Happy New Year/Monday

According to Blogger, I haven't written a blog post since October. Jeez. But you know what? It's 2014. No regrets.

Except for how I was like, "This year I'm totally going to eat nothing but kale and quinoa and not drink and go running!"

But then New Years happened and I was like, "Well, I mean, not NOW because it's New Year's Day and we have to go to this party where I will stand by the spinach and artichoke dip and end up eating half the container just because of proximity."

And then I woke up this morning and was like, "Seriously? I'm still thinking I'm going to do this? Can I just be honest and admit that there are too many leftover Christmas cookies for this to be a thing yet?"

So beginning of the year shit has been rescheduled for Monday because I don't care how fresh a start New Years is, if it's a Wednesday, there's nothing to be done. All my reboots happen Monday morning.

Anyway, I feel like I need to let you know what's been going on with me, not in an attempt to justify my blogglessness, but to just catch you all up. I decided to go back to teaching high school. For some reason, I'm not qualified to teach high school, even though I've taught it before and I'm qualified to teach college. So going back involves getting a second masters which is one reason why I've been dragging my feet about it. But this fall, I just decided to do it, so I applied for the masters program, thinking all this shit would go down next summer and I'd get a teaching job for the fall.

Well, let's just say that as soon as I applied, they were like, "Oh, you have teaching experience. Let's try to get you a job right now!" Then a vacancy opened up and they were like, "Here you go! Go interview for this job." And then the principal was like, "Great! You start right now!" So two weeks before Christmas break, wedged between two snow days, I had my "first" day of school. Oh, and remember how I have to get another masters in order to teach? Yep, that's happening now too.

And there's still the whole two children and two dogs who need stuff, and the mountain of laundry and dishes and dog fur that needs to be constantly beaten back, and then I had strep throat, and then there was fucking CHRISTMAS in the middle of it all where we had house guests who all got the pukes--let's just say that shit has been full fledged nuts around here.

Meanwhile, I no longer work in a cubicle where I get to sneak Netflix and blogs all day long. I work in a high school where from 7:50 to 12:10, I constantly tell teenagers to stop talking and I'm not allowed to leave to use the bathroom. But then there's lunch and have myself a good, dark gold pee, and then the kids come back  and there's only 20 more minutes--and you can do anything for 20 minutes--and then at 1:05 I'm done! In a lot of ways, it's like exercise. I really don't want to do it beforehand. While I'm doing it, I either zone out and shit goes by fast, or I feel every second tick by and it's the worst. But then it's over and it's 1 pm and I'm done for the day! And the rest of the day, I feel so good, like I truly accomplished something. Because I did. Today, I got a spastic, malnourished, feral teenage boy to sit down in a chair for seven minutes and write three sentences. Did I ever accomplish so much working in an office? Nope. Not for the whole year and a half. Sure, I drank filtered water all day and my pees were clear and frequent. But besides my inevitable bladder infection, I truly believe I'm making the world a better place.

Also, SUMMERS!

Breastfeeding: It's the tits!

 Currently, I'm breastfeeding my four month old and plan to do it until he's a year old--the magical time when you're allowed to give your baby regular milk (regular = cheap milk you buy from the store, not the precious liquid gold you express from your sore and sagging boobs). I also breastfed my daughter until she was year. I gotta say that I hate it. I understand why it's good--the antibodies and affordability--and I also understand that not everybody is capable of doing it. Like pregnancy, feelings can  be hurt when certain people (me) go around bitching about how much they hate being pregnant when other people want it so badly and might not ever get it.

Okay, enough about your feelings. Here are mine: I hate breastfeeding. It's like Pregnancy-Lite. Your body still doesn't belong to you. You're on a two hour milk tether, where you either have to go back and find your baby or squeeze your tits in a bathroom. Drinking is only slightly better. Since lactating isn't as noticeable as pregnancy, so you can drink in public without the same level of scrutiny. But when people know all about your situation, the judgment is still there. (Haters: I drink coffee AND beer. Bring it.)

When MH was a baby, I pretty much stayed home with her, adjuncting a few terrible classes at a for-profit college in the evenings. Point being, I breastfed her on demand until she weaned herself a few weeks shy of her first birthday. (I force fed her my boob for the next few weeks, but she cried every time. At the point, she knew all about delicious yogurt so she didn't want to mess around with my milk.)

Currently, I work full time which means that three times a day, I go into this room, sit on the grossest couch in the history of the world (so many milk stains it smells like old cheese), and I hook myself up to a milking machine while I watch episodes of House Hunters on my phone.

(The Mother's Room, aka, "The Barn")

The point is, I think it all sucks (pun! zing!)--nursing, pumping. It's not anything in particular that's terrible. I don't mind nursing him. It doesn't hurt and when your baby is hungry, what the hell are you going to do? I don't mind going upstairs and pumping. It's work-sanctioned fucking around time. I don't mind pulling my boob out in public. Fact is, it doesn't even feel like my boob anymore, it's just Charlie's flesh-bottle. (Weird, I know, but totally true.) But you put this all together, and I just hate it. I can't wait for the day when I can give this kid a sippy cup of grocery store milk and be free!

So I know I titled this post "Breastfeeding: It's the tits!" and it turns out that I really don't like doing it. You know what I do like? Saying something is "the tits." I love this expression so much, I want to use it all the time, but I'm afraid of using it up. So I horde it and hardly use it at all. Maybe my New Year's Resolution will be to make this my new catchphrase. (I always give myself easy as shit resolutions that are easily accomplished, but that's a subject for another post.)

Sleepytime Me

Every day, I have all these good intentions. I'm gonna eat salad and go running. I'm not just going to wear clothes, but like outfits with jewelry and shit. I'm going to brush my teeth. And yet, none of this happens and there is only one person to blame. Not me exactly. Sleepytime Me.

Sleepytime Me is the one who wakes up in the middle of the night and turns off my alarm--which requires typing the password into my phone, selecting the Clock app, and turning off the one alarm that has been selected.  This isn't some accidental fumbling in the dark--Sleepytime Me is totally aware of what she is doing. She thinks, "Ugh, I'm so sleepy. I just want to sleep forever!!!!" I guess it's her way of trying to take over the body we share.

And she doesn't let me waking up stop her. When I'm still groggy, she's still the boss. In her last moments of control (you know, pre-coffee), she packs cheese and pizza for lunch (I'm not talking cheese pizza. Cheese AND pizza, like two separate things.), and dresses me like a deranged toddler. When I finally come to, which is usually when I'm driving to work, I realize that I haven't even brushed my teeth, let alone gone running or made a salad or whatever lofty goal I set for myself the night before.

I mean, seriously, what the hell am I wearing today? I have on gray leggings, an elastic waist skirt that is stained AND wrinkled (how the hell did I manage to wrinkle a skirt made out of sweatshirt?), and clogs. This is all Sleepytime Me's fault.

But taking a picture of myself in the bathroom at work and then almost getting caught doing it by my boss? Yeah, that's on me.

There's nothing worse than a bootleg Mickey

Sorry it's been a week and I haven't been around. In an effort to Keep Things Real, I've been feeling a bit blue recently, so I've been afraid to blog. I don't want to dump my temporary feelings into the internet. (Because lest you forget, this shit is FOREVER.)

But here's something that depresses me to no end that I will not regret sharing.

This is painted on my son's bedroom wall. I know, it's a cartoon. Cartoons are happy! I can't really explain it, but homemade cartoon characters just depress me. It's not that they are slightly off, like how the store brand version of something mimics the name brand packaging. It would be different if this person had just painted generic animals on the wall. But the fact that he tried to do Mickey Mouse--and despite spending so much time doing it (when you look closely, you can still see the pencil grid this poor person used to paint them), it just didn't quite happen--makes me so sad. 

And there are TWO OF THEM. 

Let me set the scene: you walk into this room that's painted this off white that just looks old. One of the windows has broken blinds, the other has cracked frosted glass. And then you've got the bootleg Mickeys. Honestly, this room would be better if the walls were just bare because then at least you could just say nobody tried. But these Mickeys are like getting a 20 cent tip on a $50 bill. It would have been better to just not get anything at all.

Taumpy

MH went to the playground with her daddy last night (sucker!) This is the old school slide at the farmer's market. Last summer, MH fell off the slide ONE TIME and forever after it became known as that place "where I fell off the slide." Not that place where I had countless beautiful experiences of playing with other children, dancing to live music, eating hot delicious kettle corn, petting angora bunnies, etc. Nope. Your kid falls off a slide one time, and everything good immediately gets erased. I guess from a fall like that she could have suffered more extensive brain damage than selective, judgy memory, so maybe I should feel lucky.

Anyway, I got some more playground rant left in me, but this is all on me. Over the summer, MH invented (befriended?) an imaginary person named Taumpy. When we're at the playground, she'll start pushing the empty swing and be like, "I'm pushing Taumpy! She likes to go high!" or whatever. I have to say, this was kind of a break through experience for me as a parent. When MH was around one or so, I had the realization that she was smarter than the dogs. And that's pretty much where she's stayed in my idea of her. But coming up with this imaginary friend makes me realize that she's not just smarter than the dogs, she's totally a person! Like a separate human being who thinks and imagines and feels things that are completely independent of my thinks and imaginings and feels. It's both exciting and terrifying.

Of course, I have to totally ruin it. I have to be such an annoying grown up about it. I ask her about Taumpy CONSTANTLY which just takes all of the spontaneity and whimsy out of the thing. "So where's Taumpy right now?" I ask her. Sometimes she'll throw me a bone and be like, "She's over there, eating grass" or something. But other times, she'll roll her eyes and be like, "Whatever." (Yes. My two year old rolls her eyes and says WHATEVER. Like she's 13 and hates my guts.) And when that happens, the overwhelming realization that my kid is a separate human person with all of her own ideas and feelings crushes me.

Playground Rant

We went to the playground in our new neighborhood yesterday. I was taking pictures while my child was standing up there screaming for help. When she realized that her useless mother was taking her picture instead of rescuing her from danger, she started a general plea for help out to the world. And yes, that's when I took this picture. Isn't it cute? My daughter is yelling for a drunk at the bar down the block to come save her. Better preserve this moment with a picture. Click!

In the past few years, I've put in some time at the playground, and you know what? It's torture. Half of the time is spent me being bored, pushing her on the swing for what feels like hours. The other half is spent with my child yelling at me and sobbing and generally acting like the worst human being because eventually we have to go home. In general, it has gotten to the point where I never want to give her nice things because she acts like such a bitch when those nice things are over. It's like how our neighbors gave us some cupcakes so ONE TIME we had cupcakes after dinner. Now every dinner is bullshit in her eyes because it doesn't involve cupcakes for dessert. And she just doesn't seem to comprehend that I don't have any cupcakes. So in her eyes, I'm refusing to give her cupcakes because if I gave her cupcakes that one time, then I obviously have the power to produce cupcakes at will, so if I'm not giving her cupcakes now, it's because I'm being terrible, and the only solution is to shed real tears and throw herself on the ground. (But you know what? The fact is, I really do have cupcakes at my disposal 24/7. I'm a grown up with a debit card and a car. So she kind of has a point, even though she's still being a bitch about it.)

But the playground thing. I can't even blame MH for it because going to the playground is always my idea. Because I'm an idiot who never learns her lesson. Needless to say, after playing for a good 30 minutes--which required my full undivided attention and APPLAUSE every time she went down the slide--I said it was time to go and she pitched a huge fit that included sobbing, running away from me, and screaming to the sky for help, as if she were pleading with God for salvation from such suffering. And I SWORE, as I angry pushed that stroller with my writhing two year old and sleeping baby (yes, he sleeps soundly during MH's screaming but still wakes up every two hours at night, but this is a whole other blog post) that I would NEVEREVEREVEREVER go to the playground again! Never again!

Yeah right. I'm totally bringing them to the playground again today. Because I'm an idiot.

Running

(I'm planning on taking Des with me when I run because look how thin he used to be and now he is Orson Welles fat.)

Today I was going to start running again. I've been meaning to do this for a while. At first I didn't do it because I was pregnant (the first time). Then I didn't do it because I just had a baby and plus it was winter outside and people in Kentucky don't ever shovel their sidewalks so sidewalks are just made out of jagged pieces of black ice until March. So then I jogged a little bit, but then it got really hot to the point that even at night it was muggy and you couldn't even go swimming in the pool because it was like taking a giant bath with a bunch of strangers and I hate taking baths when it's just me because I always imagine that the bathtub is really filthy. Or I know it is because I live there and know how infrequently I clean. And so it went for the past two or three years.

Anyway, I had all these plans that TODAY was the DAY. I'm not pregnant anymore. It's not summer anymore. There is really no excuse for me not to get up at 5:30 in the morning and go running in the dark. Except that everything about that sounds terrible. But it has to be that early because I hate running when people can see me, and if there are a bunch of youths standing around waiting for the bus judging me while I run, well, just forget about it.

But seriously, I was all ready to go. Like to the point that the night before I found my shoes and put them right there so I could put them on in the morning. Then I went to sleep and dreamed all night about jogging so when the alarm went off, I immediately turned it off and went back to sleep because I had already gone jogging so many times, there was no reason to do it anymore.

So I guess that means there is going to be no running this week because seriously, this is not some idle shit you can start on a Tuesday. This is some Monday, beginning of the week stuff.