Shopping Spree

I was pretty convinced for most of the day yesterday that it was Friday.  Imagine my disappointment each time I realized that it was, in fact, Wednesday.  Damn you, Wednesday!  You’re just so looong.

 

To cheer myself up, I made the best beef stroganoff ever.  The secret is to use lots and lots of golden butter.  And pair it with deep, red wine.  I often sacrifice “healthy” for good.  There is no one in the world who would say that beef stroganoff is good for you, other than that it is food and we need food to live.  No, but it is enjoyable, and in the quest for good health, one must not ignore that really enjoying the experience of food is healthy, too.

 

I bought a flower shirt at Target so Charles would have more wardrobe choices for me each morning. 

 

 

I’ve been on a bit of a shopping spree lately – nothing extravagant, but things that make me happy.  I bought these three pairs of shoes at Payless (two of them had to be mailed to me):

 

 

www.payless.com

 

You would not believe it from their $20 price point, but the red and gray are some of the most comfortable heels I have ever worn.  The heel is a bit too low (it could do with another half inch), but in the realm of compromises, the comfort of these shoes vastly outweighs the added sexiness of a higher heel.  Also, I’ll point it out again, TWENTY DOLLARS.

 

(The flowery shoes were not $20.  They were $29.  But they’re super cute.)

 

 

I also invested in an enamel-coated cast iron Dutch oven.  I am so in love with it and I haven’t even used it yet.  I’m going to make this bread recipe as my first dish in it.  Did I pay $104 for it like the website suggests?  No, I did not.  I paid $53 as it was on sale AND I had a coupon. 

 

And then I bought something ridiculous for the boys: straw mugs.  You drink out of the straw handle!  $0.99 and tough to clean, but super fun for the boys.  Also, really annoying to Tony when they blow bubbles and splatter a mess out the little hole in the lid.

 

 

Tony and I definitely have different sensibilities when it comes to messes.  For a man who doesn’t notice, EVER, that the baseboards are dirty, he sure gets upset when the boys make “unnecessary” messes.  Like when Jamie drips yogurt all over the table, chair, and floor or gets peanut butter in his hair.  Or when Charles spills his milk for the zillionth time because he placed his cup too close to the edge of the table.  Tony’s frustration with messes like these is palpable, and I think it’s because he sees them as totally avoidable.  I mostly see them as funny.  Kids are going to dump cereal everywhere if you let them eat straight from the box.  Tony would never let them eat straight from the box.  I always do.

 

Fortunately for our marriage, I’m usually making dinner or cleaning at the time, so the tradeoff for a cereal (or other) mess is a meal or clean dishes.  That wise husband of mine chooses not to complain verbally, merely to roll his eyes and sigh in a long-suffering manner.

 

Well, I was about to wish you a happy Friday, but it’s STILL not Friday yet.  So, instead, here’s Jamie wondering why on earth he should have to go inside just because it’s starting to rain:

 

My Little Klutz

My mom has often told me that she was called “Grace” as a child/teenager because she was not – graceful, that is.  Neither am I, and I think it has a lot to do with nearsightedness and poor spatial reasoning skills.  Tony, thank God, is neither nearsighted nor has poor spatial reasoning skills.  In fact, he is gifted in both eyesight and reasoning, spatial or otherwise.  I have long hoped that our kids would inherit both traits.

 

I’ve just about lost hope for this young monkey, though:

 

 

Kid falls off of everything.  In the past week, he has fallen off of a chair (three times!), the back of the couch (he’s not allowed to get up there!), a stool (he’s not allowed up there, either!), down the stairs (he crawls backwards, I swear!), and off of the bleachers at swimming (in front of everyone!).  He has a fat lip, a goose egg on his forehead, and a hole in his tongue and dammit all, that kid gets right back on the escalator.  He falls while walking, while running, while moving from one piece of furniture to another – if there’s a way to go over something rather than around it, he will try.  And fail.  Because his legs aren’t as long as he thought they were or his fingers not as strong or, shit, I don’t know.  He just falls.  A lot.

 

Most of the time, he is unharmed.  He looks up at me, stunned after tripping again, and says, “Down!”  Yes, honey, you fell down.  Other times, he cries.

 

 

I’m honestly surprised he hasn’t broken a limb yet, but I imagine that’s coming.  And thank God the falling down the stairs incidents (there have been many, most of them when he was going down them backwards like a good toddler does and the one this morning when he was actually crawling up the stairs) haven’t resulted in a broken neck.  Sheesh, he’s out to give me a heart attack.

 

 

Oh, Jamie, I feel your pain.  I fall down a lot, too.

Redeem Your Life with Dancing & Gin

I often wish my life wasn’t so extreme – I seem to have these terrible lows followed by unsustainable highs.  It has been this way since, well, probably forever (or at least since puberty).  I often tell people that  my friends and I worked harder and partied harder in college than anyone I know.  We would stay up all night (in the library that was open 24 hours) studying during the week – many of us had double majors with honors and studies abroad and took a foreign language and were in a sorority and were involved in music or acting or dance – and then we would blow off steam in a train wreck of partying all weekend long.  It would seem that nothing much has changed, except maybe my understanding of the lows and resultant highs and the frequency with which I hit them.

 

PMS, right?  It just sucks.  The older I get, the worse it is, and it is always accompanied by a bout of depression and a spiral of hopelessness as I run like a hamster with my cheeks stuffed full of food pellets from one task to the next, barely taking the time to breathe.  That wheel is spinning, all the damn time.  And when my brain chemistry changes for a few days a month, I can’t seem to see beyond it.  And worse, I can’t even remember the next month that I know perfectly well what’s going on here and it’s not my fault and it will pass and maybe I should just go ahead and drink that bottle of wine already.  Some things you can self-medicate.

 

Actually, thanks to my mom and her love of quackery, I drink Gin & Tonics when it’s that time of the month (I dink them other times, too) because, apparently, tonic water helps with cramps.  So there you go: G&Ts are good for you when you’re crampy.  It’s just science (fuzzy science based on something my mom told me that she heard from someone else who definitely isn’t a scientist).  You’re welcome.

 

One thing that is great about getting older is how little you have left to lose on the dance floor.  I saw 22-year-old me out there dancing this weekend in several of the girls at the bar, and boy was she insecure.  And damn, those heels were high.  When you’re old, have kids, are happily married, and don’t get out to dance enough, well, you just don’t care.  You dance for fun and because you love it and you have a much better time than you ever did when you were young.  So there’s a silver lining to the wrinkles-and-sag cloud.

 

Even better?  We danced in celebration of a friend’s 30th birthday to a 90s and early-2000s cover band.  There’s no faster way to take me back to every frat party I ever went to.  The only things missing were a backless shirt, belted jeans, and the aforementioned self-consciousness as I tried to look hot while dancing.  It was wonderful to blow off steam in that way, to hit that high and sweat out the unhappiness of my week with friends.  I wasn’t even hung over, merciful God.

 

I’m tired today, though.  The extra-hard workout Saturday morning plus four hours of dancing like a drunken idiot (we! did! not! stop! dancing! not! once!) plus getting home at 3 am plus getting up at 8:30 am plus not much sleep last night and yeah, I had coffee and chocolate cake for breakfast this morning (I am a great example to my children).  Which helped me deal a bit better with the fact that I had to carry a screaming and kicking Charles into school today.  But my hormones have leveled a bit, so even though I still want to stab myself in the eye about that kid and his tantrums, and least I didn’t have the urge to just get in my car and keep driving until I’m someplace far, far away and hopefully warmer than here (instead, I drove to work, where the power was out, whee!).

 

Next month, I’ll aim for less fatalism and more G&Ts, chocolate, and probably some sappy movies or something to dull the pain.  And I’ll try to get all the ironing done before I turn into a mess of PMS-driven angst so that it isn’t taunting me in my darkest hour (“You’ll never get me done!  NEVER!”).

So I Will Buy New Shoes

Okay, so probably what I need is some chocolate and a glass (bottle) of wine and for my hormones to calm down (being a woman is aaaaaawesome!), but I can’t do that (bottles of wine being detrimental to my head and chocolate being detrimental to my waistline).  I can go dancing, which I will do this weekend (for the first time in about a year) with some girlfriends, so that might take the edge off.  If you’re out and about in Bellingham on Saturday night, please flirt with me.  My ego needs a boost. 

 

I’ve written and deleted this post today several times (all in 30-second increments between tasks!) because I just don’t know what to say.  I hate to continue in the same vein and complain ceaselessly about my feelings of inadequacy; they are there, they are not going away.  I can list them easily enough, the pressures I feel to perform well as a wife, mom, and in my career, the worries that keep me up at night.  Though I am advised to cut myself some slack, it’s impossible to do so – there is nothing in my life that I can let slide any more than it already does.  If I neglect my children, well, I won’t be able to live with myself.  If I neglect work, several people will find their jobs in jeopardy.  If I neglect my appearance or my housework or my marriage, one of the most important people in my life suffers. 

 

It does some good, to vent in this space.  I like to feel less alone, less isolated.  But it certainly doesn’t lead to solutions, does it?  I can only move on, try daily to be better and do more.

 

Self Portrait

 

One of the stupidest things about being overwhelmed is that I still want more children.  I know, right?  Logic doesn’t even begin to play into this desire.  How could I handle more?  But I want more.  I want to have another infant to cuddle.  Not today, not tomorrow, but someday.  I like to think that there’s an alternate version of me out there that has enough love and time and energy to give to yet another baby.

 

In the meantime, I’m going to ignore the workout of the day (while trying not to feel guilty about letting down the team and condemning my body to being flabby forevermore) and try to make time in between work, errands, dinner prep, housekeeping, and kids to buy myself some new shoes and a shirt with flowers on it.  Charles always wants me to wear a flower shirt and is always disappointed that I don’t have one and I just want new shoes.  Cheap shoes, but new nonetheless.

 

This dress has flowers on it – I wore it for Valentine’s Day.

But the best I could do today was a flowery scarf.  Damn, I feel and look about a hundred years old.

A Day in the Life of Crazy

I got up yesterday at 6 am.  Charles was in bed with us – I think I already explained how he hit me first thing in the morning, ostensibly over my wardrobe choices (specifically over my choice to get dressed at all), Jamie was sleeping, so was Tony, and I had a meeting to get to at 7.  Work for several hours, I left early to get gas and groceries before my dentist appointment, which was the only time all day that I relaxed for even a few minutes, in that blissful dentist’s chair.

 

I’ve had so much stress in my life lately that I snapped my night guard in half and had to get it replaced (which is expensive).  On Friday.  Which meant that I went the whole weekend clenching my jaw in my sleep with enough force to snap super tough plastic designed to withstand the pressure of the body’s strongest muscles in half.

 

We’re having a major supplier problem at work, which trickles down to just about every customer we have.  Add that to all the normal stresses of running a business, plus my personal stress of not being able to devote enough time to it or my family or anything else in my life, worries about finances and frustration over stupid decisions made in the past (this house that we’ll be stuck in FOREVER), and you have a jaw-clenching spiral of anxiety.

 

After I got myself a new night guard (hopefully it’s reinforced for super wear), I proceeded to mangle a salmon I had intended to prepare for a party last night – the head was still on, and the backbone was in and, basically, I’m an idiot.  No one should allow me around fish with a knife.  But no one else was available to help and I destroyed the damned thing beyond recognition so instead of having a healthy protein to take to the party, I made super unhealthy chicken (with mayonnaise.  And cheese).

 

The party was for our Baby Boot Camp instructor, a wonderful woman who has been my friend for several years.  We’re currently doing a 3-month challenge in Baby Boot Camp to be more fit, healthier, make better food choices (so the bad-for-you chicken was a terrible choice), etc, and I’m now reminded why I didn’t do it last year.

 

The whole thing makes me feel like a goddamn failure.

 

Every week there is an email with videos to watch (they’re short and I never get to them), food/eating changes to make, and a daily workout.  I rarely complete any of them, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only one.  Every other member of the group posts that she’s done the workout on the FB site, or that she’s lost so many pounds this week, or that she changed her diet to include kale or some such garbage this week.  Me?  I wear heels to work, so I’m unlikely to get down on the dusty floor of my warehouse and do a one-minute plank every hour or 25 jumping jacks every hour.  I get up at the crack of dawn and go-go-go all day long, so I’m unlikely to find time between work, groceries, meetings, dishes, dinner prep, swim lessons, and anything else that comes up to do a daily workout or a morning plank routine or hip bridges or anything else.  Hell, I write this blog in 30-second snippets in between work tasks.

 

And it’s not that I don’t WANT to do these fitness things; I would love to be stronger and more fit.  I don’t have time to give my children and dog, let alone my husband, the attention they deserve.  How can I add another workout to my list? 

 

And then there’s the pressure of knowing I’ll be doing Ragnar this summer.  When will I find the time to run?

 

So after I mangled the fish and set some chicken out to thaw, I picked up the boys from preschool, carted them home, and snuggled them while I read books.  We then frantically beat feet to swim lessons (snuggling and reading frequently make us late for other obligations) where I chased Jamie around while Charles worked on side-breathing.  Then we ran home, grabbed the chicken from the oven, and went to the party.  Where Charles threw a fit when it was time to go home.  None of the other kids did, but you know, F*&#ing Fours.

 

The kids were in bed by 9ish, Tony was reading me depressing articles from the internet, and I was trying to lull myself to sleep with a trash novel by 10:30.  I feel guilty about the time I spend reading at night, but truthfully, I just don’t have the mental or physical energy to do anything else and I need the escape so badly.  I am in awe of these people who have clean houses, who do workouts at night, who meal-plan or cook for the week in one fell swoop.

 

***

 

I’m overwhelmed, you guys.  And when I’m overwhelmed, I look in the mirror and all I see is failure.  I look around at my friends and all I see are people who dress better, look better, have better-behaved children, cook better, clean better, and who clearly are not as stressed as I am.  It’s a stupid downward spiral of self-loathing and feelings of worthlessness.  The guilt at any little indulgence I allow myself, be it chocolate or reading at night, is near-crippling.  I know that I will survive and make it to tomorrow, and I certainly don’t want to give up anyone or anything that I have, but I just don’t know how to do anything well anymore.  I just don’t know how to feel pretty or successful or good about myself.  It is so hard to like myself, let alone love myself.

 

When you do your best, and it’s not enough, what then?  My expectations really aren’t that high to begin with…

F*%&ing Fours

The Terrible Twos weren’t so terrible for Charles.

 

Don’t get me wrong, they had their moments.  I distinctly remember the time I couldn’t get Charles into his carseat – I was several months pregnant at the time – after picking up a pizza and we sat in the parking lot, Charles screaming, me openly weeping at my plight, for maybe 45 minutes until Tony could come and rescue us from each other.

 

Tony’s always been better at bending Charles to our will, especially since Charles figured out that there were limits to my physical strength.

 

But ages two and three were fun in spite of the constant energy, clinginess, and sleep troubles.  He was easily distracted if things didn’t go his way, everything was new and interesting, and bribery totally worked.  Time out worked with some success.  He took naps.  Exhaustion resulted in sleep, not tantrums.  It has always been tough to mother Charles, but I think we have reached a whole new level of difficulty with age four. 

 

He’s bigger.  He’s stronger.  He knows much more about what he wants, how he wants it, and when he wants it.  He understands when he is not getting his way and is unwilling to be distracted by shiny things or fun activities.  He’s struggling to seize power from us.  And he lashes out when he’s angry.

 

Last night, I sent Tony off to enjoy some time out with the gang from my office at pub trivia while I put the kids into bed.  Charles refused to brush his teeth or have his teeth brushed.  Then he refused to get into bed, so I picked him up and put him in, an act which earned me a screaming, kicking fit.  Charles threw himself on the floor in the hall, effectively putting an end to my efforts to get Jamie to bed, who, by that time, was exhausted and showing it by throwing his own screaming tantrum when I took his toothbrushes away from him by force.  The great thing about Jamie (largely due to his age, I’m sure) is that when he is mad, his temper burns hot and fast and then he sticks his thumb in his mouth and snuggles into my shoulder and calms right down.  Despite Charles’s terrifying screams, Jamie finally went to sleep.

 

Charles, however, continued to rage.  The neighbors probably thought that I was pulling out his toenails one-by-one.

 

I eventually sat down next to him in the hall and held open my arms.  He crawled in, snuffled into my shirt, and I calmly explained why we have to brush our teeth (he didn’t care) and also that he was losing library privileges for a whole week.  If he could go a whole week without throwing a fit at bedtime, he could go back to the library and take home a sack of books.

 

He crawled into our bed around 3:30 am.  I got up for a meeting at 6, and as I was getting dressed, he woke up and said, “Mommy, why are you wearing that?!”  When I told him I was getting dressed for work, he got out of bed, walked over to me, and smacked me right on the back while screaming “no!”  The little jerk.  (We don’t hit him and tell him “no!” by the way, so he isn’t mimicking.)

 

Our constant discipline of Charles is wearing on me.  He gets a lot of time out.  He often has privileges, toys, and books revoked.  We’ve embarked on a program to give him more responsibility, more little “jobs” like wiping down the table after dinner and making sure books and shoes are organized and in their places, in the hopes that he will learn to do these things without them being extraordinary requests that cause a fight.  He responds well to love and cuddling, but not at all to discipline.  And frankly, I don’t feel like cuddling him when he is kicking at me and throwing food on the floor and screaming and telling me “no!”

 

Oh, Charles.  When he is good, he’s very, very good.  But when he’s bad, he’s terrible.

 

This is a good chance for you all to weigh in and tell me that it gets better… that five, six, and seven will not be so horrible.  That powers of logic and reason may develop soon in my son’s brain and we’ll all get some relief from the violence of his misbehavior.

 

Beach Babies There on the Sand

Sunny weekends at the beach can be near-perfect:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, plus pizza with friends, time spent with both my parents and my in-laws, brainstorming business ideas, a beautiful Sunday-morning run along the bay, and an astonishing amount of food ingested by my children.

 

Here is what they ate on Saturday ALONE: two bowls of Rice Krispies (each), a half an English muffin with jam (each), a link or two of sausage (each), MY bowl of Cheerios with yogurt and jam (which they stole and devoured), and two fried eggs… and THEN WE WENT TO BREAKFAST, where they each had a pancake and scrambled eggs and milk, and then our friend Mike made Charles a plate-sized Mickey Mouse pancake, which he nearly finished.  Then we went home for naps and chill time and then after nap went to McDonald’s, where Jamie ate five chicken nuggets and Charles ate an entire cheeseburger, they both had fries and ice cream, and Charles ate both packets of apple slices.  THEN they had some cherry cream-cheese pie, some popcorn, and some applesauce at snack time.  And we haven’t even gotten to dinner yet!  At dinner they ate rice and veggies and meatballs with milk.  Phew.  Neither asked for a bedtime snack.

 

I think they’re growing.

 

We came back Monday to a dirty house.  Tony worked all weekend long, and by all weekend, I mean that when I talked to him every evening or even late at night while we were gone, he was either taking his dinner break and about to head back to the office or he was at the office.  Tax season is a good time for us to leave – we all miss Tony, and I think he misses us, but allowing him to work without feeling distracted or guilty for being gone is the best for him and for us.  It’s easy for me to slip into resentment this time of year, and that’s not constructive.  This is the nature of his job, it will soon be over, it pays the bills.

 

However, I have decided that I am going to cull the herd, so to speak, in his underwear drawer so that he will have no choice but to do laundry more often when he is home alone.