Ya gotta love 'em

Me to the Children this morning:
Can you please find an activitiy to do that is quiet?

The Children's response to my request:
Let's have a marble fight!

Me to the children (said in a calm yet firm tone):
Absolutely not.

AND Scene.

Happy Birthday to My Tiny Girl

Well #2 will officially be 6 years old in just under an hour.

Let me tell you, this time 6 years ago I was not a pleasant person.

Y'see #2 was two weeks early. Which in all honesty was FINE by me.

The reason I was upset was because I thought that I was not going to be going through the whole process of being in labor.

I had a c-section scheduled because #2 who started trying to be like her sister while still in the womb was in the breech position. Having already done the natural childbirth thing with one baby who was breech, an experience that did not go well and is by far the most terrifying experience of my life thus far.

Moving on...

I went through a procedure called an external version two days before #2 was born. If it had been successful they planned to immediately induce labor.

It was not, so I was ready to have my c-section thankyouverymuch.

The OB then informed me that they would schedule no c-section until 10 days prior to the due date.

Thus the beginnings of my unhappiness.

But I showed him.

Two days later... I find myself sitting on the couch and pop goes my water.

And Whammo... goes my labor process. Zero to God help Me in just a few minutes.

Apparently it takes a long time to get someone down to the OR when the c-section is not an emergency. For me...it was three hours before they got me in there. Contractions were strong and just under 5 minutes apart on the way to the hospital, three hours later you can better believe I was nearing insanity, and ready to rip the nearest head off of the next person who tried to speak to me or made ridiculous comments like..."wow you are really having some strong contractions!"

Finally three hours and a spinal block later I was in a much better mood....things were even better when they handed over #2. I kept hollering at people to bring me that baby, I didn't care what kind of goo she had on her and they could bloody well weigh her later. We had a couple of dicey moments when I began to feel pain while they still had my innards out on the table and the anthestesiologist was failing to register my panic. But a shrill tone of voice and a nice morphine drip took care of that issue.

So let the celebrations continue. We have survived round one. Round two is tomorrow. Round three Sunday.

Did I mention that all cake for these fetes are chocolate with chocolate frosting? The ice cream....
chocolate of course!

She is after all her mother's daughter!

WTF?????

Can ANYONE explain to me why BEANBAG CHAIRS cost as much as a damn couch?

Seriously. I can not find one much under $50.

WHY?? WHY?? WHY??

No title

I ain't got one in me tonight.

Man going back to work after being on vacation for a week sucks ass.

I really was meant to be a lady of leisure.

Not that my vacation was all that leisurely. We here at Chez Us were very productive once again.

Makes me wonder what I could accomplish if I was home all the time.

Not much I suppose. If I was home all the time I would not have the advantage of being motivated by a timeline like I am when I am home for just a week.

In other news...

My baby turns 6 at the end of the week. The party(s) are planned.

Somehow celebrating her birthday has turned in to a weekend long event. Not sure how that happened. But there is no changing it now. We have been getting the daily birthday countdown for two weeks now.

She has some good math skills.

Didn't get that from me.

Despite all my well planned birthday activities we still are lacking a gift for her. The reason why is a long story...so we will just say that I have learned to book mark web pages that have potential gifts on them because despite my confidence in my abilities I apparently can not access those pages again no matter how many hours I spend with Google.

Let's talk about FOOD

MMMmmmm....

I had a lovely evening out with Belovved Husband last night. We went to eat a relatively new restaurant here in town.

My it was delicious.

I had Fire Roasted Flattened Chicken with garlic mashed potatoes and marinated vegetables.

Even the next day nuked for a minute..the leftovers were delicious. I felt like I could eat it every day.

I have decided that I need a wood fired brick oven in my kitchen.

That is what is missing in my life.

Big Fire.
Big Oven.

Preferably we will keep the big fire in the big oven.

I will keep you posted on the details.

In other news...

I am ready to drop kick my cat out the attic window.

For reasons known only to her she has decided to boycott her litter box altogether.

Apparently the carpet in the hallway is a much better place for meeting her kitty toileting needs.
MY BRAND NEW CARPET IN THE HALL.

She has always been a bit prissy about her litterbox. We had to try a few different litters during kittenhood before we found the right one and God forbid if we go a day without scooping..she will leave her calling card right outside the box.

We got a new box a few months ago and she has never really taken to it. She is almost 12 years old, it is a tall box and she does not move as nimbly as she used to. Also #1 who does a great job taking care of the litterbox got pretty heavy handed and put a huge amount of litter in the box, which we suspect may not agree with our feline friend.

So we have purchased a new lower to the ground litter box, with less litter and gone back to what we did when we were litter training her as a kitten. When she can not be supervised she is shut in a room with her litter box, food, water and other kitty necessities.

If this doesn't work then I guess it is off to the vet to make sure we don't have some other issue at play here.

Now my hallway has the lovely scent of Nature's Miracle because I saturated that damn carpet.

If it doesn't get the smell out her kitty ass is going to find a kitty job and pay for the carpet replacement.

I have been telling her for years that she doesn't pull her weight around here.

I am sorry to say that it is going to be awhile before she is off my poo-poo list. We don't go in for prissiness around here.

I need immediate gratification

OK, in my world, when antibiotics are consumed immediate relief should happen.

I know this isn't realisitic, and it never happens that way but I want it to just the same.

I have had four doses and my throat still hurts. If I don't keep up on the Advil it is a down right ugly kind of pain.

What kind of crap is that?

I mean so what if the doctor said I would need to keep up on the advil for the next couple of days to manage pain. What does SHE know? I have antibiotics. I will be cured immediately.

I mean come ON. I am on vacation here.

This is 2007. Where are the magic pills?

Somebody?!?!!!

Just HRH for short

I had a lovely birthday yesterday.

Came home from work to find my honeys all showered and dressed to the nines.

Why....

Because #2 decided that they should, "Honor Mommy like a Queen on her birthday."

So exciting to see that all of my hard work and training has paid off.

I did feel queenly, had a delicious dinner with excellent company.

I was gifted with money and a fancy schmancy watch. (Fancy Schmancy is royal talk don't you know!)

Cake was eaten in my honor.

I was massaged one minute for every year of my life thus far by a handsome man.

Yup pretty queenly.

Today.....

Not so queenly.

Actually the tarnish was beginning to show on the crown throughout the day yesterday, but I was determined to hold it off.

I tried to deny it all day today....I went to work stuck out the whole day...but the body don't lie. The body aches...sore throat....

Next thing I know I am taking my queenly self to the medic to have a not so queen-like q-tip shoved down my throat to find out that I have a royal case of strep throat.

Bummer.

Not the greatest way to start my week-long vacation. But I am in posession of antibiotics and will hopefully be on the mend tout suite.

However I think the best remedy for my poor raw throat is some left-over birthday ice-cream cake from Maggie Moos.

I feel better already!

Go Missy! Go Missy! It's Your...

Birthday!!!

Yes dear reader(s) today is my (enter guess here)th birthday today.

I am not officially (enter guess here) until sometime this evening before 7.

I only know it is before 7 because my mother told me that West Side Story was on the evening I was born and she was determined to have me out before it started.

She made it apparently. This might explain my strong desire to be on stage.

Legend also has it that before being taken to the hospital she had to fix my grandmother's hair and then drive the two of them to my aunt's house so that my aunt could drive her to the hospital since my grandma did not drive.

There was much laughter all the way to the delivery room.

That might explain a few other things about me too.

Puttin' on the Bitch

So today I made some hotel reservations online for a colleague and myself as we are going to a conference in Wichita in a few weeks.

Lucky for me I actually checked the confirmation e-mail only to discover that the reservation I made for my colleague was showing an incorrect check-in/check-out date.

So I called the customer service line for this particular internet travel organization was on hold for at least 20 minutes if not more while listening to the same movement of Vivaldi's Four Seasons over and over again. Once I was finally speaking to a person, I explained my dilemma. She put me on hold again, got back on and said they could fix the date, but I would be charged $50.

50 M-F'in dollars. To make the reservation one day earlier.

My reply was a very irritated, "that is ridiculous" and then repeated my request to assure that I had heard right, that it was really going to cost me 50 bucks to move a reservation up one day well in advance of the actual date of the reservation. (Voice tone and pitch rising with every word)

She put me on hold again (and I am pretty sure she heard me complaining with lots of profanity to Beloved before she actually put me on hold)

A few minutes later (and more Vivaldi)..... lo and behold! The $50 fee has been waived by her supervisor as a "one time courtesy."

Which just proves my theory that if faced with ridiculous things when making a purchase, getting in touch with and sharing my inner bitch usually makes the ridiculous go away.

I think it is the shrill tone of voice.

People will do just about anything to make it go away.

@#$%&! Time Change

Let me tell you that today I could gleefully cause great bodily harm to whatever genius came up with the DST idea.

All you out there with young kids know what I am talking about.

The reality of this change seems to have really kicked in today for my young ones.

This morning I had to deal with MASSIVE grouchiness, whiny, fussy, and rude behavior because the children feel as though I am waking them at the ass crack of dawn.

This evening I am dealing with more grouchiness, whining, and fussing and THEY ARE STILL AWAKE AFTER BEING IN BED WITH LIGHTS OUT FOR AN HOUR.

Typically these kids are out a few minutes after the heads hit the pillow.

Of course I am dealing with this on top of my own tired grumpiness as I deal with getting back on schedule after the show coupled with the time change.

I don't see why we can't just stay on DST year round.

It would just be better for me and it is all about me after all.

Anyway it is when I am tired and grouchy.

I'm Tellin' You

This should be the last post with an update about which song from the show is in my head as we had our last performance today.

I am usually a little bummed out after a show ends, it is so consuming that I often seem to be unsure of what to do with myself for a short while.

The previous two or three shows I was in prior to this one, I did not have that short melancholy period after they were over. In truth I was practically foaming at the mouth to have them over and done with and that worried me. I thought maybe I was growing out of performing or being possessed or something of the sort. I think it had to do with a lot of other things that I am just not going to go into here.

At any rate I find myself this evening feeling a bit melancholy about the end. I had a really good time, and overall I was pretty happy with the way I portrayed this character. I got a fair amount of good feedback about the shows and it was really cool that nearly every performance sold out.
I made some new friends and that is always fun, and I got the opportunity to socialize with them over the past three weekends and I really enjoyed that. Beloved and I don't seem to get out and be social with other adults very often together and for me to go out and socialize on my own has been virtually unheard of for the past ohhhh...9 years. I can probably count the times on one hand. I know it is not a great way to be and I have no one but myself to blame for the lack of socializing. I get lazy pretty easily about going out socially since the children have come along. I know all the arguments about "taking care of yourself so that you are in a better frame for your children" and all of that, but at the end of the day..week...month...year....I.AM.TIRED.
But I bit the bullet and pushed past my tired and went out with people. I am definitely out of practice. I don't know where people go to socialize after dark anymore. I do not recover as quickly the next day from staying out past 12 even when there is no drinking involved. I still seem to be able to converse and be mildly interesting however. Glad I still have that.
In a few days my melancholy will pass as I become immersed in the daily stuff that is my regular non-performing life. There is much to do and many things to return to that have been neglected for the past couple of months. One of those things is reasonable bedtimes. I must leave you know to pursue that right now. Nighty night.

Shout out

To my good friend Ali who has a birthday today. Ok technically yesterday, but since I have not been to bed yet I am calling it today. Hope it was a good 'un Ali!

No More Shows for 60 months

#2 informed me last night as I helped her with a shower that she did not think I should do any more shows for at least 60 months. I told her that was 5 years and she changed her recommendation to 60 years.

Wonder what good parts there will be for a 90-something woman.

One more weekend to go. We had pretty consistently good performances all weekend and every show was sold out. Looks to be the same for this weekend as well. Country music sure sells 'round these parts.

Did I tell you about how I learned that apparently country music is popular with the young people these days? I had no idea.

We went to see a variety show at a local high school a few weeks ago and I was shocked at the number of students wailin' away singing country music songs. (Of course I kept looking around for something sharp to slit my wrists with because about the La-hast thing I wanted to do was listen to a bunch of high school girlies sing bad country songs through their noses, especially since it happened to be my ONE NIGHT off from country music...)

Now maybe I am getting prudish and uptight in my old age, but there was one performance that I decided was offensive to me.

A young lady got on stage and proceeded to sing what is apparently a very popular country song about (big surprise here) a woman who finds out her man has been cheating on her. Now what I found offensive was the chorus to this song which describes how she vandalized this man's car because he was cheating on her. Describes in great detail seat and tire slashing, keying, taking a baseball bat to headlights and all that mess. At first I thought...hmm this does not seem like the best choice for a high school talent show. I thought I was being an uptight parent, but then after more thought I decided that it wasn't as a parent that I was offended, but as a professional. I spend a lot of time talking about appropriate ways to express anger, and here is a very popular song promoting violence and young girl(s) are singing their hearts out to this song. Didn't set too well with me let me tell you. I know many of you are probably thinking that it is just a song and all that, but I have worked with enough kids to know that many take the messages in songs to heart. Maybe I am over reacting, but I really think it was inappropriate for the venue. I just wish people would give more thought to the messages given to our children.

We need to be more thoughtful.
Period.
End of Story.

Now it is time for me to pull that stick out of my ass and get to bed.
Can't sleep well when there are protrusions.

Oh to be my dog for today

Then I would get to lie in front of the heater and nap until I was done.