One Perfect Mess

Archive for March, 2010

Do you hear that MTA? It is me… in a “tizzy!” As I have alluded in earlier posts and tweets, we have a lovely family swarm of carpenter ants that have been living with us the last couple of months. Every time I think the word **ants!** now I imagine Dooce with her Shingles and jazz hands. Keep that visual in mind.

We started seeing big ants (not like GIGANTIC ants or anything but not the teeny tiny sugar ant variety) here and there a couple of months ago. Then, as it got warmer there were a few more. Weird…. where are these ants coming from I wondered. Hell it is still winter. And I didn’t see them in the usual places like in the kitchen on my oh-so-clean counters or hanging out around a puddle of spilled milk on the floor. They’d just be here and there. Crawling up a wall in the hall way or trekking across the living room carpet. It was like each day they multiplied. Now those little fuckers are everywhere. I honestly was eating a piece of pizza last weekend watching TV and when I looked at my pizza there was an ant walking across it. The hell?

I am a “do not harm” kinda gal. Really. I don’t allow anything to be killed inside my home or outside of it either by anyone I have any sway over. We carefully capture and release spiders, mice, bats, millipedes, cats (they don’t seem to be going away) and any other little critters that find their way into our home. I won’t even let poisons be put on my lawn to kill weeds because I worry about the impact that has on my children, pets and wildlife in general. Let me tell you what. They cannot roll out the bug spray fast enough over here at my house. I may still be saving the little buggers when I find them drowning in the toilet (how can you not, OMG the karma!) but it is them or me. We have a contractor coming out to rip the wall off the side of the house to repair the damage and to get the little wankers out. Short of packing up the entire wall, ant colony and all, and trucking it somewhere in the middle of nowhere I don’t know what options I possibly have for not killing these ants. Laugh all you want, I hate to do it. But I 100% look forward to no longer sharing living quarters with thousands of ants. I’ll go plant a tree or something to make amends to the universe.

It was not me that woke up in the middle of the night to feel an ant crawling on me. In my pants. These carpenter ants have driven me bat shit crazy.

It cannot be me that is so desperately looking forward to the carpenters ripping the wall off the side of the house and the pest control people doing their thing.  Because I hate killing things. And I hate chemicals even more.

It was not me that gave in and got my daughter a Happy Meal to eat on the way home from preschool today. I am always way too organized for that and plan out healthy lunches she can eat on the go.

It is not me that seems to always order pizza on the same day that I spend $100+ at the grocery store.

It is never me that says things like “honey can you please just watch your DVD” when my preschooler asks me where we are going for the 37th time in a row. Because encouraging and fostering conversation are so important to a child’s vocabulary… why on earth would I waste that opportunity?

It was not me that caught myself trying to play Words with Friends while driving yesterday…. down the interstate.

I am so freaking tired of making meals that don’t get eaten. My children employ different approaches to avoiding their breakfast/lunch/dinner. My daughter is outright distracted. If we eat at the table in the kitchen she simply gets up and runs around. We have tried numerous ways of getting her to sit down and eat. Bribery, threats, simply saying “eat now or dinner is over” and then letting her be hungry until snack time. She really doesn’t seem to give a good gosh darn about it. If I let them eat in the living room at their special kids’ table she will color or stare at the TV etc etc and forget there is food in front of her. So, I try not to go insane and just put the food out, give her a fair amount of time and then put it away. I figure the kid won’t starve herself. I hope.

My son, on the other hand, takes a different approach. If we put him in his high chair he spends the entire meal trying to climb out of it. He also “drops” a fair amount of food no matter where he is fed. Then, he likes to canvas the floor for dropped bits and eat them. I caught him yesterday afternoon gnawing on a sweet potato fry he found… somewhere? We had sweet potato fries on Sunday. There are days I feel like I am going to totally lose it and cook his dinner and then just hurl it onto the living room carpet so that he might actually eat some of it.

Really the worst part of it to me is the waste. Food is expensive and takes time and energy to plan, purchase and prepare. Plus I hate to see things in wasted in general. I throw away SO much food it is shameful. One trap I have been lucky to stay out of though is eating their leftovers. No thank you. Once they are done squishing the food through their fingers, drooling on it then spitting it out or dunking all their crackers in their ketchup I don’t find it particularly appetizing. Luckily we compost.

I took the kids to Costco yesterday. Yes, on a Saturday morning. Yes, I knew what I was getting into. I’m not sure if it is just that there are fifty million people there on Saturdays or if the three dozen free sample stands that attract hordes of customers make it worse but Costco is a hard place to navigate on a Saturday morning.

I ignore the vast majority of the sample stands. I know right! I’m not even sure I’m American. But yesterday one in particular caught my eye. They were giving away meatballs. You know those sweet yummy meatballs somebody always brings to a potluck? Damn I love those. And I have never figured out how to make them or where to get them. So, I am always on the lookout for a lazy alternative. I gave one a try.

“What dat mommy” – Weebles

“It is a meatball” – Me

“I want meatball mommy” – Weebles  Okay I have to stop here to say my daughter is NOT in a phase where she tries new things. Hell she barely eats things that she already loves. Naturally she wants a meatball that probably has egg in it. So I wandered over to the package on the shelf to check it out. Hmm no eggs. And it was pretty damn tasty. Ground teriyaki chicken with pineapple meatballs. And they are precooked. All you have to do is put them in the microwave oven. Figuring she won’t even try it I go back over and get one for each of the kids. They both snarfed them down as we went on about our shopping.

Two minutes later: “Mommy, I want more meatball” – Weebles

“Well honey we got some to take home for later.” – Me

“Mommy, I want more meatball” – Weebles

“We can even have them for lunch if you want” – Me

“MORE MEATBALL!” repeated over and over again with rising levels of panic for the next forty five minutes as we finish up in the store. I sped us home, ran in the house, threw the damn things in the microwave oven and presented them to the kids for lunch. Wouldn’t you know they didn’t touch the fucking meatballs?

It seems that just in the last week my little boy has been full speed ahead on learning. His new words include:

uh oh

ball

car

yellow

mommy

daddy

moo

meow

Lily

Beep beep

I’m sure I”m forgetting some already. He also is working on his signs. He has added the sign for mommy, daddy, all done, baby to his original sign “more”. He is also really into stickers, painting and using his window markers. But by far his favorite activity is still running around outside. Yesterday he walked all the way down to the neighbor’s house to see their koi pond and then back. Where did my little baby go?

So we started working on our taxes like two months ago. We got right to the end, the baby woke up and we were like SHIT we’ll have to finish that tomorrow night. Yeah. Well here I am trying to finish the damn things and I go to sign into H&R Block to be greeted by a message essentially saying “Hey! Congrats on remembering your password you use once a damn year. We are sending you an email just to make your life fucking difficult. The link in it will only work for 24 hours but may take up to 20 minutes to arrive in your inbox.” The fuck? Let me get this straight. Just to finish my taxes, which really should only take me ten or fifteen minutes I have to sit here refreshing my email inbox waiting for an email from you. I can’t put it off until later because by the time I remember the link will have expired. GAH.

So, I sat. Refresh. Refresh. Ooh look a new email! Nope just another freaking spam email from Plow & Hearth. What the hell is Plow & Hearth anyway? Have I ever bought from them? Sigh. Refresh. Oooh goodie, here is my email. Okay, click on link. They want me to “update my information” which appears to mean they want to me to sign up with them all over again. Okie dokie, this is great fun I sure hope I get to start all over on my taxes too. Username check, old password (whooo I remember this I rawk) check, new password… the hell you say? Why? A new password. Dammit I defied all probability by remembering my original password. I’ll never remember a new one. Okay, whatever. New password, check.

Error message. Sorry your new password  must contain at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter and one number. Hell in a handbasket. I can’t even THINK of a password that works there, much less one I might perchance remember later. Think, think. Ooh okay, last name + number. I probably won’t remember it but whatever.

Error message. Sorry your new password cannot contain your username. Fuckity Fuck. Whatever. Fine. Alreadyforgotten666 how is that H&R block? Oooh my password is “strong” now apparently. Good.

Please select a new security question. Sigh… patience wearing thin here people.

Options:

What is the first and last name of your first boyfriend or girlfriend?

What is the phone number you remember most from your childhood?

What is the last name of your third grade teacher?

I’m sorry, wha? Is this a security question or a MySpace meme?

Listen up IRS, H&R Block obviously doesn’t want me to do my taxes. They have apparently decided to abandon accounting and instead go with social networking. So when my 1040′s aren’t efiled on time, take it up with them.

P.S. Please still send me my refund. Thanks.

It is Not Me that still has the last few Christmas decorations sitting in my utility room waiting to be boxed and put in the attic nearly three months after Christmas. Nope.

It is Not Me that had to rewash the same load of laundry three times last week because I kept forgetting to move it to the dryer. That is just horribly disorganized.

It is Not Me that has a garage so messy I refuse to let anyone out there. Boxes, recycling, toys, donations… the excuse was that it was too cold to work out there. Now that we’ve had a few days hit nearly seventy degrees I think I’m running out of excuses.

It is Not Me that has had an entire colony of ants move into the dining room wall. Everywhere you look is a damn ant. The kids are fascinated with them but I have had about enough. The bug man is supposed to come later today. Oh Lord, I hope he doesn’t want to go in the garage…

It is Not Me that got Jillian’s fitness game for the Wii for Christmas and have not even managed to turn it on once. Apparently I did manage to take it out of the box at some point, because now I have lost it.

Play along with MckMama, what did you not do this week?