I CAN ONLY TAKE SO MUCH

I can't believe it's gotten to this point, but here I am. 

I AM HAVING AN ARGUMENT WITH A TOY. ALOUD. VERY ANGRILY.

Wait, let me preface this by saying two things:

1) We are so lucky to be able to have toys for our children. Many more toys than they would ever realistically need. 

2) I'm sure many (most?) of you have gotten to the point where you want to go all Office Space on one of your kid's toys EVEN IF IT'S ONE OF HIS OR HER FAVORITES because it has pushed you so far over the edge with its level of annoyingness. I know this is not a new phenomenon. I have a few of those toys. 

One day, B. Meowsic Keyboard. One day. 

This is way beyond all that. We have an adorable little pretend vacuum (Aside: Toy companies. Make those tiny vacuums FUNCTIONING VACUUMS. Love, Everyone.) (Second aside: Is that really how you spell vacuum? I've never been able to spell it. Don't you think it needs two Cs in there?) that the girls LOVE. It's very cute. Except for the fact that in between making vacuum noises, it has "funny" little quips. At first I was able to ignore them, but yesterday was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

Vacuum: What a pigsty!

Me: Good one. That one gets me every time. Very funny. My housekeeping skills are subpar. HILARIOUS.

Vacuum: *Cough cough* We must clean up the dust!

Me: Right, it's dusty in here because I never clean. I GET IT. SHUT UP ALREADY.

Vacuum: Whoa! Did a tornado blow through here?

Me: You can go STRAIGHT TO HELL, BUDDY. I TRY MY BEST!! *collapses in a puddle of tears*

Vacuum: *dopey laugh*

It's been a long week, you guys.

Business Trips, Runny Noses, and How to Sleep in a Bed

You guys. YOU GUYS. Jeremy just got home from being out of state for work for three days, and OH MY GOD. How do people DO this? 


It was also just bad timing since I am still sick, and therefore, pretty sluggish and whatnot, and Josie is still hanging on to her runny nose (no other complaints, though, thank goodness!), so we were pretty much stuck in the house the entire time. The ENTIRE TIME. It certainly would have helped break up the days to have fun-tivities and adventures to head out on, but it was just cold enough, combined with her still-runny nose making me nervous about her immuno-compromised state, that I didn't want her to be outside much. If she got really sick again just because I wanted to take her to the park to burn off energy? Come on. Stab me in the heart now and get it over with. PLUS, we couldn't really go anywhere with other kids, because I didn't want to be That Mom who brings a kid covered in snot to play with other kids. It's not a desirable trait in a playmate for your toddler.


So, we stayed in the house for the past three days. Alone. Yikes. You'll notice that I didn't whine about this pre-emptively: Oh, woe is me! My husband is going to be out of town for three days! SOB! Nope. Not on the blog, not on facebook, not on Twitter. I stayed strong. Since I've amassed such a following in all three arenas, it would have just been an invitation for pervs or stalkers or thieves. Fooled ya, buttheads. Now if you try to come do something pervy or stalkery or theivy, my husband isn't out of town anymore! BURN.


I was worried about being all alone because I am pregnant and sick and thought (knew) I would be exhausted after three days of doing it alone, but I think it was the emotional aspect that made it the most draining. There were really only a few things that I *had* to add to my daily to-do list, and it really only extended my work after putting Josie down for the night by about an hour, so you know, do-able (especially if a few things that weren't crucial to our survival got put on the back-burner), but not having him come home and sit down and eat dinner with us, and talk to us, and play with Josie after dinner, and do the bath stuff while I clean the house, and then hang out with me on the couch after the Bean is in bed? Killer. Absolute killer.


Yes, I know that people have lives like this. Some spouses travel on the regular or are deployed or are long-haul truckers, but I SPECIFICALLY forbade Jeremy from having a "being-gone-is-a-regular-part-of-my-job" job long before we were married. He graciously accepted these terms and then told me I couldn't become any crazier than I already was. 


THE JOKE WAS ON HIM, INTERNET. I get a little crazier every day.


Anyway, in my desperate attempt to try to find one tiny little nugget of acceptable-ness in the situation, I did manage to find ONE upside to being the only adult in the house. It in NO way makes up for all the ten million bad things on the list, but man, it is a pretty good thing.


Have you ever slept diagonally across a king-sized bed? Heaven. Best thing ever. Here, let me illustrate this thing that you could likely easily imagine yourself:

Wow. This rendering is shockingly accurate in terms of my delicate willowy build and gentle bump of a stomach. And bald head. I am truly an artist. I am also, of course, reminded of the Attack of the Night Farts artwork. 

Wait, I just clicked over and looked at it. That shit is WAY better than this. I feel very failure-ish now.

I started doing this last time I was pregnant, when I could take naps during the day (ha. HA. HAHAHA. Isn't that hilARIOUS?). When Jeremy happened upon me once, he teased me for weeks. But then a few months later I caught him waking up from a diagonal nap, and he muttered "best thing ever." 


You got that right, dude. 


So, while I don't recommend having a partner who is gone for long stretches of time, for those of you who have to endure the situation, may I suggest the diagonal sleep? It won't give you another adult around the house to help raise your kids or someone to have an adult conversation with, or you know, all the other benefits of having the person you love in the house, but hell, it's something.


Trust me. You'll thank me later.

AND Here We Go Again With the Crazies

My kid is sick. SHIT. 

Okay, okay, we are actually SO VERY lucky that Josephine is healthy in general these days. In fact, I seriously cannot remember the last time she was sick. I can't even remember the last time she had a runny nose. I couldn't even find her saline nose spray right away because it had been so long since we'd used it.

I thought a new outfit might help with the sickies:

Eh. Still not feeling so great, mom. But she looks SO CUTE, even with the snotty nose.

But then Yo Gabba Gabba! came on. This led to dancing around the house:

And showing off her belly button (she's pretty big on showing kids her belly button these days):

Of course, that tired her out and she spent the next half hour with her head on my lap, but if she can muster the energy for some dancy-dance, I think we'll make it.

And, this cold (virus?) is a little easier than the last because she can blow her nose. Of course, it would be nice if she ONLY did it when I was holding a tissue up to her nose and not just at any given moment. :)

Unfortunately, every little cold also takes me back to the time when Josephine was sick and no one knew why. Yes, we obviously have it MUCH better than many people; it "only" took two months to discover the problem, and then we were able to fix it. And although those two months were excruciating and heart-breaking, they really were only two months. She got better, and now she is healthy and happy. 

I know there are millions of kids who are not so lucky, and I would never put our issues on par with theirs, but there are also millions of kids who don't have to go through two months of agony because her doctors couldn't discover a simple problem, and I have such tremendous guilt over all of it. Why didn't I take her to different doctors? Why didn't I discover the problem myself? Why did I let her go through all of that and let her get the point that she had to be hospitalized and ... oh my god, the hospital. I try really hard not to remember the details of the visit. Tubes, an IV that took an hour of poking to start, starving her for 24 hours to "restart" her stomach lining ...

Again, I know many children go through much worse, but considering how simple the solution was to our problem, I should have been able to discover it much sooner and save her from all those terrors. 

Many people have given me excellent advice on what I need to do to forgive myself and move on from all of that, but I really feel like it was my fault that the first few months of her life were filled with pain. That's something I don't see myself getting over anytime soon, and any little sniffle takes me right back there. 

Aside from all of that damage, I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but every little sickness sends me to that place -- that place where I realize there are oh-so-many things I cannot control and there are so so many things that are going to hurt my little girl, and there is nothing I can do about many (most) of those things.

For (a very weird) example, Jeremy and I are REALLY over renting, and we have been looking at houses and looking at neighborhoods and researching schools and all of that jazz. It is S-L-O-W, to say the least. Yesterday, while driving home from doing errands, Josephine and I drove past one of the houses we looked at recently, and since it is in one of the neighborhoods we don't know much about yet, I couldn't help but play one of the (many, ridiculous, constant) possible future scenarios in my head: We live in that house, and Josephine is in school, and tells a classmate where she lives, and that brat says something about her living on the wrong side of town.

Tangent: In school we once had to do this whole big project about our hometown and get in groups and make up songs and blah blah blah, and one group got up and sang their song, and one of the lines was "Although everything north of the tracks goes downhill." Guess who lived north of the train tracks? Yeah. Me. And seriously, this town was like10 blocks by 4 blocks, and only two of the blocks were north of the tracks, and there was actually NO "bad" part of town. To be fair, there was some less-than-lovely homes North of the track and WEST of main street, but EAST of main street (MY neighborhood) was LOVELY, and even the not-so-lovely homes were PRETTY nice. Instead of being like, "Whatever, they're fools," I was SO EMBARRASSED. I was crushed beyond belief, and was CERTAIN that all four of those people were staring right at me when they sang the song, and were talking about me when they wrote it. 

It was a stupid thing to get upset about, but that didn't stop me from feeling upset. And I imagined some brat kid saying something like to Josephine, and my stomach started churning.

If I stopped and thought about it, I could think of plenty of appropriate responses to the situation, but my first instinct was cuddle Josephine until she falls into a blissful slumber and then hunt down that child and punch him in the face. INappropriate. But this is how my mind works. And I'm sure I'm not alone in that either. I have a feeling there are plenty of other moms who are normally non-violent and logical who also imagine punching kids. PLEASE tell me there are other people who feel like this.

AND ... this all came from Josephine being a little sick. I weep for my future if this is how crazy I have become since becoming a mother.

If you have any sort of compassion, I would adore a comment telling me you can commiserate. :)

Crazy Lady, Fire, and My New Role as Sole Zombie-Killer

I have a neighborhood report, and this time it is NOT EVEN a result of me spying from my front porch.  I mean, I did learn all of this information by looking out my bedroom window, but I think by the time you have reached the end of the story you will agree that it does NOT, in fact, constitute spying.


Anyway, hold on to your hats, biotches, because this story is ZANY and TOTALLY REAL AND FACTUAL.  No embellishments or additions.


I am sleeping, snug as a bug in a rug as is possible for a pregnant lady, when a fire engine rouses me.  And it is not far away, like usual, it is CLOSE, and I turn and look out the window, and it is ON MY STREET.  And then it is STOPPING DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE!! You can imagine the panic.  I shouted Jeremy's name (about an inch from his ear -- it was effective) and he immediately ran downstairs.  My first thought was "Is MY house on fire and I'm not aware of it yet?" but we quickly learned that the firemen were running toward the house across the street, not ours.  That house is home to Crazy Lady.


Crazy Lady.  How can I summarize her quickly and effectively?  She is 92, in perfect health, possesses all of her faculties, but ... is not so nice.  Apparently the other neighbors used to take turns visiting her and bringing her food and checking on her, which I find VERY KIND and unusual, especially in a city this large.  However, Crazy Lady only likes one of our neighbors, and hates all the others for various reasons, such as the colors of the clothing they wear and the cadence of their voices.  


At first she starting pretending that she had been struck deaf and mute when those neighbors knocked on her door.  BTW, I think this is super-clever, and I may utilize it myself one day.  Her acting was very realistic because she would take out her teeth and gape open-mouthed and wide-eyed at people.  If it had been me, I probably would have smiled, waved, left cookies and the porch and just run away.  My nice neighbors were persistent.  They waited, and she would finally give in and let them in the house.  Apparently she would then excuse herself and go to a back room and call 911.  When the cops arrived she would ask the neighbor with cookies to be removed from her house.  Then she would walk across the street and brag to the one neighbor she likes about how she got the "harlot with the red shirt" removed from her home.


So, apparently Crazy Lady's house is on fire, because now there are FOUR fire engines.  These are followed by two police cruisers, and finally an ambulance.  There seems to be some confusion and running back and forth from the house to the scanner to talk to dispatch.  I finally hear over dispatch (because it is louder than the firefighters' voices), "Well, if she is just standing there starting at you through the front door and won't let you in, threaten to use the ax."


This is when I realized that Crazy Lady was likely totally safe and this was not going to be a scary and sad night.  Lots of talking and head shaking later, I hear the story (like all of my other neighbors, who are of course standing in the street at four in the morning to be in the front row, and not peeking out of their bedroom window like me) -- Crazy Lady has awoken to discover that her power is out.  So she pushed the fire, ambulance, AND police buttons on her lifeline alert system.  When she finally let them in, she simply stated, "My power is out, and that is unacceptable."  


Sure, she alerted us to the power outage, which we would not have known about and would have slept in and been late for for.  Sure, she is a ballsy bitch and uses the term "unacceptable," much like yours truly.  But I was DISGUSTED to see my street full of emergency workers who came out to save a life, and could be needed elsewhere to REALLY save lives, all because Crazy Lady was mad that her power had been out for a few minutes (the power was back on in another 10, by the way).  I will save the rest of this rant, because I am sure you are all filling in your own version yourselves.  I don't care how old she is -- I hope she gets a big, fat bill from the city.


What I did not expect from this incident, however, was what I learned about my husband.  While I was lying there, adrenaline still rushing, heart still racing, and mind full of horrible thoughts, I turned over to find Jeremy DEAD ASLEEP.  Less than five minutes after four fire trucks pulled up in front of our house in the middle of the night.  Seriously?


I shook him awake to tell him, "This is startling evidence that you have no heart."


Jeremy:  Did you just wake me up to tell me I have no heart?  At four in the morning?


Veronica:  Yes.  I wanted you to sit with this realization, much like I have been forced to.


Jeremy:  How do you figure I have no heart?


Veronica:  If you had a functioning heart, it would be racing.  It would be pumping adrenaline throughout your body, and you would be unable to nod off moments after such a shock.  


Jeremy:  Well, it wasn't a real fire.


Veronica:  Your body should not know that yet.  You should still be in fight or flight, not REM.


Jeremy:  Can I go back to sleep now?


Veronica:  You know, I don't fear for you Jeremy.  I fear for me.  One day you will have to save me and the baby from a monster, and in the middle of defending us, you will just collapse and take a little cat nap!  


Jeremy:  *SNORE*


Crazy Lady might be crazy, and she wasted the taxpayers' money, and I will never bake her any cookies, but she did make me realize *I* will have to be the adult in charge of emergency plans in case of zombie invasion, bear attack, or shark bite.  Duly noted.