Monday, November 30, 2009

Back Asswards

I decided to hit my head hard enough to put myself into a coma
So that the next 183 days will go by faster.
Only I hit my ass instead.
On the corner of the coffee table.
(And no, the coffee table is not super-tall and I am not a midget.)
But it must have caused some amnesia
Because I don't remember what I was doing under there.
It was after I had rearranged all the furniture.
And after I found Haley's retainer container in the hall closet.
Leave it to me to do it entirely wrong.
All I got was a bruise on my ass and a mild case of amnesia.
And now this post looks like a poem about my ass
Which is so amusing to me that I'm going to leave it this way.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Thoughts for This Evening

  • If I can hang out with Keira Knightley by climbing into a cupboard then I'm going to do it right now. I hope she's under the kitchen sink because I think that's the only one I can fit into.
  • Why do my teenager's friends use up my limited texting by telling me they have to pee and they're going to use my bathroom?
  • How do I tell someone what I really want without making them feel unmanly?
  • Haley would be perfectly happy with a pomegranate and an old crusty mostly empty jar of Fluff for Christmas so why am I buying her a new camera?
  • How long is 184 days?
After eating half a bag of jellybeans and some whole coconut milk curry in some silly attempt to feel even more miserable than I already was I discovered that my pudge had bloated up so that it was actually hanging over the edge of my laptop as it sat on my lap. And as the pudge expanded like a giant hot air balloon it pushed the laptop farther and farther away until I had to stretch my arms WAY OUT to type.
This was a problem.
I stopped eating things that hurt and started drinking Fennel Tea and taking peppermint capsules but it was too late. I was up until 2 a.m. feeling extremely hungover.
So today I took all the crazy and I put it into a more productive behavior than eating food dye and high frutose corn syrup and fat and instead I had Haley help me clean her entire room which is a huge feat that rarely happens all at once. Sure, I sneak in there every day and pick up trash that she'll never notice is missing. Today we sorted her books by size, color, and copywrite date, found lonely socks under her mattress where they slither away to hide from her sweaty night feet, and found her retainer container--which is a fun thing to say outloud.
Then I pulled the bed halfway out of the couch downstairs and had Haley crawl into the crack to dig out all the trash that the kids had stuffed in the couch to make it look like they NEVER eat in the livingroom. Then I vacuumed the mattress, and under it, and Haley's butt. IT WAS RIGHT THERE. What was I supposed to do? We rearranged the furniture back to where it was before that odd askew day last year when I wanted my ENTIRE life to be crooked just so that it would make more sense.
Then I had Emily help me clean her side of the bedroom she shares with Gina. It's nice to see their faces when they realize how much crap they keep and how much space there is when you throw away all of those crumpled up pieces of blank paper, broken toys, and dead mp3 players. I almost think they might dig through the trash can in the kitchen to save the things I've thrown away, cause I swear a couple of those mp3 players had already seen the inside of the trash can two years ago.
Ok, so now what do I do? This place is too small to clean forever. Maybe annoying the kids will be my new hobby. Hey Haley! Come here so I can vacuum you some more!

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Reverting

Since he left I've made up for all those things I stopped doing before he got here. I started chewing off my fingernails in the car on the way home. I ate a bag of jelly beans and some chicken curry so even though I'm not any fatter, I look like I gained 20 pounds of bloat this morning. I am still in my pajama pants and I might just stay that way all day. I'm eating 2 day old leftover oatmeal. My posture is so bad that my breasts are actually brushing against my thighs. I haven't done dishes in a day and a half, which in my house means they are piled high and haphazzardly and no one is brave enough to even look at them without fear of being trapped on the kitchen floor under an avalanche of mismatched plastic cups and stolen restaurant plates.
And the BEST news is that the girls informed me last night that they have Monday off from school. WHAT??? Monday isn't a holiday?! I'll bet the teachers decided they just couldn't handle seeing kids so soon after having to be thankful and wanted to hold off reality just a little longer.
So here I am stuck with them one more day and I can't shut myself in my bed and curl up on the side he slept on and pretend he's still here. Because they come in every 30 seconds with excuses like: Can I have a piece of bread? or Can I call Grandma? Or Emily has been on the Wii 2 hours and 28 minutes longer than me! I know they really just need to know where I am and what I'm doing every second so they feel secure that I'm not upstairs crying.
Besides, they pick on me when I cry.
It's not the End of the World Mom.
Yes, yes it is. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Friday, November 27, 2009

He's Halfway to Salt Lake City

and I am home in Vermont. :(

I hope he had an interesting trip
  • escaping across the border and back, and across and back
  • listening to my father name every tree on his 27 acre tree farm, the bear scratched tree, the racoon's home tree, the stump from the tree he cut down in 1976
  • while the girls and I walked behind with our sacred sticks and fern crowns, bowing to the sacred stumps and moss and trees and puddles and noisily mocking Grandpa
  • watching Gina catapult a pencil into her own eye
  • making too-perfect icicles on the gingerbread house
  • visiting the Magic Red Button
  • trying to use nudity and cesspool in the same sentence on a Facebook status update
  • watching people at the liquor store buy beer in shopping carts like real Vermonters do

And of course the second he left the November storm blew in and now I'm back to being stuck in the house with a girl who keeps popping out her retainer to swear at me properly and a girl who doesn't realize she's pmsing when she yells at me about how bored she is. ERGH.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Got to Post Something So I Don't Lose my Following


So we've been to Fryeburg on the Maine border. We've stood on the line between the U.S. and Canada in Derby. We've been to the orthodontist twice. We spent an evening surrounded by man-scent. In about an hour and a half I'm taking him to the mom's therapy group I go to. We've driven in circles for hours every day and I realize more and more that I live in my car.

Three states and one country later and the trip is almost over. Then I'm all alone and more bitter than ever because I'm going to miss him way too much.
Wyoming is a whole lot farther away than Canada.

See you on Friday evening when I'm alone again --blog world!!!

Monday, November 23, 2009

A Sneaky Post

Ooops, I disappeared. I had nothing to write about because everything is so cool. And besides, it would be rude to say, hey Nick, wait a minute, that thing you did was really funny and I have to go blog about it!
But now he's still in bed and the kids just went off to school so I snuck on here to post something quickly before he realizes that I'm missing.
We went out with Abrah and Bill Saturday night and things worked out better than I planned. Here's a quick run-down:

  • Having the same part of the same thumb missing because of a woodworking accident makes you as good as TWINS.
  • As long as there are plenty of quarters men are happy.
  • Calling it man-scent doesn't make it smell any better.
  • Bill is my new picker and as odd as that sounds, if he's comfortable enough to talk non-stop for 6 hours then something must be right. :)
  • Blue cheese can be deadly.
  • Hard cider DOES have alcohol and I can't believe I was the first person EVER to order that.
  • There are at least 5 ways to get there from here--and all of them are the same distance.
  • Vermont has ALOT of roads but FEW people
  • Which is a GOOD thing because there are a lot of intersections I just don't know how to navigate. I think the locals set it up that way just to prove that we're not from there.
  • I DRIVE ALOT.
  • No matter how I look at all the details I just don't want to spend the rest of my life without him.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The Pants Fairy's arch-nemesis

You know how after you wash jeans and hang them up to dry when they're still half wet because you're too impatient to wait for the dryer to finish and you have ten million other things you need to get done and how your jeans are all stiff after they dry hanging on the treadmill in your bedroom? The first few moments you squeeze back into them are extremely uncomfortable until they stretch back out and soften.
Well, I've spent the last week stretching out all of my clean jeans and putting them back in the drawer so that when HE gets here I can just slide into them like they fit perfectly instead of all the usual heavy breathing and swearing. I realize in writing this just how insane I am.
Well, this morning I opened the drawer to see if there were any I hadn't softened up yet and a pair was missing. So I went into Haley's room and there they were. She'd been wearing them. She stole the jeans I worked so hard to make comfortable and wore them! All that hard work gone to waste!
I know WHY. She isn't allowed to wear jeans with rips and holes to school. And she ruins her clothing. She also buys skin tight ones and I'll bet mine are just so much more comfortable, BECAUSE I DID ALL THE WORK!
So I'm going out to buy myself new jeans now and she can just keep stealing my old ones!
She's like the anti-pants FAIRY, taking away my best pants so that I can't wear them. I hope the two of them meet and have a huge BLOODY battle and she learns that you can't just give pants and have someone else take them away. Not without the wrath of a mom who likes her pants to have some breathing room. Next time maybe I'll make her do all the work--as PUNISHMENT.

Monday, November 16, 2009

I'm the Biggest Hypocrite on the Face of the Planet

An hour ago I realized how far I was behind on the bloggess. (See list of places I go.) No wonder all the joy has been stripped from my life! So I've spent the last hour catching up on where she's been and all the embarrassing things she does and then has anxiety about.
I was reading the April Flores interview on her sex column and then started watching the video, which is a nice photo shoot with porn-ish music playing in the background.
But let's back up for a minute to about 3 weeks ago when the MAN decided to buy me a webcam and send it to me so that we could keep in touch. I immediately assumed a webcam would mean porn and made it clear there would be no porn. NONE. I guess American Pie was on my mind. Using the camera isn't as bad as I thought it would be--it's all nice and blurry and very forgiving. Perfect for my need to remain anonymous.
So here I was watching this ahem photo shoot (because she's all round and not stick thin and it was just such a relief to see someone who is a real size do this and look good) and he called me on gchat. It rings like a phone from the gmail page. I minimized April's window and accepted his call. And then realized that the MUSIC WAS STILL PLAYING.
He asked what I was watching.
"Um, nothing" was the best thing I could come up with! I own all of these words. ALL OF THESE WORDS. And I said "um, nothing."
And then my face turned red.
And although the webcam is slightly blurry and weak, I'll bet he knew. Yes, I was looking at another woman in her underwear. I don't know why at that moment I couldn't just say it. I admit it.

Memory Foam

It isn't on there!

This morning I woke up at 5:30 again and started going about my morning of shoving everyone in the car with everything they needed. Then I suddenly realized that I didn't know if the girls' appointments were today or tomorrow. Of course, these weren't written on my calendar because I didn't remember long enough to write it down.
I am getting old. There was a time when I could run on 5 hours of sleep for three straight weeks before feeling tired. I could stay up for 4 straight days and only start hallucinating at the very end. I could sleep on the ground for 8 days and still get up and run.

NOT ANYMORE.

If I'm not sleeping in my own bed I'm not sleeping. And that's not necessarily caused by sleeping in a place that smells like my father since last Wednesday, or sleeping with a dog who must be having the same nightmares about Joe that I am because she sometimes growls wildly and thrashes in her sleep. Soon I'll be taking her to Dartmouth for some prozac as well.
I just miss my bed. My nice big bed that's not too soft or too hard. That smells like incense and sage and me. I miss how it gently cradles my hip and it has just enough give to let my boobs breathe. I love my 4 pillows, two big and fluffy, one a little flatter, and one made of memory foam. Which is something my head is missing this morning.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Could Time Move Any Freakin Slower?

Okay, so take the longest week ever and then add to that being stuck away from the internet and movie channels and all the chores I could be doing at home and if this goes any slower I'm just going to aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

There is absolutely nothing funny going on. The kids watch Spongebob for hours. I didn't know he had a cousin whose name is Stanley and he acts an awful lot like Haley, going from one thing to another and creating havoc and explosions.

I have washed everyone's bedding (That's like 10 loads of laundry) and I found 6 dollars in people's pockets and I used a Magic Eraser on Haley, but she's still here.

And my dog ate something nasty and her stomach keeps making terrible noises that squeal and gurgle and sound like there's an alien puppy growing in her stomach. She keeps farting and looking pathetic and embarrassed.

I miss the ghetto and all the things I had to complain about. All I can complain about here is how they grow immensely huge and fast spiders that only come out at night and strreak across the livingroom floor.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

First Day of Drama and the Pants Fairy

Well, I did it. I got up. I threw on some pants and shoes. I made her scrape the windshield off. And I drove her to school at 6:15. It felt really good for about an hour--Yay, I can be a morning person! I have lots of energy! I have tons of extra time!
Now I realize those were just the schizophrenic thoughts of a tired mind. It was all true until the other kids went to school and I sat down to write an email. Then I saw the disconnect between my head and my hands. As soon as I started to type I lost the ability to think of words. Crash and burn. Coffee is not helping.
But I do have to say that I found a new pair of pants hanging in my closet with the tags still on that I must have forgotten about. I was a little afraid to try them on because sometimes I buy things without trying them first and then later I realize that I'd have to lose my pudge or let it hang over the top. I stuff those pants in the back of my closet and try to pawn them off on people. Or plan on finding my abs by spring and put them in a box marked "summer pants" along with all the other pants I've never worn but take out once in a while to admire.
These pants fit so well. They must have come from the Pants Fairy. As much as I ABHORE shopping, especially for pants--there is NO WAY I would have had the patience to find these myself. My ass looks good. My pudge is under control. Ahhhhhhhhhh.
Yes, I do believe in the Pants Fairy now. And I'm sure he's a gay guy with slender transparent wings and rosy cheeks who sneaks pants into the closet of people who willingly drive their kids to school at 6:15 in the morning. I'll be waiting for him tomorrow morning.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Awesome summer camp letter!

I am cleaning out my filing cabinet today. What could be more tedious than that??? Oh, it's not all bad. I found this letter Haley wrote me from summer camp when she was maybe 10 that still cracks me up:

Today wasn't as bad but it still was bad. I had to go to fishing first then I had to walk up to riflery and then I had to walk back down for sailing then I had to walk back up line up walk back down for lunch walk back up for cabin time walk back down for kayaking then walk back up for farm and garden then walk down for dinner walk back up for poetry then we go to sleep. I miss you.

A Revision

I have to post this because it's a masterpiece and it's never too late to laugh about the stupid relationships I've had ever since leaving Wyoming.


Runaway James (to the tune of Runaround Sue)

Here's my story, its sad but true
It's about a boy that I once knew
He took his stick then ran around
To every pool hall in town
Ah, I should have known it from the very start
This boy will leave me with a broken heart
Now listen people what I'm telling you
A-keep away from-a Runaway james
I miss his books and his pajama pants
His voice as he asks for just one more chance
So if you don't wanna cry like I do
A-keep away from-a Runaway James
Ah, he likes to travel around
He'll love you but he'll put himself down
Now people let me put you wise
He goes out with other guys
Here's the moral and the story from the one who knows
He'll leave so fast that he'll forget his clothes
Ask any fool that he ever knew, they'll say
A-Keep away from-a Runaway James
He likes to travel around
He'll love you but he'll put himself down
Now people let me put you wise
James goes out with other guys
Here's the moral and the story from the one who knows
He'll run so fast that he'll forget his clothes
Ask any fool that he ever knew, they'll say
A-Keep away from-a Runaway James

So besides rewriting songs and laughing about them I also have decided that I do in fact have hobbies. I may not hunt or fish or make anything right now (unless this song counts) but I do like vampires. Vampires are a hobby. And I like wine. And I do like to bitch sometimes. That's a hobby. I wear sweatpants too, which is this new hobby I just picked up a couple of month ago when I stopped caring about what I look like when I'm at home. And I am really good at loud sighing. I'm just full of hobbies!
How did Haley get to school if one of her new shoes is under the coffee table??? I'll bet she forgot to put shoes on. I'd better go find her.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Many Random but Important Events That must be connected Somehow

Today I got the birthday present I bought myself through the mail. I am now feeling supported and separated, lifted and somehow thinner. Is this really where the boobs are supposed to be? I keep hitting my chin on them and I can definitely see the six pack of small rolls where my abs should be but aren't. When not dragging against my knees they look really HUGE. I am so amazed that I keep looking down and then feeling them, cause I can't quite believe they're mine.

I took Haley to Dartmouth yesterday where her doctor (who I LOVE) thought there's a good chance most of her issues are caused by a sleep disorder. So she filled out the paperwork (one piece of paper) for a referral to the sleep clinic to at least rule this out before we go the ADHD route. She said that when she faxes these down to the sleep people they somehow lose them and so she wanted us to walk it down (2 buildings over and 3 floors down) and hand it to them in person. When we found the sleep clinic all the doors were shut and because it's a small city I finally decided to enter the business office.

The three women who were sitting there chatting were AGHAST that I would walk in. They spoke ANGRY INTEROFFICE language at me that sounded something like "You can't hand this to us! You have to send it by interoffice doctor transportalator facsimile machination" and each one looked up at the sky (or ceiling) like whatever it was lived above us. So maybe they meant I had to talk to God first, and when I refused and said "The doctor said to walk it down here and hand it to you" they were even more AGHAST that I would refuse to bow down and worship this thing they so feared and revered. "The doctors keep doing this to us, instead of using the interoffice doctor transportalator facsimile machination," they said to me so that I would be on their side of the interoffice schism. And maybe I was or maybe I wasn't, I didn't really care as long as the paper got to where it was going.

Then they just looked at me like I should apologize for bring this nasty piece of paper to them. I turned to the one nearest me and asked politely "I have no idea what you are talking about, but can you please get this to where it's supposed to be."

She took it from me and said that she would fax it upstairs so that it would be faxed back down to her, the way things are supposed to work in the hospital. If this order was not kept apparently the whole system would fall apart. I don't doubt that she made a paper airplane out of it and threw it down the elevator shaft after I left. And I now realize that she may have been merely following the Pathetics on the Way to Gof, in which case I commend her attempt at trying to make me feel like she was doing me a huge favor and as long as the paper made it up to God and back I'm okay with it.

The third thing that happened was what I found when looking back through the history on my laptop to find a walkthrough for LOTR for Emily that she looked at on Thursday. I haven't seen so many bizarre sites since the days of Joe and Jim in my basement. No, no, no! I wish I'd never seen those pictures. When I was a kid you had no access to these things and now all you have to do is find the five minutes when MOM has locked herself into the bathroom and type Animal Porn into google and there it is!

Can you tell that they've been home sick all week and I haven't had a break since a week ago Friday?

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

A Letter to Joe

I am angry. I am just completely wrecked and murderously angry. A while ago I made a long list of all the things I lost when I finally ran with my kids and my life. But really very little of that hurts me all that badly anymore. I don't care that you stopped paying the mortgage and I had to lose my house. I don't care that I gave away all the furniture, the swingset, the lawnmower, or all my books. Today, it doesn't matter so much that I lost most of my friends, that I became homeless, or that you continue to threaten me. It doesn't even matter that I lost the ability to eat cheesecake because of all the stress you've put me through. And I love cheesecake. Today all that matters is that you stole the last six years of my cat's life from me. It matters that I had to give him away and that because you are irresponsible and unpredictable I could never afford to rent some place where I could get him back. I wasn't there when he died. For this I will never forgive you.
I don't believe in forgiveness for things like this. Not even that old forgiveness is for yourself bullshit. There was no reason for any of this to happen. No excuse. You knew exactly what you were doing to me by making me make that choice and by keeping me running and poor. I am not sad that he died Monday night, on the full moon, as any black cat should. He was old and it was good that he died in his sleep. I am angry that I couldn't spend his last 2000 days with him, that I had to sacrifice him in order to leave you. The cost was impossibly high and my soul is forever scarred.

The Cheese Nip that Almost Joined Jesus

Gina was happily eating a bowl of cheesenips next to me last night in my big futon chair, watching Heroes. You know the kind of cheesenip with two flavors in the same box--that kind. Cheesenips are awesome, but you NEVER want to feed me any. Anyway, suddenly she opened her mouth wide in AWE and held out an orange cheesenip in front of her, to see in better in the light from the television. The light shown on the cheesenip and it glowed a powdery orange.

"MOM!" she exclaimed.

And I knew what she was thinking. She had found another crazy piece of highly processed food, created in the weird image of Jesus, or miniature like that flour tortilla, or musical like a carrot, or bumpy like the badly twisted pretzel. She had found a cheesenip that would join Jesus on the holy shelf of all things weird and not to be eaten.

I looked at it. I looked some more. I couldn't see anything weird about it, except that a corner had broken off, leaving the cheesenip as a rough triangle shape. She flipped it over and over in her hand, until she saw that the edge was indeed ragged and not accidentally shaped that way by an error of the cheesenip manufacturers.

She was SO disappointed. But I laughed and laughed and laughed and then bit the corners off more cheesenips to show her how it's done. This cheesenip would not be joining Jesus and neither would the others.

She was so offended by my laughter that she then confused herself for a cheesenip and said "But I thought that the Gina was special."

Yes the Gina is special. The cheesenip is not.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Swine Flu, the Swine-ASS, and spilling my wine

We've been struck down by the flu since Friday. One at a time they fall down, call me to pick them up at school, and spread mounds of used kleenex all over the house. They share the same thermometer in a contest to see who is the warmest. They cough day and night and race each other to the bathroom. I'm running out of toilet paper.

But that's not really the digusting thing I wanted to talk about tonight. The truly disgusting thing is that my children don't want to talk to their father and so he sent me this tonight:

I am going to assume that your phone has been cut off. I will call you at work tomorrow to set up a way I can talk to my children.

At work? Seriously? Now, this appears to be a bluff but then sometimes he really does the things he says he's going to do. Like calling my employer to tell them I'm selling crack in the parking lot. And maybe that time he said he was going to call the financial aid office at the college I was going to to tell them I had inherited money from my dead Grandmother so that they wouldn't give me grant money.

All she left me was a Rubik's Cube.

Is he really going to call a counseling center? In his demented head this forces me to
  • Do what he says, which is to force the girls to talk to him on the phone which makes me a hypocrite and a bad parent
  • Tell everyone at work all about him in case he does call
  • Live with the anxiety that at any minute he could start calling my work over and over and over and tell them I'm selling crack in the parking lot.

The problem with this twisted manipulative plan of his is that THEY ALREADY KNOW. I tell everyone I work for and with, all my friends, every school my children go to, the mailman, the street cleaner, and the guy who wears the orange vest and directs traffic at deserted intersections.

It's true that some people do believe his stories. But I don't need those people anyway. They are easily bought and suckered. I need people like the police chief in my town who listened to my ex talk about how he was moving to my town and they needed to be prepared because "something is going to happen"--and thought he was completely off the wall.

So yeah, call my place of work. I just hear MC Hammer in my head singing "Can't Touch This" which is very bizarre but so true.

Oh, and I spilled my wine on the carpet in a moment of spaz, not unlike Meg Ryan who throws the best fits in movies I have ever seen. I admire that.

Dentistophobia

Usually I don't mind going to the dentist. I end up fighting them off like used car salesmen when they try to sell me services. If I ever agreed to having my wisdom teeth removed for no reason other than preventing possible future cavities and having them taken out at some later time, I would no longer be able to spread my wisdom all over this blog. I also don't need fillings especially since they've refilled the same tooth three times already. I finally caught on to that little scam.
I was surprised to have a male hygienist this time. It feels a little personal to have a man looking in my mouth. They've looked in other places--but never there. He was a very short little man and when he stopped quickly and I tripped over him in the hall I reached out to steady him. Sorry little man for hurting you. When he put on his weird sci fi surgeon style goggles I closed my eyes so that it wouldn't seem so intimate. I thought he'd be timid and gentle, the way other male doctors and other professionals usually are. (Except that surgeon I went to, let's not forget that incident!)
And then the pain began. A half hour cleaning turned into an hour of torture. Okay, he was good. And vicious. I practiced deep breathing. I counted to ten instead of slapping his goggles right off his close little face. I wondered if he did this to children as well. I wondered if anyone ever requested him. I tried not to cry. I thought about happier times. I kept telling myself it could only last so long.
Not entirely unlike other intimate moments with men.
I now have a healthy fear of the dentist.
Thank goodness he didn't decide to become a gynecologist instead.