Not enough hours in the day.

It’s been an entire week since I last posted anything and I have nothing even remotely ready to post again for who knows how long!  I have been so incredibly busy the last few weeks that I just feel like I haven’t had the time to sit and think, not to mention write anything.  On the one hand, it’s wonderful that I’ve been so busy with work, but on the other hand, I’ve really missed being able to read everyone’s blogs and do some writing of my own.

I am sincerely thankful for anyone who visits over here and I’m sorry I’ve been such a dud lately, but I can’t remember a time I’ve been busier with my out-of-the-home job.  I promise I will be posting some stuff soon, including a special post about my mom for Mother’s Day and the fact that my older son has discovered religion and what we’re doing about it.

Despite not having time to indulge in my own interests or hobbies, I did somehow make time to put together a birthday gift for my 5-year-old:

It took forever.

 

 

Manic Monday Blog Hop: Mom’s Nightmare.

The other night, I had a dream.  One of those dreams during which you wake up and for a split-second you ask yourself, “did I really leave my kid at a train station all alone earlier today?”, until you realize you’re in your bedroom and you thank the Good Lord that you did not in fact abandon your kid and that The Department Of Children And Family Services will not have to be called.

Then you go into your kids bedroom and check on them.    Just in case.

You know that dream.  We mamas have all had a dream like that and I am telling you, this dream just about killed me.  It all started with this fruity idea that I had, that we were all going to go on a trip via train.  I had my older son Si with me and our backpacks.  I remember walking to the train station with him and texting my husband to pick up our younger son Bozo and meet us at the station.  Despite not hearing back from him, we proceed.

Then, I realized I had forgotten the tickets.  After searching my person for them I apparently felt it was okay to tell my six-year-old “you stay here while I drive back home and get the tickets”.  So, I did.   I left him at the train station while I hopped in my grandmother’s old car (did I mention I was driving my grandmother’s old car??).

Then, things got worse.  Abruptly, I find myself at some kind of outdoor barbecue in someone else’s neighborhood.  It was nighttime and I have no idea who any of these people are, and it suddenly dawns on me “I’ve left my kid alone at a train station”.

Panic.  Frantic panic.  That’s the part of the dream I remember most.  Running around the neighborhood in the dark, trying to find my car and can’t find it anywhere while these strangers look at me like I’ve lost my mind.  I’m so confused.  How on earth did I get to this barbecue without a car?  Why did I end up here?  So then, I start texting my husband again, but of course in this dream, the auto-correct is going crazy and making my texts completely non-sensical.  Although, as before, my husband isn’t answering my texts, so what does it matter?

It was at this point that I woke up, heart-racing and lying straight on my back looking up at the ceiling.  Needless to say, I was beyond relief to find that not only do we not live anywhere near a train station, but that Si was in bed snoring away as usual while Bozo was somewhere deep in the recesses of his stuffed animal cave.

What am I saying?  That wasn’t a dream.  It was a nightmare.

Naturally, I went back to bed and began analyzing why I would dream such a terrible dream.   The thing is, my life is actually very similar to my dream, albeit on a much less panic-inducing and scale.

I might not leave my kid at a train station, but I’ll leave my F-drive at home, which houses everything I could possibly need for my job, and not realize it until I’m already at my office with three minutes to spare until my first client arrives.  I’ve stood in the middle of my office and cussed the F-word a handful of times because of this very reason.

I might not forget how I arrived at a BBQ and not even remember driving there, but I frequently forget where I parked on my way out of the grocery store and I dissociate all the time while driving, as the only means of escaping  the incessant fighting going on in the back–to the point where I don’t actually remember driving the 7 mile stretch of Main St.

I might not forget something as important as train tickets, but I forget lunches, mittens, snow pants, permission slips and to re-schedule a hair appointment on a regular basis.  I can’t count the number of times my morning commute has been interrupted with a “S*#t” and me turning around in someone else’s driveway because I forgot to take my son’s lunchbox out of the refrigerator and put it in his back pack.

The only things that took place in my dream that happens in real life are the annoying auto-correct and my husband not answering my texts.

My life sometimes feels like a never-ending race with no finish line.  Getting ready for school, packing lunches, packing bags, remembering Si’s coins for the coin drive and the fact that today is “Royalty Day” at Bozo’s pre-school, packing myself up for work, planning dinners, doing homework, remembering to feed and take out the dog, calling back my father, planning birthday parties, talking to the principal about my son getting bullied on the playground (which had me in such a tizzy, that I tried to back out of my garage with the garage door still closed).

Often times it’s overwhelming, and that’s usually when I start forgetting that we ran out of milk two days ago or that I forgot to renew those library books that are a week overdue, or that my car still needs to be aligned, or that I haven’t yet opened the garage door so don’t reverse just yet.  My life is dictated by To-Do lists because if I don’t write down every single blessed thing I need to remember, it is as good as gone.

Today, it was nearly 50 degrees outside and the boys and I took an hour-long walk down our dirt road just the three of us.   Our first relaxing Spring walk of the year.   We stopped and loitered for long periods of time, they played in some water, they carried sticks and we laughed at how silly they were.  I am so grateful I had that time with them today before the rush of the work and school week starts all over again tomorrow.

I can’t wait for summer vacation.

This post is a parenting blog hop!  Please click on the picture below to visit Perfection Pending and read all the others.

Junkyards and garage sales just aren’t my thing anyway thank goodness.

As my younger son’s 5th birthday draws near, I find myself thinking back to the whirlwind day he was born.  I look into his beautiful blue eyes today and listen to him speak with his little lisp and still, I don’t understand why, find it so hard to believe he was once a little squirming ball of flesh and fluid who had just taken a dump in my womb.

Unlike his older brother’s labor and birth, Bozo came fast and furious, which might explain why at this very moment he is pretending to be a Nascar racer and running laps in our house while he makes me periodically wave our American flag as he goes by.    For Si, we had a hospital bag by the door two weeks prior, I labored for 12 hours at home only to find when I did get to the hospital I was a mere 1 and a half centimeters dilated and my mother, after 24 hours of labor, told the doctor to offer me an epidural because she couldn’t bear to see me in anymore pain.

Poor Bozo.  No one came to his birth and we were completely unprepared for his arrival despite knowing his due-date.  My husband was feverishly installing the wood flooring to our house which wouldn’t be finished  until after Bozo arrived.  Until then, we were bouncing back and forth between staying at his dad’s house and my mom’s, both of whom were probably thoroughly sick of having a moody pregnant lady, a toddler and an anxious son-in-law always asking, ‘what color stain should we choose for the molding?’.   On the 3rd of April,  I had just dropped off my husband some pizza for lunch at our almost-finished-house and headed back to my mother’s when my contractions began.

Awesome.  Husband is up at the house where there is virtually no cell service and I’m in labor.  After an hour or so of 5 minutes-apart labor pains that became increasingly strong, I called him and through choppy cell-phone service was able to get the message across, “This.  Is.  Happening.!”.  He flew from our almost-built house to his father’s house, threw everything he might need into a garbage bag while I paced the driveway waiting for him to pick me up at my mom’s house.  I still vividly remember leaning against the lamp-post swaying from side-to-side and moaning while my mother helplessly stood by wringing her hands until, finally, he pulled in squealing tires and all.

I don’t even like to think about the truck ride down there.  I have no idea how fast he was going, but I’m sure it was not safe and even five years later I still ask myself  “what if?”.  I sat in the passenger seat writhing beneath my seat belt holding onto the Oh Shit handle for dear life as his Toyota Tundra barreled down the highway.   All I know is that I could smell burned rubber when we pulled up to the hospital.  I guess that saying really is true.

Once inside, they sat me in a wheelchair and wheeled me into a room where the nurses scurried around me as the doctor examined me and told me that I was almost 8cm dilated.  “Sweet!” I said out loud,   “We’re almost there!”.  The truth is, I’m actually pretty good at labor.  I don’t really scream or yell at anyone and I tend to withdraw into myself during contractions and don’t bother with anyone until I’m done.  I could seriously just do it all by myself and be fine.  I don’t really need that much “support”, if that is what you call my husband standing next to my bed giving me his limp hand and being more interested in what everyone else is doing around the room but me.  It’s just how he is.  Although, at one point, I was feeling a bit annoyed by his lack of cheer leading.  Not because I needed it so much, but for God’s sake, I’m birthing his second son, give me something!!!   So, in between contractions, I tried to communicate my feelings to him:

Me:   “Hee-hee, hoo-hoo, hee-hee-, hoo-hoo……..hee-hee…….hoooooooooo…… hooooooo… um, honey…..hoooooo……could you please like…..hee-hee…..hoooo tell me I’m doing a good job or…..hooooooooo……. say something encouraging to me?  I could really use it right now”.

Husband:   (shaking him from his reverie):  “oh yeah!  no, honey….you’re doing great, really, you’re doing awesome.  Good job!”

By this point, my water still had not broken.   It never breaks on its own–slacker.  So, once again, they had to break it for me, which marked the only semi-scary part of my labor because when they did break my water, I heard the doctor yell “MEC!!” which means “Meconium”, or for you folk who don’t know what that is, Bozo basically took a crap while in utero.  It can be dangerous if the poor baby ingests some  of it, but he did not, thank goodness.

So yeah, that was stressful at the time, and If that wasn’t enough, the doctor asked me if her intern could come in and watch.  Now that part I don’t care about.  I’m all for someone who is trying to learn to deliver babies to come on in and watch one being born, because really, how else are they supposed to learn?

It was the fact that he was gorgeous that irked me.

Why didn’t she mention this to me?  In my delirium, I saw him walk in and be led by the doctor to my open legs, so spread-eagle in front of him, it was a little too late to change my mind.    Through the wide opening of my knees, I lifted my head up slightly to say ‘hello’ and introduce myself since he was going to have a front-row seat  On top of being a hottie, he was very nice and being such a nice piece of eye it did take my mind off the pain for a few seconds.  That is, until I saw him craning his neck to get a better look as I was pushing.

Ugh, I bet his girlfriend is gorgeous.

The more I pushed and the closer Bozo was to making his debut, I did start to make some unattractive noises, but again, I was extremely courteous and composed in my hysterics because after I let out a good scream/growl/holler, I asked the nurses if they made sure to shut the door to my room so that I didn’t scare any first-timers out there.  I try hard to be thoughtful of others, even as my body is being ripped in half.

Finally, after a mere 6 hours of labor and only a few minutes of pushing, my little Bozo arrived safe and sound.  After he was out and husband was cutting the cord and all that husband stuff, Dr. Hottie did pay me a compliment telling me he was impressed because he had rarely seen a woman give birth naturally without any drugs used, which told me he was obviously very new at this whole Intern thing.

Looking at my soon-to-be-five-year-old-today, I’m so grateful we made it to the hospital safely.  I’m so grateful he didn’t eat his own poop and I’m even grateful I had a cute intern to help me keep my mind off the pain at times.  But most of all, I’m so, so grateful when my little Bozo hugs and kisses me and tells me,  “Mommy, you’re my favorite mommy.  I would never put you in a junk yard” or “Mommy, you’re my best mommy and I’d never want another mommy and I would never sell you in a garage sale”.

Happy, happy birthday Bozo.  Thank you for bringing so much happiness into MY life.