Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice??

This is what little girls are made of: sugar and spice and everything nice.
So says a nursery rhyme that I recall from my childhood, when there were less taboos about political correctness and something like that could be published without fear of backlash from feminist protesters.

But let me ask you this?
Would sugar and spice throw a plastic hamster (who knew it could be used as a weapon?) at your head and order you to "Get out and stay out" when you try to wake her up in the morning??
She's not a morning person, I figure.
Honestly, I'm kind of scared of her.
And the really scary thing is-

she's only six.

So I finally roused my sleeping princess at quarter after 8, after about an hour of trying.
"Hurry up," I told her. "We have to go in ten minutes." (Which was actually twenty, but I say ten in the hope that she might be motivated to budge from her perch on the top bunk, with her pillow held firmly over her head.)
I gave her her clothes, nervous to see what she would say about them.
But she didn't say anything. She just took them wordlessly.
Relieved, I left the room to give her some privacy to change.
I returned five minutes later to check on her progress.

She had one sock half on.
"Payton! You have to HURRY" I told her, now on the verge of hysteria.

And then she flung herself to the ground, collapsing into a puddle.
"You YELLED AT ME!" she said, crying. Her words quickly became unintelligible.
"Oh for God's sake," I said, leaving the room.
I passed my husband in the hallway.
"She is going to bed EARLY tonight!"
My husband nodded. But we've had this conversation before. Every day.
That early bed time?
 Never comes.

Anyways, by the time I get to work at nine o'clock, honestly, I'm already spent.
And then I have to work eight hours.
I'm very tired, my stress is high and my energy is low.
At work the first thing I saw was a poster that said "Tips for dealing with stress:"
So I read it earnestly.
(I love the word "earnestly" and it's really very sad, because so few opportunities come up to use it. So when I do get to use it, I get really excited about that.)
Anyways the tips were crap.
"Talk about it" "Laugh about it" "Exercise" "Plan ahead" "Relax"
I do not know who designed that stupid poster.
Because I didn't see on there anywhere- binge drinking, drug overdose, or stabbing, which was really too bad.
So I tried to talk about it- but everyone at work was like 'Ohya. That's girls for ya. Just wait a few years."
And then an evil laugh.
I mean, where's the love? I'm still feeling like stabbing something.
And speaking of stabbing-

You would think that when you go to a hotel and you approach the front desk and you ask them for a knife and a stack of heavy duty paper towels that they might ask a bit more questions than "what kind of a knife?"
"Oh, I don't know," I said. "Something sharp."
"Okay," she said with a nod. "Sure thing."
So they went and got me this seriously scary looking knife and a big stack of napkins.
"Enjoy your stay," she said with a smile, and then I had to carry this knife all through the halls, and I felt more than a little conspicuous let me say, but people merely smiled and nodded, as though seeing a knife wielding woman in the hallway was pretty common.
Maybe it was.
What the hell kind of a hotel was I in, exactly??
And then I thought- I hope no one gets stabbed here in this hotel, and then they canvass all the rooms, and the people are like "come to think of it I did see someone walking around with a carving knife."
Anyways- all I needed it for was to cut my sons birthday cake, because we had forgotten to bring a knife with us. I mean, who thinks of bringing knives to a birthday party??
I felt the need to tell that to every person I passed, but then, as it turns out- no one is really that interested in entering into a dialogue with a person carrying a knife that looks like a prop from Night of the Living Dead.
Go figure.
Anyways-
writing makes me feel better.
Now I can breathe.
So thank you, dear reader.

And please tune in tomorrow where I will publish my post "Thirteen Things I Want to Tell My Thirteen Year Old Son."
Have a good day!!

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

Sorry it's been so long.
It's been a busy week. And by busy I mean lousy.
My husband decides he needs to go on a vacation, on account of how "overworked" he is, which honestly, I don't understand. I mean, he works at a country club. Like, literally. It can't be that bad. Anyways, he wanted to go golfing, and go to hockey games and the like. At first I was like "Whatever. I can handle the kids by myself. I always do, anyways,"which was meant to be a jab at him, but of course he doesn't get that. He's like "Cool. Thanks, you're awesome. See you Wednesday."

I've said it before and I'll say it again- being passive aggressive does not pay.
 My advice: just be aggressive. F the passive. It'll get you nowhere. Except for stuck at home with three kids.

A mere few hours after he left I was already starting to feel overwhelmed. My morning consisted of various complaints, lots of whining, lots of hitting, subsequent time outs, potty training mishaps, a dog that ran away, and several renditions of Alex's creative spin on "Oh Canada," which contains the line "I can't fix your trampoline" which is also sometimes "zamboni."
By nine fifteen I was feeling like a caged animal.
Caged with other animals. Annoying ones, like hamsters who look cute at first but then then they just keep on digging and digging and getting wood chips everywhere, and running on their wheel which keeps on squeaking, and then suddenly you look at their big hamster teeth and their cheeks all puffy cheeks and you suddenly have the urge to take that little hamster and gouge his eyes out.
Like that.
So I decided to take them out. "I just need to get out of the house," I thought.
That was a mistake. It's kind of like those people,, who have bad marriages and they think that having a baby will fix everything. But then you just end up with an even worse marriage, a lack of sleep, a perpetual puke stain on your shoulder and bladder control problems.

Rule Number 2: If your kids are driving you crazy at home, they're only going to drive you crazy in public. Which is worse. Cuz then you're in public. With crazy kids. And you can't even yell at them or threaten them that if they're not good you'll go get Shadow- which is a dog that they're scared of.

Brunch did not go well.
The person sitting behind us may or may not have suffered a mild to moderate concussion after Alex threw a fork at him. He tried to climb on the table, spilling his orange juice in the process. Which might not have been that bad, except for the fact that Alex had shredded all of the napkins, which I sat back and let him do, maybe even slightly encouraged it, because after all-- he can't give anyone a concussion with a napkin.
"Alex," I told him, tyring to be firm. "You are going to go in time out right away."
Payton looked at me. "Where are you going to put him for time out, mom?"
"Touche," I said.

Anyways, when my husband came home it wasn't one of those emotional reunions you see on TV where the woman runs and lunges at her husband, wraps her legs around him and shrieks with excitement.
It was more like: I thrust Alex at him, who'd recently had another potty mishap. "Welcome home. He shit."

And then the next day he didn't even want to get out of bed.
He was like "Ohhh, I'm so exhausted. I need a vacation to recover from my vacation."
And I was like "You're not getting any sympathy from me, asshole."
Like seriously? Maybe if he hadn't drank his weight in beer he would be feeling better.
And his weight in beer, BTW, = a whole lot of beer. Like, A LOT.
Okay, that's kind of mean.
Anyways, that's why I haven't been around.

Still Stabby

I regret to inform you that the Vitamin D did not do as promised and cure my stabbiness. At first, I thought maybe it was working. Suddenly I felt all footloose and fancy free. I had the sudden urge to dance to "Money Money", and to tell everyone around me that its the best song of the 80's, no OF ALL FUCKING TIME.
But then I just realized I was just drunk.
Once I sobered up a bit, the stabbiness came back with a vengeance.
I don't know if it has anything to do with the fact that I missed nearly all the doses and then took all seven at once?
There was literally no directions on the bottle. It said, and I quote "Take as directed."
So I just did what I did with the birth control pill, which was to take all of the missed doses as a mass, catch up dose. Which seemed to work pretty good.
Minus the three kids, of course.

Anyways. The stabbiness came back.
"How on earth do you stay so SLIM, Randine," a coworker asked me. The way she said it, it sounded almost like an accusation of some sort.
Immediately I felt vaguely defensive.
After all, I wouldn't ask someone "How on earth do you stay so CHUBBY?"
Oh but I suppose since I'm not (supposedly) chubby it's OK to ask about my stature in front of a roomful of people? This goes back to my days as an awkward preteen. A traumatic incident.  I was all dressed up to go to a wedding. My self esteem was shoddy, even then- especially then, but having said that I was feeling pretty proud of myself with my french twist and black dress. And then one of my old, eccentric aunties approached me, and in front of everyone said with a swirl of her drink:
"OH, LOOK AT YOU, but aren't you just a BEAN POLE!"

Anyways, flash forward twenty years and I am still taking flack for it.
Another coworker jumped in, perhaps sensing my discomfort.
"It's called three kids and a full time job," she said with a laugh.
There.
End of conversation.
Right?
Wrong.
She (the other co worker, the offending party) dug her feet in the ground, shook her head. "No. I have a kid and a full time job," she said staunchly.
First of all- your kid is twenty three years old. That's a little different than chasing a two year old.
Or at least, it should be.
Secondly, your job?
Sitting on a chair for eight hours a day.
My job?
Being run off  my feet for eight hours a day.
"It's your metabolism," she pronounced. "Some people are just lucky."
I felt the stabiness prickling me everywhere.
"No," I said. "I'm actually pretty crazy busy most days. Half the time I don't get a chance to eat."
She still looked skeptical, perhaps because I had a doughnut on my lunch break, which she had seen me consume.
Well, sue me for having one doughnut in the last month.
Okay, maybe two. And actually, it was a long john.
But still.
The point is, I eat pretty fricking healthy nine times out of ten. Or at least seven or eight.

So as promised, the stabiness scale revisited:
How stabby do you feel on a scale of one to ten: nine
Pink or purple: pink
Favorite pizza topping: cheese
What are you wearing right now: khaki pants and a tank top (an improvement you say: not really. I'm only not in my pyjamas because I'm behind in the laundry. What am I going to wear to bed tonight you ask? Geoffs Corona tank top that he got free from a rep at work. I know. Awesome.)
First word that comes to mind when you hear the word knife: carve
Was Lassie good or evil: Evil.

I think its an improvement.
Basically, the only question that counts is the first one.
The rest are just for fun.

Feeling Stabby

Every morning when I wake up, I tell myself: "I am not going to feel stabby today. NO MATTER WHAT. Not even a little bit, Randine. And I'm serious this time. You're not going to pull that shit you did yesterday."

Don't look at me like that. Everyone talks to themselves sometimes, I think.

"Choose Your Attitude" I say, thinking of this work- what do they call it- morale, I think- thing that we had to watch at work where people threw fish at each other and laughed about it and a bunch of weird shit like that.
But the stabiness comes, anyways.

Eg:

Geoff and I have this ongoing feud between jasmine rice and sticky rice.
I prefer jasmine rice, and being the buyer and preparer of the food- jasmine rice it is in our house.
Geoff always sulks about this.
Tonight we sat down to eat, he scooped the rice on his plate with a heavy sigh, as though burdened by this hardship.
"Look." I said, dropping my fork with a loud clank.  "If you don't like the rice, don't fricking eat it."
"I didn't even say anything about the rice. I was just breathing."
And suddenly I'm stabby again. I'm looking at my fork and thinking about making it into a shank. Or better yet- I could just use that steak knife right beside it.

And then I go on my Facebook page and I see someones status update:
"I would rather go to jail for spanking my kids than see them go to jail because I didn't."
Three people "liked" this status.
Which, whatever.
But. First of all: as if you're going to go to jail for spanking your kid. You're not getting any sympathy from me on this.
And secondly, don't take the moral high ground on me because I'm not a spanker. I doubt, highly doubt, that my children are going to end up jail because I didn't spank them.
In fact, I'm pretty sure that if you go to a prison right now- any prison- and asked any random inmate in there what caused them to become criminals, "Too much coddling from my parents" would not be the first thing out of their mouths.
In fact, I think that's just about the last thing they might way.
So SHUT IT with your self righteous status updates.
I don't freaking need it.

But now I know why I'm so stabby.
Vitamin D.
I read on a website- very legit I'm sure- that Vitamin D deficiency is basically the root of all evil.
Feeling tired?
Vitamin D
Feeling cranky?
Vitamin D
Cancer?
Vitamin D
Sores?
Vitamin D
Syphillis?
Vitamin D
Married to Mel Gibson?
Vitamin D

So I'm going to start on Vitamin D, and see if I feel less stabby in a week.
And to test my hypothesis, I'm going to self administer a stabby scale, which I created just now in my head, which has basically no psychological validity at all whatsoever, but I think it will be a good pre test post test measure.


How stabby do you feel on a scale of 1-10: 10
What are you wearing right now: Pyjamas
Pink or purple: Pink
Favorite Pizza Topping: Cheese
The first word that comes to mind when I say knife: stab
Yellow or orange: neither
Was Lassie good, or evil: Evil. That's why they shot him.

OK. So now we wait. I'll start taking the Vitamin D and let you know in a week if I'm less stabby.
In the meantime, do not stop by, unless you want to get stabbed. We can just chat online, it's better that way for both of us: less stabbing for you, and I can stay in my pyjamas, and I don't have to clean my kitchen. Not that I would anyways. I would just steer you clear of the kitchen.

My poor,dear aunty decided to pay me a visit this weekend past. I wasn't in a very good mood. The kids had been in and out for about a solid hour, always leaving the door wide open. The dog had run away about eleven times. Alex had woken up from his nap about three times.
"Stop coming in and out," I told them firmly, shutting the door behind them and locking it.
Three seconds later. Ding Dong.
"I told you to stay out!" I said as I flung the door open.
And there stood my dear old aunty with a sheepish look on her face and pink present in her hand.
"Sorry, I guess I should have called first."
I kind of felt like an asshole about that.
Anyways. Blame it on the Vitamin D.
I'll let you know how it goes.