One Perfect Mess

Archive for the ‘Randomness’ Category

I’ve never been big on carrying purses. I really prefer to throw my debit card in my back pocket and be done with it. But, with kids I have found there are lots of little things that I find useful to have on hand. Today while waiting for a doctor’s appointment I decided to make a quick list of items I saw just glancing inside the small bag I had with me.

Diaper

Purelle

Two cans of play doh

M&M’s

Hair clip

Thomas

Ultrasound DVD

$11 in cash

Letter from DA’s office

Torn up pay stub

Burger King receipt

Hospital bill

4 pens

Ketchup

7 crayons

Finn McMissile

Three sets of keys

Popsicle stick

Mints

Chapstick

Stack of coupons

Benadryl

Two debit cards

Three lollipops

Driver’s License

 

All around the country, people are excited about getting an extra weekend hour. Let me break down for you how DST works for parents of small children.

In the spring, time moves forward an hour. That means that the kids’ internal clock allows for them to sleep an hour later. That is all well and good, unless you actually have places to go in the morning which I’m betting upwards of 80% of us do. So then you just get to wake a sleeping kid (THE HORROR) and have a sleepy, grumpy, uncooperative hot mess on your hands all morning. This also means that at nighttime, they want to stay up an hour later. LOSE – LOSE SITUATION

In the fall, time falls back an hour. That means that the clock said five AM this morning when my toddler woke up instead of the usual, and already intolerable, six AM. So in reality I end up feeling like I’ve LOST an hour of sleep instead of gained one. The only real win for me in DST is that tonight when their little clocks tell them it is time to sleep, I will get an extra hour to fiddle around on the internet.

So, what did I do with my extra hour this morning? Well, I cleaned up after the cat threw up about four times. I broke up half a dozen extra arguments between the kids. I did an extra load of laundry. And, I wrote this blog post. That’s something I suppose.

Mommy I think this baby is going to be brown.

Me: what?

You know, like Zymirrah from school.

Me: Silent while pondering a response…

Can we name him chocolate?

Me: umm no?

How does one explain race relations to a four year old?

It is November. There are Christmas carols being played in Target and there is frost on the ground every morning. So, I guess the holidays are coming. Thanksgiving is three weeks from today. All that makes me want to do is crawl under the covers. I love, like big L love, Thanksgiving and Christmastime. I normally make Andrew drag all the decorations out of the attic November 1. If I’m taking down the Halloween stuff, might as well go ahead and put out the next round. This year I just can’t muster any excitement. This makes me so sad. I know part of it is simply that I have no energy. The thought of even making a gift list, or ordering Christmas cards makes me weary. But even the year that I was due the week after Christmas I was out in the front yard directing the placement of twinkle lights on the house. I know another thing dragging me down is my mom. There is really no explaining it. She just gets depressed every Christmas season. I’ve tried to find out why but I will go to my grave never getting a straight answer out of her on anything. But again, it has been that way my whole life so that isn’t new. I’m just in the hole again I guess. I hope I manage to get out in the next week or two so that I am able to enjoy my favorite time of the year. If not that is just going to make the post holiday blues even worse.

What is your favorite food?

Spaghetti

What is your favorite color?

The whole wide world and the rainbow and pink and purple. And you know what else? Yellow.

What is your favorite toy?

My engines.

Who is your favorite cat?

Eli

Who is your best friend at school?

Tripp and Dominic and Joey

What is your favorite thing to drink?

Orange Juice

What is your favorite dessert?

Ice cream and M&M’s and Skittles

What is your favorite movie?

Day of the Diesels

Favorite TV Show?

Peppa Pig and Thomas

Favorite book?

Let’s see…. my smelly books. (me: what?) The Mickey Mouse books that smell good.

Favorite move in ballet?

Curtsies

Favorite thing you do with Mana?

Paint with her!

Favorite thing you do with Cici?

When her comes to visit here.

Favorite thing you do with Granddaddy?

When he takes us to explore and play somewhere.

What is your favorite thing to do with Papa?

When he gives me kisses.

What is your favorite thing to do with Daddy?

Daddy bringing me on adventures to museum and buy new fish and he earns money for us to buy our toys.

What is your favorite thing to do with Bug?

Color with him when he wants me to color with him at school.

 

So this weekend is the weekend. The much anticipated release of Cars 2 whereby I will (eventually when it comes out on DVD anyway) finally have a new movie to play on repeat in the van. I can recite the dialogue from the original from start to finish all while navigating interstate traffic and serving a three course happy meal. I’m actually kind of wondering how the kids are going to feel being able to see the new one just the one time in the theater. I am not going back every afternoon here people… At any rate, the kids had never before been to a movie and I happened to notice while scoping out the website for the theater this morning that they are offering kids’ movies in the mornings this summer. I figured a trial run was in order so off we went.

First off, the summer movie deal is really awesome. They play kid appropriate movies and only charge $1 admission per child. Adults are FREE! That would have sold me right there but the popcorn and drinks are just $1 too. The movie today was How to Train Your Dragon which I had never heard of but assumed it was alright for a 2 1/2 and nearly 4 yo. Right off the bat I realized that it probably was a little too much violence for my normal standards but we stayed anyway. I don’t need to have to explain to my preschoolers “why that kid say he was going to cut the dragon’s heart out… what does that mean mommy? the dragon wouldn’t like that would he? we don’t play with knives….” All the way there I stressed the two rules of seeing a movie at the theater. Be quiet. Sit still. Even as I drilled them into their little heads I thought “oh shit, we’re never going to succeed at those two things.” They did… okay. Clearly this situation was set up for small kids and noise and distraction and such so I don’t think anybody minded as everyone was in the same boat more or less. The Bug dropped his Sprite on the floor splashing my leg three times. He was having a bit of a hard time judging where his cup holder was and kept missing, apparently. The Weebles meanwhile sucked hers down and then kept asking for more. Loudly. I guess she thought I didn’t hear her when I didn’t jump up to remedy the problem. Their soda exposure has been extremely limited so I’m pretty sure that was the highlight for them. I’m hoping that this weekend they will be so fascinated with the movie that they won’t have any problems sitting still as I’m guessing the theater will be packed. I’m also pretty sure we’ll make a morning movie feature a weekly thing since it was something different to do and only cost us $7. Considering the haircuts they got immediately after the movie ran us $60 I’ll take all the cheap entertainment we can find.

I decided to do something very rare this past week and be a good wife. I knew Andrew was going to have a hectic morning at work so I dragged myself out of bed, got dressed (if you don’t understand the sacrifice of getting dressed then you are not one of my people) and took the kids to school so that he could get to work an hour or so earlier. I have been having a really hard time finding anything I want for breakfast lately and this morning was no exception. I decided to run in the grocery store on the way home to pick up some dishwashing detergent as we’d been having to run the dishwasher with just water since running out. While there I threw some French Bread Pizzas in the cart figuring what the hell, that would make a quick and yummy breakfast. What’s not to like? Greasy cheese, crunchy bread and you can be eating it within about five minutes if your play your cards right. Score.

I made a beeline for our trusty toaster oven as soon as I got home to get it preheated. Meanwhile I threw the pizza in the microwave for a couple of minutes, loosely following the quick bake instructions I seem to recall seeing somewhere on the box in the 90′s. Something caught my eye as I was putting the groceries in the fridge and I noticed flames shooting up from the bottom of the toaster oven. This isn’t really an unusual sight per se, because I have a general dislike of taking it apart to clean it. Frequently I find that cheese has melted off of something or other onto the heating unit and it will just burn off. Ahem. See no cleaning necessary! Made of win. I continued on putting things away and snagging my half baked pizza out of the microwave. Huh, still burning…. those flames look kind of big. Woah, is this thing spreading? Wonder if I should like, unplug it? Being the dedicated social media junkie I am, I snagged my phone and took a picture.

This went on for a few minutes. Alright maybe like ten minutes, and finally I began to wonder if I should intervene. Can a toaster oven explode? At some point might the flames escape from the toaster and catch other things on fire? I stopped to consider what a responsible adult might do and I formed a plan. I grabbed a pair of potholders and hauled the entire thing out to the backyard where I sat it in the grass. I texted my husband to let him know what was going on. It went loosely like this:

Me: Toaster’s on fire

Andrew: Turn it off and unplug it.

Me: *eye roll* Got that covered

Andrew: Is it contained in the oven?

Me: No honey, the cabinets are on fire too and I thought I’d stop and take the time to text you. WTF?

I imagine at the point he was satisfied that his capable wife had things under control as I didn’t get a response. I let it sit in the grass where it continued to burn for a solid twenty minutes. I hope it still works because I hate trying to find a good toaster oven.