Archive for February, 2010

What? It’s been a week since I last posted? Really? Hmmm…wonder why that might be? Could it have been because I didn’t have a functional computer? Could it have been because I got the new Mac on Thursday and have been learning it since? Could it be that life moves at the speed of OH MY FREAKING GOD and I’m not able to catch up? If you answered all of the above, you win!!!

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I need a name for the new computer. My friends have sent in some good suggestions, but I want a few more. I’m about to just name it Dude, but since I call my boys Dudes, don’t know if that will work. Help me name my new sexy toy!

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A real, live post is up over at Hopeful Parents today. Something well thought-out, with a beginning, middle, and end. Not the random snippets that are here tonight.

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If the earthquakes that have been hitting suddenly break apart the earth a la Pangaea, know that I’ve loved our time together. I’m saddened by the destruction in Chile, but oh-so-glad that the tsunami seems to have taken it easy on Hawaii. I didn’t realize until this afternoon how badly I want to go back there, and wanted it to be in one piece (or rather, seven islands) when I return.

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February? Go away already. I can’t begin to express my joy that tomorrow is the last day of the month. It has been 27 days of bad news, and it needs to end already.

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Anyone seen my mojo? Is it off partying with yours? I’d really like it to return. I’m hoping that Monday will mark the end of its extended vacation and I can return to feeling…oh, I don’t know…human again.

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And if there’s anything more exciting than doing laundry on a Saturday night, don’t tell me. Not sure I could handle the excitement.

Karma: What goes around, comes around. See also Grandma’s description: God’ll get ya, every time.

4th Commandment: Honor your father and mother

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We trekked into church for the first time in several weeks today. Tom has been traveling on the weekends, and while I’m a strong woman, I’m not strong enough to get the two boys to a church 35 minutes away by 9:15 on a Sunday morning. Getting them there would require Bailey’s in the coffee, and then I couldn’t drive, so yeah, there’s the reason right there I didn’t bother. Tom had a rehearsal, I had to pick up music, and we thought we should probably make an appearance before the fires of hell burn brighter for us. Or something like that.

The boys are generally pretty good during the service, but they do get antsy after awhile. So they usually make the trek to the basement bathroom at some point, usually mid-sermon. I let them go, and my last words to them are always, “Come right back.”

Uh-huh.

They didn’t come back, they didn’t come back, they didn’t come back. Finally, right as Tom was about to go downstairs and crack some heads, J thumps upstairs (yeah, we’re so proud) and stage whispers at about 95 decibels, “A’s hurt (mumble mumble), nose, downstairs.” Tom hurries downstairs to check on him…

and doesn’t come back, doesn’t come back, doesn’t come back.

Sigh.

Is it too much to ask for a quiet, meditative service? This is why I play the liturgy any chance I get. I get to sit up behind the choir, no one talks to me, I can enjoy a quiet hour. Ahhh…

So, just as I was about to head downstairs to make sure body parts were all where they were supposed to be, Tom brings A back up with a bloody nose. Only my child could get a bloody nose at church going to the bathroom.

Turns out that the boys took their respective leaks, then snuck into the preschool that’s in the basement. And discovered a New!Teeter!Totter!

See where this is going?

A got smacked in the nose farting around on the teeter totter instead of returning to the service.

And got a bloody nose.

And a lesson on karma.

With a heaping side of the 4th Commandment.

As Mom always said, God’ll Get Ya, Every Time. And now I have proof.

and then turns right around when it realized it was being shipped to my house.

Princess’s reign of terror is over. As of 5:30 MST today, she has been replaced. The shiny new toy will be here by the weekend.

Now, to think of an appropriate name for it…

Still here, haven’t been dragged off for shooting Princess the PMSing Laptop in a momentary lapse of judgment (note: not only do I not have access to a firearm, I’ve never fired one). She’s still not working worth crap, and I made the executive decision this morning that I’m giving her up for Lent. Yes, I’m fully aware that today is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent and already I’ve fallen off the Lent Wagon, but since she’s moving so slow I suppose I will too. Bitch ain’t gonna see Easter, that’s for sure.

It is all kinds of February around here, and it’s not just me. Tom made a comment at lunch about “back in February,” and I had the sad task of reminding him that it is still that horrid month, and we have 13 days to go before we see any relief. The days rush by so fast I can’t catch my breath; I climb into bed every night wondering where the day went. AND YET the month is dragging on. Sad state of affairs, that. This morning someone greeted me with the standard, “How ya doing?” and all I could do was look at him and reply, “It’s February.” When you start the day off by convincing your test-phobic twice-exceptional 3rd grader that state testing isn’t going to kill him (yes, CSAPs started today whheeeeee), it’s pretty much just downhill from there.

February is my “always darkest before dawn” month, where things get worse and darker before things suddenly improve and it’s all fairies and unicorns farting glitter and working computers. Yes, I put a functioning computer in the same category as glitter-farting unicorns–do you blame me? I made an offhand remark on Facebook about wanting to run away and I think there were no fewer than a dozen women who were ready to toss everything and head out with me. I don’t think that’s so much a statement of my coolness as it is the recognition that this month sucks and a little warmth, sun, and unlimited drinks by scantily clad pool boys is precisely the cure for such a predicament. I’m actually considering assembling a little vacay for Suckage Month 2011, women only. I think four days on a cruise ship with no way of being contacted, food and drinks a’flowing, nothing to do but what we wanted to do, would do wonders for our combined mental states. I can dream.

So yet again, a bleh post because February is in cahoots with Princess and sucking my will to live. But soon March will be here, with a functioning computer and unicorns, and life will be good again.

My mojo has gone missing. I’ve been searching all over the house for it, but it’s well hidden. I did find the 2 extremely overdue library books, but no mojo. I’m doing ok without it, I’m just floundering a bit. Things are taking considerably longer to accomplish, I feel a bit out of sorts–like things aren’t getting done, and I find myself cursing uncontrollably lately. Loudly. Repeatedly. Sailors are blushing on my behalf.

And then I figured out why my mojo escaped. Because of this:

That is Princess the PMSing Laptop. Don’t know if I’ve ever posted a picture of Her Highness the Bitch (thank you iPhone, with your reliability and grace). I can’t really explain how her slow demise is making my life miserable, but lemme see if I can try.

• Something inside the machine, under the left hand, has been making a wet (!) gurgling sound. I smacked it last night, rather hard, and it stopped. I can say with a great deal of confidence that the sound will return today.
• Click…1,2,3,4…28,29,30…window opens. And lest you think I’m counting quickly, allow me to remind you that I’m a professionally trained musician and can keep a damned (see, there’s the swearing again) steady beat at 60 bpm. The shortest count is about 4 seconds, the longest well over 30 and then she crashes.
• I’ve been working on updating my resume. Four hours on Tuesday, two and a half of which were just waiting for her to catch up. I tried to continue last night, but got so frustrated I went and started working on our taxes at 9:30 at night. I need to have Le Resume in tomorrow for a volunteer position I dearly want.
• Working on the taxes is taking forever because half of what I need is on this machine and getting it out is like pulling teeth from a rhino…difficult and painful. See the irony? As soon as taxes are in and we have a refund (pleasepleaseohGodplease), she can be replaced. Wait a second…methinks she knows this…hmmm…
• Supposedly I have wicked fast internet now. I have not seen any indication of this, simply because the computer is too slow. Swear to GOD once she is replaced I’m getting fiber-optic internet, just so I can dance like a wood sprite with the joy of it all.
• It’s a good thing I have mad touch-typing skillz. The letters are wearing off the keys one by one. Eh, who needs an “n?” I only have two in my name!
• Have I mentioned the constant crashing?
• I got my inbox down to zero a week ago; right now I have roughly 80 emails to process and/or answer. Same with posts in my reader, except there the number is well into the hundreds. I don’t like the feeling of my large intestine trying to throttle my brain because of the length of time it takes to accomplish a single email, so I’ve been avoiding it.

So, all in all, I’d rather brush my teeth with a rabid porcupine than sit and work in front of this machine. And on top of it all? We have our “Come to Jesus” meeting this afternoon with the school about accommodations for A.

Applying keyboard to forehead in 3…2…1…

I’m back. And, boy, do I have some loose ends here.

First and foremost, I allegedly have super fast, whoosh-my-hair-back internet now. I can’t tell, because Princess the PMSing Laptop has relapsed and is slowly dying. As I type here, I have no cursor, can easily write an entire sentence before I see what has been written, and can click on a window/tab/anything and count to at least five before something happens. So today I offer up this heartfelt prayer:

Dear IRS, after last year’s heart-attack-inducing “We owe HOW MUCH???” incident, we changed our withholdings and are praying for a refund. Please let there be a refund. Any refund will directly carried to the Apple Store and exchanged for a computer that actually works. (Wow. Imagine that, a computer that works. What’s that like?) This will stimulate the economy and I will be regarded as a hero for aforementioned stimulation. You can thank me later. Off to gather tax info for my accountant, Jen.

I poisoned myself went for dim sum last weekend. Thought I was doing so well, avoiding the wheat items and eating the rice items. Uh, no. I managed only to heavily glutenize myself and have been wiped since about Tuesday. Took me the better part of three days to figure out WTF I did to feel so bad. I’m still recovering, as evidenced by the fact that I slept until 9 this morning. That was partly due to a dog with a sudden case of I HAVE TO PEE!!!!! at 4 this morning, and partly because the boys didn’t want me to find out that they had dragged A’s mattress downstairs to watch TV. They are now using it as a trampoline as they watch Garfield. Please pity me.

If you haven’t been participating in the Twitter #gtchat chats, you’re missing out. Yesterday’s topics were Asynchronous Development and Twice Exceptionalities. Because I was still setting up my new modem/router (seriously, can anything concerning computers be easy for me for a change?) I missed the entire 2e chat. Grumble, grumble…but transcripts have been posted. Asynchronous development here and 2e here. Chats are every Friday at noon EST and 7pm EST. Details can be found at Ingeniosus and new topics to be voted on are posted every week.

This post is taking forfreakingever to write. I hate this POS laptop. I type insanely fast and I’m into a half hour here. (edit: it’s five hours later and I’m still working on this, simply because my frustration level keeps shooting through the roof)

Missy, bless her heart, left me not one, but two awards this week. I have to combine the blog list ’cause I will kill my computer if I link back to 22 bloggers.

Along with the award comes . . . R-U-L-E-S.  Here they are:

A. List 10 things that make you happy.
B. Try to do at least one of them today.
C. Tag 10 bloggers that brighten your day.
D. For those 10 bloggers who get the award, you then link back to my blog and create your own “makes you happy” list.

Ten things that make you happy…ordinarily this wouldn’t be hard, but I still feel like crap from the gluten poisoning and that tends to make me less than happy. Let’s see what I can come up with.

1. Sunshine in February
2. Any temp over 50F in February
3. Coffee with friends
4. Wine and Whine with friends
5. Pandora
6. When the boys genuinely love on each other
7. A hot shower after a hard workout, not that I’ve had the energy for that this week
8. My iPhone…because IT WORKS (hear that, you miserable POS? You can’t miss it, I’M TYPING ON YOU!!!!)
9. When the dog farts and I’m in the other room and don’t have to breathe it in. Never happens, because she’s always under my feet. But I hope.
10. Monday mornings, when I can kick the boys out the door to school.

In the tradition of this award, here are the rules I must oblige by in order to pass it on:

- Put the logo on your blog or within your post.  Check.
- Pass the award onto 12 bloggers.  Check.
- Link the nominees within your post.  Check.
- Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.  Check.
- Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.  Check.

I’m only linking to 6, because, again, my computer would keel over…I’ve been working on this post for too long…I’m tired and want to go lie down.

1. Nancy at Away We Go. I love her sense of humor.
2. cms at Ends with 8741. She has had a hard week.
3. Lynn at For Love or Funny. Again, makes me laugh.
4. Karin at HeartSongs. She has also had a terrible week.
5. The gals at So ‘Over’ Everything. Another blog on intense, 2e kids. Good to find.
6. Dawn at Weldable Cookies. She is a wonderful friend, has talked me off many a ledge, and never fails to surprise.

Frankly, there are too many. Eventually I’ll get my blogroll up in the header where it says “reading list.” Guess how long that’s been in the queue? Yeah, just slightly short of forever. If you made it this far, congratulations, you made it farther than I did. I gave up long ago and the monkeys quit their Shakespeare and finished this for me.

Ah, the first day of February. Or, as we’ve been calling it ’round these parts, “DON’T GET SICK NOW!,” aka the day our new health insurance goes into effect. The one that’s going to cost more for less coverage. Yeah, that one. I don’t have insurance cards, the HSA debit card, and I have to pick up a prescription today. Yeah, good thing my thyroid medication isn’t for a life-threatening condition.

I started today with a to-do list that had me hyperventilating and my throat closing up. Dawn, bless her heart, talked me off the ledge through IM and now, with some lunch, Coke Zero, and a bunch of M&Ms in me, I think I’ll live. Still looking forward to some wine tonight, though.

…note…I started this three hours ago, am on my second Coke Zero, and have to leave in a half hour. Did much get done? Yes. Do I have an answer on my HSA debit card? Yes. Can I pick up my prescription today? No. On the plus side, it’s sunny and warm. Boring post today?

Yup.