Thursday, May 31, 2012

♪♫Summertime...and the living is easy...♪♫♪

It's summer!  And even though the Storm season started back in April, I still call it my "Single Parent Summer"...  And I only feel it during those times that Choners has his Storm games back to back to back...and I mean 7 days in a row at the most.  They usually don't take up more of his time than that, but that's enough for me.  In case you haven't realized it yet, I am totally spoiled.  I got my honey all to myself when it was fall, winter and part of spring.  I lose him on average 14 days a month 5 months a year.  I know that's nothing to some people, I realize that.  I said to someone earlier this week, everyone has their own private hell to live through for whatever reason that is.  Mine is the summer.  For a few reasons actually.  First and foremost, I HATE the heat.  HATE it with the fire of the thousand suns that beat down on So Cal during July, August, and September.  I don't throw the H word around much, but when we're talking hot weather?  Abso-tude-a-lutely.  Second reason, I don't like the fact that I lose my honey 14 days a month during the summer.  Well, I DO..and I don't... I don't like it because I'm cheesey and I miss him... I miss him cause I'm spoiled by having him around so much.  And I don't even really like that addage "You don't know what you have until it's gone..."  I know what I have, that's why I don't want it to be gone... Third reason I don't like summer: Everyone's birthday is in summer...  Thing 1, Choni, his mom, mine, my sister, her kids, my uncle...OY...
I must say though, the good that it does having Choni work nights in the summer is it gives Harley and I time together.  Well, now it's Harley, Marysu and I.  Fine fine.. no problem there.  Harley gets to watch any movie she wants, we have dinner, they get cleaned up, they go to bed.  Everyone's happy.  I attempt some small chore to be done to make me feel like I didn't completely waste my time and make Choni feel like he's not the only one keeping the house up.  Cause you know...he kinda is.  heh...  I feel uber accomplished by getting two loads of laundry and dishes done by the time he gets home from the game.  A bottle in the fridge for when Miss Marymonster wakes him up for her early morning wares... Doing these things for my family makes me feel so good at the end of the day.  It's a complete success if I'm able to sneak in a quick shower...even if it's just a rinse off.  In the summer, I always make time for the rinse off.  Cause yea, YUCK!!  So I am facing down the barrel of the single parent summer part 5.  The first was the worst.  I have gotten used to it by now, I definitely don't let it get me as down as it did that first year.  But that was a hard year for a lot of reasons...  In that year, we moved, Ma got divorced with which there was back lash to deal with, Choni still had his job, so the Storm was his second job and took him away completely for that summer...then he lost his job and the Storm season ended at the same time.  I am thinking that basically any summer since has been monumentally better!  I actually know for a fact that it has...but maybe this one can go down in the lower portions being the first summer without my father in law around... still dealing with that one...  It's going...  not sure HOW it's going yet, but it's going just the same.  Not a day goes by without "I miss my Grandpa..." coming from Thing 1's mouth.  Pobracita...  and so forth...  Now, I get to exit my place of employment and trade it for screaming little girls in Navy and Gold hair bands hitting bright green softballs off of a tee... Yay summer!!!  Don't forget your sunscreen!

**countdown to winter begins...NOW...

Monday, May 21, 2012

You Must Be THIS Crazy to Ride This Ride...

I find extreme irony in the fact that Choni is always telling me that I have a high tolerance for crazy... Maybe that's how he views it.  I definitely have a capacity for only so much in my life, but I wouldn't necessarily consider that a high tolerance.  I know he mostly chronicles that to the years spent dealing with the exstep's semi bi-polar antics...but that's not IT.  I know he means work situations and dealing with retail workers.  We each were one of those once... I don't see the problem there.  And I always tell people when I meet them that if they are going to get all crazy business on me, I'm done.  Cause I know I have a capacity for crazy  and necessity takes precident so there you have it... 
I have in fact utilized this tact, and I must say; am better for it, I feel.  I was always wondering "You know I SAY this to people, and to myself...but do I really mean it?"  Well, I proved to myself that I very much DO mean it.  And you know, now that I have LESS crazy in my life, I guess that capacity has a lot more leg room.  When we are in a restaurant, or a store, or Harley's school and people are getting weird around us...Choni wants to bolt...I hang..  that's where he gets that "High tolerance for crazy".  I CUT someone out of my life for their crazy...  and I almost had to do it again, but luckily things took a turn for the much, much better and we didn't have to go down that road.  Then, I REALLY did have to cut some crazy out, and DAMN it felt GOOD!!
So that being said... I wonder how he puts up with me!  If Choners claims he has no room for crazy...  I must have a very different perception of myself than he does.  Cause I thought for SURE...I would fit in that very category...what with my never ending collection of chapsticks and lip balms...my pen collection that would keep a small army writing for years...  and my...well, how many cameras DO I own now??  I couldn't even tell you...And typewriters!  Did I mention the typewriter collection??  Yeah..I have one of those...but so does Tom Hanks so it's okay...  Moving on...  All the caps I have brought home from work...  Granted..the man has a plastic arsenal on the wall of our spare room lovingly dubbed his "man cave"... but I digress.
I often wonder WHERE I would be if he had the same rule I did...turns out he kinda does...but luckily, the crazy people HE knows are SO crazy they straight up forget he exists so he doesn't have to interface with them and everybody wins!  yay!  It's one of those moments I know I have something really special cause he loves me just the way I am...and damn...  what does that say about him??  haha, just kidding...but not really...  I think we're both pretty nuts but it's that really good kind that goes together like peanut butter and marshmallow creme... mmmmm... 
I mean come on, what with our neverending capacity to remember movie quotes..and who was in what and what else did they do with their lives?  That's where the crazy comes together...  And even Harley is picking up on some of those such things..  "Hey that's the same guy as 'this' movie..." and so on...  oh no... is she going to be the "weird" kid in class??
Atleast she's not the smelly kid...  I couldn't let my kid be the smelly kid...

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The Death Of Speedy Gonzales/Mephistopheles

As is with all things in my mind, I start off with one thought, and it snowballs radically into something completely different which always brings me back to my childhood.  I don't even remember how it started, but somehow Harley and I got on the subject of pets.  Apparently, she is tired of the dog.  She's six and has the attention span of a gold fish.  Fine, I expect nothing less...  I would be worried, actually, if that weren't the case. Moving right along...

I grew up with lots of different pets.  We had: Cats, birds, fish (saltwater and freshwater variety), dogs, mice, guinea pigs, there was a lizard once, I had a turtle for about 3 days once, a monkey, and rabbits.  Not all at once, my mom would have thrown herself from the roof...  But we had run the gamut on animals.  That being said, it is still fresh in my mind all the maintenance and chores involved.  Harley however, does NOT know of such things and doesn't understand why she can't have a hamster.  She wants one really badly.  I keep saying no.  I keep saying that we have a dog AND a baby and that's enough for now.  Maybe after the dog is gone, we will talk about something else.  Now she is trying to explain how she doesn't want the dog anymore, she wants a hamster so we should just give the dog away and I explained to HER that it doesn't work that way, we didn't take the dog in so she could just decide on a whim that we didn't want her anymore (yes I say whim to my six year old).  Then I got to thinking, we don't have room for any caged animals.  It's a fact.  We don't.  We bought a small house on purpose, we knew that these days would come and now we have no choice BUT to say no.  Unfortunately, as a kid, I was actually really happy with having animals.  I really enjoyed their company and there is just something so fulfilling about having them around.  Whether it's a bird that you won't necessarily "play" with or a cat that's around and hides all the time...it's comforting. 

But then....there was Speedy...

When I was 8, my sister had a mouse...and then, she got another one.  She had TWO!  And they were HERS!  And I couldn't play with them!  EVER!  I was devastated!!  So, of course, all I wanted for my birthday was a mouse.  That's all I wanted.  Just a mousey.  My mom had converted one of her fish aquariums into a mouse condo for my sister's mice and she said we could just throw my mouse in there.

One August day, Ma and I piled into her Celica and drove to the pet shop in Huntington where we were going for our mice.  I picked out the spotted one.  We had males already, we need another one.  We got another male, and he was white with black spots and he was the smallest one there.  I thought he was perfect!  I was so excited...in fact I was TOO excited.  We got into the car, and I sat there with the brown paper bag in my lap...anxious.... Too anxious...  I thought I would just grab a peek of the little guy, my new little mousey...  Unfortunately, the SECOND I peeked into the bag, he JUMPED out of the bag! And proceeded to run around the little car!  My mom threw the car into a parking lot and we sat there looking for the sucker.  He was so damned fast, we couldn't catch him!  He zipped all over that damn car! He decided to settle up by the accelerator pedal.  Peeking his head out through the carpeting, he begins taunting us.  Until finally, Ma, the animal charmer, grabbed his little ass and threw him into the bag.  She crumpled the thing up so much I thought she squished him, threw the bag at me and said,"Don't you open that bag until we get home!".  Yes Ma'am!!  I named him Speedy Gonzales...  I thought it was fitting...  notice how you don't see any of those cartoons on anymore...

We get home, threw him in the cage. Fine.  A month goes by, we are in school...  Ma is home on a weekday, sometimes she had a weekday off, and she goes upstairs and sees my mouse...Standing on his hind legs with his little hands on the glass squeaking at her.  My Ma used to work in a Pet Store, MMkay...  she knew a thing or two about meeces...  And that was no bueno.  She goes over to the aquarium and thinks, how strange that the other mice are nowhere to be seen...odd..right?  Well, she somehow decided she needed to investigate the missing persons and finds my sisters mice dead, buried in the sawdust underneath the water bowl and food bowl.  One under each.  Speedy just kept squealing.  Ma decided that he was in fact possessed by the devil and that she should just toss the whole tank in the garbage...so she did.  I think it was even garbage day or something because that tank wasn't in the trash by the time sis and I got home from school...

So brought the end to the devil Speedy Gonzales...

And Harley wants to know why I don't want rodents in my house...

I already have two rugrats...

bah-dum-ch!!

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

I spell work P-R-O-C-R-A-S-T-I-N-A-T-I-O-N...

I am a worker bee, absolutely.  I love my job, too...  I know, right?!?  Sounds like a match made in heaven... Unfortunately my scanner is broken.  It works, partially.  And because it works partially, it still works in the eyes of management and therefore is a reason to NOT replace it.  I would break it fully, but then I would get caught...so is my luck.  The only work I have left to do right now is to scan and attach documents into our system...so I decided as a result...  NOT to... 

Instead I bring you a cheerful little ditty about my Harley:


Thing 1 comes in to me a week or two ago and says, "Hey Mom: You know Flamingos?" 

Me: "What...Like personally?"

H: No...duh...but you know Flamingos?  Those big pink birds?

Me: of course, I was just kidding.  I know Flamingos.  Why?

H: I like them.  They're pink.

Me:  Awesome.  So, what's your point?

H: I want a Flamingo birthday party.

Me: Interesting...  so now you like Flamingos?

H:  Well yeah!  Because they're PINK!

Oy to the Vay...

This is going to get interesting to say the least.  Harley has a memory like her dad.  Photographic and elephant-like.  You have to be careful what is said around her because she will hold you to it, or bring it up, or some such embarassing incident will occur.  Fine, I have learned to deal with it.  What I am saying is, that we are months from her birthday and I might as well start looking for Flamingo stuff because DAMN!  She will bring it up again and again.  And I can't just walk into the store and get Flamingo stuff.  I will probably have to work on some online magic.  I usually don't do the online thing when I purchase.  I like stores, I like being around people, I like going in and smelling and touching. 

Also in the realm of Harleyness:  the kid eats like a bird. 
This is a problem for me because even as a picky kid, I ate more variety of foods than she does.  I am slowly but surely adding different foods into her diet.  And she is so silly about it.  I serve her a food and she asks,"Mom what is this food?"  I tell her and she asks,"Have I had it before?" and I answer.  And if the answer is yes she retorts,"Do I like it?" to which the answer is ALWAYS yes in a ploy to get her to put it in her mouth and atleast get one bite down before she makes her decision.  This has been working fairly well so far.  I am a fan, really.

Yesterday and today I have been forcing full bowls of cereal with milk on her.  Usually she wakes up and has just enough time to get ready for school and choke down some dry cereal in a baby size bowl or a pop tart a la daddy.  I have been getting her up extra early, getting her to dress quickly and meet me at the dining table for a hearty bowl of honey nut cheerios.  So we have our breakfast together.  This is good.  She tries to keep up with me and eats bigger bites and has an easy time of it.  She is using our size spoons and bowls now, I have completely weened her of her character tablewares.  She hardly noticed. 

Harley hardly noticed any of those changes as a baby, and now as a kid.
As a baby Harley was not a binky baby.  She never caught on to the pacifier phenomenon and I couldn't have been happier.  When it came to going from bottle to sippy cup...easy peezy, lemon squeezey.  Going from her crib to a toddler bed and shortly after that a big girl bed... no problemo.  Potty training was a task, but we learned later that had more to do with her own bodily functions not functioning right as opposed to ill-fated theory.  And now, she is eating a fuller breakfast...  she takes change very well...  Yay for us!  Also, our morning routine has changed somewhat with our latest addition...

It used to be that I would wake up, get myself dressed and such and have enough time to help Harley get ready while Daddy made both our lunches.  When I had gestational diabetes, he had to ad "Make Ashley Breakfast" to that task and I got fresh quesadillas every morning because there aren't any real breakfasty foods allowed on that diet.  

Now, tis different my friends.  Now I wake up earlier, wake Harley up, get us breakfast, make our lunches... Daddy has baby time.  I would happily take baby time, but baby time encompasses one task... the baby...  And when Daddy is tired or hasn't slept well because of said baby, he forgets things...  milk in the cereal...the spoon...  the cereal...  cheese in the sandwich...honey in harley's pb and honey sandwich...fruit snacks... granola bars.. spoons..  basically things get left out.  So we have made the bait and switch and it be working just fine :)  Daddy is still tired. haha, like Clark Griswold...he gets weird when he gets tired.  Everything turns into one great big joke and he laughs at nothing...  it's great entertainment for me and Harley... Mary was even laughing at him last night.  She has good taste :)  such is a day in the life of us... 

And I wouldn't trade it for nuthin!!  Yay!