%&#! You, Easter Bunny!

Yeah, you read that correctly. I am cursing out the damned Easter Bunny. Well, I am sure there is something sacreligious about that, but, well, we all know I’m a heathen, so I won’t even act like I care.

Here’s the deal: When it comes to Easter, I….”suck at life” would be putting it mildly.

The Easter saga started a few years back. I was in the throes of pre-medicine while working more than any human should work. And since I am a heathen, I just didn’t even think about when Easter was. So I go to work. It’s Saturday night. I work every Saturday night and have for the past six years. Weekends are my gig, man! So I go into work with all of the responsible parents, and they are all discussing Easter. Then damb-ass me, I pipe up, “When the hell is Easter, anyway?” To which I got crickets chirping and blank stares, as if to say, “This bitch produced children?”. So in desperation, I call John. I tell him to take my debit card and go to the store and get Evan an Easter basket right then! There! Problem solved. So I get off in the morning and I discreetly asked him if he, you know, handled business. Yeah, he did in his mind. He handled it the John way. As in, he bought a package of those Reese eggs and handed them to Evan, saying, “Here, kid. Happy Easter.” Seriously? No grass? No cute basket? No waking up to a surprise? Seriously, the kid’s childhood is probably in shreds as a result. So I made a mad dash to the store instead of going to bed. And there were no Easter baskets. The closest thing I could find was a hamper. Yeah. In desperation, I bought the damned thing and ran through the toy section, tossing smallish toys in there and whole bags of candy. And I ran home, left the basket in the driveway, and shouted to Evan that the Easter Bunny must have been in a hurry and dropped it off out front instead of bringing it in. And I swore that next year, I would do better.

The next year, guess who was working! Yeah, me. And this time, I won’t even give you a story. I forgot the fucking Easter basket. I gave it to him in a laundry basket. Not even a pretty wicker one, but a beige plastic Rubbermaid one. He got candy, though. There was always the next year.

The Laundry-Basket-as-Easter-Basket still lives! Here is Zachy playing in it as proof!

The next year–SURPRISE!—I was Pregosaurus Bitch and on bedrest, only permitted to break orders unless I was going to a doctor’s appointment or something. Well, that year, options were limited. Evan was with us as I rode the damned Handi-Scooter thingy through Target. By this time, all illusions of the fucking Easter Bunny were dashed, and I just wanted to get the stuff and go home.

This year…

This year, I was so …GOOD! I was Uber-Mommy. I bought the baskets way in advance. I made them up. I got the boys their Easter gifts. We don’t usually do monster baskets full of candy. I always give some, and then make up for the small amount by buying a decent present–who needs that many jelly beans???) I was good. I managed to conquer Easter. Ah-HA!

So for the past few nights, I have been working. The Easter baskets are hidden in the house and all John has to do is sit them on the coffee table before the boys wake up on Sunday morning. Good to go! Saturday morning, I am sleeping off a twelve-hour night shift. I wake up. I stagger to the coffeemaker, when John tells me, “Hey! Don’t let Zachy touch you! He’s all sticky.” Oh. Okay. WhatthefuckEVAH! I continued my old-lady shuffle in my slippers before thinking about it. Why is Zachy sticky?

So I do a double take. And Zachy has a huge sucker/ lollipop thingy. Hmmmm.

“John, where did Zachy get the lolli?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He brought it to me, so I opened it for him.”

“Yes, but WHERE DID HE GET IT?!?”

“I SAID, ‘I DON’T KNOW’!”

I’ll tell you where the midget got it. He got it from his fucking Easter basket. That he found. And raided. Along with his brother’s. Screw “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”. This is the tale of The Zachy Who Sabotaged Easter. I tossed all of the pastel-foil-wrapped shit back into the baskets, tried to arrange them so they didn’t look like the Easter Bunny took a pastel-colored poop in them, and tried to save Easter. The boys still got their candy.

Fuck it.

Next year????? Next year, we’re having a Passover seder. L’ Chaim!

We Do Not Beat Our Children, Schedules are Meant for Rearranging, and More Discoveries

We’re all about discoveries here in the Bitchypants household. Here are a few new ones.

We are finding the need to defend ourselves as parents. Not that anyone has accused me of anything. But still. Zach is into, well, EVERYFUCKINGTHING. He climbs up, crawls over and under, dives off of any surface he can find. And more and more, he is getting the little bumps and bruises of toddlerhood. And when you go out in public and your baby has a big bruise, you feel like you have to tell the story of how to everyone. He climbed up on a rolling toy…..he dove off of the arm of the sofa….he slipped and fell. This last one was a little harder to expalin. John was getting him out of bed in the morning and Zach was doing his usual game of “Catch me, Bitch” when John reached for him and Zachy head-butted John’s hand. Only John’s finger made contact with a little toddler eye. Yeah. Zachy go his first black eye. Insert big frowny face here. The evidence:

See! Even in the photo, he is climbing on a toy, reaching onto my desk. Seriously, kid!

Schedules are meant to be rearranged. Fo’ reals, yo! But here is the most awesome picture of the past week:

See that? No conditions there. Just my admission packet. For my MBA program. I am officially in. No ” You should be fine.” No “conditional admission”. Just……in. IN. IN!!!

So I made an appointment to schedule my classes for October and the shit got tricky. I only have three courses left to take of my first-year MBA program. What they call the foundation courses. And those are offered in intensive half-semesters. I finish the BSBA in September, so I could start the second half of the MBA session in October. Except none of my classes are offered then. They’re all offerred in August. They were going to make an exception and let me start while simultaneously finishing my last month of my BSBA, but ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???? I have a job. And kids. And I do not have a death wish. Especially considering that my first semester of the MBA will be full of financial accounting, macroecon, microecon, and one of the 700-level courses. No. So the solution? This summer, while John is off of his classes, I am going to triple my BSBA courses so I will finish August 15th and can start the MBA the following week. So I learned that where there is a will, there truly is a way.

Evan is a Con Artist. Seriously.

All of this time, we have been fighting him over homework. He made a confession to his therapist. Since he gets perfect test scores, he can pass without completing his homework, so in his mind, why should he do it? So on the nights when he fights and has meltdowns, we try and try before finally giving up and sending a note to his teacher. The next day, she keeps him in at recess to do what he didn’t do the night before. But it got to be too much. And so she changed it up. Now, he gets a zero like everybody else. And the result? He’s doing his homework. And scoring even higher on tests.

The proof is in his science test from this past week. My kid has been conning us all. Little booger.

Zachy started speech and is making strides every day. And he is getting it. Proof? Yesterday in the car, John missed his exit on the interstate, and responded with a “DAMN!!!” And from the backseat, crystal clear, we hear this baby voice say, “Damn!” The other day Zachy was playing outside and he was getting close to the infamous snake sighting of 2010. And I exclaimed, “Zachy, no, SNAKES!” To which he exclaimed, “SAKES!!!!” N left out intentionally. We say “Bus”, “WalMart”, “Evan” or “Bubby”, “Eat”, “SpongeBob”. He signs for “more”, “please”, “help”, “all done”, “eat”, and “drink”.  And e has the  cutest, throaty baby voice that melts my heart. I realized this is the first time I am really hearing it.

I was thinking about the next month or so when I realized that I never requested off for Zach’s second birthday. I was assuming it would fall on Saturday this year since it was  Friday last year. But it is Sunday. It’s Mother’s Day. His second birthday. The 13th. Mom’s birthday used to fall on Mother’s Day sometimes, too. And I hate Mother’s Day. And this year, we really can celebrate. Npw more than ever, I think Mom sent Zach to me. And P.S.–how in the hell is he already going to be turning TWO????

I think that about sums it up. For now. I’m sure there will be more as drama unfolds. We always have some of that.

The GMAT or OH MY GOD Can People Really Do This?

I am so pissed at myself right now. I can honestly say that in all of my higher education, standardized tests, credentialing exams—and there have been plenty of them—I have never done poorly on a test of any kind.

So it starts with me trying to prep for my GMAT for a couple of months. Honestly, there was just never time. There was always work. Or an appointment for one of the kids. Or John had class. Always something. But I tried half-heartedly to prepare. And by the time I was finished with all of the tasks I had to do, I was too exhausted for anything that could be considered optional. I mean, the GMAT doesn’t sign my paycheck. My grades do not depend on studying it, so it had to be moved to the back burner. And then I found out that the required score for my top-choice program is not that difficult, and I blew off studying altogether.

Holy shit.

On test day, I was nervous as hell. Butterflies and nausea. Heart-racing, palm-sweating nervousness. I tried to pump myself up with an iPod full of pump-up music. Lots of Eminem and other I’m-Kickass tunage. I chugged a venti mocha from Starbucks. Then I squared my shoulders and marched my happy ass right into that testing center as if I owned the place.First of all, let me tell you that Fort Knox could learn a thing or two from the security of a GMAT testing center. Palm-vein scans. Digital photos. Audio and visual recordings of the entire test. Pockets turned inside out and sleeves rolled up before entering. You have to put everything into a locker. EVERYTHING. All you are allowed to have on your person is your photo ID and the key to the locker they give you. No pencils or paper. They give you a dry-erase notebook for scratchpaper, and you aren’t supposed to erase it. When you run out of room, they bring you a fresh one. They provided me with earplugs, but I wasn’t even allowed to have the wrapper they came in. Please explain that one to me. How does one cheat with an earplug wrapper they get from the testing center? Because if they can figure that out, they deserve to ace the damned GMAT.  I had to unwrap them before I even entered the testing room and give he wrapper to the proctor. And when you leave the room for any reason, the entire process happens all over again.

And then I sat down to take the test.

I whizzed through 2 writing assessments. I gave responses that were well-developed and organized in thought. Grammar was perfect. No spelling errors. If anything, I can churn out a paper for anyone and anything, so I am sure I nailed those, though it will take a few weeks for the powers that be to determine my score on them. It gave me a chance for a scheduled break, which I declined. I mean, I finished the writing assessments with time to spare, so I was in the zone. Ready to go for the net round. Bring it on, Bitch!

Next came quantitative. I’m not allowed to tell you about any of the questions. I swore on my children and my future as a human being in this world that I would not. But I will tell you that this math can suck a big one. Algebra, geometry, and arithmetic organized into either problem-solving or data sufficiency questions. The math concepts were not hard at all. What was hard? The way it was organized into the problem. Each problem solved by a long chain of steps, and then the solution is not at the end of those step, but rather some portion that relates to it. And then the answer choices! Normally, when one takes a multiple-choice math exam, they solve the problem and if their answer doesn’t match the choices, the know they have done something wrong, they go back and work the problem again and find an answer that matches. Well, the GMAT bases incorrect choices on common mistakes. Say you forgot to divide the number in step two of fifteen by 2. One of the answer choices will fit that error, so you see your answer among the choices and have no idea you were wrong and are completely oblivious. But then you don’t just get the problem wrong! Your score goes down and the subsequent questions are easier because the test then figures you are a fucktard and need easier questions. Incidentally, the easier questions are worth less, so then it takes forevver to get back up to the score you need. But if you get the first few problems correct, the exam propels you into the difficult questions. And for me, these were insanely difficult. And then there is data sufficiency. I can’t even….Just Google that shit. The GMAT prides themselves on the fact that they invented this question type. If I were them, I would not be proud of the fact that I tortured poor college students seeking advanced degrees. And they are a big fricken part of the quantitative secion. Whatever. Shake it off, because after another body cavity search after a potty break, it’s time for the verbal reasoning.

Critical reasoning, sentence correction, and reading comp compose the verbal reasoning. Simple, right? Ummmm, no. Because the GMAT gives you complex sentences full of modifiers in odd places and odd verbage that one would never use in a normal conversational tone. The grammar is perfect, but the flow of the sentence is completely awkward and clumsy. So you really have to know your grammar. Conjugation is a biggie. The critical reasoning gives you a statement and you are expected to draw inferences or determine ways to weaken or strengthen the argument–whichever is asked. The reading comp is pretty standard, except the passages are verbose and dry, written on topics nobody could give two shits about.

And just like that, you’re finished. And the beauty of the GMAT is that you get your unofficial score right then. It isn’t official because the writing assessments have to be scored by some geek in an office somewhere. But the rest of the test is scored. And they don’t even give you a warning that it is coming. It just pops up on the screen, and you are in a room of other test-takers and cannot blurt out any expletives. I mean, I think I deserve some extra points for not blurting out, “YOU HAVE GOT TO BE SHITTING ME!!!!!”, which is totally what I was thinking.

Because here is what the fuck happened: I aced the verbal reasoning. I am pretty sure that I nailed the writing assessments. I bombed the fucking math. Fuck. FuckityFuckFuckFuck. However, I scored so well on the verbal that my scores are competitive anywhere–Wharton, Harvard, Keenan-Flageler—any of the big B-schools. I fucking did it. But then I start revisiting the requirements for my first-choice school. GPA 3.5. Okay. GMAT score greater than 470. Okay. (GPA x 200) + GMAT> or = to 1070. Yeah, okay. I’m good, right?

No. Halt. Big screeching brake sound here. Because they want a certain percentage of the GMAT score to come from math. Fucking math. And my score was so unbelievably lopsided.

I aced it, and yet I still have to retake it.

Shit.

I am pissed. I want to shout from the rooftops that I have never done poorly on any test ever. Come to think of it, I don’t think I have ever even gotten a B on an exam. I certainly have never gotten a B in a class. I can write when I have to. I test remarkably well. What the fuck????

Oh and did I mention that the exam was, like, $300? Not counting prep materials. And I have already gone to the store and purchased a program specific to GMAT math. Feel free to take up a collection for me. I have to wait 31 days to retake that fucker, too.

I would rather shoot myself in the eye than take that fucking exam again.

While I Was Away

I’ve been busy. I’m sorry. I’m a horrible blogger. And the truth? I’m still busy. I honestly have no business creating a long list of catch-up posts when there is so much I should be doing. So I am going to try to catch you up in this one post, if you are still out there.

School: I’ve got a couple more classes under my belt. More A’s. I’ll be finished with my business degree in September. I’ve been working on the MBA applications. More on that in a sec.

Evan: Evan is still…Evan. They’ve changed his meds several times. Some of it has been good and some bad. The bad changes are the ones that had him literally awake for days, dark circles under his eyes, palor. It broke my heart. Until one day when his teacher called and said he fell asleep in school and we had to bring him home and let him sleep for almost 2 days straight, only waking him to get some fluids in him so he didn’t dehydrate. I hate it all and would love more than anything to just be able to take him off of all of them and get them out of his system, but I kow he can’t function without them. Now things are finally looking up. He came home last week, excited and proudly presenting this flyer from school. Turns out they are having baseball sign-ups and Evan wants to play. We signed him up. He’s never played a sport before because he has never shown interest. But we jumped on this, even taking him to get fitted for a glove and bat, getting him training gear. He’ll start practicing here at home this week, since he is too old to play tee-ball, and this is actually pitch baseball.

Zach: Zach was officially assessed at the 12-month level, developmentally speaking. He has started therapy after officially being labeled as developmentally delayed. I had some very overwhelming days where it struck me that I have one child with Asperger’s and another who is DD. I had to get past that to carry on. In the meantime, in absence of any verbal communication, the therapist has started teaching Zachy to sign what he wants. Simple things like “more”, “drink”, “all done”, “eat”, and “help”. He can finally express what he wants to us instead of having a meltdown because we cannot understand his grunts and shouts. And with this development has emerged some attempts to be verbal. He can get the intonation of the syllables of words, but nothing anyone can understand yet. But he is trying, which is more than he was doing a month ago. He continues to be social and adorable and loving. And he is so smart. He can clearly understand anything you say to him. He hs favorite places and knows the routes to those places and will cry if you turn the opposite direction in the car. We just have to catch him up a little bit.

Grad School: I got letters of recommendation from my direct supervisor and department director at work. I wrote a stellar cover letter and drew up a new resume. I had my transcripts sent yesterday. Yet about a month ago, I was having a weak moment, so I scheduled a time to go into my first choice school and speak to them about my potential for admission. I was armed with nothing more than an unofficial printout of my undergrad work. She basically told me there was a very little likelihood that I will be turned away with my academic record. But I have to take that damned GMAT. You may recall that I took two weeks off at the end of January to prepare for and take the test. And then I psyched myself out and wouldn’t do it. That was the low point where I called them and made the appointment. And then I bit the bullet and scheduled the damned thing. And tried and tried to prep for without the advantage of time off from work or school. As a matter of fact, I have finished two more classes and started 2 more in that time frame. I still feel underprepared. My stomach has been in knots for days. As in butterflies and queasiness. The exam is tomorrow. If all goes well, I will be started at one of the top-ranked MBA programs in October. Oh, and that’s another thing: because I went back and did an undergrad business degree and will be fresh from that with immaculate grades, I am elegible for their accelerated program. In other words, they will give me credit for my undergrad and I will only have 8 classes left to my MBA. So by Summer of 2013, I will be an MBA. Yeah. No pressure. I have to get in. Have to. No other options. I even submitted all of the financial stuff for grad school, and at a very expensive private university, I will even have all of that falling into place.

So there you have it. While I haven’t been present in the bloggy world, I’ve been doing plenty. I look forward to catching up on everyone’s blogs and hopw you’ll forgive me for my absence.

Little–Yet Mighty–Steps

I am on vacation. I know, right? I never take vacation. The last time I had any real time off of work was when I was on bedrest. But I did it. The plan was for me to spend the next couple of weeks crack-a-lackin’ on the GMAT prep, then take the exam.

Until the GMAT prep made me feel mentally incompetent to even tie my own shoes.

Or my new classes left me with less time than I thought.

And I have had appointments every single day, including some meetings for work. So in truth, I have gotten Jack Crap finished by way of GMAT. And guess what! Jack left town. So we aren’t going to talk about Jack, or GMAT, or anything else that makes me want to scratch my eyes out and beg for Ativan. We’re going to talk aboout what Zach did last night.

He slept without a swaddller. Yeah. Uh-huh. John was at his evening class, and I told myself that now is the time, damnit. It took a gazillion trips to his room to remind him that I was right here. Maybe a couple of pats on the back. And the binky. Yeah, we aren’t even touching the bedtime pacifier yet, in the name of picking one’s battles. But he did it. He slept in his Spongebob pj’s, covered by his favorite blankie, with his little butt in the air. My big boy. Turns out that we aren’t going to have to send him to college with one after all.

What else is Zachy doing? Well, first of all, we cannot go out in public without cracking people up. Really. He gets so excited when he sees something he recognizes. And when he gets excited, it’s the funniest thing ever. As in “Oh! Oh! Oh! OH! Oh YEAH????” Only in that adorable baby voice. Yesterday, I took him to the pharmacy to fill a prescription. Our pharmacy is small, so I usually don’t do this. Well the first thing he saw was a container of baby wipes on the shelf. So here he goes. “OH????? Oh YEAH!”, as he darts to the shelf. Then he saw the body wash I use on him. “Oh-Oh-Oh Yeah?” And so it went, back and forth across the pharmacy,, which is essentally a little room with shelves. And quite the audience assembled to watch him in amazement, because through all of this, he didnt take one thing off of the shelves. He was just excited to see the products we use at home. You really should see him at the grocery store!

He still isn’t really talking, but it is obvious, even to the therapist who came to the house, that he understands everything being said to him. He just won’t speak. Except he said “book” the other day, which can be added to the short list of random words he says. By the way, did you know that the sippy cups with the straws are better for language development because drinking from them requires different muscles and actually strengthens the muscles needed for speech. Well, now I know it and we are in the process of replacing all of Zach’s sippy cups as a result. And though I hate the commercialism of characters on children’s products, I will do anything to get this child talking. So basically, whatever floats his boat…Spongebob pj’s. Elmo sippy (with straw, of course!). Thomas toy. Not a lot of characters, but some.

So that’s it. Little steps. I’m not afraid of little steps. Just like I will be taking little steps to get the GMAT prep finished. All it does is slow me down a little bit. But then again, maybe I needed to slow down.

I Shall Call This One “Someday”

Because…..

Someday, I will have time to make a dent in this 6-inch thick GMAT prep book.

Someday, I will have a day off of work.

Someday, Evan will go back to school.

Someday, Zach will start speaking and stop doing the whining/ grunting/ pointing thing.

Someday, this house will be clean. And neat. And organized.

And I will finish the 1000-page book I started reading out of a lapse in my sanity. Because for some reason, aside from GMAT prep, working like a dog, the questionably Aspergian high maintenance oldest child and the terrible-twos toddler, and all of the other shit I have to get done, I thought I would have time to read the damned thing.

Someday, I’ll relax.

Or maybe finish the apps for grad school.

Or maybe eat a dinner that is home cooked because we had time to cook.

Someday, there will not be sheer chaos in this house.

Someday, I will finish the 50 gazillion blog posts I have started about the different things I wanted to tell you all about but have not have the time to finish. On our Christmas. Or our anniversary. Or Evan’s progress and Zach’s delay.

But not now. Because right now, the tv is blaring, Zach is screaming because he doesn’t have the words or ability to tell John he wants apple juice. I am waiting for a phone call from the developmental interventionalist because I am finally worried about Zach’s speech delay to do something about it. And once I get the call, I have to go through the gu-wrenching possibility that my treatment during the pregnancy did something to him just when I thought it was all okay. And it is finally snowing outside, mixed with a bit of rain and freezing temps that are sure to make my commute a living hell.

And right now, I have to go to work. Again.

Fuck.

No Rest For the Wicked

I swear, everybody, that this next comment is going to make me seem like a braggart. I’m not. I’m really, really not. But some people have to really work at academics. I am not one of those people. From grade school, I have handled school work with ease. My business classes have been a cakewalk other than the demands on my time and the volume of work to be done. It isn’t that the work is demanding–it’s just overwhelming for my current schedule.

I am currently in a statistics course. It seems like common sense, and I have an A in the course with only two more assignments to be graded before winter break. But I swear, some of the assignments have been insanely difficult. Maybe it is because it is difficult to learn the intricacies of these complex mathematical formulas online with no face time with my professor. I can do the work but it is actually taking a certain amount of effort. Monday, for example, I had to complete a project that involved a 250 sample size, including organizing the data, computing solutions for problems regarding the data, and presenting it all in spreadsheet form along with an APA-formatted paper analyzing and interpreting the meaning of the information I extrapolated from the data. All of this was done after working all weekend and not sleeping. I literlly came home from work on Monday morning and sat at my desk at 7:30 AM and not completing it until 1AM Monday night/ Tuesday morning. At one point, whether it was from exhaustion, stress, being overwhelmed, or whatever, I actually broke down into tears. In the process, John kept looking over my shoulder, shaking his head and exclaiming how no human could possibly understand the stuff I was being asked to do for the project. He brewed me 5 pots of coffee throughout the day. And then, once completed, I had to hurry and finish the 46-slide PowerPoint presentation on the organizational effectiveness of my current employer. By the end of the night, I was nauseous, my fingers were swollen from feverishly typing, my back/ neck/ head ached. I was still sore the next morning, and didn’t want to even see typeface for a while. No Kindle, no blogs or blogging, no reading.

I am almost finished. I will be on winter break from Monday through January 8th, when I will return to a whirlwind of classes before I can move on to the MBA. As a matter of fact, I will have 6 more 5.5-week sessions, back to back, with 2 classes each session. For the immediate period of time, I am working every hour that is available. I have 3 days off between now and January 4th, and none of those are holidays.

And now starts my countdown for my GMAT and working on grad school applications. I have put in for vacation for the last 2 weeks of January–time to wrap up exam prep and actually take the exam, hopefully with a few days left over to do nothing work- or school-related. To maybe kick back and celebrate what I have done just a little bit. On a side note, I actually got some interest from M.I.T, which actually hurt a little bit. I cannot pick up my entire family and move like that, though their interest is beyond flattering.  I mean, this is the number  3 MBA program in the country! For me, when just this time last year, I was on track to med school. Maybe in a different time and place. But for now, I have my top three choices and a couple of “safety” schools picked out, and we’ll leave it at that.

In the meantime, I am going to try to spend some downtime here in the Blogosphere over he net three weeks. Please be patient with me and don’t lose interest.

I’m not a huge country fan, though I love me some Kenny Chesney. His music just reminds me of my John. But anyway, he has this song that sums it up pretty well, and I leave you with the key line from it:

“Hey, I wanted it all and that’s what I got.”

Bitchypants, Out.

Just for a Moment

Just for a moment, I got to put my feet up. A brief 5 minutes over the course of 13 hours of work. And as you can tell from the photo, I got to check my blog. Just for a minute, before ventilators started alarming again and patients started to have trouble. It has been an exhausting weekend. Exhausting. And now it is Monday, and I am off of work only to be immersed in papers and presentations and reading for school. And in sticky handprints and peanut butter sandwiches and vacuuming up Golfish crackers that have been ground into a pulp in the carpet.

Sometimes, when you want it all, when you aspire to have everything, that is exacly what you get.

 

Addicted…

To ugly running shoes.

Yeah, I am. It started a couple of years ago. I had worked a gazillion 12-hr shifts in a row. Plus, by day, I had been traipsing allover the University of Cincinnati’s campus for pre-med stuff. (PS-how in the blue hell did they design that campus to where literally everyplace you walk is uphill??? It defies the laws of reason.) The end-result of twelve days of work in a row, assigned to the ICU during the perils of flu season, plus school-schlepping all day with only brief bursts of sleep when I was absolutely about to die of exhaustion was that my poor feet were swollen and painful to even touch. I limped into a sporting goods store and told a bewildered salesman that I didn’t give two shits about the shoe’s looks or price–if it was comfortable, I would buy it. he reached somewhere up toward the heavens and procured this hideously ugly pair of running shoes. They were mesh and pleather, and the pleather was silver–not dull, matte silver, but mirror-like silver. They had big black stripes down the side of some sort of rubber and huge patches of pink gel-like shit in the inch-thick soles. The pleather trim was white–with fucking pink paisley designs. They were the ugliest shoes I have ever seen in my life. And I put them on. And I literally teared up because they felt so good on my feet. John was jabbing me in the ribs with his elbow and hissing, “Andrea, damnit, stop crying. You’re embarrassing me!” Yeah, whateves. So I told the guy to give me the other one, I was going to wear them out of the store. And I gasped when I saw the price: $190.00 with tax. For those ugly bastards. So I tried the cheaper versions of the same brand. Incidentally, the cheapies were cute, not ugly–why is that? But none of them worked. And I finally just paid the money. Best money I ever spent, I swear.

I wore the hell out of my ugly shoes. They were Asics. Very high-end running shoes. And they worked for about 8 months or so before the sheer amount of running I do at work made the insides of them die a painful death. The outsides still look like new to this day. As ugly as the day I bought them. But since then, I have devoted my time to finding the proper replacement. And no pair of Asics I have bought since has ever lived up to those ugly mofos. They all do fine for trips around the block or to the aprk. Even for long walks, runs, or hikes. But never to my hellish work environment. Never.

Until now.

I was googling “ugly running shoes” in the hope of finding them online to buy another pair. And I encountered something that made me gasp with their ugliness. Another pair of Asics. High-end. $140. And though they weren’t the same, I figured their price and brand gave me a better shot of finding something comparable. So I ordered them online. The mens and womens’ versions were both equally disturbing.

I am not kidding. Excet that the photo doesn’t do them justice: the yellow is less green or yellow and more that painfully neon color of a yellow highlighter.And the Asics stripes glow in the dark. Really. John, having not seen them until they arrived at the house, gasped in horror when he saw them for the first time. And he hates when I wear them because you cannot miss them. So people stop and comment.

Turns out there are scads of people out there who love ugly running shoes as much as I do. At work, at the grocery store, at restaurants…People love my shoes. Or are lying to me, and making a big production out of stopping my and offering unsolicited lies. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Because these shits are as comfortable as if I swathed my feet in clouds. And the mesh top is actually so airy that you can see my socks through them.

So I will never buy cute running shoes again.

And John can bite me. Because my feet don’t feel like they’re breaking anymore.

And I am a respiratory therapist.

And it is flu season.

Why I Suck at Life and Other Tales

The I'm-in-a-shitty-mood-and-have-no-pic-for-you pic. Deal with it, please.

So I have to be the worst mother in the world right now. We try and try to monitor what Evan sees/ does/ hears. We cannot control all of it and realize that in just a few short years, he will be a teenager and his peers will likely have more influence on him than either of us. So we don’t get nutty about it. Some of the stuff, he is going to hear, and I would rather it be here with us so I can correct him. But that didn’t prepare me for tonight. It was bedtime, and he was angry that we wouldn’t let him stay up all night, despite the fact that he has no school tomorrow. He was storming down to his room, dressed in his flannel pj bottoms and an old tee, and I heard him say to his father, “Suck my——”. I didn’t sensor that. He did it. He stopped short of saying what would have had me reeling. But I was still shocked/ disgusted/ angry as hell. Where in the hell did he hear such talk? And even though he didn’t finish the sentence, does it really matter what the end word was to be at this point? How could that possibly have ended in a way that would have been acceptable? I’ll answer that one for you: it couldn’t have. So now Evan is massively grounded. And the computer/ tv/ dvd’s/ cd’s/ mp3 player are all on lockdown until I either find the offending media or he rats out the punk at school who talks like that. (Disclaimer: While I sling the f-bomb on here all of the time, I don’t speak that way in front of my children, ever. So don’t even think it.)

There is a problem with my laptop. Yeah, the one I bought in March. Anyhow, the mouse buttons don’t work, and while I can use an external mouse for the time being, it is driving me crazy to do so. So I googled the tech support number for Dell. And this link popped up with the number, the Dell logo, and more. I called the number and got an Indian guy–not racist, Mr. Internet Troll/ William Wallce/ Braveheart Motherfucker–just an observation. And he seemed polite and helpful. And he wanted remote access to my PC so he could check it out. Which I granted. He asked for my home number, just in case we got disconnected, which I gave. I gave him the cell number too, since he requested it. And then the convo started to go downhill from there as he started pulling up Wikipedia pages on my desktop about malware that comes from social networking sites. And he did some scan that reports that I have like a gajillion viruses–in truth, I scanned my computer after all was said and done, and I found no threats other than the ones he installed. Anyhow, he started demanding hundreds of dollars from my credit card, blah blah blah. Really, the problem is with the damned mouse buttons, not the actual computer. And I have antivirus protection. I didn’t need anything he was slinging. So I aborted the remote access, logged off and hung up simultaneously. The bastard called back. Again and again, to both numbers. And I instantly felt like the world’s biggest idiot. I called the guy. I gave him my numbers, and I gave him access to my computer. And when it was done, my antivirrus automatically fired up and detected two threats that were cleaned off of my computer. I feel so stupid. What is wrong with these people? I mean, really? You’re going to pose as Dell Tech Support now, Cyber Assholes?

Yeah, failure of epic proportions in other areas of my life right now, too. This was the week we were to do our rounds at the big Children’s NICU in preparation for the opening of ours. I was among the 10 therapists who made the cut, and so I was to go. So here’s what happened: I was off for 4 days. I kind of ran ragged though, as I was finishing up classes, getting new furniture and working on the house. Despite wearing myself out during those days, I still couldn’t sleep at night due to my night shift schedule. So I would be up all night and try to stay up all day the next day in the hope that I could spend my days off with the boys instead of sleeping while they are awake. And again, I would be up all night that night. It sucked, and before I knew it, the days off were a thing of the past. I had two days of work, my standard night shifts. Then I had one day off. Though it wasn’t reall a whole day. I got home at 8AM on Sunday morning and had to be at Children’s at 7AM on Monday. So again, no sleep. The same for Monday night and Tuesday night. Needless to say, after sleeping about 6 hours in 10 days or so, I started to feel under the weather. I tried to fight it off. Wednesday morning, when I woke from my whopping 30 minute nap to get ready to leave, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. Fever. Chills. Aches. I even puked a couple of times for good measure. And why was I breathing like one of my emphasematous patients? I had no choice but to call in. The last thing a 24-week preemie needs is to be around my sick ass. And so I slept. I slept like the dead. Until John woke me because I was so freaking hot and breathing so strangely that he was really worried. And off to the doctor I went. Yeah. I have fucking pneumonia. So now I am on steroids, antibiotics, bronchodilators. I’m starting to feel a little better, but only slightly. To put it into perspective: before, I felt like I had been hit by a train. Now it feels more like a Mack truck did me in.  I have been off since Wednesday, and now am off until Tuesday night. Shit.

So there you have it. I truly do suck. I’m hoping that tomorrow, if the third day of antibiotics and steroids continues making the same amount of improvement the first two days made, I may be able to leave the house long enough to get some lunch or something. Or maybe some very quick retail therapy before I wear out. Who knows? I’ll probably be dead by then with the way this week has gone.

PS- Zachary–sweet innocent Zachy-Poo–learned something new. He learned to stick his cute little finger straight up his cute little nose. Holy shit. And I was so grossed out that my reaction may have scarred himfor life. Is his brother’s Pig Stage rubbing off on him? No. Please, God, noooooooooo.