The Queen's Rambles

I forgot just how much “fun” toddlers are. Elsa is fully into the getting into trouble stage. She’s smart and physically competent enough to make a huge mess in about .5 seconds.

I decided to make us a really nice family Valentine’s day yesterday. The dining room table was covered with crap and it was bugging me. Plus, it still had on the vinyl Christmas table cloth, which was way too busy for my eyes. But getting it off the table required clearing off the whole thing. Archeological digs are less complex than clearing off this table.

I assumed that if it was bugging me, the slob, it must be about to send Mike into orbit.

It took me three hours to clean up the room. Three exhausting hours.

It would have gone a lot faster if I didn’t have children going along behind me, undoing everything I was doing. Or creating bigger messes in other rooms.

I hear some noise in the kitchen: Oh look! Elsa has the whole silverware drawer totally scrambled up.

I hear the water running in the bathroom: Oh look! Elsa is covered in tomato seeds and her eyes and skin are burning from tomato acid. She took a whole box of Zima tomatoes (best tomatoes ever, btw. They’re like big, orange grape tomatoes, only super sweet) and smashed them all up in the sink.

Erik decides he wants to decorate the house for Valentine’s day and cuts up teeny pieces of paper and tries to GLUE them to the wall. I taught him about tape. Then he cuts out a strip of paper and wants me to tape it into the doorway of the bathroom. Strip of paper is 8 inches long. Doorway is way more than 8 inches. He starts having a screeching fit about what a mean mom I am and I just don’t understand. I finally figure out what he wants (the paper to be like a streamer across the door) and realize he is an insane person if he expects me to miraculously make this 8 inch paper fit across a 36 inch space. I try to help him make a paper chain, but he just screeches at me that I don’t know anything. I swear to god if he was an adult man I’d take out a restraining order. I guess a six year old is not a mature adult, huh? Lucky for him, or I’d totally be cutting him off for that behavior.

So after we both get ourselves settled down and come to an “understanding” I help him make a paper chain even though it’s the last thing I want to do and I’m frazzled and making messes is not helping me clean up the mess.

I was so exhausted by the time that I finally got the dining room cleared up, the kids settled into the basement and the gifts all sitting nicely on the table that I wanted to sit in my comfy chair and never move again.

Then Mike finally got home and didn’t even seem to realize it was Valentine’s day. I guess a bunch of geeks and nerds don’t know enough about romantic relations to gossip about Valetine’s day at work and compare notes about what they are getting their wives and girlfriends. Some of them bring their moms and sisters to holiday parties, so what do they know about Valentine’s day?

After all the work I put in on making the home a nice place for the evening, you can guess how happy I was that I’d been completely forgotten. I suppose it is not fair to expect something if I have not made my expectations clear, but it’s Valentine’s day. Do I really have to say that I need a token of appreciation? It seems like all my friends were posting pictures of the flowers, candy and other little gifts that their husbands surprised them with. I don’t need or want much. A piece of the special cake I like, a box of chocolate, a card. . . any of those would have been fine. Of course, I wouldn’t turn down diamonds and gold either, but that’s just crazy talk.

And when I am very upset I eat sugar. And when I eat sugar I get very upset. Emotional eating sucks. Being a giant, fat woman who can’t control herself sucks. I need to get a gastric bypass, but I don’t think that takes away a sweet tooth. I would do just about anything to get rid of this sweet tooth. Do you think cutting out my tongue would help? Little home surgery with the super sharp fish knife? I can learn sign language, right?

Mike redeemed himself tonight by coming home super early with some roses. The roses weren’t the redemption. Coming home before 5 is about the best gift he can ever give me. Most nights we’re lucky if we see him by 7, which really sucks.

Subject change:

I got an e-mail from Erik’s teacher saying he is behaving a lot better in class. I’m so glad. I am worried about him. We all hate to see our children unhappy and having problems at school, a place they will be spending at least 13 years of their lives. It is so difficult to have our hearts walking outside our bodies, completely away from us for several hours a day. The teacher did mention that he still has constant body movement and can’t seem to control it. I know what she means and I know it probably drives her insane. It drives me absolutely crazy. I suggested she let him sit on a bouncy ball or an active seating disk or wedge, so we’ll see what happens. When I subbed in Alexandria a lot of the kids used active seating devices, but I’ve not seen that here. I will even buy it if she will just let him use it. I don’t know if it would help at all, but it’s worth a shot.

If you follow my FB feed, you’ll know that his Valentine’s loot was insane. I am so irked by this new tradition of turning Valentine’s into Halloween. Why the fuck does a kid need to bring home a whole backpack full of candy? He has 17 kids in his class. Eight of the kids sent home birthday sized goody bags stuffed full of candy. It is just completely insane to me. Some of them didn’t even give out Valentine’s cards, just the bags of candy. I guess Erik made a poor showing with his homemade cards with a pencil taped on them. I refuse to participate in that over-the-top goody bag business. I think it’s very intersting that all the big goody bags came from the kids who live in the single family home neighborhood that’s supposedly really fancy. I am so glad I don’t give a rat’s ass about keeping up with the Joneses. I don’t need to make everything bigger, better, bigger, better MORE CANDY! I don’t look at the bags of candy and think “wow, those must be great parents with a lot of money.” I look at it and think “wow, those people are asshat losers who want to sugar up all the kids and are desperate for approval.” I’ve met several of the parents at birthday parties and other activities and I can’t stand any of the ones from that neighborhood. They are just huge snobs. Ugh.

Last thing:

I booked my mom’s spring plane tickets. She’ll be here six weeks! Crazy, but she wanted to be here for my birthday and she wanted to help me the last week of April because Mike will be out of town. We love having her, so it is not a problem. She’s good at making herself scarce when she needs to and she respects our boundaries. Hopefully we will all have a good visit.

My sister is even more bat shit crazy than usual. Remind me to tell you about her new non-biological baby. I thought I’d lost the energy to be emotionally invested in anything she does, but I am completely livid on her children’s behalf (behalves? behalfs?).