Category Archives: Personal

Sep 17 24 comments
Blog, Incessant Whining, Personal

Attitude is Everything!!!

When I woke up this morning with my head throbbing, husband grousing around and my children carrying on about one thing or another…I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. I feel like that a lot lately, as noted in a previous post. I think my exact thought this morning was that every day lately my life feels like it’s imploding “to collapse inward as if from external pressure.” I don’t know if it’s me, like my perception is skewed and nothing is really as bad as it seems, or if it’s exactly as it seems and I’ve just reached my saturation point.

I actually said this morning, in a moment of extreme fed-upness, and in my husband’s general direction,  “I can’t stand you people anymore. One day I’m going to run away and never come back.” Nice. That mother-of-the-year award I was coveting is definitely a pipe dream now.

It’s not that every second of every day is awful. It’s not. In between the impatience and outbursts and complaints, there is love and laughter and fun. But if I had to sum it all up…it’s still pretty sucktastic. I’ve totally been phoning it in with the kids being back in school. PTA membership papers sit on my desk ignored. Girl Scout event emails calling for parent volunteers make me want to run and hide. It’s all I can do to get up and get the kids off to school. Everything that’s not mission critical just keeps getting backburnered. How long can you do that, exactly?

I just…don’t feel like I have both feet on the ground. I feel tethered by a very, very thin thread and I’m up there just blowing around in the wind…waiting for something to pull me back down. I’m not depressed, per se. But it’s something.

Every day is the saaaaaame. My husband is always in a bad mood and I’m overwhelmed. I never get enough done. I’m always ten steps behind everyone else and playing catch up…just trying to get through the day so I can lather, rinse and repeat the next day.

Again, I have to ask…is it just me? Am I seeing things through a warped lens? Could I shake this off if I really wanted to?

Whilst lamenting to my BFF this morning about my husband, who has been PMSing for about a year straight, she brought up something I haven’t thought about in a very long time—the law of attraction. Basically, you attract what you put out there. She was talking about how it can be difficult to get yourself out of a funk because you’re feeling so negative and thus, attracting more of it to you.

We were actually talking about my husband but in that moment, I started thinking of myself and wondering if I was the architect of my own misery. In my head I envisioned one of those photocopied flyers that an old boss had tacked up in her wood-paneled office. It said “Attitude is everything!” and proceeded to tell you all the ways in which a bad attitude will defeat you.

Shit. My attitude SUCKS, I thought. But then I countered that with “How can you have a good attitude when you’re surrounded by people who are perpetually dissatisfied? SOMEONE is always unhappy and we’re never all happy at the same time. We’re so…out of sync. And I don’t know how to fix that, even with the world’s bestest attitude.

Sep 13 22 comments
Blog, Incessant Whining, Personal

Would You Like Some Cheese With My Whine?

I hate whining. I really do.

I don’t, however, hate it enough to NOT do it.

Really, the fact is…I just don’t want to hear anyone else whine. Not you. Not my kids. None of ya. But since this is my blog, I’m going to be a wee bit of a hypocrite and whine just a little. Think of it as venting (but with more patheticness…).

You  see, I’ve had a this atrocious headache for days, possibly weeks. After enough coffee, Aleve and Canadian aspirin (the good kind), I can sometimes make it go away but every morning, I wake up and it’s back again like a bad penny. Fricken headache…ruiner of all things good and fun.

I also woke up this morning with not only a headache but a wet desk chair. I’m all “Did someone pee on my chair???” but I got denials all the way around, which is good because if anyone actually DID pee in my chair, like my husband, for example, that would be messed up.

When nobody would cop to peeing in my chair or spilling anything on it, I, for some reason, looked upward and there it was…the wet spot. On the ceiling. Which means???? Our roof has a leak.

I always knew this day would come (we were told six years ago that our roof had about 4-5 years to live) but did I ever do anything about it? Did I ever even attempt to act like a responsible adult and be pro-active? Hell no. I just waited for this day and then got to spend a good hour trying to find a roofer that would call me back on a Saturday—a RAINY Saturday. And now? We will have to pull thousands of dollars out of our asses (because that’s where irresponsible adults keep their money) and put a new roof on this fricken shoebox—which leads me to my next gripe…

I told my husband this morning that if he doesn’t figure out a way to give me a damn bedroom, I’m divorcing him—we’ve been sleeping in our office since shortly after my son was born. His crib was in our room and he was such a light sleeper that co-sleeping never worked and when we would sleep in our bed with him in his crib, he would hear every noise and wake up all night long.

We eventually moved into our office, which IS a room, but it’s in the middle of everything—no door, no privacy, no quiet in the morning. It sucks. This morning, I tried to shoo my kids back to their rooms because my head was pounding so they went in what is now my son’s room and started rifling through my dresser drawers. The top drawer is just full of my junk, not clothes, and they dug all through it and came out with all kinds of stuff and it just pissed me off. I have NO space of my own at all and I’m completely over it.

I want to move but since our house lost FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS of value this past year, according to our illustrious county appraiser, we couldn’t sell it for what we owe on it and even if we could, we’d walk away with NOTHING. I haven’t even told my husband about this yet because I know he’ll freak.

Also? We’re getting new neighbors. The house next door has been a rental for the past two years and we’ve had a steady stream of shitty, douchey neighbors. I have NO reason to believe the new ones will be any different.

I don’t like this house, I don’t like that there are no kids in our neighborhood, I don’t like that we have to put a new roof on a house I don’t like, I don’t like that we’re getting new douchebag neighbors, I don’t like that our tree died, I don’t like that there is SO much to be done but it’s too damn hot to do anything outside and I don’t like having these headaches because I have to work thrice as hard to get anything done. I can’t even blog everyday for Nablopomo because I can’t think straight when my head is pounding. Oh, who am I kidding… I also have major writers block. I’ve had it for ages. I get inspiration when I don’t have time and then I forget it when I do have time. Or when I do have time, I’d rather sleep. Thisssssucks.

But please, for the love of all things good and decent, don’t tell me I need to exercise. I know I need to exercise but it’s impossible when you have headache that gets worse when you stand up. Or bend down. Or exert yourself in any way. Tension headaches and exercise are not friends. They despise each other. Also, don’t tell me to think positively. Or take more vitamins. Please.

And dear husband, if you’re reading this, please forgive me for saying this in such a public way…but your constant bad mood and Man PMS is really wearing on me. I TRY to understand but I’m over it. Life is hard. Life isn’t always fun. Life is challenging. I get all that. I’m not exactly thrilled either, as evidenced by my ranty whinefest, BUT I don’t make everyone else suffer for my unhappiness. Figure out what you want from life and go after it. Figure out what will make you happy and pursue it. I may be unhappy with certain things right now but I’m still an optimist. I still have hope that life will get better. I wish you would, too. I love you—now chin up!

I can feel the tension run from my head to my neck,  into my shoulders and down my back so I’m going to my chiropractor on Tuesday and then I’m going to beg my massage therapist to see me right after. If that doesn’t work, there’s always the gun method—it’s damn near impossible to have a headache when you don’t have a head. Heh.

Sep 10 11 comments
Blog, Meta Junk, Personal

The Internet Never Forgets

If you know me at all, you know I teeter on the fence between wanting to share and wanting to hide—under a big BIG black cloak of privacy. I do want to blog. I want to voice my opinions. I want to spill my guts. I want to pour my heart out. I just don’t want anyone I know in real life to read it (blogging friends and a few select others notwithstanding).

This also extends to my kids. I honestly have no idea what I’m going to do when they get older and don’t have such limited computer access but the idea of them combing through my blog and reading certain things bothers me a lot. I’m all for honesty but really, there are just some things you’d rather not share with your kids until they’re older. Or maybe never. That said, I sometimes imagine that after a certain point, I will have to cull this blog back to a bloody nub by removing a lot of content. Oddly, that thought has never bothered me much.

But people always say stuff will stay on the internet forever, right?  And maybe that’s true but it wasn’t until I found about The Wayback Machine (no, not like Mr. Peabody’s machine) that I really pondered the gravity of that statement. So I checked it out and holy crap on a cracker—there was my whole site archived by month and year. It was freaky. And creepy. I didn’t like it.

Have you ever visited The Wayback Machine? Chances are your site is archived there, too. If you’re cool with that and you want every word you’ve ever blogged to be accessible for generations to come, then you’re good. No action necessary. Carry on.

But if you’re not so sure, the ability to make it all go away DOES exist. The instructions are right here. Good luck!

Sep 04 22 comments
Blog, Incessant Whining

Happy Birthday

My 24 hours of special treatment from my family is almost over…another birthday nearly behind me.

If I were a pessimist, I’d say “Ohhhh, another birthday, another year closer to death” but I make a point not to think of stuff like that. I cannot, however, lie and say I haven’t spent a few moments lamenting the fact that I’m officially middle-age.

The hardest part of all to face is the fact that while I AM young and vibrant in the grand scheme of things, my youth, per se, is gone forever. Equally painful? I didn’t appreciate it when I had it.

George Bernard Shaw once said “Youth is wasted on the young.”  I daresay he was on to something…

Happy 29th birthday to me…again ;)

(Edited to add:  I fear my joke about being 29 again has flopped. I’m not 29, folks. I just wish I was.)

Sep 02 30 comments
Blog, Character Flaws, Family & Parenting

And You’re Not Invited

Do you remember the first time you found out YOU weren’t invited to a party but all your friends were? (And I’m not talking about that revival thing that was being sent around on Facebook by an old (and very saved) friend. I wouldn’t go to that anyway—you see, God and I have an understanding… He doesn’t nag or guilt trip me about church stuff and I don’t attend such things and snicker the whole time. It works for us.)

Anyway, speaking of religious stuff—the party invite thing… I remember. It was in elementary school and I wasn’t invited because I wasn’t Jewish and it was the first of many Jews-only shindigs to which I was not invited. Yeah, sure…I wasn’t Jewish but I almost could have been—I ate matzo at my Jewish friends’  houses and I knew all words to Hava Nagila and my last name? It’s a PREDOMINANTLY JEWISH name, folks.

Why people felt it was okay to exclude someone who was an otherwise close friend I still don’t understand because I was never like “Oh, you can’t come to my party because you’re Jewish. Sorry. I’ll see you at school on Monday. Oh, and can I borrow your disco bag for my skating party to which you’re not invited even though we’re totally good friends?”

For what it’s worth, I got used to not being invited to all these parties and whatever Mitzvahs—mainly because I moved away. My new friends were all pretty much heathens anyway. Well, except for that girl across the street that asked me to see Flashdance with her and then tried to witness to me through the whole movie. It was a little awkward telling her I would NEVER go to her church because she was freaking me the hell out.

So fast forward like twenty something years, right? I have kids now and my daughter comes home and tells me a girl in her Girl Scout troop is having a birthday slumber party and her BFF and fellow Girls Scout got an invitation and she didn’t. This girl just attended my own daughter’s party last month so of course I wanted to be all “That little @#$%&! WHATEVER! Her mom is probably mean anyway. You don’t want to sleep over there. She’ll yell at you a lot and serve gross stuff like pickled eggs and raw onions and make you go to bed at 9:00.” But I had to play it cool, not let on that I was as upset for her (possibly more so) as she was.

Instead I calmly said mom-ish things like “There will always be things in life that you’re not invited to and it’s no big deal. And? Think of the people you haven’t invited to your parties. It wasn’t because you didn’t like them. It was because you were limited and so you had to pick only your closest friends. Maybe that’s how it is with so-and-so. I know she likes you and I know she’s a nice girl so please try not to take it personally” My pep talk appeared to be effective and she seemed to be over the whole thing, even confessing to me that she hates sleepovers because there’s always someone who snores really loud. So true, so true.

When I checked the mailbox, I hoped an invite to said party would waiting there for her but nothing. And it started to piss me off. Why would you dis-include ONE girl from your Girl Scout troop and invite everyone else? That’s just rude. Truthfully, I was merely assuming everyone else was invited; I had no evidence of this. I actually considered calling some of the other moms but what if their girls weren’t invited? Then it would just cause more trouble and thus, I forced myself to just lay low. I tried to dispel the little revenge fantasies I was enjoying where we’re throwing an envy-worthy party and handing out invitations to everyone but this one girl and sneering at her as we skip over her.  Because I am ten and SO MATURE.

I knew if left to my own devices I would probably do or say something stupid and possibly embarrassing so I put the whole thing out of my mind and filed it away as a “character building experience” because nothing builds character better than being being treated like a miniature 48 lb. leper, right?

Then my daughter casually mentions to me yesterday that she IS invited to this party, that they printed their own invites and ran out of ink. I find this slightly questionable but she says this girl told her she’s totally invited to the slumber party. Except we don’t know when and where.

Me: When is it?

Her: Um..I don’t know.

Me: We kinda need to know that. Ask her to have her mom call or email me since they ran out of ink. Ahem.

I secretly breathe a sigh of relief that we dodged this particular bullet for now. Sadly, I know this will come up again someday and it probably won’t end as happily. Lucky for her, my  daughter has me to do all her hand-wringing and revenge-fantasizing FOR HER.

Edited to Add: The day after I wrote this, my daughter did receive a computer-printed invitation along with an apology for the short notice. Apparently, they had to buy more ink.

Aug 22 17 comments
Blog, LOL, Personal

The Good News Is…

Well, the good news is I don’t cancer.  The less-good news is I still don’t know what the frig is going on with me, although now that the colon cancer thing is off the table, I’m far less concerned. 

Honestly, I have very little faith in doctors. Most of the times that I really needed their help (beyond a cold or sinus thing or whatever), they didn’t help at all and you know what they do when they can’t figure out what’s wrong with you? They tell you you’re depressed (which naturally reminds me of the depressed vagina episode on Sex and the City) because if they can’t figure it out in two 10 minute office visits and a panel of routine labs, then it MUST be in your head. Well, should THAT happen again, the joke will be on them because I’ll be all I’M ALREADY ON THE HAPPY PILLS, DUMBASSES!

So yeah, I successfully attended and completed Asscam09 and I have to tell you that while I was worried on many fronts (and mentally composing my last will and testament and goodbye letters to my kids) I need not have worried about the actual mechanics of having a camera put my ass (or people pointing and laughing at my cellulite) because once the guy put the Propofol in my IV, I seriously cared about nothing more than going to sleep, which I did in about a nanosecond.

I hesitate to say this but I can see why Michael Jackson was demanding the stuff to help him sleep. It’s pleasant and because it’s not a narcotic, you have no shakes or nausea or itching or other sucktastic side effects. They finished the asscam, they woke me up and I was in the car and on my way home within 20 minutes, feeling totally normal. What’s crazy is that it took 3 hours of waiting and prepping and waiting for a ten minute procedure. Seriously, this place was an Asscam MILL. It’s all they do and there were a TON of people in the waiting room.

Speaking of the waiting room, I made the mistake of not bringing my phone and some nineteen year old kid was hogging the ONLY decent magazine, a three month old copy of Rolling Stone. He must have known I wanted it (I was staring at it HARD, psychically willing it to fly from his hands into mine) because he picked up another magazine and KEPT the Rolling Stone on his lap….totally taunting me.  I was about to walk over and grab it and run away with it when they finally called me into the back.  Note to self: NEVER willingly leave your phone at home ever again. You missed a golden opportunity to tweet some really great laxative jokes…

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that when you turn 50 and have to go for a routine asscam, it’s not that bad. Just make sure they give you the Michael Jackson drug and NOT the crappy el cheapo grande nitrous. And bring your own magazine.

I the interest of being consistent (and possibly developing a reputation for only writing about poop and ass-related things), I’m over at Aiming Low today with a funnier, albeit somewhat grosser story about something that happened to me last week. Come by and visit. We’re a lot of fun!

Aug 11 38 comments
Blog, Commentary, Incessant Whining, Jackassery

Thanks for Nothing, Big Corporate Robber Barons

Okay, I finally got up the nerve to make the appointment for Asscam 09 (tomorrow & I’m terrified) only to find out that since it’s a diagnostic asscam instead of a screening asscam, it’s going to cost me a $300 copay because, inexplicably, it’s considered an outpatient SURGERY.

Seriously?

The woman from the insurance company says it’s because they invade your body. Well, if that’s the case, those transvaginal ultrasounds they give you when you’re pregnant should be considered surgery, too. I’m sorry but I consider having a big old phallic-shaped device poking me in my lady bits to also be pretty damned invasive (and not nearly as *fun* as it sounds).

My complaint in a nutshell? We have the VERY BEST plan offered by my husband’s employer and we pay a small fortune the equivalent of our mortgage payment for it every month and they won’t cover a freaking colonoscopy 100%?

Frankly, that alone is reason for me to reconsider having it done, although I’m sure that’s EXACTLY what my insurance company is hoping for because if I don’t get it done, then they won’t have to pay for ANYTHING. I guess it’s never occurred to them that an asscam is a hell of a lot cheaper than treatment for advanced colon cancer or some other horrid potential diagnosis down the road. To hell with all that fancy, highfalutin’ logical thinking…

Health care reform of some kind CANNOT come soon enough, IMO.

—

If you have kids and have ever posted a pic of them on your blog or on Flickr, you should really read this post because…well, because I said so. And because really, who wants pix of their kids labeled with porn tags by a search engine?