Category: Rants

Enough Already

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If I read one more post, article or link about how to slow down, cut back on the to do list and or enjoy life, I’m going to punch someone.

No really.

Telling me to forget those dishes, stop running errands and don’t sign my kids up for activities is not only pointless, it’s down right mean. So my kids are going to be deprived of swim lessons, play dates and visits to the museum because it’s a lot of work? I should let the dishes, laundry and other housework pile up in the name of bonding time? How can I work more “efficiently” at my job in order to avoid having to multitask?

Also, these people clearly do not have a “spirited” four year old whom they stay home with who has ideas of her own and she. will. get. her. way. No matter how severe the consequences. So yes, while sitting down and spending time together is a good thing, there are days where if she doesn’t go to swim lessons, I might run out the door an never come back.

I get it. I do. I see the point these articles and posts are trying to make and in general, I agree. I do think there are limits on the day and what can get done – but while the message is clear, the call to action (or non action) is ridiculous. Show me a mom who is not stressed, worried or overwhelmed in some form and I’ll show you a mom who is not paying enough attention to her life. I’m not saying it’s healthy, I’m just saying it’s part of the gig. Learning how to not just survive but thrive is essential to make the most of your life and your kid’s lives. Quite time, unstructured time and alone time are all great, but they are only part of a fulfilling life. Getting kids dressed and out the door to church is annoying, but essential. Loading up for tennis lessons, t-ball games and riding lessons is difficult, but it provides the enrichment we all need. And let’s not forget our jobs. Fun as they are, they are necessary not only to provide for our families, pay for college and groceries.

So unless you’ve got a technique that will teach me how to thrive on 4 hours of sleep (how does Martha do it?!), spare me your warm and fuzzies. I’ve got work to do, children to raise and laundry to be folded.

Big Picture, Little Picture

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I love weeks when I can see the big picture. I can see life for what it is and find joy in small things and have patience to turn bad behavior into teaching moments. I have the energy to tackle my to do list AND be a good mom. Get down on the floor and play. Get in the kitchen and cook together. Read books and go for walks. Make dinners and clean up the kitchen before 5pm. Get the laundry and ironing done. Clear my desk of bills, work and whatever else is lurking there. These are good weeks.

This is not one of those weeks. This is definitely a little picture week. I can’t see the forest for the trees.  All I can hear is a teething baby screaming, a puppy yelping and a smart mouth four year old. All I can see is the mess of toys, dishes and laundry. All I can think about is the pile of invoices that need to be created, put into envelopes, stamped and sealed.  All I want to do is look at the beautiful, smart, talented little girl in front of me and say “WHY??? WHY DO YOU KNOW WHAT MY BUTTONS ARE AND WHY DO YOU INSIST ON PUSHING THEM AALLLLL THE TIME?? WHY CAN’T YOU STAY IN BED AT NIGHT?? WHY WHEN YOU STAY IN BED DO YOU SCREAM FOR A PARENT TO COME TO YOUR BEDSIDE EVERY 2 HOURS TO FIX SOME NONEXISTENT PROBLEM??? WHY ARE YOU WAKING UP YOUR BROTHER??”.

Oh yeah, we aren’t sleeping right now. Again. It’s fun. I think B has a bet with Augg on how soon the men with the big butterfly nets are coming for mommy. It won’t be long little lady. It won’t be long.

My mom told me last week that I need to remember that her behavior comes from the fact that she’s bright. Actually, her quote was “It’s because she’s smart. If she were dumb, this would be a lot easier to solve”. And she’s right. Bay is no dummy. She’s capable of great things which is why I get so incredibly frustrated when she flat out refuses to do something. Or worse, pretends that she doesn’t know how (button pusher, party of one…). I’m not asking Hellen Keller to sign supercalifragalisticexpialidotious, I’m asking Einstien to add two plus two. So why can’t she just say FOUR and we could move on?!

I guess because she really wants to see if the men with the nets have white coats….

Joke’s on You

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To the person who keeps stealing packages off of our front patio: when are you going to realize that we don’t order anything fun from Amazon? Just because it’s heavy, doesn’t mean it’s not shampoo. Or diaper rash cream. Or a fan for the dog crate.  So get it through your thieving little brain; we’re boring. We order boring things. Our kids are smelly and have diaper rash so we’re going to continue to order boring things. When you see a package on our patio, just keep walking. Unless you have diaper rash. Then you might want to consider snagging it.

Wake Up Call

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I snuck away for a pedicure and was reading Self Magazine which was all about breast cancer and awareness. I read the statistics and a learned more about the risk groups and realized as I am now in my early thirties, I’m now at a higher risk and that it’s time to start taking those self exams seriously.

The next morning I got an email from a very good friend of mine. It started out apologizing for the mass email – as it began, I thought she was about to write that she and her husband were getting a divorce – I don’t know why I thought that, I love her husband and they have a great marriage, but it seemed to be the only logical piece of bad news she could be sending out. I literally felt my heart stop when I read that she was writing to tell everyone that she had breast cancer. 32 years old. Stage 4 breast cancer. My heart is racing as I write those words.

The good news is that she is crazy tough. And she is married to an amazing guy and they have been battling this awefulness together and she’s going to be ok. The road to recovery is long – she’s already endured several months of chemotherapy and despite it being successful, she is having surgery and then radiation. And all the while she has been open, honest about her feelings and making jokes. I will never look at arm pit hair the same way after she told me how excited she was to see hers growing back!

The part that makes my heart happy is that as I forwarded her email to our massive group of Phis, they all jumped in. They started a Meal Train so for the next several weeks, they will have dinners brought to their house a couple of times a week. There have been gift bags, flowers, emails, cards, texts and love going out to her. I know sororities get a bad wrap most of the time, but I’m proud to know my chapter has an amazing network of women who come from far and wide to help when a sister needs it.

I hate that this had to hit so close to home in order for me to pay more attention to my own health and risk. Take this as your wake up call to get your annual exams, do self exams and contribute to a charity/non profit who is working on a cure for such a miserable disease.

 

Dear Parents

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Dear Parents of School Age Children,

I know for a few parents, this is your first year of your kids being in preschool or kindergarten. I leave out the parents of older kids because they’ve clearly gotten the memo on what I’m about to tell you.

No matter where your kids go to school, public, private or charter, you are going to be asked to make a donation to the school or the classroom. Now, when I say donation, I don’t mean that it’s optional, I mean that it’s tax deductible. If you need a receipt for the $30 that the teachers of your child’s class are asking for so that they can develop film and hand you a beautiful book at the end of the year with pictures of your child through out the year, that’s just dandy. But please, under no circumstances should you think you are going to get the beautiful book without the donation.

Why? Because it is not up to the other parents in the class, the room parents, the teachers nor the school to provide the “extras” for your child. The donations is what makes those adorable and fun extras possible.  It should be noted that I am not talking about parents who are in difficult financial positions. In my experience, those with difficulties in cash flow are the first to respond. I’m talking about the rude parents who refuse to donate and go as far as sending nasty emails regarding the donations because they don’t like being required to make a donation and thus leaving the teachers and volunteers to cover the costs.

Listen, if you’re fine with leaving your kid in another classroom for the day while the entire class takes a field trip, that’s fine by me. I would suggest putting the $5 you should have spent on the field trip towards future therapy, but that’s just me.

So as one of the volunteers who “keeps sending you annoying emails” please note that your name will be left off the Christmas, birthday and end of the year gifts to the teachers. Even if that means I have to write out 25 names so that I can leave yours out, I’ll happily do it. Because you are what is wrong with our school system. You are the reason that our teachers are underpaid, under appreciated and most likely why your kid is a jerk.

Also, please don’t be surprised when my response to your emails is in the same nasty tone as your original email. I’m a volunteer, I don’t paid to be nice to assholes. And please expect that I’ll continue to send you those “annoying” emails, notes in your kids cubbie and in the check out folder – I think it’s important that you’re reminded of what a jerk you really are.

Kisses!

Beth

It’s the Little Things

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Robert Earl Keen got it right. It is the little things that piss me off.

We were getting to a point in our house where the list of things that didn’t work was greater than the list of things that did work. Ok, not really, but you know what I mean. Every night I had to look at the hole in the wall that I created in a fit of frustration trying to re-install the curtain rod that Auggie had managed to pull completely out of the wall. I got a little over zealous with the drill and anchors….and well the result was not good. Peter finally stopped me and mysteriously fixed it all (I think there was some glue involved judging by the stain on the curtains…). But the holes and white patch remained.

Similarly, the weather stripping around the back door that had once been painted and was now chipping off was equally as taunting. All of the little things were easy enough to fix, if you had an hour or so of uninterrupted time. Which let me tell you how many of those hours I have.

I lamented to my friend Beth M about it and explained what I really needed was an older relative with a lot of time, know how and love for me who would come and putter around and fix stuff for free. She agreed she too needed such relative and we agreed to start looking through our respective family trees for candidates.

During a full there is too much to do and not enough time in the day Jessie Spano level melt down, I made a decision to just call the handy man and get some of this stuff fixed. Thankfully, our handyman has become family friend too – he’s a great guy who is wildly trustworthy and just really good at fixing just about anything (he just doesn’t work for free – so close to the dream!!). I made Rick a list and turned him loose with a box of paint and weather stripping. Two hours later, he was done, the house was cleaned up and he mentioned that he had fixed about 5 other small things (like the fact our front door wouldn’t stay shut unless it was locked) for me too. And his bill didn’t make me want to throw up, so that was a nice bonus. Thankfully he has known us long enough to know that I’m not entirely insane so when I got so excited about the painted wall, he doesn’t immediately call in the men with the giant butterfly nets and padded rooms.

The moral of the story? Life is too short to live with ugly weather stripping and to loose your sanity by trying to do everything yourself to save a dollar. Throw a little money at the the little stuff and enjoy some playtime with the kids.

Manic Monday

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Rain

Picture day at school – hair dried and brushed to perfection

First day in God knows how long I have to wear professional clothing

Juggling baby, four year old, umbrella and heals trying to keep the above looking decent

Rain

Baby with a stuffy nose who “slept” in two hour or less increments all night

No construction on water company because of…you guessed it, rain

Rain

Two doctor’s appointments

Crabby baby who is a wiggling, screaming mess  at my doctor, perfectly nice at his doctor

Four year old who is not sick, but sans nap which has made her hyper rather than tired

No ear infection, just teeth which means no end to stuffy nose or lack of sleep

Rain

Sinus infection

Doctor who is less than pleased about the crazy four year old and screaming baby

Stupid HSA account that is supposed to save us money on our health insurance will. not. work.

Finally changed into casual clothes, errands and appointments done, dinner ingredients obtained

Sun

I’m not sure who I pissed off, but apparently I made someone in the weather department angry today…

There’s Something On The Wing

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You know when you are flipping through channels and come across one of those strong man competitions and you see the guy with some enormous harness strapped to him and that’s strapped to a 747 and he’s trying to pull it? That pretty much sums up how I feel about life right now. It’s all. just. taking. so. much. work. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got a great gig and I happily take my problems over 99% of the world’s problems. But….it would just be nice if something, anything would go down without a struggle.

Until then, all I’ve got to do is iron my super woman cape and get to pulling. Fingers crossed for a strong tailwind.

capes

Meet Matthew

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I got a text from PW last weekend that said Matthew is here and he looks AWESOME. Before I could text back Who the hell is Matthew??  I realized he was talking about the damn deer he hunted in November. And by here he meant on our living room wall. And in our freezer. Yea…..

Meet Matthew

matthew

Matthew is named after our friend and the guide of the hunt. It’s an homage to the great tracker that he is. Baylor is in love. She greets him when we walk in, pets him randomly throughout the day, says goodbye when we leave and is chowing down on the venison pepperoni sticks. She is, in a word, a traitor.

Sick of Being Sick

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Last Thursday everyone started feeling crummy…lots of sneezing, sore throats, stuffy noses all around. And of course, Baylor’s mystery cough was still present. Auggie’s tear ducts seemed to be infected (again) so we did a family trip to the doctor. An ear infection, a possible sinus infection, low oxygen levels and an eye infection were the diagnosis (and that was just the kids!). Four prescriptions later, we were out the door and on a first name basis with the lovely pharmacist at CVS.

Medicating the team is literally a full time gig. Antibiotics can’t be taken with reflux medicine. Probiotics needed to keep the antibiotics from killing off even the good bacteria…it’s a process to say the least. Also, see the white thing in the top of the big bottle? This is the greatest invention ever – it has a tiny hole that the measuring thing fits into so you can get every last drop of medicine without spilling!

medicine

Auggie has been sleeping in his car seat in our room for a week – it’s the only way he can sleep because if he is laying down, he gets stuffed up and wakes up. Last night I found him like this:

carseat_1

Which I took to mean he was ready to get back to his crib. I elevated the mattress and he slept the entire night in there – although he didn’t sleep the entire night. I don’t know if he’s having a growth spurt or catching up from not eating much last week – man that kid can really pack it away. He’s had two long naps today so fingers crossed, if it’s a growth spurt, we’ve entered the sleepy phase. 5 hour sleep stretches please come back!!

I broke down on Tuesday and called in reinforcements so I could go to the doctor. I took whichever doctor was available and got the guy who was going to solve all my problems. After 5 minutes of scrolling through my history he deduced that I go to the doctor approximately 4 times a year with a sinus infection. It took all my strength not to say “yeah. I know because I’M THE ONE WITH THE SINUS INFECTION”. He decided (after looking at what kind of health insurance I have – i.e. the kind that would pay for a lot of crap) that I needed an x-ray of my head. I did explain that I would do pretty much whatever he wanted as long as he promised me right now that I could have antibiotics and whatever else would make my teeth stop feeling like they were going to pop out of my mouth. 4 x-rays later he proclaimed “see that little, tiny, sliver of black right there? That’s your nasal airway. You really cannot breathe!!”. If I had had slept in increments longer than 90 minutes the night before, I very well might have punched him. He made good on his promise and loaded me up with the good stuff and 48 hours later, I’m feeling much improved. I still can’t smell, but I can breathe so I’ve got that going for me. And around here, sometimes it’s not a bad thing not to be able to smell anything…I go back in 2 weeks to have my head re x-rayed to look for an underlying cause of reoccurring sinus infections. I know Peter is dying to let out all the “you need your head examend  jokes he can think of.

Oh. And Auggie’s eye infection? Totally pink eye. And we all got it (except Peter, damn him). Talk about insult to injury. The smell of Vick’s Vapo Rub and bleach is almost visible around our house.