Mom to the Screaming Masses

Well, At Least There's Room For Improvement

Time is running out to enter to win either $100 or $150. I'm trying to give you money, peoples. Take me UP on the offer.

I don't know who is more tired - me or the kids. Back to school is doing.me.in.

Why does there seem to be so many things that could go wrong/have gone wrong/are irritating/or just plain frustrating? Is it me?

Wait. Don't answer that.

It's been two days.

Positives:

• We've all gotten up on time.
• I've made breakfast both mornings. Emma and Riley do not have snack this year, and lunch is more than 5 hours after we get up, so I've got to get a good, heavy breakfast into them. Today it was eggs (scrambled or hard boiled), yogurt and toast. Tomorrow (Wednesday) is Lean Pockets with yogurt tubes for the girls - Gabe will probably have frozen waffles with soy butter. Got any good, high protein breakfast suggestions? Lay 'em on me.
• No one has forgotten a lunch. Yet.
• Everyone has all of the supplies. I only had to run out at night and buy one more red folder, so I'm calling that a success.
• I've successfully remembered to email every teacher who requested, AND by the second day of school, I had returned every.single.signed.paper, signed Riley up for soccer, signed Mackenzie up for cross country, AND returned medical forms (in quadruplicate!) AND medications.

Negatives:

• Every person is crabby thanks to not enough sleep.
• I had to do a monster laundry folding night - up until midnight - just to get caught up. AND the baskets are STILL FULL of dirty stuff. I'm thinking about imposing a mandatory nudity day. But then we'd still have towels.
• The Tuesday/Thursday schedule has morphed into 5 hours at the martial arts place.
• My sleep schedule is gone. Gone, gone, GONE.
• And I've got to get myself organized for dinners. Picking random stuff out of the fridge at 6 p.m. isn't going to work.

So, it's a wash. BUT. Guess what's NOT a wash?

Hurricane Earl, bearing down on my town. Tomorrow will be the deciding day - do we stay here? Do we feel like we need to leave?  Will we lose power? Will we lose windows?

Will I lose my mind?

Are you on the East Coast? What are you thinking?

Sixes

I'm so tired I can't think straight. The first day of school went very well, except for the one part that didn't. BUT. Tomorrow is another day. I can't seem to think straight, and so I am once again falling victim to the dreaded "OMG, she's doing a meme AGAIN" that everyone hates. I promise to get back to some good stuff in the next day or two.

But for tonight, I'm comforted by Riley's words to me as I tucked her in: I'm not going to read tonight, because I want to go straight to sleep so that I can wake up and go to first grade again. It was so much fun! And she wrapped her arms around herself, turned over, and closed her eyes.

That's good enough for me right now.

Six Things I Could Live Without, but It Wouldn't be Pretty:

- A dishwasher

- My washing machine

- Deodorant

- Coffee

- The Internet

- my iPhone

That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

The last day of summer. The very last day of sleeping in, hanging out at the beach, swimming in the pool, and just getting ready for the first day of school.

Oh, I had such plans for Sunday.

And you know me and plans, we go WAY back. We're t-i-g-h-t.

Onions, Parfaits and People Have Layers in Common

One of the hardest things for me has to be to lose the judgmental attitude that all too often creeps into my life. I see a person and immediately form opinions, and often I find out later that, whoops! that was a really stupid move. It's something that I'm actively trying to work on, and I wonder most days if I'm getting anywhere.

The flip side of this is that I find myself judged and it infuriates me.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Oh, it's been a crazy time. Lots of changes in the works.

I've spent the past week buying notebooks, covering copybooks and workbooks in contact paper - I've found that the secret to doing this is to get my older kids to do it for the younger! - procuring the necessary scissors/glue sticks/ 4 pack of chisel point dry erase markers. I've labeled and labeled, convinced two little girls that if they switched book bags with each other it was just like getting a new one (without having to buy them), and realizing that I didn't get the summer reading journals done for a couple of my kids.

Oh, they read the books. We just never did the paperwork. Whoops. Kind of an important part.

My oldest started his college courses this week AND obtained employment. LEGAL employment - doing something that he likes. He can't decide if he wants to continue to train Ji-Jitsu.

Allegra used the money that she's been saving all summer long - babysitting as much as 50 hours a week - and bought a new-to-her-car. A 2001 Honda Accord. She's missed a full month of Muay Thai thanks to MONO and hates it.

Mackenzie decided that, because her soccer team wasn't allowed to have on on the team - she's the oldest and has to move up - she'd break with TEN YEARS of 4 times a week soccer and QUIT. I almost can't quite believe it. No soccer for her at all, although she will continue with cross country and would love, oddly enough, to take ballet again after a 5 year hiatus. Whatever will I do on Saturdays and Sundays?

Take RILEY to soccer. Oh, yeah.

And she and Emma want to take Irish Dance. Or maybe ballet. And Emma wants to drop Muay Thai, except on the days that she doesn't, and Gabriel wants to start Ji-Jitsu.

Monday is back to school. I feel like that should be in bold and in CAPITAL LETTERS. 

Bring it, baby.

We've met the teachers. We've bought the supplies. We bought a case of Horizon organic milk boxes and one of juice. We bought new Contigo no spill bottles for the lunch boxes. We've checked the uniforms. One long, grueling, tear inducing afternoon we bought 8 pairs of shoes. (I may or may not have been the one to cry.) Covered books are back in the desks, pencils are sharpened, lunch tickets packed for the first day.

And I realized, today, that I never had the clinic forms filled out. Those forms that I receive from the clinic, drop at the pediatrician's office the first week of summer vacay, and pick up the first week of August. Those forms that give other people the right to treat my food allergic kid, my migraine sufferers, and my asthmatics. THOSE very important forms were in my closet as of this morning, patiently awaiting their turn. And I have yet to fill the necessary 3 sets of epi pens, haven't filled the albuterol, have no motrin in the house.

It's little details like that that may send me to the funny farm. Oh, and today was my favorite pediatrician's last day - she's followed my girls for 15 years and she's leaving the practice.

Changes. Not just for diapers.

You Must be Kidding Me

Otherwise known as "How can we be out of that AGAIN, so soon?" BTW, have you entered to win a $150 or $100 Visa Gift Card? Interested in ice cream that's 150 calories for the ENTIRE PINT?

Milk. Toilet paper. Cheese. Stonyfield Farms Yogurt tubes.

Strangely, cheese.

We run out of those things every time I turn around. The milk, I  can kind of understand - my oldest son drinks a gallon a day. Riley would eat four yogurt tubes a day if allowed, most of them frozen. We also run out of orange juice and grape juice as soon as they arrive in the house, and bread goes in 2 days during the school year.

During the summer, I buy bread maybe once a month. We just don't eat many sandwiches when we aren't packing for school lunches.

We can keep a lot of stuff for a while, but it's gotten so that every time one of us goes to the store, we bring home a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread - and cheese of one type or another - without even checking with each other.

Because we know.

Cheese might be Babybel, string cheese, American, Colby Jack or Muenster. But we never have all four at once. It's like a law or something.

What are you always out of at your house?

What Can You Pack if You Can't Pack Peanut Butter?

I was recently asked to provide a list of peanut butter free lunches that this mother could pack for her child, who did not have food allergies but ate lunch in the classroom with peanut allergic children and, thus, was unable to pack the only meal that was acceptable to the child. Sounds fuzzy, but I think you can understand.

We first found out that Gabriel was allergic to peanuts and tree nuts when he was 18 months old. We could not figure out why he had hives much of the time, had 6 asthma attacks, and was often seen with swollen, runny eyes and a beet red face - and hands, when we went to one memorable party.

I left to buy some Benadryl.

Flats or Heels?

While at church this weekend, I observed a young girl who was wearing a pair of heels for what must have been the first time. She was in the 10-13 year old range, I think - I'm not the greatest at gauging ages, but she was young. It was clear that she had no experience in walking in heels, and while descending the steps of the altar, she fell. She wasn't hurt, just embarrassed.

I remember my first pair of heels. I used my babysitting money and bought a pair of Candie's. I can't even find them now on Zappos, but they were big in the 70's and 80's. I bought 3 or 4 inch backless stilettos - maybe not the most appropriate shoes for a 12 year old - and my mom didn't like them. She's not a wearer of heels.

Teaching Self Confidence and Excellence

I read this in a post this week over at Burgh Baby. In this excellent post, the writer was talking about her own self confidence and conceit.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I've been reflecting since I returned from Blogher how hard it is for me to accept a compliment.

I have a nasty terrible time accepting anything complimentary that is told to me. As a (bad) example, a girl I train with complimented my toenail polish. Instead of just saying, "Thank you!", I told her that one of the nails had chipped and I filled it in with what I thought was the correct color, but it was actually a different one and so now I had one renegade nail. She just looked at me and I could tell she thought, "Who is this crazy girl and why did she just go into all of that?"

I Should Never Aim to Post Something Weekly

So. Hmm. I don't think I can call this the WEEKLY Reader Book Update, since, you know, it's been more like a month since I did this. Yeah. Sorry about that.

Before we begin, I wonder - did anyone read The Hunger Games and are you ready to discuss it beginning of next week? The third (and final!) in the series comes out next week and I should have done this before then. Sorry.

It's time for the (kind of, sort of) Weekly Reader Book Update, where I tell you what I've been reading and you tell me what you've enjoyed OR hated. I should maybe do it more often, but, um, I keep forgetting. Sorry about that. If you've read any of these, tell me if you agree with my review. Have a great book you've been unable to put down this week? Lay it on me. I've linked every book to Amazon, but I don't make money off of it or anything. Just as a help to you. (If it is a help. Which maybe it isn't.)

Shut up, already, Carmen.