The Queen's Rambles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can guess how that went.

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

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

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

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

She informed me that he was not her kid.

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

She called me a bitch.

Elsa and I walked away.

Whew!

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

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

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

When do I get my week long vacation?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You know what the best thing was?

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

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

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

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

Hahahahahahaha.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?