Someday I'll Update For Real

In lieu of real though, here are more snippets:

- Why are all of these people flipping out about Obama's speech to students? Haven't seen it? Look on whitehouse.gov. When I was in 2nd grade, Bill Clinton was in office. We learned about him, Hillary and Chelsea as parts of our social studies/current events classes. We learned about what he was doing and we talked about our thoughts on all of it. We were encouraged to talk with our parents about all of it too. His speech wasn't about promoting socialism, promoting his agenda, or anything like that. It was a message to the students of America, who are grossly irresponsible, ungrateful and entitled, that they need to work and work HARD to get to their goals. If parents in general were talking to their children about this, the President might not have to.

What I was taught is that even if you don't agree with the leader, you respect and support the leader. I think people need to back the fuck off. Actually listen to the words in that speech and then probably follow it themselves. I'll say that honest to everything and anything holy that his speech inspired me. It was a swift kick in the ass to stop bitching about the semester I have, how much I hate it, because even though it doesn't feel important, that these baby steps will help me be who I want to be.

- Emily got moved up a classroom at school. Finally. She is disgustingly smart. And a little OCD. We were in her bedroom and she was lying in bed talking to me before she went to sleep. Tomorrow she's going to The Girlfriend's mom's house for a sleepover and said "Mom, I want to draw you pictures. You like pink and green and um, black?" I said no, I like pink and green and brown. And she says "Oh. OK. Wait! What if there're no crayons? What will I do?" And she flipped out, talking a mile a minute for four minutes before I stopped her and told her not to worry. Funny girl.

That's all for now.

Some quick pics.

I'm sitting around a fire right now with The Girlfriend, the Awesome Neighbors and all the kids. I wish summer could last a little longer.

Procrastinator

I am supposed to be working right now. The Girlfriend is in class and I have homework and a deadline coming up. However, my mind is just SO FULL. So. We shall do very few small snippets.

- I think the man who slapped the toddler? That yeah, ok, he shouldn't have done it. But for anyone who shops at Walmart? It's like redneck central, at least where I live. There are MILLIONS of children running around shoeless, shirtless and seemingly parentless. It's annoying and wrong. These kids jump in front of your carts, open things up and SCREAM. So, like I said, he shouldn't have done it. I personally think that physically disciplining any child that is not your own is wrong, no matter what. However? I totally understand and sympathize and I think that parents need to be taking WAY more responsibility for their kids' manners, especially in public. Whatever happened to politeness? Teaching our children right from wrong?

- Healthcare? I don't understand the big thing. People should be more important than money, money should be less important than it is, and no one under eighteen, employed or being generally more productive to society than less productive, should have to DIE because they can't afford doctor visits. This one hits home a little too personally for a snippet, but I will write about it later.

- I love dooce. And her washing machine story? I followed it on twitter and people are RIDICULOUS. They also don't know the definition of fairly simple words and they attack and attack and attack. This ties in with snippet one: what happened to manners?


This can all be summed up by what I say more often than anything: The entire world needs to gain a better sense of common decency, common courtesy and common sense. If those three things could be attained? I think it would all be good.

Back to work.

The Other Night

We went out to dinner. I had arranged for Emily to have a sleepover at one of her friend's houses (which is a total different post about nerves, about things like OHMYGOD, what if Emily can't sleep and I'm not there? and things like FUCKFUCKFUCK I FORGOT TO PACK HER PRINCESS DOLL) and I took The Girlfriend out to have a good night of fun before school started. Oh yeah, school started Monday. Awesome.

My grandma called me earlier, which is good because her birthday was Sunday and I called and called and kept getting a busy signal.

We all love snippets, right?

Today was my second day out of work. I wake up every day and feel like shit. Every day, without fail, I feel like absolute ass. My mouth is like the fucking cave of wonders. Seriously, you should see the stuff I scrape off of my tongue with my tongue scraper. It's gross. Anyway, every morning I feel like but. No voice, stuffed nose, etc. Usually a shower, an allergy pill and a few cups of hot coffee turn it all around within an hour or so. But on Tuesday, by eight thirty in the morning (three and a half hours after waking up), I still felt like butt. And was dizzy on top of it. And my voice was not getting better with hot drinks, but was disappearing all together. By nine am, I thought I was dying. Seriously. (I'm not at all dramatic. At all.)

So I went home. I spent the entirety of the day moaning in the bed, getting up to have my entire stomach fall out of my ass and then stagger back to bed, groping at the walls because I was so dizzy that I quite literally couldn't see straight. I would get in bed, argue with the pillows because I couldn't have my head too horizontal but my neck hurt if it was too vertical and it was awful. There was a bottle of honey next to me which i drank straight, the way that the ladies at churches throw back the communion wine shots on Sundays. You know what I mean, the way they try to look dignified in their hats and pretty outfits but really, who can look dignified when taking a shot?

The Girlfriend was kind enough to pick Emily up and the Awesome Neighbors took Emily and fed her so that I could lie around in my misery alone. Emily came back home around 6:45, just in time for bed and The Girlfriend got home from school around 8:15 or so. I don't really remember.

This morning I woke up and expected to have had some magic recovery. And when I put my feet on the floor, my head rolled off of my body because the weight of the snot couldn't be contained. It rolled off and the snot left a trail and I died. Right there. Dead. And then I had to wake Emily up to dress her and get her butt to school. So I informed my boss that I was still feeling ill (and I'm pretty sure the word butt was in that information) and got Emily to school and came home amazed that I hadn't been arrested and given a breathalyzer for driving drunk.

So I sucked it up and went to the doctor today. I'm not one to freak out about things. At all. I'm one who tends to think that the media overplays things WAY TO FUCKING MUCH. However, I'm an asthmatic, a college student and I have a three-year-old. So I decided it would be good to make sure that I do indeed have a cold and not H1N1 or anything more serious. I go to the doctor and she does all her stuff, blood pressure, weight, asks if I've quit smoking, stethoscope, etc. Then she puts her fingers on my face and taps on my cheeks, right under my eyes and I YELLED. Seriously yelled at this poor woman, who timidly says "um, I guess that hurt?" and then proceeded to tap on my forehead above my eyebrows, and tears fell from my eyes.

Diagnosis? Wicked sinus infection, double ear infection and it looks like strep might be on it's way. Awesome! I love having a shitty immune system! It's fucking awesome! So I was give some antibiotics and a nose spray and was told that if I don't start feeling better soon, or if at anytime I feel like a semi just ran over my body, I need to call her back.

Tomorrow I'll be back at work, dizzy, running to the bathroom and hoarse, but I'll be there. It's been weird to sit at home. I love work and haven't known what to do with myself.

I did, however, learn how to make apple maple chicken sausage, courtesy of Rachel Ray.

I know. I know.

You're all desperately wondering where I've been, right? Probably not. I'm smart enough to know that you probably don't care all that much. I do though.

I started this blog for many reasons. I've written my entire life: I have diaries from seventeen years ago when I was five. I've had an online journal for nine years and have always dabbled in poetry, short stories, writing jobs, etc... This blog was supposed to be another outlet, and hopefully one that could gain some outside popularity so that I would have a bigger audience to provide opinions.

The other part of it is that I think I'm living a life that many women are living. But there's simply not the time to write about it. I wanted to make the time, to make a voice for all of the women like me. To open the eyes of other women who so frequently look down their noses at us, the lower tiers of money and society. I feel that the class I'm in, the social setting and the general place in life is a place that not many people know about.

I think I lead an important life and that all the women, and probably some men too, that are living it deserve to have a story told. I think we deserve to show our sides of parenting, the side that isn't fortunate enough to have the most important conversations be about popular internet baby controversy: pacifiers?? Circumcision? Co-sleeping? Bottle or boob? To be able to have those conversations dominate your life, to have those be your only parenting choices, that is a luxury. And I think that is forgotten.

This is why I want to have this blog. I also want to show that it is possible to be multi-faceted. I can be Melissa, Mommy, big sister, political moderate that swings right, tree-hugger, writer, singer and twenty-two year old, all at the same time. I want there to be some proof to my child that her mother was a person. I want to show the world that it's all possible and that there are ways to make it happen.

Unfortunately, a side effect of the life I lead is that time is limited. I work, all the time. I have my day-job, a job that I love and I have a writing job, a job that I also love. I also like to spend some time with my daughter. I have a home to clean and a car that is entirely way too crappy to run with no maintenance. I have my best fruiends, bills, you know... all of those things that make up a life. All of the parts that come together to make this person I am. I have them. And sometimes, the things I want to do are on the bottom of the list. Things like writing in my blog, things like working on my book (that no one knows about. until now I guess.), things like calling my family to see how they're doing, or remembering to write thank you cards.

I will do it though. For those of you that do read this, please keep readinjg. Because as much as I hate the lack of updating, that lack of time is an important part of my voice. It speaks more honestly than many things I could write about. So, don't stop. Because it will get better.

And, I have some funny stories I've been storing. So. Stick around!

ps. Cell phone picture of the day may come back. But probably not daily. I't"ll probably be done on Saturdays. That's what I'm thinking. Silent Saturdays. No words, just a picture. I'm still thinking through it.

pps. please excuse typos. I'm not typing on a conventional keyboard.

OMG

It's amazing what life will do to a blog! I'm sorry, readers.

We decided to go to the beach this weekend and we just got home. And of course, yours truly forgot her camera. But it's ok. It was an entire weekend full of, ready? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. And it was fucking glorious. Seriously. We got there on Friday and it was in the middle of the windstorm (which is typical) and set everything up. Emily immediately got in to the water and played for over two hours. Hot dogs were put on marshmallow pokers and roasted to crispy perfection and then I looked at the stars while The Girlfriend did some night fishing.

On Saturday morning we woke up and set up the shades (it had been too windy for that the night before) and then cooked up some breakfast burritos. Then Emily played in the water for the entire day while The Girlfriend fished and I went back and forth from the water to lying in the sun to sitting in the shade and feeling the breeze on my skin. There was lunch, and snacks, and Emily took a nap in the sand under the shade, and there was dinner and s'mores and the kid in bed and more night fishing and kissing under the moonlight. It was amazing. And it was just what I needed.

Even more amazing is that there were NO INJURIES. Two trips ago, The Girlfriend was trying to teach me to chop wood. Well, hi, I'm a city girl. Through and through. Do you need to know how to take a bus somewhere? What neighborhoods you can't wear what colors in? How about the best Greek food hole in the wall? Oh! Oh! Or how about how to get out of a ticket? Or what alleys to run down to escape cops? I can tell you all of those things. Now, things like driving a stick-shift, camping, or ever being used to seeing wild animals casually strolling along? I don't know how to do.

I tried to learn to drive a stick. And honestly, I just have no interest. It's as simple as that. I know it's a useful skill, but I'm over trying. It doesn't work. Something about using both feet simultaneously just doesn't click with my brain chemistry. Camping? I have found out that I LOVE CAMPING. It turns out that I'm down to get a little dirty and sit around a fire. The wild animal thing still throws me, but anyway. The Girlfriend was trying to teach me to chop wood. So we had this piece of it on top of a stump and she was showing me how to hold the axe. Our friend was also trying to teach me. So between the two of them I got two conflicting sets of instructions and I tried to mesh the two and after comPLETELY missing the wood, I chopped the end of my flip flop and almost cut off my toe. Literally.

(Lessons learned: 1) Don't make city girls attempt this shit. 2) Wear closed-toe shoes when using sharp objects. 3) Don't ever, ever trust Melissa with swinging sharp objects, especially after she's been given two different sets of instructions.)

Now, last trip, The Girlfriend broke her pinky toe. While her injuries are usually sustained because of overuse of adult beverages, this particular injury wasn't. The boys on the trip had been playing horse shoes and left the stakes in the sand. In the pitch black. The Girlfriend was running to her fishing pole and ran in to the stake. The toe at the bottom joint stuck out at a 90 degree angle and then the middle joint pointed straight down. It immediately started to swell. Now, The Girlfriend has some monkey toes. Like she could peel a banana, paint a picture, and cook with her toes. When this happened? Her pinky toe resembled my Flinstone toes. So she hobbles over to me and whispers "Um, I think I sprained my toe. Can you look?" So I look and then between three people, we pop her toe back in to place. Now, a full month later, it's almost back down to regular size. (Also on that trip, she cut her hand, bruised her back and arm, and burned her thigh. All of those injuries were, in fact, her fault.)

So this trip, NO INJURIES! was a very very good thing. I'm actually kind of amazed. And now, I have a ton of shit on the floor next to me, shit that needs to get put away but won't until tomorrow. I have a baby upstairs watching Snow White and I have a mouth full of teeth that need brushing.

I'll write more. I promise.

For The Big Boys

Yesterday, Emily and I went to a one-year-old's birthday party. Some of the Dad's friends brought a seven foot water rocket. This is it launched in the air, moments before it landed in a tree.