%&#! 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!

How Legos Pissed Me Off

I wrote a post bitching about this experience, so when I posted it, what I wrote disappeared and just the photos remained, so you are going to get an abridged version of Lego KidsFest.

$70 for my family to get in. Fine. But Evan didn’t get to do much because the lines were so long and the tickets were only good for 4-hour sessions. Ours were for 8:30 AM the morning after a work night for me. So I was tired. And crabby. And I could’ve stomached it a little better if it had been children in those lines. But they were all adults. Some of the rudest adults I have ever met. One almost knocked over Zachy’s stroller. There was lots of cursing, and not on my part. At a kids’ event. I actually heard someone shout, “Suck my D###!”, at one point. And for the most part, all of the kids were fine. My only gripe there was the big kids romping around the Duplo area, which was intended to be a safe place for toddlers. But again, this went back to the adults, who should’ve gotten the big kids out of there. And so I was getting angry. So we left after only two hours, lest I lose my cool and cut a bitch.

The statues were cool. Some of the activities would’ve been cool if Evan would’ve actually got to do them. So here are the photos I got.

Kinda like his room.

And for Zachy, a huge pile of Duplo bricks.

Captain Jack Sparrow, savvy?

Hello, SpongeBob!

One of the few things the kid got to do.

The coolest of the statues--a life-size Lightening McQueen

Just parked the car

The Great Cabbage Patch Controversy

My name is Andrea, and I bought my son a doll. There, I said it. You would’ve thought I bought him a machine gun. Wait. Perhaps that would be more acceptable, more masculine.

The Offender

Zach plays with his stuffed animals by cradling them and hugging them as if they are babies, but yet when he gets close to a human, he swats and bats at faces, inflicting pain. I thought about it, and thought perhaps a doll that looked more like a baby would help him. He could do some role play and learn to be gentle and nurturing.

I knew his dad would hate the idea, so I knew better than to buy him a doll that was dressed in a frilly pink outfit or had bows in her hair. That really would have been pushing the envelope. What I needed was a masculine-looking doll. A doll that looked like a boy, was dressed like a boy. A less girly doll. Yeah. Have you ever tried to find anything that has anything to do with traditionl domestic role play that is not pink and frilly and…..grrrrrrr. Toy vaccuums, shopping carts, kitchens. Toy mops and brooms, dishes. All of them. Why? My real vaccuum isn’t pink. My dishes aren’t, either. My stove, refrigerator….none of it is pink. Why in the hell are we doing this to our children?

So  after scouring the internet and finding nothing, I gave up on the doll. Until last week. We were at Toys ‘R’Us when I saw a boy Cabbage Patch Kid. I had been looking at the dolls, reliving memories of my childhood. I had been the first on my block to get one when they first came out. Parents were getting in fist fights over the dolls, and my mom was right in the middle of that. The limit to buy was 10, and she bought all 10 to give to the girls in the family as Christmas presents. But not me. I got one of mine that day. I’ll never forget it. His name was Earl. He had on a blue cuorduroy outfit, was bald with big blue eyes. I was remembering all of this and thinking if I knew a little girl who would want one. As I moved the boxes around, looking at the different dolls, I saw the boy way in the back. A doll. No pink. Big blue eyes like Zachy’s.

And I bought it. The boy doll I had been looking for all of that time. We brought him home and I took him out of the box. His name is Kelton. And I handed him to Zachy, who promptly hugged him and put the doll next to him on the seat of his Cozy Coupe. Success.

Until I absentmindedly posted something on Facebook about, “Yay! I found the boy doll I was looking for for Zachy.”

I started getting e-mails. The phone rang a few times. People, who shall remain nameless and were too cowardly to post anything publically on Facebook, have a serious problem with this. Finally, John, who was with me when I bought it and had no protest then, is making snide comments when Zach so much as looks at the doll. I am going to confuse Zach. I am going to upset the balance. I am going to —GASP!—TURN HIM GAY!!!!! (These aren’t John’s words, but some of the comments I got from others.)

Zach and Evan are growing up in a family where the mom is the breadwinner and has the career, is on the fast track to an MBA. Their dad does the laundry, the cleaning. He runs the vacuum about three times a day (don’t ever get chocolate-brown area rugs, people–they show every speck of lint!) and washes the dishes. We split the cooking. He is the one to taxi Ev to and from school. To the point that one time, we went to a school function and one of the other mothers mentioned that she thought we were divorced because she never sees Evan’s Mommy. I believe there are inherent diferences between men and women. Some of it is put upon us by society. Some of it is hard-wired by biology. Both nature and nurture win. A prime example? I love pink. I like smelling like flowers. I hate getting dirty. You would never catch me fishing because I will not handle a fish. I hate most sports, other than college football. I watch chick flicks and cry when the situation calls for it. My husband can bench press a lot more than I can. But I am driven, aggressive, down-to-business. If you piss me off, I will let you know. If you are wrong, I’ll let you know that, too. I hate bullshit and will not allow you to dish it to me. I multi-task with the best of them.

Do not ever make the mistake of telling me something is not my job because I am a woman. Other than peeing while standing, I doubt there is anything I could not learn to do. Hell, if I were willing and had some practice, I could probably even manage that one. And if there is nothing I cannot do, and it is unacceptable to place me in a little stereotypical box, then it is certainly unacceptable to do so to either of my children at a time when they are growing and developing and learning who they are. At some point, they will choose the paths they want to take. They may be gay or straight. They may  choose to play in dirt or stay indoors and bake cupcakes. They may be construction workers, chefs, teachers, doctors, lawyers. Presidents of the United States. Or they could choose to stay home and be caregivers to their children while supporting their significant other so he or she can go out and kick ass in the world.

Just like I can do whatever I want, so can they. And whatever they choose, it will have not one damned thing to do with a doll I bought them while they were a toddler.

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.

 

If It Weren’t For Nuns, My Child Would Starve

IF YOU CAN’T TOLERATE THE F-BOMB, JUST FUCKING MOVE ALONG ON THIS ONE.

As if we didn’t have enough drama in this house…

It doesn’t matter what I do. I send Evan in with lunch money to be put on his account. Or I can pack his lunch. Whatever. We still get cafeteria bills. In general, it costs about $100 per month to feed Evan school lunches. Remember when we were kids and it took like 75 cents per day? And an extra quarter got you an extra helping on pizza day? Those days are gone. They went bye-bye along with the little rubber squeezy change holders that held your lunch money daily. Now my kid has a name badge thay he swipes like a debit card, and we have to add money to it.

Sometimes, in the craziness that is my household, I forget. And sometimes I don’t. Regardless, we get the bill.

Two days ago, we got hate mail from the cafeteria lady. Evan has a bill. Again. And it needs to be paid. So I went to get money out and discovered that instead of deducting my normal monthly car insurance premium, Geico took enough to cover the entire policy. Oops. When I renewed, I forget to opt for the monthly payments. My fault. But oh, shit, we have no money! So I tried to call the cafeteria lady and got no answer. Since I had no cash, and Evan has to have lunch, I sent him in with enough to cover one day’s worth. There! Evan gets lunch until my payroll hit this morning.

Yesterday, when Evan returned from school, he had more hatemail. Another copy of his bill, and in black marker and block letters at the bottom, the cafeteria lady basically stated that I am the scumofthefuckingearth and sending Evan in with enough to cover one lunch was NOT ACCEPTABLE–her emphasis, not mine–and that we owed a bill. Again, we tried to call and got no answer.

This morning, I sent Evan to school as normal. I told him to let them know that we would go to an ATM and bring money in for his cafeteria bill and to tell whoever this information. John overslept and didn’t have time to stop at an ATM on the way, so he would have to bring the money back to the school. So what happened?

My kid calls me, crying, from the office. “Mommy, they said you have to bring me a sandwich or s-s-s-s-something for lunch, that I cannot go h-h-h-h-hungry. I told them what you told me to tell them, but they still made me call you!”

To which my response was to make Evan put an adult on the damned phone. Basically, the nun that answered told me that they are concerned for Evan, that he has to eat and how did I plan on feeding him. Blah blah blah. How their only concern was Evan.

Are you serious? MY  only concern is Evan. I will ensure that he eats. We are bringing in money, for God’s sake. We are not trying to starve our kid. His bill is thirteen fucking dollars and we are acting like it is a federal crisis and poor Evan is going to go hungry and never eat again. And for the record, I would have packed Evan a lunch today and just sent the money in with Evan tomorrow, but I was out of fucking bread for a God-forsaken PB&J and Evan refused an Uncrustable in place of his fucking PB&J-with-the-fucking-crusts-cut-off. So ta-daaaaa. You have to wait for me to get one of us to an ATM. And while we on the topic of my failure to feed my kid, John would have had time to stop at an ATM before school had Evan not nibbled on his breakfast, insisting on eating one fucking Cheerio at a time, citing that too big a bite is a fucking choking hazard. What 10-year-old speaks of choking hazards, anyway? Mine, that’s who!

Maybe I should just revert to my passive aggressive bitchiness and really prove my point. I wonder if that five-star place around the corner caters school lunches!?!? Better yet, how would the nuns react to the waiter showing up with a silver platter and tucking the linen napkin neatly onto Evan’s lap for him?

What’s the Deal with the Kindle, Already?

*Sigh* I don’t own a Kindle.

I have wanted a Kindle for as long as they have been out. Since their shiny newness was cutting-edge technocrap. I have blogged before that, damnit, I was going to buy myself a Kindle.

I still haven’t bought a damned Kindle. Even though their prices continue to drop and you can now get a decent one, a highly purposeful one, for like somewhere less than $100.

What is my problem? I have no problem thunking down money for a oy for one of the boys. For a meal out. For nice perfume or gym shoes for work. Why don’t I have a Kindle?

And now, after some heavy self-psychologizing, I know.

I’m old. That’s my theory. I am old and set in my ways. I resist technology. Exhibit A? The length of time it took me to buy a cell phone. But when I did, I bought an Android smartphone and now I would rather cut off my arm than live without it, and want an even better, more advanced smartphone that can do even more. Exhibit B? The fact that my courses this session didn’t come with books, but E-Books! Which I’m fairly certain are less books and more data files, no less. I just about had a meltdown. I was seriously pissed, and promptly wasted trees and killed the environment by printing out all of the chapters listed in the syllabi, spent the time with the 3-hole punch and arranging the chapters into binders. Essentially, I made my own damned books and didn’t look back.

Here’s the thing: (And you will probably attempt to have me committed after reading this) I love books. Books. I love the glossy cover and crisp pages of a new book. I love spending time pouring over shelves at a massive bookstore trying to find the next great read by that new auhor who may even become my favorite. I love that little sound the spine of a new book makes when you really get into the pages for the first time. (Though, just a bit of Bitchypants trivia for you, my biggest pet peeve is a broken spine on a book. They just never look the same on the shelf again.) I love the smell of new books.

Yeah, yeah, the Kindle is handy and I still want one. I realize I could potentially carry my entire library in my purse if I just bought the damned thing. But has anyone ever truly been out in public and thought to themselves, “Self, I really wish you had your entirefuckinglibrary in your purse right now because this line at the bank is horrifically long and you could spend this time reading your entirefuckinglibrary?” I doubt this has ever happened. To anyone.I am perfectly content with one book in my bag. If things get really crazy, I may even have a couple of books in my backpack.

I’ll buy the Kindle eventually because I know it will travel well and I am the girl who always has a book of some kind on her person. But now I know why I have resisted for so long: I am a closeted book purist.

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.

Hey, No Smoking in the House! (All Night Blog-a-Thon #2)

…..Step right up, and don’t be shy. Because you will not believe your eyes. She’s right here, behind the glass. And you’re gonna like her. ‘Cause she’s got class….

Yeah, still jammin’ to the eighties. 10 bonus points if you know that song and can tell me who sang it, and the name, without Google.

So here is installment #2 in my little middle-of-the-night Blogathon.

So do you remember this post? Well, it was all about the dysfunction of my 8-moonth-old laptop and how it sucks, among other topics because I have ADD of the Blog. Anyhow, so the plot thickens.

I dealt with the issue of the malfunctioning onboard mouse by buying a small external mouse to use with the laptop. I acually got used to using it. So earlier tonight, I am sitting down at my desk, logging on so I can complete one of my pain-in-the-ass papers for my newish Human Resources Management class when the DVD drive starts making this awful clicking noise. And it won’t open. I have, by this point, picked up the laptop and am looking at it at all angles, turning it over and over as if looking at it funny is going to solve the damned problem, when Evan noticed it.

“MOMMY!!!! It’s SMOKING!”

Oh my God, the kid was right. Little puffs of smoke were coming out of the jacks in the front where I would normally plug in my earbuds for a boring-ass lecture online. And then the puffs weren’t so little. And then they were pouring smoke. And then my fucking living room smelled like burning hair. (yeah, I know that smell after an unfortunate incident where I caught my long ponytail on fire with a lit candle. Don’t judge. It was years and years ago–the early ’90′s and we all used that much hairspray.) I hurried up and shut down the computer. But just like one would risk running into a burning building to rescue photos, I thought of all of the digital photos of my boys on that damned computer that I failed to back up. Shit. So I turned it on and tried to hurry and transfer all of the photo files I care about onto any flash drive I could find. Thankfully, with our roles as perpetual students, there were about a half dozen right here at my fingertips. But I still, after the bedrest and medical bills, the new furniture and my bout of pneumonia a couple of weeks ago, have no friggin’ savings. I am the poster child for financial irresponsibility. And I have to have a fucking computer. For school. For work. For my fragile sanity.

And then I had the worst night of my life as I tried to convince an electronics store that, yes, I have a couple of medical bills that show up on my credit report after the Pregnancy Heard ‘Round the World, but I have a good job, am financially stable, this is a farking emergency, and I will pay the damned bill, Now gimme the damned loan or I will cut you- I have a paper due in 4 fucking hours. And I left with a . But laptop that I like, if not love. It isn’t my MacBook that I want, but all I could get out of them was a measley grand. Bastards. And then I spent my evening trying to hurry up and get software loaded so I could do my paper. I have the friggin’ enormous Office Suite that has a gazillion programs, of which I am not sure what they all do, and so that took forever. And Microsoft wouldn’t let me use my product key again, so I spent another age convincing them that I am not pirating software, that my house is just Where Computers Come to Die. They finally let me install it again, saving me hundreds of dollars. And then I spent another age on the phone with tech support at the school because the default security settings on the newbie weren’t allowing me to log on to the school website.

And then? Then I spent the rest of my night trying to get this paper finished from scratch. My research and everything. Not a single note taken ahead of time. Really. How in the hell I pulled that off while still going 300 words over the required minimum is beyond me. And it even seemed halfway coherent.

And now we’ve moved on…To Prince, before he was the weirdo symbol. And I have a confession to make: I love Prince. Always have, always will, ever since the day when my sister watched Purple Rain in my presence when I was kid while she was babysitting me one night. he worst movie ever. With the best soundtrack ever….She asked me if we could be friends and I said, Oh honey baby that’s okay. You know and I know that we wouldn’t be satisfied…..Hells-to-the-yeah. Moving on.

Hard Evidence That I Suck at Life Right Now

I’m sick. Not deathly ill, but just a little under the weather. And what comes with feeling a little under the weather? I have absolutely no desire to do anything.

My house is a mess. Not just any mess, mind you. No, it’s a mess. I’m choosing to call it crackhouse-chic. As in nothing is where it should be. I am sitting at my desk right now, and I am appalled at the clutter. A dirty coffee mug, abandoned and empty and left there most likely at 3AM when I was awake in the wee hours trying to get a paper submitted by a deadline. An empty OJ bottle from when I grabbed some juice from the cafeteria on the way out of work on what was my fourth night in a row at that hell hole. Camera, cell, and mp3 player, all with their affiliated charges and USB cables, in a jumble of wires. My purse, unzipped and laying on its side, with contents strewn out across the space. I think this is the remnant of the search for my sunglasses for our walk yesterday. And there are about three empty inhalers.

Empty inhalers from where I have been wheezing like a freak for the past few days, to the point that coworkers would tell me, “Andrea, take your inhaler.” Because they could hear my dysfunctional lungs. It has yet to be seen if this is due to the fact that I have allergies like a mofo, I have been coming down with something, or a few days ago, I was taking puffs off of an inhaler that apparently was involved in a freak body-spray-leakage and thus drenched in the stuff. Nothing like Victoria’s Secret’s Strawberries and Champagne fumes all up in your lungs. Anyhow, I think it was the second one, that I’m coming down with something, simply because yesterday, the other stuff started: runny nose, cough, achiness.

But my dysfunction isn’t limited to the desk. Let’s discuss the kitchen table. Diaper bag. A stack of board games that have been uprooted from their home when Zach started really  walking, and we realized he could reach them, complete with their choking-hazard little pieces. As in, “What’s that in Zachy’s lung? Oh, it’s a family member from the Game of Life–not sure if it’s mommy or daddy because the pink or blue doesn’t show up on an x-ray and he’s gonna need a bronchoscopy to get it dislodged from his bronchiole so we can know…” But I digress. What else? Text books. Mine. From where Ev spilled juice the other day and John made a mad dash to save the (quite literally) thousands of dollars’ worth of what is essentially paper and cardboard and ink. There’s also a bottle of shampoo that never found its way to the bathroom when groceries were put away…two weeks ago. A bottle of multi-purpose cleaner…ditto.  The list goes on and on.

I’ve fallen behind on my blog, as well as reading others’.

Evan starts school in 2 weeks. T-W-O. I have not bought him a single school supply. He needs all new uniforms this year, from short sleeve to long sleeve, shorts to pants. Hell, he even needs new gym clothes. That one is all the school’s fault: we wore whatever for gym class when I was a kid. Evan has to have navy sweats and plain white t-shirts. And he needs new shoes….Gah.

The day before Ev starts school, John does as well. He can get his own damned books. He’s a big boy.

I am finishing up my e-commerce class. Next up is corporate finance and  operations management, Don’t be jealous. Actually, I have the overwhelming feeling that those two are going to suck when put together in the same 5 weeks. I have this week and next to not have to worry about it, so screw it. And I must admit that I have coasted by on my e-commerce. But I also have a perfect score right now with only 2 assignments left to submit. Oh wait, I lied. I missed 5 points on last paper because I forgot to close the parentheses on one of my citations. So I may only get a fucking 99.9%. Pffft.

I have a mandatory meeeting coming up as well. For the NICU. I’m on the list to go there. As a result, I have to go and spend some time at Cincinnati Children’s RCNIC (Regional Center for Neonatal Intensive Care). Sweet baby Jesus, help me. Because I can keep my shit together when it counts. But then, once it is all over, the baby is saved, and it is time to move on, I think of mine. I picture Zach and Evan and what could have been with either one of them, and I break down. Well, there, that is all I’m going to see for 8 hours a day until my rotation is over. These are the gods of the neonatal world. Other specialty children’s hospitals send them the shit they can’t handle. Actually, they’re ranked number 3 in the nation. 3. Out of God-knows-how-many. This will be so exciting, yet so emotionally and mentally stressful. I can wait on that, too.

I have to come up with 36 continuing education credits in order to renew my creds with the National Board for Respiratory Care. Yeah. I actually don’t have to have that finished, but I need to ensure that all of my credits count before the deadline, so I have time to replace the ones that do not count. Either that, or I can sit for my credentialing exams all over again. No, thank you.

So the bottom line is that I have a lot of crap to do, and no gumption to do any of it. Yes, I suck at life right now.

>A Woman After Evan’s Heart

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Seriously, Fergie? Legos? Which makes me wonder: Could I make one in a triple-extra-fat if I use those big Duplo ones made for the little kids?