Things you shouldn't shout in church.

Ian was trying really hard to be good, but it was an extra long service because it was our church's centennial celebration. This was a huge celebration that had so many attendees, they had to hold it outside. The choir was 3 times it's normal size and there were about 6 extra priests on the stage, er, the altar. There was lots of extra singing, prayers and talking. From beginning to end, it lasted an hour and 45 minutes. I guess it's not wonder that towards the end he started to get antsy. But Ian doesn't just get antsy like a normal 3 year old, no he has to do it with style.

In a Catholic service, the most sacred part of the ceremony is the Eucharistic blessing. This is the part where the priest does his voodoo magic and turns the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. It's the part where we traditionally kneel (although not today because we were outside on the asphalt and we're not THAT holy) and the altar boys ring little bells to remind us to be extra prayerful. It was during this very sacred and solemn part of the ceremony that Ian decided to call out "It's my turn to be God". At first I let out a giggle, but then noticed that noone around me saw the humor. So I tried to squelch him, but he must have said this another 10 times at the top of his lungs. "It's MY turn to be God." And being that we were already outside, there wasn't really an escape for me. Thoughts like "could I be raising the anti-christ?" actually ran through my head. I tried to quietly explain to him that we couldn't BE God, we can only love God. So his response, (which he couldn't possibly WHISPER back to me, because Ian doesn't really whisper) was "God is MAD!!!" I'm sure everyone around us thought that I was whispering to him that "God is mad at you" which is a terrible mother kind of thing to say. So another six times that he tells the whole world that "God is Mad". Great, I'm glad we're using this church experience to instill the love of God in you, son. Then it was time to sing and I asked him to sing with me. No, he couldn't, because you see, "Jesus can't sing!" Who knew? I finally took him out on the sidewalk and let him run up and down. But what I want to know is, where were all the other 3 year olds??? Why was mine the only one shouting??? And does anyone get now why I only go to church about once a month anymore?

Whew!

I think that this blog was about to suffer death by neglect while still in it's infancy. Well, I am nothing if not inconsistent so I will be consistently inconsistent to avoid surprises. Capiche?

I don't know where August went. I just know I was busy. Lots and lots of busy. And September, well, holy cow - another september. I generally lose 15-20 lbs. in September/October without even trying. okay, that has been the two year pattern and I'm suggesting that it might be a rule, at least until I find myself dangerously close to underweight at which point I will correct things by consuming ONLY very high calorie items like chocolate bars and french fries for a period of time. Man, that's gonna suck.

So, busy. Yes. You know, school starting up, etc. Please don't ask me what I was doing. It will probably come out in bits and spurts when it occurs to me, but I don't want to have to give you a laundry list of all the mayhem. Each individual item, of which there are many, requires it's own lengthy explanation and I simply would rather get this posted. Let's maintain the policy that I have with my dearest friends: it doesn't matter how much time has passed, we never have to feel guilty and we can always just pick up right where we left off.

Last week was SO hectic, that, completely out of character for me, I actually cancelled on two social outings. Yes, ME, I skipped out on two social events. I mean, it's not like I'm always doing stuff, but I usually never say no to outings. And I felt sooo guilty for about 20 minutes and then I realized that it's OKAY to say no. And I luxuriated in a weekend at home. I played with the kids. I cooked. I organized. I did laundry. All of it was extremely soul-satisfying and I felt great about my weekend home. I spent precious little time on the internet and didn't watch TV at all. Go me! But I feel refreshed and ready to blog!

Speaking of organizing, I WILL say that I am hugely more organized than ever before in my life. Something has clicked in my brain and I am starting to get it. Whatever it was that all the rest of you have known all along, I'm kind of starting to get it. It has something to do with consisitently following through, consistently putting things away, etc. No duh, you say? This is all new to me. I spent my entire life thinking that if there was only one dish in the sink, it wasn't dirty. 2 dishes? Eh. Oh, what happened? There are twenty dishes in the sink. Oh my lord, what an incredible mess, how did I let it get so messy???? And then it was time to do dishes. Repeat this scenario replacing the words dishes and sink with toys and the floor, bills and to pay, papers and to correct, etc. You get the idea. It's this totally liberating realization. The amazing part is that I always thought having to do the same thing every day to keep things organized would be like shackles holding me back from the things I really wanted to do. But it's the opposite! Not letting things get out of control allows you to be very carefree. You can leave the house at a moment's notice and know where the umbrella is. You can use your kitchen for cooking. You can be cooking something fabulous and realize that you'd love to share it and call up a friend to come join you and not stress about cleaning the house before they arrive.

I am still sorting through ten year old clutter in certain closets of my house, but slowly, I have been freeing up closet space, giving away rubbermaid bins and not feeling any urgent need to fill up the empty space. I enjoy looking at empty spaces. There are still not enough empty spaces in my house, but I"m getting there. Holy cow, this post just turned into a flylady testimonial. Cripes. I used to do flylady about 5 years ago and I totally gave up on it because it was too complicated. What worked for me? An effort at consistency. So there. Now ask me about my dieting philosophy sometime. Another hill I overcame without the aid of any program.

Okay, so that's it for now. I will post some pictures later, a short essay on family generations and a rant about Betsy's future aspirations. Please stay tuned. And if I get lazy and don't do it, I can edit this post and you can't prove I ever said it!!! Ha. I control the reality of the worrygirl universe!!!! (Okay, someone told me recently, many times, that I am way too guilty feeling. So I'm working on NOT feeling guilty. Saying things like that out loud helps me. I'm sorry, did I hurt your feelings? I promise, I didn't mean to. If you really want me to write those posts I will.) I'm not crazy.

It's just a doll... breathe in, breathe out....it's just a doll

There is such a difficult line to navigate in parenting between gaining your child's trust so that they will share things with you and being their disciplinarian, possibly having to punish for the things. It's especially difficult as a single parent without the good cop/bad cop option.

So today I made major headway when Betsy showed me the very secret thing she wrote in her diary: "Nat, I love you." carefully spelled out in her Hello Kitty notebook. So now I've posted it on a public blog and I'm a very bad mommy whom she should never trust. She doesn't read that well yet. This is Nat. I have very mixed emotions about my 6 year old having crushes on teenage boys. On the one hand alarm bells are going off screaming caution. On the other hand, it's cute, it's normal and I'm so happy that she shared it with me. She was embarrassed and so I told her about my crush on Shawn Cassidy and Ponch from CHiPs at roughly the same age. She laughed, "you mean in the 50s?" I told her that she can have crushes but she can't go out with real boys yet. She said, "I know, but maybe when I'm like 17?" Ummm.... yeah. Maybe. With this one I'll be lucky if we make it to 12. I'm trying my darndest to steer her towards nerdy pursuits and I'm pretty sure she's going to need glasses soon so hopefully that gives us a little cushion. Sigh.

On a slightly related vein, this afternoon she was playing with her barbies. First she filled a plastic tub with water and it was going to be a lake for Barbie to take her kayak. Then I went outside and it was a bathtub. All the Barbies were completely nude laid out on a towel either having just bathed or getting ready to bathe. I kind of freaked when I saw that Ken was naked too. Since I remember the naughty things my Ken and Barbie did (and I know what a naughty adult I've been!) I was kind of concerned.
"Betsy, shouldn't they be wearing bathing suits?"
"They're wet mom and there's not enough"
"But won't they be embarrassed for Ken to see them naked like that"
"He's just a DOLL mom!"
Oh yeah. So true. I don't know how I'm going to get through these next 12 years. Too much to worry about!

Back-up Plan

So the kids and I decided today that if we ever find ourselves homeless, we are going to live under this tree in overlook park.





Betsy has already planned out where all the furniture will go. It will be kind of like how this family lived in forest park. Truly though, I think that when park rangers and the public see how cute the kids are, we shouldn't run into any problems. In fact, why are we even paying rent now? If you are trying to get a hold of us and we are unavailable, well, now you know.

This pretty well sums up my dating life...

She has red "hair" and her name starts with an e - coincidence?

We've entered a new Era folks!!!!

Guess who got to sleep in this morning???? ME, that's who!!!! Yes, it's true, I slept in until 11:00 AM with both children here. This is the most unbelievably fantastic thing that has happened to me in YEARS!

My mom gave me the advice years ago to put the cereal on a shelf where kids could reach it so that kids could get up by themselves and watch cartoons. That is one of the secrets to happy mommies. And happy mommies are better mommies. This is one of the better pieces of advice I have to say. The set up has been in place. The cereal is stored on a low shelf. I also recently started buying milk in half gallons because the gallons are too heavy for kids to pour. They know how to turn the tv on. They are old enough that they have a little bit of common sense and aren't going to be sticking forks into wall sockets and trust me, I would hear and come down if there were any loud noises. I have a very finely tuned mommy ear.

Skill - wise, we've been ready. The hold up has been my scaredy-cat children. At least, that's what they tell me. These little manipulators play the "I'm scared" card to keep me at their beck and call. They claim that if I am upstairs and they are downstairs, monsters could get them and vice versa. I haven't told them that if there REALLY were monsters, I wouldn't be able to do a damned thing to protect them and we'd all be dead, probably torn apart limb by limb. I'm not sure they're ready for that line of logic for why they shouldn't be afraid. What this means is that every morning when they wake up, they immediately come into my bed, climb on me, climb on each other and basically act as annoying as possible until I have to put one or the other in time out and am forced to get up and deal with the situation.

But this morning, I felt like crap! I've been sick the past two days and never had the chance to just sleep it off (like my bachelor friend who passed this disease to me), but for some reason I stayed up late last night. Oh, I know why. It was all the coffee I drank just to be barely functional yesterday. This morning, the idea of getting out of bed when the kids came in to start their usual routine of jumping on my bed with me in it seemed like the worst imaginable disomfort. I BEGGED them to go downstairs and let me sleep in, but no, they were too scared, they were hungry, blah, blah, blah. I was NOT getting out of bed, but they were equally determined to not leave me alone. Finally, I resorted to the time-honored parenting tradition of bribery. Betsy now understands money. "Betsy, if you will go downstairs and make yourself some cereal and watch cartoons so I can sleep, I will pay you $5". She was off the bed and down the stairs before I could finish my sentence. As soon as she was downstairs, Ian was quick behind. Aaaahhh!

I feel like that was some sucky parenting to bribe my kid to do something for totally selfish reasons. BUT, what she doesn't realize is that she now proved to me that her not doing it before has NOTHING to do with fear. If she was truly afraid, the money wouldn't have changed that. So in a way, I tricked her and next time I can ask her to do it and if she says she's afraid, I will be able to remind her that she's actually not. Future prices are always negotiable. Future prices could be along the lines of, being allowed to continue eating in this house. ha ha ha!

Come join my pity party!

It seems everyone I've talked to over the past week has had as much or more to gripe about as me. I would say this week has shaped up to be an all time low for the year.

Monday: Got dumped via email by nice but apparently clueless guy I'd been intensely dating for all of 3 weeks. I'm tempted to tell his mommy on him since she seemed to have failed at instructing him in basic ettiquette.


Tuesday: While still in a daze from my heartache, I tried to distract myself by taking the kids to the swimming pool. I let my worry guard down! What was I thinking??? I remember walking in and thinking "Creston Park feels like such a friendly, safe place, I'm so glad we live in this neighborhood." So, I had my purse and the bag with all of our pool stuff. I didn't have a lock and with my feelings of security for some reason made the very dumb choice that it seemed safer to leave my purse in the locker where it wouldn't be visible than out on the lawn. We piled all of our clothes and extra towels on top of it, shut the door and went swimming. Well, I'm sure you can all see where this is going. We came back to the locker ready to shower and get ready for an evening of fun at an outdoor concert, but something wasn't right. The locker wasn't as full as it had been. OH NO!!! My purse was gone. I immediately rushed out to the front desk to report it and had all the lifeguards looking around although I'm sure the thief was long gone. I called the police who considered it a non-emergency and then had to comfort my two scared and dripping wet children to get ourselves home. yes, this is when I realize all the things that were gone. Besides the contents of my purse which included my cell phone, wallet, ID, debit card, car keys and camera, they took: 1)Our shampoo! Well, we weren't goign to take the time to wash our hair at that point. Never mind that I had colored my hair not 3 days before and I was likely to completely fry it by leaving the chlorine in. 2) Our towels! Fortunately with all the running around to call the police, we had sort of drip dried. 3) Ian's shirt! He had to just go shirtless. 4)ONE of my shoes!!!! This was teh worst of all. So, without my car keys, we couldn't drive home. Without my cell phone, I couldn't call anybody. And even though the pool staff let me use their phone, who could I call? I don't have anyone's phone numbers memorized. Okay, I had 2 - I knew both my sister's numbers and neither answered. Without my wallet, I couldnt' pay a cab. Without my shoes, we were looking at a long walk. Big bummer! Fortunately the pool staff lent me a pair of flip-flops. Big kudos to the Creston Pool staff!!!! Thanks for all their help.

The past day and a half has been spent trying to replace all the things I lost. It got very expensive - I've spent around $600 now and I won't be able to replace my camera for a while. I won't ever recover the pictures on my phone and camera, or the sound of Ian's voice saying "telephone mommy" that I recorded, the "LOVE" that Betsy spelled with toys on the floor that had been my phone's screensaver. I'm sad for that.

The upside is that my sister Joanne was my savior! She was there in my time of need to watch my kids while I did stuff and then to drive me around to run errands. We actually had a fun day hanging out yesterday. And nothing bad happened really. We are all safe, it's only money.

Wednesday: After a long day of running around town, I started to feel a scratchy throat. Then I started to feel feverish. By morning, my throat hurt so bad I couldn't sleep and I am exhausted from all the stress of this week. So the kids are at the sitter and I am just trying to get better. Imagine the sound of the air coming out of a balloon and that's how I feel.