Happy-ish Anniversary

   Recently, my spouse and I have hit the 14 year mark.  It’s hard to believe, of course. I don’t feel 48 and I’m lucky enough to be told I don’t look it, either. We’ve hit that Jesus-Christ-it’s-you-again point in our marriage. I’d like to say that we’re still as frisky as ever but mostly we just want a nap.  Our beautiful daughter is 8, funny, smart and full of energy. Did I mention mommy and daddy want a nap?  I’ve asked my spouse if he’s sorry we’ve only got one child.  “I’m in my 50’s, I’m exhausted!”  Our next child will have four legs and a tail.

  I get it that I’m lucky to be able to stay home and raise our daughter, it’s just that there are days when I want to run away from home. There are a few downsides if I do that. I’d have to make my own coffee for one. (We live by the biblical rule he-brews.) I’m also not sure who’d end up getting custody.  I don’t mean my daughter, I mean that currently, we are the party house and our friends would have to choose.  I don’t get any holidays.  Our family is small and my in laws are older and prefer to go to restaurants for holidays. I am way not fond of this.  Thanksgiving at a restaurant is not a holiday.  

  I’ve gotten so desperate I made up my own holiday. I call it Friendsgiving.  It gives me the chance to make a turkey for more than 3 people and it’s a cheap excuse to get everyone together to drink too much and bulls**t all evening. I also get to use my free-for-$400 turkey we get every year and we get turkey leftovers.  We’ve also been doing this for a while now so my guests literally make themselves at home and help clean up my kitchen! Who wants to louse that up? 

 I’m glad I only have two children. I gave birth to one, the other one bought me flowers for our anniversary. Our problem is that “date nights” are few and far between.  We get out by ourselves once a year whether we need to or not. By the time we get done paying for a sitter, dinner, drinks (God forbid), dessert and a movie if we really get crazy, we’ve spent a stiff chunk of change.  It’s no wonder we don’t get out much more than that.       

  As if we weren’t short enough on time, I’ve been “Highly Encouraging” (harassing the s**t out of) my spouse to start getting in shape. No, round is a shape, but not a good for your health shape. It has recently dawned on me that I need him to stay as healthy as possible for as long as possible.  I admit I have ulterior motives.  I cannot even think about the possibility of raising a teenager by myself.  It would also be nice to someday enjoy retirement with a healthy person as opposed to taking care of someone chronically ill. Accountants make lousy nurses and I have zero bedside manner. 

  The spouse and I get along well enough.  The biggest reason I married the man (besides my best friend telling me to) was that I became convinced we were joined at the brain. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve said “I demand a foil hat!”, I’d be driving a much nicer car. The compatibility thing was overwhelming since the beginning.  We’ve read a lot of the same books, he knows how I react to things, we say the same thing at the same time a lot, and can finish my sentences.  It’s nauseating and creepy at the same time. I tried to mentally calculate what the odds are of me finding anyone else I have this much in common with, yeah, I guess I’m committed - or I ought to be. 

Mom's new car and the disappointed dinosaur

  I was recently dragged kicking and screaming into the world of new cars and even worse, car dealers.  My mom just bought a new to her Rav 4 small fuv.  I admit I liked the new car smell and the cockpit.  I was bummed out to discover that the newer cars do not come equipped with cd players anymore.  Don't ask me why I was surprised.  I think it was also a bit annoying to have my old age thrown up in my face like that.  It makes sense now that I think about it.  Of course there's a store in my areas selling cd's for $1, everyone else is buying their music in a digital format, except for us old fartasaurs.
  Mom asked me to come with her when she bought the car, that's the only reason I was there.  Finding out how much money these people were making on the deal is about as easy as finding the holy grail. Feeling as comfortable as a guppy in a shark tank didn't help. Unfortunately for us both, my mom had decided that she was buying a car that day and they knew it.  The dealer in question was someone she found on the recommendation of a friend.  I am also lousy at hiding my dislike of how much they wanted from my mom for the car.
  I think my mom just wanted the process to be over.  Despite the shingles, mom had been to several dealers with friends test driving cars before I got involved.  Normally shopping is supposed to be fun isn't it?  I've been in home improvement stores where I've had to send up a flare to get help (ok it just felt that way). Mom was already fed up with the whole process, or more to the point, exhausted. She made an appointment to buy a car. (This was a  completely new concept for me, to be sure.) Still, I expected a better attitude from people to whom we were trying to give a pantload of money.
  Dealing with car salesman is also a lot like dealing with a politician, again not helpful.
  Mercifully, the best thing about this is that once we're done, we're done for a good long time.  We are of the drive-it-till-the-wheels-fall-off ilk for a lot of reasons.  Cheapness is probably the biggest reason along with avoiding the car buying process like the plague.  It's great to have a new car, of course, but I am perfectly content to keep my old car.  Old Bessie is the last car I bought from my ex before he passed away.  That process was the epitome of car buying perfection.  All I had to do was put the remote down long enough to write him a check.  It was the equivalent of "Fetch me a new car, wench!".  I bought it sight unseen from a guy who was more anal about the car being perfect than Sheldon Cooper solving an equation. I also knew I wasn't getting ripped off. I paid him cost plus a finder's fee.  God, I miss him!!!
  The disadvantage to a new car is the fact that the more gadgets you have, the more something can break. My car is over fifteen years old and I'm sure there are "new" nifty features that I have never used much less know how to use.  Finding an honest mechanic can be like looking for a unicorn.  You've heard of them but never actually seen one.  It can be as much fun as sticking a fork in your eye.  Someday, when I do have to get a new car, I may have to take a course to teach me how to use all the crap it comes with. Maybe I should just ger a new bike.

Can we get a grip, maybe?

   I am shocked again at how fast our summer has flown by.  You'd think I'd be used to this by now but no, I'm still amazed.  It began with the end of the school year panic about how am I going to keep our daughter occupied and ended with school starts when??!!  Our girl did have a good summer.  I can't say it was Facebook glamorous.  There were no pictures of us checking in to this or that amusement park or getaway spot but thanks to camp, she managed a few fun trips and we made it to the beach.
  Fall, will probably fly by in a sneeze.  Besides the blur of homework and soccer, I have a consignment sale, a martial arts test, a birthday party, and a contest entry to handle.  I also managed to commit myself to regular blogposts on a large website for promotional purposes.  Changing my name to skippy would probably give me copyright issues with a major corporation so I'll settle for an unofficial nickname.  I'm wondering how thin I can spread myself.
  It would help me get a grip if I could manage to eat my elephant one bite at a time.  Making lists help and maybe a dose of reality would aslo be nice.  I will not be able to pull everything off, at least not perfectly or when I would like.  Admitting that I don't have a cape and phone booth is depressing. The fun thing about having 'can't remember s**t' and lists it that you have to remember where the hell you put the damn lists.  Starting things early although almost against my genetics is also helpful.
  Another shocker would be to remember that life will go on.  My test is not a death match where the loser gets eaten by a bear.  I will do what I can to make time to write and maybe dig up some old pieces or leaf through some handwritten things to type in and post if I get stuck.  Setting a reasonable word count for fall posting would help.  Once our daughter starts school and soccer, I'm bound to find something funny to rant about.
   Our daughter will definitely turn 8 and come hell or high water there will be an ice cream cake.  The rest will come together one way or another.  We already have half the gifts for her.  The toughest part is telling my inlaws and our friends what her majesty would like for her birthday.  This is a good problem to have, Hellllooooo, we are blessed, remember???  God forbid we should hang onto that.
  Another outcome of all this stress is that I'm losing my hair.  It was getting so bad I went to a dermatologist for help.  I am told the leading cause is - you guessed it - stress!  Stop worrying about losing your hair, it causes hair loss!  I was told my hair is healthy, it's just abandoning ship.  Peachy, I may have to start shopping for hats, or snarky baseball caps.
   Could we not completely freak out and find patches of time to actually enjoy rather than survive??  My God, I may need an oxygen mask! Let's not go completely nuts. They say that exercise is also good stress relief.  I've been having some ungodly workouts lately but for some reason the only thing I've gotten is sore.  The upside of this is that I'm working off my alcohol and chocolate in advance.

It's just another manic birthday...but does it have to be?

  I can't believe it either.  The timing is going to be one mad scramble.  Brace yourself. Where did we put the Cuervo?? I am on the trail of arranging another birthday party. Our princess is turning 8 soon and, spoiled bunny that she is, we are having a party at a local arcade.  I am less than thrilled about this but it couldn't be helped.  While I never had my act together, I do try to plan ahead at least a little for our daughter's birthday.
  This year mom's car accident threw me for a loop.  I forgot all about planning for a party once my mom called and said she was in the hospital.  Long story short, she had a bad car accident and totaled her car.  It was an honest mistake, I think, but mom was pretty shaken up. It only took a week or two for the worst of the dust to settle but my focus got shifted and I just wasn't thinking about party plans.  What we wanted to do, have people at our house, was no longer going to work because the entertainment we wanted to rent was no longer available.
  As we say at our house, bologna happens.  I now need to move forward and accept help from a party place.  On the upside, I get to focus on the grown up family party - yes,  there's 2 gatherings. This means a lot fewer people at my house.  This is a plus since our house is too small to have people indoors so I keep everyone in our garage. The family crowd is also quite helpful since the inlaws and close friends ask 'what can we bring?'.  My house also gets a good cleaning since company's coming. That's about as much fun as a fork in the eye but at least I end up with a clean house.
  I also need to work getting ready for a consignment sale.  I registered to sell so I need to start getting my stuff together.  The problem is keeping ahead of things so I'm not behind the eight ball and killing myself to get it all done.
  A friend recently asked me a great question.  'Do you have to have a birthday party for her?' This got me thinking - again.  Why are we going through all this as if it was some sort of 'requirement'? I mentioned this to our girl. 'You know, I said, not everyone has birthday parties.'  She looked at me as if I had asked if she wanted to be disemboweled.
  Here's a biggie for the mommy to do list.  How do we instill some gratitude in a daughter who is incredibly blessed? I'm guessing this is going to take baby steps, possibly billions. We struggle as it is to keep our girl from getting greedy.  Unfortunately, I've seen that overstimulated look of a kid tearing through gifts, barely acknowledging one before the next one gets opened.  I plan to call on the cavalry for this one.  I plan to ask our family therapist for some ideas. In the meantime, I'm open to suggestions from you, dear reader.  

For the love of God, slow down!

  Recently, I saw a friend post on Facebook that he saw pumpkin spice coffee at WaWa in August.  I thought, 'don't worry, in ten minutes it'll be Christmas'.  I think the retail after summer sling shot to the holidays is really bad for a mommy who feels overwhelmed already.  For me, they're just heaping on more s**t I'm not ready for- and in a shameless money grab to boot.
   I'm amazed like everyone else how fast the summer flew by. Funny to think how I was worried about how I was going to keep our girl busy all summer and now she started third grade this month! It still feels like I just brought her home from the hospital. Tempus fugit does not need any help.
   I look forward to the weekend for obvious reasons but is that really such a bright idea? Most people don't have the luxury of either a job they love or independent wealth. How do you find pieces at least of your week to enjoy so you're not 'looking forward' past your whole life? I don't want my week to be something to 'kill off' at least not completely.
  So how do I pull out of my personal vortex?  My week blurs by in a to do list of household crap.  I find this funny in the sense that I'm a stay at home mom.  You'd think I'd have free time.  I haven't been bored since I was 8.  I would be baffled as to why the house isn't immaculate but that's a wall of pudding because of the 2 children I clean up after, ages 8 and 53. There's plenty I would like to do but it seems I don't often make it past the brussels sprouts portion of the list, at least not during the day.
  Getting it all done so you won't be sorry is a big cattle prod but is it really such a bright idea?  How important is this really?  What's the worst that will happen if it doesn't all get done?  Will something explode?  
  It seems odd to me that the things I journal about always end up resolving themselves.  Every single time I go back through those hand written pages of worries they always turn out fine.  I wish I had a grip on that fact from the beginning.  If there is objective evidence that worrying is a waste of time, why do I keep doing it? I can only surmise it must be a deeply ingrained habit.
  Maybe the problem is my vision.  My eyes are way bigger than my stomach when it comes to all the things I want to get done.  There's no way I can pull it all off, not without a cape and phone booth.  Some things simply will not get done and I have trouble accepting that sometimes.  It would also help me to keep my eyes on myself, too.  I am not the Martha Stewart type.  When I am lucky enough to come up with something creative, it's usually in response to an emergency.  There will never be a birthday party with homemade perfectly decorated anything in our future.
   Those close to me also know that I am notoriously late for everything.  Maybe the way to get ahead is to take a step back.  I'll settle for baby steps on this one since we know what a basket of sunshine I am early in the morning.  I'm trying to get up a few extra minutes early to allow more time for the harassment campaign known as getting my daughter ready for school.  Once during the first week of school I fell asleep and was late to go get our girl.  Baby steps apparently came back to kick me in the butt.

Eureka, sort of, finally!

  "She needed to be 'bitch slapped' but he didn't do it".  I heard my spouse read this to my daughter before bed recently.  Someone is apparently getting frustrated with our girl's choice of reading material.  We've gone through this before when our girl was smaller.  She would get stuck on one book until we all had it memorized.  After a while we'd get bored and mess with her by changing things in the story.  Half the fun was seeing if we'd get caught. "That's not what that said!" At least we knew she was paying attention.
  This was all part of the "process" involved in getting her majesty to get ready for bed.  Some nights are better than others, of course.  The stories are probably my fault.  I'm a book nerd from way back and when I had my daughter, that was just a cheap excuse to get more books.  The downside of this is inventory management.  I'm a regular at library book sales and I have a ball looking.  It's one of the few times I will voluntarily shovel my butt out of bed early on a weekend.
  The rest of the process can be attributed to standard kid operating procedure.  Our girl is a professional staller.  Can I have some water? I'm hungry! Is it a bath night? Things got a bit hairier at during second grade.  Our girl's math grades were almost swirling the perimeter.  We tried the computer math games, math dice and getting her 'help' with figuring out the cost of treats at the grocery store.  Finally, her teacher suggested flash cards and our therapist helped out by suggesting they be neon.  Somehow flashcards got added to the "process" mainly because I couldn't figure out how to get any cooperation earlier in the day.
   I think the captive-audience-because-you're-upstairs helps.  It was painful at first but it got a little better when she figured out that these weren't going away anytime soon.  This harrassment continued all through the summer.  What frustrated me was that I didn't figure out how to take the torture out the flashcards until almost September.  Our therapist suggested that since our girl is more of a visual kid, I could just get her to find the answer to a math question in a pile of flashcards.  When we went to the library one day and ran into one of her teachers, she gave me the second half of a great idea!  We could have a race.
   Built into our bedtime saga is now a math game.  I spread out the answer cards and 'race' our girl to find the answers.  She had so much fun beating mommy that she asked for more cards!  I had to wonder if she was feeling well but I've learned to shut up and go with it (selectively, that is) for as long as it lasts.  Despite the fact, that I'm a CPA, my seven year old wins the math race every time by a mile.  She hasn't figured out why mommy is so slow.  Sometimes I don't get it, either.

exercise - in masochism?

   I am very jealous of my gorgeous instructor, John.  It began as a horrible girl crush.  The man is young, handsome and in fabulous shape.  He's the complete opposite of my husband.  That's an ongoing struggle I have in my marriage.  My spouse is my best friend and we are practically joined at the brain.  I didn't marry him for the unbridled sex appeal but sometimes I miss that.  I'm having an imaginary illicit affair with my teacher.  Good thing he's not aware of that, I wouldn't want to skeev him out.
 Before anyone gets the wrong idea, make no mistake.  We are all of us right where we belong.  That is to say we are all paired up with the perfect spouses for us.  'John', my teacher,  has also never been anything but a consummate professional.  We all know I've made a commitment to run to the end of my chain and bark (to quote a comedian) and I'm cool with that.  Those that know me and my spouse know how spoiled I am and also know I'm smart enough not to louse that up.  John is also so married it can be seen from space.
  I've been taking classes with him for years now.  He began teaching self defense at my dojang.  Recently, he started a new series of real world self defense and intense fitness classes.  They began with an evening information session to survey for interest.  I figured it sounded neat and a little intimidating but I wanted to check it out.  I decided I'd have no problem looking at John for an hour a few nights a week so I signed up.
 Thus began an odyssey into what I can only guess is some warped combination of humoring my mid life crisis and an undiagnosed mental illness.  We started classes and I had no problem watching those nice muscles.  After the first week I woke up so sore it felt like my hair hurt and I was cursing Mister  Handsome Pants -- and I kept coming back.
 The lunacy continued and included such fun things as flipping tires, box jumps and ground pounds and went on to include burpees and "hood drills".  Hood drills, just to enhance the masochism, involve an exercise in reacting whatever threat is in front of you once a hood is removed. (See undiagnosed mental illness.)  
  What's even wierder is the fact that I enjoy these classes or should I say the benefit of them.  I've had fantasies about working out at home in my basement but the reality is that I'm someone who needs to leave the house.  I've also noticed that the older I get the closer to impossible it becomes to get in shape (unless you count round as a shape).  Normal gym workouts no longer seem to give the same results they used to.  I could also eat salad until I develop a nose twitch but still stay ostensibly the same size.  Unfortunately, I also need to sweat like a farm animal and do it often just to break even.  The sessions themselves are fast paced and you don't see the same exact routines twice.  Putting it mildly, by the end of a class, I 'mell.
  I'm guessing the real root of this warped addiction goes pretty deep.  When I was a teenager I lost a lot of weight the "wrong way" and ended up in the hospital.  I recovered physically but haven't been able to see myself clearly since.  I did manage a healthy pregnancy although I was frustrated that the only thing the doctors removed was the baby. They could have taken some extra but no, just our daughter.  Besides the peer pressure of "not wussing out and quitting", my pants are the other big reason I return.
   Somewhere around the sixth week of training from hell, I noticed my abs were improving and my jeans were starting to feel loose. I was teetering on the verge of feeling good about how I looked and was unwilling to give that up. I was trapped, dammit.
    I am one of the older students in our group. Some evenings you'd think John was making a concerted effort to kill us.  There was one particular evening recently when we were doing four rounds of craziness.  By the fourth time,  my burpees had gone from a normal looking down and up to flopping myself on the floor and praying for death.
  What helped a lot was the camaraderie of this group.  Maybe you latch onto each other in a crisis but these people are da bomb all the same.  I've gotten cheered on to finish a set of evil exercises by people I've just met that night as well as the regulars. They also make you feel like you want to finish your set even if you have to drag yourself across the floor with your teeth.
   Every once in a while, we'd all go out for a drink after class, too.  I try to be careful not to put back on too much of what I took off but either way, they're fun evenings because I get to listen to people's blackmail stories.
  I've also learned to look at the world differently.  I'm a bit more aware of my surroundings.  The self defense courses have taught me to look at my environment as a source of weapons should I ever need it.   Every class with John is a combination anatomy and physiology and a physics lesson.  I am a little bit proud of how much stronger I've gotten and I plan to keep training to build up muscle memory.  That part, I'm finding, seems to take a while.
   I figured out another reason why these classes are so much fun and the biggest reason I'm jealous.  The passion is infectious.  John really enjoys what he does.  It's as if someone told his parents, 'Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. you have a bouncing baby law enforcement professional.'  There are very few people I have met who are doing what they were born to do.  My ex, my mechanic and my instructor definitely are born to their jobs.  I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.
     I plan to keep trying to figure what I am meant to do, in between classes when I can walk, that is.