Surviving the Domestic Jungle

I love the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” movies! My kids like them but I love them! I think the characters are just fantastic but I think Rowley is the best. He is such a well rounded kid that I would almost wish my son grows up to be like him. I say almost because I don’t want my son to be overweight, because its unhealthy, and I also wouldn’t want to condemn him to a life of nerdom. Kids are mean and cruel and I would be devastated if any of my kids have to endure any more than the usual amount of kid inflicted abuse. Kids are going to be jerks but a lot of the time it goes way too far. If my son turns out like Rodrick, oh my god how awful would that be. I look forward to them becoming teenagers but I also dread it. I will be the mother that never sleeps because I will be so worried whenever they leave the house. Oh when they drive I will have to sedate myself! I have can be an overbearing mother with a tendency to worry. I will be that mother that is sitting in the living room with all the lights off just waiting for them to come home. I will not handle dating well at all but I am curious as to what kind of people they will be attracted to and bring home to mom and dad. It should all be very interesting but first I have to get them through childhood! I think Greg is the happy medium and chances are pretty good my son is going to do bad things and good things but all I hope out of my kids is no matter what they put us through, they end up good people!

Pet peeve alert!!! I cannot stand when people write LOL when they are saying something that isn’t funny. It drives me insane and I just want to say “What is so damn funny?” Nothing. Nothing is funny when you are being rude or somber or just annoying! Sometimes my husband and I have the occasional text fight because it is easier than waiting til the kids are asleep or yelling over each other on the phone. Anyway, he will write LOL after things that are not even funny…remotely…and it annoys me and makes the fight worse. I’m sure I will get a message about how I shouldn’t have told that story and you know what my message back will be…”LOL Sorry!” Real sincere right? NO the LOL screws it all up! Not that I would apologize for saying that little story because I think that texting is just ruining the world. Between texting and driving, and consequently getting in an accident, to losing all ability to spell words correctly to losing all intimacy with human beings, it is just a bad thing. It is good when you want to avoid confrontation but that is kind of like computer confidence. You are hiding behind that little keyboard typing things you wouldn’t normally say to someone if you were face to face. Regardless of texting ruining the world, it is ruining my patience with LOL. Laughing out loud! Who comes up with this stuff anyway? LMAO Ummm Laughing my ass off! So stupid! Like I need to know your ass is falling off. Use your laughing when appropriate, that’s all I’m saying!

I have a new passion for the colors yellow and orange. I am trying to make peace with my belief that I could not wear yellow because I think I maybe can…..depending on the shade. No GOLD. Only soft yellows. Orange is also one better left to the muted palate. ‘They’ say you are only supposed to wear certain colors depending on if you are a spring, summer winter or autumn. I don’t know all the exact rules but I do know there are colors I would never really wear in certain hues. I think I look ok in all colors just sometimes the hue needs to be tweaked. I would never wear fuchsia pink but I would wear a soft pink. No Electric blue but most other shades of blue are good. I had someone do my colors for me and wouldn’t you know I forgot every detail! In the past couple of years, I have embraced brown, yellow and orange which has expanded the old wardrobe! When I met my husband, I wore a lot of black and white and while white is still my number one choice for pants, shorts, capris and skirts, black has taken a backseat due to his complaining. I now have a closest that would make rainbow bright proud! Though he has many many many many opinions about what I wear, he never ever listens to my opinions on his outfits……. I have a theory about colors and clothes and that’s if you like it, wear it. Someone is always going to think you look like a jackass but who cares because someone thinks they look like a jackass. We’re all jackasses just trying to look like we know something about fashion!

In my home there is me, my husband and the three kids. They are small people and my husband and I are normal sized so why the heck do I have a mount Everest pile of laundry to keep up with…..everyday! It is so annoying. I feel like I am signal handedly draining the oceans with each load. I wish I had a clothesline to dry things like sheets and towels but suburbia isn’t exactly the place to string a clothesline. I have the same sock issue as every other human being which is they go in the washer but they don’t come out of the dryer. I constantly shrink my husbands t shirts and boy does that make him mad. My theory is he is growing hence the small shirts. I just don’t get how we create so much. The kids stuff is tiny and most of my husbands clothes are dry cleaned. Well, I could have it worse and have to use one of those washboards in a barrel to wash my clothes. Somehow that just does not say clean to me. Whenever I wash my hand-washed clothes in the sink, it just seems like I am dipping them in soapy water. I do not actually see how they are getting clean but I do what the tag says! I actually hate clothes that say hand-wash or dry-clean only. Right there I know it is going to be a high maintenance article of clothing that will rarely get worn because I am just not willing to put in that much effort to drive to a dry cleaners twice or fill up the sink and make a make shift washing machine in my bathroom. Anyway, I have piles of clothes to work my way through so yippee skippee and I will return after I tackle the heap!

If Karma is a bitch (which it is…a big one) then baby weight is karma’s big bitchy sister who taught karma how to be a bitch. With my other kids, my weight literally dropped off. OK, well that’s not entirely true considering I gained insane amounts of weight with my first. 60 pounds don’t just drop off and if I had figured out a way for that to happen, I would be really rich. With my second, I weighed what I weigh now a week after giving birth. With the third, it has not fallen off at all. In fact, it has stuck like gorilla glue. Mind you I have not exercised other than chasing around my kids and I do breastfeed but contrary to the celebrities that say they lost 40 pounds by breastfeeding, it doesn’t do all that much for your figure. You do not get your abs back from laying around with hugely engorged boobs! I eat reasonably well as I am not a saint when it comes to food. I try to be but I have weaknesses and after each pregnancy I have had to reteach myself to eat. You just cannot justify as much when the whole ‘eating for two’ excuse is no longer applicable. I need to start working out. Ive been told I would benefit from yoga which is all wonderful and stretchable but I really need the time to sit around and stretch. If I get anywhere near the ground, my two year old jumps on my back to play horsey! At the very least, I am only a few pounds from my starting weight and I know eventually it will come off when I can go outside without dying again. I think it was 106 degrees today which believe it or not, is not conducive to outdoor activities! For now, I carry my extra love with pride and jiggle!

Yesterday was amazing. Simply amazing! I met so many people and had so much fun and by the time I left the convention I felt like I was walking on air. It was quite the experience which hopefully will lead to tons of new and wonderful experiences. Finding friends that are into the things you are into can sometimes be a challenge for the isolate stay at home mom but I think I finally have a link to the outside world! My drive to get my daughter was long but I was so jazzed from earlier in the day it seemed quick and painless. Today on the other hand, I have to take little Hudson for some shots. Oh the heartbreak! It just makes me want to scream at the nurse for hurting my baby and then there is the ever present shots being linked to autism fear. You cant do anything as a mother without being plagued by guilt. Every step of the way you are crippled with guilt. Do you feed them the right type of food? Put them in the right clothes? Are their shoes supporting their feet properly? By the time their first birthday comes around you are a haggard mess who feels like you are screwing everything up! Ahhh motherhood. Such an interesting adventure. I try to stay in the know but when I was pregnant with Hailey I drank 400000000 bottles of water. I am not kidding. I drank a lake every night and then my husband watched a documentary on bottled water and how terrible it is and bam, guilt like you wouldn’t believe. No documentaires for me. Ignorance is bliss until my husband tells me otherwise!

I have a very busy day tomorrow and probably wont be able to write which literally pains me! If I do get a chance, it will be at the end of the day. The reason I wont have the time is I have a convention to go to that is going to hopefully be awesome! It is a Whole Life convention and basically is about spiritual stuff. That is a very general summary but I have wanted to go since I was a teenager! My mom went years ago and told me about it and now that I am an adult and live in the same city as my mom, we are going tomorrow. I am beyond excited! I even have an outfit picked out and Im worried I wont be able to sleep tonight! After the convention, I have to go pick up my daughter from her weekend with her dad so it will be a long day. I suppose after a few hours in the car I will have something to talk about! To totally change topics, I had a very bad food day. I came home from running an errand and was starving and because I was being lazy, I decided to try a lean pocket. Like a hot pocket but lower in fat. Now, I never eat that crap. My husband eats the regular hot pockets and the lean ones were apart of a promotion at our grocery store where they gave them away for free with the purchase of regular hot pockets. So I decided to try one and thank god I looked at the box because they had a best before date of Oct 2010. I stared at the box for a minute and thought about what year it was because I have never had anything like this happen to me. Nobody really does eat lean pockets do they?? I threw the whole box away and decided it was a sign I shouldnt eat that crap. Instead I had cold, leftover pasta.

I suppose the whole world knows by now that Amy Winehouse has passed away. It is so sad! So many famous people die so young and while it is being widely speculated that it is a drug related death, I cant help but ignore that talk and just pay attention to the fact that she died all alone. What a sad way to leave this world. If it was drug related, maybe if someone had been there she could have received help. I don’t know what it is about her but her death has me very sad. I haven’t felt truly sad over a celebrity death since Heath Ledger. I know I don’t know any of these people but when you see them in magazines, on movies and watch their lives unfold, you cant help but feel like you know them in someway. If she did pass away from drug usage, I really hope that this motivates someone somewhere to get help. Drug addictions generally end badly and it is never too late to turn it all around. I do not understand drug addiction at all. We all know drugs are bad and addictive so why even try them? Why even temp fate. Maybe you wont get addicted and maybe you will but either way it is just not worth it. Between her death and the tragedy in Norway, I am a little bit somber today. There is so much good in this world but when tragedies happen, its easy to forget that.

I dont get the attraction to war/killing video games. My husband plays this Call of Duty game that drives me insane. He puts on his headset and enters a world of fantasy and has so much fun doing it. I only get to hear his side of the conversation which is usually about how everyone but him is cheating! Typical. Apparently a lot of people play this game…even girls. One that my husband plays with friend requested him on facebook and he is also friends with a few of the guys he plays with. The idea of being friends with a voice makes me a little nervous. You never know what kind of crazy you are allowing into your life. Who has time for video games? Not me for one! With the kids and writing, I am not left with much time for anything but a shower and sleep. If I were to put on that headset and retreat from reality, my house would be in dismay and my children would all be crying. I don’t have the luxury of going to the bathroom alone let alone saving some fantasy country from the threat of war…or whatever that game is about. The only kind of video game I would ever play is one that involves decorating or design but I don’t think there are any as war and killing seem to dominate the video game world. I wonder what would happen to all the nerds in their headsets and gaming chairs should they actually have to go to war. I wonder who would survive and who wouldn’t…….

As I have mentioned on here a time or two before, I am now officially a professional paid writer. I am paid a trivial amount but paid nonetheless. Tonight, one of my ‘bosses’ told me ” you have life in your writing”. Well, if that didn’t make my day then I don’t know what could! I am thrilled to bits when my husband tells me I am a good writer. My husband is one of the harshest critics! When someone who actually pays me to write for him tells me ” you have life in your writing” I feel like I just won an Oscar or Emmy or Pulitzer! I feel amazing! I’m pretty hard on myself and 9 times out of 10 consider myself some hack with a computer but, as time goes by, I am beginning to think I am the best writer that ever lived. Not quite but I do try to improve and I actually work really hard at it. Seeing a piece come together is such a rush. Its probably like when a mechanic gets a car to work or a plastic surgeon fixes a nose. Its that climactic moment when all your labors come to fruition and you have created something beautiful. I may be jazzing it up a bit but that’s how it feels. I just finished a piece about accounting…Oh, you feel asleep reading that? Ha! I feel asleep writing it! It was so hard for me as I tend to have “Life in my writing” and sorry to all the accountants out there but it really is just not an exciting topic. I compared it to dry toast when talking with my ‘boss’. I somehow stumbled my way through it and finished it and if that is not seeing your labors come to fruition then I don’t know what is! I’m proud of myself tonight and feeling pretty good about my abilities!