I was having a pretty decent Sunday, lounging with Landon and getting some stuff done for finals while Jason was at drill. My plan was to just stay in my PJs, inside, away from the cold, all day. Why I deviated from such a great plan, I do not know. But I did. I made the big mistake of trying to tackle a trip to my "favorite" place (insert sarcasm indicator here), Wal-Mart. ugh.... shouldn't have done it.
After I survived the over hour long ordeal I managed to escape without saying out loud all of the things I thought- mostly "dear gawds!"
At least I have Landon to talk to while I'm there now. He's functioning at a higher level than most of the other people that were around. So when I'm having a hard time biting my lip, I just look at Landon and say "yep. I know." and he looks back at me with the "where the hell did you take me" look.
30 minutes just to check out (as usual) then I loaded my car, got Landon settled into the car seat, and I had to just sit there for a minute. Just decompress from all of the toxicity of the unhealthy people in that store.
Right when I was trying to figure out if there was a way to prevent stupid people from breeding, a child started climbing out of his mom's shopping cart onto the back of the car next to me. He continued to climb over the top and slide down the windshield, getting caught up on the wiper as he went, all the while his mom put her 10 month old in his front facing car seat that was obviously not strapped in tightly. Why the car climber continued his fight with a wiper, the third child took off with the cart (that was taller than he was), right out into traffic. Mom was still playing the oblivious card as she sat in the front seat, texting. Somehow all of the kids made it into the car before she backed up into any of them.
I sat there, still a little disoriented and picturing myself at home, still in PJs. (Why? Why? Why?)
Avoiding the people driving the wrong directions and cutting through parking aisles, I finally made it back towards home. I found myself thinking again, those people are complete idiots AND they are breeding at faster rates that the rest of us!! I wish the overly-intelligent people that are too busy to have kids and give the human race a real chance would at least come up with a solution for how to handle the stupid people taking over the world. Maybe the greeter at wal-mart could stop checking off reciepts to help with theft prevention and start highlighter-checking condoms to help with stupidity prevention....
I'm now a Mom.Momma.Mommy but I'm still a me. Here you will find snippets from my/our daily adventures. Partly about the 'joys" of parenting but more about self and finding the humor in every day life. In other words, less baby talk and more of the things I probably shouldn't say out loud (but do).
12.09.2010
12.03.2010
Just A Thought
Every once in awhile I stop to contemplate how I've gotten this far. I don't do this as much as I did when I was an angsty teenager, but it's a type of therapy for me. A look at all I've been through and I'm still going sort of self-worth recognizing exercise. I am 25- that middle point between "whole-world-plenty-of-time-20" and "should-have-it-together-by-now 30." This is what I'm supposed to do isn't it?
The biggest difference between doing this 5 years ago and doing it now is that 5 years ago it led me to the conclusion "I need to get out of here!" and now it leads me to "I need to stay with this."
The biggest difference between doing this 5 years ago and doing it now is that 5 years ago it led me to the conclusion "I need to get out of here!" and now it leads me to "I need to stay with this."
"The secret of happiness is the determination to be happy always..." - J. Donald Walters
Someone Is Going to Cry Here and It's Not Me (or the baby).
If you are working at a customer service call center, I think the first question you should ask the women when she calls in is "are you a stay at home mom?" If she says yes, do not bother to argue. Do not ask her how her day is going. Do not attempt to BS her. Just transfer to your supervisor, because eventually it will get there anyway.
Here's the deal- Stay at home moms are masters of winning arguments. We spend the day manipulating the truth just enough to make the kids (and by kids I mean the children and the daddy) do what we need them to do in order to keep this boat/house afloat. We are so good at choosing our words carefully that there is not even a break for thought. No stumbling, no tripping on words, no backtracking. No room for error or we would never succeed at getting those lollipops and stickers from the doctors office away from the "kids" before they end up in someones hair (probably ours) or stuck to the floor mats of our SUVs. We are masters at maintaing control of the conversation. All of that sales training you were tought in your first few weeks on the job didn't prepare you. That stuff wasn't designed to work on us. That stuff was designed to work on... well I'm not really sure who yet, but it definitely wasn't designed to work on me.
That is why, the next time the annoying, song-singing, credit report website tries to have their guy on the other side of the world (who can keep up with me just about as poorly as I can keep up with him) handle charging me for something I didn't order, they should just save him 10 minutes and transfer that call over to Tracy with the Texas accent a little sooner.
(...Same goes for the the American car company I had to call a few months back...and the internet service provider that supposedly has an office just down the street from here...)
Here's the deal- Stay at home moms are masters of winning arguments. We spend the day manipulating the truth just enough to make the kids (and by kids I mean the children and the daddy) do what we need them to do in order to keep this boat/house afloat. We are so good at choosing our words carefully that there is not even a break for thought. No stumbling, no tripping on words, no backtracking. No room for error or we would never succeed at getting those lollipops and stickers from the doctors office away from the "kids" before they end up in someones hair (probably ours) or stuck to the floor mats of our SUVs. We are masters at maintaing control of the conversation. All of that sales training you were tought in your first few weeks on the job didn't prepare you. That stuff wasn't designed to work on us. That stuff was designed to work on... well I'm not really sure who yet, but it definitely wasn't designed to work on me.
That is why, the next time the annoying, song-singing, credit report website tries to have their guy on the other side of the world (who can keep up with me just about as poorly as I can keep up with him) handle charging me for something I didn't order, they should just save him 10 minutes and transfer that call over to Tracy with the Texas accent a little sooner.
(...Same goes for the the American car company I had to call a few months back...and the internet service provider that supposedly has an office just down the street from here...)
12.02.2010
Who's Doing The Assessing?
I just had a utility person come by to help me figure out what is wrong with our furnace. The utility company called it an "assess and assist". As my desk is now facing out the front window of the house, I had a good vantage point of the clown car, circus-esque show that unfolded in front of my house and made me wonder who needs assisting and who needs assessing?
The "utility-person" (p.c. term for gas man) rolled up and hopped out of their white ladder loaded truck. It was one of those situations where you weren't quite sure at first if it was a man or a manly woman. And I say hopped out of the truck, because they literally had to hop in order for the tiny feet of their 5 foot tall rounded body to reach the pavement. They quickly grabbed a wrench that was as big as one of their arms and headed to the meter. (Little legs moving very fast). As they got closer to the door, I realized that on top of their interesting build and questionable gender identity, they were sporting a dark red (slightly purple-brown) crew cut. The hair color somehow matched the freckled but olive skin tone. Very interesting person. They introduced themselves as "Chris" and I thought, Is that Chris as in Christopher or Chris as in Christine? Even Landon wasn't quite sure. He sat on my hip with a furrowed eyebrow (staring at what I eventually figured out to be a man) with a very inviting look of "Who the hell are you?"
Anyway, turns out Chris lives in the same neighborhood as us, has a wife (go figure), is good at his job and was extremely helpful. Lesson learned (again), don't judge a book by it's cover (or a man's manliness by his butch-lesbianish hair).
The "utility-person" (p.c. term for gas man) rolled up and hopped out of their white ladder loaded truck. It was one of those situations where you weren't quite sure at first if it was a man or a manly woman. And I say hopped out of the truck, because they literally had to hop in order for the tiny feet of their 5 foot tall rounded body to reach the pavement. They quickly grabbed a wrench that was as big as one of their arms and headed to the meter. (Little legs moving very fast). As they got closer to the door, I realized that on top of their interesting build and questionable gender identity, they were sporting a dark red (slightly purple-brown) crew cut. The hair color somehow matched the freckled but olive skin tone. Very interesting person. They introduced themselves as "Chris" and I thought, Is that Chris as in Christopher or Chris as in Christine? Even Landon wasn't quite sure. He sat on my hip with a furrowed eyebrow (staring at what I eventually figured out to be a man) with a very inviting look of "Who the hell are you?"
Anyway, turns out Chris lives in the same neighborhood as us, has a wife (go figure), is good at his job and was extremely helpful. Lesson learned (again), don't judge a book by it's cover (or a man's manliness by his butch-lesbianish hair).
12.01.2010
The Truth About Spiders
(In case you don't know, or can't tell, I'm not a big fan of eight-legged creatures).
My pediatrician may be in cahoots with the spiders…. She gave Landon the Itsy Bitsy Spider book at his appointment today. Now I know the Itsy Bitsy Spider is a classic and has been around for many generations and is innocently sung by children in pre-schools across the country. However, there are a few serious issues I have with this nursery rhyme. Firstly, that spider is never itsy bitsy. Secondly, I think it sounds better if the rhyme ends at “Down came the rain and washed the spider out.”
Another supposed “classic, innocent children’s story” I have issue with, Charlotte’s Web. Sorry Mom, I know you have tried and tried again to get me to get over my spider-issues by pushing this story on me but it didn’t work out quite right. I still dislike spiders. On a good note (I guess) I now think pigs are terrific, radiant and humble.
I mean really though, we all know that Charlotte is a black widow, don't we? Now what kind of message does it send that the little girl, Fern, is out there in a barn, not just playing with all the farm animals all alone (because her parents obviously don’t support her having a social life and forbid her from having any people friends) but hanging around with a deadly black widow spider? I don’t care what lies this story spreads, I personally know that the black widows in my life aren’t weaving any intelligent words in the webs I see. I gave them a chance, I waited, and nada. Needless to say, I’m no Fern Arable, and that scary, not so Itsy Bitsy, black spider that WAS in my garage was no Charlotte.
I mean really though, we all know that Charlotte is a black widow, don't we? Now what kind of message does it send that the little girl, Fern, is out there in a barn, not just playing with all the farm animals all alone (because her parents obviously don’t support her having a social life and forbid her from having any people friends) but hanging around with a deadly black widow spider? I don’t care what lies this story spreads, I personally know that the black widows in my life aren’t weaving any intelligent words in the webs I see. I gave them a chance, I waited, and nada. Needless to say, I’m no Fern Arable, and that scary, not so Itsy Bitsy, black spider that WAS in my garage was no Charlotte.
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