Why do they hate me?

This has become more than bad luck, this is some sort of vendetta. Toilets now officially hate me, or want me to do physical harm to myself. And in particular my main floor toilet is the ringleader. It hates me the most. Besides the fact that it has lead me to give emotions to inanimate objects and making me become slightly paranoid as to what it's next move might be. Well, we know that me giving emotions to things isn't really that new. I believe that the mower has called a truce with me for the duration of the deployment and that the frog is suicidal, although the other day it was giving me the stink eye something fierce, I have no idea what I did to it, other than take care of it more than any other person would take care of a tiny little stupid frog.

I seem to have digressed.

The toilet. Why? In the year that I have lived here in this house, the toilet has overflowed too many times to count. I have learned to use a snake, ew. Even other toilets not at my house have turned on me, ask my sister, every time we are there, her toilets act up. Even the Y has turned on me. And now this...



Are you #&*!@#&! kidding me? I come home from my sister's house, find the house not exploded, always nice. Later I use the facilities and then go to flush and it just breaks off, gosh, stupid idiot! So along with all my "let's get out of town" errands I am running yesterday one of them was to the hardware store to buy a new handle and stick thingy that I hope will work. How would I know? Now I get to add one more thing to my list of knowledge that I didn't care to have.

Just so you know the upstairs toilet already did this but it actually did it to the home inspector, ha ha. But I told him not to worry about it and it was when Dan was gone but just in KS, and he had four-day weekends once a month so I waited and he fixed it but he ended up putting in a whole new do-hicky thing in and I know I can't do that.

Here is the proof so you guys can realize how much my life really does revolve around the bathroom here are just three posts from the last year to prove it, one was just last week:

My ode to the Commode

Icky Post

The Bathroom

Well, off to test my theory on a whole new set of toilets at the Great Smokey Mountains, we leave tomorrow and will be back Friday, just in time for Super Saturday.

Where's Waldo?

AFN (Armed Forces Network) does their own news stories for their channels on different items of interest. Overseas bases have their own and they put them online also. Dan send me this one awhile back and we all got a good chuckle out of it. It is a short news story for something happening where he is at and Dan has a cameo in it. I showed it to the kids and didn't tell them that Daddy was in it, just watch it and see if you see something interesting. Punx saw him right away and said, "I saw Dad." DD, of course, had lost interest about 3 seconds into the piece and wasn't really paying attention and by the time she looked up he was gone. She started to cry. Bug starts jumping up and down, "I wanna see, I wanna see Daddy, too." I told them to relax and that I could press play again when it was over, but they would have to pay close attention to find him as he is on the screen for about a millisecond. On the second time through, they did get a glimpse of him. They have made me play it quite a few times since then. I have to admit I have watched it more times than is really necessary.

So see if you can find Waldo, too. If you don't know what he looks like, look at the sidebar to see his picture for a comparison.

Good Luck!




Edit: So the winners are: Nikki, Jen (although she didn't give any proof, I am just giving her the benefit of the doubt as she is his sister), Missy (your description seems to match), and SuperCoolMom (Sorry, I have no idea what yours meant so you get an honorable mention).

I was going to describe where he was by what the narrator was saying at the time but Nikki described it perfectly so I will just use her description, he is in between seconds 36-39. Isn't that awesome a whole 3 seconds.

It's summertime, ah man!

Remember back when all you could do was count down until it was summer? You looked at the calendar and counted the days left of school? That thrill when you were finally released and let loose to run wild and go toilet paper whoever's house you felt like that night, even though it was a Tuesday? Man, good times.

Sometimes being an adult is such a downer. Now all I feel is this oppressive weight. Mom, I'm bored. My soft-shoe and jazz hands just doesn't hold their interest the way it used to. Another summer of entertaining these kids without Dan seems incredibly long. Never mind the whole me messing up the calendar and Punx can't go to Cub Scout Day camp, I cancelled his reservation earlier this week. That is a whole week blown were I got rid of one of them. Sometimes he is the whiniest when it comes to the entertain me thing, too.

Last summer was out first summer here in TN, it was blazing hot. I mean HOT! Wicked witch of the West, I am melting Hot. I don't want to do it again. Sit in my air conditioned house, paying super high utilities bills, listening to the kids bicker, while I watch the lawn die, Super Fun Summer 2008! Yes!

We have a couple things to look forward to. Saturday we head out to my sister's for a few days then we'll only be home for a couple days before we go right back out to go to the Great Smokey Mountains. Our reservation is Saturday to Saturday but we'll be coming home on Friday so that the kids can go to Super Saturday the next day because I am thinking that I am going to be needing the break after all the family togetherness. Just a hunch.

It's not until mid-July that the kids go into the Y-day camp that I signed up all three of them for. An outdoor adventure thingy, whatever, I don't care right now what they do with them, just take care of them, keep them from killing each other, and I will go enjoy my 9-3 break, preferably by the poolside with some new books.

Then two weeks later, school starts. For the life of me I still can't figure out why they would have school start in early August in this place. Then it will be onto my new freedom and my new thing, still working on the details.

It's that big space in the middle that is giving me anxiety. I am relieved that school is out. A break from the hurry and go in the morning. Some relax time. But I am actually having anxiety about dealing with the kids and not totally freaking out on them this summer. It has me unnerved and antsy.

I've been doing some math. Taking into account Dan's started deployment last year but not finished, so therefore not counted for anything. This past year he has only been home for 3 1/2 months. And that was last fall all at once. We've been here a year and Dan has only lived here for less than 4 months. By the time we have been here for two years, Dan will have lived here for a grand total of 5 months.

I've gotten to that grove point of being here. Knowing short-cuts around an accident or traffic. Running into people I know at the Library or the Mall. Comfortable, right? Most of the people in my ward don't even know what Dan looks like. None of the missionaries that I feed have ever met him. I just hate this feeling of having this life here that Dan is not a part of and never has been. The one thing that my life truly revolves around (I know, gross) is the thing most invisible to everyone else in all the other parts of it.

What's this have to do with summer? Nothing, I am being a big baby, that's all. One last thing that I've noticed. No one likes a weak and struggling deployed wife. All anyone says to me is how they couldn't do what it is I am doing. How does anyone know that? Does that mean that you would literally die without your husband and somehow I am stronger than you are or don't love him enough that I can bare to be apart from him for so long? You are so strong and doing so well handling the children and all your responsibilities. Once again, how do you know what I am handling? Not that I resent all supportive comments sent my way, just sometimes I doubt their sincerity. Especially those said to me by a person telling it to me walking by me at 40 mph. The doubt comes from noticing that people don't notice when you don't answer their questions. Hey, how are you doing? Did you know that more than half the time I don't answer that question and the other half I answer with a very weak, "eh?" Very few people respond to my response.

It's very strange to me that the place I feel my support is from people miles away that I haven't seen in years or people I haven't ever met. Without the couple good friends and my sister here I am sure I would have snapped already. Unless I already have and just haven't noticed yet. It's a toss-up.

On that cheery note, have a good summer. What a great year it was. I had a lot of fun. You are my BFF. KIT. Cristtin
I can't think of any other cheesy yearbook thing to say.

The Bathroom

Let's just say I've finally snapped. I put a lot of stock into a sense of humor and have tried to cultivate my children's comedic styles. Punx has a flair for sarcasm, I have encouraged it in it's proper place. DD is still an enigma to me, she still tells knock-knock jokes where the punch line doesn't make sense. Bug, I think, is where I will have my true comeuppance. His timing for saying those things that embarrass me and make adults everyone go, "oh!" is something to behold.

The children are on hour two of solitary confinement. And I have no intention of early parole for good behavior. In fact, parole really isn't a possibly since their sentence was "a really, really long time, now go."

Their humor is in the crude phase and try as I might to teach them time and place it is not working. I can enjoy a good bathroom joke now and again, like most people. However, life here has started to revolve around things involving the toilet. I have been as patient with it as I can. "Alright, kids, that's really not appropriate let's move on to another topic." Statements of that nature. Distraction, redirection, threats, pleadings, nothing is working. My children's minds are living in the porcelain bowl.

Finally today came the outright ban. No more bathroom jokes. Obviously you kids are not going to learn time and place or moderation any time soon so before you make momma start living in the fetal position, we are going to initiate a total blockade on all things bathroom related. Five minutes later, they start again. That's it, no TV for the week. It must be that I am letting you guys watch the wrong stuff and I need to get a better handle on this and reevaluate what and how much TV you are going to be allowed to watch. Thirty minutes later, you guys have got to be kidding me, you really need to rethink your priorities. Do you want me to take everything away? Just go play upstairs and please stop.

Five minutes later. Punx brings me down a white marble but it has brown on it. Bug put a Hungry Hungry Hippo marble in his butt. HE WHAT?! Bug get down here, no everyone get down here, NOW! They line up. I start to tell them how this is bad and we should not put marbles in our butts. I say butt and they look and each other and they are all snickering. Bad move, Neil. "DD your room, Bug your room, Punx living room couch, and you will all be going there for a really, really long time, now go."

I am so upset that I am calm. I think that I have gone to the bad place. The place that when I finally do go to talk to the kids it will be in a eerily-detached but firm voice that actually freaks the kids out more than if I yell at them. That's about where I am right now. Oh yeah, I am definitely in the bad place now, that's why I won't let the kids out because I have no idea what punishments I will start dishing out and then have to live with after. One thing is for sure those kid had better like Nick Jr, because that is about all they are going to be allowed to watch next week when I let them start watching the TV again. It's going to be a lot of Dora and that freaky weirdo show Yo Yo Gabba where the spazzy kids dance with the way too excited to there gangly Band Leader.

A fricking marble in his butt. Man Alive.

Rebate?

Anyone who had read this blog enough to read some of my political rants can figure out I swing Republican, it's not hard to see. That does not mean you know what I think about the President, this war, immigration, universal health care, fiscal policies, or any number of politically charged debates sweeping the countries right now, unless I have already ranted about them here. A good amount of my views go hand in hand with the GOP, to a point. Not all, and in my advancing years I actually am learning a little diplomacy. A little. Political Correctness can can go to Europe, and stay there. I have no patience for that.

Here is one view I will share with you today. I think the tax rebate is a completely hare-brained idea that will do no good. The first one, we didn't get. We were too poor. I think we were still getting EIC at the time and so that disqualified us and so I didn't really pay attention to the debate or any ramifications. In the colleges years, it was really just babies and Dan, that was about all I could see. Although back then, I would have gladly taken the money and not cared about any affect to the country.

A few years later, here we are in very different circumstances and the country is too. So Mr. Bush comes in to save us with a better idea than what he did before, more money this time. Everyone listen, we will save this economy by spending our way out of it. What would Rosie the Riveter do? She would go get herself something pretty to wear for after work and maybe a Coach purse, too. We will stop this recession from happening (because we all know we aren't already in one, don't we, come on, prove it) by acting the same way as what got us into it. Does this make sense to anyone?

I found little Johnny smoking today so I made him smoke the whole pack.

My brother is an alcoholic so we took him on a four-day binger to make him so sick he'll never want to touch the stuff again.

The country is in such bad debt and can't handle their own personal finances, let's give them more money and encourage them to use it all at Best Buy, not save or pay down debt, use on mortgage or bills. It will help our economy.

Does anyone else think that maybe, just maybe we are past the quick fix ideas here? It may be easy to get into debt but it does take time and work to get out of it. Does a retirement account just grow with magic beans? Is this whole country just going to work until they die?

ABC News all this week has been doing a segment every night on the power of 2. Just 2 things you can do to make something better. One night, health, environment, etc. I think it was Wednesday they did personal finances. The two things are so simple and easy. 1.) Pay yourself first. Just start saving some money. They showed one woman who was a single mom in her 40's who didn't save. Had she started at 25 with 25 a week she would have $28,000.00 now. 2.) Pay with cash. Can't handle the credit cards? Put yourself on a cash only diet. Not a debit card, cash. It makes you much more aware of what you are spending when you budget for the week with cash and when you are out of cash for the week you are done for the week. Buy a $100 of groceries on a credit card and then only make minimum payments you will spend $212 on those Crunch berries and impulse Oreos, ouch. So simple, how many of us do it?

All that being said. I am really against this idea of the rebate. I don't like it. I also haven't researched yet what it will do to our next year's tax filing. Although for us it shouldn't do anything, combat pay, tax exempt. For us it's like we aren't making anything this year. Looks like another year for EIC, sweet! Anyway.

So what do you do when all of a sudden there it is in you checking account? The full rebate amount, so pretty. Best Buy did come to mind. A coach purse did not, I like them, I'll admit I have a baby one (got it at the outlet store) but can't pay full retail for those things. All my principles are against this money but come on, there is no way I'm giving to charity or something. I'll pay tithing on it sure. But help the economy by shopping spree? Sorry, Mr. President, not in the cards.

I promptly paid the tithing, paid half to debt, a third to savings. That leaves a whopping 7% left. What am I going to do with it? Maybe I could bend a little. It is Super Saturday tomorrow. Not to brag or anything but I have lost 25 lbs now and busted the skinny jeans off the shelf and now they are getting loose. A small principal to compromise, especially if it means I get to go shopping.

Weekend Trip to Cleveland, TN

We took our trip to say good-bye to our good friends. It was a fun trip and it was fraught with all those things that are par for the course when it comes to my kids. Story to come, other than that, I was able to relax and just forget the house, to do list, and just have some fun with Tammy. That was a nice change. It was also really nice to see Tom, her husband home safe from Iraq, his third straight deployment. Fourth deployment if you count the fact that he went to Desert Storm, which of course you count. Seeing redeployment up close was interesting, to say the least. I know I am in for it when Dan comes home. I am not saying anything about Tom and Tammy. They are awesome, I love them. You imagine living on your own for 15 months and not having a fun transition at the end of it.

The first night the kids went to a Parent's Night Out at their church, nice. We just went out to dinner and talked. The next day the older boys had their football games. Tom took the boys and Punx and DD. This is where the story comes in. I stayed at home with Bug and Tammy with her two little ones. We get a call about an hour or so after they left. It's Tom. He's asking how everything is going, everything alright, meanwhile Tammy can hear DD crying and yelling in the background. We were neighbors of a duplex for seven months, she knows DD's sound. Just spit it out. DD was over by a tree and kicking fun little hills of dirt. Only they weren't. She starts running and screaming once she feels the ants all over her legs biting every where up and down her legs. Give it to the ants, it would appear they had synchronized the time for starting the attack. Tom takes her to the family bathroom and nervously tells her she has to take off her pants. He has three boys and one baby girl he is just now getting acquainted with. Her legs are covered in ants. As she dances around, Tom is trying to brush them off her and shake off her pants. Luckily, Tammy's mom was there to watch the game and she brought DD home for some cortisone treatment. Her legs were covered with angry red welts.

After everyone got back, we went to Chattanooga to go to Rock City, a garden of sorts. On the way there I look at DD face to see a red dotted rash across the bridge of her face. We stop at the next pharmacy at drug her up with benadryl and motrin. The dots didn't fade until the next day. But the next morning all the kids were so zombie that I decided church was not in our future and just headed home. We got home in record time and I got to nap, bonus, even if the kids didn't. It was for the best since they went to bed right on time that night to be bright and eager for school on Monday.

Back to Rock City. That place was really cool. It is this cool rock formation place in the high hills outside the city in Georgia. You just walk around the rocks and gardens, sometimes squeeze through these tight places. Even a couple caverns. Then up to the top at Lover's Leap where on a clear day you can see 7 states. We had to walk across a bridge to get there, the swing bridge. The whole time I am thinking of Short Round on the Temple of Doom, "Strong Wood, Strong Wood." as he about falls through. It wasn't made of wood but I didn't like it at all. When I stepped off it, I had some vertigo and had to sit down, it was weird. I've never had that before. We were at a higher altitude there than where I live, and I actually don't do well with altitude changes so I think that was it. As a kid growing up at the grand altitude of 99 ft above sea level, I have had my fair share of altitude sickness and fainting at girl's camp. But it's been at while since I've been through anything like that.

The best and worst part was the last cavern we walked through. I was still a little woozy so the walls closed in on me sometimes but it was made up for by what they had done to the cavern. The made it into a fairyland, wait let me put that into quotes, into a "fairyland." It was so hideously wonderful. The best part was they used gnomes for a lot of the characters. Creepy little gnome mother goose rhymes. I was so mortified and pleased and the same time. It was too dark, no pictures came out. At the end in a huge room was this horrible castle with all these gnome demon kids doing mother goose rhymes in sing-song voices like some travesty of It's a Small World under black light. It was the high-light of the trip. If I did drugs, I am sure that would be the place to drop and then go take a stroll. Although, maybe for me, just walking on the swing bridge and then walking through there is enough.

Now pictures that did come out...





One of those cheesy pictures they make you take when you enter an amusement park or go down a scary ride to get a good face, we have a great one of the kids at Busch Gardens, I'll have to scan those and put them in. Anyway, I just wanted to have a picture of all of us, well the two little ones are missing, oh well.





I like Bug's face, that was exactly how I felt.



Here's the view from Lover's Leap, and the little map to all the different states.





This is one of my favorite things about being in a military family and living in so many different places. Staying in one place and being settled how would I have ever found out that exotic places like this existed? This is what makes living in the South fun, they know how to name a town.

Snippets

I am going out of town for a few days and I just wanted to get all this stuff out of my head so I could "try" and relax and have some fun this weekend. The last thing I need is to be thinking about my "need to post" list this weekend. My good friend and former neighbor from the last place we lived, Fort Lee, is moving to Europe at the end of the month and this is our last chance to go out, see them, and say good-bye.

This is one of those random, what we have been doing all at once kind of things. In no order except how I remember it, here it is.

Last year, DD gave herself bangs and then decided that she didn't like them after all and wanted to grow them out. She has been asking for long Princess hair for a while now but keeps getting in her way by having that habit of cutting her own hair. The last haircut I gave her was finally one where I could shape the bangs a little to the back length and make it look not so much like she had a mullet. Now it has been time for a haircut for a while now. I was going to take her in to a salon for this one just to make sure it gets done right. I can cut hair ok, but I always worry cutting DD's hair. I have been doing the boys for years but if I make a mistakes there, I can just shave it off. I don't have that luxury with DD. Her hair is like wild bushman hair if not taken care of all the time. And she is now to the phase where she wants to do it herself but always have it "flat down" as she calls it. By the time she gets home from school, rat's nest. It has been driving me crazy. So on Monday, I put her in a chair and evened it out. One length all around. It would end up around her shoulders. My favorite length for her, since it is too short to get all crazy and still long enough that I could do two french braids. Or as DD calls the nest in the morning, her hair is still snuggling from the nighttime. One hitch, as there always is, she moved, and I mean moved. It's a little shorter than originally planned.



I still like it and it is very easy to do, definitely a plus.

Two nights ago was Bug's turn for prayer and he prayed to be everyone's friend in the whole world, except the bad guys.

I informed the children that I would be cutting out all sugary cereals for our diet. Say goodbye to the marshmallow cereal, the crunch berries, the coco what-evers. When these are gone I will only be getting cereals with a lot less sugar. I am still buying stuff that has some sweetness, no point in buying something that they are just going to add sugar to. But stuff with fruit or healthy stuff with less sugar. Everything under 10g, no idea behind that, that was just the cut-off. After I told the children, they looked at me, asked a couple questions, I could tell Bug had no idea what I was talking about. But I know the message got through to DD, she started to cry.

It has been really nice here lately and so we have been doing a lot of driving with the windows down. I love the feel of my arm out the window in the wind. The change in the air as I go over a bridge and know that there is water nearby. That feeling when you were little of flying your hand and letting the wind take it up and down. I taught that to the kids recently and they ask to have the windows down all the time. I tried to capture the sweet thing I see in my side mirror every time Bug is trying to do this. He is still in a five-point harness so he doesn't have much wiggle room.



Last night was our den's Raingutter Regatta. If you guys don't know I am the Wolf and Bear leader for our ward's cub scouts. Punx is in Bears now so it is a lot of fun. It was supposed to be outside, but the weather didn't quite cooperate so we had to move it into the gym. It was so much fun. We did the races, let little siblings race, let parents race their kids, and then let the adults race. We only have six boys so we had a lot of time. A few of us adults made our own boats, too. I had a few difficulties with my Rosie at the beginning. I didn't know that you needed to glue the sail to the mast and so at the beginning the glue was still wet and the sail moved around, and I lost all my races. By the end of the night when it was dry, I challenged the cubmaster to a rematch and then won. That's my Rosie, she was there for me when I needed her. the best part of the races was that Punx won. We did the winner of this heat goes against the winner of the next and so on and did some consolation heats and all that. Punx won every one. Except me when Rosie's sail was dry. I was so happy for him. I took a ton of pictures but here are just a few.










All this past month in scouts we have been working on the Physical Fitness belt loop and it is not a simple one to get. One of the requirements is to show improvement in five fitness activities over a months time. When we started I had a couple boys who could not do a single sit-up in the minute time frame. And the end of the month both of the boys had surpassed the high teens in the minute time. One into the twenties. We awarded the belt loop last night to three of the boys, one of them Punx, and there are two more that should finish up next week. This was kind of new for me, but I can't begin to explain how proud of my boys I was when I saw them working so hard and improving like that. Giving the belt loop to one of them last night was the highlight of the night for me.

On Tuesday, at the elementary school was Kindergarten Round-up. All future Kindergartners were invited to see the school, do a couple things, and the parents get some info. Some of the info was shocking to me. In the first two weeks of school Bug will only go twice. They will assign him his two days and on those days it will just be him and four other of his classmates as they do assessments to figure out where they are and where to go from there. So the first day of school is a half-day and then the next two weeks only twice. Man, he is not going to like that. He is dying to go to Punx and DD's school and then when he finally gets there he won't go everyday with them. I know it will go by fast and then he will be over it and forget all about it. However, I am not sure what kind of wrench this throws into my plans for this fall, and that makes me a little nervous. Sorry to be cryptic, news is forthcoming. The other thing he got to do that night was take a little tour of the school bus and take a short ride around the parking lot. He was ear to ear grin the whole time. There is one problem though, he is way too tiny. I am having anxiety about putting my little Bug on that great big school bus.



Alright, that's all I can come up with. My brain, for the moment is empty, not a surprise. I really need to pack for the weekend and clean the house. I hate leaving on a trip with a messy house, one more thing on my mind for when I get home. So far all I have done this morning is blog and read Twilight, I really need to do something. Maybe just a couple more chapters.

Deployment is...I forgot 2

I didn't just want to edit the other post because I wanted to get these two out there also.

Deployment is...

learning to doubt yourself in places you have never, I mean never doubted yourself before. You have a nice conversation with the cute Sergeant who did your taxes and you feel guilty for days about it, so much that you tell your husband about the ridiculously benign chat you had with some random guy you will never see again while you got your taxes done. And then he just makes fun of me and tells me it's too bad we don't have a pool, so I could hire him as our pool boy.

And probably the most important,

Learning how to rely on others, especially the women in your life. I am not an ask for help type of person, I really don't think it is a pride issue more of a don't want to be a bother and I should be able to handle my own problems issue. Since this, however, asking for help has become more of a necessity. What is even better is the times I have gotten help from my friends that I haven't even asked for. The time I had the flu and wasn't even getting out of bed and my friend Robin happened to call and next thing I know she is going to the commissary for me to make sure the kids had food. My friend, Catherine, who just yesterday made cupcakes for me that I forgot to make for cub scouts and realized that I only have a muffin pan that holds six cupcakes. Scouts was in three hours and I still wasn't done with all the other stuff I needed to do, she doesn't have a son in my den, she is not even in my ward. She has also took Punx and DD late one evening as I had to take Bug to the ER when he had strep over a weekend, and didn't get back until 10pm. These women and even the women I have never met here on my blog make my life easier.

Deployment is...

A new way of walking. A walk that include the patting down of your pockets, to make sure you always have your cell phone, my new pat walk.

Becoming a trained monkey, jumping when the phone rings, turning on the computer to check the email first thing in the morning and before you go to bed, checking the mailbox everyday regardless of if you just got a letter yesterday.

Learning how to do things you never wanted to know how to do. I now know how to snake a toilet, yuck. I know that if our basement garage door won’t shut that I need to press the reset button in my top floor bathroom, even though there is a reset button in the main floor kitchen. Guess how long it took me to figure that one out?

A spider on the inside of your driver’s side window with your kids in the car and you unroll the window grab the thing by the web and throw it out the window.

Developing a love/hate relationship with time and the calendar. Everything is about the milestones. Next is summer break, then that trip to Jenny’s, then Super Saturday, etc. And sometimes it is alright let’s get to bedtime. Right now all milestones lead to R&R, the end of the deployment is too far off to dwell on.

Worrying about having to sleep alone then realizing you shouldn’t have bothered; one of the kids seems to be in his spot every night anyway. They are having nightmares.

Living and dying by your lists, to do, should do, want to do, need to do, need to get, and even in your head, the need to get on the to do list. If it doesn’t get written down you are not going to remember it, a lot gets forgotten

Feeling so frazzled and unfocused that I don’t even feel like myself during those times.

Turning into a mushy cheesy mess. I cry at love songs on the radio that remind me of Dan. The first time I saw the moon some morning after Dan left, I just stopped in my tracks. I must have stared at it for a good minute just goofily thinking about it shining on Dan at that moment. When the guys at Dan’s work razzed him for calling me so much (who would do that?) he told them that he calls his wife in the morning and his best friend at night. They stopped making fun of him and I can’t stop thinking about how he said that about me.

Finding out how to live with yourself and live in your head. And learning how to escape yourself at times. It’s a very solitary place.

Learning that the word “Morale” is not a silly propaganda word to use at the butt of a joke. It is a real tangible feeling in your chest when you miss his call, when he doesn’t call when he normally would have; it’s that feeling of nothing being right until you finally hear his voice.

Discovering that doing two people’s jobs around the house is just about impossible, learning to let go is just about almost as impossible.

Walking the fine line between making goals to keep yourself busy to stay sane and making so many goals that you are going to drive yourself insane.

Finding out you have a crazy amount of independence and are slightly afraid of what will happen when your husband comes home.

Trying to keep your oldest child from becoming a co-parent, because he feels so much responsibility. It is another difficult balance between knowing that you need to expect a little more help from your children and still letting them have a childhood.

Predictably, an emotional rollercoaster. One day, you realize that you are stronger than you thought and that you will be able to handle this and make it through. Another day is a day of walking through sand and you just have to be proud of the fact that the children got fed and you are dressed.

Only like 30% of the way through, oh man.

I am so mad, I could scream

I know that I have been very brain-dead lately. Very forgetful, scatterbrained, any synonym you can think of, I can't because my brain isn't working right. However, there has been one consolation in that it has mostly been making my life more difficult. I have been forgetting my appointments, my stuff. The children's lives, for the most part haven't been affected, except maybe seeing me a little more frazzled than is normal. The one exception happened recently was when I didn't make it home in time for when Punx and DD got off the bus. I planned and planned to get home in time and then got stuck behind construction. One of those flaggers where they are only letting one side of traffic go at a time while you just sit there. I could have screamed then but I luckily have a neighbor on my cell phone, now I have two, and she got them and took them home with her until I got there, about ten minutes late. Now if I am not outside waiting for the kids, they just start walking to the neighbor's house. I had to stop them of that one, "Punx, you've been going to school for four years, how many times have I not been home when you got home?" Once, and now all of a sudden it is going to happen all the time? Kids are so funny. This is not the point.

Other than the bus thing, I have been trying so hard to not let my new state of mind affect the children's lives. Until today it hit me like a ton of bricks, major calendar error. I use the calendar on my cell phone because it calls you 15 minutes before you have something scheduled to say, "Yo, doofus, you should've left by now." Yeah, I know, my cell phone is rude. It has saved me a couple times by only being a little late instead of not showing up at all. I was sitting on the couch today trying to make sure I had everything in my phone and double checking it with the master calendar hanging in the kitchen. Yes, I am that bad, two calendars and I still am barely keeping it together. Then I get to the end of May, I am getting to the last day of school, blah, blah, blah. I look at the last two days of May, one of those days is the day we are leaving for vacation to the Great Smokey Mountains. That is when it hit me like a ton of bricks. Punx has scout camp that week we will be gone. His camp is the first week of June. We got the paper work for camp sometime in March, I made the vacation reservation sometime in February, I never saw a conflict. I always thought we leave in May and when we get back Punx will go to scout camp.

Both have already been paid for. Punx scout camp by the ward. Here is were the screaming comes in. I am an anal planner for the worst, I am an insurance person, I always get that $60 cancellation insurance, did I get this time, of course I didn't, I forgot. Is the reservation transferable, of course it isn't. The children know about our vacation, Punx knows about scout camp. Everyone is excited for everything. It's not like I can just cancel one, be out the money and just take the hit. I can't even begin to think of what to do. It would seem like I should not let Punx go to scout camp and we take the family vacation, since this is the only summer vacation I have planned this summer. I think we might do another trip in July but I don't have any firm plans. I just hate the thought of having to tell him of how I screwed up and now he can't go. Enter more screaming. Will one of you tell him and tell him it's your fault? I know, how can this be Dan's fault?