…It wasn’t pretty.

There was foul language.  Spelled outloud.  My kid won’t know the words, but he’ll be spelling them.  Or saying one particular word beginning with S and ending with T in German, because somehow that makes it not a bad word.

There were hours of frustration.  Six to be exact. (That’s just the failing icing, not the entire cake.)

In the end, the fondant won.  I threw in the towel.  I was trying to make marshmallow fondant in five colors.  Red, blue, white, gray, and black.  Red and black were the death of me.  I had no gloves to wear, and if you’ve used Wilton Food Coloring Gels before, you can imagine how my hands must look.

I can feel every tendon and muscle connected to my fingers or my right hand.  My fingers and fingernails are rainbow colored.  And when I bent my finger, my knuckle split open (you have to knead it forever).  That was when I gave up on the fondant and decided to stick with buttercream.  I am my own worst critic.  I hate the way the cake looks.  Believe it or not, I feel like I disappointed him.  I know that sounds crazy.  But he had ideas about the cake, and I just knew I could do it.  And then it didn’t work.  So yeah.  That sucked.

Pictures are coming.  I promise.

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Make it stop.  This kid refuses to nap.  He will do anything but nap.  I had him in the bed for over three hours today and he never did just give it up and catch a snooze.  And he needs one so badly.  Right before bed, everything falls apart.  He turns into nightmare child, hitting and kicking and screaming.  Completely out of character.  Most nights I’m able to just take a deep breath and just let him scream (all while feeling like I want to rip my hair out).  Last night he had a meltdown because he couldn’t see the lines on the toilet paper to tear it evenly.  Tonight it was the process of getting undressed that sent him into a screaming wall pounding rage.  I just hate dealing with it because I know it could be avoided I guess.  He hasn’t napped in several days.  I’m now experiencing what it is like to have a kid who falls asleep in 15 minutes though (that’s new to me).  The night before last was a new moon, so he kept me up pretty much all night.  Then would not take a nap the next day.

We’ve been house hunting hard.  Things are all up in the air right now.  It is all exhausting me.  Meanwhile, our current house is falling apart.  The ceiling is leaking, and not far from falling in.  Every time it rains, we have to blockade off the area with Caleb’s  Cranium Fort stuff.  Nice huh?  Then there’s the kitchen sink.  It also leaks.  I took a shower yesterday morning, then got Caleb a bath about an hour later.  Several hours after that, I started a load of laundry.  No harm right?  Yeah, not until I was crawling behind Caleb’s train chasing it with a police car and he called out “River Mommy!  A river!”  I look in front of us and sure enough, there is a river flowing out of the cabinet below the sink halfway across the kitchen already.  I saw the laundry soap residue in the sink.  So I headed to the laundry closet.  It has overflowed the drain and there is another gallon or two of water under the washer.  Super.  Oops, gotta pee.  Haha, not done yet.  Yep, both toilets overflowed and the tub is full of brown water and toilet paper.  AWESOME!!  Did I mention that this already has already happened in the eight short months that we’ve lived here?  Tree roots are growing into the pipe and they stop it completely up every six months.  I was told by the last plumber that he had been here several times for the same problem.  They have yet to just run a new drain line further from the huge tree.  Understand why we’re moving again?  Good.

And I almost forgot.  Conveniently, our dog slipped his collar over his head and took off at some point last night.  The shelter finally picked him up mid afternoon about five miles away.  $100 we didn’t have.  Here ya go.  Can I wash dog bowls or something?  Seriously the last thing we needed right now.  So he’s back home from his grand adventure, complete with a microchip installed (required, so that next time they can just call you to come pay your fines and get your dog back).

Anyway, I’m off to clean up the mayhem that has taken place during the last two days of plumbing nightmare.  Like I said, sleep is for the weak, no matter how exhausted you are, there’s always more to do.  Ahhhhh!  *runs away screaming waving arms in the air*

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I got an email from a friend today in which she said…

“Mind you, my house is still a wreck, piles of laundry, tree needles everywhere still from the fall [yes the Christmas tree fell over in the middle of the night], I haven’t mopped in two weeks, no sheets on the bed, the bathroom is a science experiment, and the dog smells like a gym sock.  I just need ONE MORE DAY!”

I think everyone is probably feeling a bit like that right now.  I know I am.  I’m several weeks behind in reading my usual blogs.  I can barely keep up with posting on my own.  Piles of laundry?  Can I get an Amen!  I’m putting the fact that we’re probably moving soon so far from my mind I almost forget about it.  I have partially vacuumed the house twice this week, and by the time I find the vacuum cleaner to finish, enough has been tracked in that I may as well start over anyhow.  BUT, my tree is still standing, so I am thankful for that!  The tree falling over was about the only thing that didn’t go wrong last Friday though.  I just haven’t had time to sit down and write about it.  So pull up a chair.

Last Friday.  Yes last Friday.  It was actually the 12th, but it may as well have been the Friday the 13th.  As you may remember from the last time I have a few free moments to blog, we went shopping the rain last Thursday.  My mom came down and stayed with my dad (he has an apartment close by for work during the week).  She told me she was heading home Friday and wouldn’t have time to stop, so I took her at her word, and left the mess Thursday night on the assumption that I would have all day Friday to clean it up.

My mom called Friday morning and announced that she was leaving as soon as the dryer was done and would stop by for a little bit.  Yay!  And by Yay! I really mean Ugh!  Caleb and I rushed out to the bank after breakfast so we could get back home in time before my mom arrived.  We waited five minutes for the bank to open.  Ran inside, as we didn’t have any deposit slips, and talked with Scott’s nephew’s wife (got that?) since she works there.  We headed down the street to pay the natural gas bill.  Waited 15 minutes on them to open.  Go inside, get in line with the other people who were waiting.  They don’t take debit cards.  Super.  Go back to the bank, take out 3/4ths of the money I just put in.  As I was pulling out of the bank, I dumped my wallet upside down between the seats.  All my bank cards, change, etc went down in the crevices by the console.  I just started to laugh.  I didn’t know then that it was only the beginning.  We paid the gas bill and ran back home, thinking my mom would be there within five minutes.  An hour and a half later, she arrived.  Even though she was “walking out the door” during my second trip to the bank.  And it is a 30 minute drive to here from my dad’s.

Caleb. was. horrendous.  No butts about it, he was a total Arse.  I wanted to strangle him by the time my mom left.  I felt like it was my first day parenting or something.  And my usually -trying, yet manageable- child had been replaced with the devil himself.  He talked back, slammed toys around, screamed, he was just out of control.  And  my mom was watching disapprovingly.  There’s a lot of back story there that I won’t get into, but it was just humiliating.  When she left, Caleb was in time out for the third time in 30 minutes, and I just sobbed.

I snuffled my way through lunch and came in the living room for something when I was done eating.  I heard a noise behind me, and I turned around just in time to see a coffee mug jump off the desk at the sight of me and the obvious curse looming over my head fall off the desk and break.

Finally, I opened Yahoo and saw the answer to my day.  The moon.  Not only was it a full moon.  It was the biggest full moon since 1993 [read article].  I honestly breathed a sigh of relief.  I felt like there was a reason.  Someone, or some-thing to blame!

I had been hoping to get out of it, because the day had already been so long and trying, but never-the-less, my brother in law and his wife came over Friday night to work on a DVD project I’m doing for them (and should be working on right now).  We spent three hours going through pictures, picking out songs, etc.  I was an hour late getting Caleb to bed.  I was grumpy, I was ready to go to bed myself.  Finally, I wound down about 12:30 after a few laughs during Will and Grace.  But there was one last thing to do.

I wanted to see this moon that had been the thorn in my side all day long.  It was in the 20′s and I didn’t particularly want to go outside.  I went around the house peeking through blinds and standing in chairs with my nose mushed up against the window, but I couldn’t see the damn thing.  I decided, it being such a monumental event (the biggest moon in 15 years), I could stand the cold for a minute to see it.  But my day was not done with me yet.  I purposely didn’t turn on the porch light, as I was already in my pajamas.  I unlocked and opened the door, which makes a fair amount of noise.  At least I thought it did.  I opened the storm door.  Aaaand stepped on the cat.  Turns out that brown cats blend in with brown doormats in the dark.  Especially ones that are sleeping so soundly that they do not hear the door open, and they are laying flat enough for the storm door to pass right over them.  Well, in an effort not to kill the cat, I fell across the porch and slammed my fingers into the railing and almost broke a rubbermaid container, I stumbled into it so hard.  The cat took off like a bat out of hell around the corner of the house.  I looked up at the moon, which by 1:00am when it was directly overhead, really wasn’t that spectacular.  I crossed my arms and sighed as I headed back inside.

Scott asked what all the commotion was.  I said “I stepped on the cat, fell across the porch and about broke three fingers.”

“Well is the cat okay?!” he replied with the utmost concern.

For all of those quietly wondering just that question, yes, the cat is indeed fine and was right back in the same spot five minutes later.  I’m fine too, thanks.

Caleb’s bed is temporarily in our bedroom.  I got in bed and I began to snicker.  Snickering turned into giggling.  Giggling turned into laughing.  I was afraid I’d wake Caleb up.  I had to get up and come back in the living room because I started laughing hysterically.  I had tears streaming down my face by the time I made it up the hall.  Scott looked at me as if I had totally lost my marbles.  But really, I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

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I know this is a busy time of the year.  And I know I ordered a lot of crap online.  But if anyone should be complaining, it is the UPS woman (they have those?  They do here).  Not you.  I think you have brought about three packages.  The UPS lady has you beat.  By a lot.  She smiled and was quite polite when she was still scrambling to make her deliveries at EIGHT THIRTY at night!  But dear mister postman, why, why, WHY do you refuse to knock on the door?  I mean I may have appreciated that you didn’t knock yesterday, as I was standing in the hallway in a towel playing ball with the kid.  But you could still knock without peering through the glass.   But really, I need to know why you felt the need to leave my Borders.com order sitting in the rain rather than just knock on the blasted door.  You’ve been rude since the first day we moved here.  You barely acknowlege people when you are spoke to, but damn, the box would have fit inside the storm door, or you could have just….gasp…KNOCKED.  You don’t even have to stay and wait on me if I’m that scary.  Just let me know so I can get my package out of the pouring down rain.  Thanks.

Sincerely,
Your irritated customer on your route who doesn’t want to file a formal complaint because then they’ll make you call me on the phone and address the issue.  God knows I don’t want you to have to speak to me.  Plus it’s the holidays.  I don’t want to get you in trouble.  Scrooge.  Bah Humbug!  (I know about the complaint thing because I called when we were living in our previous house.  The super nice lady bent an envelope from Shutterfly to wedge it in the mailbox.  She was nice about it and apologized, and she always brought all my packages to the door with a smile.)

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When we went allergist last month, she prescribed Claritin for Caleb.  When the prescription was filled, I picked up the syrup.  I asked as I was leaving if it tasted okay.  The pharmacist said it had a fruity smell to it, so it would probably be fine.  Well of course he didn’t mention the liquor type kick it has to it.  Needless to say, it has become a daily battle and I’ve had it spray back at me more times that one.

So last Tuesday (remember that) I called and asked if it could be refilled in a chewable tablet instead.  Raise your hand if you’ve seen the Children’s Claritin over the counter chewables.  I know, I have too.  So they told me they would fax an authorization to the doctor and once approved they would refill it, just call back later in the day.  Well it slipped my mind for a few days, all along I was telling Caleb, just a few more days of this icky liquid, then we’ll get a chewable like your Flintstones.

So fast forward to Saturday, I send Scott to go pick it up.  They still haven’t heard back from the doctor they say.  So I call the doctor and leave an annoyed message that I’m running out, could they please send the pharmacy what they needed.  So I began trying to chase it down yesterday morning.  The pharmacy says they are waiting on the doctor, the doctor says they’ve sent the info to the pharmacy and once a fax goes through, they shred it!  So they are both blaming the other.  Eventually it turns into this whole big fax war, somewhere in the middle, the prescription gets switched from ClariTIN to ClariNEX.

I called the doctor for the second time this morning, and when the receptionist answered and heard the name, she said, “Oh he is one popular kid over here this morning!  Do you know how many faxes we’ve had about this??  Let me let you talk to Amy, she’s handling this mess!” So Amy said now the pharmacy was saying they don’t have a chewable.  I said, I could have sworn I had seen it over the counter, and she agreed, so she went and got some pill bible off the shelf and located it, the chewable, just like we thought.  So she called the pharmacy back and now the pharmacist is calling his wholesaler to see if he can order the chewable!!  What a HEADACHE!  I was hiding in the bathroom to cut down on screaming and yelling background noise.  When I returned to the table and Caleb has stolen the remainder of my lunch in my absence!!!

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Oh, hi.  Sorry didn’t see you there.  I really do know how to count, I’m not practicing.   I’m just trying to keep myself from blowing a gasket.  Again.  I’ve been doing a LOT of counting to myself lately.  Is it something in the water?  See I’m all about the positive “no.”  Saying no in a positive way, or putting a positive spin on it.  When he asks something like “Can we get this car at the store?”  I say something like “Well let’s ask Santa for it for Christmas,” instead of just flat out “No.”  Well it seems I’ve been positively saying no so long that he has forgotten what the hell it means!!  I find myself just blurting out the word loudly more times than not now.

By bedtime the other night, my last nerve had been long since gone.  Probably lost it around lunch that day.  We were sitting on his bed and I was lecturing, for lack of a better word.  “Let’s try to have a better listening day tomorrow.  I need your ears open, when I ask you to do something, let’s get it done quickly on the first try so we can go do something fun……………”  He interrupted my rambling with this smart ass tone and said “Just let me go to sleep now.”  *Eyes bug out of head*  Does he tottle off in the middle of the night while I’m dozing to some little class that teaches him this stuff?!  I wanted to scream!  Sometimes things like that catch you so off gaurd that you cannot even react properly.

Thank GOD he’s cute.  He can sense when I’m at my boiling point and need a break unbelievably bad.  Like right now.  He decided not to nap today.  His little heiny is laying in there with the door shut anyhow.  On strict orders for it to be silent and not to budge from that bed.  He had better not breathe off the side of that bed!  Now I’m left debating whether to take him outside.  On one hand, I want to take him out and get some of that energy out, but I told him he needed to go right to sleep so we could go out when he woke up, and as far as I know, he’s awake.  We shall see when my last glorious twenty minutes have passed.

Lightbulb moment: There is a full moon coming up in three days.  Perhaps it is contributing to his ability to pluck all my nerves by 11am and my inability to hang on to my nerves.

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I’ve spent much of the last week feeling guilty for not writing on top of everything else.  I came down with some ailment yesterday.  Caleb is having a hard day because I know he senses all the stress in me.  We have basically lost our only source of income at the worst possible time of the year, with the holidays around the corner.  And the worst possible time, due to the state of the economy right now.  It isn’t in stone yet, but not far from it.  I honestly kind of think they are trying to make Scott quit.  Which I suppose is the thanks he gets for carrying his boss’s business by himself 2+ years out of the last three.  Cheers.  I’ll drink to that.

I suppose I’m just excusing myself for a couple days trying to get my thoughts in order and get well.  I’m by no means gone, and reachable by email…just need a few days to figure out where Christmas is going to come from….or our rent.

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Edit at bottom

Come over here and tell me again in my good ear.  I lost my hearing on my left side.

Yeah, so I took Caleb in for allergy testing this morning.  Actually, let me back up.  On several past occasions, he has had a reaction to eggs.  Now all three times, they were in totally different forms.  Once was just regular scrambled eggs when he was a little over a year I think.  Immediately came back up along with whatever he ate before it.  Once was French toast, and once was whipped egg whites on top of banana pudding.  Red splotchiness around his mouth and it always came right back up.  So at Caleb’s three (and a half, so I’m a little late) year check up, the pediatrician assumed (without even asking) that I wanted the flu shot that we’ve never gotten before.  Not to stick my nose in the air, but it was September 2008 at his appointment, and it was our first time being there since March 2007 (for his 2yr well checkup).  So for the third year running, I planned on declining the flu shot (as I have with several other vax – way different post for another day).  I just let it go, and listened to the pediatrician as she rambled on about going to see an allergist.  Why not, I thought, then we’d know for sure if it was a reaction or his sensitive gag reflex with different textures. Forgot to add, the flu vaccine has trace amounts of egg in it – I guess the two sounded completely unrelated without that knowledge.

So the pediatrician called me a few hours later -in the super loud children’s museum of course- to let me know that she had so graciously called and made us an appointment.  Gee thanks for letting me check my schedule, asking what time of day…  Whatever.  Luckily, there happened to be an allergist not only in our town, but so close that we could have actually walked faster than we drove.  Literally.

We went in this morning, to get tested for egg allergy.  She asked me a bazillion questions totally unrelated to eggs/food.  She then said, he was going to be just as mad about us doing one verses ten, so maybe we could do a few others while we were there.  She rattled off maybe four things.  So, since four plus one is five…this would naturally lead you to assume five or six things, right?

So in the come with THIRTY THREE little prickly tests.  Milk?  You want to test him for milk?  He drinks two gallons a week.  Seriously, I think Scott helps a little, but I would bet Caleb’s intake accounts for 75%+ of that consumption.  She had a counter reason for every one I suggested marking out.  I got fed up and said lets just get it done.  The nurse asked if I had a problem with them holding him down.  I asked to hold him instead.  Like I said, this is when I lost my hearing on the left side.  I closed my eyes and prayed for them to hurry up so I didn’t cry.  Having my child looking at me with tears streaming, screaming “Stop dat hurwts” is not how I planned on spending my morning.  His back now looks like he got in a fight with a cat because it is impossible to hold a child still when you’re doing something like that.  So several of them scraped across his back.  Blah.

He couldn’t even breathe when they were done, and almost deposited his breakfast on me.  It really helped that the nurse absolutely sucked with children.  She asked me if he had some horrible experience with a doctor in the past.  Um hello, kids don’t like people they don’t know touching them.  I don’t think that is unusual.

I, personally, think it was a lot of drama for not so much information.  Out of the 31 they did, they came up with positive ones on a few of the molds and dusts, and so they say, dog.  If you go huff dust, do you sneeze?  Me too.  She was saying he shouldn’t be playing in the grass because that made him stuffy.  “I’m sure you notice that when you come inside, right?”  Um, that’s another no.  And he would live outside if I let him.  They gave him a prescription for Claritin and some nose spray.   Cause kids love nose spray.  It is still, in my non medical mom intuition opinion, overkill.  Oh and they want me to get a dust cover for his pillow and mattress.

So anyway, it sucked.  Yay.

Edited to add: Ah yes, Andrea reminded me, in being so flustered I forgot to add, no egg allergy showed up.  I believe that he had an allergy that was outgrown (egg is a common food allergy for children that is outgrown by 3-5)

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You’ve been seeing a lot of pictures lately.  And I’ve been taking a lot.  And feeling about a million miles away.  With writer’s block.  Weird.  Sometimes in stressful situations, I can write and it helps.  Other times, I can’t think of anything to say to save my life.  Or at least I can’t put it down ‘on paper.’  So apparently I just take pictures instead.  You ever have a period of time where the days fly by and at the end of each one, you think, what did I actually accomplish today?  The hours are gone, but you feel like you’re in the same place you started that morning.  And you get up and do it again the next day.

My mother inlaw has been having a lot of health problems lately.  Quite frankly, she gave us all quite a scare.  The doctors determined her heart strength to be significantly lower than it should be.  It was one of those things where, she  felt a little worse gradually, then that became normal, then a little more winded, and then that became normal, until suddenly normal was really a struggle.  Thankfully a defibulator/pacemaker seems to have her feeling a little better, other than recovering strength from the ordeal in the past several weeks, which involved several hospital stays.  The rather ironic part is, two days before a catheterization to determine if there was any type of blockage, she was going down the slide with Caleb at the park next to her house!  I’ll do her the favor of sparing the photographic proof of her deciding 3/4ths of the way down that it might not have been such a wise idea, but she did make it to the bottom with a big smile.

Then there’s the job.  You know, that ugly thing that provides ever cent we need to survive?  Well it has been a battle zone recently.  Uncertainty.  Stress.  Disrespect.  Stress.  Did I mention stress?  You probably don’t want to know the grizzly details.  I’ve been doing everything I can think of to conserve money, spend wisely.  Hopefully this will blow over.  Truly a reminder of nothing is guaranteed, even if you moved into a house that was on the high end of your budget on that premises.

Discovering an empty pool.  A face sad enough to almost put 5000 gallons back in there.

“Picking berries” which he says will grow into a beanstalk that will reach the sky

Caleb received a VW bug from his Auntie, so I once again set about the task of transforming it into Herbie.  This one started off red, so I was forced to add a white base coat this time.  I allowed plenty of dry time (a mistake I made last time because the paint smudged almost immediately), and worked over about a two week period.  Adding three coats of white, then each stripe and the I drew on the 53′s with a paint pen (looked like I had the DTs or something, surprisingly my hand was more steady with the paint brush, go figure), and lastly added the sunroof, bumpers and tail lights.  He was thrilled yesterday morning.  Then he dropped Herbie last night at Walmart and a big chip of paint flaked off!  How disappointing.  He was crushed too.  He just got silent and almost started crying.  It was pitiful.  But we assured him that Herbie could be fixed.  I think I’ll try some clear coat spray over him in hopes that it will give the paint some stability after all my hard work.

He started off red.  Now he is Herbie.  The kid is thrilled.

~ Taken Today ~

I see you.  I hear you.  I just do not intend on looking at you.

The difference between kids and adults: we actually mind laying in the sand, whereas kids, not so much.

Raining today.  We played on the screen porch for a few hours.  Pretty chilly, had to break out the long sleeves.  Listening to the rain was relaxing.

I’ve found solace in my photography.  I sat down one night last week.  Made my rounds online.  No new emails, blog entries, not much going on with the mommy board I frequent.  I sat here staring at the screen.  Scott was already asleep.  Don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I looked up the RAW picture files from the one decent snowfall we had last winter.  I spent the next hour tinkering with them in Adobe Lightroom.  For that hour, I forgot about everything going on.  I got lost in the calm, quiet snow of the pictures below.  I remember that day, it was so quiet you could almost hear the snow fall.  The middle picture is still my favorite.  Especially since it used to be my backyard.

We are heading off on an adventure tomorrow.  An adventure brought about by Caleb’s three year well checkup at the pediatrician.  Yes he’s three and a half.  Shutup.  At least I can say it is our first time going since his two year well visit a year and a half ago!!  So that counts for something.  That plus I can use the -we were moving- excuse.  We were looking at houses right around his birthday, and moving at the end of April.  Then the summer skipped on by and here we are.  It is strange though.  Last time we were there, he wasn’t even talking.  And now he’s up to 100,000+ words per day.

After the pediatrician, we are headed to the children’s museum, always a favorite.  I’m packing lunch and snacks to take along to save some of that green stuff.  In fact, my goal is for tomorrow to be completely free.  With the exception of $4/gallon gas of course.  I have selected a cool castle event venue in hopes of getting some neat pictures tomorrow.  Clothes are laid out, lunches are packed, camera is stowed, plus undies, extra clothes, a small trash bag, napkins, a toilet and a maybe kitchen sink in there somewhere.  Feels like you’re going camping for a week when you leave home with kids on a day trip.  I must say, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to spend the day away tomorrow.  Clear my head.  I sure hope the weather is nice.  The house was just dim all day today and it rained today, and I just wanted to go back to bed.  All. day. long.  Tomorrow will be a good day.  If I can just stop my head from calculating how much every 1000 feet costs to drive (I stay home.  A LOT.).

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned the hard way that some poems don’t rhyme and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, and taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what is going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.” – Gilda Radner

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Can someone please explain to me what the government -whoever the hell asked, The Pantry (gas station chain)?- hopes to accomplish by asking people not to get more than 10 gallons of gas???  Was that a conspiracy to get the exact response they desired?  People lined up at the damn pumps driving the price through the roof again?  Instead of the normal amount of people who would have gotten gas this weekend, instead everyone, his brother, cousin and great aunt Sally is lined up with the cars, gas cans and any other container that might hold gas.  People are probably driving their lawn mowers to the station.  I’m gonna start riding a horse just so some of these idiots can step in his crap behind me.

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