Spring Break: Day 2

This weather is not helping me the way that it should.  (Although maybe it’s trying to help me into napping, which is exactly what a day like this calls for, except I’d be too full of guilt to do that.  Not to mention, the urchins would never allow it.)

I have to get my house cleaned for the appraiser that’s coming on Thursday morning.

And the house is, once again, a pit.

So I’m trying to take it in sections…mopping one area, dusting, straightening…

And then Mr. Boo comes and grabs the toys which he has not touched for six months and takes them from the spot where I have stacked them and proceeds to drag them to another area of the house.  And leaves them there.

It’s really no wonder that he screams at his sister.

*****

There is really nothing that I can do to actually ‘clean’ the house.  I have to take loads and loads of stuff out for that to happen.

I just hope that this person will understand that it is winter and there are two urchins and a kitchen that is still in limbo and it’s just clutter, rather than digusting dirty stuff.

Um.  That is, if I can get all of that clenaed up by Thursday am…

*****

I was running around the house, doing this and that yesterday, so left the urchins in front of the tv for most of the day.  Damn tv.

They wanted me to do puzzles, but I was cleaning here and there and then wanted to get on the treadmill, then needed to get dinner going…The Bits is pretty good at finding stuff to do and Mr. Boo will go outside for a while here and there, but I can’t get them to go downstairs and keep themselves occupied without the tv on.

So, this morning, after catching up on my AI mindlessness, I went downstairs to tackle this puzzle with them.

Which lasted about five minutes for the Bits before she was off playing with her doll house and about eight minutes for Mr. Boo before he was trying to turn on the tv and jumping all over the furniture.

SERIOUSLY.

Which make me cranky and makes me think that two days is going to disappear awfully quickly and will I just have to be super-embarrassed when the appraiser is here, so I bust into mini-clean mode while the urchins go upstairs to watch Journey to the Center of the Earth.  (I always feel a bit less horrible if their watching a movie as opposed to ‘Total Drama Island’.)

So, now I have vacuumed the porch furniture (while they were eating lunch) and put a bunch more stuff into bags for Goodwill and am thinking that I need to get on the treadmill (even though my back hurts and I’d rather get into bed) and then maybe I’ll have another burst of energy to tackle the next thing…Which you never know what it might be.

Last night, while I was cooking rice for dinner, I went out and straightened the summer porch (where the aforementioned toy situation happened) and mopped the darned floor.

Funny, how I could probably get the entire house pretty spotless in a day If I were to spend the entire day doing it.  As it is, I’d rather spend twenty-five minutes going crazy and get one little part Done.  /shrug  Works for me.

*****

I do have to say, dear Logic, that fb is not what gives me trauma.  That would be Everything.

I can make trauma out of a trip to the park.

I love the fact that my friends keep me up-to-date on techno-stuff so that I look like a techno-wizard to my Other technologicall challenged (or just slow) friends.

However, sometimes there is just so much to keep up with that I let certain things fall by the wayside.  Kind of like reading other people’s blogs.

Which leads me to wonder (after catching up on Ms. Logic)…

Did you notice how many females are basically saying the same thing?

The fact that our mothers are becoming more awful with age?

(God knows I’m becoming more awful, but at least I realize it.  Even if I can’t seem to do anything about it.)

I know that your mom has been awful most of your life, Logic, but I’d have to say that mine Hasn’t. 

Other than the oft-mentioned me taking everything she says as criticism.

Do we, as daughters, misread these comments as criticism (as The Mom would have me think) or is it some switch as we age that we will lose the ability to see the way we say things and therefore are unable to understand how venomous (which is too strong a word, but I’m tired) it comes across to others.  How passive-agressive.  When it really Was meant as a harmless ‘comment’?  Or are we daughters so predisposed to our mothers that we take these comments too personally, no matter what the intention was?

Who is at fault?

I know that my situation is a little different and I am becoming more and more defensive because The Mom will NOT get it through her head that I do NOT want her help and there is Nothing that she can do to help and that my problems are My Own.  It is Not what she would do, were she in my shoes and even though she can clearly see what the answer is, it’s not necessarily that black and white on the inside.

This does tend to color the way that I treat many, many aspects of my life and, while I would love to spend thousands of dollars for someone to try to tweak my attitudes, I’m also stubborn enough to not believe that’s really going to work at this moment.  (see:  Stubborn)

So, yes, this makes little to no sense, because I am wandering in my comments and arguments and situations, but I found myself noticing a pattern in comments and it struck a chord as to where the problems lie as we get older.

Did our mothers face similar issues with Their mothers as they grew older?  Did they find them out of touch and royally annoying and oddly vicious as they got older?

If I can manage to to take that on some day, I might just have to breach That particular topic with The Mom and see if that can shed any light and allow me to shine the light back on The Mom in a way that maybe she can see why I treat her the way that I do.

*****

And on that note, it’s time to find out what the urchins are doing and see if I can get them to annoy the hell out of me while they wait for me to get off the treadmill so they can continue to wear out the motor.

I wonder if I can sucker them into cleaning something….

HA!

ahem

ak

The first day of Spring (cleaning) Break

I have let the urchins loose with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Windex.

With the exception of needing to go buy paper towels (as there is no concept of ‘conservation’) this is a decent trade-off that I must embrace more often, rather than worrying about waste.  It’s either clean windows or more dysfunction from the tv.

Clean wins almost every time.

*****

It is Spring Break.

I am celebrating by keeping the Bits home from school (as the car castle is in the shop due to the motor that runs the back seat window falling apart and the window itself sliding down every time the car is run…can’t wait for This bill) and have scrubbed the bathroom, dusted the living room and am selectively mopping the floors.

I have gone here before, but I would like to reiterate that, as much as I appreciate the Swiffer, it pains me to go back over the Swiffer-ed area with a regular mop to keep my slippers from sticking to the floor.  I would offer that I wish I had more carpet, except the evil rat-mutt continues to find reasons to sneak a pee into various parts of the floor where I can’t always see it.  Better ruined wood floors than carpet.

I think.

*****

I’m also doing the laundry that I couldn’t get done yesterday, only to find out that I’m almost out of detergent and the new box of detergent is…

in the car castle.

Fricken-fracken.

The Ba has taken to muttering about the state of the laundry and has decided to again do his part to show me how it’s done…

By doing his own laundry.

Gee!  Wow!

That is Such a help!

He’s also somewhat beginning to take over the sheets and such, except we continue to fight about just how much one can put in a front-loading washer.

He doesn’t think he can put all the sheets in there.

He thinks his own shirts and underwear is one load.

Granted, there is a happy medium between me shoving all the sheets and possibly the bedspread in there, but I’ll take less loads any day.

I really, really, REALLY need to be single.  (Possibly with no kids, but then who would clean the windows?)

*****

I also have aspirations to do a major toy clean-out this week.

Problem #85,892 is that I have this intense desire to attempt to get some form of cash for them.  (And the clothes and strollers that have been cluttering up the basement for, um, over two years now?  ahem.)

But deep down, the thought of another garage sale attempt and making a whopping $25 for setting everything up makes me just want to load it all up and get it to Goodwill, Pronto.

Dagnabbit.

*****

Now it’s on to Facebook.

I read an entertaining, yet totally predictable, article about Facebook recently.  Saying that ‘we’ (yes…the eight or so of you who still manage to read here are about my age and therefore, you are also part of ‘we’) have taken over Facebook from the youngsters and therefore they are running over to Twitter.  (Funny.  Logic is the one who got all of us going on Twitter last year and is the one who informed me that we needed to take Facebook back from the kids.  She’s just so crazy-cutting-edge!) 

Yes.

I have caught up with tons of high school friends but am suddenly running into that old ‘high school’ dilemma.

I had a girl friend me who I never really liked in high school and she was part of the popular crowd and I don’t remember even really being her friend, other than she was a cheerleader and I was a pom-pon girl in junior high.  And she sent me a friend request.  And it was the weirdest thing and I really didn’t know what to do about it.  Because, Really?

So, I ended up friending her anyway, so as not to be rude.

There are now four friend requests sitting in my inbox.

One is The Mom.  Leftover from November (or so).  And I still can’t bring myself to friend her, because I am in no mood for the ‘you can make little updates in fb all day long, but you can’t pick up the phone to call me or send me an email or blahblahblahblahblah.

I’m a horrible child.  But, Honestly.  I Know how it will go.

#2 is a guy from college who had a crush on me and was not exactly the most normal person and one of those who you were nice to, (so as not to be rude), but you could tell he had a crush on you and there was no way that you were ever going that route, and really wouldn’t be a ‘friend’ either.  You just bumped into each other on a small college campus and were polite.  I haven’t hit ‘ignore’ yet (because there’s a part of me that thinks that is rude, too.) but I really don’t see why I would be his friend ‘here’ when I don’t want to be in the real world.

#3 is a girl from junior high who was one of those fringe friends.  We fought a lot and I don’t know that I really liked her all the much because she was as much of a know-it-all as I was (but possibly moreso) and we kind of hung out because there weren’t that many other people that were in our area.  She crawled out of the woodwork and friended me and I will more than likely friend her, if for no other reason than to see what she is up to.  Which I guess is what fb is all about anyway.

#4 is someone that I don’t recognize.  A bunch of my friend have friended him and the name is remotely familiar, but I’m going to have to go get a yearbook, because his picture is doing nothing for me.

I’m somewhat entertained by the likes of Show Host  (who has yet another person on her fb page that she’s talking to about the tv job…/snort…I think it may be time to just give up on that one) who basically friends everyone who asks.  She has like 400+ friends and the downside to being someone in the ‘public eye’ is that suddenly you have to monitor what you are doing and saying, because it’s one thing to do crazy or stupid stuff to friends from your past and quite another to let complete strangers into your ‘life’.  I don’t want any of that, thankyouverymuch.

There are also a number of people that I see out there as ‘friends of friends’ who I would love to find out ‘what happened to you’, however, there’s that pathetic junior high part of me that never died that Doesn’t want to be that person that someone else is thinking (or writing) about saying, “I never really liked her anyway, why is she friending me thirty years later?”

And so, I will sit back and wait and see if these people ever get motivated to friend Me and think more about those of us who have embraced the web and those that jumped on board fb but are never on and never update.  You all know that there are very much those two categories of folks out there.

Anyone else have these kind of issues with fb?  Anyone else willing to share so that I don’t have to continue to have these feelings of inadequacy (that I manage to beat down much more easily than when I was in junior high)?

I know have to decide how much more cleaning to do and when to force my butt onto the treadmill.  Because I Will be running the Firecracker Fun Run on July 4th, but if I don’t get myself going, I will be walking most of it and will never even come close to that one hour mark.

rah.

ak

Does it need a title today?

Here it is, all Friday and everything.

And my normal light workday is somewhat hampered by the number of people who are here working when they’re not supposed to be.  How am I supposed to lightly work if you’re here, imposing on my light workday???

I have survived the Bits’s 5th birthday party (and birthday), the eleven day visit by The Mom, the visit by The Mom’s family from South Dakota and…what else?

I think that was plenty.

The Bitsy made a ridiculously fabulous haul from the bowling birthday party (and did a very nice job of remembering her thank you’s) and it made such an impression that she ‘played’ birthday party all over again on Tuesday…complete withputting her gifts back into gift bags and opening them with the requisite look of ‘delight and surprise’ and subsequent Pose for pictures.  Houston?  We May have a problem.

The birthDaywas very good, with enough clothes for six girls from The Mom and a neat little dinner at the Bits’s favorite restaurant.  The one that serves her very most favoritist’pop-ups’ (popovers) complete with maple nut butter.  And for dessert?

The thing I have been craving ever since:  A popover, filled with ice cream, covered with whipped cream, chocolate and caramel sauces.

Seriously.  I don’t think it’s on the menu, but the next time I am there, I’m going szechuan green beans (to make myself Think I’m eating healthy) and that darned dessert.

YUM.

*****

My next dilemma is the summer situation.

I have put in notice that the Bits will be leaving her dayschoolto join Mr. Boo at the elementary school program and have them both signed up for that.

Then, there are about a hundred billion summer programs/camps to sign them up for.  (Each for an additional billion dollars in additiona to the basic fee.)

I let folks know that I would sign the urchins up for a number of programs to coincide with their children’s signing up but have now found that some of the programs don’t make sense and some of them overlap, so why would I pay double when they can only attend one or two sessions.

Fricken-fracken.

Throw in the fact that I was hoping to be able to do a somewhat variable schedule, only to find that, no, you Do have to have a set schedule (and can I add additional days on certain weeks???) and can then ‘modify’ that prior for a mere $10 change fee.

Good God.  It’s MARCH.

I have no idea what’s going on come April 1, let alone being able to plan the entire summer schedule for TWO.

This parenting thing is Whack.

But I may have mentioned that before.

*****

Mr. Boo had his testing for the high performance program.  Got the memo stating that he had had his testing and we should talk to him about it.

Um.  Yeah.

Got Nothing.  (And from listening to him, it sounds like his whole class is being tested, which just doesn’t seem to make sense to me.  So, no confidence being placed on information from that child’s mouth.)

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if he makes the cut.  I personally feel he’s on the cusp, but the inner-I want an overachiever! in me is hoping that he’s in like Flynn.

We’ll see…

*****

Still no word on the tv thing. 

I was perusing the Facebookpage of Show Host and found a post from the former buyer-turned employee of ours who went on the air there who was suddenly going for the same job.  /snort  Which prompted me to fire off a phone call and a flurry of emails to the woman I interviewed with And Show Host to do some stealth digginon the position (without letting her know that I wanted to know how the hell Nashville Woman [is that what I called her?] had even found out about the job) and basically got a whole lot of nothing.  The audition tape is in the hands of merchandising (which means that it may be in the hands of a very evil former co-worker from the Hut…so evil that you cannot for the life of you ever read how she is going to deal withyou, so I’m now in a quandary as to whether to go out and try to beg her for a chance or just let it be and see if she’s even had it pass her desk) and it can be a long process (and Show Host came back with nothing about Nashville Woman, dagnabbit) and so I’m going to start touching base every two weeks and hope that somewhere along the way something falls into place.

It was fun getting all freaked out about it for a week or two, I suppose.  And for the moment, I can still let my hair and nails go and not focus on the bags and wrinkles and yellow teeth, which I wonder will effect my chances of getting this job.

Eh.

*****

I’m sure there is more, but I’m just happy to finally get some form of post up.

I miss the writing, but can’t seem to use that as motivation to actually Do It.

Go figure.

ak

Your weekly excuse

This week’s excuse for not updating is courtesy of a new job on the horizon.

Thanks to Suzanne and her eagle eyes and an inside track from Host-friend (what did I call her??), I had an audition for either an on-air host or guest host position at the local shopping network. 

Suzanne informed me two weeks ago that there was an ad in the paper, as well as on that monster site for a guest-host.  So, before I could really think about it, I fired off an email to Host-friend who asked, “What do you want me to do?”  I began fretting about head shots and the like until she forwarded an email from the Head of Hosts saying, “Have her send her info to me.”  And before I had time to worry about it, I said screw it and forwarded the head shot from four years ago that was on the site, told her I didn’t have a dvd of my work as this is not my career and left a message on her voicemail.

The next thing I know, I was stopping the Bits from answering my cell phone and setting up a hair appointment, a nail appointment and going insane over how I was going to get my make-up done before the Thursday audition.

Suffice it to say, I did the make-up myself and hoped it would be ok and have been waffling between quitting my job to make a ridiculous amount of money for a few hours of work a day and preparing myself for the, “Thanks for coming in” response.

It was fun to be there and I think I did an ok job, although I’m still not sure what I’m auditioning for.  Apparently, there may actually be host positions available, however, I think it’s more likely that they are looking for someone to do what I’ve done in the past and take a specific line on the air.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out and how things will go if I have to tell tptb, as there are only about five people in the office that don’t know that I’m doing this.  I figure why rock the boat until I know what the situation is.

So, I continue to plan my future of shopping and getting my hair and nails done (thereby spending any form of additional income I am hoping to make) and babbling incessantly about Stuff and wondering whether I’ll cave and get Botox and also wonder if this will be the final answer to “Am I really as good at this as I think I am, that I think I can actually Do This?” and will find out that the people that actually Count–the ones who do the hiring–think Not and I can finally let my little pipe dreams fade slowly off into the sunset.

/shrug.

At least I know that I did something about it.  I got my chance.

And if it doesn’t work out, then I have lost nothing.

*****

The Bitsy is Insane about her upcoming birthday.

I have tomorrow as my RSVP-by date.  We sent out twenty invitiations.

I have heard from nine.

I’m not the best RSVP-er either, but Sheesh. 

Thank goodness, the bowling alley doesn’t even care how many actually show up as long as I originally gave them a count of 25, max.

But the Bits is counting her presents and talking about what she will be getting and we ordered the cake yesterday and she is going to Explode.

I wonder if she’ll end up like Mr. Boo, who threw up the morning of his first bithday party (first real party at age 5, that is), but it really was nerves rather than being sick.  It was bizarre-yet-funny.

So, this week, we have the arrival of The Mom, the Soccer Mom Monthly get-together, the Ba’s birthday, the Bitsy’s party, tennis and baseball for Mr. Boo.

I feel like I’m supposed to be doing something, but can’t seem to figure out what it is.  Other than cleaning the house which, as you can tell, I am vehemently ignoring.

Maybe I can do what I did on Friday and put Mr. Boo on task as a way to keep him in his room as punishment for being a brat and the next thing I know, he has cleaned, vacuumed and is on a rampage in my room and the couch in the living room.

I love negative energy that ends up in massive cleaning.

I know better than to expect that much more than twice more before he goes off to college.

*****

I suppose that I should attempt to get something done today, other than the pre-requisite laundry (in work) and dishes (done!!!).

Fully expect me to be sitting here catching up on AI gossip until it’s time for swimming lessons.

But it sounds like I’m mildly motivated, doesn’t it?

rah.

ak