Monday, December 31, 2012
NYE
Happy New Year's Eve. I always found new years eve to be anti-climatic. It's always supposed to be the best night of the year and indicative of how great the next year is going to be. It's always disappointing and leaves me feeling like the next year is going to suck. So I've lowered my expectations and am looking forward to a night of leftovers and a glass of red wine, sitting of the couch with my husband. I has to be better than the year my friends and I drove to New Jersey for "an awesome party", where it turned out that no one else was invited and the host got burger king for everyone. He proceeded to eat at least ten burgers then vomited in his bed. There was a keg (for 10 people???), the contents of which tasted like melted ear wax. Soberly, I went to bed only to be awoken hours later by three more invitee who appeared to be crashing from whatever substances they had taken earlier. Good times.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Christmas, glad it's only once a year
I'm a Christmas person. I decorate the entire house every year and look forward to the season. I love the smell of balsam, baking different cookies, buying gifts and Christmas music. When I lived alone in an apartment I would put up (a 25 year old hand-me-down) artificial tree the day after thanksgiving and kick off the season. Now that I'm married and have the house, we get a real tree about mid December but I usually decorate the mantel and everything else earlier. I bake into the night trying to find cookies that everyone will enjoy and try to keep some cookie traditions alive, like the bourbon balls my grandmother made every year.
Now as a mother, I try to give my son that Norman Rockwell Christmas I always wished for, and by recreating it for him I get to finally get it. Because regardless of my age or what we do, Christmas with my family usually ends with me in tears. Nothing is every good enough. Great you made oat-pumpkin-chocolate-cranberry cookies but I really wanted jelly cookies. Either I get you exactly what you asked for, which is anti-climatic or I got you something you didn't want. And at some point, something mean spirited will always be said, at the worst possible moment to push me over the edge, and make me thankful Christmas is almost over.
This year was especially trying because we did a lot of running around with boy, who at 14 months is into everything. He can sniff out an open outlet from across the house, coffee tables are the perfect height to reach everything, like glass picture frames or spicy chorizo and who knew kitty litter would look so appealing. Christmas night, at the third Christmas party, where again I was too busy chasing my little monkey to eat or speak to any adults, my father found it necessary to comment that "in my old age" I wasn't handling stress very well and seemed to get more frazzled. This after he followed me around all day to point out every looming hazard then critiqued how I fed my son, as if I was purposely trying to choke him with quartered cooked carrot and cut up mac and cheese. This from the man who one time forgot to give me dinner when I was 7 while my mother was at the hospital while my grandmother had open heart surgery. Or forced me to go play basketball with him while I had sun poisoning and was burnt from head to toe and kept vomiting because no one gave me sunscreen at the beach at 8. Or at 5 when he left me at his friend's wife's house and forgot that he left me there. I slept that night in bed with the wife and her two kids after being given a half pound of cole slaw for dinner. So excuse me if I don't want or appreciate your parenting advice but thanks for acting like something is wrong with me being a little stressed out. Why don't you first try "parenting" for real then have someone who has no idea what they're talking about micromanage you, all why trying not to have you're anal retentive aunt's house destroyed, all on very little sleep. That's whats stressing me out, crazytown!
Now as a mother, I try to give my son that Norman Rockwell Christmas I always wished for, and by recreating it for him I get to finally get it. Because regardless of my age or what we do, Christmas with my family usually ends with me in tears. Nothing is every good enough. Great you made oat-pumpkin-chocolate-cranberry cookies but I really wanted jelly cookies. Either I get you exactly what you asked for, which is anti-climatic or I got you something you didn't want. And at some point, something mean spirited will always be said, at the worst possible moment to push me over the edge, and make me thankful Christmas is almost over.
This year was especially trying because we did a lot of running around with boy, who at 14 months is into everything. He can sniff out an open outlet from across the house, coffee tables are the perfect height to reach everything, like glass picture frames or spicy chorizo and who knew kitty litter would look so appealing. Christmas night, at the third Christmas party, where again I was too busy chasing my little monkey to eat or speak to any adults, my father found it necessary to comment that "in my old age" I wasn't handling stress very well and seemed to get more frazzled. This after he followed me around all day to point out every looming hazard then critiqued how I fed my son, as if I was purposely trying to choke him with quartered cooked carrot and cut up mac and cheese. This from the man who one time forgot to give me dinner when I was 7 while my mother was at the hospital while my grandmother had open heart surgery. Or forced me to go play basketball with him while I had sun poisoning and was burnt from head to toe and kept vomiting because no one gave me sunscreen at the beach at 8. Or at 5 when he left me at his friend's wife's house and forgot that he left me there. I slept that night in bed with the wife and her two kids after being given a half pound of cole slaw for dinner. So excuse me if I don't want or appreciate your parenting advice but thanks for acting like something is wrong with me being a little stressed out. Why don't you first try "parenting" for real then have someone who has no idea what they're talking about micromanage you, all why trying not to have you're anal retentive aunt's house destroyed, all on very little sleep. That's whats stressing me out, crazytown!
Friday, December 21, 2012
The best laid plans
Despite every promise to spend time every day blogging, or at least every other day even for 5 minutes fall by the wayside. Busy with work, busy with home, most spare minutes I want to spend zoning out. As I strive to have the great career, the martha stewart house, and the happy, well adjusted family I find myself covered in hole punches and disfigured staples, exhausted, starving and going home to a house that looks like its been ransacked by monkeys.
The Norman Rockwell Christmas that I've dreamed about giving my son devolves into letting him watch yo gabba gabba so I throw together some chocolate chip cookies, which I don't even let him eat because I'm trying to hold him off on chocolate until his two. He had a different idea and reached up and grabbed one from the cooling rack. It's amazing how much that boy can shove in his mouth, especially when it's something he's not supposed to have like a cookie, or a penny, or a leaf.
In my fantasy world everythinging isn't sticky, the dining room table is cleared, the smell of cinnamon replacing that uriney smell that seems to linger (due to strange rash of midnight diaper leaks this past week). My desk at week is in an actually office that is climate controlled and has door I can shut so I don't have to smell anyone else's lunch/BO combo.
A girl can dream can't she?
The Norman Rockwell Christmas that I've dreamed about giving my son devolves into letting him watch yo gabba gabba so I throw together some chocolate chip cookies, which I don't even let him eat because I'm trying to hold him off on chocolate until his two. He had a different idea and reached up and grabbed one from the cooling rack. It's amazing how much that boy can shove in his mouth, especially when it's something he's not supposed to have like a cookie, or a penny, or a leaf.
In my fantasy world everythinging isn't sticky, the dining room table is cleared, the smell of cinnamon replacing that uriney smell that seems to linger (due to strange rash of midnight diaper leaks this past week). My desk at week is in an actually office that is climate controlled and has door I can shut so I don't have to smell anyone else's lunch/BO combo.
A girl can dream can't she?
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