aw man

You ever have a bunch of busy days where you don’t see much of the inside of your home then you come home at night to piles of stuff everywhere and AAAAAAAAAHHHHH you end up just taking a shower and watching music videos on youtube and…

ug.

I have SO MUCH STUFF TO DO.  I can’t!! I just can’t!  I don’t know how to find my kitchen underneath the things that my parents brought and all of the stuff I have been shuffling around.  I guess we are not going away for a few days.  I feel like I have not been home in forever!  Well, maybe we will go away if I can get 1,000 things accomplished before tomorrow noon.  That seems unlikely.

I should concentrate on picking up and organizing and running and I DON’T KNOW.

There was no date.  That did not happen.  The two of us can never leave the house alone.  I guess we can lie here in front of my computer and look at horrible pictures from multiple conflicts and feel more miserable than any movie could manage to make us feel.  That is what we did.

I am getting another glass of wine.  I was just listening to this:

I wish a lot of stuff was as good as U2 “War” was when I was young.   Few have ever measured up.
Happy New Year.

new week’s resolutions

Forget about trying to think about what I need to work on in the next year.  I have a lot on my plate this week!  My wallet/bags/pockets/books/drawers are all littered with little pieces of paper containing lists of things I have to do and have not done. 

I resolve:

-to figure out a way to feel as happy as I am trying to act around my mom.  For a while now I have been given up on any sort of defending myself or expressing my honest opinions. Also, I noticed a terrible trend over the years: when two or more members of my immediate family are in the same room I become the subject of all jokes.  My mom is sick and tired and I just never feel like any argument is worth it anymore.  I suppose they can laugh at my expense all they want if it makes them happy.  I just have to learn how to not get so annoyed?

- to send some POST holiday cards.  Some people in particular were in my thoughts, and though I mentally planned out what I was going to say to them nothing was ever written and posted.  Oops. 

-to fix up the haircut I gave my son this morning.  I was running around snipping off one little bit at a time and while it seems to be an improvement on the grown-out mop he had this morning (that I was getting fond of, actually) I can see more little spots that need work the more I look. 

-to admit to the doctor during out annual well-child visit that my perfect little angel is still having some potty issues.  I take accusations personally.  I didn’t take it very well when  a childless friend from high school offered me unsolicited advice in the grocery store… but I think the doctor will be a little more tactful.

-to sleep tomorrow even if it is nice outside… even if my husband seems to want me to be awake…. even if my phone rings or I have interesting emails to answer.  I need some sleep.  It is all I can think about at this present moment!

-to pay off our dead and forgotten car with all of the proceeds from Christmas.  Stupid piece of junk! We hate you!!!!

-to plan something really good for the time off that we were surprised to learn we have off towards the end of the week.  What the heck do we do?  We talked about leaving town briefly… I just don’t know!  Can we really just read books and go out once in a while to get coffee?  Are people allowed to do that?  I feel strange about that.

-to TRY TO GO ON  A DATE WITH MY HUSBAND.  My parents will be around so I see no reason why they cannot watch my son while we go catch Slumdog Millionaire.  I am tying this knowing full well that we will not see the movie this week because this is how it is for us.  They will offer but the plan will be too complicated to execute.  It will involve some time pinch or a degree of child wrangling that will make it more trouble than it is worth and we will end up going home and pretending that we didn’t really want to go out anyway.   I don’t know anyone who has a more difficult time leaving the house for grown-up time than us. 

-to finish our gifts to my in-laws.  I am not the ball-dropper.  One cannot be the dropper of the ball if it is technically not in one’s court, right?  My family’s stuff is all set.

-to mend broken crap like the rip in our comforter that my husband has been complaining about each night as I am falling asleep.  I know this will not get done.  I don’t have enough resolve to sit and get into that.  I should, though.

-to finish at least one of the three books I am reading at once.

I am sure this was all very dull to read.  I am tired.  Sorry.

they are stranger than i remembered!

I would have never thought I would see any of these things again.   We only received three channels when I was a kid.  Thanks to the CBC (and TVO shows it aired in the wee hours), and PBS we did get an interesting array of programming.  I never, ever hear people talking about these shows!  Here: Have a look!!  I love youtube.  I do!

The Hilarious House of Frightenstein: (My brother and I used to get up really early and tune this show in before my parents were hip to the fact that it even existed)

Parlez-Moi:

Blue Rainbow:

Magic Shadows:

Telefrancais:

The Write Channel:

Think About:

The Little Prince:

Read All About It:

Tales of the Wizard of Oz:

The New Adventures of Pinocchio:

and this- not so obscure, but it gave me nightmares for a month!  I only found the first part:

post 1: nice, nice holiday

We played outdoors for a very, very long time.

We ate lots of yummy food.

We cuddled up and watched my son watching “Star Wars” for the first time.

The gifts were not very big this year but we had a lovely day.  Now I am trying to figure out how I can get someone to sit so my husband and I can watch Slumdog Millionaire next week.  I really want to see that movie.

no longer christmas eve, it is now christmas (a list, for some reason)

So I am work and it was Christmas Eve, it is now officially Christmas.  It feels a little weird.  I will just bullet through it!

-I guess this is one of the most sentimental nights of the year.  I am reminding myself that if I were at home right now and not at work my husband and son would remain sound asleep.  I would be either sleeping or trying to sleep.  Nothing to be sad about, right?

-Something completely unrelated to Christmas but slightly related to a theme that ties in for me (bear with me) I was just looking at photographs of a friend doing Hajj.  Seeing him there looking so different than he does when I usually see him: so happy and… well, also serious…. it sort of left me in awe of that sort of experience. My husband read to my son from Luke tonight at bedtime to sort of give him the story of Christmas (even though I am pretty sure he thought he was quoting Linus) and I was remembering what it felt like to hear that as a child and how much more profound an effect it all had on me.  It made me realize how hard it is to grow up and become jaded and find yourself looking for holes in everything.  I can see how the opposite can be beneficial. 

-I have started to think about New Year’s resolutions.  I don’t really put much hope in a new year, but this year seems very different.  2008 should end for so many reasons: deaths, Bush, economy, even the weather.  Not that anything will magically be better, but sometimes a new label is helpful, right?  I mean, an entire generation of my family disappeared in the past year.  That leaves my parents! I mean, my parents’ tier of the family is the top tier.  That is horrifying. 

-How did I raise my son to be so, uhm, not materialistic?  I don’t like to pat myself on the back… I mean, one could bring up the potty issues or his hatred of some things that other kids love but I am a little proud of how he just sort of looks at presents with caution, even after being warned for weeks.

-Indian take-out is yummy.  We are living on it until the holiday is over. I can smell the spices on my skin!

-I think 2009 should be the year we finally get a honeymoon in.  I am trying to decide between Quebec City or Chicago.  Maybe we will just take a train to Philadelphia and revisit how it all began… the time it began for good.

-My son is watching all of the Star Wars movies tomorrow.  That is what we are doing on Christmas.  If I am a bad mother you can let me know.  I think it is a pretty incredible way to spend Christmas, though. 

-We will also be having another bowling tournament in the living room.  The scores are surprisingly close.  You would think that there would be more disparity.

I don’t really know where I am going with all of this.  I suppose I just wanted to be doing something to commemorate the fact that I am sitting here at 2 a.m. listening to piped in music (Edie Brickell “Good Times, Bad Times”- honestly!).

Have a nice Christmas, if that is what it is that you do.

have a nice holiday

It has been snowy.

I really planned to make an actual entry today but I feel like napping.  I had better nap since I decided to work on Christmas Eve after celebrating Christmas Eve.  After working Christmas Eve I plan to participate in our holiday movie marathon (showing the child Star Wars, etc), eat Indian take- out leftovers and pretty much just lie around.  Maybe its not the most festive way to spend a day but we are pretty happy about it.

After this week is over it will be time to start anticipating a new year… does that even make sense? Can life be divided into cohesive chunks of 365 days?  I wonder….

Back to changing smoke alarm batteries.  I hear one chirping somewhere!!!

uhm, it snowed

This weekend was like a strange dream.  Not a good dream, not a bad dream, just a strange dream.  I am pretty sure that I was dreaming while awake.  I certainly taxed myself (sleepwise beyond the usual.  5.5 hours of sleep in 63 hours!  That is not a good reacord.  I have learned a valuable lesson.  Water and water alone.  No more caffeine ups and wine downs…. or energy drinks… GAH!!!

So over a foot of snow fell last night.  Add that to the 6+ inches that fell Friday night.  Happy Solstice, right? It is definitely winter now.   I was a bit down about it last night, but I was a bit down about everything last night!  Every single thing seemed bigger than life.  I woke up this morning and it seemed so, uhm, pretty?  Yes.  I am all excited to go for a walk with my son in an hour and show him snow over his head for possibly the first time.  We will walk around and see all of the miraculous white stuff and then we will get hot chocolate somewhere and look for a mailbox to mail our bills…  Today will be fine.  It is so easy to be in a good mood when my husband dealt with retrieving the car from the public garage at 5a.m.  Thanks, man.

I can’t remember much about the last couple of days other than tossing and turning and picking random arguments that didn’t really pan out.  I also felt like going to the beach (a little out of season) and started dreading Christmas, and ate too much junkie food, and made terrible conversation, and AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE.

It is over.  Time to get into the Christmas thing.  I think it will happen for me this year.  I am going to make peppermint bark (anyone have a good recipe?), clean and organize, keep the lighting all Christmas-y and keep listening to this song until I am really in it:)

I think I will put up a picture post tomorrow.

“she swallowed the spider to catch the fly…”

ug.

So I can’t remember what got the ball rolling.  All I need to remember (and I need to remember this often) is this: when I drink water and eat my meals light and on time and get the proper amount of sleep….  UG.

So I think I had an energy drink to get through one day then some naproxin sodium to manage a little girl-type pain and then took an acid reducer to get rid of the stomach pain caused the pain reliever… then I had to sleep or else there would be NO CHANCE for sleep so I had a little nip of wine but woke up groggy and proceeded to have another energy drink so I could drive in a snowstorm… I shoveled and did laundry all night in intervals with caffeine on a fairly regular basis and came home and tried to sleep but had another glass of wine, slept fitfully, woke up, had more caffeine…. AND WHEW.  HERE I AM.  I can’t tell if I am tired or not.  I can’t tell if I am hungry or full!!! All I know is that I am very, very cold.  Stupid cold weather!

So.

Other than the try-to-sleep-try-to-stay-awake continuum it has been a weird day.  I was run off of the road by a dump truck this morning.  The roads were very snowy and this land straddling truck either could not or would not slow down leaving me no choice but to drive off the road or run a light (and sideswipe someone) (or get hit from behind by a giant red dump truck).  Luckily it was a controlled drive off of the road and I got on again fairly easily without the use of my left hand that was otherwise occupied (making angry gestures at the trucker).

When I got home I got on my husband’s pda, thus the wrong facebook account, and read yet another email from this woman he went to law school with.  She was pretty much begging him to email her and asking outright why he was not really into her little flirty conversations (all said with as much innuendo as possible, right?).  I kept my cool about it and just calmly mentioned to him that I had seen the email.  He wrote a kind of scathing response to her that made me feel better and worse at the same time.  I mean, I don’t dig the fact that she in no way respects the fact that he is married and I really don’t understand what she gets out of harassing him all of the time, but the stuff he wrote seemed sort of harsh… oh well.  I guess that is what you get for being so bold, right?

I won’t even get into my personal internet issues of the day.  All I will say is this: how on earth would a person get a hold of stuffed animals that I tossed out?  I can’t remember what I did with them but I have a very thorough case of the creeps right now and the worst sneaking suspicion that I stupidly overlooked something for a very, very, very long time.  It is hard to keep a good grasp on what goes on around me with such a limitted point of view.  Who has the capacity to be a little more omniscient and aware?  Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy…. some things would make great blog entries…. blog entries that are too creepy to write!

Speeking of creepy, my skin feels a little crawly!  I can’t wait to get home and under my quilts. A huge storm is supposed to hit- a great day to de-tox from the (perfectly legal) up and down aids and (non-addictive) pain relievers.  Never again!

This entry was written in the wee hours of the a.m. on little sleep. Please don’t judge it too harshly.

snowstorm driving

 The drive to work was crazy!  A volvo wagon spun out of control about 15 feet from my car!  I lost a shoe on my way in and I cannot find it. 

I can’t wait to sleep tomorrow.  It will be the most wonderful feeling ever.  The only way it could be better is if I somehow found a way to hypnotize the husband and son and make them go to bed at 1p.m. to cuddle with me.  That would be nice. 

My nose is running.

30 eggs worth of deviled eggs

and I think my husband can eat them as fast as I make them.  I need them for the Christmas party at work tomorrow!

Did anyone notice that I used “shortcake” instead of “shortbread” in the title of that blog entry two weeks ago?  Sad!! I need more sleep sometimes!
I have Christmas and then ‘after Christmas Christmas’ coming up.

I think I have bought all gifts.  Now we have to work on the stuff that we are making for certain family members (well, sort of making) and…hmmm.

I boiled a lot of eggs today.  I boiled them and cut them in half and spooned out the yolks and…

I am tired.

One egg didn’t have a yolk!  I felt sad for it.  I made a little hole in it and filled it anyway.  See?  See how nice I am?