Pensive Family

OK So I don't have the cold from hell. I have a horrible sinus infection, complete with massive congestion, bronchitis and even a touch of cojunctivitis. I feel like SpongeBob in the episode where he got the Ick and was basically a walking ball of green gook.

Anyway, given the circumstances, I feel like I've been a trooper. I might have complained a bit, but I've been working every day, being a mom every day, and doing stuff around the house whenever I have the energy.

Despite all this, I couldn't let a comment made by my dearest husband yesterday go un-blogged. He said to me,

"The only thing worse than a pregnant wife is a sick pregnant wife."

Such compassion.

Anyway, after I gave him a Look, he quickly said that's not how he meant it. Which I believe. He knows better.

But it should still go up there in our book of awesome parenting quotes by SB's Mom and Dad, along with "Suck! Lick! Don't bite!", the contradicting "Big girls don't suck," and my favorite, "If you want to get high, ask Mommy or Daddy."'

We are definitely a family that thinks before we speak.

Some like it hot...this one does not.

I've been battling the cold from hell for the past 2 weeks (and 1 day). My immune system is more or less nonexistent these days, so anything floating around within a one-mile radios of me ends up all up in my system. I've been sick more times this winter than I was all through my 20's. Right now I'm dealing with a chronic headache that worsens with every cough, a nagging cough that comes in spurts and sometimes leads to gagging, and total congestion with mucous EVERYWHERE- not just limited to my nose, but I have found booger-like junk in my mouth and I woke up with it gluing my left eye shut this morning.

It's snot pretty.

Anyway, on a completely unrelated note, my appetite has been very unusual lately. I'd like to blame it on the pregnancy but sadly I don't really think I can because I'm not really craving anything per se. It's just my taste has changed. For example yesterday I had a bagel for breakfast, another for lunch and one for dinner. And they were onion bagels. I couldn't really smell anything because of the congestion, but I'm sure my breath smelled like a rose garden by the end of the day.

I've also been kind of obsessed with Giant's salad bar lately. I've never been much of a salad person, unless by salad you mean drenched in mayo, as in chicken salad, or potato salad. But in the past 2 or 3 weeks, I've attacked Giant's salad bar at least 6 times. I pile my foil bowl with romaine lettuce (only enough so that I can still call it a "salad"), shredded carrots, peas, chopped onions, baby corn, diced turkey, tomatoes, and croutons. Then I add 3 big beets to the side and plop a generous spoonful of potato salad on the top, squeeze the lid on, hoping nothing pours out the side of my overfilled container, and head home to enjoy.

Really? It's not too bad. The only really unhealthy thing is the potato salad, and it's only maybe a quarter of a cup at most so I don't feel too guilty about it. I add lowfat peppercorn ranch salad dressing to the bottom part (since the potato salad and beets take care of "dressing" the top part) once I get there, and I'm in heaven. The whole thing is inhaled in a matter of minutes.

I got my heavenly salad tonight (sans the onions- they were out) and settled down to eat it. SB was busy munching on her dinosaur chicken nuggets and fruit salad. I was eating really fast, but being congested, I wasn't easily able to breathe and eat at the same time. So I found myself quickly out of breath. But I didn't care. I finished off the potato salad and beets and all the affected parts of my salad. Then I poured some of my dressing on and took a huge bite.

A second later my entire mouth was on FIRE. I couldn't figure out what was going on- one minute I was eating my salad, then the next minute I was literally spitting out a mouthful of lettuce and baby corn because something was biting me or stabbing me in the mouth. WTF??

I ran to the kitchen and drank an entire bottle of water in almost one gulp. It would have been even worse, but for the first time in weeks, my sinuses felt almost completely clear...they had been burned out, I guess. My nose was running and my eyes were watering.

I wandered back to my salad to find the culprit, and realized that instead of my usual peppercorn ranch salad dressing, I had picked up (and drenched my salad in) JALAPENO RANCH dressing.

Why the HELL do we have jalapeno ranch dressing? No one in the family does jalapeno stuff. Then it hit me. My mom.

She and my brother are jalapeno/hot/spicy freaks. My brother eats wasabi straight off the plate with his fork. But he would never think to bring dressing to my house, so I ruled him out immediately. My mom, on the other hand, has a tendency to hoard salad dressings, keeping them until loooooong after they expire- until my brother or I raid my mom's fridge and throw all the dressings over 5 years past the expiration date away. She also has a habit of making salads on holidays, and bringing about 47 different dressings with them, then leaving them in my fridge.

For me to later almost kill myself eating by accident. Jalapeno is bad when you don't do spicy. But it's worse when you're not expecting it!!

SO here was my dilemma: awesome salad covered in death dressing. There was too much salad left to justify throwing it away. Plus I really wanted that salad. So I just poured myself a huge glass of water, covered the poison sauce with peppercorn ranch, and dug in.

By the end, my eyes and nose were running like faucets, and my mouth was completely on fire.

But it was totally worth it.

Beethoven Crap

A few weeks ago I got a new phone. This one is pretty cool, it has a touch screen on top (never mind that my pocket has mistakenly called at least a dozen people...some of which I haven't spoken to in months!), and opens up for quick texting (have I mentioned I'm a texting fiend? Although now I feel like I have manhands because I'm always pressing the wrong keys).

Anyway. My old phone was very personalized. Because I have large pockets of time when I'm supposed to be watching SB, and she has large pockets of time where she doesn't want anything to do with me, but gets upset the minute I leave, I play with my phone a lot.

My old "default" ring was Flo Rida's "Low". If TB called, it was James Brown's "Get Up Offa That Thing", because that's totally something he would say, and has said, to me. If Bucky called, it was They Might Be Giants' "Snail Shell" (I was mad at her the day I assigned it and this was the closest thing to mean I could find or liked to hear 20 times a day when she calls). Maggie's ring tone was "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas.

Bucky and TB had their own text message alerts too. If anyone but them texted me, I would hear someone say "Is that a text message or are you just happy to see me?" It cracked me up every time. If TB texted me, it was a recording of a kid's monotone voice from Sesame Street saying "Dorothy, this is how I walk my dog.......come on, girl" only the last part was said in a very depressed manner, like the girl was leading the dog straight to the grave. Kind of an inside joke. And texts from Bucky were announced with her own voice saying "Whatever, you don't know".

I rarely had to even look at my phone in order to know who was trying to reach me. Oh- and my picture message alerts went back and forth between a really annoying trumpet call and my dog barking.

One day Bucky visited me at work. I was in the main office and away from my desk, leaving Bucky alone with some really annoying woman we refer to as The Intern. She has since accepted a position working for the same company, but she will forever be The Intern in my mind. Anyway, she was sitting at my desk and I got a text message, so my phone said either "Is that a text message or are you just happy to see me?" or "Dorothy, this is how I wwwalk my dwwooooog" in a thick Brooklyn accent. Regardless, Bucky watched as The Intern picked up my phone and opened it up!!

OMG!! Bucky confronted her, and The Intern said something about us having the same phone so she thought it was hers. HELLO?? Her phone talks to her? No! Most phones have a beep or something. Admittedly, we did have the same phone, but she also had some retarded cover on hers. So it's not like they even really looked alike. Plus hers wasn't even on MY desk, it was somewhere in her bag. Besides, she was annoying, who'd be texting her, anyway?

That was all beside the point. And what was the point? Oh yeah, my phone is very unique in its noises, and I spend much time making it that way.

This new phone hasn't been as easy to customize. So far, my default ring is Iko Iko. No one has personalized rings yet. I did find the "Is that a text message...." text alert, so that's back on it. But TB and Bucky don't have personalized text alerts yet. So I'm still in the process.

The night I added those two tones, I was just sitting there at home minding my own business when my phone rang. I got up to get it, but it immediately stopped ringing. So I sat back down. A minute later it rings again. This time it keeps going.

Upon answering, I was immediately greeted by Bucky yelling "WHAT THE F IS THAT?" I had no idea what she was talking about.

"THAT MUSIC...WHAT THE F IS IT, IT'S HORRIBLE"

I stammered around for a minute before assuming she meant my new Iko Iko ring tone, and started to defend Iko Iko since it's such a happy song. But she kept yelling something about classical music and I realized at the same time that she was calling me from her car, and therefore could not hear my phone ring.

After several moments of confusion, during which Bucky was ranting nonstop about the
"Beethoven crap" my phone was spitting out at her, I hung up. I texted TB and asked him to call my cell phone (because apparently I'm incapable of picking up my house phone and dialing out) and tell me what he hears. I hear Iko Iko and ignore it, then a minute later I get a text saying it's Vivaldi. Specifically, the Four Seasons.

Apparently at some point I somehow not only got a ring back attached to my phone, but I also, of all things, got all or part of the Four Seasons. From what TB sang to me later, it was Spring, which is my favorite anyway.

But still! I don't know how it got there, or how to get rid of it. I'm too lazy to contact Verizon regarding this, and too apathetic to care what people hear when they call me. The only time I call my own phone is when I check my messages from work, and the phone is turned off anyway so it goes right to voice mail.

Bucky has told me that the Beethoven Crap makes her want to call me less. So far she hasn't really followed through with that threat.

Oh well.

The Great Unwashed

I hate other people's kids. It's not the kids' fault, not at all. I completely blame the parents. But because of the parents, I hate the kids. Mostly, en masse. Individual kids can be ok, but when you get them all together in a place like a park or a bounce house, I don't like them very much.

Not to say that my kid is perfect. She can tantrum, yell, scream and stamp her foot with the best of them. But that's only to us. When in public, she is polite to others and is careful not to step on or hurt other kids when playing.

On Monday, SB was a perfect angel. Well, as close to an angel as we could hope these days. She dressed herself in the morning, went to school without a fuss, and was just a happy, whine-free, obedient child for the remainder of the day. So I decided to reward her with some positive reinforcement and bring her to an Ultimate Playzone in nearby Timonium.

This place was crowded, but big, so she had plenty of room to run around and burn off some energy (yes, I also wanted to ensure a good night's sleep, so there might have been an ulterior motive in bringing her there). Of course, she went into the one moon bounce where she tends to get stuck and make her pregnantly fat mom squeeze in through the birth canal that is the entrance to the bounce, climb up a ladder, slide down a slide, and lift SB up over the wall that she was unable to scale. Luckily it only happened once. Unluckily, I was now in a moon bounce, feeling like a sea cow out of water. Can't wait to figure out how I'm going to squeeze out of that place.

I also re-injured my injured toe. I guess I bounced funny, because the purple swollen toe that had just recently returned to normal color and size was now throbbing, and upon inspection later at home, appeared to be purple and swollen again. The things we do for our kids.

Anyway, we moved on to a moon bounce with a more adult-friendly opening. This one had a sort of ladder to climb in order to reach a slide. This "ladder" was composed of raised blocks about the size of bricks on an otherwise smooth incline. One was supposed to use the raised blocks to support their feet, and had the option of hanging on to ropes on each side of the "ladder". The blocks were a little too far apart for SB at first, so I followed her up and down about 10 times until she got the hang of it. She was still slow, but was able to climb on her own. Satisfied that she was safe and able, I gave my body and toe a break by resting on a bench about 4 feet in front of her moon bounce.

At some point during her gallivants, SB had befriended a little girl who appeared to be around her age, maybe a little older. So this girl was about 3-4 years old. She had originally begged me to let her go down a slide while sitting on my lap, but I politely declined. She said it was "ok with her mom," but since I didn't see said "mom" anywhere around, and wasn't really interested in some weirdo pressing charges against me for touching her kid, plus I didn't really want to have to lift up some 35 lb kid that wasn't my own, seeing as how I'm on a 20 lb lifting restriction, I told her to go down the slide and hold hands with SB. Which they did, and promptly became BFFs.

So now BFF and SB wanted to go up this rock climbing ladder that I described above. No problem there, but BFF decided she wanted to take along this little wooden lady bug thing that was there for kids to ride around the floor. It looked kind of like this:



Actually, it looked exactly like that. Only older and rattier.

So BFF holds it in her hand while climbing this rock ladder. SB follows. BFF is a little quicker climbing the ladder and ends up slightly ahead of SB. I am not comfortable with BFF bringing the ladybug onto the moon bounce, and her parents are still nonexistent. I stand up and approach the moon bounce to take the bug away from BFF. Just before I get there, she loses her grip on the ladybug and......you guessed it.

It falls and hits SB right on the head. SB starts BAWLING. This thing is not small or light, and the wooden part at the bottom is what hits her. I felt horrible. I tell SB to make her way down the ladder and come to me, since there are kids in the entrance and I can't make it to her. As she makes her way down, crying HARD, I reach in and take the ladybug out. BFF holds her hand out to me like she wants me to give it to her. I tell her she's not getting it, and place it on the floor where it belongs. As I do, BFF screams at me "It's ok, I'm allowed to have it!" Like HELL you are!

I STILL don't see any parents. I'm not one to go around reprimanding other people's kids, but there was no way this girl was getting that ladybug back to drop on another kid's head. I told her that those toys were meant to be on the ground, she's not supposed to have it on the moon bounce because it could hurt other kids. By this time, SB was in my arms, and I pointed out to the girl, in case she missed it, that she had just dropped it on SB's head and it hurt her.

BFF was not happy but I didn't care. I brought SB to the bench and comforted her, but she wouldn't stop crying. I felt bad that she was being so loud, and worried that she was bothering the fat little old lady parked next to me at the bench. Not that I really blamed her. I'd be crying too if that happened to me. But I offered to bring her to the water fountain as a distraction.

We walked out to the hallway, and as I helped SB up onto the stool in front of the fountain, I realized that BFF was right behind us, with the little old fat granny from the bench. Which I assumed was her grandmother. Who had witnessed the WHOLE THING yet never reprimanded the child or apologized to SB. OMG.

As this is sinking in (I'm kind of slow sometimes), another lady brushed past me with her son on their way into the restroom. She seemed concerned about SB, who was still crying pretty hard, and asked what had happened. I was touched that she cared, and eager to call out BFF in front of her grandmother. Just in case the GM was blind and didn't really see what happened. So I told the lady that someone had climbed onto a moon bounce with one of the roller ladybugs and dropped it on SB's head.

I hadn't even gotten through the entire sentence when this lady interrupted me to say "Oh, good, I was worried that this one had done something to her", and rushed into the restroom. WTF?? So she wasn't concerned at all about a hurt child, she just wanted to make sure her devil son wasn't responsible? And I couldn't even finish my sentence that was in response to HER question? I hated her almost as much as I now hated the GM and BFF.

As they passed behind me, GM said that was a shame, and she hopes SB feels better. WTF??? Am I in the Twilight Zone? Doesn't she realize that her own freaking grandchild, or at least the child she was supposed to be SUPERVISING had INJURED another child because she did something incredibly stupid and against the rules by bringing heavy piece of wood with wheels onto a freaking MOON BOUNCE and DROPPED IT ON SOMEONE'S HEAD???? Shouldn't she at least be scolded for this?

Poor SB. Luckily the injury wasn't too bad, I think it was more the shock of it than anything else. It hit her right behind her ear, pretty much just at her hair line, so you can't really see the bruise.

I'm not too mad at BFF. She didn't know any better. What upsets me is that she still doesn't know any better, because her GM is completely oblivious. Not only to the fact that she did something stupid, but to everything. I kept a close eye on SB the entire time she was on a moon bounce. I was only a foot away by the time the accident happened- trying to get there to take the ladybug away and avoid the accident altogether, and saw the whole thing. Obviously this GM did not keep an eye on her charge. It saddens me because without a grownup telling her what's appropriate and what's not, BFF is going to go through life not considering the consequences of her actions.

It also makes me mad that I spent $7 and got very little besides a bruised daughter and a re-injured toe.

Getting High and Sucking Things

SB has been a royal pain in my tucchus lately. I'm not sure if she's nervous because we're putting furniture into storage left and right in the hopes of making our house appear larger so we're more likely to sell it quickly and get a good price, or if she's not feeling well because we both seem to have caught a cold, or if she's just going through a difficult spurt.

She's been blatantly ignoring us, throwing temper tantrums, screaming for effect, and rebelling against her punishments. It's been a trying time, but I probably don't make things any better with my obviously not thought-out comments and advice.

SB sometimes sucks her thumb in her bed, which we can't really do anything about. But we have strict rules about not sucking her thumb when she's out and about, or sitting on the couch, or anywhere except in her bed. Sometimes she really wants to suck her thumb, and says "Mommy, I need something in my mouth." I usually try to distract her by getting her to do something with her hands, like draw or paint.

The other day, she told me "Mommy, I need to suck on something." I was in the middle of doing something so I couldn't really distract her at that point so I had to use another Mom Tactic: the Big Girl argument. Every 3-year old wants to be a Big Girl. So when I want SB to do something, or not do something, I liken her desired actions to whether a Big Girl would do it.

Unfortunately, in this case, my telling her that "Big Girls don't suck on things" was not the best, or most honest approach to getting her behavior to change.

Fast forward to yesterday, when SB took me into her room to show me/brag about how she moved a chair (ROCKING CHAIR) over to in front of her book case and climbed on both to try to reach a doll on a high shelf on the wall. The only reason she was telling me all this was because she still wasn't able to reach the doll.

Of course, my first reaction was to warn her how dangerous it was to climb onto her bookshelf like that, and that she could fall and get "big booboos" (I'm totally into the Mommy Talk these days).

During my lecture, TB entered the room just in time to hear me explain to SB that she shouldn't do that, and "if you want to get high, ask Mommy or Daddy."

Yeah. I guess my Mommy Talk needs some work.

There Are No Jews in Manchester

I rarely go to the salon. The past few years I've averaged 1-2 haircuts per year. I know, that's horrible. I go to the same girl because she gives me the "curly cut" only in the places I need it, for free. Well not free, but for the amount of a regular layered cut, not the special Ouidad method of "carving and slicing" that one needs to take out a small loan to cover when purchased regularly. I have major problem hair, officially. I have a How To Look Book that was written some time in the 1960's or '70's that tells young ladies how to carry themselves and take care of themselves so that they look good. There is a section on hair, and apparently, curly hair is considered "problem hair" that you should regularly see a stylist about and keep your hair cut very short or straighten it daily so no one has to witness the horror that is curly hair.

And freckles are a special kind of charm. I don't have freckles, but I was a little offended that freckles are charming while curly hair was given to me by the Devil.

Anyway, this post has nothing to do with my problem hair. It also has nothing to do with the fact that I'm at work right now and all of my Face Book notifications come to my work email, but I can't access Face Book at work, so the fact that I've received no less than 10 comment notifications about a photo someone posted of me in high school, yet I have no idea which photo this is, what I look like, or even worse, what I'm doing in it, is driving me completely crazy.

No. This post about my brow-waxing adventures earlier this week. What I started to say was that brow-waxing is a big deal for me because it's the only time I get "pampered". And by pampered I mean I get to lay down on a dirty chair, get hot wax poured dangerously close to my eyes only to have my skin ripped away quickly and harshly, sometimes leaving raw scabs in the vicinity of where my eyebrow should be.

On Monday the MIL was in town (and by "in town" I mean taking over my house) so I decided to take advantage of my semi-freedom to get my brows done since I hadn't touched them since before Thanksgiving. Yeah, they totally hate me at this salon. I get yelled at every single time I go, whether it's for a brow wax or my yearly hair weed whacking, for not keeping up with my appearance. Whatever.

Since I always schedule the brow thing at the last minute, I end up with a different person every time. This time, I was with Emily. I liked her right away. She spoke English, didn't have smoke breath, and didn't yell at me for neglecting my hair, skin and life. She started ripping away and we got to talking, but were interrupted when she had to excuse herself from the room to take a phone call from her husband.

About 2 minutes later, she re-entered my cell with tears streaming down her face, telling me she had a family emergency and had to go but someone would be in shortly to finish the job. I felt horrible for her and told her I hoped everything was ok.

Then I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, the door opened and Jen came in, bustling about, apologizing profusely for Emily's hasty departure and telling me it was obviously an emergency if she left me with wax on my face.

There was wax on my face??? This whole time???

Jen took a few minutes to get her act together, since she was all discombobulated, having been interrupted in the middle of a facial she was giving, to tend to me. Finally she settled down and got to work making me gorgeous, and started chatting.

We talked about kids and houses, and found out that she lives very close to me. I told her we were moving, and, at her request, listed the areas we were looking at. One of these areas is Manchester. She said that was a really nice area but far out. Then a moment later, she told me "There aren't any Jews in Manchester."

My response was, "Ok..."

I wasn't sure whether she meant that was a positive or negative. Either way, there was no way I was going there. This woman had hot wax on a stick mere millimeters away from my eye. I wasn't about to question anything she said.

She went on for a minute, then looked at me and said "You are Jewish, aren't you?"

To which I replied "No."

Long silence.

Then she apologized, saying I looked Jewish and that she just assumed. Apparently she was Jewish and felt that she was doing me a favor by warning her I was considering moving to a place where there might not be a lot of people...like me.

I recounted this event to my husband on the way home from the salon, and, feeling mischevious, wondered out loud what her reaction would have been had my initial response to her statement regarding the lack of Jews in Manchester had been "Good! That's why we're looking there!"

I probably wouldn't have any eyebrows or eyelashes right now.