Bang the Drum!
“I don’t want to work
I want to bang on the drum all day.”
-Todd Rundgren
It’s not that I’m lazy; it’s that i just don’t care.
6:00 AM I’m sooo sleepy but hey it’s FRIDAY people and that’s a HAPPY day cause it’s the end of the week, right? Yeah! Nothing can get me down!
6:10-6:40 AM Eat cereal. Do breathing treatment with the nebulizer (LUKE I AM YOUR FA-THER) and play pretend farm on the Nook (pretend cows don’t milk themselves), use long-acting (supposedly) asthma inhaler. Rinse mouth out a zillion times. Use nasal spray. Hope to breathe. Uh, oh, time to wake up children.
“I don’t want to play, I just want to bang on the drum all day . . .”
Vader: Time to get dressed, Luke.
Luke: Noooooooo!
6:40-6:50 AM Snuggle with Thing One. Try not to fall asleep. Encourage her that it is Friday and that’s awesome cause Friday and last day and for God’s sake get up. Go to Thing Two’s room. She is in a loft bed which seemed like a good idea at the time until I figured out I couldn’t climb up there and get her out. Pelt her with stuffed animals. Yammer at her. Stand on toes and poke at her. Yell.
“I took a stick and an old coffee can, I bang on that thing ’til I got blisters on my hand . . .”
6:50 -7:00 AM Forgot to wash jeans. Just how dirty are they? Wow, yeah, that’s a few too many stains to pretend I didn’t notice. Wear work pants that are less dirty. Thing One wanders in with a pop tart. Send her to check on little sister and make sure she’s out of bed and getting dressed. Someone has to do it, and it’s not gonna be me. I’m prostrate on the bed, but at least I’m dressed.
“I don’t want to work, I want to bang on the drum all day . . .”
7:00 AM Door slams. Thing One reports that Thing Two is, in fact, dressing. Hallelujah.
7:00-7:10 AM. Make stab at brushing teeth. Actually stab gums. Thing Two is wearing a black shirt with cats that says “We are Strange” over a pink shirt along with a lacy blue skirt, some sort of pants that hit between her knee and ankle, but no shoes. There is a strand of pink fake hair in her short hair that she is insisting on tying back with barrettes. I am just informed it is picture day at school. I tell her to take the pink hair out. I can have one standard right? Thing Two has first conniption fit.
“The teacher told me I should stay after school, She caught me pounding on the desk with my hands
But my licks was so hot, I made the teacher wanna dance.”
7:10-7:15 AM. Thing two has second fit. No lunch sacks because my husband insists on throwing out all my plastic bags that I save. For trash liners. And lunch sacks. He doesn’t throw anything away INSIDE the bags, no, just my bags. Like I can send a lunch in a giant paper sack? I plot his demise.
I looked something like this.
7:15-7:25 AM. I am informed that it is also picture day for singing group Thing Two is involved in. She needs her group shirt. No idea where it is. I need to get going. Every minute I’m late means one more moron with stupid stick people figures on their SUVS dropping off their brats and blocking me in. I get in my car and plug in my MP3 and loudly play
“I don’t want to work, I want to bang on the drum all day”
7:25-7:30 AM Thing One is in the car. We are grooving and beating on the dash. Thing Two storms out later, incensed that no one else is upset about her plight. We drive by Sonic so I can get caffeine cause GOD I NEED IT.
7:30 AM Reach Thing Two’s school. She is still howling despite my turning the volume way up on my song. Now she has realized she forgot her lunch. I give her a dollar – no way am I going back. I tell her to quit screeching or the other kids will be annoyed. She says she’s just upset that I got a coke when I COULD have been helping her find her shirt, after all.
“And I get my sticks and go out to the shed, And I pound on that drum like it was the boss’s head”
Count to 100. Slowly.
7:30-7:40 AM Peal out from elementary school. Drive Thing One to her school all the way across town because that’s just so convenient. We yammer and sing along to the song. This time I remember to stop at her school, unlike the time when I just drove right past it and was almost at work, talking all the time, when I realized she was still with me. She hangs out as long as she can until I tell her she has to go in. I feel like a bad parent for making her go to junior high.
7:40-7:50 AM I drive to my work which is actually only five minutes from my house but nevermind and there is no parking because they took away our staff and faculty parking cause like, who needs morale, right? I drive around a while and find one spot at the very back of the parking lot – one spot in handicapped, mind you. I get the awesome placard on account of the cold air making my lungs go splodey. Yay, me!
“I don’t want to work, I want to bang on the drum all day”
Still does not guarantee parking. What’s the use of being handicapped huh????
7:50 – 7:55 AM Sit in car listening to music a while. It’s not 8:00 AM yet. Realize I have forgotten my own lunch.
7:55 – 8:00 AM Trudge to work with headphones in ears. Those college kids have something going there. I am not actually here, I am banging the drum. All day.
How is your Friday going? I’m tired already. Is it time to go home yet?
The Other Baby Story Part One
A long time back, I wrote about the baby story of Thing One. Thing Two has been most irritated that I have not written about her yet. There is a reason for this. A lot of that story is filled with OH THE HORROR but I will try to recall it for her sake.
Look how happy and stylish she looks. I did not look like this ever.
Once we had Thing One a few years, we figured we pretty much had this parenting thing down. I wanted another one, because I had STUPID which makes one think BABIEZZ all the time. My husband was thinking more about diapers and money and our tiny house, but I was much more practical. I thought BABIEZZ. When we didn’t agree, I wrote a diary entry whining about how incredibly unfair life was. I also told several other people at a marriage retreat about my sob story. At this point, I was already pregnant, which people greatly enjoyed pointing out to me later. Ha ha.
I took the pregnancy test and bang I got just what I wanted so obviously I started to PANIC like crazy. What were we going to do? We couldn’t afford a baby! We had no idea what we were doing with Thing One! When in danger, when in doubt, run in terror, scream and shout. There was an entry in the baby book that asked what you first thought when you found out you were expecting the bundle of joy. Terror did not seem like a nice thing to put in a baby book.
Expressions like “OMG” are not generally expected in memory books.
My husband, in typical fashion, just took it in stride like he always does. Oh, a baby. Okay. Well, I have anxiety and depression, and combine that with pregnancy hormones and boy do you have a whale of a lot of fun. Speaking of whales, I didn’t show in my pregnancy with Thing One until well into my 5th month. With Thing Two, I was showing as soon as the stick turned pink. I tried on my old maternity clothes and they were already too small. Not a good sign.
In keeping with the animal theme, I was also sick as a dog, again, something I had conveniently forgotten about it. Only this time, I got to take care of a three-year-old at the same time. A three-year-old who had not yet potty-trained because hey, someone would change her diaper right? This is a theme that continues with Thing One. Why do it when someone else will eventually get around to doing it for you? Smart kid. For instance, she had a great way of letting us know she’ d like some juice, please.
Duuuuuuuuuuice!
We had a slight communication problem going on because, as it turned out, Thing One had a verbal delay. Her Sunday School teacher informed me about this, saying that by now she should be speaking in complete sentences. My husband and I just thought we were really lucky to have a quiet kid. Parenting Fail. So I took her to a school and had her tested and found out she was way behind in a lot of areas, at least according to them. “Hums herself to sleep as an infant” was not on their list. I thought their list sucked, but more on that in another post.
The plus side of this was that they were willing to take her in a preschool program without her being potty-trained. Hallelujah! Just one problem. I was so sick at this point that I couldn’t venture far without my good pal, bucket. Many times I was in debt to my mother, who drove 15 miles to take Thing One to school when I was too green to climb out of bed.
Bucket, my erstwhile friend . . .
I was also a big, whiny lump. While pregnant with Thing One I managed to teach two graduate classes while also taking two graduate classes. She was born less than a month after I finished my studies. With Thing Two I was lucky to be able to walk from one side of the house to the other without either bawling or puking or some combination of both. Thing One was either blissfully unaware most of the time or she was ignoring me, it was kind of hard to tell at that point.
Once I got past the worst of the morning sickness, I thought, hey, maybe I can make it. We got a sonogram done, and I was anxious to find out what the gender was. The technician told me confidently that she had never not been able to tell the gender of a baby. She tried to get a lock on Thing Two, not knowing that my obgyn had tried that earlier and couldn’t even get a heartbeat because as soon as her stethescope touched me, Thing Two kicked her off and moved, then did it again, and again. Thing Two had attitude from conception, I’m fairly certain.
Hi Mommy I’m going to use your uterus as my personal trampoline!
She kept her knees together stubbornly. The tech was determined though, and got her to turn over in my stomach. She did, keeping her legs together the entire time. Finally the tech gave up, concluding that it must be a girl because the boys liked to show off their, um, parts early on while the girls were more demure. Yes, demure, that sooo describes my Thing Two.
What I didn’t know at that time, was that they were also taking measurements and they found one they didn’t like. So I went back the next month, and later was told something absolutely terrifying. There was a possibility Thing Two might have down syndrome or possibly fluid on her brain. The doctor was new, and just told me this casually in her office. How would I find out? Oh, I could see a specialist. IN TWO WEEKS.
To be continued . . . but not in two weeks, promise.
The Noxzema Incident
I know several bloggers with small children. Mostly I think oh thank GAWD that’s not me. But if there’s one thing I occasionally envy, it is their ability to chronicle all the goofy stuff their children do so they don’t forget. I know my kids have done hundreds of things I don’t remember that were absolutely hilarious at the time. But there are some incidents that stick out in my mind.
One we just call the Noxzema Incident. A friend, I’ll call her L, and I were hanging out at her house one day. Our usual activity was to sit in front of the TV with Thing Two, who was about two years old at the time, while her youngest (4) and my Thing one (6) ran off to play. As long as we didn’t hear blood-curdling screams, we figured they were okay. Since we had young children, and she had few stations, we OD’d daily on PBS. She’s the one who came up with the idea for “Reefer Tree” which made much more sense than the nauseating “Big, Big World”. Haven’t heard of that show? Oh oh, LINK DROP!
Anyway, we were, as usual, sitting on the couch amongst piles of laundry (we looked at it sternly every once in a while, but rarely moved it), and Thing Two was on the floor putting marbles in her mouth, when I noticed an unusual smell. (Click to enlarge pictures I actually didn’t steal off Google Images!)
Then we noticed, hey, the kids have been awfully quiet. This is often a much worse sign than hearing actual screams. So we got up and walked to the hallway. The smell grew stronger. Yup, definitely that delightful chemical smell of Noxzema. WTF. We kept walking toward her daughter’s room. The smell got even stronger. Then we heard her daughter, E, shout a warning to Thing One.
Uh oh.
We reached the door and opened it. There, attempting to hide in the toy box, were Thing One and E. E was in her underwear, covered from head to toe in Noxzema. There was also Noxzema on the floor, the furniture, and her older sister’s favorite dress. Only Thing One had no Noxzema on her but only because she didn’t like to get messy at that age (This changed with therapy. Why did we give her therapy again?) I guess because of her cleanliness, she thought she could get away with it.
No honor among thieves.
I informed her that she was in just as much trouble as her friend, even if she was only the getaway driver. It’s not as if she attempted at any point to stop her little buddy. The only problem was that while we were telling them they were in SUCH TROUBLE we were having to not laugh. But our voices were wavering “You are in trouble, clean up this mess . . . no really, trouble, so . . . we’ll be back . . . to tell you . . . your punishment.”
Then we went back to the living room and laughed our heads off.
Tales of a Failed Housewife
I have a lot of education. None of it is in housework. For some reason, I figured since I was going to work outside the home, I wouldn’t actually need to know how to clean. I’m not sure just who I thought was going to be doing the cleaning. Maybe cleaning fairies. Or perhaps I’d buy a self-cleaning house. Degrees in the arts certainly don’t give you the money to hire maids, that’s for certain.
Cleaning fairy, why hast thou forsaken me?
For a short time I was only a housewife. I stayed home with two small children. I had a four-year-old and an infant. When you never get enough sleep and you’re dealing what amounts to a furless screeching cat and a short, insane, drunk person, you just kind of try to survive. Or at least I did.
I knew women whose houses always sparkled, at least when I was there. I couldn’t figure out what she did with the children while cleaning. Kennels? And what about after? Did they just stay in the kennels all day? Does Baby Bjorn make one of those? Wait, no, you shouldn’t treat your child like a dog no matter how much it acts like one, because, you know, illegal.
Anyway, I no longer have little creatures, but a thirteen-year-old and a nine-year-old. Conceivably, these kids should not only know how not to make messes, but be able to clean them up at least part of the time. This hasn’t happened yet. It might be because I haven’t taught them properly because, and I am ashamed to admit this as part of womankind, but I don’t know how to really clean either.
Devil puppy looks so guilty. I don’t know how to clean either, devil puppy.
Oh, sure, I get the concept behind putting dishes in a dishwasher and taking out trash and doing laundry and not simply throwing said trash or dishes or laundry on the floor (something that has escaped the children entirely) but as far as real, honest to goodness cleaning with a capital “C”, I don’t have a clue. I am trying to learn, though, not to get my Martha Stewart I am a real woman badge, but to get healthy.
I have horrible allergies. I am allergic to anything green including most trees, bushes, weeds, grasses, etc. I’m also allergic to mold. I can’t tolerate cigarette smoke and dust, well, do you know what’s in those cute dust bunnies? Dust MITES which are disgusting little bugs who not only hang out in your pillow (sleep tight) but have the audacity to just poop all over everything. Even the children now know how to go poop in the toilet. But these mites just consider the world their toilet and all of us get to breathe in their feces.
Billions of these guys are in your pillow. And your sheets. And your mattress. Cute, isn’t he?
That was your science lesson for today. You are welcome.
So since I’m allergic to life inside and out, I figured I would start trying to combat it. Um, the allergies, not life, since the allergies are already doing a swell job of combating my life. I get sick all the time, and it’s starting to not be fun anymore. Last year, as anyone who has read my blog for a long period of time knows, I had pneumonia. I wrote, under the influence of fever and various pharmaceuticals, about my journey to mucusland, starting with this (LINK DROP) post, which caused me to miss an entire month of work and weakened me for some time after that. That kind of sucked.
Nom, nom, nom, pneumonia germs!
All this to say I’m trying to clean my house and I don’t know how. I decided to get natural cleaners like vinegar (not on chips, although it’s in the food aisle turns out) and bleach added to water. But how much bleach or vinegar to water? I wasted a good chunk of time today trying to figure that out. If it’s ¾ cup to one gallon, and I have a bottle that is 32 ounces, and the train is coming at 80 miles per hour, how long until I say I give up and go eat salt and vinegar chips? Not long.
I also bought a steam vacuum. It has a million attachments and blows out steam all over the place. You can burn yourself on this if you’re stupid, or you know, me. Also I have a vacuum cleaner with fun attachments on order since I’m not too keen on dragging the a50 year old, 200 pound Kirby my husband loves like a family member with me all over the house. I spent a LOT of time picking out vacuums. I even employed friends to help, friends who thought it couldn’t get worse than the yoga obsession I had a few months back.
I see this in my future.
So I have cleaning supplies and contraptions, if I can figure out how to work them. But I’m so tired just from all the research and from looking at my house which has at least 5 years worth of deep cleaning needed due to my utter lack of a Martha Stewart gene. Maybe I’ll just go take a nap.
So, guys, how do you clean?
I Hate Everyone
Fuck off, Sunshine
Haha, but not you guys! I mean, unless you choose not to read this post or leave comments; then I hate you. It’s nothing personal. I hate pretty much everyone a large portion of the time. That is why this is one of my favorite songs. It’s sort of like the anti-Barney song. Here’s a clip on youtube. Someone went to the trouble of slapping some lyrics on the screen while it plays. I hate that person. Probably.
But that’s not all. Since I didn’t bother to think up a real post, (this is always a promising beginning to a post isn’t it?) here are people I hate.
That guy in the drive-through at McDonald’s that cut in line. Fuck you, stupid car. Wait your turn. Didn’t you go to freaking kindergarten? That IS where you’re supposed to fucking learn everything. I hope someone beats the crap out of you on the playground today.
I hate you too, Ronald. Stupid clown.
Patrons. I mean, wtf, they want me to serve them? Get away from my books.
People who call with the wrong number but then ask if my number is really 555-5555 and I’m like yes, come to think of it, that person is here after all. Let me go get him and have him hang up on you.
Adults who freak out over cuss words. Fuck off, Mary Poppins. These are awesome words. Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuckballs.
Stephenie Meyer. E.L. James. Whoever copies E.L. James. Whoever copies that person.
Kirsten Stewart – just fucking say your lines, will you? I know it’s a stupid movie, but you’re getting paid millions. Stuttering was only charming on JIMMY Stewart.
L-li-line. What’s . . . my line?
People who think they are parenting experts. I hope your kid writes a tell-all book about how much you suck. This would make me very happy.
The Religious Right. Shut up. And stop denying people rights. If Miss Four Eyes wants to marry a depressed pony and a manic squirrel then she can! Is this not a free country?
Patrons again. If we don’t have a magazine in, we don’t have it. We aren’t hiding it. We librarians cannot magically pull periodicals out of our asses. If we could, we would make better money.
Children. Always asking for food and water and attention. Get a job you little brats.
Formula ain’t gonna buy itself.
People who think filtering computers is a good idea. I can’t get into perfectly reasonable sites, but I can get into my own blog. This means your filter isn’t working, douchebag.
The publish button. Just – push – it. Push it. Do it. Go on.
People like me, who are given awesome ideas for posts, (Satanic Yoga!) but just come up with this crap.
So there you go. My favorite lines from that song? Right here:
I bet you think I’m kidding
But I promise you it’s true
I hate most everybody
But most of all, I hate, oh I hate yo-uuu.
Do YOU hate anyone, boys and girls? Please say so in the comments below!
Boo!
This morning I was getting ready, sitting on the edge of my bed, minding my own business when my darling eight-year-old, Thing Two, who had been lying in wait under my covers, decided to leap out and yell “Boo!”
As a parent in this situation do you:
A) Smack the daylights out of your child with the hardest pillow you can find.
B) Yell at your child stuff like “Do you want to kill me?” and “I brought you into this world, now you’re going out.” etc.
C) Scream from fright because you are jumpy anyway and this didn’t freaking help, then turn around to do both A and B and see that cute smile on said child’s face. The same cuteness that has kept mothers from every species from eating their young. And you just sigh instead. And then, ten minutes later, your older child asks if you’re okay, cause you screamed ya know. Ten minutes ago.
So how was your morning?
Yes I screamed louder than this little brat.
Rants With Alice: Morning School Drop-Offs From Hell
I am fortunate in that I now live only five minutes away from my workplace. Unfortunately, it takes me roughly thirty minutes to get there every morning. Why? Because I have children, people, and these children go to school, and these schools are on opposite sides of town for maximum convenience.
My life is one big Little Billy trip from Family Circus
Now I’m grateful for school, mostly. I mean you get people to take your kids everyday for free and occasionally they even learn something. But getting them there really sucks. I live in a moderately sized town. Not so tiny that the only social outlet is a Dairy Queen, but too small to have anything open past 11 pm. When I was growing up, there were three schools: an elementary school, a junior high, and a high school.
Since then there has been a yard ape population explosion and now there are multiple elementary schools, an intermediate school, a junior high, and a high school. Intermediate and junior high (they totally demoted my high school, the jerks) only house two grades a piece but there are still roughly a million kids going to both schools. This is better than the elementary school that houses like eleventy-billion.
And all of these children have parents and all of these parents have cars. Most of them have SUVs, actually, with those charming little stickers on the back with the stick figure children. I freaking hate those stickers. Seriously, people, the reason there is so much traffic every morning is because you decided to have like eight children, all of whom have names that aren’t names and start with B – Barracks, Britain, Breyers, Bayer Aspirin, Bayleaf, Boo-boo, Bridge, and Beyonce. Also a dog: Barfy. (Please see Tracy’s post on these stickers that will make you laugh your butt off.)
Available on Amazon.com
Apparently I am not the only one somewhat annoyed by these stickers.
These people always pull in front of me and then stop, blocking traffic, and forcing me to block traffic, while they tearfully give lengthy goodbyes longer than the Gettysburg address to every single little brat (and yeah, all of them somehow go to the same elementary school, which shouldn’t even be possible biologically).
I reach this elementary school first, just a couple of blocks from my house. At one time I could drop both children off there, but then Thing One had to get older and go to a charm school for adolescents. Now I have to plan this strategically. If I get there too late, I am never getting out of the parking lot before 8 A.M. when technically they expect me to be at work. So I try to get there at 7:30, because the earliest you can drop your children off is 7:30 without them calling the cops.
This is rife with problems since Thing Two has the memory of a gerbil and never, ever, ever puts any of her stuff (like coat, shoes, backpack, etc) away. I do not know where she gets that from, seriously. Also, she must always have a stuffed animal with her because it’s like her familiar or something, and it’s always a different animal so no fairsies trying to keep one where you can find it.
Once I’ve deposited her, I get to go to the other side of town through early morning traffic. Now they force people to drive 20 mph and not use their cell phones (this is, like, followed so religiously) in school zones so that they don’t run over any precious children. That’s great, but it also makes it damn near impossible to get anywhere going at that speed. Also, you must frequently sit at stop signs and watch as one car putts, putts, putts along just slowly enough that the car putting along from the opposite direction has enough time to prevent you from crossing. Or some jerk who is much more important drives up beside you and blocks your view as well. My children have learned so many new words on the way to school.
Rich parents simply jet their kids to school, thus avoiding pesky traffic.
I finally make it to the opposite side of town to the intermediate school, whose parking lot is somehow even worse than the elementary school, by which I mean 18th circle of hell worse. I drop off Thing One, and wheeee, it is now time for me to go to work. At this point, if I’m lucky, we’re operating at 7:45. Now to go BACK across town to where I work, that also happens to be closer to the elementary school and my house.
Once I arrive, I am greeted by the awesome parking situation, by which I mean there is no parking except several blocks away from where I work. In case you missed that post (No Parking) I also pay for this privilege. Again, if I’m lucky, we’re now at 7:55 or so. Then I just have to hoof it to the library and ta-da, I am there! Well, I’m in the building, which flipping counts because I say so, and because I have to tromp across the library, up the stairs and across the second floor to get to my office.
Fortunately, I work till 5 PM so I am unable to pick my children up from school (SADFACED) although I do occasionally get calls at work wondering who IS going to pick up said children. Maybe they could ask SUV stick figure mom.
How Do You Blog?
Recently I wrote a post on Canvas on overwhelmation. And I am definitely feeling it now. Pretty soon, they’re going to expect me to go back to work. I’m better, much, much better, but still when I go to the bookstore, I’m good for about ten, fifteen minutes tops before my body says “Holy crap, go home!” So I’m thinking if fifteen minutes is hard, eight hours might be slightly harder. There is also the process of working out sick leave (like not having any) and if I qualify for something called sick leave pool, the logistics of which probably inspired the book Catch-22.
My employee handbook
So I was thinking stressing on this and Thing Two started coughing. And then running fever. And I said, “Oh, crap.” (I say this a lot.) I guess I was just hoping the powers that be or whatever would give me say enough time to quit being sick myself before striking a kid. Yeah, not so much. Even better, she has the ability to go from lying still (freaky for this kid) to bouncing about while chattering non-stop until my brains threaten to explode within minutes.
Mommy, what are you doing? I want a buffalo for Christmas! I was reading this story and it was about this and this and this and are you listening Mommy and my buddy said that I was weird and I don’t like bullies why do people bully it isn’t nice and it’s against school policy and that’s not fair and what’s on T.V.? I think I might throw up. No, false alarm, it’s a burp and do you want to play dolls?
So this, and work, and sick, and laundry, and whatever the hell else I’m supposed to be doing has not made it any easier to sleep at night. Well, that and sleeping during the day, which you get used to when you feel too crappy to do anything else, and then it’s hard to break the cycle. So since I can’t sleep, I get up and write. And then it occurs to me (and look we’re getting to the supposed point of this post) that maybe I should try to set some sort of boundaries on my blogging. Boundaries I’d like to set other places, like work (not so many hours) or parenting (not so many hours) or laundry (Why are there so many clothes and where the frack are the socks?)
Husband: So like I’m not supposed to dry your underwire bras in the dryer?
Wife: I’m going to kill you.
Thing is, I love feedback. Love, love, love it. I am extremely susceptible to compliments. I feed on good press, and then I’m compelled to do more, more, more! But then I lie awake at night and along with everything else think – am I doing too much posting? Am I annoying? Am I pressable? What if I write something and they think I’m not funny? You know, like Sinatra when his voice started going but he kept singing and no one wanted to tell him to shut up? Wait, I forgot what point I was trying to make here.
There’s a point here somewhere . . .
Oh, yeah, insecurity. I has it. And night time is a great time to think about this. Which is why insomnia really sucks, unless you are just dying to catch up on infomercials. Like this one for this leaf blower that is apparently more awesome than Jesus. Maybe it’s powered by Jesus. Or possibly the people in the commercial are on drugs. They are very, very happy about this leaf blower. And after a while, I’m thinking, I should get that leaf blower. Then I too could blow away spider webs with the force of a helicopter taking off.
Wait, that’s not a leaf blower – he’s a freaking Ghostbuster!
Anyway, I’m hoping to get my sleep cycles out of “infant” and back to “semi-adult”. But even when I do, I still have to decide how to balance my life. Get it? Balance. Hahahaha. As if mothers, whether SAHMS or working moms, can ever balance their lives. I mean, unless they’re like Ann Romney and have servants and crap. But I should probably try to balance the blogging. So here’s the question. How do you blog? Do you blog every day? Once a week? Twice a week? Randomly? Do you keep a schedule? Do you remember where your children are, or who they are? Have you bathed lately, because I can smell you from here, I’m just sayin’.
I dunno, do you think you should be juggling the baby?
I’d appreciate the feedback on this, because I’m trying to figure out some way to balance at least one tiny part of my life but I’m unsure how to do it. I mean, I realize it’s up to me, but I’ve got Sinatra complex, and also ideas running about my head like mad, which makes it hard to make any decision, including what I’m going to have for supper. So tell me how you blog, and how you came to that decision, and how long you’ve been doing it, and how you paid off those WordPress people in order to get pressed. I really want to know. And then maybe I can figure out how I blog as well.
I don’t get it.
Where are their faces???
Also, wtf with the jerky-I’m-gonna-take-my-sweet-time crap going on while writing and editing your posts on WordPress lately? Huh? It’s annoying.
As Always,
Alice
My To-Do List
I wrote a post earlier about Time Management in which I proved that I know nothing about what that is. I’ve got a lot of stuff that needs doing, but I keep forgetting because of ADHD or possibly just laziness or – hey is that a meerkat?
He is SO sneaky.
Anyway, I decided I would type up a list and post it here in hopes that I will be held accountable by fellow bloggers who are also avoiding work by reading blogs. It’s a rock solid idea. Here we go.
To-Do
Try to accomplish something at work.
1. So far I have confused and misdirected several students and written this list. Score.
Laundry
Even Barbie has to do her own flipping laundry.
1. Sort that strange pile that I swear I saw move the other day.
2. Re-wash clothes that have been in the washer for three days
3. Re-dry clothes that have been wadded in the dryer for three days.
- One could use an iron for this, but that would ruin the lovely damage to the environment. Plus I would have to find the iron. Saying I even have one.
4. Wash and dry other clothes and try to actually remove them when they are done.
Dishes
Angry bean guy makes me want to leave my cup in the sink just because.
1. Ignore them until the pile is high and smells like death in hopes that either husband or the dish fairy will finally wash them.
Allergy Shot
1. Have the doctor purposefully inject me with stuff I’m allergic to in hopes of curing me of allergies by making arm swell up. Try not to die.
Pick up meds
Let’s see, so the pink pills go in that bottle, and the blue ones . . . wait, where did I put them? Eh, nevermind.
1. Pick up prescription from the pharmacy. Saying they finally get it in. And it’s the right one.
Call Doctor
1. Figure out what the heck is up with the medicine the pharmacy never got in. Be directed back to the pharmacy. And back to the doctor. Do the hokey pokey and turn self around.
Help child(ren) with homework.
1. Hope that 6th grade Math is not too advanced yet, because boy did I feel like a dork when I didn’t know where half the states were in 5th grade Geography last year.
The largest state in America? C-a-n-a-d-a.
Feed children
1. Most likely something with lots of nitrates that comes in a bag or a can and ends with “o’s”
Force children to bathe.
Force children to get out of the bath.
Hey, we’re clean.
Read to children
1. Children’s author, Rick Riordan, has double-crossed me by making his chapters progressively longer with each book.
Yeah, I saw you skip the last two pages, Mom.
Mess around on blog and facebook (I might as well put this in because you know I’ll be doing this for sure.)
The Regulars: Public Library
I often say my job would be so much easier if it weren’t for those pesky customers. Patrons: can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without . . . their stats. Seriously, most patrons are not a problem, and some are even fun to get to know. And boy do you get to know some of them. In every library, there are the regulars.
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| If you’ve never seen one of these, I hate you |
A lot of business at the public library comes from the very young, the very old, and the computer lab users. The very old are desperately seeking the past, whether in actual history or books on tape – you know, cassette tape. If you haven’t ever heard of these, I hate you. Anyway, old people also love to chortle when the electricity goes out and our card catalogs go down, as well as our ability to check out books. In their day, there were card catalogs with actual cards in them, that didn’t disappear with the pulling of a plug. If you don’t remember these either, see above.
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| Puppet Master |
The very young, and their harried mothers, are the public library’s next most popular customers. They come for story time, because that is fifteen or so minutes out of their day that the children’s attention is focused on something other than them. Even if it is the children’s librarian. At the library I once worked, we called her “The Puppet Master” for reasons that went beyond her job description. Every once in a while, you’d hear her talking to the puppets. Not for practice, just because.
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| How far can I get this into my mouth? |
Anyway, the children are a great help. They weed the shelves (by yanking out books and destroying them), they shelve (the books just about anywhere, backwards, and upside down), and help decorate (once they made a new carpet entirely out of books). Not that they are that interested in the books, because there are two computers in the childrens’ area. They aren’t connected to Internet, so no porn. Instead there’s Barney’s ABCs turned up to full ear blasting volume, which I will argue is even worse, at least for the people forced to shelve nearby. These people are newbie staff, and the children’s section is what we like to call “Boot Camp”.
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| Yeah, tell her you’re 25 and a professional wrestler! |
The only time the usual regulars change is during Summer Reading Time (a special hell that deserves it’s own blog entry) when the school children are released from their cages and set free on the library. So the normal library users often head for the hills for their own protection. For the “tween” generation, not quite old enough for a driver’s license, but old enough to make their parents want to strangle them with their I-Pods, the library is their playground. Lots of free fun. There’s the computers that they, with their endless youthful patience, will manage to hack despite our best security measures, downloading bizarre stuff that can take us weeks to get rid of. Yet these same little geniuses would leave their MySpace profiles up on the public computers detailing every last detail of their lives for their future stalkers. If they get bored with the computer, there’s always chair races up and down the library. Thankfully, these patrons are temporary.
There were others, like the guy who tried to convert us to Jeezus (he slammed his hand on the desk and said Jesus was there – I was like, on the Circ desk?) despite the fact that my coworker was already Catholic. And the woman who plowed her car into the side of the library. And the one who swore that was not her son’s library account with the overdue books, but the account of her sister’s son, who happened to have the same name, birthday, age, and residence as her son (the coincidences!). But these people were not, thankfully, regulars, just more of the spontaneous fun you encounter at the library.
aliceatwonderland 