Pee-Tastic!

Well, I did it again. I came home last night, went straight to the bathroom, sat down on the toilet and I could hear Abba singing. It was faint, like a small voice in my head. I couldn't understand why this particular moment would inspire Abba in my brain. It wasn't like I was having any sort of epiphany on the john. Was I?? I had to look around my 5x5 bathroom just to make sure. As I looked around the bathroom I actually thought "wow maybe this is some spectacular pee." Then I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out my little ipod-like machine. Evidently I hit the on button when I sat down. I don't think I've ever tinkled to music before especially Voulez Vouz, from Abba Gold, Greatest Hits. You should try it. It's disconcerting.

The last time I let my blonde roots get the best of me I walked around my house for about 5 minutes trying to figure out where the music was coming from. I was enjoying some time at home by myself and couldn't figure out who was playing the Alan Jackson music that sounded so clear but yet faraway. I even looked in the kids' closet. I put my head in then pulled my head out, put it in, pulled it out. Duh. Then I put my hand in my pocket. I laughed so hard I then had to go to the bathroom. No epiphanies that time.

I'm listening to Dancing Queen now and I'm thinking it's got a nice beat. I think I could tinkle to it.

Bad Mom Monday

Well, it's Monday. I don't know if it's because it's Monday or because it's cold and gray or because it's President Day and my kids are home from school today AND TOMORROW that I'm in a fowl mood. Maybe it's the stress of the holiday. Too many sales, no money.

I'm done with winter. I was done with winter on January 29th but today I am OFFICIALLY OVER IT! My feet are cold. My nose is cold. My dog is cold. (She hasn't complained but I can tell.) I'd rather chew my toenails than be outside. What happened to global warming?! I'd like somebody to come melt MY polar icecaps. And if we have to go anywhere it takes my kids 10 minutes to walk a half block to get to the car. It's like herding opossum. And then another 5 minutes to actually get in the car as they argue about who's going in first or last. If it gets any colder I'm going to just have to leave them in the parking lot. It will be a first. On the six o'clock news you won't hear "mom left child in car while shopping" but "mom, left three children in parking lot." "She drove home by herself with a different radio station on than Radio Disney. She then proceeded to take a bath because the hot water had not been all used up. She's obviously crazy but she's feeling better after some "alone time."

Isaac wanted me to buy a Harry Potter book the other day when we were grocery shopping. He morphed into his sister Eva.
"Mom, can we get that Harry Potter book?"
"Umm, no."
"Puleeeasse, I really, really want it." (Have you noticed this doesn't work for Eva either?)
So I said, "Isaac it doesn't have any pictures in it and besides we already have it."
"Buuutttttt, Mooooooommmmmmmm."
"No, we're not buying it."
"But Myna (Maya) has it."
"Yes, and we don't need another one."
"Puuulllleeeeeaaaassssse....." The argument escalated and I blurted out rather loudly...
"ISAAC YOU CAN'T READ!!"
Ewwww... this feels like a BMM (another Bad Mom Moment).
His big eyes got squinty and he gave me a look like 'I can't believe you brought that up'. Ouch. Bad mom.

Speaking of "bad mom" I can't remember if it was before that or after that that he gave me a strike. A strike is an "x" that goes under your name on the chalkboard in our kitchen whenever you do something unsavory like say for example not picking up your things after I've told you 11 times to pick up your things. I moved some chairs out of the way that Isaac was playing with. He was standing behind the couch with his arms folded over his chest and his belly hanging out of his too small pajamas. So I asked him what was wrong.
"Did you hurt yourself?"
"No"
"Are you cold or something?"
"No, you moved my stuff and I gave you (pointing at the chalkboard dramatically) a strike!"
And sure enough there was a big "X" right where Isaac would have put it. I bit my top lip so that I wouldn't laugh. Then I had to bite my lower lip. Then I just started chewing desperately on both lips because he was staring me down with righteous indignation. He had been wronged. And I had been "bad". There was no getting around it. I think he sensed my inner upheaval (that and the fact that all I could do was nod my head) and he walked away. He came back 5 minutes later and threatened to give me another strike if I didn't give him some marshmallows pronto. I then threatened to send him to his room. We silently called it a "draw" and left it at that.

On Thursday while we were dining at the fine establishment of Chik-fil-A he shared his feelings with my mom. I was trying to get him to eat just a couple more bites of chicken when he looked at my mom and said something that I couldn't hear. My mom said to him "Here, just eat these two small bites" then she told me he'd already eaten a lot and beside he'd had a cupcake earlier. Excuse me?! He had icing!! And I'm trying to feed him protein!! (Who is this woman?!) So one very small bite later Isaac ran off to play in the playroom with other kids and lots and lots of germs and bacteria. (sorry, issues.) And later my mom said "you know what he said to me?" he said "She's making me nuts." Evidently Isaac needs less "mommy time".

So it's been decided. No more hemming and hawing over half-day or full-day kindergarten next year. He's going full-day. It's better than leaving him in a parking lot.

Insights

I've been having many insights lately. Maybe it's due to the weather, being kinda locked indoors. Or maybe it's the season of creative thought and insightfulness. Or maybe it's because I've been watching a lot of Oprah. Anyway, I'm having them so I thought I'd share.....



My first insight is that it might be a little easier for me to blog if I could remember my bleepin' password. Perhaps I'll write it down somewhere... See, the creative mind at work.



Here's a good one. I decided to give myself a break. I know, easier said than done but here is what I've decided. You might even find this helpful if you're a mom. So here's what I'm saying to myself - "I am not a bad mother." You're probably thinking "Michelle, you're not a bad mother, where'd you get that idea?" Or you're thinking "No shit lady, get a clue." But either way I'm really not all that bad. The reason I'm saying this to myself is not because I'm looney tunes but because most days I tell myself that I'm, well, a bad mom. (You know with my inside voice? The one inside my head that says " you shouldn't eat that".) I don't mean to be nasty to myself (or my children) but sometimes, inevitably it happens. And one little incident can ruin a whole day with feelings of mom failure. Like when I say things to my kids like "IF ANYONE ELSE UTTERS THE WORD "MOM" IN THE NEXT 60 MINUTES THEN YOU ARE ALL GROUNDED FOR THE REST OF THE DAY!" See, it's not that I'm a bad mom it's that I had a "Bad Mom Moment." Uh, huh, you're getting it, it's a BMM. (It's like a BM but less mess)(hopefully) So just because I'm not June Clever 95% of the time (ok, maybe not even 10% of the time) that doesn't make me a bad mother. It makes me - me. And I'm an ok mom, I'm a good mom! (Well, sometimes and usually when no one is looking.) So remember when you blow up at your kids and you've found, yet again, another granola bar wrapper staring up at you from the middle of your otherwise clean living room - You're not a bad mom, your just having a BMM. Right there in the middle of your living room.

More insights later,
Michelle

Ok. Little Einstein's is on. I have 30 minutes to blog. Ooops the phone is ringing. Oh oh Isaac answered it. And he's talking to whoever it is. It's the At&T guy. He's coming over in 15 minutes to fix our tv hookup. Gotta throw on some clothes. Ok, I still have 25 minutes.

So you ever have one of those weeks when everything goes just the way you want it? You're always on time, your kids don't give you lip when you're running late to THEIR piano lesson, it just seems that the gods are working in your favor? Yep, me neither but I'm still hopeful it will happen. Last week started out ok but by the end of the week the gods had kicked me in the head and punched me in the stomach. I ended up with the flu on Sunday. The good news is after taking one of my mega-headache pills I can no longer remember the entire week! See, there's always a silver lining.

In other news... I quit my job at Archiver's. This I remember. And this is good. I think it's just time to move on. My body was saying "quit this job, you don't want to do it anymore." It was the many headaches and all my many aches and pains. For some reason my body is still talking to me with the aches and pains even though I quit my job. Perhaps I need to tell my body I quit my job. It's that whole mind/body connection thing. Although I have another theory....

It's a disease. It's called "I'm a hothouse flower" disease. Or HHFD. Yes, it's serious. I’m a hothouse flower. Don’t leave me outside too long or I’ll wilt like a day old salad. My environment has to be steady and stable at all times. No excess anything. Actually no anything. No sugar, no simple carbs (white bread, pasta, etc,) no caffeine, no alcohol, no dairy, no chocolate, no fun. I have to exercise regularly but not overly exert myself. I need a nap daily but no more than 30 minutes or I'll be up all night. I need to meditate daily, do yoga and eat macrobiotic foods. I don't know what macrobiotic foods are and I don't know how to meditate but I do do yoga once a week. I've also given up cereal for breakfast and switched to eggs. (Hey, baby steps.) I've yet to give up caffeine entirely (alcohol either for that fact) and I definitely haven't given up chocolate. But I think the first step to curing this disease is recognizing that I have it. I am a Hot House Flower. Now onto Step 2. Maybe I'll take a shorter nap today, eat a little less chocolate.

Is there a teacher conspiracy? Sorry, moving on to a new topic. Why is it I feel like I'm getting the run-around with Eva's teachers? Why have I always felt this way with Eva's teachers? The common denominator here is Eva but I'm really confused about the situation. I think I'm going to go sit in on some of her school day and get a feel for things. I'm hoping to turn into a fly on the wall and they all forget I'm there. Probably not going to happen but at least her teachers will know that I'm watching...watching....watching.... We'll see what transpires.

That's it for now. I have much more to say but now this tension is crawling up my neck and poking it's way into my head. Maybe an early nap today?
Michelle

Ahhhhh February

So the big snow storm didn't happen. A bit disappointing for some people. Especially Eva who woke up at 6:30 (a half hour early) to discover she did in fact have to go to school. This knowledge was followed by exclamations of the unfairness of life and a little bit of foot stomping with a little bit of thrashing about. She knows I don't like the stomping so she substituted with the thrashing which looks like mini upper body convulsions. (Reminds me of the Talking Heads.) I let her do her dance of unfairness while I continued to crunch on my cereal. Oh, woe is her.



In other news.....

Isaac turned into the antichrist the other day. I wouldn't draw a picture of heaven for him. Evidently he's a visual thinker... It all started with me recalling something I did as a kid. He in turn needs to know where he was at the time. I said he was in heaven. Thought I did well. So he asked me what heaven looks like. I tried to answer with the basics...a beautiful place, trees, water, flowers, etc.. "Well, draw it for me mom". Huh.

"I don't think I can do that Isaac".

"Just draw it mom." Thrusting is light blue colored pencil at me.

"I can't Isaac". Knowing whatever I drew would be disappointing.

"Just draw it." Pencil coming a little closer to my face. Insistence in his voice.

"I don't know how!" Me becoming hysterical.

"DRAW!" Clenched teeth, pencil sticking me in the nose. Ok, mini-Satan, get a grip.

"Hey, do you need a time out?"

And there, another meaningful discussion at the Johnson house.

Lordy, lordy

Question: What can give you a headache, an eye twitch and uterine contractions all at the same time?
Answer: Twins reaching puberty.

I'm not ready to buy bras. I think I just got mine right.

I don't know what to do with most feminine products. I see those commercials and I have no idea what they're talking about.

Discussions about bodies and changing hormones tend to leave me drooling and listless kinda like a small stroke (or uterine contractions). I'm prone to freak out and say the wrong things like "what are you talking about?!" and "have you lost your mind?" or "go ask your father, he knows more about sex than I do."

Then there are the questions I try so hard to evade. For instance: "Mom is Jamie Lynn Spears really pregnant?" I went with the forthright approach and said "yes" and followed it up with a "It's late, we'll talk about it in the morning." I didn't say which morning. Like maybe a morning when you're sixteen, or a morning when your married and your third child is on the way...."about Jamie Lynn Spears.. we never cleared that up..."

Tim's taught the kids to be open with their discussions about their bodies. (Eye twitch.) You know, use correct anatomical names, etc. So on the way to church one day Eva announces (rather loudly) "my nipples hurt." Nice. Can I hide in the glove compartment? Are we there yet? I can think of I few prayers I need to offer up. Somehow Isaac managed to not hear this or there would have been a aching nipple discussion all through church until he was completely satisfied that he knew everything about the topic.

Maya has always been good at mastering the art of tear production. Things don't go her way and she doesn't get what she thinks she deserves then "pop", like little sprinkler spigots - tears. Now, the tears are just running out of her eyeballs at the drop of a hat. It's a sprinkler on an almost daily timer. Example: She and Eva had a discussion over hair color that lasted their entire shower which lasted about 20 minutes and used all my hot water (it's an issue). Maya said her hair was darker than Eva's when it's wet. Eva didn't appreciate that for obvious reasons. (Actually no, I don't understand it either.) I tried to disentangle the argument (bad idea since I didn't understand it in the first place) but this lead to tears from Maya which I have yet to understand. This is not good. I feel like a man. Being a man is bad. At least when you're trying to understand "feelings". Not just feelings but "feelings". Maybe even ""feelings"". I even asked Tim if he had any insights. The man who openly uses the word "nipple" had none. Huh, what good is he?

Lordy, lordy,
michelle

I woke up yesterday morning to a bedroom floor spotted with blood. As I tried to focus my eyes I noticed that the blood was EVERYWHERE. At first I thought it was our dog, Phoebe, then I saw larger pools of blood and thought Phoebe couldn't have bled that much and suspected someone's nose. I followed the bloody trail out into the hall and saw that it circled around the hall and then led into the family room where it made a lovely figure 8. It had to be the dog because anybody in my house with a bloody nose wouldn't have wandered around in the middle of the night creating psychotic patterns of red on every reachable floor (except for the kitchen of course, that would have cleaned up easily.) without waking me. And near the kitchen floor, laying calmy and no longer bleeding, was the culprit looking guilty as hell. She could have at least rolled over and whined or something instead of looking at me like "why didn't YOU do something?" Evidently she had lost a toenail during the night as evidenced by the large disgusting toenail found on the family room floor. So I spent most of my morning scrubbing rather dispassionately many square feet of light colored carpet. I moved from room to room, I guess to get the worst of it and to give myself variety. Isaac helped by bopping me on the head with his magic wand telling me to scrub faster. (He wanted me to play with him.) At one point in the family room I considered leaving half the red spots - you know, as conversation pieces. I could visualize guests coming over and asking "Well, did you have a bloody murder in your living room? A physical dispute with your husband? Do we need to call child protective services?" Blood spots as ice breakers - it would make for a great party. But I wasn't planning any great parties soon so I kept with the scrubbing and Isaac kept up with his bopping. (He tried the "stop scrubbing now" magic bop as well, always thinking.) It was but a mere 1 and half hours later that I scrubbed the last spot, rubbed my aching arms and sang a small hallelujah. When you wake up to a house full of dog blood it just makes you stop and think "what is God trying to tell me here?" The blood of life is all over my floor and I'm on my hands and knees trying to remove it. Perhaps He is saying "Your life is a mess, you need to clean it up, preferably with an oxygen formula cleaner" or "you should be grateful you're not cleaning up blood on a daily basis" or " you should appreciate people who have cleaned up your blood" or the more obvious " You should clip your dog's toenails once-in-a-while". I'm going with all the above. Phoebe pretty much kept her tail between her legs most of the day and walked with a bit of a "gimp". I was trying to work up some compassion for her and was hoping I would bolster myself about the time the smell of blood cleared the air or my arms stopped aching. Well, it's almost 11pm. So far, no go. Poor dog. There I think that's about all I have for today. Maybe tomorrow she'll get some love. Oh bloody hell, Michelle