C is for Challenge

Life, Organization,

If you’re wondering what’s with the letters lately, it’s all about this:

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26 blog posts this month, keeping track by using the letters of the alphabet. I haven’t utilized my blog properly for a long time and it seemed like just the kick in the pants I needed. I have a lot of challenging things in my life I can’t do much about right now. This one I can.

I’ve thrown down a few more gauntlets for myself this month as well. As mentioned in previous posts, I am not the greatest of housekeepers. My house isn’t gross or anything. Just really messy is some rooms. Ok…maybe all if them. I seem to have a magic ability to obtain and keep things that we simply don’t use. I also tend to let the housework pile up and then get mad that no one is doing anything about it.

Apparently that’s what makes sense in my brain.

So I’ve decided to also challenge myself to do more around the place. At least one thing every day to make a difference.

Of course, I also have children. That one thing a day is probably pointless, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

B is for Beauty Disasters

Hilarity, Life, ,

I am not a girly girl. Hell, I never even realized clothes should match until maybe fifth or sixth grade. I had no idea about hair products until junior-highish. It’s pretty safe to say I don’t really know what I’m doing.

I’m also one of those people who will spend two hours looking up hairstyles on Pinterest before having a “Eureka! I can do that!” moment.

I should really know better by now. Remember my Minecraft birthday cake? It’s just a few entries down if not. It was so bad I actually looked for a toy dinosaur to blame the wreckage on.

So I really shouldn’t have been surprised by my morning experience two days ago…but I was.

I had a plan to use a round brush while blowdrying my hair so I would have these big, bouncy curls instead of confused, almost corkscrewy Medusa-like creations that I just try not to anger in the mornings. It was gonna be great. I washed my hair, I had all my stuff together, and I even had a brand new brush all ready. I was so excited.

I took off the towel and picked up the brush, started at the end of my wet hair,curled upward to my scalp, and started blowdrying. I was almost trembling with excitement (yeah…it doesn’t take much to thrill me. I know).

And then I tried to roll the brush back down.

It was stuck.

I don’t mean a little bit. I mean it was stuck so bad there was no give. In the next five minutes, I go from “what the hell?” to “omg, how did my hair somehow wrap around this thing in both directions?” The next fifteen minutes are spent yanking and wiggling and trying to pry my traitorous hair out of the bear trap disguised as a hairbrush. It was so bad I almost woke Darrick up and tell him to get some butter or something. Anything. I was desperate.

It was starting to look like my choices were either a new pixie cut or go to work with it still in my hair and act like I meant to pretend I was a demented unicorn, but I finally got it out. I did.

I lost a big handful of hair, had a horrible headache from yanking my own hair, and had some swollen places on my scalp…but I got it.

Lesson learned. Don’t try to normal people when I am NOT one of them.

A is for the Antihero

Life, , ,

I admit it – when Jessica Jones hit Netflix a few months back, I binged. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Fans and critics alike were writing like crazy about it. I even saw articles from a psychological perspective on the characters and their unique quirks, for crying out loud. And don’t get me wrong – I liked it. I wanted to see what would happen next, but I wasn’t hooked on it and felt no connection whatsoever to the characters. 

Jessica isn’t a good person. She’s a drunk, she’s viscious to other people most of the time, and she’s out for vengeance most of the season more than she’s out to rid the world of a bad guy. It’s like, ok, she did a good thing, but it doesn’t make her a hero like people come to believe she is at the end of the show. She’s definitely the antihero.

And I think that’s why people were so adamant Jessica Jones is a good show. Very, very few people in this world are genuinely out to help others all the time. Most of us are just struggling to make it through the day. There’s work, bills, and problems. Jessica deals with all of it too, in some not-so-healthy ways. She’s got her reasons, but then…so do we. We get in shitty moods. We lash out, we push people away, we hole up and try to forget about the rest of the world in various ways. We doubt our worth, and we question anyone who seems to care about us.

People like to think they’d always do the right thing, but you never really know until you’re facing the fire. And even then, your choice may not come easily. And sometimes you don’t do the right thing for the right reasons, like Jessica.

I keep thinking about the last moments of the last episode in season one, where she’s listening to all these sad messages from desperate people with a faraway look on her face like she’s trying to decide if she even wants to help them.

But she will. Sometimes when people put their faith in you, you can’t help but step up to the plate.

Sending Flowers

Life, ,

That itch is back, just under my skin. It’s like a clock ticking loudly while you’re trying to sleep, or a leaky pipe dripping that you can’t find no matter how much you root around.

It isn’t as simple as waking up one morning and realizing things aren’t the way you want them to be. Everybody makes adjustments in life, little tweaks here and there to their expectations based on the reality they’re facing. It happens, you know?

Today I broke down. It wasn’t one thing in particular that did it, but an accumulation of months of trying to be stronger than I am caught up to me. I’m tired of trying to figure out what to do all the time and trying to hold it all together and keep us all moving forward and happy.

Sometimes I need someone to come home with something special to cheer me up, or surprise me with plans to do something special. Just…something. Something different to break up the monotomy.

Alas, it isn’t going to happen. At least not anytime soon. Darrick has been too sick to even notice how restless I’ve become, and the girls are just kids. I’m I’m in charge of making their lives better and happy; not the other way around.

So I lost it. I’m ashamed of my behavior today. I yelled at my ten-year-old for not being able to figure out what cleaning supply to use to clean the bathroom, then pulled away from Darrick when he was trying to be nice and offer comfort.

He left to go to the store angry.

I curled up in bed for a good, ugly cry.

And a nap. I figured if it works for a grumpy four-year-old, it would work for a grumpy mommy.

I woke up feeling awful. I washed my face and did the dishes anyway.

I apologized to everyone and went about my day, but then I got a text message from my little one’s dad that Anya’s step-grandpa had passed away yesterday morning.

It rocked me. It breaks my heart for the whole family. We don’t talk anymore; it was a horrific split between my ex and I, and of course, being his family and all, I chose to cut myself off from them. There was a lot of bitter there for a long time where my ex was concerned. A lot of hurt and wreckage. It was tough as hell for me to let go of the situation and let things be in order for me to heal.

Now, nearly four years later, hearing the news hits me harder than I would have thought possible. He passed away from a heart attack, same as my father. And all I can think about is the first time I was welcomed into their home and made to feel like a part of the family. Enjoying Christmas together. Making plans for the baby and buying her everything she could want. Just hanging out at their house while my ex was at work and I wanted something to do.

I offered my sympathies to my ex via text, but text doesn’t convey emotion well and he just brushed it off anyways. We aren’t friends anymore, we barely even talk. It’s not the way I would have wanted things; It’s just how they worked out when the dust settled.

All I can do for that family now is say prayers of comfort, light a candle of remembrance, and smile about the way things were once.

I’ll send some flowers for the service to honor the short time I was part of their lives. Maybe it’ll make them smile, maybe they’ll just throw them out. But at least I’ll know I did the right thing.

People should always be remembered.

And I should always be grateful for the day, no matter what kind of day it was. 

At least I had this day.

Is ‘Help, my child has been possessed by a gremlin on crack’ too strong for a title?

Hilarity, Life, , , ,

Do your kids ever make a mess and when you clean it, you realize how much you really needed to clean anyway?

That’s why I hate to clean.

Tonight was interesting. And by interesting, I mean horrible and hilarious in ways that fellow human beings should take pity on me and buy me some ice cream.

The littlest one came home from her dad’s today. Usually, those are grumpy days. She’s tired, she’s emotional, and it’s hard for her to get back into mommy routines instead of daddy ones.

However, when she came home today, I noticed something different. It didn’t seem to be her that came back… instead, I got a gremlin on crack.Remember that movie? It was full of mean little monsters who were out to get you.

She started off with some spectacular and exhausting meltdowns, graduated to dumping milk all over her sister’s food when she got up to go pee, smooshed globs of ketchup all over the dining room chair she was sitting in, and then, for a grand finale, pooped in the bathtub.

And in case you’re wondering, no, she was not taking a bath and had one just slip right out and go floating.

Nope. My child pulled her pants down, backed her cute little tush up over the edge, and let it go.

She probably sang the song while she did it.

I had no idea until about an hour later when I was tucking her into bed and realized her feet had a certain smell wafting up. Suspicions were confirmed when I saw a strange smear on the bathroom floor and, while moving closer, I got a good view of what was waiting for me inside the tub.

(Dear Lord, I am a good person. Why do you punish me? Is it because I didn’t adopt a child over the television that you make a monthly payment to like I’m promised to if You stopped the toilet from overflowing last week?)

So I calmly walk back into her bedroom and ask her very politely and non-judgement-ly if she pooped in the bathtub. Of course she denies it, but I know I didn’t poo in the tub, my fiance surely didn’t, and I’m pretty sure my ten-year-old didn’t do it either.

Darrick puts on his serious expression and tells her that we’re going to judge to put a sample of the poo in a bag and take it to the police station so they can tell us who did it.

She immediately confesses.

So now everyone else is in bed. I’m still up. I mean, if you’re gonna scrub and disinfect the bathtub, you may as well hit up the sink and toilet as well. Right? Only… then you see that the mirror is all dirty too. And since you’re already mopping, you may as well hit up the kitchen and entryway too. And jeez, when was the last time I washed out the trash can? May as well do the kitchen one too. Why is the door all dirty?

Is it bad that my place is a lot cleaner since my kid pooped in the tub?

Something Extraordinary

Life, ,

When I was a little girl, I read. A lot. I didn’t have many friends, and I spent a ton of my time and my weekends at my grandparent’s place exploring the woods and imagining great adventures for myself.

Growing into my junior high years was tough. Here, several different grade schools and up combining into the same junior high and high school. It was rough on me…the quiet, odd bookworm who would never speak up in class but always got the right answers.

I made few friends, but they were amazing and have stuck by me for the last ten, fifteen years.

We had some great adventures together.

But I never stopped imagining the adventures I’d have for myself as I got older.

I thought I’d go to college, become a nurse. I wanted to be a traveling nurse. That’s a real thing, you know. I wanted to see the Grand Canyon. Seattle. The Appalachian Trail and the coast in Maine. I wanted to eat pizza in Chicago and see the lights in Time Square.

It didn’t quite work out for me that way.

I made decisions in my life that made things a lot more difficult for myself than it had to be. There were twists and turns I never saw coming.

There were wrecks. Carnage.

There’s been a hell of a lot of clean-up.

And a lot of…stalling. Drifting. Merely maintaining until something happened to shake things up and cause some interest, some kind of reaction.

In all my imaginings, I never dreamed I’d be living in the same town I grew up in, two children by two different men, working in a factory.

But you know what? Life is still an adventure. A beautiful one. A heartbreaking one. One filled with love and belly laughs. Scraped knees and the occasional staples in the head (boy, that was a day!) Board games and cartoon movies and karaoke.

Sometimes you look for adventure, and something extraordinary comes along and surprises you.

When It’s Game Night, Mommy’s Always a Loser

Life, ,

Since the big kiddo would rather spend part of the weekend with my mama than me, I’ve been thinking up ways to make the little one feel like it’s *her* special night, too.

She’s a blast t to hang out with anyways, but I wanted some new stuff to try. I tried searching for Rory’s Story Cubes so we could make up some funny and scary stories (she’s been really into Goosebumps lately, she likes the suspense and scares), but the Walmart here didn’t have any. However, they did have a Paw Patrol board game and Go Fish cards. Also, the movie Robots is $5.

I win.

Of course, I could have felt like a winner solely because I knew I could walk down the snack isle and pick up anything I wanted. Sometimes childhood dreams do come true.

Anya was thrilled to death with the Paw Patrol game and happily helped to set it up. It’s a super simple game, and quick. Just a note – it’s more fun when you make a big deal about what color you land on. Especially when you name off the wrong color and act like you don’t know it.

There may have been eye-rolling and a lot of “silly goose” name calling involved.

There may also have been popcorn, chocolate chip cookies, and teddy grahams.

Also, giggles, messy faces, and a lot of “GO FISHING!”

Love it. If only housework was as fun.

He’s Just Jealous I Didn’t Bring Him One

Hilarity, Life, ,

Last night, Darrick wasn’t feeling well enough to go to my mama’s with me to pick up the eldest and bring her home.

No biggie.

It was a gorgeous day and I wanted to get the kids outside to play. I left around five thirty, nabbed some pizza on the way (always a big hit!) we stuffed our faces and headed out into the big world.

First, swordfights. It’s a must. Everybody grabbed their sticks, made obligatory karate noises, and the chase was on.

You’d think having two girls would mean I’d never have to break up fights about whose stick is bigger. You’d be wrong.

During the swordfights we notice Mamaw’s gutter extensions had blown off due to the massive wind we got the day before. Search and rescue mission underway! After spying it trapped against the back fence, Anya and I trot off to drag it back.

It’s about a six, seven foot black tube with ridges. Not real heavy. She grabbed one end, I grabbed the other, and we started pulling it back to the house.

Then we got distracted yelling into it like it was a giant empty paper towel roll.

A couple minutes later, Sophie was doing something much more interesting than I was. Anya threw her end down and started running. Of course, I couldn’t let her get away with that! So I flipped the gutter around and pretended it was a giant snake chasing after her.

It was hilarious, especially when everyone else picked up their ‘swords’ and beat on it until my hand went numb from the vibrations.

Playing hide and seek inside the house, my mama remembered she had some alligator hats she’d come across at the dollar tree a while back, so we threw those on and roared at each other while we put on our shoes and sweatshirts to go home.

Along the way, I made sure to stop at a gas station so we could go in and show off our hats. Sophie refused to wear hers and was embarrassed Anya and I did, but she’s ten and will survive.

Coming through the door to the house, Darrick sees us, hops up, and asks what in the world we’re wearing. We model them just for him, he shakes his head, and then calls us weirdos.

Deep down, I think he’s just jealous I didn’t bring him one too.

…And the Man Still Takes Me Out in Public

Life,

Winter finally hit here in my tiny town. Freezing temps, snow in the inches, car doors frozen shut…Jack Frost in all his glory.

I am not a fan.

However, it does give me the opportunity to entertain myself in ways I normally can’t.

This morning I was finished getting ready for the day before Mr. Darrick. I thought I would head on down and start the car to warm it up.

It takes forever when it’s this cold, so I start revving the engine a little to warm it up quicker. Darrick found me five minutes later clutching into the steering wheel, revving in short spurts, and yelling, “Put food into my belly! Feed me!”

“Um…I take it you want to do and get a breakfast sandwich on your way into work?”

“No. I was talking for the car. Gas light came on.”

I have to admit that the man has a great facepalm.

I’m Not Crafty, But I Am Creative

Life, , ,

My oldest daughter hit double digits this year. I actually had a really hard time with it, for personal reasons…her turning ten means that my father has been gone now for ten years. I was always a daddy’s girl and losing him had been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with.

But as we all know, life still moves on. And Sophie turned ten. TEN. Jeez! She has been really into Minecraft for a year or so, and thus requested a Minecraft party. I thought, awesome! Minecraft is extremely popular. I’m sure I’ll find tons of decorations to make it easy on me.

Nope. Not at all. Or at least not in my tiny town or the surrounding bigger ones. Online I found a few things, but they were more than I was willing to pay and then my procrastination meant they wouldn’t arrive in time anyways. So what’s a mama to do?

Hello, Pinterest! The place where you see some of the most amazing things and feel so inadequate. Lol! Seriously, I don’t know how some off those people manage to pull it off. I wish I had the tiniest fraction of their talent!

I may not be crafty, but what I am is creative. So I got to work collecting party items in the signature black and green that signals “Minecraft” to the masses, and the result was a slightly unconventional but still really fun birthday party.

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Behind the gaggle of birthday attendees here, you see the green tablecloth my sister-in-law spent a good twenty minutes drawing a creeper face onto.

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From behind the scenes here, you can see the big balloon and streamer spider we made and stuck in the corner, complete with four red eyes painted on there. These were really simple to throw together and everyone loved them. My four year old is now insisting she wants some at her birthday party next year, she liked them so much.

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The table, all decorated up to make the kids happy. You can see another spider on the wall, our balloon chandelier, and the creeper boxes on the table are actually the party favor boxes. You can’t see it, but they’re filled with green and black candies. Just in case I didn’t wind them up enough with cake, ice cream, and karaoke. Ha!

Speaking of cake…

I was going for a look similar to these:

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With the layers and the little figures. I thought, that’s easy enough. Bake two cakes, and one you can just cut up to make layers. Throw green icing on top, put your little figurines in that you can buy at Wal-Mart, and you’re set.

Yeah…not so much!

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My cake wasn’t stiff enough to do that with. It was moist and kept crumbling on me, then the crumbs would spread around with the icing. The icing, which, btw, does not come in that color from the small cans you buy at the grocery. You have to use food dye. I also highly recommend against taking a swig from the bottle when you’re done to see how it tastes. For one thing, it’s gross, and it will dye your lips and teeth. You will brush for fifteen minutes to get it off. You will, however, laugh about it the entire time. Or maybe that’s just me.

So what did I do with my disaster? I looked for a dinosaur in the girls’ rooms. How else could I try to explain this mess? Found none, so I stuck a TNT box there with a creeper running the other direction and Diamond Steve being thrown onto his back from the explosion.

Like I said, I’m not crafty by any means. But I am creative.