This morning on the way to school, Ethan being chatty as always, inquired as to what road we were on. I usually give him a running narrative on what road we’re on, which way we’re going to turn and onto what road. He informs me to give him more information on occassion, usually by pointing out roads we’re passing and demanding, “What is THAT road mommy?” So this morning went like this:

“What road are we on now, Mommy?”

“We’re on Sutter Rd. We just left Woodwin Drive, and turned right onto Sutter Road.”

“I like Sutter Road. It’s my favorite. But I don’t like *that* road, Mommy.” (pointing at some side road)

“Ahhh.” (this is my standard response instead of saying, ‘I have no response to that.’) “Now we’re turning left onto Planbee Lane.”

“I like Planbee. It’s on the way to my school!”

“Yes, your school is on this road.”

“This road is soft Mommy.”

“Soft?” (‘Ahhh.’ didn’t seem to apply here. More info was needed.)

“Yes. It’s soft.”

“I don’t think so, I think it’s very hard.”

“When we stop, let’s feel it, Mommy.”

“Good idea.”

We pulled into his school and I dutifully crouched down and beckoned him down too. “See? It’s hard.”

He shakes his head and points out to the street. I can’t pull one over on him. He knows this isn’t the road.

“NO OUT THERE! We need to feel THAT ROAD. I think it’s soft.”

I promised him on the way home, we’d feel that road. I’ll keep you updated on it’s resistance to permanent deformation.

Hi! I have limited laptop battery life, so I’m just going to get right to it.

After my Weight Watchers meeting on Saturday morning, I stopped by Toys R Us to do some christmas shopping for Ethan and Jocelyn.

I thought I was doing pretty well.

Until I looked into my cart and realized that EVERYTHING was for Ethan. A little garage thingee with matchbox cars (the cars will go zooming down the ramps from the top level all the way down to the bottom. Wheeeee!), a Bob the Builder lego set (it got vetoed later), a Geotrax set. To my credit, Jocelyn is going to get a big ticket item in the form of a play kitchen, and I had the ticket for that one in the cart. But still! I just naturally gravitated toward all the boy car train truck toys and had NOTHING in there for Jocelyn. So I made another round of the store, this time keeping my eye out specifically for Jocelyn. After picking up a cute JoJo doll, I seriously was still coming up empty. The baby toys were really too young for her, and the little girl toys were too old. The amount of pink in the little girl section is just frightening. It nearly makes one need a pepto bismol, except that THOSE ARE ALSO PINK. You just can’t escape it. I really dislike pink. I’m good with purple, but pink should go crawl under a rock and die. Especially that Barbie doll package pink. Shudder.

Now, I know that Jocelyn also loves trains and trucks etc. Just an hour ago, she threw a FIT when Ethan wouldn’t let her play with HIS dump truck. She was very sad. Ethan does this thing where he gets a flashlight and goes “choo-choo”ing around the main level, sometimes with Jocelyn, Mommy or Daddy tailing along behind him as freight cars. Jocelyn LOVES this game, loves pretending to be a train. So I know that if I were to buy her the more boy-type toys, she would be totally in heaven with that. But that isn’t even the point. I used to be a girl! I totally had girlie toys! I was a Barbie queen, I loved my cabbage patch dolls, and anything that had “unicorn” or “pegasus” in the title I was totally enamored with. So WHEN DID I LOSE THE ABILITY TO SHOP FOR GIRL TOYS FOR MY DAUGHTER?

The answer is sad. I’ve never HAD the ability!! This is the first year that she’s a little girl, rather than a baby girl. Baby girls and baby boys can totally get the same sort of toys. Rattles, toy phones, activity tables, you name it, it’s unisex. So now I am facing my own ineptitude for the first time. I called James and ran down the current present tally, and lamented my lack of toy girliness. He reminded me that she had shown some interest in a My Little Pony once, and I rushed to the display and picked some of those out. Shew. Saved… At least until NEXT TIME! I guess it will be easier once she can really tell us what she wants, as well. Ethan makes no bones about what he wants. In fact, I made the mistake of leaving him in the same car WITH THE TOYS R US TOY EXTRAVAGANZA BROCHURE in it. He latched onto it Saturday and lost himself in it’s pages. We forgot to throw it away after getting home from the movies last night, so today we had to watch consumerism latch onto our boy and suck out his life essence.

I know I’m making a bigger deal out of this than I should, because (well, it’s kind of fun to make a big deal, but also,) I DO remember in MY childhood spending many a happy hour gazing over the Sears Christmas Catalog, folding back the corner of the pages that had the toys I HAD TO HAVE OR DIE AND THEREFORE PESTERED MY PARENTS TO NO END. Ahhh… childhood. *happy sigh*

So I think we’re pretty set for Christmas now, which is good because there’s no way I am going to venture into a mall or a store, let along a toy store after Thanksgiving. Anything else we need, well, that’s what the internet is for.

Saturday morning weigh-in:

So. Up like, 2/10s of a pound on my Saturday morning weigh-in.

scream.

Serves me right for dying and going to heaven at Perfect Pita.

I am really heading into a bad time of year. Thanksgiving is this week, for which we’re just staying at home and doing our own thing. Christmas holidays are coming as well, and good food always goes hand in hand during the holidays. This is when, last year, I really just tossed in the towel and lost all the success I had gained during the summer, and I really don’t want to do that again. Honestly, it’s clear to me that I have not really “committed” to this process yet. I want to kind of sail through it, fudge a lot, and still lose weight. when I called James (during the TRU phone call) and told him about my weigh-in, I said something like, “It’s really just time to buckle down, and” blah blah blah. To which he said, “You say that every week.” I SO wanted to bite his head off, but IT IS TRUE. I say that EVERY WEEK. I have NOT buckled down, and it is showing up on the scale.

In fact, I have to say, if it weren’t for this blog, I think I probalby would have been doing even worse than I am. Something about writing down all these things in my head, that normally would stay in my head, makes it so much clearer to me. Now, I really don’t want this space to just be all about this aspect of my life, but at the same time, I think I need to divulge more details in order to keep myself honest. I personally, don’t find that sort of a blog all that interesting, so I think I’ll just mull it over for a while before I start informing the Internet what I had for breakfast. I mean, how boring is that. I guess we’ll see.

I have 6 weeks until New Years, so I need to lose a little over 3 lbs a week in order to make my new years goal. Just a little perspective for me.

Enough of this. Blech.

So last night we went to dinner and Harry Potter with some friends. It was kind of amusing how at dinner, we kind of fell into boy conversation and girl conversation. I can’t remember what the girl conversation was, but the boys were going on about work. I’m not complaining or anything, I think they got bored with what we were discussing, but I just thought it was funny (amusing funny, not weird funny).

Harry Potter was good, but I must say and James emphatically agrees, that the new (yes I realize he’s not that new now, but to me, he’ll always be the new) Dumbledore just isn’t right. Oh how my heart longs for the REAL DUMBLEDORE. There were several scenes that just didn’t seem right, didn’t seem to be the way that Dumbledore really would act / react. I don’t blame the actor, if anything, that would be a director’s choice, and it just wasn’t right.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, but it seemed to be lacking. I was trying to explain this to James on the way home, and this was the best analogy I could come up with.

I haven’t had one of these dreams in a long time, but have you ever had a dream about flying? I have, and they always started the same way. I would always trip, and in a very Douglas Adams sort of way, miss the ground, and start flying. The most vivid one I remember, I had in grade school, and had it several times. I am in a huge stadium, and am walking down the very steep stairs. No hand railings and it is very crowded. Well, someone bumps me from behind, and in order to not trip and fall down this huge flight of stadium stairs, I start running down the stairs. I go faster, and faster and I can’t stop, even when I get to the bottom, and suddenly I’m falling over the edge to the field below, when instead of hitting the ground, I just zoom by it and am flying. I usually am aware of the fact I’m dreaming now, and unlike some people, I usually never “stay” in a dream or affect how it goes (only very rarely, and they’re usually sex dreams. Ahem.) So it’s usually only a few minutes of ecstatic flying around, effortlessly and powered by my own mind, before I wake up. And I always just want to cry, because the experience of flying is so amazing, so thrilling, so ________, because new words need to be invented just to express how incredible it is, and it’s over. I’m back in real life, and there’s no flying. No flying! NO FLYING IN BASEBALL!

Well, that is how the world of Harry Potter feels to me. When I’m reading the books, there IS magic. There ARE wizards and witches, flying and quidditch, house elves and cleaning up spells (yeah like HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE), and then when I stop, I want to cry, because the magical fiction is just that: Fiction. Well, in my Harry Potter movie-going, that is how my grading criteria works. If it makes me thrill to my toes, and want to BE in this magical place, then it get’s my big thumbs up. It’s getting harder and harder to acheive this, because let’s face it, there’s a lot of stuff to cram into these movies.

So yes, I enjoyed it. And they had me for parts of the movie. But not for all of it. As always, the books are better (a universal truth? probably).

So you are all getting lucky in the fact that my laptop battery is about to run out. And so I must end this post! Adieu! And I hope there aren’t too many typos!

Tonight is Bunko night. Am I at Bunko night, you ask? No, I answer, I am not.

While bunko is a ton of fun, it just always seems that it goes about an hour after I’m ready to call it a night. This week I’ve been working on a project at work that had to be completed (ish, it’s still in QA) by today. Last night I was up til 12:30pm. I just felt like vegging out at home tonight, so I called a friend to sub for me at Bunko.

Tomorrow James and I are going out with another couple to have dinner at Coastal Flats and then see the new Harry Potter thrillah. The sitter comes at 6pm. Oooh I can’t wait. It’s going to be nice to go out by ourselves. Hopefully we can make this an at least once a month type dealio.

About two weeks ago, Jocelyn was throwing herself on the floor in a tantrum at every little thing that didn’t go her way. This week, it’s been an about face. SO happy, so delighted, so tickled to see you! and you! and that thing over there! and the kitty! KITTY! THOMAS! Pat! Pat! Pat! (patting her hands against her chubby little knees)

Last night was a school night for James, so it was me and the kids. I made some quick PBJs for dinner and after they’d eaten we went upstairs. We (OK, more like I) cleaned up their bedrooms and then I vacuumed them and the hallway. Took about 20 minutes, and then the three of us hung out in Ethan’s room and played with his train table. He got it for Christmas last year and while he played with it a lot, it seemed to come as the Whole! Train! Excitement! was coming down off the initial high. It also didn’t help that his little sister wasn’t even 1 at that point, and would come to the table and destroy whatever he built. So we moved it into his room, but honestly, he doesn’t play in his room that often. The last month or two though, we’ve come into his room and there’ll be something super cute set up. Like, the train tracks will be laid out in a simple circle or figure eight, but he’ll have put one of his books, opened like an upside down V, over the tracks for a home-made tunnel/mountain.

So we were in his room last night and I dug into my brain and actually remembered how to set up the tracks the way they were made to go (with only several pieces left over!) (it’s been a while!). The really amazing part was the realization that Jocelyn is now the right age to be able to play with them. She doesn’t immediately grab the tracks and fling them everywhere, instead she takes a train and tries to run it around the track, complete with “choo choo!” noises. The only trouble we had was when she took some of Ethan’s train (he had all 2,358 train cars hooked up to his engine. He could spare them.)

Sometimes it’s interesting to consider how having children has changed us. Or even just changed me. I like to think that there are some universal changes that happen to ALL parents, everywhere. Parents of the Internet, correct me if I’m wrong, but from those I’ve talked to, I think I’m right:

• all babies and toddlers seem cuter than they did before parenthood struck.This is an important one, because it actually does not take into account whether said child is actually BEING cute. They could be throwing a major tantrum in aisle nine of the grocery store, but they will still be cute. Instead of the feelings of annoyance and frustration, there’s a pang of empathy for the parent, commiseration, and even in the kid’s channeling of Satan Himself, the kid will still be cute. Pre parenthood, one thinks, “They should just drown these creatures so the rest of us can shop in peace.” Post-parenthood, one can’t help but think that the way their lower juts out and the chin trembles just before they launch into the new fit of bawling, and really, they are just pretty cute.
• stories, programs, commercials, snippets from the news, ANYTHING involving children in any sort of danger or trouble cannot be tolerated. This one may be just for mothers, I didn’t see james bawl during the CSI that had the baby die from being left in a car in 100 degree heat. that really happened recently here in the DC area. I cried in my car when I heard it. Sure, I was sad to hear these things before I became a mother, but now, it is heart breaking that such abominations can come to pass.

I’m tired of this list, so I think I’ll stop. But non-parents be forewarned. You baby doesn’t arrive with the warning label: “Having me will and probably already has altered the way you experience anything to do with children.” So I just consider it my act of public service for the day.

OK, a bit scattered of a post, but I’m a scattered kind of gal.

another list for you:

Things Ethan/Jocelyn have done recently that made me blink in surprise and/or smile:

• gotten up out of bed to turn off his closet light*
• informed me the next morning, when I asked him if he turned off his closet light, “Yes Mommy, I didn’t want to waste e-lim-ni-city (electricity) (!!!!! can you beleive he said this? the boy does listen after all!)
• Run after Jocelyn screaming, “I’m going to GET YOU!” while she ran away, screaming in delight
• When James brought some paper towels to the table at the end of dinnertime, said, “Hands, daddy!” and reached out, took the paper towels, and started to “wipe” her hands
• Jocelyn likes to hide behind the rocking chair in her room. It’s like a little ritual. I get her diaper and jammies on, she expresses her delight on having jammies on, “JAMMIES!!!!” and then as I stand up and get her story, she runs behind the chair and WAITS there until I say, “Where’s Jocelyn? Where could she be?” and then she runs out and grins at me, sparkling with excitement from head to toe.
• Sat on the couch where the cat’s tail drooped down from where she was sleeping. Brought her face closer and closer to the fuzzy tail, and then screeched with glee as the tail twitching from said cat tickled her face. Rinse, Repeat, – for 5 minutes.

* This summer we finally got him out of the habit of sleeping with his OVERHEAD light on. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth (us and him) and the closet light stayed on, always, to keep any boogie monsters away (not that I would ever utter such a phrase and put it in his head. we’d never hear the end of it)

I need some tea. I think I’ll go get some.

I just looked up what day of the week I was born on, so that I could see what I am according to the nursery rhyme:

Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go,
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child must work for a living,
But the child that’s born on the Sabbath day,
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

I was born on Friday, and thus, I am loving and giving. Am I loving and giving? It’d be nice if I actually am. I’m glad I’m not cursed with being full of woe, just because of the day of the week I was born on. Ethan was *holds fingers close together* this close to being born on Wednesday. I held out for the doctor that I wanted though.

It’s been a busy week this week, and so I apologize for not updating on the events of the weekend. I really should do that sort of thing pronto, because as the week wears on, the events lose their prominence and the more recent items are more interesting to talk about.

Weight Watchers weigh-in was good: down 3.4 lbs (CURSE YOU TENTH OF A POUND!) I look at the week I’m having and wonder if I’ll have another up week on Saturday. So far, I’ve been like a yo-yo each week, up one, down the next, a step back, a step and a half forward. I could get so much further if I’d just COMMIT already and quit fudging stuff during the week. What have I fudged this week? Well, at my little retro “come sit in my living room and buy stuff” party I had some of the yummy apple nut ring as well as some yummy chips and dip. The dip that I made, with full fat mayo and sour cream. You’d think I’d know better. But I think that all was OK, I allow myself these little snafus on the weekend, especially since I have ALL week to be good. But yesterday, I went into DC for some training and stopped in at The Perfect Pita. OOOoooohhh so yummy. I highly recommend it. I had the hummus chicken pita. It’s probably very healthy, but come on, we all know you make hummus with like a cup of olive oil. At least the garbanzo beans are packed with tons of fibre and protein. After my training was over, I stopped by and got another hummus chicken pita for dinner, and a container of their hummus and 4 pitas. Ethan had a pita on the way home, and he loved it. (BTW, Whole Foods sells Perfect Pita’s pitabread. Just FYI. It’s sold under the Whole Foods label.)

So anyway. Not the best week so far, but I’m working on it. I need to drink more milk (or at least take calcium supplements) eat more veggies, and drink more water. I have Bunko on Friday night, and I’m planning on eating a nice dinner beforehand, and sticking to water for the night. I DON’T WANT TO CONTINUE THE TREND AND HAVE A GAIN ON SATURDAY!

Ahem.

So, how did the Pampered Chef party go you wonder? Well, it went pretty well, I think! Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and not feel obligated to buy something which is what I worry about the most, along with the whole “i have no decorating genes and my house sucks” complex. Our friend Chris read my blog and he did take a careful look around and noticed a few little display-y spots/areas and asked, “You did this just for this, didn’t you?” The answer was yes, for one, but no, the other one had been done earlier. You just couldn’t see it for all the crap that we’d piled in front of it. I think mostly, if we could just keep our surfaces clean, we’d be doing all right. James is very good at that – me, not so much.

We let Ethan skip naptime and stay downstairs for the demonstration and he did remarkably well, considering he hasn’t had 3.5 years of us trying to make him sit still in church to fall back on. I think if we suddenly did become church goers (it’s a hypothetic people, work with me here) he’d probably do all right. Jocelyn I’m sure would escape from our clutches in church and wander around the chapel and charm the pants off of everyone so no one would mind her anyway. JUST LIKE HER MOMMY DID.

So work seems intent on throwing me weird slants lately. I have been here about a month now, and it was just the other day that I was thinking that it was refreshingly free of weird office politics and communication strangeness when BAM!!! I got hit upside the head with a rather startling one-liner email. It wasn’t major, but it did make me blink at it for a few seconds. Oh well. I do like my job quite a bit, and I could see myself staying here a long while. That’d be a nice change! I guess you can never really escape office weirdness. You just have to deal with it. I could probably adjust my attitude a bit as well, which I will be trying to do.

Sorry this post had no snappy final paragraph that would sum everything up in a way that is super funny and would make you laugh, or introspective/cute that would make you sigh with melancholia.

Puppies. They’re cute.

Now you can sigh.

I wasn’t suffering from the “MUNDAYS” or anything, in fact, I actually was feeling pretty good. Until I went to drop Ethan off at his pre-school, and he didn’t want to go into his classroom.

When I went into his room this morning to wake him up, he didn’t get up right away (he usually does). I had to go in a second time and turn his light on and make sure he was getting up. He is usually very excited to get out of bed, visit the bathroom and get dressed all by himself (a recent accomplishment is the ability to snap his own jeans, which at one point, he showed to each person in turn at yesterday’s soiree). So I was a little worried that something was wrong, but he seemed fine and his usual boisterous self after he got over the initial sleepiness. He didn’t seem to be that hungry though, and only ate about 1/4 of his morning bagel. He seemed fine walking in to school, but when we got to the actual door to his class, he wouldn’t walk in. I pulled/carried him in, and sat with him in a snuggle, but I didn’t want to draw out the inevitable departure. He didn’t bawl, but there was a few tears shed. When I left, he had gotten out his naptime blanket and was huddled up in it, ignoring his teacher’s attempts to engage him.

My morning commute was lengthened due to an accident that blocked one lane of traffic. I didn’t get in until 8:30, a half hour later than usual. I think of this as an additional half hour that I worried about my poor little son, berated myself for being a bad mother who is working instead of staying home with him and his sister, and decided that I was ruining his life forever. I got to work and promptly called his school (I had forgotten my cell phone, or I’d have called on the drive in) to hear that he was doing fine.

I always say that I wish my kids would just stay this age forever, and of course in a way I do because they’re small and just cuter than big-eyed kittens in baskets hugging the Snuggly teddy bear on top of sleeping long-eared puppies. WAY CUTER. But a part of me dreads them growing up because parenthood at this stage has got to be so much easier than parenthood to older kids with actual problems and concerns. Right now, I can hug them away any tears and kiss their boo-boos and help them get through being scared of the dark, and let them “DO IT MYSELF MOMMY!” and show them their letters and what sounds they make. It still kills me at times like today, when I wish I had never HEARD of going back to work, just so I could stay with my boy and hold him. But surely even this will be easier than what is ahead. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to help them with fights with friends, problems with school or teachers, having the wrong sort of friends, storming off to their rooms with slammed doors and huffy silences.

Motherhood is hard right now, but I know how to be a mother to toddlers. I don’t know how good a mother I will be to older kids, or dread the day, pre-teen and beyond.

So, yeah. Mondays suck.

I’ll write more on my weekend later.

p>

At the rate I’m going, I’m going to go through all the kleenex in the world before I run out of snot.

I can’t feel too badly though, because Jocelyn is way worse than me, and has no way to deal with it (like blowing her nose).

Traffic was awful on the way home. Truly horrific. I haven’t decided whether or not I like this day light savings thing. I mean, you’d think I’d have developed an opinion on it by now, I’m 31 years old for the love of mike (oh mike, how I love you). This morning, it was LIGHT when I arose at 6am. I don’t know how I like that, but it will not be handy for telling ethan that it is the weekend, and that means that we don’t get up until it’s light. That ain’t gonna fly if it gets light at freaking 6am! Plus, I think everyone and their brother decided to get up earlier than they usually do, because the traffic on my way to work was horrific. Nothing like it usually is. I drive along I66 looking over to the left hand HOV lane, and dream what it would be like to zoom along in it. Oh for a slug to ride with me! Oh, for a hybrid that would not only allow me to zip to work quicker, but would lower my gas bill and help me to walk the walk with all the green earth philosophies! Plus, while I love my (gas-guzzling) 4Runner, it is a standard, and while it was cute and butch the first 4 years, well, it REALLY REALLY SUCKS when you’re in stop and go traffic for an hour and a half every day. Seriously. My foot hurts most of the time from all the shifting. I even went looking at the Toyota Highlander Hybrid (just online, nothing major) because I’m a Toyota girl through and through, and my mom has basically the same car only in the Lexus RX400 form (more posh) and damn that is one nice car. While it would be nice, I don’t think we’ll be buying either of us a new car for some time, because honestly, they’re both paid for now and who wants car payments? Drive it into the ground, I think that’s our philosophy. HOWEVER!!! My ‘Check Engine’ light just came on. As soon as it did, visions of hybrids danced in my head. As if I need to replace a car just because the engine light popped on. I was pretty torqued about the coincidence of the light coming on JUST when we get paid. It’s like the car knew there was money in the bank, and she was like, “Let’s fix THEIR boat!” It better not be anything major or I will have to retaliate. Like start refering to the truck as a him, instead of a her.

So while Ethan had a BLAST trick or treating, it was Jocelyn that was just all about the candy. I mean, seriously. We went up to one house and I glanced at her in the light of the porch and saw that she was chewing away at something. The girl is not even two yet, and I hadn’t given her anything. I reached in and FISHED OUT THE TIN FOIL OF THE PEANUT BUTTER CUP SHE HAD EATEN WITH THE WRAPPER ON.

Maybe I should take her on the circuit. Just like being able to tie cherry stems in a knot with just your tongue, she can eat candy and spit out (or have it fished out) the wrapper. Yeah, I’m thinking she’s probably got some tin foil in her tummy. That’s not toxic, is it?

So when we came home, she wanted that candy. INSISTENT. arm outstretched, HAND GRABBING, “UH UH UH UH UH!” noise ongoing. It would have been cute if it hadn’t been CONSTANT.

My battery is about to run dead on my laptop which means it’s time to go to bed lest I not get the precious 8 hours of sleep. But more and probably pictures tomorrow.

electric-gasoline-candy-powered raine

First off, I’d like to say that I think the title should be asked for at the bottom of the post, and not the top. Not that this is in any of your hands, but when I go to post, there’s the title field, right there front and center. Well, I’m not ready for a title yet, because my mind has a zillion things of which it hasn’t selected one of, to write on.

Yes, I ended with a preposition. Bite me.

This weekend was kind of shitty. But the more depressing question that has been pressing itself on my mind, is WHY? I honestly have not been able to figure it out. There have been little shitty things and events that have happened, but I don’t think it was any of these specifically, just that my mind has not been able to wrap itself around any of them in a way that makes me a happy person, instead, I have dealt and dwelled on them until I am an unhappy person. If I could just figure out that different way of wrapping my mind around them all, I think I could change the outcome of the shitty weekend. I know I can do this, I’ve done it before, but driving in to work this morning all I could think about was just how shitty I feel and now I have a whole shitty week in front of me and I think I’ll go eat worms.

So, the weekend. I’m going to take a page out of mimi smartypants’ book and go with a numbered list as opposed to narrative. Don’t go to that link until you’ve finished reading my post, because once you do, unless you already know of mimi (which I’m sure you have, because blogging has been around forever and she’s awesome and with me just starting to blog now i am being such a poser and don’t i know all the GOOD bloggers started five years ago already?)

1. Weigh-in Saturday am was good – down 5.2 lbs. Yee ha! I celebrated with a Whopper at lunch, and then also had some Wendys for a very late dinner, with fries, but I feel perfectly vindicated in this because of the circumstances which I’m sure will be discussed further down the list. So. Anyway. Yay me.

2. Went to get a new pocket calendar for my purse because I keep needing to refer to January in my current one and hello! January is after year’s end and mine only goes to December. I’ve been needing a new one for a while now, so I finally went to GET it, taking Jocelyn with me, and when I got there and managed to look at the ones the store had, and had picked one out (not an easy task with Jocelyn “helping”), it turns out I had left my wallet at home. The reasons of which also will be discussed further down on this list, which I think will be number….

3. Ethan went down for his nap with such enthusiasm that James and I looked at each other in awe. Was this our child? In his bed? SLEEPING???? It turns out, it wasn’t our normal happy child. It was our poor, sick child, as we learned after he woke up. I was down in the kitchen making pineapple fluff when I heard his door open and close. I called to him to come down, but no answer. So I walked up and there he was, sitting on the top step all forlorn and sick. He was burning up when I led him back to bed and laid him down to rest while I fetched drink of water, thermometer, children’s motrin. Turns out the fever was up to 104.5, which is in the danger zone they always tell you about — they don’t want to see the kid RIGHT AWAY if it’s not over 102. So I fetched my wallet (thus it not being in the right place for later use), got out his health insurance card and called them up and procured an appt for 7pm. Which sucked, because when you go to urgent care, you are always there for hours and hours, so likely we wouldn’t be home until late, and yes, we weren’t home until 11:30pm.

The doctor covered his bases (one good thing about urgent care) and ordered a throat culture, blood test, urine analysis and xray. He couldn’t manage peeing in a cup, but everything else was done, and I must say that little boy is a trooper. When we finally saw the doctor again with the results all in, he basically said it was probably just a cold but they were going to put him on antibiotics anyway. So then we got to wait another 40 minutes for the prescription to be filled before we piled back in the car and headed home. I was starving at this point, which is where Wendy’s comes in.
The night went all right, I’d set my alarm for 6 hours after he’d been given the last dose of motrin, and James went in to deliver some more. Unfortunately, he’d thrown up in his bed. This was due I’m sure to me giving him a dose of his prescription right away, which can cause an upset stomach if taken on an empty stomach. To my credit, I had gotten him some chicken at Wendy’s too, but that exchange went something like this:

me: Are you eating your chicken, Ethan?
him: No, I’m going to wait until we get home.
me: Honey, when we get home we’re going straight to bed. Have some chicken now. Have some bites.
him: I’m going to wait until it cools down.

Of course, he was asleep about 30 seconds after this, thus no food. So anyway, James popped him into our bed with me while he changed the sheets and remade the bed and then popped him back into his bed, medicated again. The next went all right except that his cough had changed from a wet, congested, bringing-up-snotty-mucus sort of cough to a dry, rattling and somewhat barky cough. Uh oh. This is the first warning sign of croup. Other than that, he was really doing very well, so we decided to go get James new shoes. We are going to the ballet next weekend and I sold James dress shoes on Ebay last spring (he hated them, they pinched his shoes, I wasn’t just randomly looking around for things to sell) so we had to get him something he could wear instead of his sandals. Just as we were finishing up, Ethan took a turn for the worse and it seemed like he coudln’t talk at all, so we high-tailed it on home. I got back on the phone with the Kaiser people and made him an appointment for monday morning. James and I discussed it, and determined that I should stay home with him today because James had stayed home the last two days that someone was sick and couldn’t go to school/daycare. Then I realized that I couldn’t stay home. I am getting fingerprinted today. Doh. So James is home with Ethan.

Look, I got all narrative on you.

I have to go get fingerprinted now. More later.

Well I’m back, and it’s this afternoon now. I just have to say that I’m feeling much better. I hope that Ethan is also feeling better, because when I talked to him on the phone (James called me so that Ethan could ask me where his “Trains” book is, how cute is that) he sounded like an 80-year-old man with a cigarette habit. Just imagine that.

I’m beginning to think (not for the first time) that my mental problems all stem from a lack of sleep. When I get all depressed and tripped out, I usually look first at how much sleep I’ve gotten the night before. Seriously. I gotta have teh 8 hours. And me not so much with the 8 hours lately. Thursday I stayed up way too late and in the morning, I decided sleep was much more important that a shower. That of course was the day the boss decideded to take me and another new coworker out to lunch. Look at that up there. I typed in “decideded”. It’s like my fingers just didn’t want to stop. decidededededed.

Anyway, I just wanted to post this so that the whole 3 of you who were reading didn’t get all bummed out because I was bummed out. I still think worms might be tasty, but not as much as this morning and last weekend. I promise I won’t veer into oncoming traffic on my way home tonight.

Tonight! Halloween! Kind of sucks because James has class, but we figured we will get the kids ready and go trick or treating with them at like 5:45 (yes, we will be THOSE PARENTS who go out with their kids incredibly early and you think, “gee, it can’t be trick or treaters ALREADY?! Yes it can, and here we are. Ding Dong!) and then we’ll come home and they’ll stay in their costumes til bed and we’ll answer our own door and hand out candy til bedtime. I’m sure I’ll post pictures soon. I’ll have to figure out how to do that.

Have you ever really looked at the lines on your hands and fingers? It’s really very cool. Most of my fingerprints have a swirl that goes up and then back down but never connects into an actual circular pattern. Like looking at a tongue sticking out and upward, only in profile. But then I do have like, 2 fingers that DO connect and have little circles in the very middle. It’s weird how I have both, at least, I think it is. I wonder if most people only have one or the other, or if I’m normal in this regard. It reminds me of Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinati, sacked out under his desk, staring at his hand and saying, “Duuuuude… your hand is like a little tiny.. freeway.. The thumb is the off ramp..” and continuing on while the laugh track grows in quantity. It’s funny how I never got when I was a kid that he was either always stoned or drunk or perhaps both. I love(d) that show. My mom did too, thus, how I have seen every episode ever made.

Off to work some more.