sueeeus

It’s been one of those days.  Rain. Wind.  Dreary gray sky.  Too much work and not enough time.  A snit with the spouse, in which he hung up the telephone.  I mean, how rude.  RUDE!  I would never do such a thing.  Granted, I made a poor choice of words, but was hung up on in the midst of trying to repair that choice of words.  So.  How immature and annoying.  Sometimes there’s no getting through a snit, other than to wait and let everything settle.  I hate not having resolution though.  Loose ends bug me.  He probably thinks I should apologize, but I’m not planning on it, even though it would be a generous and kind thing for me to do.

Consequently, my will to overcompensate with food has superseded the power of the pill (that mood regulating wonder), and I am quite overly sated now after a breakfast, lunch, and afternoon bowl of bean soup.  There’s just enough left for one more serving this evening, if I so choose.  I don’t even want to think of what my blood sugar might be.  I’m sure it’s skyrocketed up, up and away.

On a positive note, I’ve discovered the wonders of pressure cooking.  I made a fabulous bean soup in an hour.  Not an overnight simmer.  Well, I did presoak the beans, but I’m used to the crock pot or an all day stove top simmer.  But with pressure?  One hour tops!   I made a pot roast in under an hour this week also.  The meat wasn’t as tender as I’d have liked, but it was a low budget cut, previously frozen, and I didn’t allow it to thaw properly on its own.  If I try again, I might use fresh meat of a better grade.  It won’t be for a while though.  I’m all beefed out.

Work has drained me.  Sometimes when there’s a mammoth task that goes on and on and on,  it gets tedious and exhausting.  I would have liked to have had some time for blogging this week, but alas, it wasn’t to be.  In fact, much as I love to visit blogs page by page, I subscribed to bloglines so that I can see everyone’s recent posts at a glance, without visiting each individual blog.  It’s such a time saver, albeit much less personal.

I’m so looking forward to the weekend, in which I plan to visit my sister and see her scrumptious little boy, now 3 months old.  Hopefully the marital strife will have blown over by then.

Don’t answer a fool according to his foolishness, or you’ll be like him yourself.

That would be Proverbs 26:4 — just the sort of thing I have to say when idiots indulge in road rage.

And Mr. Gadget’s rebuttal would be something on the order of Proverbs 26:5…

Answer a fool according to his foolishness, or he’ll become wise in his own eyes.

Is it any coincidence that this morning we awake to find the truck vandalized, with both windows broken and strewn across the driveway in thousands of bits of blue-green glass? Now, he would say no. I, however, am not fully convinced.

Perhaps there is no relationship between the two, but I stand by my conviction that Mr. Gadget should by no means attempt to “teach them a lesson or they’ll never learn.” Not unless he wants to pursue a career in road-patrol in which his capacity is official and warranted. And especially not when his wife and child are in the vehicle. Especially NOT.

Hello? This is not Small Town America, in which people know each other and lessons might actually be effective. No, this is Suburbia, in which nobody knows anybody, and crazies mingle with the masses. People carry guns, drive by and shoot each other. The odds of encountering a crazy are amplified if one chooses to provoke.

If it weren’t for the Zoloft, I think I would have given him the tizzy of tizzy fits over that selfish display of immaturity. As is, I gave him the standard sharp and curt lecture, and didn’t speak to him for the rest of the evening. However, with the dawning of a new day, and a freshly vandalized vehicle, I find it hard to imagine that these incidents are unrelated.

And it totally sucks that someone would do this to us. At least nothing was stolen. Due to the abundance of gadgetry, it took the entire day for Mr. Gadget to realize that something had, indeed, been stolen. His GPS. And why didn’t the alarm go off? What good is it if it doesn’t detect breaking glass? So now I’m worried that whoever it was will be back. I’m not one bit happy. Mr. Gadget has run off to the car gadget store, to have an updated alarm installed.

Maybe it is unrelated, but it doesn’t matter. There is no call for a stupid display of road rage. None. It serves no good whatsoever. Nope. I’m not one bit happy.

Although it was nice to have nearly two weeks off from work (even though some of that time was not nice at all), it is with a sigh of relief that I return to the office and my mundane life.  The skies are cloudy and grey, the decorations are put away.  No more garland, no twinkling lights, no ribbons and bows.  All is back to normal, and life in the suburbs goes on.  There is no more holiday chaos and suppressed or unsuppressed anxiety over expectations for idyllic picture book lives where all is merry and of good cheer.

A little someone continues to seek his mother around 2:30 every morning, and again around 6:00 a.m.  Five hours of continuous sleep is a prize!  Note to self:  Don’t allow the little one beverages after 6:00 p.m.  (Right.  Well then.  We’ll see about that.) 

We bathe, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening, we dress, we play, we make messes, we tidy up, we wash clothes, we put them away, we prepare meals, we dine, we wash dishes, we buy groceries, we drive from here to there and back again.  We go to work or we go to daycare.  We spend our days and live a mostly comfortable routine, day in and day out.  It is very soothing, and I am grateful for this life we live.  It’s a good life.

I’m not big on formal resolutions (right, who am I kidding, what with all my various lists and journals), but I hope to make positive strides towards better health and harmonioius living.  Of course I’m hoping for a baby as well, but I’m a bit too timid to put too much hope there at this point.  I can only take so much heartbreak at a time.

All said, I am relieved to be through with 2006.  Hello 2007.  I’m ready for you.

But spilt wine   Now that’s a different matter entirely.

Last night I stopped for some milk and got sidetracked by that most enticing smell of freshly baked French bread.  It was still warm from the oven, so I couldn’t resist.  Once home, I lamented the absence of wine in the house.  How I love a glass of wine with fresh French bread!  After a little foraging, Fortuna smiled upon me, and a bottle emerged from the deepest darkest depths of the pantry.  I was delighted.  Delighted!  But what happened to my wine glasses   Mr. Gadget insists that I donated them in my last kitchen purge.  Honestly, I have no recollection of such a deed.  Especially considering how much I love a glass of red wine in a giant round goblet.  Aesthetics.  So important.  Helpful as he is, he retrieved a heavy crystal goblet from the far reaches of the cupboard.  I’ve kept them for sentimentality’s sake.  They were, after all, my first goblets, purchased twenty years ago in my fresh from poverty transformation to a young urban professional. 

Ah, how pleasant that first glass.  As the second.  Deciding to show some restraint, I tried to replace the cork in the bottle, to save it for a rainy day (i.e., tomorrow).  After a short struggle, the bottle claimed victory, leaping from my grasp and clattering to the counter with a loud clang, the precious nectar of the vine splaying this way and that.  Glug, glug, glug, how quickly the crimson pool spread.

I burst into tears and sobbed like a child.

It wasn’t so much the spilt wine, as it was the accumulation of recent bumbles.  Earlier that evening I had dropped a stack of cooling racks, cookie sheets, and a chartreuse ceramic lasagne dish, the latter which shattered into a thousand pieces.  Disappointed   Yes.  Distraught   No. 

Recently as well, I lost my grasp on a stack of dishes at the edge of the sink, and dropped them all.  They tumbled into the sink with a loud crash.  Surprisingly, nothing broke. 

Earlier in the day, I had some vertigo.  Add to that some tingling in the hands and shortness of breath.  Google is most unceremonious and insensitive as it serves frightening phrases such as brain tumor and bipolar disorder, both which are very real experiences of people I love, neither of which apply to me.  (It’s not denial.  It’s anxiety.  Anxiety is my thorn in the flesh.)

Germane or not, the din and clash of the wine bottle tumbling to its near demise proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.  The tears were cathartic.  I needed the release.

It has been an odd day. I forgot to take my loratadine last night, and spent the morning miserable with a gunked up throat. Dust mite allergy. Bah. I fumbled about in my desk and found some chlor-trimeton, which I know is strong for me, but I took it anyway. I then spent the day in a loopy fog, and felt short of breath all day. I came home a couple of hours early, with the intention of sleeping it off, but as usual, found other things to distract me. The effects of that dose didn’t wear off until 9 p.m., a full twelve hours after ingestion. Bah! The dizziness, anxiety, and shortness of breath were unsettling, and I don’t plan to take that stuff again. Ever.

I heard a knock at the front door. Odd. We never have visitors, and it’s late. A man holding a clipboard tried to explain to me that he was representing a charitable organization that is lobbying for health care improvements for low income people. Fine. I asked questions and he had lots of papers that he rifled through and spoke about, but they didn’t make much sense to me, so I asked more questions and tried to read the things he was pointing out. I asked if the organization was a 501(3)c, and he said yes, so I told him that I give at the office and I can look into designating it through my work contributions plan. He said he was collecting signatures and money, and I said I wouldn’t mind signing the petition, but I wasn’t prepared to give him any money. I barely finished the sentence and he whipped around and left, without even saying adieu. So. I wonder if he was working an elaborate scam, or if he was just tired, cold, and not in the mood to try to beg for donations from a penny pinching engineer. He left me a flyer that looks reasonably legit. The whole time he was standing there, I was trying to keep my son from going outside, and I had horrible visions of the stranger casing my home or nabbing my child. My gut feel was distrust and suspicion. And I am torn between feeling guilty and cheap, and feeling indignant for being treated rudely. Bah. To be able to discern honesty would be a very good thing.

Meanwhile, in other unrelated, or somewhat related news (related only because these things happened today), I wasted the entire evening fiddling with my blog. I found a swanky new theme and tested it on my hard drive, then implemented it on the server. Wouldn’t you know, the server implementation threw an error, and I am at a loss as to how to fix it. And I can’t put any further effort into it, because I am already racked with guilt over the time I’ve wasted. Racked Wracked Bah!

BAH I say.

I love…

• that the rains have finally arrived
• that Mr. Gadget installed fan timers in the bathrooms, without me even asking
• that Mr. Snazzy Pants has forgotten about his pacifier (and it’s a good thing, as I have absolutely no idea where the last surviving ‘binkie’ is)
• that today is Friday and there is a remote possibility that I can get a full night’s sleep tonight
• that TV season is back in swing (Prison Break on Monday, House on Tuesday, Bones on Wednesday, Grey’s Anatomy and Without a Trace on the horizon)
• that my new popcorn popper does a bang up job and meets with my (very hard to come by) approval

I do not love…

• that my blog goes belly up on such a regular basis
• that all my web sites go belly up so frequently
• that I have web sites to support
• that the culprit is probably my web host service
• that I can’t determine, for certain, precisely what is the cause of such bad behavior
• that I made a fabulous family web site for the in-law side of my family, and thus far, almost nobody uses it
• that I upgraded my fabulous family web site with super-fabulous features like a categorized photo gallery and personal control over posts, uploads, and comments, and, thus far, I’ve heard nothing but complaints from the peanut gallery regarding how slow it is and how difficult it is to use, and how it basically sucks
• that, thus far, only one person (other than myself) has even tried to use the fabulous new site, that person being a certain gadget enamored individual, recently referred to as the peanut gallery
• that I have lost the art of punctuation (which some people, more than others, and myself included, find distressing)
• that Mr. Gadget has the wi-fi capable laptop tucked away in his work van (and why   Why   “Because it’s mine,” he says, “and why can’t I keep it where I want it ” To which I ask, “what possible use is it, out there ”  To which, the non-answer is, “Because it’s mine, and why can’t I keep it where I want it “
• that almost all conversations with the peanut gallery are similarly productive
• that I can think of far more things for this part of the list, than for the glass half full list

Today we went fishing. What a day! It’s a glorious feeling, to be out on the ocean. There’s just something about it. Big water terrifies me, but it also soothes me. It’s one of those incongruous things. This was my first time fishing for king salmon. I fished for pinks or humpies (I don’t know what’s what), the last time (which was also my first time), and was quite successful. Apparently, there’s a completely different art to king fishing, and they weren’t interested in my allure.

Mr. Gadget did quite well, and landed an enormous fish that will likely grow larger yet, as the years go by and the tale is spun. Mr. Munchkin is a remarkably good sailor boy. He did so well. He wasn’t interested in the fish or the seaweed, but he loved pointing out the planes when they’d fly by.

The biggest fish was bigger than my son! It was a wild one too. Not a hatchery fish. (One learns these things when one has fish friends like ours.)  We’ll be getting our omega 3s this week.

Let’s try that again, shall we

• 5:15 – 5:35 a.m. wake up (4 mins)
• 5:19 – 5:39 a.m. prepare for work
• necessary hygiene
• bathe (20 mins)
• brush teeth (3 mins)
• get dressed (5 mins)
• apply warpaint (5 mins)
• pack lunch bag (5 mins)
• 5:57 a.m. prepare for daycare
• dress the munchkin (5 mins)
• pack diaper bag (5 mins)
• snuggles and cuddles (5-10 mins)
• 6:12 – 6:17 a.m. make the bed (ha ha, as if that will happen) (3 mins) 
• 6:15 -6:20 a.m. drive to work (35-40 mins)
• 7:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. work (8.5 hrs)
• 3:30 – 4:15 p.m. drive to daycare (45-50 mins)
• 4:15 – 4:25 p.m. daycare pickup (10 mins)
• 4:25 – 4:35 p.m. drive home (10-15 mins)
• 4:35 – 5:05/5:35 p.m. prepare dinner (30-60 mins)
• 5:05/5:35 – 5:35/6:05 p.m. feed the munchkin (30 mins)
• 5:35/6:05 – 5:50/6:20 p.m. feed myself (15 mins)
• 5:50/6:20 – 6:10/6:40 p.m. clean the kitchen (20 mins)
• 6:10/6:40 – 7:05 p.m. exercise (25-55 mins)
• 7:05 p.m. miscellaneous household chores (30 mins)
• 7:35 p.m. bathe the boy (20 mins)
• 7:55 p.m. change into jammies (5 mins)
• 8:00 p.m. put him to bed (15 mins)
• 8:15 – 8:20/9:00 p.m. get him to sleep (5-45 mins)
• 8:20/9:00 – 9:00/9:40 p.m. marriage maintenance (40 mins)
• 9:00/9:40 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. me time (20-60 mins)
• 10:00 p.m. prepare myself for bed (5 mins)
• 10:05 p.m. – 5:15/5:35 a.m. sleep

I don’t know why I was complaining.  According to this schedule, there is not only room in my life for exercise, housecleaning, and marriage maintenance, but there is me time as well.  Except, I just realized, that apart from the 5-10 minutes of morning snuggles and cuddles, I am completely ignoring my child.  This will never do.

This is more what honesty looks like.

• 2:30 a.m. wake up for diaper change, put toddler back to bed (10 mins)
• 2:40 a.m. back to sleep
• 5:00 a.m. wake up for another diaper change and hungry boy, give in and feed him something (20 mins)
• 5:20 a.m back to sleep
• 6:30 a.m. wake up exhausted, realize we’re late again, wonder to self, “what’s the point “, try to get up, fail, go back to sleep, drag self out of bed, finally, after a ten minute struggle
• 6:40 a.m. prepare for daycare
• dress the munchkin (5 mins)
• pack diaper bag (5 mins)
• snuggles and cuddles (5-10 mins)
• 7:00 a.m. prepare for work
• necessary hygiene
• bathe (20 mins)
• brush teeth (3 mins)
• get dressed (5 mins)
• apply warpaint (5 mins)
• pack lunch bag (5 mins)
• 6:12 – 6:17 a.m. make the bed (ha ha, as if that will happen) (3 mins) 
• 7:20 – 8:00 a.m. drive to work (35-40 mins)
• 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. work (8.5 hrs)
• 4:30 – 5:15 p.m. drive to daycare (45-50 mins)
• 5:15 – 5:25 p.m. daycare pickup (10 mins)
• 5:25 – 5:35 p.m. drive home (10-15 mins)
• 5:35 – 6:05/6:35 p.m. prepare dinner (30-60 mins)
• 6:05/6:35 – 6:35/7:05 p.m. feed the munchkin (30 mins)
• 6:35/7:05 – 6:50/7:20 p.m. feed myself (15 mins)
• 5:50/6:20 – 6:10/6:40 p.m. clean the kitchen (20 mins)
• 6:10/6:40 – 7:05 p.m. exercise (25-55 mins)
• 7:05 p.m. miscellaneous household chores (30 mins)
• 7:35 p.m. bathe the boy (20 mins)
• 6:50/7:20 – 7:55 p.m. play with beloved child, pay bills, misc. household chores, delete spam, waste time
• 7:55 p.m. change into jammies (5 mins)
• 8:00 p.m. put him to bed (15 mins)
• 8:15 – 8:20/9:00 p.m. get him to sleep (5-45 mins)
• 8:20 – 9:00 p.m. delete spam, blog
• 9:00 – 10:00 p.m. marriage maintenance (i.e., watch tv together)
• 10:00 p.m. prepare myself for bed but get distracted by an assortment of distractions, including but not limited to: blogs, tv, arguments, chores, daydreams, internet research, projects, and so on, and so forth.
• 11:00 p.m. – 2:30 a.m. sleep

And… somewhere in there I manage to shop for groceries, fuel the car, do some banking, and so on and so forth. 

It’s been exhausting, just trying to sort out where my day goes!  However, I think that I shan’t berate myself quite so much for not making more time for exercise.   

It’s almost unthinkable.  I am home.  Alone.  Alone!  This is such a rarity, and there are so many things I want to do with this time.  I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to clean the carpets, what with no little feet trampling around this way and that.  But I’m also exhausted, since a certain young man decided to wake up at 3:30 this morning, and didn’t let  his poor mother get back to sleep until 5:30, after which it was nearly pointless since the official wakeup time is 6, followed by the normal flurry of bathing, dressing, packing diaper bag and lunch boxes, flying out the door, working a full day, wrestling with rush hour traffic, unloading the gear from the van, finding something suitable for the love bug to eat, hugs and a little teeny bit of play time, all which brings us to 6 p.m.  (At which time Mr. Gadget whisks my little blondie off to the ball game with the guys, having acquired free tickets from some benevelont soul today.)

Me time!  But of course, I find my way to the computer.  And I stealthily peruse as many blogs as I can before I surrender to the couch.  If only I weren’t so tired.  There are so many ways I would love to spend this evening.  But a nap is a very good thing, and a treat indeed.  I am giddy, even, that Mr. Gadget offered to take my sweet munchkin to the game.  Of course, he knew he would be walking on very thin ice if he even suggested a guys night out without offering to take the wee one, what with the delineation of tasks, chores, and responsibilities around here…  Even so, I am very thankful.  Grateful!

Eeeeegads, it’s 2:30 and what have I accomplished   Apart from a marathon blog spill, or spew (whatever), the trinkets have found a new home, the dishwasher is sloshing merrily away, I’ve downed three cups of coffee, and successfully transferred images from the new camera to the computer.  Which also means that I had to modify my cable bundle, which is becoming quite something:

• Camera charger cable
• Camera transfer cable
• Phone charger cable
• Camcorder charger cable
• Camcorder transfer cable
• Wireless keyboard receiver doohicky cable thingy
• Telephone cord

I have them bundled so that they don’t fall off my desk and get lost in the rats nest of cables at my feet.  Yet another tidy-up item for my to-do list.

After perusing JCPenney’s online catalog (the Joke towels), I let my fingers do the walking and called our local store.  Seems they have the now-famous towels in stock, and if I drop in after 4 p.m. tomorrow, I can purchase said towels and get $10 off if I spend $50.  So.  I just might wander over to Penney’s on the morrow.  But I won’t be buying hand towels or wash cloths.  Because I am cheap frugal industrious.  Instead, if I buy said towels, I will buy one extra, and cut it up to make two hand towels and two wash cloths (thereby saving $26 or thereabouts). 

Meanwhile, in other news.  It appears that the boy child does not think much of his safety gear.

He’s not always his boisterous self when he’s at Grandma’s house.

But with a little coaxing, he’s all smiles again.  My beautiful boy(s).

These pictures are proof that I can transfer photos from the new camera.  I think I prefer my old camera, but am not displeased with the new one.

So now I’m off to Target, to finish my errands and collect my bundle of joy.  I don’t feel caught up one bit.  Hrumph.