Still recovering

This weekend my oldest son had a sleepover on Saturday and my younger son had a playdate on Sunday.  It was awful...for me.  I don't particularly enjoy having extra children around.  Ok, without their parents I don't enjoy it.  It's great to have friends of mine/ours over hanging out and our kids are playing together, that's fun.  At least I can try to ignore my own kids by having a conversation with someone else, and they can discipline their own kids.  But kids here by themselves, ugh.  They are always too loud and obnoxious for me, makes me feel like a grumpy, crotchety old lady. 

I don't like feeling like a grumpy, crochety old lady. 

Because of this I avoid these kind of get togethers as much as possible.  This weekend, it wasn't possible, one was asked of me by the mother and begged of me by the child...the other I thought was going to mean sending my kid off to someone else's house, a thought I was quite wrong about.  There was a lot of noise, and lot of pushing of the behavioral boundaries, and not a lot of sleep.  Which meant when all was said and done there was a lot of crying and whining and rule breaking.  So as much as I don't enjoy the actual event, the fallout is even worse.

So, I didn't get to post this weekend, and I'm too tired and have too much of a headache to come up with anything interesting to write today.  I guess I could just call this my daily dysfunction, being a parent who wants my kids to be sociably and have friends, but doesn't want those friends to come to my home.

Creepy cashiers

I don't like them, they make me...uncomfortable.

I have 3 redheads so I get my fair share of comments and conversations with random people walking around grocery stores or Target or wherever about their hair or how cute they are.  I am also a person that people tend to stop and ask things of.  "Have you ever used this?" "Can you reach that on the top shelf, I'm too short."  "What would you buy for a boy/girl turing X years old?"  Depending on my mood that day or how often I have to stop during one trip I generally don't mind all that too much.

But the creepy cashiers get to me.  The ones who start asking you questions or begin some personal story that doesn't seem relevant to the act of ringing up groceries or taking too much of an interest in your kids.  I guess it's because you're kind of stuck there with them at the mercy of how quickly they can move all of your purchases along the conveyor belt (while they are taking too much time to talk to you.)  You can't just walk away or ignore them or pretend like you have to hurry your kid to the bathroom.  Even the smiling and nodding your head like you care all the while thinking about what you're making for dinner or the latest American Idol episode is a bit more difficult when you are standing face to face with someone only 2 feet away.  There is a fine line between being friendly and being creepy people, stay on the right side of the line!

I had a creepy cashier today.  He kept smiling and waving at Katelyn, saying she was a silly girl.  She looked at him strangely, as well she should have.  My hand was near her and she thought I was going to tickle her so she told me I couldn't, and the guy says "Can I tickle you?"  Then she looked at him like 'you're a gross old man'...as well she should have.

I don't wanna!!!

Said in my best 2 year old tantrum throwing, whining, yelling, kicking, throwing things voice.

That is how I've felt every morning this week.  I decided that starting Monday I was going to get up early to exercise.  I was tired of having too many other things get in the way later in the morning and ending up skipping it day after day. 

The problem is, my kids wake up at the crack of dawn and start stomping or shouting or crying or asking for things practically as soon as their eyelids open.  Which means I have to be on them every 30 seconds for quiet because my husband doesn't go to bed at a normal time and doesn't appreciate noise when he is sleeping.  I do not appreciate having to do that AND workout at the same time.  So getting up early for me means getting up extra early so I can finish before the natives get restless.

Even though I decided that's what I wanted to do and it was my completely my choice...I am still not happy about it.  Not happy at all.  Every time the dang alarm goes off I am screaming in my head that I DO NOT WANT TO GET OUT OF BED!!  It doesn't matter that I won't be able to sleep anymore, I just don't want to get up.  Period.  I did on Monday and today, but Tuesday and Wednesday the toddler in my head won.

Weight loss self-sabotage...  If there is one dysfunction I wish I could get rid of for good it's that one!

One from last night

Today's dysfunction actually happened last night, however, I am still feeling the effects of it today so it counts.  Last night I hurt my wrist.  How did I do this?  By getting up off the couch. 

Yeah, I know you're jealous.  It takes a special kind of talent to hurt your arm in the process of standing up...and I?  Am so totally that talented!

It was a very strange series of events that I'm still not exactly sure how it all happened.  I went to stand up and put my hand on the arm of the couch.  For some reason I had my hand fist down instead of palm down.  As I was about halfway up my wrist suddenly gave out bending under and forcing a good portion of my weight onto it.  About a split second after that, I have no idea why, my right knee gave out, thus forcing almost all of my weight onto my bent under wrist.  I almost fell to the floor on my ass at that point, but somehow managed to catch myself enough on my injured arm to allow my working left leg to get under me so I could stand up.  It was one of those really fast, but happening in slow motion, couldn't do it again if you tried kind of things.

So now I have strained muscles from pretty much my knuckles to my elbow...all from standing up.

Reverse ingestion of the canine variety

I apologize to those of you with sensitive stomachs, if you're eating you may want to come back later.  My dysfunction of the day has to do with dog puke.  It totally skeeves me out.  Why is this a dysfunction?  Well, because I'm a mother of 3, I worked with toddlers and preschoolers as a career, and I spent a majority of my young years doing some sort of babysitting or other childcare.  I'm not a germophobe in the least.  Dirt, blood, snot, and other things coming from small human bodies really don't phase me much.  I've changed a lot of diapers in my life...A LOT.  I used cloth diapers on my daughter where you have no choice but to get rid of the poo instead of wrapping it up and forgetting about it like most do.  I have a son who projectile vomitted entire feedings, several times a day, for months.  Not that I enjoy cleaning any of these things up, quite the opposite, however they don't gross me out beyond belief.  And don't forget I am a doula, birth is quite messy and that doesn't bother me in the least. 

But the dog is another story.  I know it's kinda the same thing, but yet, it is totally not the same thing.  I hate finding dog puke...because that means I have to clean it up.  Sometimes (just a few times, really) I've pretended I didn't see it and hope that my husband notices soon enough so that HE can clean it up.  (And when he doesn't it really irritates me because then I have to.)  When I'm forced to clean it myself I have to use 5 times the amount of paper towels necessary because I don't want any chance of it touching my skin.  And even if none does I have to scrub my hands like I'm preparing for surgery.  About 2 weeks ago I threw away a kids book that she had puked on because there was just no way to get it clean enough that it would be ok for anyone to ever touch it again.

This morning I was laid down on my bed after suddenly feeling overwhelmingly tired.  K played in my room while I lay there in and out of sleep for about a half hour.  Then I moved my foot and felt something wet.  Um, WHAT IS THAT?  I hoped as much as one can hope that someone left a wet towel on the bed, even though I had just been staring at the bed for a while folding clothes and putting them away and knew there was no chance of that.  Grudgingly I get up and find under the blanket a wonderful gift from the dog.  She refuses to jump on the bed by herself, so she must have done it sometime this morning after I got out of bed but before C got up.  So now not only am I grossed out because my foot touched dog puke and I have to clean it up, but now I have even more laundry to do and I'm cursing my husband's ability to sleep like the dead.

For the record, I'm not a fan of what comes out the other end either.  When I take her for a walk and have to clean THAT up, I feel dirty until I can get home and scrub my hands.  If there is no trash nearby and I have to carry the bag for a long time, it really grosses me out.  I should start carrying hand sanitizer.

I promise to try and make the next one something less disgusting.

I haven't disappeared

Despite the fact that I haven't posted in over 4 months, I am still around.  What have I been up to?  Taking the boys back and forth to school, keeping up with their homework, walking the dog, making dinner (or lunch, breakfast, whatever), laundry...just the usual stuff.  I also decided to delve back into the doula world and re-took a training class and did a bunch of stuff to get my business back up and running.  Although my initial excitement and forward momentum is pretty much gone.  Last time I had some client contacts right away and it was easier to get started.  This time I don't have that, and I have more work (and children) at home and less energy in me to get out of the house to do anything to help promote myself.  So I'm struggling with myself over feeling like I finally know what I'd like to do with my life, but not having the self-confidence to actually do it.

Anyway...

I've been wanting to get back into blogging for a while now, but it just seems like any time I sit down to write a post I am so bored by myself I fall asleep get halfway through and think "this is just stupid, nobody will want to read that"...and so I hit delete.

Last week, though, I did have some inspiration that came to me via the Pioneer Woman, in this post of hers.  It's about some products from a company called Knock, Knock.  They have a journal that I LOVED the cover of, it's funny stuff.  If you don't want to click on the link this is what it says ...

"A journal for chronicling my immeasurably fascinating dysfunctions, neuroses, emotions, inner children, moments of shame and doubt, projection, self-loathing, misanthropy, and completely normal insanity, because the only difference between me and the rest of the population is that I acknowledge how crazy I am and they're all in mind-numbing denial." 

I decided that their cover description was so perfect I'm going to attempt to post a "Daily Dysfuntion".  I may even order the journal to get some more inspiration from the quotes and whatnot.  I'll start tomorrow, because my daily dysfuntion for pretty much everyday today is - procrastination!  I may not be good at many things, but I am an expert at procrastinating!

Happy 2010! It's that time again...

You know what time...when I sit here and write out a long, rambling post about goals (but not resolutions, gave up on that a few years ago) for the new year. What I want to accomplish and in which ways it's not likely to happen.

But, I'm not gonna do it this year. Not because I utterly fail every year. In fact, I did accomplish some of the things on my list last year, to some extent. Then again, I purposely set my expectations low so that if I did anything at all I would have met my resolution. (So technically I was a total non-resolution rock star last year.)


This year I'm not doing it because frankly I'm not feeling inspired. At all. Its always the same thing, ya know, every. dang. year. Lose weight, keep my house cleaner, ignore my kids less, blah, blah, blah. It's never anything new and I'm totally bored with the same old thing.

So next January I can sit back and see that I've accomplished nothing....and I won't have to care, not one little bit!!!