The Queen's Rambles

I’ve spent the evening looking through my journals from early 2009. That’s when Erik was 3 1/2 and I badly need perspective about naughty three year olds. They turn out ok in the far future! Even if they are little jerkfaces that make you want to run away from home! Ugh.

Yes, my dear little Elsa has turned into a complete hot mess of Three-and-a-half-ness. Everything is met with a howled “No!!!!” She throws herself on the ground with startling regularity (Erik didn’t do that because he doesn’t have much determination about him–he gave up when I walked away, but she picks herself up and follows me around, only to throw herself down again).

When I picked her up from school today, I told her to pick up her tote bag and she yelled “No! You do it!” and stomped her feet. Her teacher’s jaw about dropped and she sputtered out “Ummm. .. ummmm. . I’ve never seen that side of Elsa. Elsa! I don’t like to hear you talk to your mommy that way!”

I just told Elsa very blandly, “You pick it up, or we are leaving it here” and of course she picked it up. I wanted to laugh in the teacher’s face since her son was so bad at age 5 that I wouldn’t even allow him in my house (for those who remember the car pool boy who was a complete monster, his mom is now Elsa’s preschool teacher).

It is like living with some kind of giant feral alley cat. You never know when your going to have 40 pounds of fierceness jump on you and either ride you like a horse or grab your face and give you the most painful Eskimo kiss known to man. She even tried jumping up onto Erik and slapping the shit out of his face, but we did not tolerate that and she got the message pretty quickly. I hope.

The result of my research: yes, this is normal and there is hope she will turn into a nice young lady. Erik is a wonderful 8 year old. Certainly not without his challenges, of course, but overall we are very proud of him. And he was a nutso three year old. He refused to wear clothing and was mouthy. Much like Elsa! Only she wears clothes, but insists on wearing her shirts backwards which drives me and everyone else crazy. I have all kinds of people stop me to tell me her shirt is on backwards. It’s not worth the fight to get her to wear them correctly.

The other results of my research: I am a much, much happier person when I am active and not eating sugar. I have got to get off the sugar, post haste. And I’ve got to get back to the gym. I was planning on going today, but then I kept Erik home sick from school and didn’t want to leave him for over an hour while I went to the gym and drove Elsa to school (in our state children are allowed to be left alone for short times at age 8).

Also, thank god I finally had my stupid ovarian teratoma removed. I was having so much pain back in 2009 and no one would believe me. Even the ultrasound showed nothing (the intestines were obstructing the view). It took a CAT scan in 2010 to identify the problem and then when they removed it in 2012 they discovered it had overtaken my whole ovary. No wonder I was in such pain! Medical mystery solved. . . three years after the fact.

So goal for next week: no processed sugar (carbs are fine, just not sweets) and get to the gym at least three times. I am feeling myself become a huge blob with no energy and I hate it. I want to get back to being able to kick some ass at the gym. This stupid knee is ruining all my plans. Grrrrrrr.

Erik seems to be coming down with a cold, which is pretty unusual. The kid has an immune system to beat all immune systems *knock on wood about a million times* and very rarely gets sick. Eight years old, three sick doctor visits in his life. And it’s not that I’m anti-doctor. Sometimes I feel like dear Elsa lives at the doctor, though she hasn’t had a sick visit since the summer celluitis where we ended up in the ER to make sure her eyeball wasn’t going to fall out. The boy is just never sick.

I got him to take some sambucus (miracle cure, I swear by it) but he was not happy with me. “You know mom, I’m eight years old and I think I can just handle having a cold without you telling me to take medicine. If I want to be sick, that’s my choice. I know I’ll be over it in a day” [which is probably true, his colds are always miniscule].

And then while we were reading he kept wiping at his eyes. I know they were itchy because they are always itchy. I have tried to teach him my trick (because my eyes are also always itchy) of wetting a bit of toilet paper and cleaning them out, but he refuses to do so. Instead he wipes them with his fingers which doesn’t help at all and actually causes the skin around his eyes to get red and dry. It looks very painful, so I have to sneak in is room at night at daub olive oil on his eyes. That’s the only why I’ve found to keep him from looking like some kind of vampire creature. The things you never thought you’d do before having kids. Oiling up someone’s eyes was never on my radar.

Anyway, my suggestion was met with the following statement, “You know mom, I think you should just stop worrying about my body and let me handle it. If I want itchy eyes that’s my choice. You need to find something else to worry about. And don’t worry about my sickness either.”

Part of my brain is going “yay! Independence” but the stronger part of my brain is going “kid! I am your mother! Listen to me because mother knows best!”

I swear I don’t know what to do with this kid sometimes. He is wise beyond his years, but still very much a child.

I can’t believe I never posted about the most exciting thing I’ve done in a long time!

Two weeks ago we had a MOMS Club business meeting. These meetings are always held in a local bank’s community room. We’ve been having the meetings at the same time, same day, same place ever since I joined the chapter over five years ago. We’ve had problems with the room before, but nothing significant unless you count two months ago when water was sheeting out of the ceiling and when we reported it, the tellers were just like “I’m sure maintenance will get to it sometime today” with completely bored looks on their faces.

There’s a specific guy who signs the key out to us and when he isn’t there we often have some confusion, but we’ve always gotten the key.

Well, last Wednesday he wasn’t there and wasn’t reachable by phone and had not left any instructions about giving us the key. The tellers are completely useless when it comes to doing anything helpful (see above for their response to a major flood) and told our president that they couldn’t help us get into the room and we’d have to cancel our meeting. This despite us having a contract with the bank about the days we will use the room and showing them the e-mail confirming our use of the room for this particular day.

The president came outside to talk to us and try to figure out what to do. The main problem is that we’d invited three prospective members to this meeting so would have no way to communicate a change in plans to them. Plus, we are not allowed to invite prospective members to our homes. And what if we had scheduled a guest speaker? We do that several times a year! It really pissed me off! We were supposed to have the room and the tellers needed to talk to someone above their pay grade, not just send us on our merry way because they didn’t know what to do.

So, always the rabble rouser, I suggested that we all go into the bank and see if someone other than a teller could help us. Imagine 12 moms and 18 toddlers entering a completely empty bank lobby. Every single person came out of their office to stare at us and after some back and forth with a higher up, we were let into the room less than five minutes after storming the bank.

Sadly, one of those prospective members showed up and I think we scared her away. She sat through the meeting, but did not fill out the paperwork and has not answered my follow-up e-mail. Oh well. Her loss! Her name was Kerri so I am not too sad about not having to share a name.

Tomorrow we are having a cookie exchange, so I tried something completely different and made white chocolate cherry shortbread. It turned out so good! You probably saw the pic on my FB page. I just made one mistake and used stupid jimmy sprinkles instead of nonpareils or sugar sprinkles as suggested by the recipe. The waxy tastes really ruins the goodness of the cherries. Live and learn! I never dreamed I would be making a cherry based cookie because I don’t care for whole cherries, but I do like cherry flavor and this is the recipe that came up when I googled “best cookie for a cookie exchange.” I know that is a silly google, but sometimes I find some great gems that I wouldn’t necessarily try when I google like that. I am so over all of my recipes.

The weekend was not off to a good start. Mike was hit with a tummy bug Thursday night and then I had it yesterday. So far both kids are unscathed, but I don’t expect that to last. Mike was feeling well enough to take Erik to his first fencing class this morning, so I hope that goes well. Erik has already said he doesn’t know why he is taking a fencing class because he knows everything there is to know about sword fighting. I’m sure that will go over well with the teacher. Watching too much Power Rangers does not generally give you the ability to pick up a sword and use it correctly.

I went and picked up reading logs from the school yesterday and was quite pleased. We had a much, much better return rate than previously thought. A lot of the teachers simply didn’t turn them in to me last week, and of course a lot of students turned them in late. There is still no way they will reach the goal to have their principal do something crazy, which is unfortunate. I thought I set the bar fairly low, but my expectations were much, much too high.

We let the kids suggest things for the principal to do, then he went through them and picked three he wouldn’t mind doing. The kids voted to see which one would happen, if they read 200,000 minutes (512 kids x 21 days should have been very possible), but two weeks in and we are only at around 39,000. The reading specialist took care of all of that with very minimal input/help from me for which I am very, very grateful. I’ve discovered that it is hard to find people to depend on, but she is totally on top of things. I love her!

I am honestly not even sure the three things the kids are voting on. I think one was a school wide pajama day and one was the principal dressing up like a 70s disco king. Rejected suggestions: do the Harlem shake, dress like a girl all day, climb the flag pole, jump out of a helicopter, sing [various songs], dress like Captain Underpants.

It’s too bad the kids are soooooooo excited, but are not even going to come close to their goal. They don’t seem to have the connection that their actions are what will make this happen. If they aren’t turning in reading logs it simply won’t happen. If I do this again (big if), I would definitely change the goal (assuming the principal would let me. I think he was only on board with it because he knew the kids wouldn’t hit the goal). He’s a nice guy and I don’t have a problem with him, but he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

****Triggers****
In other, more serious, news. When is this country going to get serious about mental illness? Why do we allow non-compliant mentally ill patients to have custody of their children. Why are their civil rights more important than the safety of their own children (and everyone else, for that matter)? I am not a psychiatrist and don’t have all the answers. Obviously plenty of mentally ill people are perfectly safe and good parents. But there must be some standard. Our system is beyond broken. After years of watching my mom deal with my mentally ill sister, I have seen that there is simply no help available to the family of these people. The mentally ill person must want help, but the catch is that the person is mentally ill so they often don’t even know they need help (I’m talking about non-compliant patients, not those who actively seek help). We’ve basically been told that my sister will never lose custody of her kids until she seriously harms them. How fucked up is that?

That’s the exact same thing that happened with a family in our town last week. The mother and her roommate were both mentally ill, non-compliant. But she’s a mother! She has rights! And now two of her children are dead and her other two children are in the hospital with serious wounds because she went nuts, thought they were demon possessed and murdered them in an “exorcism gone wrong.” Just a hint: if someone is calling herself the commander of the Demon Assassins, she probably shouldn’t have custody of her children. Especially when her method of exorcism is to kill the possessed person.

*I find it extremely amusing that the most liberal person on my facebook and the most conservative person on my facebook often post the exact same articles. They are all conspiracy theory type stuff about the medical field, but it always makes me do a double take.

*I am feeling really emotionally off center after an incredibly horrific crime happened about two miles from my house. I didn’t know the parties involved, but it is just way, way too close to home. It hit national news, so if you’ve seen the tragic crime news out of Germantown about an exorcism you’ll know what I’m talking about. If you don’t know, I would strongly encourage you to not seek out the information. It is very triggering, especially if you have children. Apparently the scene was so bad that they’ve had to bring in counseling specialists to talk to the first responders (at least that’s what my friends who know people in law enforcement are telling me). I can’t quite shake the sick feeling I have over this situation.

*Let’s talk something happy! Hmmmmm. . .

I’ve been doing my physical therapy. The first day was fantastic with the massage and heat, but now it sucks. It is a lot of Pilates types exercises, which hurt but are good for me. My main complaint is that they have really boring TV blaring in the little room. Today was a mix of TMZ and ESPN. Ugh. I finally got smart and got my book when it was time for my massage and ice. I wish I could do that during the exercises, but I can’t count and read at the same time. Today they gave me the electric shocks and ice at the same time, which was very unpleasant. My knee did feel a lot better when I came out of there, though, so that’s something.

*My kids are completely obsessed with the movie Tangled. I enjoy it too, but I find it strange that we have watched nothing but Tangled on every single car ride for the past several months and then when we come in the house they want to watch YouTube videos of their favorite scenes. I suppose it could be worse–it could be Curious George.

And I never get tired of hearing Chuck’s voice (the same actor voices the male lead).

*Somehow I never watched the final three Chuck episodes. I wonder if they’re on NetFlix.

*Anyone watching any good TV this season? I’m really enjoying some sitcoms, which is very unusual for me! I am loving The Goldbergs, Super Fun Night and Trophy Wife. I hope they don’t get cancelled. We’re also watching Almost Human. I like it, but am basically only watching it because it’s from the creators of Fringe.

*Erik started reading the Weird School books and I’m completely disgusted by them. The main character is a kid who hates school and makes awful jokes about the girls in class, including calling them fat. I can see that they would be appealing to that high/low group (high interest book/low reading level) but . . . ugh. They are hateful. I wanted to slap the smarmy little jerk-face protagonist tonight. I talked it over with Erik and he says “Mom, that’s just how kids are! I love them! Don’t you know that there are lots of kids at school I don’t like?”

Which is all true, I suppose, but I am not impressed. I don’t want him reading these, but he is obsessed so I guess I have a decision to make. Let him read what he wants and trust he will parse out the good from the bad, or censor his reading materials. As his mother I believe it is my job to censor his reading materials, but as an educator I find the idea distasteful.

I think there’s hope for my knee! I was very skeptical that physical therapy could do anything for my knee. How can you fix a piece of bone sticking out? Obviously I am not a health care professional, so my theories were not based on reality.

I had the first appointment yesterday. I was scared when I first walked in because the place seemed kind of dingy and the therapists looked kind of creepy, but once I met the actual therapist (I think the other people were her assistants) things went much better. She had me cornered off behind a curtain and did an extremely thorough exam of my knees and hips. I am knock-kneed, pronate, have one hip higher than the other and walk on the edges of my feet. On the plus side, I am really strong and do not have any muscle degradation. She strongly suggested I go to a podiatrist ASAP and get inserts for my shoes to fix my back problem.

She gave my knee a deep massage, wrapped it in heating pads and gave it shock therapy, then put some swooping pieces of tape around the knee cap (the kids are really impressed with the bright pink design). And it feels quite a bit better! No where near 100%, but there was definitely a noticeable difference. I have seven more sessions over the next month, so I have some real hope that I will not have to live with this pain forever.

The kids had swimming lessons yesterday and it was so annoying. The swim school runs on six week sessions so you are only with the same group of people for six weeks. I am constantly switching around our days to accommodate other things, so I never know who I’ll be stuck in the waiting room with. There’s always some interesting people, but in general it’s fine. I sit and read or play Candy Crush or walk across the street to the only grocery store in our county that’s allowed to sell alcohol and buy little bottles of wine (for later, not to drink while I’m watching the kids swim).

This session? Hooo-boy! There’s a couple of wack-a-doos!

The first lady is just super entitled. She was bitching to her friend that she went to a high school sports event and she didn’t have any money, but since she goes every week she thought the lady taking tickets would let her in without paying. She was beyond irate that the ticket lady wouldn’t let her in without paying and couldn’t believe the nerve of “that bitch.” I’m sitting there thinking “wut?” Is she really trying to make everyone in the whole waiting room think she’s the innocent party here? You don’t have the cash to get in, you don’t go! How is this the ticket lady’s fault? I felt so bad for the ticket lady. It sounded like the non-payer made quite a scene at the school.

There’s another lady who is completely neurotic. Our swim school has regular classes, private classes and semi-private lessons (you split the cost of lessons with someone else). The neurotic woman’s child is doing semi-private lessons with another little girl. From what I understand they were not friends before they started doing lessons–they just signed up on the semi-private match system and were assigned together, but they like each other and the neurotic lady only wants her child to have lessons with the little girl they were matched with. The other mom seems friendly to the neurotic lady, but I wonder if she is regretting teaming up with this lady.

The first week, the other mom told the neurotic mom that she was going to have to change days in future lessons because some other activity was starting up in March. The lady FREAKED. “I need to process this, I need to process this. I don’t do well with change. I can’t do any other day because this is the day we do swimming.” The other mom calmly stated, “Well, it is nice to have them together but if you need to stick with this day that’s fine. We can sign up to find new semi-private partners.”

This caused a shit storm, because the lady doesn’t deal well with change. I don’t really know what happened because the neurotic mom got up and went outside. She was pacing back and forth and looked like a crazy person.

Then yesterday the teacher was out, so the manager took over that particular class. She is a really sweet girl and everything looked like it was going ok. Neurotic Mom’s child started to cry and the manager was trying to handle it, but neurotic mom busted into the pool (no parents are supposed to go in there, though I admit I have gone in a a couple of times to calm Elsa down) to solve the problem. She was screaming and shaking and scaring her kid even more. The teacher explained what they were doing and said the child had done it once but didn’t want to do it again. I don’t know. . .she was calm and reassuring and kind.

The mom FREAKED. The teacher got the little boy back in the pool and he was totally fine, but the mom was in the waiting room yelling about the teacher being so nasty to her and her son and all these horrible things. Then it looked like she was having some kind of panic attack or something. I was seriously sitting there thinking I needed to call 911 to have someone give her a shot of sedative. It was nuts. Her son was in the pool, smiling and laughing and she was in the waiting room having a complete meltdown.

She finally went outside and asked the other mom to watch her kid. I really wanted to ask the other mom her thoughts on the crazy, but figured that would be a bad idea.

Then, directly after swimming, we went to our school fundraiser night at Chuck E. Cheese. There were a total of three families from our school. What a wasted opportunity to bring in some money (the lady in charge didn’t send out flyers).

I think the Read-A-Thon is going to be a giant fail. I picked up the first set of reading logs yesterday (we are reading for three weeks and turning in sheets every Thursday so we can announce totals at the Monday meeting). We had thirty sheets. Thirty. Out of five hundred students. My only hope is that the teachers just hadn’t had a chance to bring them down to the work room yet. I’ll go in today to see if we have any more, but at this point I want to cry. I’ve never had anything I’ve touched be such an utter failure before.

I have so much more time now that I am not running to the gym all the time. Not that I am being exactly productive, but it just feels strange to have the whole morning at home. Today I am supposed to be cleaning up the house and going grocery shopping while Elsa is at preschool, but instead I’m going to write this entry.

I took some good advice and sent off a strongly worded e-mail to a person causing me angst. I got back an equally strongly worded e-mail. I guess the adrenaline hit my veins because I was shaking for ten minutes. I couldn’t even hold a glass of water. I am not used to confrontation and I don’t like it, but at this point it is necessary. A little shaking won’t kill me. I’m just glad I didn’t break out in hives, which has been known to happen in stressful situations.

In other news, I thought Erik was turning into some kind of mutant. The other day he showed me a new tooth that he was growing–in a spot that no tooth should ever grow. This is hard to imagine and a picture would be better, but you’ll just have to bear with me. He was growing a tooth out of the bottom of his gum, underneath one of his permanent teeth. In the front. The dentist said he wouldn’t be concerned if it was coming in from behind, but coming from the front was bizarre and I’m not sure the dentist even believed me/understood what I was talking about (I spoke to him last week during Elsa’s appointment).

Mike took Erik in yesterday and I was prepared for some kind of costly orthodontia, but it turns out he wasn’t really a mutant growing a wacky tooth. A big shard of splintered root from a baby tooth had been left behind when the baby tooth came out and had finally worked it’s way out and was pushing through his gum. The dentist removed it with tweezers. I’m told Erik was not exactly the best patient. I’m just glad I wasn’t there for it, though it probably would have been more fun than what I was doing (yearly lady exam).

Not much else going on around here. Rain is making me sleepy. Kids are making me crazy. Need to clean house. We’re living it up over here.

I had an appointment with an orthopedist today to try and determine what’s wrong with my knee. I’ve been really worried that I seriously damaged something and would need surgery. It hurts like crazy when I stand up from a sitting position and I’m limping around like an old woman. Turns out I have an arthritic bone spur. The original x-ray showed nothing at all, so the doctor had his own tech do an x-ray on his machine and the bone spur showed up very clearly. I always thought an x-ray was an x-ray, but apparently there is a finesse to doing them correctly.

The doctor says physical therapy will have me ready to go in no time, so I hope that’s true. He said I should work out an exercise plan with my physical therapist, but the only thing to worry about is the pain. I’m not damaging things further when I work out, which was one of my concerns.

But arthritic bone spur. Ugh. That sounds like something an old person should have. I don’t want to be an old person! Better than the alternative, of course, but . . . ugh.

In other news. . . Elsa decided to go and grow a couple of inches upwards and outwards this week, so now none of her clothes fit. She keeps taking them off because they are too tight, which is fantastic during a polar vortex We have heat, but even with it pumping full blast it was still pretty chilly in the house. I was really hoping her winter clothes would last her all season, but we still have at least two more months of cold to get through so there’s no denying it. She’s going to have to have some supplemental wardrobe items. I even had to buy her a new winter coat! I can barely zip up her old one, especially with a fleece underneath it. Thankfully those types of things are on clearance right now.

My big PTA project launches tomorrow* and I am really nervous. We introduced the Read-a-Thon to the kids on Monday and they seem excited to try to earn the minutes, so I think the reading part will be successful. We put a box out and they can suggest crazy things for the principal to do if the school reaches 200,000 minutes. They are stoked!

I just don’t know if the fundraising part will be successful. We need to bring in at least $300 just to pay for supplies/prizes. I would hope we bring in a whole lot more than that, but everything with the PTA has been a dismal failure this year, so who knows. Part of the problem is that we’ve not had a single board meeting this year. I don’t understand how we are supposed to function without regular board meetings, but apparently I’m the only one who sees this as a problem. I can’t wait for this year to be over so I can throw in the towel. I can’t continue to use my energy on something that very, very few other people care about.

*Our school district only allows us to send home parent communications on Thursdays.

You should see the drama and fights on my Facebook page right now. Our county elected not to close schools today and the opinions on this decision are making me go nuts! Personally, I think it was the right decision, but I’m not going to get into a facebook war over it. If someone really can’t get to school in a safe manner their parent can keep them at home, but it is not that cold. Our county has a policy that the kids don’t have outdoor recess if the temperature is below 32F, so they will only be outside a very short time (unless they are forced to walk to school).

On one side of the aisle you have people who are enraged that they had to send their kid out in this mess (what mess? No snow. It’s just cold.). All of those people drive their kids to school. I don’t understand. Do their cars not have heaters? Have they not heard that it is possible to wear a coat and gloves in a car?

They say that they are happy they are able to work it out, but what about all the poor children who have to walk because their parents don’t have another way to get them to school They’re going to get frostbite! Side note: It dropped down to 5F. I don’t think anyone’s going to get frostbite if they wear gloves and walk briskly.

On the other side of the aisle we have the people who are victoriously telling everyone to get their butts to school and stop complaining. The children who are poor and don’t have warm coats and other outdoor gear probably don’t have any food or heat, so they needtheir free warm lunch and a heated school building!

The other side comes back with “But we have a lot of immigrants from southern countries! They don’t know to buy coats! What are they going to doooooooooooo?”

Uhhhhh. . . sorry, but because someone is an immigrant they are too stupid to buy a coat when it’s cold? It normally doesn’t get this cold here, but it regularly drops down into the teens. We’re not living in Florida. In my neighborhood we have a lot of immigrants from very hot countries and they tend to be the most bundled up because they are not used to the cold. I am finding the whole debate pretty distasteful with all the assumptions on both sides going on about poor families and their lack of ability to keep their kids safe.

I haven’t commented on any of these posts or made a post of my own because it is a completely ridiculous thing to get fired up about. Yet here I am, writing this journal entry. I’m just grateful that both of my kids are at school and I have 2 hours of peace. Blessed, blessed peace.

I haven’t been back to my hometown since my dad died in June of 2011. I don’t intend to ever go back. It’s sad in a way, but there is nothing there but crazy people, alcoholics, drama and filth.

My mom doesn’t realize that my intentions to stay away are 100% set in stone. She hasn’t asked me to visit for quite a while, but yesterday she started telling me about how much it would mean to her if I could come and see the renovations she’s done on grandma’s house (she’s living there now). She even offered to pay airfare for the kids, if I would bring them out to see their cousins.

She thinks I am overreacting when I say that I will not have my children around an active drug addict. “But she hasn’t done any drugs all week! I don’t think. Well, I haven’t seen her in a couple of days but she’s probably doing good right now! She’s harmless!”

Yeah, mom. Talk to me when she’s been sober for a year, not a freakin’ week. Anybody can be sober for a week.

My niece has had lice on and off for months, which is another reason I refuse to go. Not the big reason, but big enough. I do not need to deal with lice if it can be avoided “it’s not like she’s going to rub heads with you! Just don’t sleep with her and you’ll all be fine!” As if a three year old is not going to be crawling all over her older girl cousin and playing dress up with her things.

Every single time we go there we get sick. The last time we all got strep throat. I know it’s because she doesn’t clean properly. I refuse to eat anything she cooks because she has no idea about food safety and doesn’t see the problem with leaving food on the counters overnight. My sister has/had MRSA, so I’m really not wanting to take my kids around someone dripping with bacteria.

It was a very brief conversation. I’ve learned to cut conversation short when I don’t like the topic, trying to train her that if she wants a long chat she’ll avoid topics that aren’t up for discussion. I’m not visiting her. End of story. She may think it is perfectly normally to live as a hostage to an addict’s insanity, but I refuse to expose myself or my children to the lifestyle. It was a big fail on my part to take Erik back there so many times when he was little. I should have sought counseling for my family issues when I was much younger–it would have made me a much stronger person, much sooner. I think I’m in a good place now, but it has taken a lot of soul searching and crushing epiphanies to realize my family, even my mother, are not good for me and never really cared that much about me. I’m the scapegoat and don’t need to subject myself to that role.

Let’s talk about happy things! We are having school tomorrow! We will be hit with the polar vortex down here in DC, but temps will only get to around 0F, which isn’t that bad at all (says the woman who lived above the arctic circle for 3 years). I do worry about the kids who have to wait for the bus or walk to school since so many people don’t have proper winter gear, but I am betting a lot of parents will be holding their kids home from school if they have too far to walk or too long to wait. Erik will only have to be out in the air a couple of minutes since he doesn’t leave the house until the bus barrels by. It does a turn around at the end of our cul-de-sac and we have 22 children who board the bus, so he has plenty of time to get down there after we see it pass by.

My nerves have been completely shot by this winter break. I have always had certain sensory issues, especially with noises, and having an 8 year old boy doesn’t help. There is constant noise. Light sabers buzz, he talks non-stop, he questions everything or tells me things that are just completely uninteresting to an adult, he batters balloons, tries to whistle, runs cars around the house, finds every toy in the house that beeps, and on and on and on. By Saturday I was literally sitting at the table with my hands over my ears, crying. Too much input! He’s a wonderful kid and I’m so glad he is who he is, with his insatiable curiosity and ability to stand up for himself. But Stop. With. The Noise! Mama can’t take it.

You’d think Elsa would be the loud one, and she certainly is not an innocent in the noise making game when Erik is around. He makes her scream all the time, which sets everyone’s nerves on edge. Or, my least favorite thing ever, she refuses to talk and only barks, growls, grunts and otherwise becomes his pet wolf. I swear people at the open gym the other day probably thought she was developmentally delayed because she refused to speak and kept whining and growling. However, in general she is able to sit and play quietly by herself for a good chunk of time and she doesn’t have to be in my face, constantly asking questions and telling me things. That made today a good day, with MisterE off at school. When I realized he might be home tomorrow, I almost had a fit of vapors just like the old timey ladies. I don’t know how I would ever home school this child.

And now. . . off to bed! Morning is going to come way too soon around these parts.