Soccer is Hell

Oh, thank goodness the evil-that-is-soccer is over. Your kids love soccer? You love taking them to soccer? You love hanging out at the games and cheering on your little tyke? Good for you! Now I no longer have to pretend that I'm just like you. So far Quake has shown no interest in continuing with this experiment. Although he has been wearing his medal around the house. And to the grocery store.

I'm thinking about getting a whole batch of those suckers made up. I could give him one for every week of the summer during which I don't consider locking him out of the house. Now there's a competition I could get behind! Go team!

More Critter Love

We have a pack rat (aka woodrat). Correction - we had a pack rat. He/she/it has not come back after we destroyed the lovely abode you see here. This was in the corner on our house and the fence.

I get the weeds and the lint. And although you can't really see it in this photo, there were also lots of little cholla balls (little pieces of spine enrusted cacti). Makes perfect sense. But where the hell did it get that corn cob?

Also? We have a dog, a pretty large dog. A dog who likes to poop a few feet from this very spot. She, who almost removed my arm once when she spotted a rabbit during a walk, she apparently never noticed this.

Preschooler and Their Pets

In case you can't quite make it out, that is a plastic spider. I found it making a home for itself in the phone pocket of my purse. Do I need to point out that I almost jumped out of my skin the first time I saw it there? Do I also need to explain why, after the skin jumping incident, it remained in my purse for a good two months? If I could figure that one out I'm sure my life would make a lot more sense to me too.

Go, Team!

Yes, well, getting back into the swing of things around here has proved just a teensy bit more difficult than I had originally imagined. I've been moping through my days feeling sorry for myself because Monkey Man was so busy at work, and I'm tired, damn it!

Plus I'd been dreading the soccer-day-from-hell that had been planned for me yesterday. Quake had pictures at 10:30, then a game at noon and a game at 1pm. Two hours of soccer for a 4 year old? That's about 90 minutes more than he's interested in playing. Then Monkey Man told me he had band practice at 1. Then the nice man on the news told me it was going to be 90 degrees. Then I dissolved in a puddle of god-I-hate-being-a-soccer-mom-itis.

It was almost as bad I thought it was going to be. Monkey Man's cousin drove down from Phoenix to see Quake play so at least I had an extra hand to help with Cha-Cha (2 hours of soccer in which he is not allowed to participate is just about 120 minutes more than he's interested in watching). But the weather? Even if Quake wanted to play again, I'd tell him there was no more soccer until next November. And then I'd tell him all the parks were closed until then too. I guess it's a blessing that all he really wanted was the uniform.

Welcome to the House of Ick

The icky house of sick, that is.

Monkey Man had the flu all week and even canceled the trip he was supposed to take to Asia this week. I was the bad-ass momma Monday and Tuesday, keeping everything and everyone together and taken care of. Wednesday I started to slip. By Thursday I was sick as well. At least I only have a cold, a nasty cold, but just a cold.

Hopefully everyone (including me) will be back in the game tomorrow...

Look Before You Sit

I had nightmares as a child that a snake or crocodile would come up through the toilet and bite my ass. Actually I'm pretty sure I was still afraid of that as a young adult. At least when I was drunk. These days we should all probably be afraid of tiny little cameras, but that's a topic for another day.

Apparently I should have been afraid of plastic fish and octopus combs. Thank you Cha-Cha, but this is not just a small bathtub. At least he didn't try to flush them. And I found them before the 3am-in-the-dark piss.

My Daily Plans - An Update

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the list of 11 daily habits I was trying to integrate into my life. I held no hope that doing this would actually change anything. I own at least 50 self-help books (not to mention a long history with the library), and let's just say I know my way around this neighborhood.

Well color me shocked and amazed! Not only have I been filling out my little sheet, I've also noticed which items have a made a difference in my mood and which haven't. Morning pages keep me sane; meditation is overrated. It's like I'm a grown up or something. Please don't tell my mother.

Of course previous lists have included things like, "Do cardio for 60 minutes every day while eating sub-subsistence levels of food." Then I'd beat myself up for not being able to stick to my goals for even 1 day. Now that's just a little slice of heaven for a self-flagellating depressive, I tell you!

Favorite addition to my current list? Flossing. Little bitty baby steps.

In Which I Actually Read a Novel

Last week I HAD to get away from the family for a few hours. After dinner I headed out for Boookman's, a local, used bookstore that is fabulous. I even printed out a list of books from my ever-growing excel sheet of books-I-might-like-to-read. I've been feeling overwhelmed by this enormous list lately, but I haven't been able to tackle it at the library. Turns out that once your fines get over $10, you can't reserve books on-line anymore. Yes, I know, I just need to pay the fine, blah, blah, blah.

Because time is an increasingly precious commodity to me, I elected to just print the fiction books on my list. I'm more likely to read non-fiction these days, but I couldn't bear the thought trying to figure out in which category each book might be shelved. And then checking for the same book in multiple places because who knows if I got it wrong or if they just don't have a copy. I'm tired just thinking about it.

There is a point. Kind of.

I bought three novels, and I finished the first one yesterday. It was Little Children by Tom Perrotta. I LOVED it! I may have to try Joe College and Election. Because the 460 books that I already have on my list might get lonely...

How To Know If Your Toddler* Will Make You Gray

The boys were taking a bath tonight (I like them to get clean a few times a season). Cha-Cha starts crawling out of the tub, which is usually Cha-Cha-speak for "I'm done!" I sit an arms length from the tub because Cha-Cha? He likes to splash. Big splashes. The splashing? Not so good for whatever book or magazine I'm reading at the moment. So as I reach over to help the baby, who is not adverse to flinging himself onto the bathroom rug, he slips and rolls into the water.

Just a note here. Unlike many parents I know, like, let's say a certain father who may or may not live in this house, I do not panic at these moments. Contrary to popular myth, the child will not drown in the 3 seconds it takes me to fish him out of the water. Do not email me to tell me what a terrible mother I am. I read while my kids take a bath - I already know I'm a bad mother.

Before I can get my arm in the tub, Cha-Cha's head pops up. Is he coughing? Is he desperately struggling to get air into his water filled lungs? Is he crying? No, no, no, no, no. My dear, sort-of-sweet, devil of a child is laughing. Gleefully.

And he's also not done.

He spends the next 10 minutes putting a foot up on the edge of the tub and then "pretending" to fall back into the water. A few times he actually does slip, and I watch him roll into the water. And then I watch him pop up laughing. Every time, laughing. The game only ended when Cha-Cha decided it could be made infinitely better by actually getting out of the tub and then back in. Even I'm not lazy enough to let him do that.

Cha-Cha will probably never be an easy child, but he's always fun.

*I am so not ready for Cha-Cha to be a toddler. Since he has decided to not talk, I've decided he's still a baby. And will be at least until he starts to drive. Or goes to college. Or turns 30.

Once Again Proving My Lazy Status

Yesterday we resorted to using swim diapers. Because driving the 4 miles to Walmart? Too.fucking.hard.

Just so you know, swim diapers will not hold an entire nights' worth of pee. In case you were curious. Or as lazy as me.