Everyone has that one stoner friend. You know the one- he's well into his 30s by this point, but still gets high daily. That guy.
My stoner friend and I were pretty close friends back in our teens, but as we've come into adulthood, we've sort of drifted apart. Part of it has to do with the fact that he moved out to the West Coast several years go, but besides that, I have two fucking children and don't usually have time to listen to a grown man ramble excitedly for hours at a time about pot legalization. Sure, after all these years, I still consider him a friend, but now he's that friend. That friend who never really grew up. That friend who decides to up and move to California on a whim and inexplicably live in a van for a year. That friend you only hear from once in a great while.
It had been a few years since I'd spoken to him. Between the 3 hour time difference, my busy schedule, and his penchant for sleeping until noon, there just haven't been many opportunities to chat and catch up, so I was surprised on Wednesday to see his name pop up on my phone. Naturally I was curious as to what was going on with him that merited an outright phone call after almost 3 years of barely a text.
First, he informed me, there was good news! He would be interviewing for a job back home, so he may be moving back East. But, he warned me ominously, that wasn't the real reason for his call. He needed to talk to me about what had happened and he knew I was the only one who would believe him:
Stoner Friend: I had a dream last night that a bunch of people were possessed by demons.
Me: Ok... I mean... was I one of them? I don't really understand what you're getting at here.
SF: No, no. It wasn't you. But, like, they were chasing me man. And then one of them grabbed my leg and then EVERYTHING WENT BLACK.
Me: Alright. Well I'm sure that was kinda creepy. Still not sure why you needed to talk to me about it though.
SF: Because I think there was something in my room. A demon. I've never felt evil like that before. It jarred me awake and my leg was hurting where the demon grabbed me and I was really scared and I couldn't go back to sleep. I knew you would believe me. I'm kinda scared to go home.
I entertained this conversation for a while and tried to talk him down. I definitely asked if he was high when he had this dream (he swears he was not), but otherwise, I think I was a pretty good friend about not being condescending to him. I even listened when he went off on a 10 minute tangent about a Star Wars theory he heard recently and kept insisting that I "YouTube it" even though I'd made it clear that I barely give enough of a fuck about Star Wars to even listen to him talk about. After that I had to get going and pick up my kids. Then shit got REALLY weird in text messages:
SF: Maybe it has something to do with the random sword I found by a dumpster recently. I thought it was cool and wondered why anyone would leave a real sword out by a dumpster. I plan to bring it back to the dumpster from whence it came when I get a chance (you guys, I swear. This is the VERBATIM text message I got from him, along with a picture of the aforementioned sword).
Me: Well, haunted demon sword certainly makes for an interesting story if people ask why you're leaving California.
SF: I just thought of something else. I had pretty bad gas yesterday and in the dream the demon told me "IT SMELLS BAD. YOU SMELL BAD".
You guys. It's ridiculous enough that this 34-year-old man found a sword propped up against a dumpster and thought "SCORE" and took that shit home. That, of itself, would be enough of a reason to question this man's rational thinking skills. Like if you, a grown adult with a normal home and possibly a kid or two, went into your friend's house- not even in the context of having a priest who is well-versed in exorcisms in tow- and he told you "let me show you this bad ass sword I found by a dumpster the other day", you would be reevaluating that friendship right there on the spot.
This isn't just a 34-year-old man who brought home a dumpster sword, though. This is a 34-year-old man who brought home a dumpster sword and became almost immediately convinced that it was not only possessed by a demon, but that he managed to anger that demon with his rancid farts. Apparently, much in the way you would release a genie from a lamp by rubbing it, you release a demon from whatever dumpster object it's chosen to possess by farting near it.
That, my friends, is your brain on drugs.
Showing posts with label blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol. Show all posts
Friday, November 20, 2015
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
My Vagina Shriveled Up and Died Yesterday. You Know, Probably.
You know that saying about things "getting better with age"? You know, like wine and cheese and Angus fucking beef? In case you are in your early 20s and you actually believe that shit, let me assure you that it is a lie.
I turned 30 yesterday. Remember when birthdays were something you looked forward to? Your special day. Let's break down birthdays, shall we?
Ages 1-4: You had very little say in these birthdays, and you probably don't even remember them, but let me assure you that they were awesome. Your parents went overboard. There were maybe a dozen people you actually gave a shit about, and the novelty of your birthday had not yet worn off for them, so they always showed up. With awesome presents (because, really, what ISN'T awesome when you are 3? Nothing. There is nothing you wouldn't play with. Your guests could show up with 2 pens in a cardboard box and you would have thought that was the greatest gift ever and spent hours playing with your 2 pens). And there were balloons. And cake. Yeah. These birthdays were pretty fucking sweet.
Ages 5-9: At this point, you probably had a favorite something. TV show, cartoon character, whatever. And so your parents would buy paper plates and cups featuring your favorite thing and bags of shitty little plastic toys because it is easy as fuck to make a 7 year old happy. You would have a little party in your house or backyard and everyone would sing Happy Birthday. Then you would eat your body weight in cake and ice cream and drink a gallon of soda. Because you were the birthday girl and no one was going to tell you that you couldn't. And that was just the weekend celebration. A few days before or a few days after, your mom would bring cupcakes and Capri Sun to your school so EVERYONE would know it was your birthday. Cupcakes and Capri Sun are the shit.
Ages 10-13: You probably didn't get cupcakes and Capri Sun days at school anymore, but you still got a party of your choosing. Instead of cake and balloons with family and friends, you invited a few of your school friends over for a "cool" party. It was probably a slumber party. And even though you had that one friend with the overbearing mom who wouldn't let her sleep over your house even though you knew her for half her life, it was still fun. You would play games and dance and do each other's makeup. Slumber parties were awesome.
Ages 14-17: You officially thought you were "too cool/old" for birthday parties. You insisted that no one throw a party for you, even though you secretly hoped they would. And really, you knew they would never actually not throw a party for you. Even if it was just your immediate family with cake and presents, they still made a big enough deal to make you feel special. Even the "too cool" years were fun!
Age 18: You could now buy porn and cigarettes. Which is okay, I guess, but you probably waxed aloud at least once about the fact that your friends should have taken you on a road trip to Canada where you could now legally drink. Since no one was actually going to take you to Canada, you instead took your first trip to the "porn store", where they surprisingly never asked for your ID even after you and your friends spent way too much time giggling. This is also the day that you learned that fisting is actually a thing that people want to happen to them. Enough people that the porn store has a giant fist dildo that must have been in great enough demand that they actually carry such a thing. Fisting. Your 18th birthday is primarily about Canada and fisting.
Ages 19-20: You wish you were 21 already. Maybe you go to an 18-and-over club because you are not yet old enough to realize how utterly awful they are. 18-and-over clubs are like the fisting of your 19th and 20th birthdays. If you learned your lesson at 19, maybe you got your friend's boyfriend with the beard to make a run to the shady liquor store that everyone (except the cops, apparently) knew would sell to you even if you were underage for your 20th birthday. Ill-gotten booze makes your 20th birthday a triumph. A drunken, maybe-someone-will-puke-in-your-house TRIUMPH.
Age 21: YOU ARE OLD ENOUGH TO DRINK NOW. GO TO A BAR. Oh, by the way, bars are expensive. And more than likely, only about half your friends are actually old enough to go with you. The other half are too broke to go. Remember how your 20th birthday was a triumph? Try to recreate that with a house party. Except now YOU can make the liquor run. 21st birthday? SUCCESS. Maybe not what you expected, but a success none the less.
Age 22-24: Keep trying to plan that bar birthday you were hoping for when you turned 21. All your friends are old enough now, but they are all still too broke to pay $8 a pop for drinks. House party? HOUSE PARTY. Several drinks in, every year, without fail, you will realize you do not have any more fun birthdays on the horizon. You are slowly coasting towards 30, aka, the end of your youth. You will cry about this at least one of these years. The other 2 will be awesome.
Age 25: You realize you are now closer to 30 than 20. Fuck. Your friends could probably afford to go out drinking now, but you don't even want to. You remember the 18-and-over club from your 19th birthday and how shitty it was and how much younger everyone was then. You definitely will not be going to a club. Maybe a bar? I don't know... doesn't it seem like clubs are something young people do and bars are something old people do? I guess you are old now. You will probably end up at Applebees with your best friend, drinking watered down sugary drinks and eating half-priced appetizers. This is the absolute LAST year that this is acceptable.
Ages 26-29: You no longer want to celebrate your birthday at all. You still want presents though. You realize that your mom is the only person who has even thought to give you a present in the last 8 years or so, because everyone else was just pooling their money for alcohol. Now you would like some presents, thank you very much. But maybe give them to me some other day? For some other occasion? You know what? Just forget the presents. No need to mark how close I'm getting to 30.
Age 30: Plan something fun/awesome. You have money to do things now and everyone you know insists on commemorating the slaughter of your youth. Eagerly anticipate fun/awesome, right up until a week or so before your birthday. The thoughts of fun/awesome are then clouded over by the thoughts of what am I doing with my life/IS THAT A FUCKING WRINKLE???? Cry daily. Make major life changes/have third-life crisis (yes. Third. I refuse to call it a mid-life crisis. Fuck that. Mid NOTHING).
I can't say my actual birthday was terribly shitty. I mean, I had to work. Because that's another thing about those 18-25 birthdays (especially summer birthdays like mine): You and your friends will ditch work to do fun shit. But I'm fucking 30 now, and so are most of my friends. Bitch got bills to pay and a kid to diaper. No one was ditching work to dick around all afternoon. But after work, Rodolfo took me to dinner and got me a cake (yeah... it IS kinda weird to have a birthday dinner with my estranged husband. I know.). He also got me a really nice present (because only being nice to your wife after she decides to leave you is not weird at all, apparently). And I guess I only cried a little bit. Next weekend, Nadine is taking me out drinking. To a bar. Like proper adults/old people. Because sometimes you have to push your birthday weekend back a bit because of conflicting plans. That is just what grown-ups do.
Anyway. So here I am. 30. Ick. But I survived it.
I turned 30 yesterday. Remember when birthdays were something you looked forward to? Your special day. Let's break down birthdays, shall we?
Ages 1-4: You had very little say in these birthdays, and you probably don't even remember them, but let me assure you that they were awesome. Your parents went overboard. There were maybe a dozen people you actually gave a shit about, and the novelty of your birthday had not yet worn off for them, so they always showed up. With awesome presents (because, really, what ISN'T awesome when you are 3? Nothing. There is nothing you wouldn't play with. Your guests could show up with 2 pens in a cardboard box and you would have thought that was the greatest gift ever and spent hours playing with your 2 pens). And there were balloons. And cake. Yeah. These birthdays were pretty fucking sweet.
Ages 5-9: At this point, you probably had a favorite something. TV show, cartoon character, whatever. And so your parents would buy paper plates and cups featuring your favorite thing and bags of shitty little plastic toys because it is easy as fuck to make a 7 year old happy. You would have a little party in your house or backyard and everyone would sing Happy Birthday. Then you would eat your body weight in cake and ice cream and drink a gallon of soda. Because you were the birthday girl and no one was going to tell you that you couldn't. And that was just the weekend celebration. A few days before or a few days after, your mom would bring cupcakes and Capri Sun to your school so EVERYONE would know it was your birthday. Cupcakes and Capri Sun are the shit.
Ages 10-13: You probably didn't get cupcakes and Capri Sun days at school anymore, but you still got a party of your choosing. Instead of cake and balloons with family and friends, you invited a few of your school friends over for a "cool" party. It was probably a slumber party. And even though you had that one friend with the overbearing mom who wouldn't let her sleep over your house even though you knew her for half her life, it was still fun. You would play games and dance and do each other's makeup. Slumber parties were awesome.
Ages 14-17: You officially thought you were "too cool/old" for birthday parties. You insisted that no one throw a party for you, even though you secretly hoped they would. And really, you knew they would never actually not throw a party for you. Even if it was just your immediate family with cake and presents, they still made a big enough deal to make you feel special. Even the "too cool" years were fun!
Age 18: You could now buy porn and cigarettes. Which is okay, I guess, but you probably waxed aloud at least once about the fact that your friends should have taken you on a road trip to Canada where you could now legally drink. Since no one was actually going to take you to Canada, you instead took your first trip to the "porn store", where they surprisingly never asked for your ID even after you and your friends spent way too much time giggling. This is also the day that you learned that fisting is actually a thing that people want to happen to them. Enough people that the porn store has a giant fist dildo that must have been in great enough demand that they actually carry such a thing. Fisting. Your 18th birthday is primarily about Canada and fisting.
Ages 19-20: You wish you were 21 already. Maybe you go to an 18-and-over club because you are not yet old enough to realize how utterly awful they are. 18-and-over clubs are like the fisting of your 19th and 20th birthdays. If you learned your lesson at 19, maybe you got your friend's boyfriend with the beard to make a run to the shady liquor store that everyone (except the cops, apparently) knew would sell to you even if you were underage for your 20th birthday. Ill-gotten booze makes your 20th birthday a triumph. A drunken, maybe-someone-will-puke-in-your-house TRIUMPH.
Age 21: YOU ARE OLD ENOUGH TO DRINK NOW. GO TO A BAR. Oh, by the way, bars are expensive. And more than likely, only about half your friends are actually old enough to go with you. The other half are too broke to go. Remember how your 20th birthday was a triumph? Try to recreate that with a house party. Except now YOU can make the liquor run. 21st birthday? SUCCESS. Maybe not what you expected, but a success none the less.
Age 22-24: Keep trying to plan that bar birthday you were hoping for when you turned 21. All your friends are old enough now, but they are all still too broke to pay $8 a pop for drinks. House party? HOUSE PARTY. Several drinks in, every year, without fail, you will realize you do not have any more fun birthdays on the horizon. You are slowly coasting towards 30, aka, the end of your youth. You will cry about this at least one of these years. The other 2 will be awesome.
Age 25: You realize you are now closer to 30 than 20. Fuck. Your friends could probably afford to go out drinking now, but you don't even want to. You remember the 18-and-over club from your 19th birthday and how shitty it was and how much younger everyone was then. You definitely will not be going to a club. Maybe a bar? I don't know... doesn't it seem like clubs are something young people do and bars are something old people do? I guess you are old now. You will probably end up at Applebees with your best friend, drinking watered down sugary drinks and eating half-priced appetizers. This is the absolute LAST year that this is acceptable.
Ages 26-29: You no longer want to celebrate your birthday at all. You still want presents though. You realize that your mom is the only person who has even thought to give you a present in the last 8 years or so, because everyone else was just pooling their money for alcohol. Now you would like some presents, thank you very much. But maybe give them to me some other day? For some other occasion? You know what? Just forget the presents. No need to mark how close I'm getting to 30.
Age 30: Plan something fun/awesome. You have money to do things now and everyone you know insists on commemorating the slaughter of your youth. Eagerly anticipate fun/awesome, right up until a week or so before your birthday. The thoughts of fun/awesome are then clouded over by the thoughts of what am I doing with my life/IS THAT A FUCKING WRINKLE???? Cry daily. Make major life changes/have third-life crisis (yes. Third. I refuse to call it a mid-life crisis. Fuck that. Mid NOTHING).
I can't say my actual birthday was terribly shitty. I mean, I had to work. Because that's another thing about those 18-25 birthdays (especially summer birthdays like mine): You and your friends will ditch work to do fun shit. But I'm fucking 30 now, and so are most of my friends. Bitch got bills to pay and a kid to diaper. No one was ditching work to dick around all afternoon. But after work, Rodolfo took me to dinner and got me a cake (yeah... it IS kinda weird to have a birthday dinner with my estranged husband. I know.). He also got me a really nice present (because only being nice to your wife after she decides to leave you is not weird at all, apparently). And I guess I only cried a little bit. Next weekend, Nadine is taking me out drinking. To a bar. Like proper adults/old people. Because sometimes you have to push your birthday weekend back a bit because of conflicting plans. That is just what grown-ups do.
Anyway. So here I am. 30. Ick. But I survived it.
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Monday, April 23, 2012
Back From the Brink
Did you miss me? Oh wait, what's that? You didn't even notice I was gone? (I'm discounting you, Ninja, since you are the best stalker ever). Well, I WAS gone. Very gone. Very, very gone, in fact.
I was in the mountains at a bad ass cabin with an indoor pool and hot tub. You know, because I'm fucking fancy. But you know what they take away when they give you a hot tub? CELL PHONE RECEPTION. And Wifi. I think we all had a mini panic attack when we realized we wouldn't be able to check Facebook for 5 whole days. You know what I realized though? I needed to not check Facebook for 5 days. I needed it so hard.
As for the actual vacation, I had the best time ever. I relaxed. I napped. I hot-tubbed. I got drunk every single night (though, I'm kind of ashamed to admit that my tolerance for alcohol is practically non-existent at this point. When I say I got drunk, I mean I had 2-3 drinks every night). One of the most enjoyable things for me was not to be overscheduled. I'm usually that asshole on vacation who has every minute of every day planned down to the potty breaks. I could blame Caitlyn, because having a toddler does make it kind of necessary to plan poop breaks, but we've only really been on one vacation with her. I guess I'm just a planner when it comes to relaxation. Because everyone knows that (despite my usual tendency to be late for EVERYTHING) being a militant asshole if anyone (RODOLFO) throws off my plans, is the one true path to relaxation and enjoyment.
Anyway. There were a few activities. We went horseback riding. We visited some local caverns and took pictures of particularly phallic stalagmites. We swept up dead bugs (and really. That was an activity. There were so many dead bugs. And live bugs, for that matter. All the bugs. All of them). Mostly though, we hung out and drank and read books and ate barbecue.
I think I mentioned it in another post, but for the record, this was a vacation I took with a group of my friends. My husband and child stayed home. I bring it up now because I had a pretty shitty revelation on my way home. As I mentioned before, there was no cell phone reception at all. None. There was, however, a house phone. I could not even get a text out to Rodolfo because I have pauper phone company, T-Mobile. Nadine, however, has Verizon so I could at least send him a text with the house number to have him call me.
He did not call me. Well, that's not exactly true. He called me the first night. Then I received daily calls from our babysitter (who I later found out he questioned every day to be sure I didn't call her, because he was convinced I was lying about not having reception). On our way back home, I figured I'd call him when we stopped for lunch, but he called me before I had a chance and was pissed that I was within cell phone range and didn't immediately call him, despite his ignoring me for 4 days.
So that's when I realized it. The thing I needed a vacation from the most. It wasn't Caitlyn or MS or house hunting or even work. It's him. He is the number one stress factor in my life. So I don't know (I also don't know how this post went from "fun vacation stuff" to "maybe my marriage sucks"). That's it I guess. Not really sure where to go from here.
I was in the mountains at a bad ass cabin with an indoor pool and hot tub. You know, because I'm fucking fancy. But you know what they take away when they give you a hot tub? CELL PHONE RECEPTION. And Wifi. I think we all had a mini panic attack when we realized we wouldn't be able to check Facebook for 5 whole days. You know what I realized though? I needed to not check Facebook for 5 days. I needed it so hard.
As for the actual vacation, I had the best time ever. I relaxed. I napped. I hot-tubbed. I got drunk every single night (though, I'm kind of ashamed to admit that my tolerance for alcohol is practically non-existent at this point. When I say I got drunk, I mean I had 2-3 drinks every night). One of the most enjoyable things for me was not to be overscheduled. I'm usually that asshole on vacation who has every minute of every day planned down to the potty breaks. I could blame Caitlyn, because having a toddler does make it kind of necessary to plan poop breaks, but we've only really been on one vacation with her. I guess I'm just a planner when it comes to relaxation. Because everyone knows that (despite my usual tendency to be late for EVERYTHING) being a militant asshole if anyone (RODOLFO) throws off my plans, is the one true path to relaxation and enjoyment.
Anyway. There were a few activities. We went horseback riding. We visited some local caverns and took pictures of particularly phallic stalagmites. We swept up dead bugs (and really. That was an activity. There were so many dead bugs. And live bugs, for that matter. All the bugs. All of them). Mostly though, we hung out and drank and read books and ate barbecue.
I think I mentioned it in another post, but for the record, this was a vacation I took with a group of my friends. My husband and child stayed home. I bring it up now because I had a pretty shitty revelation on my way home. As I mentioned before, there was no cell phone reception at all. None. There was, however, a house phone. I could not even get a text out to Rodolfo because I have pauper phone company, T-Mobile. Nadine, however, has Verizon so I could at least send him a text with the house number to have him call me.
He did not call me. Well, that's not exactly true. He called me the first night. Then I received daily calls from our babysitter (who I later found out he questioned every day to be sure I didn't call her, because he was convinced I was lying about not having reception). On our way back home, I figured I'd call him when we stopped for lunch, but he called me before I had a chance and was pissed that I was within cell phone range and didn't immediately call him, despite his ignoring me for 4 days.
So that's when I realized it. The thing I needed a vacation from the most. It wasn't Caitlyn or MS or house hunting or even work. It's him. He is the number one stress factor in my life. So I don't know (I also don't know how this post went from "fun vacation stuff" to "maybe my marriage sucks"). That's it I guess. Not really sure where to go from here.
Monday, April 9, 2012
I'm Going to Whine About Being Tired. You're Welcome.
I'm sure I've mentioned my upcoming vacation. T-minus 6 days, motherfuckers.
The thing about this vacation is that my husband and child are staying home. This is the "say goodbye to my 20s" vacation where I spend the week getting hammered with my friends.
Do you want to hear something pathetic, though? The things I'm looking forward to the most are things like sleeping in and reading books and shitting and showering in solitude. Because I haven't shit or showered in solitude since Caitlyn started walking. I'm looking forward to shaving my legs too, because, if I'm being honest, I shave my legs maybe once every 3 weeks now. I just don't have time to do it more than that, and anyone who knows me realizes that is long enough for me to look like a bear. Summer is coming, you guys, and my legs are unprepared.
I feel so old. A few years ago I would have been seriously looking forward to spending a lot of time really, really drunk. And I am looking forward to that. But, honestly, I'm more looking forward to being able to read more than one page of a book per day.
The point I think I'm trying to make here, is that I am burnt the fuck out. BURNT. OUT. I can usually handle the trials of being a parent, but all the shit that has been recently heaped on top of that has me basically crawling through this week like I'm in a desert and vacation is an oasis. I'm completely and utterly exhausted. Run down.
House hunting is killing me. And it's not just the physical part- not just the running around after work and every weekend, looking at houses that are inevitably NOT the house. It's the mental part too. The part where I feel like we won't ever find a house. The part where I fall desperately in love with a place only to find out there is some bank related issue that will make it nearly impossible for us to buy it. The part where I want to give up and live in my shitty one bedroom apartment forever.
The other thing that's been getting to me is the amount of time and effort it has taken me to coordinate the delivery of the medication I'll be starting after vacation. I swear it's taken no less than a dozen phone calls to get this shit to my house. And it's kind of bullshit to put that much effort into something you are dreading.
Oh. And did I mention that Caitlyn's birthday is in less than a month and I've done literally nothing to prepare for it? Literally nothing. Awesome.
So I dunno. That's it. I guess this vacation could not have been timed more perfectly. Ideally, I'll get home showered, shaved, and well-rested, and my husband will tell me he found us the perfect house.
The thing about this vacation is that my husband and child are staying home. This is the "say goodbye to my 20s" vacation where I spend the week getting hammered with my friends.
Do you want to hear something pathetic, though? The things I'm looking forward to the most are things like sleeping in and reading books and shitting and showering in solitude. Because I haven't shit or showered in solitude since Caitlyn started walking. I'm looking forward to shaving my legs too, because, if I'm being honest, I shave my legs maybe once every 3 weeks now. I just don't have time to do it more than that, and anyone who knows me realizes that is long enough for me to look like a bear. Summer is coming, you guys, and my legs are unprepared.
I feel so old. A few years ago I would have been seriously looking forward to spending a lot of time really, really drunk. And I am looking forward to that. But, honestly, I'm more looking forward to being able to read more than one page of a book per day.
The point I think I'm trying to make here, is that I am burnt the fuck out. BURNT. OUT. I can usually handle the trials of being a parent, but all the shit that has been recently heaped on top of that has me basically crawling through this week like I'm in a desert and vacation is an oasis. I'm completely and utterly exhausted. Run down.
House hunting is killing me. And it's not just the physical part- not just the running around after work and every weekend, looking at houses that are inevitably NOT the house. It's the mental part too. The part where I feel like we won't ever find a house. The part where I fall desperately in love with a place only to find out there is some bank related issue that will make it nearly impossible for us to buy it. The part where I want to give up and live in my shitty one bedroom apartment forever.
The other thing that's been getting to me is the amount of time and effort it has taken me to coordinate the delivery of the medication I'll be starting after vacation. I swear it's taken no less than a dozen phone calls to get this shit to my house. And it's kind of bullshit to put that much effort into something you are dreading.
Oh. And did I mention that Caitlyn's birthday is in less than a month and I've done literally nothing to prepare for it? Literally nothing. Awesome.
So I dunno. That's it. I guess this vacation could not have been timed more perfectly. Ideally, I'll get home showered, shaved, and well-rested, and my husband will tell me he found us the perfect house.
Monday, April 2, 2012
I Stared at My Computer for 5 Minutes Trying to Come Up With a Clever Title. I Failed.
I've been avoiding making this post. I don't know how to make it funny or enjoyable to read. And I don't want you to know how much I'm struggling. I'm angry and bitter and the reflex reaction of everyone I've told is to pity me, which only makes it even more clear that I'm fuckity fuck fuck fucked. Which kind of makes me want to punch things. I think you all know where this is going:
I got the results of my spinal tap, which have confirmed MS (as much as you can confirm MS without a recurrent episode). Doctor says I have all the markers for it, plus blah blah blah medical stuff. And so I have to start on treatment.
On the upside, apparently my insurance is going to cover all but a $50 per month co-pay on my medication, and I qualify for the pharmaceutical company's co-pay program so they are actually even going to cover the $50 a month for me. That is pretty much the only upside though, the fact that this incredibly expensive medication isn't going to bankrupt me.
When I had my first symptoms, back at the end of December/early January, it took me almost 2 months to feel completely back to normal. And during that time when I felt tired and fuzzy and off, it was easier to say "yeah, there is definitely something wrong here", but once I snapped back to being me again, I guess I went into denial. My spinal MRI came back clean. My hearing and vision tests were normal. And so I started to think about how stressed I was in December, running around every day after work and then every weekend, trying to get ready for Christmas. I had myself pretty convinced that it was all a big coincidence. The brain lesions could have been from anything, especially considering my klutzy nature and my tendency to fall and smack my head on shit. And the lesions? They weren't even inflamed! They were tiny, inconsequential things that showed no exacerbation and no improvement. And the weakness and exhaustion were surely side effects of the steroids.
Truth be told, when I went in to get that spinal tap, I fully expected it to come back showing nothing of consequence. My doctor had already made it clear that that doesn't actually rule out MS, but in my own mind, it was going to. Because I'm too strong to have something like this.
Except that clearly, I am not. Because I do have it.
There's the immediate stuff I need to deal with. The fact that I finally feel like myself again, not sick or tired like I did for the first 2 months of this year, is making it really hard for me to deal with starting this medication. It's an injectable, which sucks right off the bat. But I've done that before. I took Lovenox when I was pregnant with Caitlyn. I don't look forward to the injections, but I can handle them. It's dealing with the side effects that's getting to me. It's the fact that the "flu-like symptoms" "USUALLY go away in 2-3 months". Usually. It's a little ironic to me. To finally feel like myself again, to be able to stay me as long as possible, to try to stop the progression of this disease, I have to inject myself with this medicine that is going to make me feel sick for the next several months. It's a cycle that will seemingly go on forever, as is the nature of this disease. Exacerbation and remission. So starting the meds, to me, is like a trial run for being sick all the time. I get a few months of being myself- the person, the wife, the friend, the mother that I see myself as, then I have to give that up and slip into being this person I don't even know: sick, tired, fuzzy, unable to focus on my daughter and my relationships and the things that matter most to me. A person in survival mode. Survival mode is not how I want to live half of my life.
Then there's the longer term stuff. I've waffled a bit on having another baby, even before I knew I would spend my life being sick. It's been a tough decision. As a person who grew up with 3 siblings, the idea of Caitlyn being an only child feels wrong to me, like I'm depriving her of something in not giving her a brother or sister. On the one hand, with this new information, I feel more inclined to have another baby. I don't know how long I'll have before this disease becomes unmanagable. Hopefully decades, but that certainly isn't guaranteed. So I think of Caitlyn being a little older, a teenager maybe, trying to cope with going through her own changes and maturation and having her childhood taken from her by having to help take care of her disease-stricken mother. And I wonder if having a sibling, someone who truly understands what she's going through, someone in the same boat, someone to talk to when she needs to say how much she hates taking care of me and she wishes she had a normal mom like all her friends, might ease that burden a little bit. Because burdening Caitlyn feels like the biggest failure I could have as a parent. I can't relieve her of the burden completely, she loves me and I know she will be there for me even if I tell her she doesn't need to be, but maybe having a sibling to help carry it will make it easier for her, to give her a break, a sense that she doesn't always have to be there.
On the other side of that coin, having another baby feels so selfish. Because relieving some of Caitlyn's burden, a burden I certainly didn't choose for her because I didn't know about this disease before she was born, means choosing to actively inflict it on another child. And how can I make a choice like that?
If I do decide to have another child, it's a decision that needs to happen soon. The longer I wait, the more likely it is that I'll have progression of my symptoms. If I'm going to do this, I can't afford to wait. Which wouldn't be so bad, if I just had to have Rodolfo roll on top of me for a few minutes a couple of weeks after I had my period. But it doesn't happen like that for us. So in addition to everything else that makes this decision so hard, all the pros and cons that already exist, now we have to figure out if we can afford to spend $8000 or so on IVF (we can't, in case you are wondering. Which really means we have to decide if we want to go back into debt to have another baby.)
And then, if I decide to wait, or not have a baby at all, there's the issue of birth control. The medication I'll be on causes miscarriages, so I would absolutely need to stop taking it before deciding to get pregnant. And that isn't such a problem, really. The problem is the fact that, because of our fertility issues, we don't use any birth control, ever (or at least not in the last 5 or 6 years). Not even the trusty old pull-out. Because our chances of me getting pregnant are so slim that it would be a miracle if it happened. A miracle we would have happily welcomed. A miracle I've always secretly hoped for. Yet another thing MS will take from me. Because I can't hope for that anymore. I can't hope to get miraculously pregnant, because my medications could kill my baby. And so I have to go on some sort of birth control, JUST IN CASE.
In fact, with all these tests and shit, I've found the issue of birth control comes up a lot. When I had contrast MRIs, I was grilled about the possibility of being pregnant. Same for when I had the spinal tap. As it turns out, medical professionals don't really appreciate the answer "probably not because my husband has shitty sperm, but I guess it's technically possible". They do not appreciate that answer at all. It's really frustrating because I always wanted to keep that little bit of hope alive that maybe it would happen on it's own, and now I can't even have that.
I don't know. I'm pissed off and bitter and scared, and I don't know what to do with any of it. My current plan is to get very, very drunk when I go on vacation in 2 weeks.
I got the results of my spinal tap, which have confirmed MS (as much as you can confirm MS without a recurrent episode). Doctor says I have all the markers for it, plus blah blah blah medical stuff. And so I have to start on treatment.
On the upside, apparently my insurance is going to cover all but a $50 per month co-pay on my medication, and I qualify for the pharmaceutical company's co-pay program so they are actually even going to cover the $50 a month for me. That is pretty much the only upside though, the fact that this incredibly expensive medication isn't going to bankrupt me.
When I had my first symptoms, back at the end of December/early January, it took me almost 2 months to feel completely back to normal. And during that time when I felt tired and fuzzy and off, it was easier to say "yeah, there is definitely something wrong here", but once I snapped back to being me again, I guess I went into denial. My spinal MRI came back clean. My hearing and vision tests were normal. And so I started to think about how stressed I was in December, running around every day after work and then every weekend, trying to get ready for Christmas. I had myself pretty convinced that it was all a big coincidence. The brain lesions could have been from anything, especially considering my klutzy nature and my tendency to fall and smack my head on shit. And the lesions? They weren't even inflamed! They were tiny, inconsequential things that showed no exacerbation and no improvement. And the weakness and exhaustion were surely side effects of the steroids.
Truth be told, when I went in to get that spinal tap, I fully expected it to come back showing nothing of consequence. My doctor had already made it clear that that doesn't actually rule out MS, but in my own mind, it was going to. Because I'm too strong to have something like this.
Except that clearly, I am not. Because I do have it.
There's the immediate stuff I need to deal with. The fact that I finally feel like myself again, not sick or tired like I did for the first 2 months of this year, is making it really hard for me to deal with starting this medication. It's an injectable, which sucks right off the bat. But I've done that before. I took Lovenox when I was pregnant with Caitlyn. I don't look forward to the injections, but I can handle them. It's dealing with the side effects that's getting to me. It's the fact that the "flu-like symptoms" "USUALLY go away in 2-3 months". Usually. It's a little ironic to me. To finally feel like myself again, to be able to stay me as long as possible, to try to stop the progression of this disease, I have to inject myself with this medicine that is going to make me feel sick for the next several months. It's a cycle that will seemingly go on forever, as is the nature of this disease. Exacerbation and remission. So starting the meds, to me, is like a trial run for being sick all the time. I get a few months of being myself- the person, the wife, the friend, the mother that I see myself as, then I have to give that up and slip into being this person I don't even know: sick, tired, fuzzy, unable to focus on my daughter and my relationships and the things that matter most to me. A person in survival mode. Survival mode is not how I want to live half of my life.
Then there's the longer term stuff. I've waffled a bit on having another baby, even before I knew I would spend my life being sick. It's been a tough decision. As a person who grew up with 3 siblings, the idea of Caitlyn being an only child feels wrong to me, like I'm depriving her of something in not giving her a brother or sister. On the one hand, with this new information, I feel more inclined to have another baby. I don't know how long I'll have before this disease becomes unmanagable. Hopefully decades, but that certainly isn't guaranteed. So I think of Caitlyn being a little older, a teenager maybe, trying to cope with going through her own changes and maturation and having her childhood taken from her by having to help take care of her disease-stricken mother. And I wonder if having a sibling, someone who truly understands what she's going through, someone in the same boat, someone to talk to when she needs to say how much she hates taking care of me and she wishes she had a normal mom like all her friends, might ease that burden a little bit. Because burdening Caitlyn feels like the biggest failure I could have as a parent. I can't relieve her of the burden completely, she loves me and I know she will be there for me even if I tell her she doesn't need to be, but maybe having a sibling to help carry it will make it easier for her, to give her a break, a sense that she doesn't always have to be there.
On the other side of that coin, having another baby feels so selfish. Because relieving some of Caitlyn's burden, a burden I certainly didn't choose for her because I didn't know about this disease before she was born, means choosing to actively inflict it on another child. And how can I make a choice like that?
If I do decide to have another child, it's a decision that needs to happen soon. The longer I wait, the more likely it is that I'll have progression of my symptoms. If I'm going to do this, I can't afford to wait. Which wouldn't be so bad, if I just had to have Rodolfo roll on top of me for a few minutes a couple of weeks after I had my period. But it doesn't happen like that for us. So in addition to everything else that makes this decision so hard, all the pros and cons that already exist, now we have to figure out if we can afford to spend $8000 or so on IVF (we can't, in case you are wondering. Which really means we have to decide if we want to go back into debt to have another baby.)
And then, if I decide to wait, or not have a baby at all, there's the issue of birth control. The medication I'll be on causes miscarriages, so I would absolutely need to stop taking it before deciding to get pregnant. And that isn't such a problem, really. The problem is the fact that, because of our fertility issues, we don't use any birth control, ever (or at least not in the last 5 or 6 years). Not even the trusty old pull-out. Because our chances of me getting pregnant are so slim that it would be a miracle if it happened. A miracle we would have happily welcomed. A miracle I've always secretly hoped for. Yet another thing MS will take from me. Because I can't hope for that anymore. I can't hope to get miraculously pregnant, because my medications could kill my baby. And so I have to go on some sort of birth control, JUST IN CASE.
In fact, with all these tests and shit, I've found the issue of birth control comes up a lot. When I had contrast MRIs, I was grilled about the possibility of being pregnant. Same for when I had the spinal tap. As it turns out, medical professionals don't really appreciate the answer "probably not because my husband has shitty sperm, but I guess it's technically possible". They do not appreciate that answer at all. It's really frustrating because I always wanted to keep that little bit of hope alive that maybe it would happen on it's own, and now I can't even have that.
I don't know. I'm pissed off and bitter and scared, and I don't know what to do with any of it. My current plan is to get very, very drunk when I go on vacation in 2 weeks.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Because It Would Be Narcissistic to Make Two Separate Posts About How Everyone Loves Me
I'm not what you would call technically savvy. In fact, Nadine set up this entire blog for me. My skill set pretty much consists of signing in, reading other blogs and posting.
My point is that I have no idea how to get people to read my blog. Nadine got me a few sympathy followers to start off with and I think most of the rest of you found me through my comments on other blogs. And I appreciate every single one of you. The fact that any of you want to hear what I have to say, even if it's about diarrhea like 80% of the time, is amazing to me. Thank you all for your support.
Anyway. Somehow my small (extremely small) legion of fans is slowly increasing, and that is fucking awesome. And in the last week, I got two awards from two of my awesome readers:
The first, was the Versatile Blogger award from Selena over at Because Motherhood Sucks
I'm fairly new to Selena's blog, but I was in love with her the moment I saw the title. Because motherhood? Yeah, it kind of does suck sometimes. Selena does an awesome job of being inappropriate and pointing out when things look like orange vaginas. I'm currently reading all of her archives so I don't miss anything.
Next was the Liebster Award, from my Ninja, which is basically her way of saying "Wow, You are awesome as shit. Why are you so underrated?". Ninja is my internet stalker, in case that was unclear. You can easily buy her sassy, Canadian love with some stale cookies and lip balm. She's kind of a whore like that. But seriously? Check you out some Ninja. She's awesome and funny and super smart. Don't play Words with Friends with her though. She's a dirty fucking cheater (or smarter than me, one of those two).
Now, with the first award, you are supposed to give 7 random facts about yourself. Let me see if I can make that happen for you:
1. I'm borderline OCD with my eating habits. The lengths to which I will go to have things a particular way is slightly psychotic. A few examples, you say? Surely. Well, the most obvious example is the fact that I rearrange any kind of burger or sandwich I get. Every time. Even if I'm eating it in my car. The reason for this is to ensure the even distribution of condiments, obviously. Because, moving along to my NEXT example, I need to have a little of everything in each bite. With burgers, that means a little onion, a little pickle, a little bacon and a little ketchup (with anything else, I pretty much get a little of each thing on my fork for every individual bite. Yeah. I know it's psychotic. Didn't I already say that?). If you are wondering what I do about the fries, they are actually eaten in alternate bites with the burger. Last bite has to be burger though, because, moving on to my next example, I have to save what I deem the best bite of something for last. With burgers and sandwiches, this is usually the bite in the middle, which is why I eat around the edges first and work my way in. With steak, obviously the best bite will be the one that looks rarest. And the best bite of pizza is the second bite up from the point. I'll usually bite off the tip (that's what she said), then turn it around and eat from the crust down. These things are the reason I'm fat. Too many food obsessions.
2. I walk weird. I blame my father, as he has the same stupid walk. Rodolfo once described as looking like I'm carrying a bag of groceries in each hand, so... maybe I don't move my arms a lot? I don't know. This is also probably the reason I'm a ridiculous klutz.
3. I'm currently house shopping. It's stressful, because our budget is really tight and we don't want to live in the hood, but it's going to be so fucking awesome when we find the right place. We have been living in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment for 3 years now, and Caitlyn's shit has taken over every nook and cranny, so when she has her own room and maybe a playroom and a fucking backyard to share with Joey, it is going to rock my shit so hard.
4. I married my husband after less than a year ::coughheneededagreencardcough::
5. My left boob is bigger.
6. I have one tattoo, a horribly disfigured little butterfly on my lower back, just above my ass. I got it when I was 19, when my horribly disfigured (okay, maybe he was just ugly) ex boyfriend's brother offered to do it for free on his living room floor because he was learning how to do them. Rodolfo likes to point out that it looks like I got it done in prison and he is 100% correct.
7. I'm not allowed to eat Jolly Ranchers. Yes, in fact I am 29 years old and have been forbidden to eat a particular kind of candy. You see, my mother nearly choked on a similar, squarish hard candy when she was a kid (her own mom dislodged it with the back end of a spoon, so you might understand why she's so traumatized) and told me long ago that I wasn't allowed to eat them. And really? For my mom, who let me drink and fuck in her house because she trusted me to make my own decisions and knew I was intelligent enough not to get pregnant or alcohol poisoning, how could I ignore this one request? I can not. So even today, as a grown adult, if someone offers me a Jolly Rancher, I politely decline and tell them that my mom doesn't let me have them.
Seven random facts. You're welcome. Oh, and thank you, obviously.
I'm also supposed to tag some bitches, but it seems pretty much everyone I would tag for these things has already been tagged by someone else. Except Nadine, who is also awesome and who you should also check out. She doesn't post very often, but her posts are kind of epic (see this post in particular. It's one of my favorites). So I guess I'm tagging Nadine then. Give us some blog love, sir.
My point is that I have no idea how to get people to read my blog. Nadine got me a few sympathy followers to start off with and I think most of the rest of you found me through my comments on other blogs. And I appreciate every single one of you. The fact that any of you want to hear what I have to say, even if it's about diarrhea like 80% of the time, is amazing to me. Thank you all for your support.
Anyway. Somehow my small (extremely small) legion of fans is slowly increasing, and that is fucking awesome. And in the last week, I got two awards from two of my awesome readers:
The first, was the Versatile Blogger award from Selena over at Because Motherhood Sucks
I'm fairly new to Selena's blog, but I was in love with her the moment I saw the title. Because motherhood? Yeah, it kind of does suck sometimes. Selena does an awesome job of being inappropriate and pointing out when things look like orange vaginas. I'm currently reading all of her archives so I don't miss anything.
Next was the Liebster Award, from my Ninja, which is basically her way of saying "Wow, You are awesome as shit. Why are you so underrated?". Ninja is my internet stalker, in case that was unclear. You can easily buy her sassy, Canadian love with some stale cookies and lip balm. She's kind of a whore like that. But seriously? Check you out some Ninja. She's awesome and funny and super smart. Don't play Words with Friends with her though. She's a dirty fucking cheater (or smarter than me, one of those two).
Now, with the first award, you are supposed to give 7 random facts about yourself. Let me see if I can make that happen for you:
1. I'm borderline OCD with my eating habits. The lengths to which I will go to have things a particular way is slightly psychotic. A few examples, you say? Surely. Well, the most obvious example is the fact that I rearrange any kind of burger or sandwich I get. Every time. Even if I'm eating it in my car. The reason for this is to ensure the even distribution of condiments, obviously. Because, moving along to my NEXT example, I need to have a little of everything in each bite. With burgers, that means a little onion, a little pickle, a little bacon and a little ketchup (with anything else, I pretty much get a little of each thing on my fork for every individual bite. Yeah. I know it's psychotic. Didn't I already say that?). If you are wondering what I do about the fries, they are actually eaten in alternate bites with the burger. Last bite has to be burger though, because, moving on to my next example, I have to save what I deem the best bite of something for last. With burgers and sandwiches, this is usually the bite in the middle, which is why I eat around the edges first and work my way in. With steak, obviously the best bite will be the one that looks rarest. And the best bite of pizza is the second bite up from the point. I'll usually bite off the tip (that's what she said), then turn it around and eat from the crust down. These things are the reason I'm fat. Too many food obsessions.
2. I walk weird. I blame my father, as he has the same stupid walk. Rodolfo once described as looking like I'm carrying a bag of groceries in each hand, so... maybe I don't move my arms a lot? I don't know. This is also probably the reason I'm a ridiculous klutz.
3. I'm currently house shopping. It's stressful, because our budget is really tight and we don't want to live in the hood, but it's going to be so fucking awesome when we find the right place. We have been living in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment for 3 years now, and Caitlyn's shit has taken over every nook and cranny, so when she has her own room and maybe a playroom and a fucking backyard to share with Joey, it is going to rock my shit so hard.
4. I married my husband after less than a year ::coughheneededagreencardcough::
5. My left boob is bigger.
6. I have one tattoo, a horribly disfigured little butterfly on my lower back, just above my ass. I got it when I was 19, when my horribly disfigured (okay, maybe he was just ugly) ex boyfriend's brother offered to do it for free on his living room floor because he was learning how to do them. Rodolfo likes to point out that it looks like I got it done in prison and he is 100% correct.
7. I'm not allowed to eat Jolly Ranchers. Yes, in fact I am 29 years old and have been forbidden to eat a particular kind of candy. You see, my mother nearly choked on a similar, squarish hard candy when she was a kid (her own mom dislodged it with the back end of a spoon, so you might understand why she's so traumatized) and told me long ago that I wasn't allowed to eat them. And really? For my mom, who let me drink and fuck in her house because she trusted me to make my own decisions and knew I was intelligent enough not to get pregnant or alcohol poisoning, how could I ignore this one request? I can not. So even today, as a grown adult, if someone offers me a Jolly Rancher, I politely decline and tell them that my mom doesn't let me have them.
Seven random facts. You're welcome. Oh, and thank you, obviously.
I'm also supposed to tag some bitches, but it seems pretty much everyone I would tag for these things has already been tagged by someone else. Except Nadine, who is also awesome and who you should also check out. She doesn't post very often, but her posts are kind of epic (see this post in particular. It's one of my favorites). So I guess I'm tagging Nadine then. Give us some blog love, sir.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
God's Radioactive Ballsack
I've written about it here before. My hatred. For ribbon magnets.
It occurs to me now that I could be the fucking queen of them. All the diseases. I possess them in some way. Some connection. I could go all the way with the magnets. I could support so many Chinese factory workers.
Because I refuse to make another whiny post (at least before I go to the doctor tomorrow, and have fresh things to whine about), I will list for you, the magnets I could have. You're welcome:
M.S.- It's important for me to know what color this magnet would be. Does anyone know? Because if I'm absolutely certain of anything, it is that there is already one in existence. So what color? Because I've decided that the best way to deal with this diagnosis, to throw all my support behind this disease, is to wear it's representative color, head-to-toe. I need to know what color underwear I need to throw away, so someone get me this information as soon as possible, please.
Cancer- Ok. There are lots of cancers. Breast. Ball. Et cetera. But maybe we can just lump them all together and say "cancer is bad, let's beat cancer". Can I get a "cancer is bad" magnet? Because I would be all over that shit. And can we not make it pink? I know I have tits and a vagina, so I should be all about the lady cancers, but my personal experience is with Rodolfo's cancer, thyroid. And I'm pretty sure the color of that magnet should be "scar"... which is a brownish color in case you are wondering.
AIDS- I know this one is red. I can't say I've been personally effected by it, luckily. But everyone hates AIDS, man. And I do like red.
Besides these three big hitters, I could own the magnet game with specific diseases. My mother has heart disease. I have friends whose children have ADHD and Autism. My one sister-in-law has Lupus. The other one has kidney disease. They even make ribbon magnets to support stillbirth research and miscarriage. I could get on all those things. People would think I was mocking the magnets, I would have so many. The problem is that they would be right.
I came to this conclusion simply. I briefly considered which magnets I could not, in good conscience, have on my car. Naturally, I started thinking about the ones that are supposed to be jokes, to support weed and pimping.
And then I realized something else. MS? It's one of the few diseases where medical marijuana is actually considered a sanctioned treatment. I could support weed in all seriousness and people would have to look the other way. Even feel bad for me and shit.
I feel I need to tell you something about myself, though. I'm a bit of a freak. Or maybe it just seems that way to me because I grew up ghetto-adjacent and I might just be the only one in a 200 mile radius. So here it is:
I've never gotten high. In all seriousness, like ever. I've been in situations. I've had the opportunity. In fact, all I would have had to do would have been to stay in a room where some shit was going down and I probably would have caught some sort of buzz. But I always walked out. Because, okay, is it just me? Weed smells like shit.
I mean, that realization came later for me, if I'm being honest. Because during the sunrise of my adolescence, I was convinced that people didn't do drugs. Well, unless they were drug addicts, of course. I was truly and thoroughly horrified a few years later, to find out how many people I knew that I would classify as drug addicts.
A boy I liked and his pre-law friend gave me a good talking-to at a party once (where, coincidentally, I didn't see anything wrong with getting so drunk that I was still hammered at work the next day) about the actual criminalization of marijuana and how it isn't actually that bad or unsafe as a lot of things that are currently perfectly legal. And they mostly convinced me. Except that I still wouldn't do it because I find it so fucking disgusting.
And now I'm wondering about all the potheads I know who don't have MS. Fuckers.
I've also considered blaming all this on God's radioactive spunk. Basically I've decided that New Jersey is the epicenter of Jesus' Chernobyl ballsack and living here made neurological decline an inevitability.
And now I'm wondering one other thing: Was this even funny the FIRST time I wrote about it? I don't know, but I suspect it was not. Cut me some slack people. Holes in my brain and shit.
It occurs to me now that I could be the fucking queen of them. All the diseases. I possess them in some way. Some connection. I could go all the way with the magnets. I could support so many Chinese factory workers.
Because I refuse to make another whiny post (at least before I go to the doctor tomorrow, and have fresh things to whine about), I will list for you, the magnets I could have. You're welcome:
M.S.- It's important for me to know what color this magnet would be. Does anyone know? Because if I'm absolutely certain of anything, it is that there is already one in existence. So what color? Because I've decided that the best way to deal with this diagnosis, to throw all my support behind this disease, is to wear it's representative color, head-to-toe. I need to know what color underwear I need to throw away, so someone get me this information as soon as possible, please.
Cancer- Ok. There are lots of cancers. Breast. Ball. Et cetera. But maybe we can just lump them all together and say "cancer is bad, let's beat cancer". Can I get a "cancer is bad" magnet? Because I would be all over that shit. And can we not make it pink? I know I have tits and a vagina, so I should be all about the lady cancers, but my personal experience is with Rodolfo's cancer, thyroid. And I'm pretty sure the color of that magnet should be "scar"... which is a brownish color in case you are wondering.
AIDS- I know this one is red. I can't say I've been personally effected by it, luckily. But everyone hates AIDS, man. And I do like red.
Besides these three big hitters, I could own the magnet game with specific diseases. My mother has heart disease. I have friends whose children have ADHD and Autism. My one sister-in-law has Lupus. The other one has kidney disease. They even make ribbon magnets to support stillbirth research and miscarriage. I could get on all those things. People would think I was mocking the magnets, I would have so many. The problem is that they would be right.
I came to this conclusion simply. I briefly considered which magnets I could not, in good conscience, have on my car. Naturally, I started thinking about the ones that are supposed to be jokes, to support weed and pimping.
And then I realized something else. MS? It's one of the few diseases where medical marijuana is actually considered a sanctioned treatment. I could support weed in all seriousness and people would have to look the other way. Even feel bad for me and shit.
I feel I need to tell you something about myself, though. I'm a bit of a freak. Or maybe it just seems that way to me because I grew up ghetto-adjacent and I might just be the only one in a 200 mile radius. So here it is:
I've never gotten high. In all seriousness, like ever. I've been in situations. I've had the opportunity. In fact, all I would have had to do would have been to stay in a room where some shit was going down and I probably would have caught some sort of buzz. But I always walked out. Because, okay, is it just me? Weed smells like shit.
I mean, that realization came later for me, if I'm being honest. Because during the sunrise of my adolescence, I was convinced that people didn't do drugs. Well, unless they were drug addicts, of course. I was truly and thoroughly horrified a few years later, to find out how many people I knew that I would classify as drug addicts.
A boy I liked and his pre-law friend gave me a good talking-to at a party once (where, coincidentally, I didn't see anything wrong with getting so drunk that I was still hammered at work the next day) about the actual criminalization of marijuana and how it isn't actually that bad or unsafe as a lot of things that are currently perfectly legal. And they mostly convinced me. Except that I still wouldn't do it because I find it so fucking disgusting.
And now I'm wondering about all the potheads I know who don't have MS. Fuckers.
I've also considered blaming all this on God's radioactive spunk. Basically I've decided that New Jersey is the epicenter of Jesus' Chernobyl ballsack and living here made neurological decline an inevitability.
And now I'm wondering one other thing: Was this even funny the FIRST time I wrote about it? I don't know, but I suspect it was not. Cut me some slack people. Holes in my brain and shit.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Things That Are Irritating Me
I'm feeling really annoyed today, for no good reason. And, to answer your next question, NO, I do not have PMS. And if you ask me again, I WILL cut you. Here is a list, in no particular order, of things that are pissing me off today:
- The dog. Why does he have to track his shit across the yard? No seriously. He spends 10 minutes finding the perfect spot to shit in, only to scootch along in his dump squat for an additional 5 minutes leaving me a trail of steaming nuggets to follow. WHY DOG?
- The husband. Specifically, the candy he has eaten from my... I mean, CAITLYN's trick-or-treat stash. I should probably mention that he neither tricked nor treated. The one who drags the toddler from house to house begging for free candy has FIRST FUCKING DIBS. I'm just saying.
- The people at the lollipop company. Because you know how Capri Sun is the best juice ever and its clear (what, I'm the only adult who still drinks Capri Sun? Fuck you guys)? In fact, I think the lack of artificial colors is part of what makes it superior. So why, lollipop guys, do you think every lollipop you make needs red or blue dye? Oh, because you love ruining my kid's clothes? FUCK YOU. You are all dead to me. Also, oompa-loompas.
- The people you send a Facebook invite to for an event you are planning and even though you have been ASSURED that they are coming, they just fucking let it sit in their notifications and NEVER respond (yeah, I'm looking at you MIKE). WHY CAN'T YOU JUST CLICK THE LITTLE BUTTON THAT SAYS "I'm attending"? WHY DO YOU HATE ME?
- And speaking of that last one, I might as well throw the year 2012 onto this list. The event I'm planning is a vacation thing for myself and my friend because we are both turning 30 next year and instead of killing ourselves, we are simply going to get drunk for a week straight and try not to drown in the pool.
- Chocolate. We have a love-hate relationship. I'd love to be someone's cat for a year and only have access to the food they give me, in the portions they give, so I do not have to answer to my dark master on the daily. Halloween, you are certainly NOT helping with this endeavor.
- People who can't answer a fucking text message. Because I just fucking hate you, okay. Stop being a dick and get back to me.
Friday, September 9, 2011
The Reach-Around. For Diapers.
I keep telling myself "post something funny on your blog today". And then I read other people's blogs instead because apparently other people have funny things to say.
So here's what I've got:
You know how sometimes it is required of you to take off your bra without taking off your shirt? This is a skill you probably learned in your teens, when second base was usually reached after 3 Smirnoff Ices and possibly in a car or a park or somewhere you can't really take your shirt off. So you mastered the ole' reach around. Wait. Not THAT kind of reach around. The kind where you unhook your bra and pull it out of your sleeve and the dude thinks you are a fucking magician because he just spent the last 20 minutes trying and failing to unhook it.
I certainly still take my bra off like this today, but the circumstances are considerably less interesting. Usually its when I just get home from work and my underwire has been digging into my back fat all day and I'm all "OMG I NEED TO GET THIS SHIT OFF ME RIGHT NOW". And then you walk around the rest of the day braless and wonder if it really does make your tits sag. Or maybe that was just the breastfeeding. Or the 60lbs you've gained since high school. There are so many reasons why your 30 year old tits sag more than your 18 year old ones. So. Many. Reasons.
Anyway. Back to the point. Houdini-ing off a bra was a skill I learned young (especially since I had to start wearing one when I was 11 and already most of the way to a C cup). Caitlyn does not yet wear bras, but I suspect she already instinctively knows how to do the Reach Around.
The reason I know this is because Caitlyn has recently decided that wearing a diaper is against everything she believes in. I mean, the CAT doesn't wear a diaper, and she surely believes in the cat. Neither do any of the members of the Fresh Beat Band, though I suspect Twist is about 3 brain cells away from being legally retarded, so maybe he wears one under his spectacular black jeans and yellow hoodie. Who knows.
My point is that diapers are apparently the most annoying thing ever, as of the last week or so. This isn't uncommon with babies. They all reach a point where they realize those shitty little velcro straps are REALLY easy to undo. For most parents, this is a relatively easy fix. Onesies cut off access to those straps. So do pants. Except...
I knew pants weren't the answer. Caitlyn has been taking her pants off since she was 5 or 6 months old. So I went the onesie route. And then I found out that she can pull her diaper out of the leg holes of her onesie like a hormonal teenager removing her bra through the arm holes of her Miley Cyrus tank top in the back seat of a Chevy.
She usually keeps pants on during the day now though, so I caved and tried the pants. She didn't need to take those off either to successfully remove her diaper. I present Exhibit A:
Notice how she's holding her diaper AND wearing shorts? Yeah. Duct tape. That's my new game plan.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
BFFs 4 EVA
As everyone probably already knows, Nadine and I are all kinds of gay for each other. So when I asked her what I should blog about, she responded "blog about me". Ok. You asked for it. For your enjoyment, I present: Stories Nadine Doesn't Want Me to Tell.
Let's start with the basics. Nadine and I have known each other since high school. In fact, she's one of the very few people from our school that I didn't hate. We bonded in senior year over the fact that I had not yet mastered the fine art of typing. She offered to type up my report for English that was due the next period (yeah, I was a real go-getter like that) and was amazed to find that I had more to say than "I love Derek Jeter" (I still do) and "I have a bunch of cats" (just down to the one now).
In fact, as she read through my report, her reaction was hilarious: "Don't take this the wrong way, but I thought you were a moron". The paper was on Beowulf so you might say our friendship is based on a solid foundation of intellect and fine literature. I think the following accounts of our craziest tales will solidify the notion that we are, in fact, worldly, intelligent ass bitches.
Quote of the Day
Quote of the day was a magical time for us. It started very early in our friendship. At the ripe age of 19, we realized we were comic geniuses and should turn our musings into a book. Here is a sampling of "the book".
"Nothing fixes a relationship like cookies and anal sex."
"I don't want to be the one to push him off the overpass onto (route) 46."
"When you're puking on Rob's bathroom floor; that's what friends are for."
"I told that bitch to put away his emotional baggage and do me."
Oh, were you looking for a story or plot of some sort? Sorry, that isn't what the book was about. The book was our Twitter in 2001; essentially every stupid phrase that crossed our lips was "the book". We were so WITTY!
Drinking Times
Drinking was 100% more fun when I was underage, and I think Nadine would agree. My mom visited her boyfriend, who lived a few hours away, every weekend, so every weekend became party time at my house. There are so many stories.
When drinking with Nadine, it's very important for YOU to know her limits. Because, ummm, she doesn't. Or at least she didn't back when we would drink every weekend. Nadine's stages of drunk go something like this:
Stage 1: WOO-HOO- LET'S DRINK!
Stage 2: THIS DRINK ISN'T STRONG ENOUGH, LET ME ADD MORE ALCOHOL!
Stage 3: NONE OF THE DRINKS ARE STRONG ENOUGH, I'M GOING TO DRINK STRAIGHT FROM THE BOTTLE!
Stage 4: I'm currently vomitting in my hair.
I will share one of our drinking stories with you today:
We were big fans of beer pong (except it was mixed drink pong when we played it). There was the time we were playing mixed drink pong and after 3 or so rounds, the rest of us got bored and stopped playing. Nadine didn't realize this and set up 4 more sets of cups (we were playing twosies, obviously). When we told her we didn't want to play anymore, she decided she couldn't let those drinks go to waste and pounded all four sets of cups. Did I mention that Nadine mixes a REALLY strong drink? At some point after that, she started walking around with a bottle of Captain Morgan and ate some Captain Crunch. The Captains had a brawl. I think it's obvious which Captain won. After Captain Crunch was tossed out of the bar that had become Nadine's stomach and passed out on the proverbial couch that was her hair, she made her way to our friend's shower. She then passed out with her head in the shower. Just her head. Which doesn't really explain why she got completely naked.
Gross Stuff
Then there are the stories that will live in infamy forever, for no other reason then that they are too horrifying to forget. They are as follows:
The time Nadine nearly amputated her thumb on broken glass. I was not there for this incident, but apparently she had left a trail from her door to a blood stained note that said something along the lines of "went to the hospital" for another friend who was on her way over. I'm very glad I didn't see that one, because I would have been pretty convinced she was dead.
The time I caught her and her boyfriend having sex in her pool. Another friend was with us, and he had left. And apparently she was under the impression I had left too. "Oh, you're still here?"... Yes, but not for long, I can promise you that.
And since I've told all of her embarrassing secrets, I suppose it's only fair if one of these stories is embarrassing for me:
The time we were driving down the parkway and I had the brown cow knocking at the back door. A few minutes after we stopped so I could use the bathroom, I came running out of the rest stop and just said "we have to go" because you know how sometimes when you are in view of a bathroom, it intensifies the need to shit by like 1000%? And as you are pulling your pants down, you ass decides you are no longer clenched enough to continue to hold it in? And you get shit on the walls? And you are 18 years old so you don't have the class to clean it up and you just hustle out of the bathroom and hope the other patrons don't start chasing you with torches? No? Just me then.
Let's start with the basics. Nadine and I have known each other since high school. In fact, she's one of the very few people from our school that I didn't hate. We bonded in senior year over the fact that I had not yet mastered the fine art of typing. She offered to type up my report for English that was due the next period (yeah, I was a real go-getter like that) and was amazed to find that I had more to say than "I love Derek Jeter" (I still do) and "I have a bunch of cats" (just down to the one now).
In fact, as she read through my report, her reaction was hilarious: "Don't take this the wrong way, but I thought you were a moron". The paper was on Beowulf so you might say our friendship is based on a solid foundation of intellect and fine literature. I think the following accounts of our craziest tales will solidify the notion that we are, in fact, worldly, intelligent ass bitches.
Quote of the Day
Quote of the day was a magical time for us. It started very early in our friendship. At the ripe age of 19, we realized we were comic geniuses and should turn our musings into a book. Here is a sampling of "the book".
"Nothing fixes a relationship like cookies and anal sex."
"I don't want to be the one to push him off the overpass onto (route) 46."
"When you're puking on Rob's bathroom floor; that's what friends are for."
"I told that bitch to put away his emotional baggage and do me."
Oh, were you looking for a story or plot of some sort? Sorry, that isn't what the book was about. The book was our Twitter in 2001; essentially every stupid phrase that crossed our lips was "the book". We were so WITTY!
Drinking Times
Drinking was 100% more fun when I was underage, and I think Nadine would agree. My mom visited her boyfriend, who lived a few hours away, every weekend, so every weekend became party time at my house. There are so many stories.
When drinking with Nadine, it's very important for YOU to know her limits. Because, ummm, she doesn't. Or at least she didn't back when we would drink every weekend. Nadine's stages of drunk go something like this:
Stage 1: WOO-HOO- LET'S DRINK!
Stage 2: THIS DRINK ISN'T STRONG ENOUGH, LET ME ADD MORE ALCOHOL!
Stage 3: NONE OF THE DRINKS ARE STRONG ENOUGH, I'M GOING TO DRINK STRAIGHT FROM THE BOTTLE!
Stage 4: I'm currently vomitting in my hair.
I will share one of our drinking stories with you today:
We were big fans of beer pong (except it was mixed drink pong when we played it). There was the time we were playing mixed drink pong and after 3 or so rounds, the rest of us got bored and stopped playing. Nadine didn't realize this and set up 4 more sets of cups (we were playing twosies, obviously). When we told her we didn't want to play anymore, she decided she couldn't let those drinks go to waste and pounded all four sets of cups. Did I mention that Nadine mixes a REALLY strong drink? At some point after that, she started walking around with a bottle of Captain Morgan and ate some Captain Crunch. The Captains had a brawl. I think it's obvious which Captain won. After Captain Crunch was tossed out of the bar that had become Nadine's stomach and passed out on the proverbial couch that was her hair, she made her way to our friend's shower. She then passed out with her head in the shower. Just her head. Which doesn't really explain why she got completely naked.
Gross Stuff
Then there are the stories that will live in infamy forever, for no other reason then that they are too horrifying to forget. They are as follows:
The time Nadine nearly amputated her thumb on broken glass. I was not there for this incident, but apparently she had left a trail from her door to a blood stained note that said something along the lines of "went to the hospital" for another friend who was on her way over. I'm very glad I didn't see that one, because I would have been pretty convinced she was dead.
The time I caught her and her boyfriend having sex in her pool. Another friend was with us, and he had left. And apparently she was under the impression I had left too. "Oh, you're still here?"... Yes, but not for long, I can promise you that.
And since I've told all of her embarrassing secrets, I suppose it's only fair if one of these stories is embarrassing for me:
The time we were driving down the parkway and I had the brown cow knocking at the back door. A few minutes after we stopped so I could use the bathroom, I came running out of the rest stop and just said "we have to go" because you know how sometimes when you are in view of a bathroom, it intensifies the need to shit by like 1000%? And as you are pulling your pants down, you ass decides you are no longer clenched enough to continue to hold it in? And you get shit on the walls? And you are 18 years old so you don't have the class to clean it up and you just hustle out of the bathroom and hope the other patrons don't start chasing you with torches? No? Just me then.
In conclusion, Nadine is goodtimes. We have fun and do stupid shit and have lots of stories. Perhaps I will share more of them with you one day.
Labels:
blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol,
nadine
Monday, August 15, 2011
I Have a Wrinkle and a Midlife Crisis
I'm getting old.
There are the obvious things, like the fucking wrinkle I have on my forehead and the occassional gray hair that make me want to get botox and shit. And then there are the more subtle clues. The things that creep up. The kinds of things you have to think back to your youth about and realize that you have to THINK BACK TO YOUR YOUTH. Because you are old and probably gonna die soon. Here is a list of things that made me feel old last week.
1. Sandblasted jeans. I went shopping for new jeans a few days ago. I picked up a folded pair and went into the dressing room to try them on. And then they were on and I realized they were sandblasted. And I thought "fuck... do people my age still wear sandblasted jeans?". I concluded that, no, in fact they do not. And I got some fucking grown up jeans instead.
2. Cute. I've always been cute. It is common knowledge. Not hot or pretty or sexy. Just downright adorable. And I wasn't ever the kind of girl who took it to mean that I was less attractive than the hot girls. It was just a different kind of attractiveness. And then someone called me cute over the weekend. And I realized that cute isn't going to last forever and my fat ass needs to work on some sexy before there is no cute left.
3. Strollers. Remember being a teenager? Or in your early 20s? Remember going to the mall and seeing all those moms pushing their kids around in a stroller looking decidedly middle-aged compared to your young, carefree ass? I'm the fucking stroller mom now. Fuck. FUCK.
4. Hangovers. I got my drank on Saturday night. And I spent all day Sunday in bed hunched over with stomach cramps or in the bathroom with diarrhea because old people can't have 3 drinks without spending the entire next day in shit limbo.
That is all.
There are the obvious things, like the fucking wrinkle I have on my forehead and the occassional gray hair that make me want to get botox and shit. And then there are the more subtle clues. The things that creep up. The kinds of things you have to think back to your youth about and realize that you have to THINK BACK TO YOUR YOUTH. Because you are old and probably gonna die soon. Here is a list of things that made me feel old last week.
1. Sandblasted jeans. I went shopping for new jeans a few days ago. I picked up a folded pair and went into the dressing room to try them on. And then they were on and I realized they were sandblasted. And I thought "fuck... do people my age still wear sandblasted jeans?". I concluded that, no, in fact they do not. And I got some fucking grown up jeans instead.
2. Cute. I've always been cute. It is common knowledge. Not hot or pretty or sexy. Just downright adorable. And I wasn't ever the kind of girl who took it to mean that I was less attractive than the hot girls. It was just a different kind of attractiveness. And then someone called me cute over the weekend. And I realized that cute isn't going to last forever and my fat ass needs to work on some sexy before there is no cute left.
3. Strollers. Remember being a teenager? Or in your early 20s? Remember going to the mall and seeing all those moms pushing their kids around in a stroller looking decidedly middle-aged compared to your young, carefree ass? I'm the fucking stroller mom now. Fuck. FUCK.
4. Hangovers. I got my drank on Saturday night. And I spent all day Sunday in bed hunched over with stomach cramps or in the bathroom with diarrhea because old people can't have 3 drinks without spending the entire next day in shit limbo.
That is all.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Judgement
I've always been close with my mom. We talk about everything, and I absolutely always felt like I would model my parenting style after hers. But now, as a parent myself, I realize that you can't be exactly like anyone else. You have to do what's best for you and your kid. It also occurs to me that my mom was a single mom, so she didn't really have to run things by my father and compromise on anything. She did everything exactly how she wanted to do it and didn't have to answer to anyone, including her own mother, who died when I was only a few months old.
I'm not saying I've had a huge shift in my ideas about parenting and I still agree with my mom on the big stuff, but I find myself increasingly annoyed by the little things she judges me for. This all came to a head a few days ago, on Facebook.
My sister had a few people over on New Year's Day. I wouldn't call it a party necessarily, just an impromptu get-together with beers. Ok, that probably sounds like a party. My point is that there was beer. I wasn't drinking, and neither was my husband, but some others did drink a little. Nadine was there too, and she snapped a picture on her phone of Caitlyn in my nephew's high chair. She thought it would be funny to put her beer in the cup holder and snap the shot.
I thought the picture was funny, and that Caitlyn looked exceptionally adorable, so I asked Nadine to post it on Facebook so I could save it when I got home. So that's what she did. This is apparently what my mother saw:
Besides the annoyed comments she left on Nadine's Facebook, she sent me multiple text messages about how I should ask her to immediately remove such a troublesome photo. Someone could see it! And think I'm a bad mother! And call the police! What if my husband and I ever break up? He could use it against me in court! Apparently it's irrelevant that he was there when the picture was taken. Obviously dads are supposed to get drunk and moms are supposed to tend to the kids!
It seems when you become a parent absolutely everyone feels justified in throwing in their 2 cents about how you should raise your kids. I guess I could understand the hoopla if Caitlyn had been DRINKING A BEER in this picture. And it's not as though there's a cocaine-lined mirror and razor blade resting on the high chair in front of her.
If it was just my mom I could just chalk it up to her being opinionated. But everyone loves to tell me everything I'm doing wrong. In fact, my sister and fought today over some stupid shit like this.
Maybe you remember a few months back when I mentioned how my sister and her husband kept commenting how my daughter "should be on a schedule". At the time I worked in retail and with a constantly changing schedule for both me and my husband, it was impossible. And it wasn't only that. I don't necessarily agree with their point of view on schedules. They are so rigid with their son. The way I do things, I just live my life and add my baby to my regular stuff. They do everything around the strict schedule they have my nephew on. "Want to go to lunch?". "Can't, it's nap time- talk to me in 2 hours!". My mom lives a couple of hours away and if they are making a trip they ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT leave before or after a certain time because it will be time for him to eat or sleep or whatever. So if they are running 20 minutes late, they have to push their plans back by 2 hours. Maybe our differences in the way we live our lives is why I feel so fulfilled by my daughter and they seem burdened and exhausted all the time. But whatever, just a theory.
I was going somewhere with this. So now that I'm working a regular schedule, I am trying to get Caitlyn to go to bed a little earlier (meaning before midnight). That means less nap time during the day so she's tired and wants to go to sleep at night. I told this to my sister and she told me she would "try it for a week, but if she's fussy, I'm going to let her sleep as long as she wants". She "tried it" for 2 days and today she decided that she "has to do what is easiest" for her so she will be letting Caitlyn take 2 hour naps as opposed to the 1 hour I talked to her about.
I won't get into all the details of why it's absolutely infuriating, but the thing that pisses me off the most is how hard she pushed on the schedule bullshit early on. Today she actually said to me "well, you didn't want to put her on a schedule when it was inconvenient for me, but now that you are inconvenienced, you want me to make it harder for me". When we argued about schedules the first time around, she was adamant that it wasn't for her benefit, that she simply thought it was "the best thing for Caitlyn". Bitch.
I can't say I've never judged someone's parenting. I've judged my sister. When I told her I would be breastfeeding, she told me it was GROSS and how she would never do that. When I struggled with infertility, she whined about how she wanted a baby way longer then I did because her husband refused to get her pregnant when she was 19, unwed and living with 4 roommates. So when she comments on my parenting, I definitely take a moment and think "wow, I'm a way better parent then you". What I DON'T do is say that shit out loud. She still hasn't learned that lesson, apparently.
I guess I just think people should back the fuck off. I'm a good mom! Caitlyn is happy and lovely and sweet. She loves people and animals and is the most good-natured kid I've ever encountered. Is it possible that I'm doing something right? Mom's of whiny kids (my siiiiiissssster!) take note.
I'm not saying I've had a huge shift in my ideas about parenting and I still agree with my mom on the big stuff, but I find myself increasingly annoyed by the little things she judges me for. This all came to a head a few days ago, on Facebook.
My sister had a few people over on New Year's Day. I wouldn't call it a party necessarily, just an impromptu get-together with beers. Ok, that probably sounds like a party. My point is that there was beer. I wasn't drinking, and neither was my husband, but some others did drink a little. Nadine was there too, and she snapped a picture on her phone of Caitlyn in my nephew's high chair. She thought it would be funny to put her beer in the cup holder and snap the shot.
I thought the picture was funny, and that Caitlyn looked exceptionally adorable, so I asked Nadine to post it on Facebook so I could save it when I got home. So that's what she did. This is apparently what my mother saw:
Besides the annoyed comments she left on Nadine's Facebook, she sent me multiple text messages about how I should ask her to immediately remove such a troublesome photo. Someone could see it! And think I'm a bad mother! And call the police! What if my husband and I ever break up? He could use it against me in court! Apparently it's irrelevant that he was there when the picture was taken. Obviously dads are supposed to get drunk and moms are supposed to tend to the kids!
It seems when you become a parent absolutely everyone feels justified in throwing in their 2 cents about how you should raise your kids. I guess I could understand the hoopla if Caitlyn had been DRINKING A BEER in this picture. And it's not as though there's a cocaine-lined mirror and razor blade resting on the high chair in front of her.
If it was just my mom I could just chalk it up to her being opinionated. But everyone loves to tell me everything I'm doing wrong. In fact, my sister and fought today over some stupid shit like this.
Maybe you remember a few months back when I mentioned how my sister and her husband kept commenting how my daughter "should be on a schedule". At the time I worked in retail and with a constantly changing schedule for both me and my husband, it was impossible. And it wasn't only that. I don't necessarily agree with their point of view on schedules. They are so rigid with their son. The way I do things, I just live my life and add my baby to my regular stuff. They do everything around the strict schedule they have my nephew on. "Want to go to lunch?". "Can't, it's nap time- talk to me in 2 hours!". My mom lives a couple of hours away and if they are making a trip they ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT leave before or after a certain time because it will be time for him to eat or sleep or whatever. So if they are running 20 minutes late, they have to push their plans back by 2 hours. Maybe our differences in the way we live our lives is why I feel so fulfilled by my daughter and they seem burdened and exhausted all the time. But whatever, just a theory.
I was going somewhere with this. So now that I'm working a regular schedule, I am trying to get Caitlyn to go to bed a little earlier (meaning before midnight). That means less nap time during the day so she's tired and wants to go to sleep at night. I told this to my sister and she told me she would "try it for a week, but if she's fussy, I'm going to let her sleep as long as she wants". She "tried it" for 2 days and today she decided that she "has to do what is easiest" for her so she will be letting Caitlyn take 2 hour naps as opposed to the 1 hour I talked to her about.
I won't get into all the details of why it's absolutely infuriating, but the thing that pisses me off the most is how hard she pushed on the schedule bullshit early on. Today she actually said to me "well, you didn't want to put her on a schedule when it was inconvenient for me, but now that you are inconvenienced, you want me to make it harder for me". When we argued about schedules the first time around, she was adamant that it wasn't for her benefit, that she simply thought it was "the best thing for Caitlyn". Bitch.
I can't say I've never judged someone's parenting. I've judged my sister. When I told her I would be breastfeeding, she told me it was GROSS and how she would never do that. When I struggled with infertility, she whined about how she wanted a baby way longer then I did because her husband refused to get her pregnant when she was 19, unwed and living with 4 roommates. So when she comments on my parenting, I definitely take a moment and think "wow, I'm a way better parent then you". What I DON'T do is say that shit out loud. She still hasn't learned that lesson, apparently.
I guess I just think people should back the fuck off. I'm a good mom! Caitlyn is happy and lovely and sweet. She loves people and animals and is the most good-natured kid I've ever encountered. Is it possible that I'm doing something right? Mom's of whiny kids (my siiiiiissssster!) take note.
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