Author Archives: Cindy

trying to work with cartoons as my background soundtrack

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Catie is still sick. This is fourth day in a row of school that she’s missed. Her fever was only 100.1 this morning, so I’m hoping that means that she’s moving in the general direction of recovery.

I’m extremely fortunate that my job is so flexible about allowing me to work from home. I don’t know what other single moms do in this position. How do you miss four days of work? I mean, really, what do you do?

And honestly, Catie is a pretty easy kid to take care of, even when she’s sick. I keep pushing fluids on her, and giving her Tylenol or Motrin to keep her comfortable, but she’s mostly content, as long as she has either a movie on TV or her iPad to keep her busy. She whines a little when she’s really miserable, but mostly she’s been ok. (If it had been Lucy that got this virus? WHOLE OTHER STORY.)

As much as my parents help out, they can’t really do much when the kids are sick. My mom is so susceptible to illnesses ever since she had chemo (btw, I realized I didn’t mention it, but she recently passed the “5 years cancer-free” point, so YAY MOM!!). The last time my parents took care of one of the kids when they were sick, my mom ended up in the ER after she caught it because it hit her so much harder. So I’m just not willing to risk it. My parents are getting up there in years, and I’d like to keep them around as long as possible. Keeping my kids quarantined when they’re contagious seems like an easy trade-off.

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Chris’s birthday is next week, and then Christmas is the week after that. I have no idea what to get him for either occasion. I’m normally pretty good at gift-giving, but with him, I’m just stumped.

And although The Bloggess’ latest post about best and worst gifts has had me cackling, it still hasn’t helped me figure out what I’m going to get. Dang.

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Also next week: Dave is flying in to visit with the kids for the holidays. The kids are really excited to see him. I, as usual, am looking forward to sleeping a lot while the kids are with him.

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Aside from Chris, I think I have almost all of my Christmas shopping done, and I mailed out my cards today. This is surprisingly punctual for me.

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Nothing else new, really. I’m just over having a miserably sick kiddo, and I’m ready for some downtime.

I’m like an extreme couponer but not as crazy or organized

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So. The past few days. Where to start?

Ok, backing up a bit: Target had this deal that if you spent $75 on Black Friday, you’d get a coupon for 20% off at a future shopping trip (the coupon was good from 12/1 to 12/7). I generally avoid shopping on Black Friday because that much open hostility among my fellow shoppers makes me nervous.

stampede2
What I imagine Black Friday shopping looks like. I would be Simba in this scenario.

Chris had hit up Target on Thanksgiving night to get some Christmas stuff for his kids, so he told me about the coupon deal. I went to Target on the night of Black Friday – long after the crazy storm of shoppers had looted the good deals and the crowd had died down – and dropped $75 in about 5 minutes. I mean, really, two big boxes of diapers is $50. Add in some eye drops and a bag of cat food, and I was basically done.

So, I had this 20% off coupon. And I also have a Target Red card so I get an extra 5% off when I shop at Target. And 25% off your entire purchase is a really good deal, right?

Last week, I cleaned out my garage and dumped two carloads of stuff at Goodwill. Then, Saturday night, I got my parents to watch the girls, I borrowed my mom’s minivan, and Chris met up with me at Target (because this was going to be a BIG trip and I needed help juggling multiple carts). We joked that our “date night” was going to be at Target, and that’s basically what it was. We met up at 8-ish on Saturday night, and we were there until the store closed at 11:00 p.m.

I filled up four carts. Four. Entire. Carts.

Major_Target_Trip

I basically have enough diapers and Pull-Ups to get Lucy the rest of the way through potty-training, and probably at least a year’s worth of paper towels, garbage bags, detergent, and toilet paper… all things that I can store in my garage and not worry about any of it going bad.

I have never shopped like that in my life.

And as much as I love shopping at Target – and I do, I often refer to Target as “my happy place” – after 3 hours there, I was done. Chris was double-checking the list and going, “wait, do you want to get a couple more boxes of cat litter?”

And I was all, “No. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m thirsty. Six boxes of cat litter is enough. I wanna go home and lie down now.”

nap_or_cry

Safe to say that the extra bit of money I had put aside in my budget for Christmas expenses is pretty much gone now. And this little shopping trip was (obviously) after I got the girls their Christmas presents. I still have a little wiggle room in my budget for teachers’ gifts and whatnot, so it’s ok and we’re fine. But still, damn, that was a lot of money all at once, even with the 25% off.

But hey, if the zombie apocalypse happens to hit in 2014, I am going to be SO prepared for it.

Stop by my place if you need me to wash your clothes during The Rapture. I have plenty of detergent hanging out in my garage.

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Completely unrelated topic jump:

On Sunday, Catie was whiny and clingy and generally not acting like herself. We were out running errands on Sunday afternoon, and she fell asleep in the car, which really should’ve been a red flag, since she never naps anymore. Chris carried her into the house (I carried Lucy, who had also fallen asleep in the car), and she slept on the couch for another hour.

When she woke up, she said she wasn’t feeling good. I checked her temperature and it was 99.6. I gave her some Motrin, and she seemed to perk up and feel ok after that.

After her bath, though, she was freezing cold (even with the space heater in the bathroom) and couldn’t stop shivering. She got under a fleece blanket on the couch and her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering.

I checked her temperature again. It was 102 degrees. Crap.

I kept her home from school on Monday, and she lay on the couch and moaned pitifully and watched TV while I tried to work. (If you’ve ever tried to write a software manual while listening to “Star Wars Episode III” in the background? Hats off to you, because that crap is impossible.) The only time she left the house was when she put on her shoes and coat with her PJs because we had to take Lucy to/pick Lucy up from daycare.

She still had a fever of 101.7 this morning, so I kept her home again. And she threw up in the driveway when we were leaving to take Lucy to daycare. It wasn’t much, I think she just drank some water too fast. And really, it’s raining today, so of all the places she could’ve barfed, the driveway was kind of an optimal location from a clean-up perspective. (God, my neighbors must love me.)

My mom brought me these gel pack things that are supposed to help bring fevers down, so I put it on her after we got home from dropping off Lucy.

be_kool_pack

I had never heard of these things before, but I swear, they really work. Within 20 minutes, her fever had come down, she was eating, and she was obviously feeling better because she was talking my ear off. So I’ll be stockpiling those gel packs for future reference. They’re amazing.

Fingers crossed that she’s well enough to go back to school tomorrow, and that nobody else in this house catches her germs. We were all sick last Christmas, I don’t need a replay of that.

toddler-speak

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Toddlers all seem to have their own unique dialects, and I’m learning that Lucy’s is very different than how Catie talked at this age. Catie had an odd little half-British accent (thanks to her dad), but Lucy’s is just straight-up Southern. Which is funny, because I don’t think there are that many people in her life with thick Southern accents. My dad, maybe, and some of the ladies at daycare.

She calls milk, “MEE-uhlk,” and when we go to my parents’ house, she says, “I ring the doo-uh bay-ull.” Turning a simple 2-syllable word like “doorbell” into four syllables seems VERY Southern to me. There are times the way she talks reminds me of my Grandmother.

And not necessarily Southern, but she always says “OK” as “Oh-tay,” which reminds me of this:

eddie murphy as buckwheat
Ahh, back in the days when Eddie Murphy was still funny.

More random 1970s pop culture references. If she’s hurt or upset, and she wants a hug, she yells, “HUGGY!” Which makes me think of… well…

Huggy_Bear
Huggy Bear, utterly pimptastic.

Yeah, it’s terrible, I know, but once you make that connection in your head once, you’ll never be able to not think of it.

She has a very two year-old way of arranging her words. She still says, “Take you!” when she wants me to pick her up. (I think Catie’s version was “carry you,” but Lucy got this one from my dad. When she raises her arms for her him to pick her up, he says, “Here, I’ll take you.”)

That little “you” vs “me” reversal happens a lot. This morning, I fussed at her for acting up, and she said, “Fine, I not you mama ANYMORE!” and flounced out of the room. It was very dramatic. Her teen years are gonna be awesome, I can see it already.

Little Miss Movie Star. She's preening, "You like my dress? You like my sunglasses?" Yes, baby, you're gorgeous.
Yeah. No flair for the dramatic here at all.

One morning when she woke up early, I told her to stay quiet to let Catie sleep, and she said, “Oh-tay, I not wake up her.” It’s the way she gets most of the correct words in the sentence, but putting them in the wrong order, that slays me.

It’s a temporary stage, and I know that in a year, the same sentence will be “Ok, I won’t wake her up.” But I’ll miss the way she talks now.

Of course, I do still have Catie who calls the weapon in Star Wars a “light saver,” and says “anywayses” instead of “anyway,” so maybe Lucy will hold onto some of those cute little quirks for a while longer. Either way, it’ll be “oh-tay.” Ha.

on mediation

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Dave and I had to go to mediation yesterday, which probably sounds very dramatic, but in reality, it wasn’t at all. We’ve been using a temporary order for custody and child support since we separated, but we needed to make some minor changes to it, and since Dave lives on the west coast, it’s a lot easier to hire a private mediator to sort this stuff out, rather than get a court date, which would likely occur when he isn’t in town for it.

So, we found a mediator. I sat in his office, and we had Dave on via video conference. And we hashed things out.

And it occurred to me that, for all of the stuff we’ve been through, we’re sort of… fine now. Sure, there’s a lot of bad stuff that happened in the past, and I doubt we’ll ever be what you’d qualify as “friends.” But we’re alright. That was kind of a startling realization to have, believe it or not. I think it’s because we both know enough people (through friends, family, and co-workers) who’ve had really terribly ugly divorces, and we’re both trying our best to not end up like that.

And really, even with these very minor changes that we made to our agreement, there were some very hard conversations that took place yesterday. Which I knew was going to happen, and I sort of went into the mediator’s office ready for a fight. But even though there were times when we vehemently disagreed, we stayed respectful. We never yelled. We never said anything nasty to/about each other. I’d say, “Well, no, I don’t think that’s right because… (whatever),” and he’d counter with his side, but it never got ugly or mean-spirited.

And even though his parenting style is totally different than mine, and we disagree on a lot (oh man, A LOT) of things as far as how the kids are raised? I do know that we’re both doing what we feel is best for the girls and we’re trying to work together for their best interests. And I have to think that even though we approach these issues from completely opposing viewpoints, the fact that he and I both love Catie and Lucy, and that we want what’s best for them? That’s going to be the thing that helps our girls most, in the long run.

So, hey, maybe we won’t ever be friends. But we’re ok. And that’s a hell of a lot better than I ever thought I’d be able to say.

Thanksgiving recap

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Our Thanksgiving was both fun and exhausting in the way that only “four days of no childcare” can be. The kids had a blast, I need a nap.

I prepped my side dishes for Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday. I contributed the sweet potatoes & the dressing, I baked some rolls, my mom did a couple other veggie side dishes and a fruit salad, and that was basically it. (The ham & turkey come from Honey-Baked Ham because ain’t nobody got time for that. Oh, and there were cupcakes, but those were also store-bought. My mom and I are basically saving our energy for Christmas.)

On Thursday morning, I dropped the girls with my parents, as well as my brother and his girlfriend (who drove over from Charlotte for the holiday), and then Chris and I headed over to his mom’s for Thanksgiving lunch.

Headed to Thanksgiving lunch with Chris's mama & family, then dinner with mine. Really wishing I still had my old maternity pants for the day.
Gratuitous “heeeeey I escaped my kids for a few hours!” selfie.

His mom lives in a tiny little town about an hour or so from here, and it felt like the area where a lot of my family lives in Mississippi. (For those of you who know the Meridian/Lauderdale County area? It’s a lot like that.) There’s something familiar and comforting about that, and I liked it. I also appreciated that all of Chris’s family was very friendly to me and made me feel welcome. I’d met his mom a few times before, but I didn’t know anyone else there.

And the food, good lord. SO. MUCH. FOOD. I forgot how much old Southern ladies like to cook, and between Chris’s mom and her sister, there was basically enough food to feed a small town. I ate way too much, and while I was sitting at the table, sweating and trying to decide how awkward it would be to faint right there at the table, that’s when his aunt Mary leaned across the table to me and said, “So are you ready for dessert now?” OMG.

ate-too-much
This cat = how I felt.

Chris has a theory about old Southern ladies and their food: they really like to have company over to visit. And they figure that if they keep feeding you all of their food that’s loaded with butter and sugar, eventually you won’t be able to fit out the door to leave. He might be right.

After lunch, we rolled our stuffed selves out of his mom’s house and headed back to my parents’ house. Lucy was sound asleep on my dad’s lap (something about Pop-Pop in his recliner plus a football game on TV = night-night time for her), my mom was taking a nap, and Catie was watching Star Wars with my brother and his girlfriend. I always worry that when I leave my kids with someone else, all hell is going to break loose the minute I walk out the door, so it was really nice to see that things were so calm and peaceful there. I started cooking, and somehow Chris and I managed to eat again at dinnertime.

The rest of the weekend was nice: putting up Christmas decorations, a little shopping (no crazy black Friday stuff for me, I don’t have the patience to deal with the crowds), eating a ton of leftovers, visiting with my cousin and her family to meet their new dog, that kind of thing.

Lucy gives my sweet potato casserole two thumbs up.
Lucy gave the sweet potatoes two thumbs up. Catie, meanwhile, took one look at the Thanksgiving feast and asked for chicken noodle soup. Because, of course.

But now, it’s Monday, the kids are back at school/daycare, and I’m trying to get back into my work groove. And lord help me, after the insane gluttony of this weekend, I’m actually really looking forward to running today. Which is weird for me, but I’m kind of glad to have these new little habits in my life.

Now I just have to remember to set the daily reminder on my phone so I won’t forget to move the damn elf on the shelf every night…

purging

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Every once in a while, I get the urge to rid my life of all excess “stuff.” I’m not really a hoarder or a pack rat type, but with two kids in the house, clutter tends to build up fast. Especially with the kids’ stuff. There are tons of toys and books and things that Catie doesn’t play with or use anymore, but I find myself holding onto it all, just in case Lucy wants it someday.

This past weekend, I got rid of a lot of stuff. I cleaned out my closet and hauled out three large garbage bags of clothes, which I gave to Goodwill. A lot of it was stuff that’s now too big on me, but I had also been keeping all of my old “skinny clothes” that I thought I would wear again when I lost weight. The thing is, though, now that I’ve lost the weight? Those clothes aren’t my style anymore. I don’t like boot-cut jeans now, and I don’t wear shirts with long flowy sleeves because (a) I’m not Stevie Nicks, and (b) I still have to change poopy diapers sometimes and that’s just asking for trouble. So there was a LOT of stuff that I realized I really don’t need.

Then the girls’ clothes… well. I save all of Catie’s stuff so that Lucy can wear it someday. And that’s fine. But now I have boxes upon boxes of clothes that Lucy has outgrown, and I have no need to hold onto any of it.

Back in the summer of 2012, my mom and I had a yard sale and I sold a whole bunch of Lucy’s tiny newborn-size baby clothes, and it didn’t really faze me at all. (I got rid of my maternity clothes at the same yard sale, and I was downright gleeful about that – goodbye, belly-paneled pants!) But for some reason, getting rid of the toddler clothes felt like a punch in the chest to me. Maybe because I don’t have the same memories of my kids as babies that I do of them as toddlers – I’m not a “tiny baby” person, I’m a “18+ months” person. I think they’re so much more fun when they can walk and talk and show their personalities. So I guess that’s what made it harder.

And the thing is, I know I don’t want another baby – really, most days I feel like I’m barely hanging by a thread with the two that I have, and I honestly, truly, absolutely DO NOT want another kid. But there was something about the finality of it that got me. As I dropped everything off at Goodwill on Saturday, I had to look away really quickly from the pile I’d just set down so I wouldn’t cry.

I’m still cleaning stuff out. I’ve had a dresser sitting in my garage since I moved into this house, because I have no place to put it, and I finally listed it for sale on craigslist. (Note that we’ve lived here for two years now. That dresser has been there a LONG time.) And there are tons of toys in this house that both of my kids have outgrown, and a lot of families who do all of their holiday shopping at places like Goodwill and could really use them.

Plus, you know, my girls are both about to get a whole new pile of stuff for Christmas, so really, it’s not a bad idea to lower the current inventory in the toy boxes.

I’m not sure if it’s the holidays or what that’s given me this restless need to get organized. But it feels really good to offload a lot of this stuff.

random rants

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I gave up Diet Coke about 8 or 9 months ago (I forget exactly when), and I think breaking that habit has been a big part of the reason I’ve been able to lose weight. Based on what I’ve read about the effects that diet sodas have on the metabolism and your brain, and the fact that I’ve lost 35 pounds since I gave it up, I think it’s safe to say there’s probably a connection there.

(Well, that and the running. I run an average of 12-15 miles a week now. I think that makes a difference too.)

I had some Diet Coke a couple of months ago, because I was at a party and there were two-liter bottles of soda, with cups and a cooler of ice, set up on a picnic table. I was tired and figured the caffeine hit would help.

The crazy thing: it made me totally sick. It tasted terrible, it burned my throat, and I felt burpy and bloated and sick for the rest of the day.

sick-2

So, what do you know. Apparently that stuff really isn’t good for you after all. I knew it wasn’t healthy, of course, I just didn’t realize quite how much damage I might’ve been doing to my body until I gave it up.

I don’t want to turn into one of those anti-soda people, because I generally find those people to be annoying and tedious, but that’s my personal story of Why I’m Glad I Don’t Drink Diet Coke Anymore. You’re welcome, and I promise that I’ll try to never get preachy about it.

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Of course, giving up the soda means finding a different source of caffeine, and generally I’ve become a big fan of iced tea. Unsweetened with a little sweet ‘n’ low is my new favorite thing – and it HAS to be the pink stuff, do not try to give me Splenda or Equal or I will smash your face.

First thing in the morning, since I always feel like death when I wake up, I’ve started drinking coffee. I’ve never liked coffee, but I’ve managed to adapt to it. My problem is that I really don’t like hot drinks, but if I make iced coffee, I’m fine.

And a few times, I’ve gotten an iced coffee at Starbucks – which, for the record, I still cannot walk into a Starbucks without feeling like some terrible suburban mom stereotype.

Mean-Girls-GIF-Reginas-Mom-Amy-Poehler-Im-Not-A-Regular-Mom-Im-A-Cool-Mom

I couldn’t figure out why the Starbucks iced coffee tasted a million times better than the stuff I made at home.

Then it dawned on me that at Starbucks, the milk I put in is half-and-half. At home, I was using skim milk. So apparently that’s the key. As with so many other things in life: once you add a little fat to it, suddenly it’s MMMM, TASTY!

Cake-GIF

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Totally unrelated to all things beverage: I’m normally a Kelly Clarkson fan. She’s cute and feisty, seems like she’d be fun to hang out with, and I generally like most of her music.

But I hate-hate-HATE this new “Unconditionally” song. Because you know what? There is no such thing as unconditional romantic love. Everyone has conditions. They vary per person – some people’s conditions may be far more extreme than others – but your partner can always do SOMETHING that would alienate your love.

So, really, what she means is more like, “I love you unconditionally… until you cheat on me/hit me/start cooking meth in an RV out in the desert/what-have-you.” But those are all conditions. So the entire premise of the song is bullshit.

Also, she puts her inflection on the wrong syllables and that just bugs me.

Try again, Ms. Clarkson.

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I read this post by Helga yesterday, and it got me thinking about bullies/mean people in general.

I’m not sure why, but it inspired me to google a guy I dated in college, who was without a doubt the worst boyfriend of my entire dating history. I’m not even going to get into all of the details, because I’m still embarrassed to admit the amount of abuse and mistreatment I took from this jackass, even though it’s almost 18 years later.

And I remember very clearly, driving home after our break-up, thinking to myself, “Ok. Chalk this one up as a learning experience. Now you know how you will never let a man treat you, ever again.” And it stuck. So I guess I ought to be thankful for that, I learned my lesson early, and I haven’t dated anyone even remotely like that since then.

Turns out? Abusive JerkFace Guy is now on the national sex offender registry. And it was weird, but recognizing his face in the mugshot I saw online, I wasn’t even the slightest bit surprised to see that he had been in prison for sexual battery. In fact, it sort of felt… oddly gratifying. Not for whoever was his victim, of course, because I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But I had a moment of “good, I hope you learned your lesson.”

takei_douchebag

I mean, it’s doubtful. Assholes usually stay assholes for life. But I can hope.

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There’s really no point to anything in this post, just a bunch of random stuff that’s been jumbling around in my head, and it was all too long for Twitter and/or Facebook. So here it is. Hopefully my abuse of animated GIFs made it more interesting.

If not? Well.

no1currr
(I could watch those dudes all day.)

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Edited to add: It was pointed out to me on Twitter that “Unconditionally” is actually sung by Katy Perry and not Kelly Clarkson. Which explains why I hate it. Ok then, nevermind! Carry on!