Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Happy Birthday, Mommy!!

I have another of those awful confessions- I hate Important Days.  Birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc... go away.  Invariably, I wake up on an Important Day and immediately want to go back to bed.  I'm not full of good cheer and joy- I'm a cranky old bitch who wants to hide under the bed with your grandmother's incontinent cat.  I like Halloween, but that has more to do with my love all all things creepy and campy than any enjoyment of the party and carnival atmosphere.  This includes my own birthday.  If I could find a way to skip that day on the calendar, I would.  Wishing me a Happy anything is possibly grounds for divorce or murder.  Buying me gifts.. please don't.  I dislike presents.

The only exceptions to those rules would be the Demons.  Bless them.  They bought me a really silly card (with a cat on it!) and a charger for my iPod that would hook into my computer.

The only problem- I don't own an iPod.  I never have.  I have a small little MP3/Flash player called a Spark, and nothing about it is compatible with an iPod.  I adore it- it's about the size of a postage stamp and has basic controls that even I can figure out.  It also has no charger at the moment, but I'll sort it out.  Because my Demons thoughtfully included the receipt, so I can exchange the iPod accessory for the one I need.

So... "A" for effort, Demons.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Babies are easier

So I mentioned in a previous post that the BF has a man-cold. 

What I failed to mention was that he has had some version of this man-cold for better than a month.  Do you remember walking the floor with a colicky infant at 2am?  That was easy.  Exhausting, and somewhat aggravating when a particularly ear-splitting scream was let loose right next to your aching head, but easy.  At least when you compare it to the sniffling, sneezing, snoring, talking and whining in the sleep, thrashing night-time so-you-can't-rest joys of a man-cold.

After a few weeks of nagging begging, I finally insisted that the BF go to the doctor. Guess what? If you ignore a man-cold for long enough while working with fiberglass insulation,you will end up with a RAGING sinus infection.  Requiring not one, but FIVE medications.  One antibiotic, two corticosteroids, one cough syrup for night-time use and an antihistamine.  All of which have to be dosed out and bullied into the BF by yours truly.  Yes, I am using cookies as bribes.

Compared to this lovely cocktail, we have the Daredevil.  His recent forays into the land of skateboards have had some interesting results- namely a spectacular road rash that covers his left side from shoulder to hip.  I'm not even sure how he got it, but when he stumbled in covered in blood and dirt, my heart almost stopped.

"What happened?"
"I think I got goofy-footed."
Now, I know what goofy-footed means, but I'm not sure what being left-handed has to do with anything.  Instead, I focused on damage control.
"Is anything broken?"
"Nope, I just came in to get a towel."
With that, my bleeding, dirty child grabbed a towel and walked out.  Dumbfounded, I followed him out and watched as he proceeded to hose himself down with the hose, mop off the dirt, water and blood with the towel, and hop back on his skateboard to zoom away.

Oh, my babies.  You are so much easier before you grow up into men...

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Before COFFEE?????

I have a research paper due this evening.  MOST of this paper is done- references, interviews, charts and all my sources and quotes have been pulled.  But the actual pulling of the strings into a nicely woven tapestry-not quite.  I mentioned the three kids and the job and the pregnancy and all that, right?

So, Mommy used her noggin, and set her alarm EXTRA early for a Sunday morning.  It's 8am, and I'm dragging my weary body out of bed, making my usual round of prayers to the porcelain gods (why is it that I feel FINE lying down, I stand up and turn into the chick from the Exorcist?), and booting up the faithful NetBook for a bit of composition.

This might be where I made my first mistake- I didn't LEAVE THE HOUSE.  For Mommies who are attempting to go to school and raise demons- McDonalds with WiFi is your best friend when projects are due.  They also have coffee.  And no children (or at least a play area to banish said children to).  Normally, on a Sunday morning everyone sleeps until at least 9.30am.  That gave me a little over an hour to finish the final tweaking on my paper and review it.  Not to brag- but I'm a dab hand at writing papers.  An hour was plenty of time.

But naturally, there was no hour.  When I crept from my bed at 8am, it was apparently the signal for everyone else in the house to wake up and make themselves known.  The children wanted to play XBox and/or watch cartoons at a deafening volume.  The boyfriend (who I haven't thought of a clever nickname for yet) has a man-cold, and had to come over and insist on my attention.  (Where DID I leave my cast iron skillet again?).  And of course,someone decided that early Sunday morning was the perfect time to want to buy the student violin I have had for sale since last week on CL.

Needless to say- my paper did not get written this morning. It got written during my afternoon shift at work, and typed up a few minutes ago.  I'm allowing my brain to cool down before I attempt to review it, for fear of missing something glaringly obvious.  Like profanity.  I'm sure profanity doesn't belong in a research paper.

Does it?

Friday, August 19, 2011

Confessions

First things first, I have to confess: I am the mommy that Good Mommies hate.

In a past life I was a SAHM to three adorable boys- collectively known as The Demons.  Then I was a single mom/part-time waitress/model/exotic dancer. All part of my charm, I assure you (and the necessity of feeding three small demons minus spousal or child support).  I survived those four years, thanks to the support of The Jolly Green Giant (my very beloved younger brother) and TheTopShot (my incredibly paranoid and beloved adopted brother/best friend) who helped keep The Demons in check. 

Now I'm that Mom that everyone loves to hate.  The one that hangs out on her front porch in the evenings with a glass of iced bourbon and a pack of Camels and a brood of kids that look like catalogue models gone wild.  The one who doesn't own a minivan or a bottle of hand sanitizer.  I'm the Mommy who lets her kids build skateboard ramps in the driveway and climb trees and fight it out like tigers in the backyard to settle sibling disputes- without pads or helmets.  I'm the Mommy you DON'T want in your playgroup, the one who calls her children Demons without reservation, and has a bad habit of cursing (out loud) when she stubs her toe while wrestling with those Demons.

My kids should be Demons, or at least that's what I've been told.  Somehow, they've managed to thrive, and I now have polite, well-mannered, funny, intelligent kids who eat their veggies and say yes ma'am and no sir.  They mow yards and get the Crazy Cat Lady's darlings out of the trees when they get stuck  They even do chores, every day, without complaining too much.  If they have a few quirks- well, blame their Bad Mommy.

Like my nine-year-old's (AKA Daredevil) hemorrhoids.  We went through this a few years back with my oldest son (AKA Doctor Doom). Apparently, my children deal with stress by getting piles. And starting fourth grade is stress for the Daredevil.  Which is how, at 8pm on a Thursday evening, I ended up at Walgreens trying to find the Tuck's pads.  Or at least some witch hazel. And an industrial-strength grade of PreparationH, because when you're nine and your bottom hurts every time you poop or sit down, you need the heavy artillery.  I may have also grabbed a package of Pinwheels, because chocolate and marshmallow smothered evil is the perfect bedtime snack for an overwrought Daredevil and his partners in destruction brothers.

At this point I should probably mention that I am also a server for a TexMex restaraunt and a full-time student.  On Thursdays I go to school until early afternoon, then come home and run like a mad chicken get the household chores squared away until I leave to work the evening shift.  And also, the whole 6ish months pregnant thing (which is blog post in and of itself.  Like I said- Bad Mommy).  So naturally, when I get to the checkout counter, the clerk eyeballs me and nods knowingly.  The joys of Southern towns pale whenever you realize that part of the Southern hospitality thing is the concern people shower down on every. little. personal. detail. of. your. life.

"Mhmm. When you due, honey?"
"End of November." Can you please just bag the damn butt cream?
"You're carrying so tiny!  You ain't dieting?"
"No, I just carry small." Please put the cream in the bag. Please. And the Tucks.
"I remember being pregnant.  You got the piles, don't ya?  This must be your first."

At this point, I should probably say that I have the tact of a bulldozer when I am A) tired B) concerned for my kids and C) hormonal.  What follows probably shouldn't have been said.

"It's my fourth.  A boy.  I've gained a healthy amount of wegiht, my uterus measures normal, the baby is healthy and my nine-year-old is currently at home crying because HIS hemorrhoids are hurting, so can you please tell me my total so I can go home, help him with his sitz bath, put his butt cream on, and get him to bed at a decent hour?  He has school tomorrow."

In retrospect, I probably could have been a nice Mommy and just smiled and nodded.  But thirty minutes later, while cuddling the Daredevil on the couch as he ate his cookies and assuring him that he would be just fine, I decided it was worth it.  I'm a Bad Mommy, but I'm good at it.