Mandajuice

What is my problem?

When I went to pick up Alex from preschool today, I completely snapped at one of the teacher's assistants.  I don't even know why!  I got there late and only had about a minute to pick him up and as he was getting his bat drawing out of his file folder to show me, one of the teacher's aide's said, "The sign out sheet is..." and I completely cut off her sentence with a "YEAH."  She was just trying to tell me where to sign him out, since it was raining and it wasn't outside on the benches where it usually is.  I had seen it in the hallway when I walked in.

I was so rude!  What am I, a New Yorker or something?!

I have no idea where it came from or why I snapped at her, but I felt immediately ashamed of myself.  Why on earth would I do that?  It was almost like I thought she was nagging me or something and I didn't want to hear it?  I don't know. I have no explanation.  I was truly horrified to be walking in my own skin.

I tried to smile at her again two more times as we were walking out, but I could tell I'd scared the crap out of her.  She probably thinks I'm the world's biggest bitch and today she wouldn't be wrong.

Jill flew out last night

We had a great time with Jill here.  I'm so grateful she used her vacation time to come visit, even if it was short and sweet.  I think the kids wore her out a bit and now she'll probably need a vacation from her vacation. 

It was slightly satisfying that after we took the kids to the Farmer's Market on Sunday, she was just as beat as I was, even though she's in much better shape than me and has the added perk of having had uninterrupted sleep for the past 30 years.  It just proves that my average "work" day is every bit as exhausting as I've always thought it was.

We also had some beautiful weather with sun and clear skies.  Dave bought a lawnmower thinking he'd take advantage of the dry spell to mow the lawns, but Home Depot put the damn thing together wrong.  He sat out in the garage reading the stupid manual for almost an hour before I came out there, took one look at the diagram, and confirmed it was missing one of the parts he needed to start it.  He took it back and hired the neighbor's gardener to come mow once a month for $45.

I'm leaving out a bunch of stuff, I'm sure, stuff I'll only manage to remember after I pick up my laptop and have that familiar desktop glow back again, but I REALLY need to start cleaning the garage.  My goal is to park my car in there on Halloween and since I can barely park my butt in there right now, I'd better get busy.

S.O.S.

My laptop died yesterday.  No warning - the battery went low even though it was plugged in and now it won't even turn on.  I'm taking it down to Best Buy in an hour to see what the damages are.  Anyway, it's probably better this way because I have company coming tomorrow (my oldest friend Jill) and I need to clean and get ready.

Big News of the Day: Genoa now says CHEESE.

I'll never leave the house without wipes again

Genoa is doing much better today.  She continued to barf off and on yesterday morning, giving her final encore performance at noon on our way to pick up Alex from school, in what was perhaps my most daft parenting moment yet: I put a sick child in the car with nary a change of clothes, a towel or a even single, solitary baby wipe.    The car seat will never be the same again.

I ended up stopping at the gas station for some baby wipes and when we got to school, I stole Alex's extra shirt from his cubby, so she'd have something to wear home.  She hasn't barfed since and seems to have returned to her formerly adorable self.  Here she is leaning in for a kiss:

(She now kisses with a puckering noise and will even say "I love you" when prompted.  Swoon!)

By the way, I've asked Moxie to weigh in on the whole breastfeeding during a stomach bug issue, so I'll let you know what she says about that if and when she gets to my question.

The good news is that none of the rest of us seems to have caught the barfs this time.  Of course now that I've said that and posted it here for public consumption, someone else will throw up.  It's only a matter of time.

We did have a busy weekend and I've got the Flickr stream to prove it.  First we went to the Fire Station for their annual open house.  Alex had a TON of fun:

Later that night, we went to the Halloween store, where Dave had a ton of fun.  And now our front porch looks like this:

Finally, I am definitely going to participate in NaBloPoMo this year.  I've already registered and I'm tentatively planning to do a daily gratitude posting.  Every day I'll post at least one thing that I'm grateful for or which made me happy.  And since that's ridiculously sappy, I've decided to also post something that pisses me off every day.  It should be a month of easy blog fodder.

Oh No!

We had friends over last night (FUN!!!) and then Genoa zonked out on the couch at around 8:30.  She seemed fine when I transferred her to her bed, so I went in and slept in my own bed with Dave (admittedly, it was because our sheets are so much softer).  By midnight we heard that horrible telltale coughing on the monitor and when I checked on her there was barf everywhere.

We cleaned up as best we could and gave her a bath.  But then there was the inevitable issue of nursing her to back to sleep.  Genoa ONLY falls asleep nursing, so I basically had no choice but to let her nurse.  Of course, an hour later we were laying in a pool of regurgitated breast milk, which is perhaps the least offensive barf there is, but it was barf nonetheless.  Repeat, rinse, repeat until I finally got her back to sleep without nursing. 

Poor baby.

I've never had to do this before.  Alex never got sick as a baby and I don't think he threw up for the first time until he was three (I guess I could check my archives...) so he was easily able to barf in a bucket or get up and go to the bathroom himself.  He also never needed/wanted to nurse back to sleep either.

I wonder how long till the next one of us barfs...

Little language explosions

First off, that Delurk thing was super fun!  It took me almost three hours to get through all the comments and visit all your blogs (and admittedly, I still have about a dozen visits left to make - I'll get to them!).  If I was still at my old desk job, I'd be adding every single one of you to my Bloglines account and reading you all every day because y'all have some excellent blogs.   

As hard as it is to find time to keep up, I want to be a better blogger and a big part of that includes getting to know my own readers.  I know I've sucked at it lately, so I just want to say that I'm not ignoring anyone on purpose!  And I'm going to try to be better at leaving comments and stopping in to say hi as often as I can.  At a bare minimum, you all should be getting more comments from ME than you do from my lame-butt internet stalker.

Anyway, I haven't talked much about the kids lately since I've been up to my knees in crap, but they are doing great.  Alex has adjusted SO WELL to his new school and his new schedule (he's fast asleep as I'm typing this at 7:31PM!).  I keep hearing about all the fun stuff he does at school ("Greta comes to the class with her Gee-tar and passes around a box of instruments!").  He continues to amaze me with his French vocabulary - une, deux, trois, quatre, cinque.  It's like a REAL school.  He actually learns stuff other than not to push the other kids on the playground.  Thanks to all of you who recommended Montessori; it really seems to be worth the money. 

Genoa has begun the fun little language explosion that happens during year two.  She will repeat back almost anything you ask her to say, but some of the things she's saying without prompt are:

I NEED HELP (yes, she always says this in ALL CAPS)
GET OUT (again ALL CAPS, usually she means it to say MOVE)
I NEED OUT (which is how she asks me to take the cap off the water bottle so she can put it back on a zillion times in a row or how she tells me she wants out of the stroller)
Mommy (I'm not even Mama anymore, egads!)
Dada
Brother (bra)
Alex (ah)
Meow
Puppy
Doggy
More (em-ma)
Baby
Milk
Bottom (because we say it about a million times every day when she stands on chairs)
I WANT IT (again in ALL CAPS)
and of course, the ever-present and merciless MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!  Even the drinking fountain at Alex's school is "MINE!"  God forbid anyone else tries to use it in her presence.

Pictures soon, but I need to go watch a movie with the manbeef.  Have a great weekend!

Milk, birthday parties, COMMENT PLEASE

I've been on the phone a few times with the owner of the flooring company and he's an honest hard-working guy who seems to be determined to get to the bottom of the milk debacle.  Yesterday, I read him the info off the top of the carton and he was going to call the Lactaid company to see when and where said milk might've been purchased.  The more I think about it, the more I start to realize maybe it wasn't US.  Maybe we ARE nice people.  Maybe the previous owners were rude to their movers or maybe their movers were just jerks.  Who knows.

I've been meaning to link to the photos from Alex's birthday party, which was one of the best parties we've had, maybe ever.  I really enjoy the company of my new friends and it was nice to be able to host the party in our own house.  I didn't have to schlep anything anywhere or go out of my way to make a list so I wouldn't forget to bring the ice cream scooper to bring to the park.  I just woke up that morning, swiffered the floors and put out some tablecloths.  I foresee us hosting a lot of parties here, which is exactly what I imagined the first time we walked into this house.

Alex had a blast.  Bigger isn't necessarily better when it comes to parties.

Also, today is DeLurking Day, so do leave a comment and I'll return the favor tonight when the kids both go to bed (at almost the same time!!!).

Our first house warming gift!

When they opened the ceiling in our family room to dry it out, we noticed something weird about the heating system.  One of the ducts seemed to be blocked.  Today I had the HVAC guy come out and take a look at it and in the process, he found a nasty carton of milk inside our furnace.  It had obviously been placed there maliciously and the HVAC guy suggested maybe we pissed off the realtor or the former owners.

But we didn't.  I can't think of any beef they'd have had with us, not to mention that they moved out at the end of August, so they couldn't have bought milk that expired at the end of September.  Also?  They were grown-ups and professionals, not juvenile delinquents.

Then it struck me: we complained about one of our floor installers.  He was, well, I'll be honest here, lazy and Dave and I felt it was our duty to mention it to the owner.  [Specifically, after the carpet and tile were removed, Dave went out of his way to mark several places on the sub floor that he wanted to have screwed down so the floors wouldn't squeak after the hardwood went in.  This guy, let's call him Bruce, told his boss that he'd laid "at least 100 screws" into the floor that morning, but when Dave got here, he couldn't find a single one.  When Dave asked Bruce to point out some of the screws, he said he'd put a bunch over in the office, right underneath all of their equipment.  When the other worker moved the equipment, Dave asked again to see where the screws were and guess what?  There weren't any.  I think the whole episode put Dave on his bad side.]

I have had to deal with a LOT of crap lately.  You'd think the water damage would be the first thing I'd mention, but it PALES in comparison to the other stuff I haven't been blogging about.  I have an internet stalker who thinks it's funny to call me a meth-addicted alcoholic lesbian, whom several of you have already heard from on your own blogs and for whom I apologize.  I also have somebody threatening to sue me for things I've said about them on this blog.  The best part is that this person has made a lifetime's worth of money working on Internet technology, but doesn't seem to understand the basics of the IP address or that it only took about two minutes to figure out who's been subscribing me to e-newsletters for gay vacation home exchanges.  I've been logging all this vitriol and keeping it in a folder for future reference. 

While laughing.  Who in the world would ever believe I was a meth-addict?!

Anyway, the point is that even with all this other stuff going on, stuff normal people would be freaking out about, none of it has bothered me.  I swear I am every bit as obnoxiously perky as ever.

Until today.

The milk thing REALLY got to me.  Maybe it's because I found it in my own home, this house that we worked so hard for and which we love, our children's home.  Maybe it's because even when I'm being a complainy bitch, I always try to at least be a NICE complainy bitch and I can't imagine pissing someone off so badly with anything I said or did.

Maybe everything happens for a reason.  Maybe Dave pulled the faucet off the shower because we're good people and while a $1,000 deductible is honestly no fun, it's a hellofalot better than spending the next several years trying to figure out what died in our stinky-ass house and wondering what the hell we'd gotten ourselves into.