Why I am Glad School Is Over

OK. Really I am done with school. Done.

First I lost the address and the directions to the pool party J10 is going to today. I have to pick him up at 2:30 and have no idea where to go -- I'm waiting for the school to call me back. I swear, I saved that piece of paper. I swear I did.

Then I just discovered that I gave one of the teachers a gift card to Barnes and Noble that has been used. Yeah. That's not embarrassing at all. I bought five cards because I wasn't sure if D7 had one teacher's aid or two. Yeah, I am totally THAT mom right now and I don't mean that in a good way. Because at the beginning of the year he had two aids in the room, but then one of them had to go and have a baby, but I wasn't sure if she was back or not. 'Cuz I'm all involved and always know what's going on at school.

SO. I have five cards, I find out I only need four. Sweet -- a gift card for me, the hard-working and always in-the-know Madge. Of course I spend it. Of course I do. Of course I put it back in my purse where all the other cards are just sort of floating around in their little gift card thingies that they are glued to with that very lacking weird adhesive crap that doesn't work.

So today I am giving out my last gift card to J10's teacher. I have two cards in my purse. I figure one of them is the one I used. So I call the number on the back to check the balance to find out which one I used.

Guess what? I didn't use either of these cards. Crap. I just gave a teacher a card with no freaking money on it and I don't know who got it. Yeah.

This is why I am glad school is out for the summer. No more projects. No more slips of paper with important info to keep track of (and then lose), no more homework, no more clean uniforms needed. No more embarrassing scenarios like the one above......

Happy Summer to me.

Oh. OK. Using my super-sleuth deductive skills I think I narrowed it down to the speech therapist. Good, she is the one that is most familiar with my, how do I say this? Inability to function? Yeah, that covers it. She's getting the extra card.

Caching Up With Madge

Good grief. It's been ten days since my last post. At least.

So what's been going on? My dog is incontinent. I know. It's so awesome. Once the frequency of the urinating on my bed or any blankets that fell on the floor increased to once a day I finally decided to take her to the vet. The solution is a pill twice a day. So far it is working. But I have to wonder for how long? At what point am I putting diapers on her? And how disturbed am I that so many people have asked me if she is wearing diapers yet?

What else? My baby graduates from kindergarten Wednesday. Yes, they do the cap and gown thing. Honestly I think it's a little much. But damn, they are so cute who cares?

J10 has a week of school left and then we are officially on summer break and for the first time I'm really looking forward to it and not freaking out about handling work and the boys. I am so lucky (blah blah blah) to work from home, but it's kind of tough to manage work and the kids for 12 weeks. Of course now I look back and wonder how I did it when they were babies and toddlers but I did.

I'm back to the whole insomnia thing but this time instead of laying in bed for 2 - 3 hours and second guessing every single inch of my life I'm just going to get up and blog. Such a better use of my time.

OH! I almost forgot. Shameless plug for a friend's blog: Please check out The Trifecta. This is not a mommy blog. Which is exactly why you should go there (and no I am not saying I dislike mommy blogs. I love them. I am one quite often.) It's actually written by a guy. A cool guy. God knows the blogosphere could use some more of them (and no I am not dogging my two or three known male readers -- I heart you guys. immensely.) I will now stop apologizing. Just go over there and check it out.

Yeah. I'm THAT mom.

Early last week D7 brought home a note from school announcing that Friday (yesterday) was Pet Day and the kids should bring in pictures of their pets for show and tell. We have two dogs and a cat. D7 was excited about taking pictures in and I promised to print some for him.

I've been having trouble sleeping and I've also developed a lovely patch of hives on my arm. Yes, it is completely stress related. Thursday night I woke up around 2:00 with my arm itching. I was up for two hours until I took a triple dose of Triaminic Allergy medicine. I figured if kids 6 - 12 need two teaspoons, 42 year old women needed six teaspoons. I also added two (or three?) Advil.

I woke up at 7:00, crawled out of bed, made breakfast, crawled back in bed for 20 minutes, got up, made sure everyone was dressed and out the door and crawled back into bed until 9:00 (isn't this fascinating? I'm setting the scene ok?).

At 9:00 I crawled out of bed, made coffee and sat down at my desk where I discovered I had things to take care of ASAP. About 10:20 or so things slowed down and I started cleaning my desk off.

That's when I found the note about Pet Day and that show and tell would begin a 11:15. Crap. I had about 45 minutes to take pictures of the pets with my phone, print them, shower, and get to school.

The next 35 minutes were filled with snapping photos of the pets, unsuccessfully syncing the iPhone with the computer -- photos wouldn't download. Finally realizing I had to e-mail the photos to myself. Trying to print them, dealing with three or four paper jams -- each which meant I had to restart the printer. Can you imagine my language during this? I think you can. My office is an old sun porch and I am in there cussing up a storm. Loudly. The whole neighborhood could probably hear me.

Finally, about 11:03 I had photos of each pet.

I threw on some really horrible sweat pants, t-shirt, baseball cap since the whole shower thing hadn't happened. And the whole laundry thing hadn' happened for a few days. As I'm hopping in the car the neighbor's painter, who was painting the window trim, about six feet from my office, looked at me, smiled, and said, "'morning!" yeah. ha. I said "hi' hopped in the car and kept swearing under my breath. I said out loud to myself, "yeah, i'm THAT mom." The crazy one. The unorganized one. The swearing one. The unshowered, driving like a maniac always three steps behind one.

The whole way to school I was muttering "I'm THAT mom, I'm THAT mom."

I walked into the classroom minutes before show and tell started, handed Dave his photos, and sat down in the back.

When it was his turn D7 told the class about his three pets and sat down. There were a couple of kids who had pets but hadn't brought pictures. I don't know how they felt about it, but I knew how D7 would have felt. Because we had talked about it and I knew he was really looking forward to it.

On the way out of the classroom I ran into a teacher's aide I knew and she asked me why I was looking so harried and stressed out. I told her what had happened and she just smiled and said, "Yeah, but you made it. You're a great mom!"

Yeah. I am a great mom. I busted ass and made sure I followed through on a promise to my kid.

The whole way home I kept thinking to myself, Yeah, I'm THAT mom." But this time I was smiling.

Poem Thursday - Bukowski

I don't think I had read any Charles Bukowski until tonight. I think I like him. I just read a handful, there were several I liked.

I liked this one. It made me think of a friend who loves gambling and is headed back to work today after a bit of a vacation:

gamblers all

sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think,
I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside
remembering all the times you've felt that way, and
you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet, see that face
in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my, but you comb your hair anyway,
get into your street clothes, feed the cats, fetch the
newspaper of horror, place it on the coffee table, kiss your
wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself,
like millions of others you enter the arena once more.

you are on the freeway threading through traffic now,
moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch
the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow
get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull
days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful
and so disappointing because
we are all so alike and so different.

you find the turn-off, drive through the most dangerous
part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as Mozart works
his way into your brain and slides down along your bones and
out through your shoes.

it's been a tough fight worth fighting
as we all drive along
betting on another day.



I liked a 340 dollar horse and a hundred dollar whore too. check it out, if you'd like. I think I am going to have to find out some more about Mr. Bukowski.....

she writes one long nonsensical paragraph

so what i really want to know is when it stops, when it ends. how is it that other people are so sure of themselves, of their lives. of their beliefs? this has really been bothering me. i've mentioned i grew up in a conservative, cloistered denomination. wasn't really plugged in there, as far as buying into all the doctrines, but you know, was comfortable in the community because it was all i knew. then i left it. then i became a baptist. i know. frying pan/fire kind of thing. not sure who is the frying pan. who is the fire. not sure. thing is i love my church. i love quite a few of the people i've gotten to know at my church. even though there have been times i have been horrified when some of the really conservative freaky stuff comes flying out of their mouth like stuff about abortion or racial issues. it's enough to make me want to pack my bags and get the hell out of here. but of course it's not quite that easy because i have roots here, kids, family. and my kids love their school. best school ever. except for the whole conservative freaky stuff. so then i find myself connecting more with people here in the blogosphere and i start questioning again what am i doing here and then i start looking back at spots in my life, forks in the road where, quite franky, i simply went the wrong way. and then i start seeing people that seem damn sure about where they are and not just that but so damn sure they are so right about everything. and the people that think they are so damn right? they scare me. they scare the crap out of me and really i guess they are everywhere. those people make me want to run and hide. i'm a runner. really i am. a hider. a questioner though. i do question. i do believe 42 is to young to have decided i know everything and that my narrow little world is the only right world so even though i live in what sometimes seems a very small narrow little world at least i do not believe that i have to fit into it that i can go out of it even when i'm here. the thing is i didn't know i would be so dissatisfied and angry at 42. no one told me and also i think that i thought that by the time i hit 42 everything should be on track and perfect which is just stupid and i hope i hope i hope i don't teach my kids that there is some kind of end goal in life but to rather really, and i know it's a total cliche, but i hope they learn to enjoy the journey and all that. to see the beauty in the little things, the joy and peace in a quiet, rainy, may afternoon, a cat sleeping next to you, spewing stupid crazy shit out into the internet. i hope they can be o.k. with the wondering. and the wandering for that matter. i hope they stay a little truer to themselves than i have, although i think that is what i am angry at myself for. not being true to myself and also not admitting that actually i do know what i believe and i am a big chicken shit so much of the time. and that is not where i meant to go with this at all. and if you are still reading this maybe you should wonder why you are still reading it and also sorry for the no caps, but really i hate caps.

Taking The Day Off

When I was growing up Sunday was a work around the house day. I was raised in a SDA family and Friday night sundown to Saturday night sundown we did not do any work of any kind at all. We didn't shop, we didn't do laundry, we didn't even fill the car with gas. We went to church, hung out with family and napped. Actually not a bad way to spend a day -- although it was a very very legalistic environment.

Sunday was a different story. My mom was a single working mom and rose early on Sunday and got right to it. Laundry. Yard work. Errands. Projects around the house. Gardening (not the same thing as yard work -- trust me).

I found out as an adult that my grandmother would actually show up on Sunday mornings and say , "Ok, what are we doing today?" or worse, "Today we are going to......" and she would have some big project for my mom to do IN OUR HOUSE. And my mom would just do it (this is obviously a whole 'nother post).

Sadly I have inherited the work-like-a-dog-around-the-house-on-the-weekend mentality. Although I've mellowed a bit. I'm not an SDA now, so Saturday, like many people, is my day to do stuff around the house.

Yesterday I had a wonderful girl's day out in Atlanta with a friend and came home to a house that looked worse than usual.

So of course I hopped out of bed this morning, even though I was feeling exhausted and kind of yucky, and tried to get right at it. I made this ridiculous, impossible to do list and immediately felt overwhelmed. I wanted a nap. I wanted to sit on the deck and read a book. I wanted to sew, and blog and just chill. All day.

And then I realized something. I can do that. I can totally take the day off. I can lounge, read, sew, blog, sleep. And it's all going to be here tomorrow. And the world isn't going to end. In fact, the world is probably going to be a better place.