So friggin tired

Okay, I got a ton accomplished today and yesterday...all the stuff in red is done:

1. Strip beds
2. Remake beds
3. Do laundry
4. Finish adding playground reviews to MCOT website
5. Start adding restaurant reviews to MCOT website
6. Add April calendar to MCOT website
7. Add newsletter archives to MCOT website
8. Think about adding recipes to MCOT website, but laugh instead
9. Fold girls’ laundry
10. Clean kitchen
11. Straighten living room
12. Mail updated auto bill payment to Internets
13. call March of Dimes and find out why, for the second year in a row, I HAVE BEEN KICKED OFF MY OWN TEAM…y’know….the one that I FORMED!!!
14. Edit March for babies homepage and add team members (after they make me captain of my own team again)
15. Call place that will take furniture donations (i.e. beg them to haul away tables and boxspring that are preventing Project Garage Purge from commencing)
16. More things that I cannot remember

And number 16 was a WHOLE bunch of things which I am too tired to list here.
but after a boatload of figuring crap out, the website is live...woot!
There's till work to be done....it's ongoing...and I'm sure some glitches will surface over the next couple of days, but the bulk of the work is done.

So maybe I can post about more interesting things tomorrow. But right now...off to bed!

To Do List

I have a suffocating to do list today. Well, suffocating if you are surviving on about 3 hours of sleep and all you want to do is curl up in a ball on the couch. And were it not for the little neighbor boy I watch, who is quietly doing his homework, I may well be doing just that. Both of my own children are sleeping. (scratch that....I think I hear Helen crying.)


Well, it now looks like the motivation I have mustered up may be derailed by crying toddler.
so quickly...
my list...

1. Strip beds
2. Remake beds
3. Do laundry
4. Finish adding playground reviews to MCOT website
5. Start adding restaurant reviews to MCOT website
6. Add April calendar to MCOT website
7. Add newsletter archives to MCOT website
8. Think about adding recipes to MCOT website, but laugh instead
9. Fold girls’ laundry
10. Clean kitchen
11. Straighten living room
12. Mail updated auto bill payment to Internets
13. call March of Dimes and find out why, for the second year in a row, I HAVE BEEN KICKED OFF MY OWN TEAM…y’know….the one that I FORMED!!!
14. Edit March for babies homepage and add team members (after they make me captain of my own team again)
15. Call place that will take furniture donations (i.e. beg them to haul away tables and boxspring that are preventing Project Garage Purge from commencing)
16. More things that I cannot remember

Items number 1 and #12 are done, and #2 is 2/3 completed, item #3 is under way. (Yes, I know it’s 3 pm, but I had to bring Ruthie to school, go to the gym, take a shower, pick Ruthie up from school, feed the children, get them to bed, and eat my lunch, with a few instances of disciplining unruly children thrown in for good measure).
I’ll check back later to give you an update…(as if you reeeeaaalllly care, right?)
And now, my two children are awake, which renders the previously quiet neighbor boy not so quiet anymore. This all makes completion of tasks much harder. ::sigh::

A little movie...2009 version

Sick this weekend. Chills, fever, sweats, digestive trouble and complete exhaustion. So I almost skipped posting today too, but thought I'd post this as well. Most of you have seen it before, but the end is different I update pictures every year.

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Short Memory

I have ten moms and a baker's dozen of kids (not including my own) coming over for our book club discussion and lunch. I do not have enough room for all these people. I really expected about 2/3 of that number, at most. I am on my knees praying to the gods of sunshine that they dry out my yard and warm up the air by 11:30. Originally, I wasn't even going to attend this month's book club, since I'd read the book before and hated it. But now, not only am I hosting the discussion, I read the damned book again, if only to have a more specific and valid argument about why I hated it. (I originally read it about 4 years ago, and remembered little, except that it sucked.)
There seems to be a pattern developing here. Remember this post? And this year for Helen's birthday, I decided to forgo our usual party and just have a few of our MOMS club friends over for cookie decorating. That turned into about the same amount of people as today. And it took me about 3 hours to clean up the toys alone. I swore I would never do it again, yet here we are a mere six or weeks later....in the same boat.
At least this time I had the sense to proclaim it a potluck lunch...and we're using paper plates. Now if only I could find where Benny hid the plastic cups.



(Carly, I think I can hear you laughing from across the river...feel free to stop by.)

As I was enjoying some of them with my soup one day...

Yesterday, Benny received two coupons in the mail for free bags of Wise potato chips. (I will be saving these for the next BOGO sale somewhere.) He received these coupons because of this:

Wise Consumer Affairs Department

228 Raseley Street

Berwick, PA 18603-4533

To Whom It May Concern:

First, let me state that I am a longtime customer, consumer and fan of Wise snack foods. I have been purchasing your products and enjoying them for as long as I can remember. Your Owl mascot is one of the most welcome and recognizable symbols in the snack food aisle and I continue to look to it as a reassurance of quality and good taste.

That makes the following discovery all the more distressing.

I recently purchased two 8 ounce bags of your Wise Ridgies All Natural Ridged Potato Chips. As I was enjoying some of them with my soup one day, I started to read the back of the bag. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me as I read “No dip? They’re also great right out the bag.” I had to reread it three times to make sure that I had seen what I thought I had seen.

Did I just read the phrase “…right out the bag” ? Yes, I did.

I hope I do not need to point out that this phrasing is grammatically incorrect. The correct phrase would be “They’re also great right out of the bag.” The “of” is definitely needed. “Of” is a preposition, a word that shows the relation between a substantive (a word or group of words functioning as a noun) and a verb, an adjective, or another substantive. In this sentence “of” serves as a bridge and its omission creates an awkward and erroneous phrasing. This phrasing is no more correct than saying “My car ran out gas.” or “I put the dog out the house.”

An alternate tack would be to say “They’re also great right from the bag.”, but that is a different story.

In these days of illiteracy and grammatical shortcuts it is especially important for respected companies to set a proper example of correct usage of the English language.

Please reply to this letter as soon as you can and inform me of the steps you intend to take to phase this packaging off of the shelves.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Benny

I'm too lazy to type out the entire reply, but this was worth noting:

I have notified our Marketing department of your concerns and you will be glad to know we will be correcting the sentence to include "of". We would like to apologize for the disappointment and inconvenience this situation has caused you.

I don't believe you need any commentary from me.

Separated at Birth?

Adam Lambert

Jason Bateman

Benny doesn't see it....do you?

Five is the new thirteen

Must be, because the drama and mood swings I saw from my five year old today were something I wasn't quite expecting until closer to adolescence. The child had the audacity to stick her tongue out at me and run away, into the maze of McDonald's playland tunnels. The engineers behind this playplace are truly my friends because, unlike most of their counterparts, these tunnels can actually be navigated by an adult. I captured Ruthie with little effort. She refused to put on her coat or her shoes, so she walked to the car wearing neither in the 35 degree weather. She screamed at the top of her lungs that she was cold. But I refused to be swayed by the horrified looks of the drive-thru patrons as they stared in disbelief at the pitiful, neglected child. Lucky for her it wasn't as windy as yesterday.
After a nap and a relatively peaceful late afternoon and early evening, (during which a favorite toy was confiscated for a week) the drama began again with the disapproval of tonight's dinner offerings. After carrying Ruthie to the the steps to cool off, where the screaming continued, I left her fate in the capable hands of Benny, since I was completely spent. This from having navigated the day's dramatics without beating her, or even raising my voice. Kudos to me If only I was drinker. I'd toast myself.

Could be nowhere

What to blog about today?? I really have no idea. I had several thoughts running through my head throughout the morning, when I wasn't home. And it figures....they've all escaped me. So we'll see where this post goes....could be nowhere.

I've been reading a lot of really sad blogs today, since we got home. I don't know why I do this. I seem drawn to them. I'm a big fan of Uppercase Woman. It's author, Cecily, lost her twin sons at 22 weeks, over four years ago. It's a community that's pretty tight in the blogging world, mothers who have lost their children. I've found a few through links on her site. So I've taken to following a couple of them. I feel a sort of kinship with them, having lost a baby myself. But I feel like I don't really belong there, because my baby was lost much earlier than most of these mothers. Like posting about the baby I lost wouldn't quite count.

I remember vividly the emotional pain of miscarrying and how completely desperate I felt. It is always defined as a loss, and it is, in more ways then just the actual loss of a child. My baby was lost, and all of my dreams for that baby, but I was lost too. I had no purpose that I could define, except maybe "not a mother". I wanted no part in this life anymore, only the comfort of my husband's arms. I remember thinking I would never, ever be able to dig my way out of the pain I was in. Thinking I would never ever feel joy again in any meaningful capacity. But I did, and I do, and I have no idea how I came to this. I think it really wasn't until Ruthie was born, and really until she came home, that I began to see a light. I remember my thoughts as I was delivering her. At the very moment I was pushing her fragile body out of mine, I thought that if she didn't make it, I would never ever do this again. By "this" I meant try to have another baby. I knew that if she didn't survive, I would be plunging into a depth of grief from which there was no foreseeable escape. I was sure of it. And I dangled there on the edge, white knuckles and all, until she came home. Even after that, I was sure something would go wrong with her. I'd walk over to the lip of that tremendous abyss and peer in, even though I didn't want to. But it seemed as if the moment I was no longer vigilant, it would sneak up on me...it would suck me in....like the little girl in Poltergeist, sucked into that TV.
Even after Ruthie seemed more stable in the NICU, I just couldn't shake it. I'd watch her cry and remember how sure I was that our first baby had felt some kind of pain, and that as the mother of that baby, I had failed. Failed to save him, failed to comfort him when he needed me most. I had this horribly haunting thought for a long long time after the miscarriage that my baby died alone and in pain, with the knowledge that I, his mother, wasn't there. So to watch poor Ruthie, hooked up to all kinds of machinery, crying her feeble cry, sometimes audible, sometimes obscured by machinery, was agony. To stand helplessly next to her bed, was nearly unbearable to me. I remember crying myself and a nurse saying "Oh, honey they all cry." I wanted to scream at that nurse. I wanted to beat my fists against her chest and yell "Yes, maybe they do, but that is MY baby, and I am supposed to be the one who comforts her. And she can smell me and hear me, and she knows that I'm here and that I'm not helping her. And I am finding it really hard to live with that. And I am being suffocated by the guilt of failing her. Not keeping her safely inside of me for as long as she was supposed to be there. I didn't fail those other babies that are crying. I failed her. So when she cries, it's my heart that's crushing itself in my chest. My knees are the ones that go weak. And I am sure I can never make it up to her. " But I said none of that. I shook my head and said "I know."
So where am I going with this? I'm not sure, but I feel like I am minimizing the pain of those mothers who have lost their babies, by comparing it to the pain of my miscarriage, or God forbid, the pain of having a sick child who lived. Their babies, whose faces they saw, whose still bodies they held. I wish there were something I could say to help them, but I know that I can't. My pain is different. My baby that died will always be "the baby that I lost." I don't know if it was a boy or a girl. It never had a name. I never saw its hazy profile in an ultrasound picture. I never bought that baby a homecoming outfit. So maybe over time it's been easier for me to let the pain go. Without those things, I didn't have the same dreams. I had dreams for that baby, for sure, but they were so much more vague. It didn't feel like that 6 years ago though.
I had always felt a bit of regret that I didn't know the baby's gender. Now, I think, I'm grateful for it. It might have made me dream more, and that would have been more that I needed to let go of. More that I had lost. I have no doubt that the year following the miscarriage, when our efforts at conceiving again repeatedly failed us, plunged me further into despair and was the hardest year of my life. Harder than my year in rehab. It changed me, as really difficult things tend to do. At first I didn't like who I had become, but I felt that letting go if it would mean abandoning my baby. Disowning him. Failing him again. And I read about these mothers, and sometimes fathers, who blog about the child they've lost. And they talk about how they've changed. I get it a little. But I don't get it all. Because they have more dreams they'd imagined coming true. They had names for their babies. Names that, if they hear them when some other mother called her little girl or boy, break their hearts all over again. Babies who would be just the ages of theirs. I am at peace with how I've changed, because in the end I think it's served me well. The pain of the miscarriage, and the pain of my daughters' births, has opened some doors for me that I never would have seen. But I don't know if that's how it works when your baby is born still at 36 weeks, or dies when she is 6 weeks old. When she has a name, and a face and you have so many, many more dreams than I'd ever dared to dream. And so I don't want to assume that I know what they're going through. Yes, I lost a child. But in a different way. I guess you could say that about every loss.

Night Out

I'm headed out for the evening. My ride is picking me up in about 20 minutes and I am not yet dressed, contacts not in, teeth not brushed, makeup not refreshed, but I didn't want to miss two days in a row here. That would leave me no leeway for the rest of the week. I'm going to a reunion of former officers for the Student Association at my alma mater. Not necessarily a whooping hollering kind of good time, but it is a night out with food, possibly people I haven't seen in a long time (which could go either way) and NO KIDS!!! (No husband either. My friend from college is picking me up, which is good because I hate to go to events like this and walk in alone. I have a crippling fear of not recognizing anyone and standing there like a fool, unable to find whomever it is I am supposed to be meeting. Silly. But real. I will go way far out of my way to pick someone up so I don't have to arrive anywhere alone.
So I am excited to be going out. But exhausted. Benny's snoring kept me up a good part of the night. He has those throat strips but wasn't able to remember if he'd taken one. He claims he didn't get any sleep because I kept nudging him. THAT'S BECAUSE YOU KEPT SNORING, DUMBASS. If he "forgets" his snore thingy tonight, he is invited to sleep on the couch.
On a side note, Helen is under my computer chair eating M & Ms off the sloor....that were dropped there two days ago. That will probably be her dinner. And y'know...I don't care. Cuz I'm pretty much considering myself off duty.
Okay, seven minutes til ride arrives....gotta go.

"Alexis Falls From Grace"

That headline has appeared in many places today. Bet they all thought they were being so cute. Last night, little Alexis Grace was eliminated from American Idol. She sang a mellower-than-she-usually-is version of Dolly Parton's "Jolene." I liked it. Benny didn't. He didn't think there was enough power in her fourth "Jolene" whenever she sang that part. I actually appreciated a weaker final "Jolene." It evoked a beat-down kind of desperation. It wasn't good enough to get the votes or to get saved by the ju7dges, so she's gone. I liked her, and I'll miss her, but I never thought she would win. You can listen to her here, but there isn't much to watch. AI...youtube...rules...whatever..



I decided to check out some covers on the song on iTunes and found this one by Mindy Smith ...I had never heard of her. I really, really like it. Enough to have downloaded it:







Seeing as Dolly herself is in the video, and that's her singing on the chorus towards the end, I'd bet she approved of this cover. But I wonder what she thought of Strawberry Switchblade's version:



Or this one by The White Stripes:





I've only recently started paying any attention to The White Stripes. They're intense. I kinda like em.

If you're a sucker for the original "Jolene", here's that for you:



Got a fave? I wanna hear!

I got a brand new pair of rollerskates...

I was going to post about my exciting trip to traffic court today (caught in a speed trap back in January) but when I got home I found my new toy in the mailbox!!!



My iPod....an obsolete mini handed down form my niece, has been having battery problems for a couple of months now. I thought long and hard about buying a new one before I finally decided I really should or I'd never get any spring cleaning done. A twenty minute charge wasn't going to help me gut the basement at all.
Of course, that was the easy part, because then there was the whole issue of which color to get.

The girls, naturally, picked pink. I vetoed that one. I've grown to love pink, but not for my iPod, and that pink reminds me way too much of a bridesmaids dress I wore in the early nineties. I thought about purple...and red...and orange....and blue... but finally narrowed it down to yellow or green. The yellow didn't look nearly as nice in the store as it did on the webiste, so green it was. I got a pretty good deal with web discounts, free shipping, etc., and free earbuds to boot. And can I tell you.....I LOVE THIS IPOD!! It sounds great and has all kinds of cool stuff my other one didn't have (of course, that one was way old, but it served its purpose.) I love the Genius playlist feature that's been availaible in iTunes for a while now. And I love that I can shake to shuffle. In all honestly, just having a video screen is making me giddy. Now, it's not a Touch...it's only a Nano and I only got 8G, but that is way more than enough to make me happy.
And just to amuse myself, I downloaded Tweeter and the Monkey Man. So if you see me out and about and you think I'm ignoring you, I probably just haven't yet been able to tear those earbuds from my ears.

RuPaul's toothbrush

Helen loves Cinderella. Well, really she loves all Disney princesses, despite my best efforts early on to keep the Disney princesses out of our house. I failed miserably, thanks to whomever gave Ruthie the Disney princess baseball cap when Helen was born. So now, we embrace the princesses in all their unrealistically proportioned, glittering glory. Recently, thanks to a combination of coupons and a really good sale, I was able to score several power toothbrushes for FREE, including two featuring Disney princesses. This is Helen's toothbrush:

And a lovely side view. Look at that profile!

Are you ready for your close-up?

We like to refer to this ambiguous little gem as "Cinderfella"

In a league of its own

So, today I knew it was time to write, but I really had nothing pertinent to tell you (unless you care that I passed Friday's kidney stone). So I checked out Uppercase Woman, and Cecily wants to hear about our first cars. Yay! Something to blog about!
My first car was a beaut. My parents bought it for me just before I started my senior year in high school (1986), since I had finished almost all of my requirements and got out at 1 p.m. every day, after typing class and Death and Dying (yes, I did indeed take a class called Death and Dying, and it was really quite fascinating). I needed to get home, so this was it.
Let me preface my description of my car by telling you that I grew up in Westchester County and went to a private Catholic girls' school. A lot of my classmates were rich kids. And some were really stinkin rich. It was not the least bit uncommon for seniors and sometimes juniors, to show up driving Daddy's Benz, or some other car I will never be able to afford. One classmate was actually given a brand new Porsche for her 16th birthday, so she drove that baby to school. And then, there was my car. My Car.
Well, my car was in a completely different league. MY car cost $200. Total. My parents bought it from friends of theirs. It was a lovely gray 1976 Dodge Aspen with burgundy interior. It had a fabulous AM radio and a propensity to overheat if it idled for more than about 90 seconds. And since the two juniors I picked up every moring were never on time, my car was always overheating. The floor was rusted out between the gas and brake pedals, so my right foot was always wet when it rained. So was my shoulder, because there was a leak somewhere in the top of the passenger side door. There were holes rusted in the trunk, so if you stored anything back there, it had to be bigger than the holes or it would no longer be there the next time you opened the trunk. But this was my favorite feature: if you failed to lock the rear passenger side door, it would swing open every time your made a left hand turn. It was really and truly a gem of a car. My parents sold it right after I left for college and my understanding is that it burst into flames on the highway shortly thereafter Poor little car.

Blog thievery

Sounds like some thing a pirate would do.
Alas, I am linking you to another blog today. It's a blog post from a local "celebrity" blog. I'll not say how we know her, or who those people are. Just in case you have no idea.
I swear I don't know these people.

Parlez vous francais? Non

So I'm trying to figure out how to get to France this summer. There are two reasons I want to go. My sister will be there for the summer, which is the common denominator for both reasons. First, she plans to bring my father with her. He's dead. So she'll be bringing his ashes. He passed away suddenly in 2004, and for the last 4 1/2 years, his cremated remains have spent the majority of their time in Sis's closet or my basement. We won't give them to our brother because of the very high likelihood that his wife would throw them away. She is a neat freak. We never purchased an urn or anything. Really, we had no clue AT ALL what we were supposed to do when he died. My parents divorced years ago, and it was left to his historically underachieving and irreverent offspring to find him a final resting place. We had him cremated because we had no idea what else to do with him and had to make a quick decision. I've felt guilty about him being in my basement, but I did bring him up for the 2008 Super Bowl to see the last quarter of a TOTALLY FANTASTIC GAME (won by his fave team, the NY Giants, in case you were living under a rock that year). And I don't even really like football. But I digress.
My dad was a huge cycling fan and my sis's idea was that, since she'll be in France anyway, she'll scatter some of his ashes on the route when the Tour de France is in Paris. Totally brilliant idea (thought that same feeling may not be shared by the cyclists or spectators who would run the risk of inhaling the bone fragments of my deceased pere...that's french for dad...I think.). I'd really like to be there for that (the scattering, not the inhaling), but I have no money. Sigh. Benny tells me to stop shaving my armpits becasue that's the closest I'm getting to France anytime soon. Fermez la bouche, buddy.
But the other, more pressing reason I want to go to France is because my sister is spending the ENTIRE summer living with a French family doing God knows what in a country where the primary language spoken is one she has consistently proven herself inept at speaking and understanding. My sister SUCKS at French. She's failed graduate level French a couple of times I believe, primarily becasue she couldn't pass the final exam. And this semester she tried to audit the class and I think they asked her not to come back. So she is under the potentially catrastrophic impression that completely inmmersing herself in French language will make her a natural. Too f'ing funny.
I'm not sure this poor host family has any idea that she is so lacking when it comes to basic communication in French. Seriously, it'll be like having a five foot four inch infant in their house. She might need to resort to crying when she is hungry. Or maybe she should just practice her pictionary skills. That's universal right? So I just want to be there to watch all this because I would find it really, really funny. I means seriously funny. Funny enough that instead of underwear, I would pack Depends because I think I would be wetting myself on a regular basis. It would be like a weeklong overseas comedy show. And I know my sister well enough to know that my hysteria over her lack of fluency would produce equivalent fits of hysteria in her as well. We would be like two mentally ill Americans walking around in Paris, doubled over and crying, possibly curled up in the fetal positon at the base of the Eiffel Tower. That would do so much to improve foreign relations, because they love us already. And honestly, think of the blog posts. Just think of it!! So to all of you readers who want to spend the summer reading hilarious posts about two noncommuniucative American tourists in France, consider donating cash or frequent flier miles, in the interest of entertainment. For now, I'm going to set up a lemonade stand. In the 30 degree weather. Au revoir!

Five years later...One week late

Lat week was Ruthie's birthday. Her fifth. To me, that seems like a huge milestone. Every birthday, I think back to the day she was born (as I assume all mothers do.) And I relive moments of that day again and again. And inevitably I cry. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a lot. This year, I felt this strong pull to take the girls up to the NICU that day. That's where her story began, and I wanted the people who were such a vital part of her beginning to celebrate and share in our joy. We brought them cookies, and we brought them brownies and we brought them some pretty big smiles. I'm pretty sure seeing the grinning faces of "their babies" makes their day each and every time someone comes back to visit. We visit there a few times a year, but this is the first time I've felt a compelling need to be there on a certain day. All the way over, my eyes were filling with tears. It wasn't even a specific thought or memory that was striking me. It was just the whole emotion of it. Remembering how small she was, how scared we were, how sad we were that we couldn't bring her home, yet how happy we were that she was alive. And to look at her now, I am constantly reminded that she is a complete miracle. I can never express the enormity of my gratitude for the NICU staff for saving my babies, and for the fact that they were born when they were. In a time when saving a baby who could fit in the palm of your hand isn't an impossibility. I promised myself I would write a letter to my girls on their birthdays every year. Hasn't. happened. yet. So here we go...a week late, but true as ever.

Dear Ruthie,
I cannot believe it has been five whole years since you came into our lives. Then, it was still the first half of the decade. Now it's nearly the end of the decade. Five years. It's not fifty. But it's a milestone to me. I remember looking at you and feeling such an overwhelming sense of love for you, and an overwhelming sense of sadness. It was so difficult to look at you and wonder, first, if you were going to live. Then to wonder if you'd ever be able to run and play, talk and sing like a little girl should. My worries were for naught, because you are five now, and you are just like every other five year old I know. You are amazed at the world around you, and you are so eager to learn all that you can. You are curious, you are sweet, you are loving. You are also so very feisty and stubborn when you want to be. As infuriating as this is, I try to stop and remind myself that were it not for this spunk, you might not have had the strength to get yourself out of a rough spot. You might have had a harder time. Or you might not have made it at all.
Moms I know, who had their babies "when they were supposed to", and who took them home a few days later, often remark on how awful it must have been for us. I'll never deny it. It was awful. Every day of it. Leaving you every night never got easier. In fact, as we got to know you, it became even harder. But it was worth every bit of heartache, because look at you now. You are all a five year old should be. You love to dance, you love to sing. You love to play with your little sister. And you love to torment her too. You love to build things, and you love to figure things out. You write your name like a pro. And you find letters everywhere you go. You are full of questions. You love to pretend. Sometimes you are a princess, or a ballerina. Or a builder. Or a mommy yourself, tucking your baby dolls in for the night, telling them that you love them. And you love to tell me that you love me. And each time you do, I know that it doesn't matter how hard the beginning was. It only makes me realize more how lucky I am today. I love you baby girl. More than you even know.
Love,
Mommy

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

I am drowning in things to do today. Drowning. And I have a very cranky 5 year old on hand to make things alittle easier for me. And tonight is my volunteer night. But I refuse to break my Lenten promise, so this little blurb will have to suffice as my post for today. See ya.

Daylight Screwings

Daylight Savings is catching up with me today. My children were completely exhausted and took almost 3 hour naps. I did not have that luxury today. (Well, I fell asleep but only seven minutes before the time went off, reminding me to get the little boy I watch off the bus...that is really almost worse than no nap at all) so I am feeling a really nasty case of the wretcheds coming over me. It is not helped by the fact that my living room is filled with items needing to be tagged for the upcoming consignment sale. My goal was to have all 76 items of children's clothing/toys/equipment tagged by dinner time. Plan aborted when tags began printing the item descriptions in something I can only guess is Russian. After several attempts to fix this problem myself I put a call into Benny to get him to see if he could print from work. This plan (probably Plan Q by now) failed when he was prevented from disabling his pop-up blocker, thus making it impossible to print. So.....an email to the sale coordinator. Apparently this is a Firefox problem?? Thy are printing fine in IE, but not in enough time to clear the living room out before dinner. And dinner??? White trash night here. Hot dogs, baked beans and Kraft mac n cheese. That should make me happy. I just regret my lack of thorough planning...I'd have made some kind of Twinkie casserole for dessert.
I'll post about Ruthie's birthday later. But I'll leave you with this gem....someone gave her a Mickey Mouse karaoke book with a microphone. This is NOT helping my mood at all.
I think I smell burning beans.

Pin Drop

I am alone in my house. This almost never happens. Maybe three or four times a year. I was going to clean the basement but my iPod is on the fritz. Cannot do a serious, heavy-duty clean without iPod. I'm nearly positive that Benny forgot to give the children lunch before he took them out visiting, Oh well. They're bug enough to tell him if they're hungry. Not a problem now anyway. So what will I do alone in my house? I think, given the lack of hot dog buns, which kills my plan to kick back with a deliciously adorned frankfurter, I will cook some frozen dumplings and watch a murder show. Bliss.

There is a God!!

Went to the eye doctor with Helen and Ruthie on Wednesday. I am beyond thrilled to report that Helen does NOT need glasses. Relief is not a strong enough word. This is far less about the worries I had with Ruthie (that her beautiful sky blue eyes would be hidden, that she couldn't wear her beloved sunglasses anymore, that I just didn't want her to have that responsibility/annoyance that comes with having glasses) and much more about the fact that I had no frigging clue how I would keep them on her face. Ruthie, while not always compliant, is easier to persuade. Not Helen. She's been insistent on picking out her own clothes since she was barely two. When she has her mind set on something, there is no convincing her otherwise. And she had made it pretty clear to us that she would have none of this whole wearing glasses business. I barely remember Ruthie's portion of the doctor visit, because the fearful pounding of my heart as we awaited Helen's turn prevented me form hearing almost anything. But alas, my worry was for naught. Helen doesn't even need to go back to the eye doctor, unless her eyes start spontaneously crossing, or she develops wall-eye, or some other manifestation of her mother's f***ed up eye sight. Phew.

20/20

It's 8:45 a.m., and I already have a tray of chocolate chip cookies in the oven. Impressed? The bake-a-thon continues.

I have to take the girls to the eye doctor today. I'm terrified that Helen is going to need glasses. Ruthie is soooo good about her glasses, but I know we'd have a much harder time convincing Helen to keep them on. When her father told her she might need glasses and she would have to listen to the eye doctor, she turned to him and said "blah, blah, blah." Then she told me she wouldn't get glasses, she'd just get contacts. I'm pretty sure she isn't three. She's a fifteen year old trapped in a very tiny body. And yes, I know we're screwed.

Oh, and DH's comment when I alluded to the fact that Helen getting glasses was a possibility: "No. I'm not going to have two kids in glasses." Um, okay buddy. Let's see how you work that one out if she needs them.

The Agony of Defeat

This morning has easily been one of the worst in recent memory. Ruthie has been completely unbearable and impossible the last two mornings. This morning was worse. I don't have time to get into the details now, but trust me. It sucked. In fact, when I dropped er off at school and it was nearing time for me to go, she burst into tears. She never, ever does that. Ever. She knew that we had reached a new level of awful mornings. Of course, she has herself to thank for that. But I don't know if she completely gets that. I'm utterly confused and I feel completely defeated. And it isn't even 9 a.m. I'll try to post the rest of the details alter, but today is shaping up to be hell on all fronts. I have to take Helen to "library school." It's not school, but she thinks it is. Then we have to get Ruthie from school, inhale lunch, drive over to Benny's work so he can take the girls while I go for pulmonary testing and chest x-rays. And then I'm supposed to do my volunteer thing at the NICU tonight. It's at the same hospital where the pulmonologist is, but I don't know if I'll have it in me to stay.
At least American Idol is on tonight.

Woohoo!

I figured out that if I disabled adblocker plus on this page, I got all of my edit buttons back....yay!
So later I will be able to add pictures of the butterfly cupcakes I am making for Ruthie's class party on Thursday. Because I am a moron and get myself way in over my head, I need to bake the following this week: 24 + butterfly cupcakes, 2 double pans of brownies, 1-2 large batches of chocolate cookies, and one Ariel mermaid cake. So far, I have made the candy butterfly wings, and I have the first double pan of brownies in the oven. Thank God it's cold enough here that I can store it all in the garage until it's needed on Thursday and Saturday. Is this what all parents do when their oldest turns five? Or is it that preemie mom overcompensation thing? Or is this not so much that, but is it "Celebrate my tiny little sick baby girl turning five and being totally healthy!" I think it's the last one.

All used up

So I committed to blogging five times a week during Lent. That was on Wednesday. I skipped Thursday. I skipped yesterday. That means I have used up all of my free days this week. Of course, being that it's my blog and my Lenten promise to break, I guess in a pinch I could blog twice in one day and count it as 2 days/posts. And this week is going to be a busy one.
Ruthie turns five on Thursday. We are making cupcakes from Hello, Cupcake. She wants butterflies, so we are modifying the monarchs and making them pink and orange, cuz that's what the birthday girl wants. And she wants an Ariel cake for hr family birthday party on SAturday. Which must be made with a doll, like Sleeping Beauty for Helen's birthday (which I would post if I had the icon and link to add a picture but it appears all of my options have disappeared??) And on Thursday, the actual birthday, after the cupcalkes and celebrating at school, we will be venturing up to the NICU, where Ruthie spent her first 47 days, to visit the nurses who have become like angels to us. We will bring them treats. Lots of treats. It's a big NICU (50 beds....Intensive Care...lots of nurses). So my week this week will be spoent baking. And blogging. And cursinig myself for hyping my kids up about fancy birthday cakes. No, I won't buy their cakes. While I have the time, I'll make them, and since I cannot do anything simply, I will stress. And likely curse.