some terrible mistakes and continues to make these mistakes. Nothing ever changes. I can not help her. She needs to help herself. She doesn’t even recognize that she has a problem. Instead of hopping on the computer and arranging a miserable trip, I’m pissed she thinks she can pull her woe is me crap and get us there. Maybe I shouldn’t get so angry, but she doesn’t get it. She refuses to see how messed up my sister is, always giving excuse after excuse for her shitty behavior. I can’t take listening to it anymore. I am out of sympathy. There comes a time in ever person’s life when they have to take control and make changes happen for themselves. She is well past that time and I’m tired of waiting for it to happen.

*Ok, I have to think of something pleasant to write about so I don’t go to bed and stew! How about cheap allergy meds? I’ve never taken allergy meds before because Benedryl knocks me on my ass, but I took a chance on some Costco brand non-drowsy claritan. What a great investment! I’ve never known that life can be so pleasant! I can walk outside without having my nose drip, my eyes prickle and my throat close-up. Yes, I’m almost a 40 year old woman and I didn’t know about the joys of allergy medication. I never thought my allergies were that bad, but I guess they were. I haven’t noticed any side effects, so I’d say that’s the best $18 I’ve spent in a long time.

I can’t believe I have two more days of single parenting. I am spent. I thought I was going to fall down sobbing in hysterics around 7 pm, but I managed to keep it together and get Elsa in the tub*. Nothing unusual was happening; it was just not ending. Usually Mike shows up by 7 and I can take a small break while he handles Elsa and I “handle” Erik, who is 7 1/2 and doesn’t need all that much hands-on handling.

Instead of de-cluttering the house–my god how much clutter these children can create when their dad is not here to pick it up every evening!–I decided to get another piece of my never ending dining room project done**.

Never paint with a 3 year old in the room. Just don’t do it.

She was mostly good, but she wanted to be involved and made unnecessary messes since that is the primary job of a three year old. Nothing I couldn’t clean up. In fact, it wasn’t even bad at all by three year old standards, but just unnecessary. By 5 pm I am over unnecessary messes.

I made the mistake of trying to trim out my west facing sliding glass door in the late afternoon/early evening. I was so blinded by the sun that I have no idea if I even managed to slap paint in the right spots. I did a lot of the painting while holding up a random bag of calla lily bulbs to the glass, trying to shield my eyes. When and where am I going to plant these bulbs? No clue. Consider them Exhibit #196165 of why I should not be allowed in Costco.

When I bought my paint the paint department clerk talked me out of semi-gloss. I bought eggshell and am really regretting it. Yes, it has a nicer finish (semi-gloss shows every little bump), but it is not easy to clean. I’m used to spray and wiping my walls with minimal effort. I’m going to have to reconsider the paint I use for the living room, now that I’ve actually been living with eggshell for awhile. My walls get filthy. I’m sort of obsessed with cleaning them. I can have cobwebs on the ceiling, dirty dishes in the sink, and burned out light bulbs every where, but by gum my baseboards, walls and bathrooms will be cleaned!

I have to admit all the random clutter is about to drive me over the edge. I never knew I was a person who was bothered by crap everywhere, but apparently I am. I guess living with a neat-nik has residual effects.

And my neat-nik is apparently rock climbing in Arizona tonight. I can’t even imagine. Maybe someone hacked into his facebook.

[Just checked FB again–he’s mountain hiking, not rock climbing. Makes much more sense.]

A friend of mine was a great help and took Erik to soccer practice. She didn’t know what she was getting into. He is a great kid, but he takes things so seriously and he refuses to listen to anyone. I have to actively work to ignore him during soccer practice and let the coach do his job. I’d really like to march out there, grab him by the ear and tell him to listen for once in his life. Seriously, this boy is not lacking in confidence at all. In some ways this is quite wonderful, but is is exhausting and embarrassing when he argues with authority figures (when the authority figures are right–I do like that he’s not afraid to stand up for himself).

The report from my friend made me want to crawl in a hole somewhere. She must not watch him on the field at other times or she would have already known that he yells, stomps, pouts, gets in arguments with the coach and otherwise exhibits intense 7 year old behavior. They were scrimmaging and he got put on the side with almost all girls, so they lost big time. I hate that I just typed that. Just because they are girls doesn’t mean they should lose! But, well. . . I’ve seen enough of these particular girls to know why he was upset about being on their team. They are playing a completely different game–mainly, La la la la la, let’s look at flowers and twirl our hair. They’re killing me! Why do they have to live up to the generalizations?

Next year I’m planning on putting him in a different league. I’ve done some research and there’s a better league that has boy teams and girl teams. Girls can join the boy teams but not vice versa. We did a winter session with this place and it was so nice to have the genders separated. I can’t believe my feminist self is saying this, but everyone seemed a lot happier.

We do our current league because it is a bit cheaper and we have a lot of friends in the league. The other league is better quality and a lot closer. I just won’t have anyone to talk to at games. Or maybe I will. I seem to know everyone. Two of my friends call me the mayor of Germantown, which I find hilarious since I used to be so shy.

How about I end with a sweet thing that Erik did today? He brought home Magic Tree House #1 from the library, even though he already read it at school. Why did he bring it? Because he thought I would like to read it to find out how Jack and Annie got the treehouse.

Will I read it?

Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

Have I mentioned how much I HATE those books?

But still, the sentiment was very sweet.

Elsa is also very sweet and lovable, even if she is exhausting in all her Threeness. This is such a strange age. I LOVE this age. She is just so cute and it is amazing to watch her learning how the world works. I really need to remember all her sweet Threeisms (she calls polka dots “coconuts”) before she outgrows them and I forget them all. I want another baby so I can have another late toddler/early preschooler. But good grief is this age a challenge. See? Strange.

*Thank you, thank you Kisha for encouraging me to try the baking soda bath again. I took your suggestions and hid the bag and just presented her with some “magic powder” to play with. She loved it and her little problem area is looking the healthiest it’s ever looked. I went to Costco today to buy a new bag of baking soda because I can see a lot of these soaks in our future. I had a major eczema flare-up on our trip to Florida and a small dip in the tub to un-do the plug seems to have turned it around. It is looking flakey, but not red and inflamed. Whoo-hoo!

**I have not been very motivated to finish this project because my mom “helped” by putting away all my supplies. I had everything organized exactly how I wanted it and now I can’t find anything. Also, she took all my good white athletic socks out of my drawer (why was she in my drawer???) and put them in a plastic Target bag, leaving random white socks that didn’t match or fit in my drawer. Why? I have no freakin’ clue. It took me two weeks to find my socks. I was not pleased. At. All.