Archives for March 2008

Case of the Mondays

About a year and a half ago, a coworker was describing his office location as being somewhat like the movie Office Space. I hadn’t seen the flick and told him so, and then promptly received it as a gift for my next birthday. Awesome. In it, there’s a whole bunch of dialogue about Mondays.

Peter Gibbons: Let me ask you something. When you come in on Monday, and you’re not feelin’ real well, does anyone ever say to you, ‘Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays’? Lawrence: No. No, man. Sh*t, no, man. I believe you’d get your ass kicked sayin’ something like that, man.

and….

Peter Gibbons: Boy, I’ll tell ya, some days… One of these days it’s just gonna be like… [He mimics the sound of a machine gun. Brian, a waiter, walks up and does the same and laughs]
Brian, Chotchkie’s Waiter: So can I get you gentlemen something more to drink? Or maybe something to nibble on? Some Pizza Shooters, Shrimp Poppers, or Extreme Fajitas? Peter Gibbons: Just coffee.
Brian, Chotchkie’s Waiter: Okay. Sounds like a case of the Mondays.

and then there’s….

Peter Gibbons: Hey, guys.
Michael Bolton: What’s up, G?
Peter Gibbons: Want to go to Chotchkie’s? Get some coffee?
Samir: Oh, it’s a little early.
Peter Gibbons: I gotta get outta here. I think I’m gonna lose it.
Female Temp: Uh-oh. Sounds like somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.

Well, I think I have one. A Case of the Mondays that is.

You see, my Monday started at approximately 12:30 a.m. when Pumpkin woke up the first time. I saw Monday again at approximately 3:30 a.m., when Pumpkin woke up with a raging fever. Then Monday started “for good” (for lack of better terminology) at 6. I am so tired.

I was fortunate enough to only have one girl to get on the bus this morning, and then I took my kids to Barnes & Noble to get books about Chicago for my upcoming girls’ weekend away. Yes, I’ve been there, and yes, I realize I’m somewhat nerdy for buying touristy books, but hey, whatever. While we’re at the BN, I decide to buy bagels for the girls and a coffee. I get a bagel, some Horizon chocolate milk boxes for the kids, and order a cappuccino for myself. I paid, got the food, the chocolate milk and then Pumpkin started having a hissy so I took the girls and walked away… WITHOUT MY COFFEE.

I realized it, of course, and turned around to get it. It was there, it was fine – good. We paid for our books, headed out into a torrential downpour (I know, at least it’s not snow, right?), and the rain made my hand slip and… I dropped my coffee. Maaaaaaaaan. I picked it up before too much splashed out, hurried the kids to the car, and buckled them in. Wiped the coffee (I know I must have drank twenty kinds of sidewalk bacteria but there was a tradeoff and the options were caffeine versus no caffeine, and you tell me what YOU would have done).

The drive home was uneventful – actually, I shouldn’t say that. I was jamming to the new Counting Crows’ cd and The Princess asked me to turn it up. This is huge, as there was no Jonas Brothers or Hannah Montana to be heard on the cd. I checked the rear view and I’ll be darned if my kid wasn’t rocking out to “1492” (And to those who bought the album, I hope to never have to explain what a “tranny whore” is). That was indeed awesome.

Come home to a call from The Princess’s buddy’s mom inviting her to a movie. Awesome because at this point, Pumpkin was whining ferociously and I was starting to wonder if maybe my head was going to blow up. I said, “Take my kid to a movie? Sure! Take her!” I then had to hustle to get things done, including make a lunch for the girls.

I decided to not test my culinary skills and instead pop a frozen pizza into the oven – which would have been fine had I not burned the everloving crap out of my hand pulling the pizza out when it was done. Still hurts. Freakin’ Monday.

The Princess is off and after forty-five consecutive whining minutes, Pumpkin is napping. I’m off to hit the treadmill and see if I can’t turn this day around.

Slacker Much?

I’ve been lazy about updating this blog and for that, I’m sorry! It’s been pure insanity in the Chronicles house lately. I’m pretty bogged down – having Pumpkin in daycare has helped, but boy, if time doesn’t just find a way to fill itself. Sheesh. I was kind of hoping to rediscover what being bored felt like. No such luck.

I’ve been stressing though, that’s for sure, and Hubby finally picked up on my subtle cues and yesterday came home and gifted me with a box from my favorite salon/day spa. In the box was a gift card along with a note saying that I had appointment times for: a manicure, pedicure, facial, hair style and makeup application… for April 16. He took the day off work and will hang with the kids while I get pampered and then after I’m all dolled up, we’re going OUT. I’m pretty excited. The pedicure alone is enough to get excited about – I sure do love a pedi. Getting pampered all day, though. Man, I can’t wait. Smart man….

In other fun news, Pumpkin and The Princess are fighting off being sick. Both have gruesome coughs and yesterday, after a day of barely touching any food, Pumpkin puked at the dinner table. Needless to say, that pretty much finished it for all of us (after I spent three and a half hours making a pot roast, no one could really enjoy it after that!). She’s doing better today, as is her big sis.

Currently I sit with my hair in a towel turban and I’m in my jammies already… Folks, it’s 6 p.m.! Hubby took the kids to my mom’s to visit a bit (she just got back from an oh-so-exciting vacation to Memphis) and he went to work for a few hours. In the quiet, I got some quality time with my treadmill, as well as doing squats and lunges while watching a mini-marathon of “Keeping up with the Kardashians” on E! I’m not entirely sure what to think about the show, but it was definitely not anything that required much thought from me – which was completely what I was going for.

Happy Sunday – may you all have a great night and a peaceful (not crappy) Monday.

Thursday Ten, Volume 10

1. Today, I bought a new nail polish. It’s blue. OPI’s Yoga-ta Get this Blue. I may be too old for it – but totally don’t care. It’s hott. Yes, hot with two t’s. It’s that hot.

2. Music of the week – Counting Crows’ new album “Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings”. It came out Tuesday and I’ve been listening to it non-stop. Love it. Especially the Sunday Mornings half. This is better than “Hard Candy” and better than “This Desert Life”. It’s pretty amazing.

3. My sister passed her State Boards yesterday – she’s now a licensed cosmetologist. She’ll be dye-ing my hair again this weekend. We’ll see if we can get it any color other than brown.

4. Other new music… “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis. Nice.

5. Pumpkin is loving her school and she had her second potty success on Tuesday. She got a marshmallow. Go girl.

6. This yo-yo weather is killing my sinuses. I have been fighting a headache off and on for several days. I hate feeling this way. I really do. (Insert more whining here).

7. My BFF is moving forty miles away and I’m bumming pretty badly about it. She took me out for ice cream the other night to try to ease the pain. I ate far too much ice cream, and the weather wasn’t really ice cream appropriate, but it was good to hang with her. I’m going to hate not having her less than a mile away.

8. Less than a month til the end of tax season. What a long several months it’s been, yes?

9. I rented a DVD of the television show “Entourage” and I’ve been watching that while I’ve been on the treadmill lately. I think I may need to get HBO. There are some funny shows on HBO!

10. One of my favorite things about being home sans kids is getting to play whatever music I want, however loudly I want – and singing along, and maybe dancing a little and just in general being silly in the middle of the day for no reason. I mean, I painted my nails while doing work. You can’t just do that when kids are around, as inevitably they need you to get something, which will almost always smudge you.

Proud Mom Alert

This morning, I had my second parent-teacher conference with The Princess’s kindergarten teacher. Hubby, swamped with all things tax related, was unable to attend, but given the last conference was so low-key, I figured it would be harmless to go alone. I was right.

Mrs. E, my daughter’s teacher, had nothing but good things to say about my kid. You have to realize that I come to this from I don’t even know how many years of Stepson’s conferences which bordered on painful. I know, you shouldn’t compare children, but even back in preschool, my Stepson’s teachers were saying things like, “You should really have him practice using scissors at home because his fine motor skills need work.” That doesn’t happen with The Princess.

I should say that I’m not trying to gloat. My kid is super smart, and I have no idea how the hell that happened. She is reading – it was like a lightbulb went off and overnight, she was reading. She gets these concepts and then all of the sudden – voila – she’s doing it. It’s amazing.

Her teacher said she’s absolutely ready for first grade. She’s ready NOW. Obviously, she’s gonna have to chill in kindergarten for the remainder of the year, but it was nice to hear. Mrs. E really enjoys having her around and thinks she’s pretty amazing. I kinda do too.

It was nice to hear this because this morning, my little genius tried to con me into letting her stay home from school. She woke up with a cough (she gets this yearly – a bronchial/asthmatic cough dealy), and I was debating keeping her home or sending her to school. In fact, I was a very cranky mom for awhile because I was kind of ticked that she would be home on my “off” day – my day to focus on work and house stuff, and quiet. Finally, I called her in sick. As soon as I hung up from the school, she was literally turning cartwheels in the living room. Picture my face reddening and the steam coming out of my ears! We got the other kids on the bus, and we took Pumpkin to school, ran a quick errand, and then I told The Princess we’d take her backpack to conferences and see how she was doing.

She was fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

So, after the glowing report, I left her at school. And there she remains. My genius. At school, learning more stuff so she can come home smarter than when I left her there.

Stop – NAKED TIME!

I am now convinced I am raising a nudist.

Yeah, Pumpkin. She’s kind of not really into that whole “wearing clothes thing”. This morning, my BFF dropped off her daughters, Pumpkin was chilling in her diaper. This afternoon, my BFF came to pick up her daughters, Pumpkin was still just chilling in her diaper. I swear, at various points in between, she was wearing clothes. She just doesn’t wanna. Saturday? Saturday, I never got her dressed at ALL. Yesterday, she was dressed most of the day.

Today, she was in her pants and shirt for about an hour before she spilled juice on her pants (then took them off), then spilled something on her shirt (then took it off). To be honest, I really didn’t feel like fighting that fight with her – I put clothes on her, she takes them off.

This afternoon, I sat her on the potty (no, she didn’t go -but she tried, which is awesome), and afterwards, she was completely running around like a little nudie-booty – and I said, “Let’s put a pull-up on!”

“No!” she protested. “I wanna be NAKED!”

Sigh.

Even on the days when I’m in a sweatshirt, jeans and thick heavy socks, the kid is running around in a diaper. It’s kind of embarassing. The Princess never did this, and I’m hoping this phase quickly passes.

Thursday Ten, The Sarah’s HOME ALONE Edition

1. Pumpkin is LOVING school. They potty train by giving the kids a marshmallow if they are successful in going on the potty… so… I bought some marshmallows yesterday, and… SHE PEED! It was only once, but progress is progress (Niki – I can’t wait to tell your mom!).

2. Music of the week: Jack Johnson, of course. I’m still so psyched about getting tickets to his concert. I’m listening to “In Between Dreams” on repeat.

3. In high school, I had my astrological chart done and one of the things the woman said was that I’m like a “peaceful remote island where people come to let down their walls and heal”. Well, even 15 years later, I still remain “The Island Of Sarah”. A friend vented to me today, and basically is having a very tough time and I can’t help and I can’t fix it and it hurts me to feel so helpless in not being able to help someone.

4. I am once again on my mission to drink more water. I’m on my third 32-oz. bottle of water. And yes, I’ve spent a lot of time peeing.

5. I’m in the process of figuring out Facebook. I’ve been on MySpace for awhile, and I like it. Then I started seeing the iPhone commercials for the Facebook web application, so I thought I’d tinker with it to see if I could figure it out so that I could waste more time on my phone. Anyone else use Facebook? Any hints to figure it out?

6. I thought drinking all this water was supposed to make me less hungry? I’m starving. What’s up with that?

7. I am completely without any books to read at the moment. Any recommendations?

8. My house is so blissfully calm with no children here. And clean too. And my kid is having FUN! Fun! Why didn’t I do this before?

9. I am so excited. I almost have enough credit card points for a $100 Amazon.com gift card… and I have already “spent” that in my head. So many books and cd’s I want. $100 doesn’t go very far, but, I’m looking forward to getting some new stuff. Some CDs I’m lusting after: The Killers, more Jack Johnson (yeah, I’m crushing on his music these days). And several books (as always).

10. I’m SO over the Lennon/McCartney theme on American Idol. I’m glad that the Rock n’ Roll nurse is gone, because she annoyed the hell out of me, but as much as I love The Beatles, some of the obscure (BORING) song choices were making me craaaaazy.

There She Goes

Pumpkin’s at daycare/preschool for the very first time today and I am so thrilled for her and for me, and what an exciting day she’s going to have. I’ve been talking it up for a few weeks, what fun she’s going to have at school, what a big girl she is. This morning, we walked in the door as her “class” was getting ready to go upstairs for Circle Time. She joined them on their way upstairs, made a beeline for the My Little Ponies and that was all she wrote!

Yeah, I snuck by and gave her a kiss and tried to explain that Mommy would be back with The Princess when the bus brought The Princess home, but to be honest, I could tell Pumpkin didn’t really care – she was pretty involved with the ponies. While I didn’t want to force her to notice me leaving, I didn’t want to just disappear. I gave her a smooch on the cheek (which she paid no attention to) and left.

From there, I went to Target (to get Easter basket junk — Seriously, the whole Santa/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy thing? Big mistake! Imagine how much easier life would be if we just never started with those lies in the first place??) and then to Starbucks. I caught myself noticing other moms with their kids, and then half smiling to myself thinking – “Heeeey, that’s not me today.” I also found myself starting to take the long way home as I sometimes do when I’m out with out the kids and they are home with Hubby. I realized that, WHOA, no one is home either – and took the regular route.

Now that I’m home, my kitchen is spotless, my dining room is alright, and my living room (if I would just fold all the loads of laundry I’ve done today) is looking good too. I had an awesome time on the treadmill today – zipping along while watching two episodes of Sex In the City (Season One… the oldies!). I’ve nearly caught up on my work, and my sister will be over in a bit to visit. I want to say that I’m bored, but I’m not. I mean, I didn’t even turn my computer on until after 12:30! That is unheard of for me, really (Okay, I cheated though, because I totally have been checking my email on my phone all morning…).

While I have a teensy-tiny bit of guilt that I’m here and Pumpkin is there, I am glad we’re doing this. I feel VERY good today. I feel refreshed. I feel almost carefree. I am loving the cleanliness that I’m surrounded by. I’m loving my productivity, and yeah, I miss my kid like crazy – but I bet she’s having an awesome day too.

I May Have a Date…

…For the Jack Johnson concert! (And it’s my SISTER!)

Saturday morning, I took the girls to wait in line with me to get Jack Johnson tickets. I know, it sounds gruesome, but what it entails is picking up a cappuccino for me, donuts for them, and waiting ten minutes for the tickets to go on sale at 10 a.m. – we didn’t camp out or anything! Easily snagged two tickets, and headed home.

I had decided to buy tickets, worry about who would come with me later – because I really want to go. Hubby has never heard of Jack Johnson (don’t ask – he’s really not a music-lover like I am anyway), and I would prefer to take someone who would enjoy the show. I have vivid flashbacks of taking an ex with me to see Tori Amos in 1995 and he hated every minute of it – I should have taken a friend of mine who would have adored the show too. NEVER AGAIN.

Concerts are too expensive to waste on someone who doesn’t care about the performer.

So, today I took the girlies to see my sister’s new place. While I was there, I had to brag about getting my tickets to the show. She said, “Jack Johnson? I Loooooooooooove Jack Johnson!” I offered to sell her my second ticket, and she may come with me. Of course, she may buy two tickets and she and her boyfriend will come (which leaves me in my originally situation of needing to see ticket 2, but I know I’ll be able to).

I turned on some of the latest CD in the car the other day, seeing what Hubby thought, but he was quite clearly bored with it all, so I think I’d like a more enthusiastic date. Here’s hoping my sis decides to join me.

BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH

Today is the Ides of March, which marks the day of the assassination of Julius Caeser. Ever since I was a kid, on March 15, my mom would always say, “Beware the Ides of March.” The day was never really that bad (except on March 15, 1990 – which happened to be the day my mom’s husband went to jail for drunk driving, my brother was in the hospital for his health problems, and my sister collapsed in convulsions from a febrile seizure while at the grocery store with my mom… Meanwhile, on that same day I was totally gypped of my spelling bee crown in what I can only describe as a conspiracy to ensure this icky girl named Yvonne from a nearby school took the prize. B-I-T-C-H).

Today, I am totally trying to fight the bad vibes of the day, and I don’t know how well I’m doing, to be honest. To be straight up blunt: I’m retaining water and have cramps (sorry), Pumpkin slept horribly last night, and The Princess is peeved because none of her buddies can come over to play – no one seems to be home today.

But, in the plus column, the girls and I went to the local grocery store today as they have a Ticketmaster outlet, and I purchased TWO tickets for the Jack Johnson concert in June (As Hubby says, “Who?”). I don’t know yet who I’m taking, but I don’t care. Someone will go. And I can’t wait. Love him. Love him. Love him. While we waited for the ten o’clock sale time, we wandered over to get donuts for the girls and a cappuccino for me. Which was very nice. I thought we were off to a great start.

Hubby is working an eight hour day – it’s mandatory and it’s a “Tax Preparation Party”. I think it’s a big steaming pile of hooey. Who makes people work and then tries to call it a “party”? I think that is a bit of… whatever.

BUT, when he gets home, I’ll get all gussied up, we’ll take the girls to hang with Grandma and Grandpa and then we’re off to a dinner out (Yay! I don’t have to cook!) and a movie (I have pretty much decided on “Juno”). I canNOT wait. Any meal that I don’t have to cook is gourmet as far as I’m concerned.

Working hard to fight the superstitious implications of the day. Wish me luck!

This Is What Happens When You’re a Packrat

Though I’ve shredded my old journals and a lot of my stuff from my past, one thing I’ve kept is my notebooks from my writing classes. Today, I found two spiral bound notebooks, and while flipping through them, I found the list I made after breaking up with a long term boyfriend in 1996. The List was “Why I Should Be Happier Now”.

Reason Number 6 why I should have been happier:
His Bill Cosby smile drove me nuts!

Not only can’t I believe I ever wrote this thing in the first place, I find it even funnier that I still have it. And now that I’ve found it, I don’t want to toss it. It’s funny.