Monday, August 29, 2011

Roller Coaster Ride

You know how when you go to an amusement park and you have to wait in line a long time for a ride that lasts mere moments?  Well, I just had a hell of a ride this last week. No waiting. And it lasted the entire week. Unfortunately, I think I just might puke.

I've been on a roller coaster of drama. Between my kids starting school and all that entailed - including being berated for not watching a soccer practice and talking to my friends instead, to buckets full of tears for making my kids abide by the compulsory education law and not letting them hang out with me at work instead. As if that loop-de-loop weren't enough, my job has been doing the same thing to me. I don't really want to blog about work, but they've pissed me off on a grand scale.

Today, Monday morning, with peace in the house and a great violin lesson under my belt (as well as a half of a sleeve of Lorna Dunes under same said belt) I'm feeling pretty good. I'm feeling good in a two-cups of coffee cheer but too lazy to exercise sort of way. All the drama from the past week has faded like my memory of this morning's breakfast. So what if I want to work more hours and I can't make that happen. At least now I can sit on my ass and type stuff!

I don't really know where I'm going with this. Did I have a point, after all? Who knows. The best thing about forgetting stuff all the time, is that I can forget to care about that which I don't remember.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

In The Face!

A woman that I work with has the most wonderful dog. I don't know if I think he's the most wonderful dog because I don't have to take care of him, or if he is, in fact, just wonderful. His owner brings him into work sometimes and we all love him. His name is Whiskey.

On Tuesday, a couple of women that I work with, including the Whiskey's owner, were in her office and the other woman noticed that Whiskey's bowl of water had a spider in it. It was about the size of a quarter and it looked like it was doing the backstroke.

We all sort of looked at it and I picked the bowl up and carried it outside to pour out. I'm sure the spider was fine, too. They both looked at me like I was very brave - right before I got shivers up my arms and legs and did the little shiver dance. I'm not brave.

My house is full of spiders and so is my yard. I wrote a while back about how there was a large orb spider cleaning up on all the moths. This one was pretty big. They usually start out small and annoy the crap out of me before getting that large.

Well, it must have been all the rain we had last winter, because there are so many orb spiders driving me crazy that I'm about to be committed. Look at the path from my front door to the street:


My daughter asked if I could clear a spider that had set up on the trampoline (out of view to the right). I took the rake with me and held it in front of me so I wouldn't walk into an orb spider. I caught the rake on a web and had the spider dangling RIGHT IN MY FACE! I - of course - dropped the rake and screamed. I nearly broke my neck because I was a couple of steps up and wearing flip flops when I ran to the house. Stumbled, more like it.

The sad thing is that it was the second time today that it happened. There. Spider In Face. What do these little terrors need to do to learn not to do that? How many webs do they need to rebuild to get out of my way?



Magic 8 Ball

It seems that my life keeps coming to crossroads over and over again. I used to be able to intuitively feel my way into the right decision when I was younger. Perhaps I had less to lose back then. Perhaps my intuition is all fogged up with cobwebs these days. I might as well ask the Magic 8 Ball.

Ask again later.

The problem arises when the heart and the head conflict. The head knows the logical way. It makes sense to do certain things and the outcome appears practical. The heart, however, has a finger on the pulse of happiness. The heart weighs the intangibles and unquantifiable components in a decision. And, of course, no decision is made in a vacuum.

Better not tell you now.

I used to be able to flip a coin to make decisions, too. Strangely, it would clarify how I felt. If the coin landed on the wrong side, I would just know that I didn't want to go in that direction. Question answered. Problem solved.

Now, I find myself doing nothing and simply waiting for the right course to reveal itself. Inaction is my modus operandi. It's pathetic, really.

It is certain.


Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Big Day Yesterday

As I was driving home last night and pulled onto my street, I saw a skunk cross my path. I didn't want to scare the critter, so I stopped to let it meander to where it needed to go. Except that it suddenly lifted its tail at me! I don't think it sprayed, but boy was that tail-lift an attention getter!

My cat was acquitted yesterday, too. My neighbors discovered that my cat has a look-alike and that cat was the chicken killer. While Pearl was under House Arrest, the other cat tried to strike again. Life is back to normal again. Whatever that means.

Monday, August 15, 2011

No Rest...

I don't know where I heard the old phrase, "No rest for the wicked," for the first time, but it's been following me around ever since. My husband used to complain when I would try to talk to him while he was reading the sports page. (I don't anymore.) He also complains when he can't finish at least one page of the book he's reading between interruptions. I don't know who he thinks he is because I've been interrupted twice before finishing this very paragraph.

I'm sure I'm very wicked.

I get interrupted while doing everything. I can't even go to the bathroom in peace. (Moms know that is no news there.) But I draw the line when I shower. I absolutely will NOT take phone calls while I'm in the shower.

We put the kids in our family bed as soon as each of them were born. I was breastfeeding and when I learned that I didn't need to remove the baby from the bed and walk to the rocking chair in the middle of the night, the whole thing made much more sense. It was lovely, especially when you realize that they won't be little forever. I especially remember hearing something like, "They're not going to be sleeping with us when they're 10!" Except that my 10-year-old is still asleep in my bed right now and I'm up because my dog wouldn't let me sleep in, too.

We have a giant California King bed, which makes the co-sleeping much more comfortable for me. After losing sleep for so many years, I cherish it and protect it selfishly, as much as I can. My husband lets each of them take a turn sleeping with us on alternating nights, and nothing I have done has been successful in kicking them out entirely, so I just go with it now.

So since my kids have grown up sleeping with us, they don't really like to sleep alone. When it's their turn to sleep in their own bed, they ask me to sleep with them. I really don't want to and have a list of excuses, the most successful being that my alarm clock is in my own room so I can't. Saturday night, I caved and let my oldest daughter talk me into sleeping with her. It's still nice to sleep with her, but the fact of the matter is, I don't sleep.

She has a loft bed from IKEA because her room is so tiny that it gives her so much more floor space. Being up so high, in another room, proved difficult for my pets. My dog, confused as to where I was wondered from room to room trying to get comfortable. He ended up settling in my daughter's room, but woke me up a million times with his itching. Apparently the flea problem has not been solved.

My cat loves to sleep with me and since being on House Arrest can't go galavanting in the middle of the night so she wanted to snuggle up to me. The loft bed is too tall for her and she sat underneath meowing until I climbed down and lifted her up and climbed up myself again. I had to do this twice since she jumped down at one point to eat or something.

Then there was the elbow in the head. Being a twin bed, there was no escaping the pointy appendages.

Then there was the whiney dog to let me know he wanted to eat breakfast.

Then it was time to get up because we were going to the amusement park.

No rest for the wicked, indeed.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Boner Juice

My kids watch too much TV. Only now, instead of sitting a foot away from the console TV watching black-and-white episodes of Andy Griffith or Superman, like I did, or color episodes of The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island, they watch streaming Netflix versions of Good Luck, Charlie and Wizards of Waverly Place.

And I'll admit that sometimes I'd rather watch a good episode of one of their shows than to come up with something more age-appropriate for myself. And sometimes they don't watch age-appropriate stuff at all and I throw all my parenting fortitude to the wind and let them pick something else...that perhaps they shouldn't.

Today's enthralling show is the SNL Commercial Parodies. They are damn funny! I laugh and can't look away, but I don't think my kids should see some of it. I caught a glimpse of the words Boner Juice as I passed by and cringed. There is a part of me that thinks they will not get the stuff that is beyond them. It will not be a joke they understand because it is beyond their maturity level. I also think that if I were to make a Big Deal about it, their curiosity would draw them to it rather than ignoring something they don't find funny.

My friend and I talk about the movie Grease from when were kids. I was about 12-years-old when it came out and the jokes that I didn't get just whizzed right by me. I was shocked later to discover what some of it meant, but I'm a prude like that. She performed it and at that similarly young age, sang the lyrics without any changes. Yikes!

But we survived. This world is big and my kids are going to have to live in it. I don't want to shelter them from everything. I can't. I don't have the energy. And like I said, I hope they don't get it all. And I'm always available to answer questions and explain stuff to them. Sometimes, I even explain stuff so well that they ask me if we can please stop talking about it now, they're embarrassed. Which is fun, too.  

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Killer Among Us



This morning as I was letting my dog out into his new yard, my neighbor called out to me to tell me we had a problem. We've been talking about beekeeping lately so I thought that's what she was talking about. No, it was worse.

She said that my cute little kitty, Pearl, killed one of her chickens. I've been a bit deflated ever since.

Pearl is one of the greatest cats I've ever met. She's friendly, but not needy. She will sleep next to me, not demanding that she remain on top of me, as I'm a side-sleeper. She will come when called and she's super affectionate. And her nickname is Killer. She's killed mice, a rat, small birds and lizards. The rat was a fluke, as it was so big. She also ignored the rat that lived in my kitchen, so I suspected it was a size thing.

My neighbor has had chickens ever since we moved in five-years-ago. The first chickens all were killed by a neighbor dog. She then had a fence enclosure put around her yard and got several more. I know they are not just a means to an egg, but family pets for her. It made me sad to see her holding her dead chicken in her arms and knowing that either my cat killed it or even best case she didn't, but my neighbor thinks she did.

I asked what I can do and she told me to get a bell on Pearl's neck. I don't know what that would do, as I highly doubt that she snuck up on the chicken. I thought the chickens kicked ass, too. I recall that Pearl was afraid of them at one point. The strangeness of this incident is not lost on me, either. I can't believe how bold my little cat must have been to go up to a chicken larger than herself and kill it. And the look on her face as I got her in the house was full of wild-eyed fierceness. And, she had been seen hanging around before and running off afterwards.

As I came home this afternoon, my neighbor wouldn't roll her window down when we were side-by-side. I don't blame her for being mad at me, but I feel terrible. And, as if that's not all, I feel terrible for wondering if she's going to eat the bird.