rivendellelf

I took the kids to the zoo today since they were out of school and I was off work. It was a wonderful 5 hours of sunshine and physical activity from which I may never recover. Early on in our visit, we rounded a corner to see some monkey-like animals (by this I mean, they looked like monkeys and probably smelled like monkeys but being the zoo, they were something with a longer name that started with an M). There were 2 squatting up on a branch and I'm watching them doing the usual Ooo-ing and Aaah-ing when I noticed that the monkey in the rear had some kind of stick or something poking up almost to it's chin. It moved a bit and I realized that we had apparently interrupted a VERY private moment for the poor little guy. It took a good few minutes before I realized that I'M STARING AT A MONKEY BONER! The kids had moved on before I snapped to and realized that the monkey was probably like "uh, a little privacy here?" and I moved on. I'll admit, too... I did have a range of thoughts from "Wow, some animals really do find sexual pleasure in the wild like I'd read about. Fascinating!" to "Hahahaaa, monkey boner!". Maturity at it's peak, here, ladies and gentlemen *slaps face*!!

There are days when it's really tiresome to be so painfully shy that you can't even update your wall on Facebook without re-reading, deleting and second guessing yourself to death. As luck would have it, I think I've passed the "party crier" syndrome on to my daughter. When I was young, I would cry at every birthday party for no good reason. Looking back, I think I was just overwhelmed with the number of kids and would start to think "wow, nobody's paying a bit of attention to me" and that would progress in to "nobody wants to talk to you because you're such a loser". My daughter is having a similar issue. Even now, I have to drag my kids to the store with me because when I go shopping alone, I think that people are staring at me and thinking bad things about me (usually at the grocery store... I feel like people are critiquing my cart and saying 'yah, you don't really need to be buying those chips, do ya chubbs?'). Unreasonable? Definitely. But I can't seem to help myself. This is probably the real reason why I don't update LJ as much as I really should. When I decide to write, I usually start and then talk myself out of it because I'm afraid of sounding pathetic. I should just get over that because it's good to get stuff off your chest whenever possible. It would definitely take the load off Nuke who has to listen to my incessant ranting when I get really good and wound up. I really should work on that. Maybe then I can even post a review on someone else's writing!

OK, so it's been almost a full year since my last post but I figure everyone pretty much knows what's going on in my life without my need to post. However, recent events are eating away at me and I just have to post about today's absurdity. My son has "cellulitis of the buttock" caused by a staph infection. It's as serious as it sounds. The worst thing I've experienced (to date) as a parent is having huge weeping sores on my 8 year-old's butt cheek and having him scream as I have to clean and medicate the area. Today we ventured to Wal Mart to pick up some necessities such as rubber gloves, gauze, a jumbo jug of hand sanitizer and some Lysol and while in line I spied those canvas bags that every eco-conscious person is supposed to be making the transition to. Despite the fact that I'm in the 10 items or less line, I go ahead and pick up about 5 of them. I worried momentarily about being over my item limit until I realized that A) there are no other checkout lines open at 7:30 in the morning and B) who gives a flark when my son can't even sit in the cart like a normal kid because his @$$ hurts too much. I check out without incident but as I watch the cashier ring up and bag my purchases I almost broke out into hysterical, no it would have been more maniacal, laughter. The cashier put my 5 canvas bags together inside a plastic bag. I think the stress is getting to me because even now, I still find that hilarious!

As far as the boy goes, it does look like it's going to heal. But I'm not taking any chances with it. I won't get the test results back until Monday to see if it's MRSA so I'm going ahead and taking him to a follow up doctor visit tomorrow at the local Urgent Care office. He's such an angel. I torture him with warm compresses and cleaning and medicating his infection and he still loves me more than Spongebob. That's saying something.

I'm having a frustrating time all around - so instead of unloading in my blog about how much I really feel like some people just need to get over themselves... I've decided to rant about a couple of my pet peeves. Ready? 

First of all, I read a lot of slash. I mean a LOT. Gobs. I've never claimed to be a grammatical or spelling dynamo but I at least know the difference between prostrate and prostate. Nothing chaps my ass more than to be reading a very steamy scene, which is otherwise written very well, only to stumble when the wrong word is used. These words are so very NOT interchangable people!!

Secondly, we are currently in daylight savings time. This means, that if you choose to use the 3 digit time zone abbreviation, you would use CDT. NOT CST. I had to suffer through 4 hours of training learning how to use a new system and the timezone is set to CST. Makes me wonder if the stupid thing is going to try and spring forward this fall. And it really, really makes me wonder about the intelligence level of the people who designed this new system. I make mistakes all the time, but that one is so blaringly obvious.

Next, ladies who don't know how to flush a #@$ toilet. Believe it or not, I was in the restroom when I actually heard a woman use the toilet. Leave the stall, wash her hands and leave the restroom. Yeah, unfortunately I couldn't help it and I had to glance in to see if she had flushed and I just missed it. Thank the goddess her toilet seat cover was still there so I didn't have a moment of insanity and think to look further. Ok, ew. 

Wow, thanks, I feel a little better.

 It's been a very long time since I've been this busy at work. It's kind of pleasant because the day goes by really fast and I actually find myself pushing to get what I need done by 5 o'clock. But, on the other hand, I'm ready for things to calm down. I dream about work, I wake up in the middle of the night and think about work... ugh! But, hey, I have a job and I'll just continue to keep doing my best. Yesterday we 'officially' took over the responsibilities for the manager who's leaving our team and I was stunned at what it did to my work load. This morning I'm going to try and convince my boss to let me hand off a different project to a peer. 

On a lighter note, Melissa's first inter-school concert is tonight! She's very excited and a little nervous. There are kids from the orchestra in 5 elementary school playing in tonight's concert. We went to the store on Monday and bought her a pretty dress and some shoes. My baby is so grown up.

 I think that someone moved April Fool's Day to April 2nd and didn't tell anybody. While working today, the power went out in our cubes...again. Not only went out, but BLEW UP. The surge protectors were popping and sizzling and smoking profusely - excitement! I had to work a few hours from home tonight and my son was anxiously awaiting his turn on the internet. For some reason I can't seem to get my router to support my dial in to the network as well as personal internet usage. Well, he's in to looking at cartoons on Youtube. I know the dangers there, believe me, but I figured that since he's right within listening distance and since he's looking at stick figures and Spongebob, it'd be ok. Well, that was until he came to me absolutely in tears tonight. My first thought was, OH SH!T! What did he see that has him traumitized?? I tried to get him to speak to me but he couldn't get past the hysterical hiccups... Finally he showed me what he saw. It was a homemade video of some kid who had taken a Spongebob figure and proceeded to do mean things to it. First he put a screw in his head, then hit it and finally setting it on fire - all the while you could hear "Spongebob" screaming in the background. My son is still crying horribly and clinging to me and I'm having to lie to him and say "no, honey, mommy's not laughing - I'm crying because it's just so sad". Jeez, talk about Mom Of The Year, here. This was just about the time that my daughter walked in and took a gander at the video and really started busting up with the laughter. This made my son cry just that much more. So, two major take-aways from tonight's episode. #1 - Do not let the boy watch videos at random on Youtube no matter what kind of filters are applied and #2 - toughen the boy up before he starts getting his ass kicked on a daily basis.

Today is my hunny's birthday!! I attended a lunch in his honour today... Sushi was on the menu. I tried a California roll. Not horrible, but not really my cup of tea. I'm really happy that I got to see him on his day. 

In other news... Still waiting on the closing for the refi. The economy sucks, I'm behind on my laundry and I need a haircut. On the happy side, though, I was able to get the order submitted to get someone out to fix the power in my cubicle. When he comes, I'm going to blame the lightning Monday and not mention someone's use of unauthorized heating appliances. I'm going to try and check out those books that Kiwi recommended for my daughter. I mentioned them and she was really excited. Right now she's reading some book about a mermaid. I can't remember the name of it. Something like the Tail of Emily Windsnap, maybe? Anywho, she left the book at school and it's spring break so she won't be able to get back to it until next week. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go get that laundry started. Nothing like having some slave labo..oohhh I mean loving and kind children to help out! 

 Tomorrow, my love and I (along with the kids) will venture on our first road trip. We're going to Iowa for the weekend to visit his family and friends. I was pretty excited until today when I realized that we're going to Iowa for the weekend to visit his family and friends. How am I going to pull off normalcy for an entire weekend? OMG, I'm guessing by 2pm on Saturday, my honey's mother pulls him aside and asks if there's something wrong with me... Perhaps I was dropped on my head as a baby? Too much flouride in the water? Alien abduction? I've already decided that it's going to be rough. I have a touchy stomach and my daughter has an itty bitty bladder. Yeah, this is going to go GREAT! My son talks constantly and with him and my daughter both in the backseat - can we say battleground? Also, as icing on this pie, I was so busy getting my stuff together tonight that I forgot to have the kids take a bath before bed. So much for them looking their best tomorrow night when we arrive. Ugh, I am stressing my self out waaaaay too much :(

 I just had to take a moment out of my day to express how totally in love I am. I'm going to try very hard to always let him know how wonderful he is. For starters... He's very supportive. Last night, my back was hurting and he rubbed it for me. Sounds like a small thing, right? Well, when you've never had that before, it means everything. There's a very long list of why I love him so. That was just a taste.