Right now I am sitting in a hotel room, relaxing, waiting to go have dinner that will not be cooked by me on dishes that will not be washed by me. Ahhhhh...
I left yesterday morning before 6 am. My kids were insistent the night before that I wake them before I leave. I woke up my oldest and she hugged me and kissed me and told me to have fun. My youngest was hard to wake. I pulled her onto my lap and shook her gently. "Wake up! I have to go." Her eyes shot open and she said, "I was dreaming about a cat dancing in a grass skirt." haha. What a weirdo.
I called my husband last night and he was handling pretty well. He told me he was cleaning the house (really?) and he took the kids out to dinner. My daughter told me that he didn't make them order vegetables which she thought was so cool.
I am confident that my husband has things under control. He is a good dad. We have girls and he really works hard to things with them they they like. I came home from work a few Saturday's ago and he had painted their nails and made them be polka-dot. He does the girl's hair (pig tails are his specialty), he watches Barbie movies with them. He knows the lyrics to Selena Gomez songs. He takes them fun places.
I seceretly think that my husband is a better parent than me sometimes. He is so cool and the girls just adore him. He is laid back and he is fun! He chases them around the house and winds them up before bed and lets them eat more junk then I like but that is okay. I have definately learned that just because he doesn't do things the way that I do doesn't mean that he is wrong.
It has been such a busy month. I finally am alone in my house for the first time in a while. Praise God!
I will be out of town for a week for work this week and my husband is in charge of running the house while I am gone. "Good luck with that s**t, I'm outtie..." is what I will say on Monday morning. I need some time away. I feel so negative lately. I am unusually grumpy.
I am actually a surprisingly upbeat person for being so cynical. The other day I was venting to my husband about something and I asked him when I became so cynical and he said to me, "The day you were born." He is probably right. I don't think that I am pessimistic, I think that my realism is just misconstrued for pessimism. If I didn't have kids I could care less (that's my indifference speaking) but I know that I have to curb my realism with a good dose of optimism so that they don't grow up to be distant and negative. It is really hard because I feel like I have to lie a lot and pretend.
For instance, when my daughter tells me she wants to be a rock star I tell her that it's awesome and that she should go for her dreams when inside I think "Statistically, that probably won't happen so maybe you might want to have a back up plan like going into law or something...." If my kid is upset about someone mistreating them I say, "Well, maybe they had a bad day" when really I think, "They are just a**holes like most everyone else." When they complain their father yelled I'll say "He works really hard, give him a break" when I want to say, "His daily schedule is soul-crushing and you both are slobs." While I want my kids to be positive, I don't want them to be idealistic. I want them to run from train wrecks and avoid damaging relationships and not get a Masters degree in Women's Studies.
This week I will work on being more positive. I will ponder unicorns pooping out rainbows and puppies and butterflies. If that doesn't work, I'll probably just drink a boatload of margaritas. Cheers!
Sometimes I take a few minutes at lunch and humor myself with mindless internet surfing. I was on the weird part of the internet when I came across a picture of the most ridiculous tattoo ever. Brace yourself:
Now the image will forever be burned in your memory as it is in mine. So at the end of the day a few nights ago I was laying in bed and my husband and oldest daughter were playing "keep the balloon in the air" and we were just shooting the bull. I said to my husband, "I'm going to get a tattoo. Of a butterfly on my butt and the middle of the butterfly will just be my buttcrack." He starting laughing, "You mean like, a wing on each butt cheek?" "Yeah. It's going to be awesome." "That is the dumbest thing I ever heard." We just laughed and my oldest daughter was cracking up. I thought everyone understood that I was kidding and being facetious.
I am not a tattoo kind of girl. I don't look down on people that get tattoos, it just is not my thing. I don't like anything enough to have it permanently emblazoned on my body except for maybe my children and I have lots of permanent stretch marks I could show people. "See these on my calves, that's my oldest. These under my bellybutton are from my youngest...." Also, I want to live to be an old lady and I think in 60 years people's tattoos will look like they are melting and I don't want the person embalming my body when I'm 87 laughing at my tramp stamp. So no tattoos for me.
Last night my oldest says, "I told Aly (her friend from camp) about your butt butterfly tattoo.I told her you might get it." "Are you serious?" She laughed, "Yeah." "You know I was kidding." "Well, I told her you MIGHT get it." I could not stop laughing because I know her mom and I can just picture her face when Aly tells her the details of my "future" tattoo. Big open eyes and a pause, "Well, that's interesting...." WTF. Here's the thing, I don't know if I should say anything to her because if she doesn't tell her mom and I bring it up I will look like a huge weirdo but if I don't say anything and she did tell her mom she's going to secretly think I'm white trash. hahahaha. I probably won't say anything and I will just let people think that I have a butt butterfly tattoo. It makes me seem more interesting than I actually am.
Being a working mom is like being one of those plate balancing people. You have so many different things to manage but if you add one plate too many, they all come crashing down.
On Monday, my daughter's 6th birthday, my car died on me. I have been expecting this for sometime. The car is 18 years old, it is rusted, the engine is rattling, I have no air conditioning and the paint is peeling off. I am not a vain person and I could care less how my car looks or how people perceive me - we drive our cars until they die but my car is on life support. It really is no longer safe for me to drive long distances.
The problem with my car needing to be replaced is that it is an extra plate in the air that I don't really have time to deal with and this month is CRAZY at work. So on Monday night I told my husband I would meet him at the dealership after work and that he would need to leave an hour early. Great.
I woke up on Tuesday morning and I had to put on a training downtown so I woke up at my usual 5 am but had to leave earlier than usual. Thank God my mother in law is in town because she was super helpful in assisting with my children. When I got downtown, the place where I was doing the training was tucked away and I kept going in circles to get to this parking garage because it is a maze of one-way streets down there. Finally, I said screw it because if I kept driving around I would be late -so I parked in the hospital garage which was 3 blocks from where I needed to be. The problem was that I had 30 pounds of stuff. I had to bring all my own AV stuff so I had a projector, a laptop, a large rolling suitcase, a duffel bag, a health model, my purse...I looked like a damn gypsy. It was the longest 3 blocks I ever walked in my life.
So I show up and I am there with lots of time to spare and the lady directs me to where I need to set up, so I get my projector working and all my stuff unpacked and a lady come in and tells me that I was told to set up in the wrong room. So I repack everything and we bring everything upstairs and set up again. Thankfully the training went well. All my presentations pulled up. It is rarely that easy. After 6 hours of giving lectures I was pretty beat. I pack up all my crap and head back to the parking garage. It was like 98 degrees outside and I am in a 3/4 sleeve button up dress shirt and a black skirt down to my knees with 30 pounds of crap on my back and I was just struggling. I wanted to just lie down on the sidewalk. Thank God I was wearing flats because if I had heels on I would have just left my crap on the side of the road.
By the time I get to the parking garage I am pretty much covered in sweat. My crap car has no air conditioning so I was rolling down all the windows and drinking my lukewarm water. I am finally sitting though, so I was good. I drive down and I owed $10.50 for parking and I only had 8 dollars on me and the lady was like "We only take cash or check." WTF? I am not a drug dealer. I don't carry a bunch of cash. I just looked at this lady with red in my eyes. If I had a watch or something I would have tried to bribe her to to let me through. No such luck. So I had to turn around, re-park, walk a damn quarter mile through the hospital to find an ATM. I was just letting out a slew of obscenities along the way. I was dropping F bombs under my breath like crazy. So I get back in my car and go to pay and my time rolled over again so now it was $11.25. I just laughed out loud. The lady probably thought I lost my mind. I was close, really close.
So I drive to the dealership and my husband isn't there. I get out of my car and I can see all the salesman inside and they all look at each other like no one wants to "waste" their time with me because everyone assumes because I drive a crap car I have no money. It was a Kia dealership- I could purchase any car on that lot, they aren't exactly luxury vehicles - but whatever. So there was one car in particular that I had seen online but it was being test driven when I walked in. So he showed me some other over-priced cars that I was not overly thrilled with. The car came back that I wanted to see and the other sales guy hands the keys to the guy I was talking to. My sales guys says to me, "Guess he's not going to buy it." So I test drive it. I love it. I tell the guy to write it up and make it a done deal and when he does the manager guy says, "That car just sold." The person who test drove the car before me decided to purchase it yet they still let me drive it. My husband was still not there so I waited and asked about other inventory. I saw the people that were buying the car and it was this 16 year old whose grandma was buying the car and he was just sitting there smirking at me and I was annoyed. I work hard and this little shit that isn't even finished puberty got the car I wanted to buy. Grrrr.
So as I'm waiting the manager guy is trying to get me to buy a brand new car. I told him I was not interested in a new car due to depreciation and what specifically I was looking for and he said to me, "I'm surprised you are so picky considering the car you currently drive." Thankfully my husband pulled up at that point. He gets out of the car and I'm like, "There is nothing good here. Let's go." He was like, "Let's just look around." "I looked around, these cars are way overpriced and the manager is a douche bag." My husband started shooting daggers at me with his eyes and went on this rant, "I can't believe I got off work early and you're not even going to buy a car..." I rarely EVER yell at my husband but I lost it in the parking lot. "I am not buying a shitty car for $20,000 here just because you got off work a 1/2 hour early. Don't take time off work. I'm a big girl and can pick out my own car." He didn't like that I said that and he rolled his eyes at me. He did agree to pick up the kids though, so at least he wasn't sucking all the way around.
I drive home and of course I am in a traffic jam, then it starts to downpour but I can't roll my windows up because I have no air and my windows will fog up. So my whole left side was just getting soaked and I didn't even care at that point. I was so exhausted that I felt numb inside.
I drove up to the house and as I am getting ready to turn the car off, a familiar song comes on the radio. "When the day is long...." How appropriate. Everybody Hurts. I laid my head on the steering wheel and closed my eyes and just listened to the music and the rain and focused on breathing in and out. You are right REM, I do need to hold on. Tomorrow is a new day.
My mother in-law is coming to town tomorrow and is staying with us for 3 weeks. I am feeling kind of ambivalent about it. It will be nice to see her and the kids are excited but 3 weeks is a long time. My mother in law and I get along pretty well but we do annoy each other at times. She shouldn't take it personally - everyone in my immediate family bugs the hell out of me sometimes.
For instance, last time she came to visit she would clean things around the house and be like, "Your X was filthy, so I cleaned it for you." In my head I felt like she was insulting me and calling me a slob and made me feel like I wasn't an adequate housekeeper which made me an inadequate wife to her wonderful son. I know that it was not her intention but I am neurotic and I take things the wrong way. This visit will be different. Whenever she says "Your X was filthy, so I cleaned it for you" I will not be offended. I will agree and be appreciative. "You're right. Come look at this filthy closet, and these filthy clothes, and these filthy dishes....." If I'm lucky she will be offended by my filth and will clean it and then I will offer her praise and she will feel good and in turn I will feel good because the lazy side of myself will be satisfied.
On the downside, I don't know what I can do to prevent her from being bored. My husband and I both have to work and the kid's summer camp is paid up through the month. We don't have cable. Honestly, I don't even have anything to say. I never call my mother in law. Not because I don't want to. There is just nothing new to talk about. "Whats new with you guys?" "The same shit that we've been doing the past 4 years. Went to work, cooked dinner, kids are good. I did have an adventurous trip to the grocery store last Friday night...." I suppose I could fill her in on my dysfunctional family for a whole afternoon but I'm stumped for the next 20 days.
She will be staying in my youngest child's bedroom which means my child will be sleeping in our room. So for the next 3 weeks all interactions between me and my husband will be G rated. Which he will bitch to me about repeatedly, I'm sure. He will become grumpy and his mom will take it personally and there will be drama. Whatever.
I am hopeful it will go well and if not, at least the kids will be happy to see her and I will probably get out of a few loads of laundry. Alls well that ends well!
