because I really can't get enough of myself

I have beef with homework.  I don't like it.  I know that some homework is necessary, but the amount of homework my kids have to do it ridiculous. I especially hate kindergarten homework.  I think it's unnecessary.  And, frankly, it just makes me mad. Number Four's kindergarten teacher sends home a weekly homework sheet with two small activities to do every day, plus we are required to read 20+ minutes every single day of the week.  I have nothing against reading or the small homework activities, but sometimes we are busy, with stuff like, you know, LIFE, and we don't have time to devote to writing the letter H 20 times and drawing something that rhymes with rat.  And maybe we only read billboards on the freeway that day, because, you know, LIFE. This kindergarten homework could be tolerable, and we could make up the missed assignments on less busy days, but the teacher is also sending home "bonus" worksheets that she expects my daughter to do.  ...

I have an intense fear of basements.  It's illogical at best.  (Certifiable at worst.)  I know I shouldn't be afraid of them, but basements, as a whole, creep me out. I lived in a basement bedroom for most of my childhood years.  I was afraid of them back then too.  But I figured that once I became an adult I would be impervious to such things as basementophobia.  What I didn't count on was the fact that being a grownup is pretty much like being yourself, but old.  So I'm still mostly terrified of basements. I can usually get over it and go downstairs as long as it's not dark.  Or if I'm home alone.  And if I'm home alone after the sun sets, you can pretty much put money on my NEVER going into a basement. At our last house, our 1930's house, I didn't like the basement because the original owner was down there.  He was a crotchety old dude with boots and a hat, and possibly overalls.  Of course he wasn't REALLY in the basement....

I always have to pee right before I go to sleep.  Sure, I go just before going to bed.  But then I just lay there, for hours, NOT SLEEPING. Insomnia is awesome like that. I can be completely dead tired, but I still just lay in bed, in the dark, with my brain in squirrel mode.  NOT SLEEPING. And then finally, FINALLY, my brain will be like, "ooh, sleep, yeah...." But then guess who wakes up? My big fat jerk bladder. Because suddenly it's like, "Whoa, remember that swallow and a half of water you had at 10:00?  Hey, let's go to the bathroom!"  And it's not like you want to ignore that knd of urge all night. So then I stumble the five steps into the bathroom, which jiggles my brain awake a little. And then I remember that I like to think about ghosts whenever I walk near the stairs at night, which scares my brain awake more. And then I have to turn on the light to make sure there are no giant spiders lying in wait for me behind the toilet, w...

I just wrote this in an email, but because I think I am hilarious beyond reason I thought I'd post it here too: I have been suffering from a serious medical condition the past few weeks.  The medical term for this condition is Lazeeassitis with severe Motivational Deficiency.  I've been looking for treatments everywhere - the movie theater, McDonalds, at the bottom of a Doritos bag, in the game Candy Crush, and I've even been reading a series of paranormal teen fiction, but I just can't seem to find anything that will cure me.  I've been thinking about seeing a specialist about it, but no one makes home visits these days so that's out.  Perhaps it's terminal and I'll just have to lay around sipping cherry coke while watching Netflix until I die.   Goodbye cruel world......

Once upon a time, last friday at 3:00 in the afternoon, my house exploded.  Kind of.  It all happened like this (imagine that your vision is suddenly going into wavy lines and you hear a harp as I take you into my flashback): I was letting Two Bits have a sleepover.  Which is huge.  Because I am anti-all-things-sleepover.  But one of her best friends is moving, and she's never had best friends before, plus her birthday is coming up in a little over a month, and her other party idea was buying everyone a build-a-bear with all the clothes and accessories which made my bank account curl up into the fetal position and whimper a little. Two Bits and her two best friends walked to our house after school that day.  Fridays are short days here, so they all showed up by 1:00 PM.  By 2:55 PM they were devastatingly bored.  Because that's what my kids do best when they have friends over.  So I decided to set up our badminton net for them in the back...

I find that I'm not really fitting in lately.  Ok, rewind, I have never really felt like I exactly fit in, ever .  I've always been a little awkward.  But lately, it's been much more apparent. We moved to our current abode last October.  And I know that's not an incredibly long time to live somewhere, but long enough to make a few church friends, right? Today we were at the public library catching a puppet show and checking out some books.  As we were looking at Star Wars graphic novels a kid came up to Monkey and goes, "Hey, I know you!"  And then he proceeded to tell us all about how they're in the same class at church.  Monkey was super shy, but this kid went on and on and on. Then the kid goes, "MOM - come over here, I know them!" So then his mom comes over.  Obviously she goes to the same church as us.  Since October.  And she's like, "How do you know them?"  And then I tell her that they're in the same church class...

A couple days ago the kids were talking about an assembly they had at school.  We were all sitting around the dinner table, and the story came out in pieces as they ate.  So, originally, I thought things occurred like this: All the classes were sitting in the gymnacafetorium, ready to watch The Amazing Whatever-His-Name-Was Magician.  Which was probably a big relief from all the school work that never occurs in May anyway (is it just me, or does the last month of school seem like a complete waste of time?).  At some point during the show, the magician's dove escaped from some unknown hiding place and starting frantically flying around the room. I imagined lots of flying, and a totally flustered set of adults trying to catch said bird.  All the while, in my mind, the magician was standing on stage feeling like a total hack.  I mean, what kind of crap magician can't contain his hidden dove before his "watch how I make this dove appear out of thin air" t...

Dear Evil Shower Curtain, You think you are sooooo clever, don't you?  That you have it all worked out.  That you can defeat me.  But let's think about this logically - do you really think you can beat someone with my abilities and mental prowess?  ha ha ha. Your confidence is humorous. I am on to your plan, evil curtain of fear.  I know how you mock me with your attractive fabric - the fabric you use to shield my vision from the rest of the bathroom.  Do not think you can fool me - I KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON. I know that you're hiding serial killers in the tub when I have to pee at night.  I know these killers have knives or deadly ninja throwing stars.  And I know that you think you're tricky when I pull back the curtain at lightening speed to find the tub empty. I don't know where you're putting the assassins, but I will figure it out - that you can be sure of. I know that when I'm showering you like to invite the satanic girl from The R...

I think dreams are rubbish.  Well, ok, I don't know about YOUR dreams.  They could be absolutely amazing and insightful. You could be one of those people that have other worldly knowledge planted into your brain during your unconscious hours.  Or the kind of who seems to work out all their waking struggles through a good dream sequence.  Who knows, maybe you just dream about math - not exactly earth shattering, but still falling in the spectrum of "intelligence". My dreams, however, are more like this: Figuratively speaking, of course. (Spongebob rarely graces my sleeping brain, which is starting to make me wonder - why don't I dream in cartoon?) The other night I was having one of those dreams where you just bounce around the whole time, and nothing really links together.  Like there I was eating french fries and I couldn't for the life of me get my fry to land in the fry sauce without splattering all over my boobs.  And then, the next thing I kno...

Once upon a time some birds moved into our ceiling. "Your ceiling?" You say, "Surely you mean something else?" To which I reply, "No, I mean ceiling.  And don't call me Shirley." The birds have made a hole is the house just above my bedroom window which allows them easy access into the ceiling.  At first different birds tried to lay claim to the new nesting territory and chaos ensued.  One time Two Bits compared the noise to a squirrel and a bird killing each other, so I had to calm her nerves by stating that squirrels aren't stupid enough to challenge a pointy-beaked, crazed feather duster over something as gross as our crappy duplex. Things were just getting ridiculous.  The bird world rumbles that were occurring above our heads were enough to make the Sharks and the Jets dismiss any feelings of prettiness from Maria.  In the end, however, the finer sex overthrew all conflict and now we're hosting a birdy love shack. I don't kno...

It's been raining all day.  But when it came time to pick Monkey up from kindergarten I didn't care about the weather.  I thought, "Oh yeah?  Forget you rain - we have these things called UMBRELLAS!" And then Number Four and I left to walk to the school. The first thing I quickly noticed was that a four year old yielding an umbrella makes not a pleasant walking companion.  She was whacking me all over the place with that thing, because instead of watching where she was going she kept looking up at the center of the umbrella or down at her feet. The second thing I noticed was that a day of downpour equals overflowing curb gutters.  The flow of water was so wide that I had a hard time spanning them in one giant stride, and with a couple of little kids in tow we might as well have been crossing a river.  We made it to the school, got Monkey, and walked most of the way home with about as much annoyance as you can imagine in those particular circumstanc...

There are certain things that I must say multiple times a day.  These things are not things that I choose to say, but most definitely the things that need to be said.  But I still get tired of saying them. This one is the bane of motherhood: I used to threaten stuff like "clean up or I'll sell all your stuff to gypsies!"  or "clean up or you'll never eat cheese again!"  But the kids never took me seriously.  So now I have to get real.  And no iPad privilages for a week?  Life doesn't get much more real than that. This is something I say every single school morning: The Monkey still has a hard time doing things for himself.  And we never get out of bed with enough time to leisurely get ready for our day.  We're not morning people, we're "hit snooze at least 7 times and then get angry at the sun for shining" people.  So when there is only 3 minutes until people need to be leaving, and the Monkey is still standing there stuck h...

Did I ever tell you about the time Opie got a goosebump the size of an actual goose egg?  I was looking at pictures from a few years ago and was reminded of how truly colossal it was. A little back story first: Opie used to have a giant sized head.  He has since grown into it a little bit.  But from about the time he was 4 months old to like yesterday his head was just too big for his short little body.  So he used to always bump it into stuff.  ALWAYS. We could barely get a goosebump healed before he would get a brand new one.  So basically, we had a stash of kid sized ice packs and I got good at looking for signs of a concussion. Now back to the story: It was March of 2010, and it was starting to get all warm and nice outside.  I'm pretty sure it was a saturday morning because I ditched the younger kids to take Opie and Two Bits on a bike ride to the neighborhood park.  So Husband must have been home.  Or something. The kids s...

I haven't been reading as much lately as I used to.  Not that I don't like to ignore the things I should be doing by doing something more entertaining.  Because I do like to do that.  It's just that with the few books that I've actually attempted to read I don't make it too far before getting  bored. sigh. I don't know if my attention span has gotten shorter, or I just haven't found the right books.  It's probably the first one.....but let's pretend that it's not really my fault. What I think the problem really is that I used to never read.  EVER.  Because I just didn't like to.  And I was pretty busy doing other stuff.  When I was in high school I thoroughly believed in Cliff's Notes and excellent guessing on multiple choice tests.  I'm pretty sure I read only one book from cover to cover during my whole teenage career and it wasn't even for school. This is where you're probably thinking I was a horrible student.  O...

I have beef with pinterest.  I mean, I LIKE pinterest, and if you check you'll see that I have about 500 boards and 7 million pins, but lately it's just gotten annoying.  I feel a little like it's trying to boss me around, or make me feel guilty, or judge me from a distance. For example, according to pinterest: We should tell our girls 25 certain things before they turn ten, because there is no possible way they can live to age 11 without it. If you didn't take certain wedding photos you shouldn't breath the same air as the rest of us. Your living room should have at least one black and white photo collage wall, and if you don't have anything with chevron in your house you might as well live in a cardboard box. There are 17 specific things that moms MUST do with sons because "they are SO important" and no one would know how to raise a son without this amazing pin. (How did our ancestors cope?) You can feed your entire extended family for 7 ...

I'm attempting a life makeover.  It's kind of not that easy.  But it's not like I'm changing everything .  Just mostly stuff like priorities, sleeping habits, and other small things, you know,  like my name. I'm actually looking for name suggestions, if you have some.  But there are some rules: 1- It can't be boring.  I've been "Melissa" for a long time now, and I have to say that it's really not a name that impresses a classroom full of second graders. 2- It can't use the letters U or Y.  Just because I've decided not to use them.  And I'm still iffy on using a K. 3- The name should symbolic of something magical.  But not anything nerdy.  Just because I believe in unicorns and a secret underworld full of lizard people doesn't mean I'm a dweeb. 4- It has to be at least 3, but no more than 7 syllables.  Let's just say I want it to be a mouthfull. I'm also thinking about a blog redesign.  Like, maybe if it...

I used to get migraines all the time.  But then I got really good at figuring out my migraine triggers and how to cut one off before it really ever started.  But the thing about migraines is that they're like that one annoying friend that stops by for visits even when you make up a myriad of excuses to get out of it. It's like my migraines miss hanging out or something, so they insist on paying a visit. If migraines could talk they'd say something like, "Hey girl, it's been so long since I've given you double vision and vertigo that I just thought I'd stop by and make you barf.  This so much fun!" Migraines would probably have really nasaly voices too, just to be extra obnoxious.  And fish breath. And if they had fingers they'd probably go around your house turning on all the lights, and then they'd pinch your kids just to make them scream. And you know how, just like that one annoying friend, migraines stay waaaaay too long?  Or they t...

Right now my breath tastes horrible.  I can only imagine how bad it smells.  I wonder if I could actually kill small mammals with it?  But finding out would require locating a small mammal, and I think I'm just going to brush my teeth instead. So guess who's going to Roots Tech this year?  With a press pass?  ME.   I'm really excited because I hear that it's awesome there.  And they just announced that Syd Lieberman is going to be one of the thursday morning keynote speakers, and I really really like him.  I think you guys should all come with me to Roots Tech, so go and get an early bird ticket before the 15th.  Because cheaper is always better. Did you know that you can't lodge an official complaint to the USPS?  At least they wouldn't let me.  I was really mad at them because I ordered a white suit for Opie's baptism last weekend, and I paid for express shipping so we'd have it a few days before we needed it.  And the...