Outnumbered Two to One

It seems like every year I forget what a chore pumpkin carving is. Seriously. I do it for the kids mostly. It’s an activity that solidifies Halloween for them, scooping pumpkin guts, going at the thing with those wee carving knives, lighting it up and watching it eventually rot and collapse on itself. It’s a good time. Or not.

Whatever.

Today I needed a jack-o-lantern, it was getting down to the wire and my five year old was hounding me for a pumpkin, which I kept promising to get. Well, little did I know that for the most part pumpkins are scarce the day before Halloween. None at Target, none at BJs, none at the Lowe’s. I stopped at the grocery store on my way home and luckily hit the jackpot.

Pumpkins galore in a big bin, swarming with fruit flies and on sale for two bucks a piece. They weren’t the traditional roundish orange pumpkins I’m used to. There were all manner of colored gourds, predominantly Cinderella, which look like the pumpkin turned coach from the fairytale. I opted for something called a Jarrahdale, a gray green tinged pumpkin that looked pretty interesting at first glance. At $2 a pop, I couldn’t beat it.

I brought it home, where it sat on my dinner table until all homework assignments were complete. Around 5 we set to the task of carving into the hapless gourd using a scary faced stencil my son had picked out.

Let me just say, this sucker did not go down without a fight. My piddly novelty carving knives were no match for the rind on this piece of fruit vegetable fruit. I was sweating, people. Literally. By the time I finally wrestled off the lid it took me 20 minutes to cut out, I wanted to cry. The tough dense flesh was more than two inches thick and I still had to carve out a face on the thing. The only good thing about it was that it smelled like melons instead of gross gone over pumpkin, which is what I was expecting.

An hour and a half later I managed to get through it. I gave my biceps a thorough workout and managed not to lop off any of my fingers in the process. Take a look.

Also today,Lydia from On the Verge tagged me with this wicked little trinket:

There are rules associated with it, primarily tagging everyone else in the blogosphere all in the name of good Halloween fun. I am supposed to drop little boo bombs on as many fellow bloggers as I can, but today, I don’t have the energy. That pumpkin took a lot out of me and since tomorrow is Halloween and slated to be a busy day on the mom front, I don’t want to let this one lapse. So, new rules, if you’ve come by and seen this adorable little image, consider yourself tagged, er booed, not like boo throwing tomatoes boo, more like boo, aren’t I scary, please don’t wet your pants boo. So pass it on, spread the boo, without the hoo and partake in the no cal Halloween merriment.

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Check out more Halloweenielicious Posts at Sprite’s Keeper: The Spin Cycle

2007 - My five year old, last year at his harvest festival in pre-K.

For more Wordless Wednesday visit 5 Minutes for Mom and WW .

So yesterday, while I ranted and raved from our local library about AT&T and their lame-o troubleshooting procedures, a certain familiar repair woman was on her hands and knees fixing my dog damaged line. We’d been scheduled for Friday. Why she came so early, I will never know. It never occurred to me to ask, as I was too busy embracing her and blubbering my heartfelt thank-yous.

AT&T on the other hand, has still not won me over. While this lady, with her tool belt and cable laden vehicle, is one hard working, efficient employee, her employer and their phone operators leave much to be desired by way of customer service. The reason my neighbor keeps severing our line is because nobody has come to bury it, despite the work order everyone assures me keeps getting issued.

Somehow we keep getting lost in the shuffle.

Surely you all know that living without internet has become synonymous with being cast back in to the stone age. As far as necessities go, it’s up there with indoor plumbing and flushing toilets. Okay and maybe fridges. We use a lot of dairy products at our house. I can live without television, cancel the cable, donate my DVR to charity, whatever. I can always watch full episodes of The Office online anyway. But the internet is vital, you know?

How am I supposed to do research on presidential and political protocol for my ten year old, without access to the web? How am I supposed to map stuff or compare the prices of stuff or get fabulous Halloween menu ideas without an internet connection? I need information at my fingertips, I need 176,000 results if my children ask me whether or not cats can get rabies. They can. 

Lately too, the internet is one of my only social outlets. Whether that’s sad or not is debateable. I do interract with actual people on a daily basis, but being online eliminates alot of the pressures inherent in talking to others. There are no uncomfortable pauses, no nervous laughs, no stuttering and agonizing over what I said or didn’t say. It’s refreshing and this blogging thing has become part of a routine I’m reluctant to part with. It gives me a chance to organize my thoughts, to be creative, to just relax.

Heck yes, it keeps me up sometimes. But whatever, I’m working on a way to eliminate sleep from my schedule altogether. I’ll patent it and ship it to you all free of charge.

This time it was a dog. My neighbor’s dog. Chewing through our exposed DSL cable which coincidentally runs through their yard. Last time it was a mower. The time before that, a shovel.

I really can’t blame my neighbor, who I can blame is AT&T for their slackerrific service. Every time they’ve come to repair a damaged line, they’ve put in an order to bury said line. (Why the repairman can’t just take a shovel to the thing, I’ll never know.) What does get buried apparently, is the repair order, because nobody ever comes. Ever. Because they’re lame.

Yesterday when I called to get my line fixed, the phone support dude walked me through an installation wizard to try to establish a “new” connection, even though I was harping the whole time about the dog and the line and how all I wanted was to schedule for a repair person to come over and fix it. Fix it!

Instead, he scheduled for a support person to come and check my DSL inside the house. Wrong repair guy, wrong department. Now they’re saying Friday is their earliest opening. FRIDAY! That’s a long time to be disconnected, know what I mean?

As I speak I have about 40 minutes remaining at the library’s PC terminal, and I still have to do some research for my tweener who has a political research project due Friday. Don’t even get me started on that topic.

So I apologize from the bottom of my ticked off heart, for not being able to catch up on all your blogs or return the comment love, because AT&T won’t let me do so until Friday. Blame them! Write them a letter. Start a petition. Something!

I thank you for all your well wishes and comments for my 14 year old’s birthday. I will do my best to reply personally maybe when all this technical hoopla is said and done. Know that I appreciated all your comments, especially you moms who related with the PPD and the colic and the first time mommy c-section psychosis.

I’m going to try to phenagel some more computer time throughout the week, but I don’t know how consistent I’ll manage to be. I may post an early photo for Wordless Wednesday from my Photobucket.

All I ask from you, my faithful bloggy friends, don’t forget me while I’m gone.

I’ve got a guest post up on Casey’s blog, Half as Good as You regarding my pathetic club HASAY progress. Check it out. Peruse her blog as well, she’s a funny gal. She’ll keep you coming back for sure.

Till Friday.

Today my oldest turned 14.

14 years ago today at the tender age of 19, I had a baby wrenched from a gaping wound in my abdomen after 13 hours of barely progressing labor. Turned out my troublesome little girl was double wrapped in her cord.

The experience, I’ll admit, was less than gratifying. See, I had certain expectations going in to that delivery. I’d read books, I’d taken Lamaze, I had it all planned out. Oh the arrogance of youth. There would be no drugs, just me focused and breathing and easing my baby in to the world.

Then reality hit with that first startling contraction, then another and another and another.

See, I was a pansy. Worst pain I’d ever felt before that was limited to skinned elbows and possibly an ear infection. I once got accidentally cracked on the head with a baseball bat, but that didn’t even come close to the searing, blinding ache in my guts. Wow.

Of course, I asked for drugs. Which didn’t so much alleviate the pain as give me double vision and make the whole experience a psychedelic blur. When they handed me the release for the c-section, I signed away happily. “Get her out by any means necessary.”

After it was over, my relief was matched only by my disappointment. I’d failed. I was off to a bad start. Worse still was that beautiful alien babe they wheeled in next to my bed. I read all about how to care for her, what to expect, how to identify cries. I knew about meconium and lanugo, cradle cap and colic. All my theoretical expertise thrown out the window as I stared at my baby. My baby? How could I possibly have a baby? What was I thinking?

It didn’t help she was the scariest baby in existence. From birth she had a stare that seemed to pierce right through you. And she cried. Non-stop. For four months. Colic. Not colic as a blurb, or minuscule section in some baby preparedness book. Real, raging colic. Colic as the center of my universe. Colic as my arch nemesis.

Back then the pediatrician said to me, “There’s nothing you can do? Put some cotton in your ears and wait three months.” Jackball. Now a days the Dr. might have played with the formulas, assumed possibly a lactose sensitivity. Then, what did I know? I believed him.

Talk about post-partum depression. When she cried, I cried. It was that simple. Those days for me are remembered from beneath a dark shroud, a cloudy haze of frustration and defeat. It was rough. If anyone had told me then, I’d be volunteering to have three more children, I would have punched them in the nose.

Obviously I got better. I survived. More importantly, my screaming, colicky baby made it to teen-hood no worse for the wear.

I am truly blessed to have her. She changed my life.

So October 24th wasn’t the happiest day of my life, there are no photos of us gazing adoringly in to eachother’s faces. I was too busy worrying that my guts were going to spill out everytime I sneezed. But she was the start of our little family, the headstrong girl that forced me to grow up, the one I make all my parenting mistakes with.  She’s awesome in spite of all that.

My teen. Happy Birthday.

I always hated tag growing up. But then again, I also hated hide-and-seek, dodge-ball, kick ball, soft ball, and volley ball. Pretty much anything that had ball in the name, mostly because I had the worst hand eye coordination ever, and mostly said orbitals always seemed to gravitate toward my head rather than my hands, so that I was almost always cringing and dodging and squeezing my eyes shut when I should have been watching the ball, but I digress.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been tagged with some memes (still not entirely sure how to pronounce that). And in light of recent creative obstacles (see yesterday) I figured tonight was as good a night as any to play your little reindeer games.

First there was my friend, Lydia from On The Verge, who challenged me to share six secrets about myself.

1. I’m a disorganized slob. Seriously, housekeeping is not my forte. Neither is remembering when the bills are due, rsvp-ing to party invites, or sending thank you notes.

2. I’m a closet scab picker. I do it when I’m on edge, it drives my husband crazy.

3. I have zero rhythm. I cannot dance, not even a little.

4. I was an underage drinker because I lacked the proper adult supervision. However I no longer partake of the alcoholic beverages. They make me sleepy and I’m sleepy enough on a regular basis as it is.

5. I also used to smoke cigarettes, which I no longer do, although sometimes I wish I still did, it would keep me from picking at my scabs.

6. I am not that interesting.

Still with me.

Next I got thrown this little number by both Ohana Mama and Savvy Suzie . Both of whom insist I should tell you seven random things about myself, according to this image. If it’s on a JPEG, then it’s practically law.

1. I have smelly feet. You asked. Well…they asked.

2. I do not eat liver. I eat practically anything, I love food, but I tend to veer away from the internal organs. Call me crazy.

3.  I hate talking to customer service representatives over the phone. I also hate making doctor’s appointments and leaving voice messages for people who I’m not friendly with. It gives me anxiety.

4. The last time I saw my father at a local Target, he did not recognize me…because he’s stupid. Before that, I hadn’t talked to him in five years. Before those five years, it had been 10. Yeah, he sucks.

5. I failed three out of four classes my first semester of college in 1993. Not because I was stupid, but because I was lazy.

6. Besides reality shows, horror movies are one of my biggest guilty pleasures. I hate watching them alone and my husband refuses to watch them with me. He’s more of a western kind of guy.

Last but not least the hilarious Kia from Good Enough Mama invited me to participate in this scattergories meme. The rules are to use the first letter of my name to answer the following questions. Let’s go with Mrs. Bear shall we…

1. What is your name?  Mrs. Bear
2. A 4 Letter Word: Maim
3. A Boys’ Name: Maury (he could be a talk show host)
4. A Girls’ Name: Mystique (she could be a stripper)
5. An Occupation: Marauder
6. A Color: Magenta
7. Something you men (shouldn’t) wear: Moccasins
8. A Beverage: Milk (it does do a  body good, unless your lactose intolerant)
9. A Food Group : Melons (not those kinds, get your mind out of the gutter)
10. Something found in the bathroom: Make-up (I don’t use it, but it’s there.)
11. A place: Mercury (you can’t really go there, but it exists)
12. A Reason for being late: Mopping (it’s happened, particularly after a bout of projectile vomiting. You know what I’m talking about.)
13. Something you shout: Move! (As in MOOOOVE your car out of the fast lane so us raging road warriors can get where we need to go.)
14. Make up a word and give its definition: Millaboutismia: A disorder that affects most of the kids in my house, and prevents them from seeing any task to its conclusion because they are too busy walking around in circles and staring at the walls.

I’m not going to specifically call anyone out, feel free to join the fun, I’m leaving it an open invite because I’m feeling generous. I’d like to tag the whole world if I could, then I’d buy them a Coke, then I’d go to bed because so many people all together at once make me want to curl in to the fetal position. Nuff said.

Oh, yes, my friends. It’s that time.

Hide the children. Bar the windows. Someone get the straight jacket and chocolate truffles. It’s P.M.S.

And it’s ugly.

Surely I was set to post about something - my failed exercise attempts, my dubious parenting skills, my unkempt home and dirty laundry. I’m certain whatever it was would have been either freaking hilarious or profoundly poignant.

Instead, you get this - an incoherent half post because I can’t focus. Not on writing. Not on exercise. Not on fifth grade science projects or housework or anything.

What I can do is walk through the house singing Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” at the top of my lungs while I pick up wayward socks.  Surprisingly, it is effective in relieving a certain amount of tension. And no, the song choice is in no way reflective of my super-fabulous husband who was kind enough to fetch me some rice pudding while my spirits were down.

Let’s hear it for the husband, ladies and gentlemen.

Today a good friend of mine from Ohio stopped by to visit with us for a while, before she and her significant other headed off to attend the funeral they were in town for. Both were dressed casual but came equipped with somber, more appropriate changes of clothing.

Well, my darling baby almost-two-year-old boy zeroed in on a pair of black pumps my friend had set down in the corner of the room. He was immediately drawn to them. Perhaps it was the slope of the heel, or the stylish buckle at the front, or maybe the peek-a-boo toe cutout. Who knows?

All I know is that boy was wearing those pumps in no seconds flat. He posed for pictures. He strutted. For the love of God, this, my youngest son, ran circles around us in these shoes three times too big for his feet, without any discernible wobble.

Understand, I spend most days in flip flops, the other days I spend in sneakers, and if I have to dress up I’m wearing flats. I do not wear high heeled shoes, I can barely walk in them without doing major injury to an ankle. I would never dream of running in them.

My husband has a rule of thumb for shoes. “Don’t wear shoes you can’t fight in or run in.”

Well, apparently stylish black pumps fall in to this category, at least for my son. If ever he has to out run the cops or a zombie even, you can believe he’ll be doing it in style.

Motherhood takes a lot out of a gal. It also packs a lot on a gal, particularly around the hip, thigh, and belly area.

This week I’m joining Casey at Half as Good as You along with all the other motivated contestants, in a weight loss support club for us doughy mom bloggers who want to shed some poundage and tighten some of our saggier muscle groups.

Once upon a time I was a skinny wisp of a girl…

This was Halloween about 15 years ago, when I was a tender 18 year old on my way to a part-time job at Sears. I weighed 100 lbs soaking wet, boasted a size 3 waistline along with some truly exquisite collar bones.

I don’t want to be 100 lbs ever again, I need to be sturdy to keep my brood in line. I do however want to feel a little better when I get on the scale.

I’m currently weighing in at about 125 lbs. Not too bad, but not a number I’m all together comfortable with. I’m 5′1″, I’m not gonna get any taller, and those extra ten pounds I want to lose sit right around my belly area and create a saggy, droopy, pinched muffin top effect even with my bigger pants. There’s got to be a cure, right?

Enter club Half as Small as You.

Here are the specifics.

1. What motivates me to want to do this challenge?

I want to feel good in my clothes, I don’t want to have to suck in my gut to button my pants and I don’t want to have to keep buying bigger sizes to accommodate a growing waistline. I also want to feel healthy. Right now, I tire very easily and I’m not as strong as I’d like to be. I also want to get in to the habit of eating healthier, because I do want to be healthy for my kids and myself.

2. What is my long term goal?

I want to tone and tighten my arms, legs, and midsection.  I want to build strength and endurance so I don’t get so winded chasing my kids around the yard. I want to develop the discipline to stick with an exercise routine indefinitely.

3. What is my long term weight loss goal?

I want to lose about ten pounds overall and be able to maintain that weight. I’d like to go down a size because I still have some clothes I’d like to bring back from hibernation. Right now I’ve only got a few pairs of pants that fit comfortably, a couple of pairs that I can squeeze in to, and a couple with elastic waist bands. I don’t want to graduate to the mu-mu , I don’t.

4. What tools are available to me?

I have a stationary bike, a jogging stroller, an aerobic step, hand weights, resistance bands, a medicine ball, a giant exercise ball, and about two dozen different workout videos. Yeah…all remnants of my failed attempts to workout consistently. For shame.

5. How often can I exercise?

I’d like to possibly do 2 days of aerobic exercise and 3 days of strength building exercises. From what I’m reading, building muscles helps burn calories even when you’re at rest so…I’m shooting for some killer biceps.

6. What do I plan on doing?

Well…I am going to start tracking my calorie intake by logging what I eat over at SparkPeople. I’m going to cutout the junk food completely except for a half serving of a dessert of my choosing after dinner…I’ve got to reward myself somehow. I want to control my portions and stop overeating like I constantly do, filling myself until I’m literally in pain. I also intend to drink at least 8 glasses of water a day, and some green tea.

I am going to jump in to an exercise program, alternating aerobic DVDs and muscle building exercises I’ll borrow from the stacks of fitness magazines I’ve got laying around. I’ll also probably do some power walking around the neighborhood in the mornings, I don’t know if I’ll ever build up to jogging but we’ll see how it goes.

7. What has worked for me in the past?

I used to work out at a ladies fitness center back when I only had one baby, ten years ago my body was ready to spring back in to shape. I’d meet my sister there 3 to 4 days a week and for an hour and a half we’d bounce and lift and sweat our asses off. If there was a day I didn’t feel motivated, she’d call me on it and push me in to going. I did the same for her and it was a successful combined effort.

Now she lives too far, so it’s all on me. And hopefully the guilt and shame offered by the Club Half as Good as You.

Care to join us?

This Friday, my son’s Kindergarten teacher sent home black cat cutouts for the “kids” to decorate, which will be displayed throughout their classroom for the remainder of the month. A little weekend assignment for parents families to work on cooperatively. (As if their weekly stacks of homework aren’t grueling enough. As if there are enough hours to accommodate all the other stuff that needs to get done.)

Okay, mostly we loafed this weekend. We visited with my mom and grandparents, my sisters and nieces. My in-laws were in town from Tennessee and we spent a little time with them as well.

Also, my darling, dearest, fabulous, amazing husband entertained three of our kids while I napped for a whopping three hours with my toddler. Suh-weet! Several times during that three hour spread, I would vaguely resurface from my slumber and tell myself, “I’ve got to get up and feed the kids lunch”, only to be sucked down in to the depths of unconsciousness again. I literally could not keep my eyes open.

Moments like these are few and far between, so I take them where I can get them. Unfortunately I paid the consequences later. As of 3 PM nobody had eaten lunch and I was still in my PJs. We ended up at the IHOP for dinner around six-ish, then the auto-parts store because my brake lights were out, then the grocery store because the waffles and eggs were all gone. By the time we made it home it was 9 PM - bedtime. So I put away the groceries, bathed the boys, and started to send everyone to bed.

That’s when I remembered the cat. The cat that was due Monday. Tomorrow. Promptly at 8:30 AM.

Sigh.

Well, I couldn’t very well let my little boy go to school empty handed. So we rummaged the closet, the drawers, and his back pack to come up with something to satisfy the teacher’s requirements.

I think he looks pretty good all things considered. His tail is a black feather, and the bandages are orange construction paper. He’s got googly eyes and some glitter glue applied strategically around the ears and eyes. I can’t figure if he looks more like a mummy-cat or a frightened hostage-cat. Originally I was just going to put orange stripes on his black body, because the teacher wants all her kitties color coordinated. When my stripes started looking like random scar marks, we went with the mummy idea. The toe claws were my son’s invention. I’ve got Elmer’s glue in my friggin’ eye-brows.

If the teacher has a problem with undead cats, well she can make the next one herself.