cool beans

OMSH hit a bus and lived to sing about it. I liked the song so much, I asked her to write one for me as a public service announcement to that one guy I helped at work yesterday.

She was happy to oblige and even got her mister in on the action. I’m tickled pink. Have a listen: If You Eat Pig Caca, Carry Binaca. Please. Pass it on.

I love search engine hits as much as you love reading about search engine hits. Stick this in your eyeballs:

• lyrics poverty hillbillies mr right now
• emotionally manipulative family
• i bit my tongue really hard what do i do
• mastitis and bald is beautiful
• how should a guy dress if he has a belly
• work smocks
• cool boy skateboards
• yelling beans
• does my son need to practice saxophone e
• foot right

I like to write here every other day at least, but this week has been busy.

Monday
Kids started school. My little guy wanted to run through the sprinkler and I was happy to let him so I could finish reading the book I’d been working on. Kids came home from school just as I was trying to respond to a friend’s email when I was supposed to be getting ready for work. Got to work half a beat late. Did the stressful thing that goes along with my new job and then I went home, packed lunches, washed dishes, started laundry, got very annoyed with video game playing husband.

Tuesday
Kids off to school. Son forgets lunch at home. Head explosion.

Phone call from PTA President: You going to the school meeting tonight, Ms. Vice President?
Me: Um, OOPS. I scheduled another meeting at the same time and I can’t miss that one.
PTA Prez: Okay, then. Do you have the meeting minutes from last meeting?
Me: (Being very quiet. Maybe she will think I vaporized.)
PTA Prez: Remember? You took them?
Me: Ohhhhhhhh, yeah. OOPS.
PTA Prez: (laughing, not mean, totally understanding) Could you put something together really quick?
Me: Okay!

Scramble to find notes, interpret notes, transcribe notes. Print. PRINT. Stupid printer. Print.

Dash to school to drop off forgotten lunch box, run to PTA President to drop off notes, fly Little Guy to Grandma’s, beam myself to work from 1-5.

5:30 volunteer training session ends at 8:15.

Pack lunches, tidy up house, formulate plan to rid house of video game consoles.

Wednesday
Kids to school, Little Guy to Grandma’s, off to work 8-12. Pick up Little Guy, have lunch, go grocery shopping, do grocery unpacking. Fifteen minutes to sit before kids burst through door demanding attention. Grilled cheese, started the washer, quickly showered, blasted off to training session at 6:30 in the pouring rain. In flip flops. Home at 9:30 for dish washing, tidying up, coma.

Today, Tomorrow and Beyond
My body aches today from the constant running around in flip flops. Flip flops are stupid. I work four hours this afternoon and then we have a preschool orientation for parents only in the evening. It seems kind of crazy to be going to a “parents only” orientation for preschool since I have a 13-year old. We are preschool veterans, yo. Tomorrow I work in the afternoon and then we tackle dance supply buying frenzy on Saturday morning. Then I’m napping the rest of the weekend. Just try to stop me.

I finished The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield today. It was good. I recommend.

Since dinner tonight, I have read almost half of Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box. If someone would like to come over and keep me company, that would be fantastic. My refrigerator starts humming and I pee my pants a little. Gah. Scary.

Austin Stories en la wikipedia.

Austin Stories via YouTube, with magic and love:

This show was fun, but it just didn’t make it. Which is ridiculous if you look at the rest of MTV’s programming at that time. I thought it was lost forever until YouTube walked into my life. I am really liking this YouTube guy. I’m like, sooooooo into him. I want you to be my boyfriend, YouTube! I wonder if he’ll kiss me when the night is over. I need to find a mint!

Today was hectic. I woke up half an hour later than I wanted and just made it to work at 8a.m. After work, I had to run to three different shops looking for things to include in my Color Me Happy Swaparooni package that had to be postmarked today - and wasn’t mailed before today because I am a slacker!

Frantic, and still needing to run one more place before mailing the box (and also needing a box), I raced home and threw the kids in the car. We went to a shoe store. No one helped us. I couldn’t find anyone who would make eye contact so we left and drove to the other side of town. Daughter selected the pair of shoes I preferred. She understands me, people. Son sulked and argued and wore me down. I wanted him to get regular sneakers. But, NOOOooooooooooooooOOO. This place has a skate shop and skater shoes. So now we are the proud owners of these. (I think. I’m not running downstairs to see if those are the actual shoes, Internet. They’re brown like that, though. And actually they’re pretty cool, but don’t tell my son that. Also? He’s got grown-up sized feet. He’s going to be forty feet tall. (More parentheses - there is a guitar shop next door to this shoe store and though I caved and bought the shoes, we didn’t bring home the guitar that looks like the one in Guitar Hero.) Anyway. Enough of (these), huh?)

Then we raced to Walmart while the four-year old screamed that he wanted to play Naruto on the Gameboy but the 13-year old wouldn’t let him because it might “erase his game.” I’ll show you who’ll erase your game, cat.

Rrrrrrrraced home after Walmart (it’s four o’clock! Gah! Run!) and frantically put together swap package in the box from my son’s shoes. Screamed at family, fought with roll of packing tape, had to scrounge for second paper bag because the one I had and knew I had was not big enough. His feet are big. Crap. Wrote address on package like a 2nd Grader.

In the meantime, I’d asked my daughter to put away all the shoes that were “behind the couch” by the front door. When I was ready to bolt out the door, my shoes (THEY WERE NOT BEHIND THE COUCH, DEAR) weren’t there. Ran down hall, shoved feet into shoes in dark bedroom, waited two more precious minutes while husband carefully, tenderly, painstakingly finished licking two envelopes and applying stamps to said envelopes. Hurry up! Daughter’s teacher will be here in half an hour for our home visit and I HAVE.TO.GO.TO.THE.POST.OFFICE.

Launched!

Followed an out-of-towner going 20 miles an hour. The.Whole.Way.

Dashed into the post office, thinking, “Hooray! I made it! I will have time to complete one more crucial errand across the street! YAY!”

Whew. Wait. Wha…huh…WHAT is the matter with my right foot? My shoe feels kind of tight. Weird. Huh. Oh, it’s brown. OH. It’s BROWN. With my black pants. Yeah. And, you know, the black shoe on my left foot.

Shit.

Do I pretend it’s on purpose? Hold my head high and pretend I’m making a fashion statement. What? You wear a matching pair of shoes? Pfft, that’s so five minutes ago.

Or, maybe I could stand in line twitching my nose and licking my hands and purring like the crazy cat lady. It would explain the writing on the top of the box, too. Currrrrrrrazy!

Or, anyway. Whatever. I made it back to the house at the same time our daughter’s teacher did. It was perfect. Whew! All done!

Yesterday
Having not slept well at all the night before, yesterday was challenging. An hour before work, I realized I hadn’t done any laundry over the weekend and I had to dig to find something to wear. There were some frantic moments of flinging things around my room with a liberal amount of swearing. Staying awake at work was a hard even though I was STANDING almost the whole time. I kept expecting the bones in my legs to liquefy and leave me in a puddle of exhaustion on the floor. After work, I came home and moaned about being tired and then headed to my 7:30 meeting. I’m going through volunteer training to help with the local domestic violence and sexual assault survivor program. I’ve done a little volunteer work for them already, but the things I could do were limited until this training is complete. Two more sessions of general training and then I think I’m going to volunteer to do the hotline. That’s probably about as much as you’ll ever hear about that. Then I came home, cut up fruit, cleaned out the fridge and gagged over a sink full of dirty dishes. Rank.

Today
The parent organization hosted a breakfast in appreciation of our teachers this morning. I brought fruit. After they were done eating. My husband said he told me to get up and I said, “I’m awake.” and I wasn’t! The teachers are having fruit for lunch.

Tomorrow
I will start to panic about all the back-to-school stuff I have left to do. The teachers at the kids’ school do home visits before the start of the year. It’s a nice thing and last year it was really reassuring since we were new. I’m resolving now not to worry about the state of my house when my daughter’s teacher arrives tomorrow. Besides, the kids can clean up when I’m at work. Hahaha.

We still need to:

• drag out last year’s clothes and try them on
• sort through last year’s school supplies and fill vacancies
• buy 6 pairs of shoes (older two kids need two each)
• practice screaming “WE’RE LEAVING NOW!” from the front door
• get the boy in for a 7th grade physical - I just remembered that right now. Crap!

Last year I started taking medication to treat depression and post traumatic stress disorder. At that time, I started seeing a psychiatrist to help “manage” these medications.

manage ‘ma-nij:
1 :See for five to ten minutes every couple of months so I can tell him, “I’m fine and yeah, your secretary already called in those refills for me. Thanks. Here’s a hundred bucks.”

The last time I went in, we had the following conversation:

Me: Can I stop taking this one pill every day?
Him: Uh, no. That and the other - very good combination. Very good.
Me: So as long as I’m on one, I’m on the other?
Him: Yes. They work really well together.
Me: (Starting to cry out of frustration. I am trapped.) Okay.
Him: Is there anything else?
Me: Yes, actually, I have two or three days every month when I am just really, really angry and emotional. Is there anything I can take just on those days to manage that?
Him: No.
Me: Blinkblinkblinkblink.
Him: Nothing for just a few days. You’d have to take something every day. All month long.

Here’s the thing: I wanted to be more assertive here and say, “Now waaaaaaait just one minute, mister. I know that’s not true!” But communicating with this doctor is difficult. We have a thick accent barrier. I don’t always understand him and my extreme sensitivity to not ever doing or feeling or appearing racist at all even a little bit keeps me from saying, “Could you repeat that?” or “Hey, at $10 a minute could we maybe get an interpreter up in this joint?!” This is stupid, I know. I know.

My therapist had suggested I ask the psychiatrist about this because she has clients who take something for a week - ONE WEEK - every month and get a lot of relief from it. When I reported this conversation to her, she suggested I see another doctor. Not switch doctors, but go to my ob/gyn and ask this same question. But that means I have to find one of those because the one I used to see is retiring (and scary) and I’m afraid of the other one (also scary) and know nothing about the new guy really (which is its own kind of scary.)

I talked to the chiropractor about it and he gave me a little kit I’m supposed to drool into at specific intervals during the day. Then I overnight the saliva bombs to this lab with a check for $150 and they tell me my hormones are messed up. Then the chiro looks at the results and gives me stuff to help balance them out. But I have to do this on a Sunday or Monday and can’t have coffee and garlic and a whole list of other things and really? A day without coffee? I need it to be a day I don’t have to do anything at all because my head? It will be sawing itself in half. I think next Sunday will work.

In between when I’m not experiencing PMS breakdown? I don’t think about it. I’m fine! Next month will be FINE! I will take a walk or a long bath and I’ll treat myself to something and rainbows and sunshine and roses will burst from my ears and nose and ass.

That brings us to today. Do you SEE any rainbows and sunshine and roses? OF COURSE YOU DON’T! Because there ISN’T ANY! ANYWHERE! IN THE WHOLE WORLD! I NEED TO BREAK SOMETHING!

This isn’t pretty. I went to church today and listened to my pastor once again poo-poo modern medicine and dismiss depression and anxiety. “Trust in the Lord! You can’t get that in a pill!”

I KNOW I can’t. My psychiatrist won’t prescribe it! Will Jesus call that into the pharmacy, please?

I sat in the front pew this morning and tried really, really hard not to cry and I literally bit my tongue to keep from calling out, “And how does one DO that, exactly? And you just used the word “put” but nothing man can do can fix anything. So PUT! Which is taking action! But I can’t because nothing I DO is worthy because that’s all about ME and glorifies ME. And you just said that’s BAD! We could be having pancakes instead!”

Do you get this way each month? If so, what do you do to get relief? Do you break things? Do you have something I could break?

My nine-year old daughter is reading Judy Blume. My 13-year old son is playing the saxophone and learning to march with the band. I KNOW! Can you feel the power of the awesome?

It’s going to be melt-your-face-off hot here this weekend. We will be staying indoors, thank you.
Except, we might have to get some back-to-school shopping done. Or not. Because that sounds like zero fun. Something died in the fridge and I’m already afraid of the garbage can in the garage that doesn’t get picked up until Wednesday. I might start freezing my garbage. I am 76-years old.

Hey! My job is alright. It could be better. You know, if I could lay around and read and watch live Big Brother 8 feeds for cash. But if it can’t be that, I’ll settle for this.

Lemon pepper pasta is MAGIC. You should have some. But you can’t because you don’t live here. Neener!