Hallelujah!

If you've been reading this blog for a while, I love you, and you may remember that on Christmas Eve of 2008, I cleaned the bathroom. I remember it because it was Christmas Eve. If you haven't been reading this blog long enough to remember, shame on you, you have some catching up to do.

So, apparently, twice a year, whether it needs it or not, I clean the bathroom. I know that it is twice a year, because, my friends, I cleaned it today, just now. TA DA!!

I am really quite a disgusting person. I always hide behind the fact that we all have clean underwear and eat off clean dishes, and I pretend that means that I'm focussing on the really important things in life. The ugly truth is, I'm just plain gross. Its not just the pink mildew, either, though that was significant, but there was just plain dirt, grime, stickiness. I used vinegar and water, windex, 409, barkeepers friend, two rags (should have used three) a sponge and a scrub brush and a toilet brush. I have a lot of cleaning products for someone who never cleans.

I've been in there for an hour, and I didn't even do the tub or the floor since I still can't couch or kneel with my stupid knee. I will let Rob do those, but considering it is his job to clean the camping stove that has been sitting in the driveway since the camping trip two weeks ago, we could grow old and crust over waiting for that to happen.

Now, when I brush my teeth, I rinse by bending over the sink and slurping water from the faucet. I don't suck on the faucet or touch it with my mouth at all. Some people will think this is gross, but I don't think its any grosser than drinking from a public water fountain. Plus, If you saw the filth I just cleaned, you would NEVER suggest that I have drinking glass of any kind in the bathroom. Its way more sanitary to rinse with the faucet. Anyway, I knew it must be time to clean the bathroom when I stopped doing that and slurped out of my hands instead. If the pink mildew wasn't a tip off, then being grossed out by my own sink was.

I always think that no one notices how dirty my house is. That people never look that closely at each other's homes, but maybe I'm fooling myself. Maybe all my mom friends go home to their husbands and say, "That Bored Housewife is such a disgusting person. How does she not see that her bathroom is filthy?" They still keep sending their kids over here, though, so it can't be that bad.

I had a comment a while ago from a reader who was so relieved that she didn't have to choose between being a working mother or staying at home with her kids, cleaning her house; that she could stay at home with her kids and NOT clean her house and feel okay about it. She seemed so grateful! See? I'm changing lives with my laziness and cleanliness habits.

I can smell the clean bathroom from where I'm sitting. The smell of victory.

Honk if you're like me and hide your disgustingness from all your friends!

*** Update: I ended up cleaning the house from 9 a.m. until 4 in the afternoon. Can you believe it? I was on fire! The living room! Check! The bedroom! Check! The kitchen! Check! I don't know what the hell has gotten into me!

Fat Chick in a wife-beater

Ahhhhh... The weekend is over, no one is sick, I have dinner planned for the entire week (I can't believe it, either) and the heatwave is over. Wonderful.

Now, I have a bone to pick. I went to the Gap on Saturday to see if I could find some leggings for Leila. She has these great ones that are so cute, but they are already fading in the wash, and Gap makes such cheap-ass stuff that I know they'll be done for before long. I wanted to get another pair, (which plays right into the hands of the cheap-ass stuff) but I didn't find them. What I did find, however, was that everything I touched in the women's department was on sale. It was like a feeding frenzy. I spent some dough, got some stuff, but here's the problem: When I go into a dressing room, I honestly believe that when I put on a pair of jeans, I will magically be thinner. I will have found the magic pants, the sisterhood pants, and I will look like I think I should look, like I deserve to look, like everyone else looks (or everyone I focus on) and do you know what? It never happens! Not once! I have not been lucky one time. I think this is completely unfair. Its not like I'm asking for a miracle, or anything! What's that you say? I am asking for a miracle. How rude!

The mirror in the dressing room is always a shock, and I always have to talk myself off the ledge; "Okay, I know these aren't the magic pants, AGAIN, so don't even evaluate how you look. Ask yourself if they are comfortable, ask yourself if you like the color, ask yourself if they're too long or too short, and just remember to wear a flowy shirt over your fat roll."

I did make a surprising find, though. Gap has these - for lack of a better term - wife beater tank-top/undershirt things in 5000 different bright and summery colors, and I got two to layer with some other stuff (I'm experimenting with layering) and I love them! I'm wearing one right now in fuchsia, and I am so comfortable! Of course, I look just like you expect me to look; like a fat chick in a wife beater.

And here's another thing. Does anyone but me think its weird that Janet Jackson and her father made some room in their grieving to go to the BET awards? I think its weird, and, I'm sorry, but she looked a little too fabulous to be grief stricken. I wasn't convinced. I know, I'm terrible.

I just overheard Leila use one of the tools of elementary school friendship that I taught her: When your playdate is manipulating you by saying she's going to go home if you don't do things her way, just say, "Okay, see ya later!" and watch what happens. Her friend just stood in her doorway saying, "Do you ever want to see me again?" and Leila said, "See ya!" and, lo, they're now playing like two monkeys in a tree. Its so nice when your kids listen to you. I should enjoy it now, it will never last...

Kill Me

You know what I want? I want to sleep in a place where animals don't wake me up. My cat likes to walk all over me and purr at all hours of the night, and then jumps down and crunches his food. The dog whimpers in his crate in the morning, and I get up because I think he has to pee, but, no, he's just lonely and awake. I let him out of his crate, and feed the other stupid cat who is as the front door, crying like she hasn't eaten in weeks, while, in truth, she's so damn fat from eating the neighbor's cat food. Then the dog is ringing his bell by the back door, so I open the door, and he just stares at me wagging his tale. When he finally goes outside, maybe on the third time I open the door for him, he runs around the yard for a while, and then he starts barking. I go to the back door to let him in, and he runs away. I close the door, he barks some more. In a normal morning, I get up from a seated or reclined position about 15 times to take care of stupid animals.

Today was supposed to be a sleeping-in day. Rob was supposed to go back to work today, but woke up in the wee hours with a screaming headache, and is now sleeping it off in bed. So in addition to administering to all the animals and their stupid needs, I am trying to tip toe around, and not wake Daddy. I snuggled in Leila's bed with her and read her a few chapters of the book we're gnawing on, but she wanted me to stop mid chapter, and she put her head under her covers because she said my breath was bad. Well, suck it up, sister, yours is no treat, either.

AND ANOTHER THING! Why - WHY! - must people in my neighborhood have gardeners who start with their blowers and their mowers at 7 in the morning? I just want some peace, people! I want to be able to take care of my own needs, like - I don't know - going to the bathroom before I take care of the needs of children and animals and husbands! Jeez!

And now, to top things off, Leila is playing puppy, and is in her room... barking. Someone kill me.

p.s The dog was just barking outside, for the second time this morning, and my blood is already boiling so I stomped off to kill him, and when I went outside to strangle the shit, the pocket of my bathrobe caught on the door handle and ripped off. I think I'm gonna cry. I'm checking into the motor lodge tonight, I swear to God.

And We're back!

Rob is finally going back to work tomorrow. He's been here, dangling around, spraying the bowl, making me lower myself to mowing the lawn and taking out the garbage, since Friday. I've gotten to a whole other level of bedside manner, though; my usual 24 hours of sweetness and light stretched into 36, then for the next 36 I did my best to hide my complete loss of patience, and after that, I went into a sort of automatic pilot mode, where my pretending to want to do nice things for my ailing husband settled into an actual wanting to do nice things for him. But now its mostly over, thank God, and he's getting out of my house.

His convalescence has not been without its advantages. I have made one food/beverage run (no pun intended) after another for him over the last few days, and every time I was out, I got myself a little treat. I never found my hard-sought-after pulled pork sandwich, so I settled for an al pastor burrito. I've had vietnamese food, a hamburger, sushi, pizza and yesterday I had a butterfinger bar. I've also had breakfast pastries and popsicles. So, Rob has lost five or six pounds, and I'm holding them for safe keeping.

After all that fine dining, though, I'm not feeling too hot myself. I have a head cold and I'm sleepy. What did one elevator say to the other? I think I'm coming down with something. Today, Leila had tennis camp until 12:30, then she went to C's house for a playdate and didn't come home until after 6. I'd had a Netflix envelope sitting around with the first disc of the first season of Dexter, and we decided to watch all of it in one sitting. If you've never heard of Dexter, its a show with the gay brother from Six Feet Under (another series we watched beginning to glorious end care of Netflix) and he plays a serial killer. Not the sort of thing I usually go for, but he's a very complex, sympathetic character who has a strict moral code and only kills really bad people. It was sick and twisted and awesome and I loved it. It was hard to eat during it, especially the frozen cheese enchilada that I had for lunch, and I had to cover my eyes sometimes, but it was totally worth it.

My dog is wigging from the lack of physical activity in this house today, and just ran headlong into the wall while chasing the cat. Serves him right. Poor cat can't even leave the back bedroom unmolested. I think tomorrow, if I'm feeling up to anything besides dancing through the husband-free house, Leila and I will take him to the dog park and then give him a bath. That should shut him up for a while.

A good, time honored friend of mine is having her first baby in August (you know who you are!) and I was sitting here earlier trying to remember what some of my favorite baby items were. There were these burp cloth things that I bought by mistake which turned out to be the best thing ever, and I still use them as dust rags. But a pile of boring cotton cloths doesn't make for an exciting gift, so my mind turned to kid's books, and I have a lot of favorites, but you can't really use those for a while, and babies rip them to shreds. I will not, as long as I live, purchase a stuffed animal for anyone, ever. Leila has three bins of the damn things and wont part with any of them. People keep giving them to her, though, and the pile keeps growing. I'll have to give it some more thought, but the point is, it was just so long ago that I had a teeny tiny baby, I can scarcely remember the items that I once couldn't live without. Its a really good thing I can't have any more kids, though. The one I have already thinks I'm on the computer too much.

Happy Father's Day

Okay, we are now on day three of Rob being sick. My bed side manner usually lasts 24 hours, which is usually all he really needs. But not this time. He has been horizontal since Friday at around noon, and I have been shuttling ginger ale and doing all the other stuff you're supposed to do when your man is sick, but I'm starting to lose my patience.

I know I have no right. When I get sick, I don't mess around, especially this year, and he always takes pretty good care of me, but this morning I thought of something:

He slept on the couch last night so he could have easy access to the bathroom (oh yeah, we're in the gastro-intestinal part of the program) and so he could watch TV without bothering me. I was relieved because our bedroom was so rank yesterday morning, I thought he'd shit the bed. So I threw the windows open and had the bed to myself. So, this morning, I go out to the living room and the man looks like death. Pale, pasty, with a three day beard and bed head. He asks me to get him a smoothy, and I ask if I should take the dog with me, and he says yes because he doesn't want to deal with the barking and the needing to go outside.

It is at this moment that I remember that when I came out of the hospital, couldn't walk, couldn't go to the bathroom by myself, he went to work. I was lying helpless on the couch, and I had to deal with the dog barking and the kid coming home from school and stuff like that. So he's now lying here, under Leila's comforter, watching golf, and speaking in such whiny, muffled tones that I can hardly understand him. I'd say my bedside manner has expired, wouldn't you?

I'm going to be good. I'm not going to let it show. I may, however, kick him back into the bedroom so he doesn't suck up all the energy in the house. My house is small, and if someone is watching something on TV in the living room, everyone has to listen to it. If he were watching the biography channel, that would be one thing.

By the way, the biography channel has let me down; I switched to it a couple of times when I needed something to watch, and instead of biographies, they were playing a show about female cops, and shows about paranormal activity. Screw that.

Poor Stinky

Demons

Rob is sick today. He has a little fever and a headache and a back ache and general malaise. So, that's what I'm doing today. I will be administering ginger ale, taking his temperature, rubbing his back and putting cool things on his forehead. I'm not complaining, especially since I was sick for a few months this year, and he did everything up to and including helping me go to the bathroom. I just hope he doesn't barf. I am no good when anyone barfs. Except my kid: she can barf.

Everyone is still asleep in this house. Its nice and quiet. We were just forced to get digital cable, along with the rest of the country, and the other night when there was nothing on the channels I usually watch, I decided to see what was beyond channel 73. I made it to channel 300, but I don't think I actually clicked through 227 channels. It was pretty much all home shopping, sports and cspan, but on channel 275 I found the biography channel. Fascinating! This means there will always be something to watch! I can watch a biography of just about anyone. Their lives fall into three categories: trauma at the beginning (which they have over come to achieve a happy ending,) trauma in the middle (which they have over come to achieve a happy ending,) and on-going trauma (which the narrator is hopeful they will over come to achieve an eventual happy ending.) Sometimes the trauma is more like "trauma," like a beloved grandparent dies, or they fail their driver's test or something like that, but its built up like the subjects very sanity hangs in the balance. I love pinpointing the moment in the show where they manufacture the inner turmoil, and I drink a shot the first time the narrator uses the word "demons."

Don't Stop Believin'

L and A playing in the sand

The beautiful Pacific, on the way to the beach

I really - REALLY- want to dish about my mother-in-law right now, but I promised myself that I would never write anything truly hurtful (except about Dyan Cannon) and that I would never write anything that I wouldn't say to someone's face. Damn me and my sense of right and wrong. I haven't actually seen my mother-in- law, or spoken with her, but I don't need to; she is that good. She can annoy me without actually doing anything at all. See, it gives her plausible deniability. She can say with total sincerity that she didn't do anything to me, be completely right, and I will still be up nights wanting to smack her. I've said too much. I should delete everything I've just written. The red devil on my shoulder is standing on the white angel's neck, though, and I can't do it. It looks to the uninitiated that I clearly have a problem, and anger addiction, but you don't know what I'm dealing with.

Also, I must have had a dream last night in which Rob was being a big jerk because I have felt this generalized hostility toward him all day. I called him an asshole on the phone today. I was explaining to him how I was going to send his prescription to the mail-in pharmacy instead of going to the local pharmacy because it would be cheaper, and all he had to say was "I stopped listening a few minutes ago and I have no idea what you're talking about." And that's when I called him an asshole. He laughed, I laughed, but I did want to kill him.

In other news... For those readers who do not live in California, I will now take the opportunity to rub in your face the fact that I packed a cooler, I drove to the beach with two little girls and a littler dog today. It was 85 degrees, with a little ocean breeze, I got a tan, and we had soft serve ice cream on the way home. Jealous? The girls had a ball digging holes, making piles of sand, digging for sand crabs and then completely freaking out when they found one. Aaaaaah. Days like this are why I shell out the big bucks to live where I do.

My neighbor, you know the twelve year-old who has started his first band? He's practicing right now. Its awesome. You haven't lived until you've heard a boy in the throws of puberty belting out Don't Stop Believin'. I met him when he was three, or so, and he's been singing his little heart out the whole time. He used to walk around and around his magnolia tree in the front yard singing London Bridge is Falling Down for hours. Rob and I used to open the window and turn off the TV just to listen. He is dedicated, and I think he will be famous some day, and I can say I knew him when. When he was channeling Steve Perry from his back yard.

Give Kate Gosselin a Break, Man

Every where you look, all you see is Jon and Kate, with our without their eight, and I have a bone to pick with humanity. Kate is getting the worst rap ever. She's being generally described in the media as a shrew-like control freak who barks orders at her husband while abandoning her children to a nanny, and taking advantage of her fame.

People, you've got it all wrong. Wednesday, I went to see the first grade music performance at nine in the morning, went home, packed up the car with all the stuff for the first grade party, for which I had made lists and shopped and planned. During the party, I served food, cleaned up, danced to the limbo song twenty times, and schlepped all the crap back to my car. Then I cleaned up all the party stuff at home, took a small break, made cosmos for the PTA party (finding that I didn't have enough triple sec even though my husband said we did) and, as Sissy Spacek says in Coalminer's Daughter, the best movie ever made: I was about ready to die. I still had to go to the PTA party, in cute shoes, and be charming, but, if you've read me at all, you know that was the easy part.

My point, at long last, is that I have one child; one child to feed and clothe, one child whose music performances I have to see, whose classroom I have to volunteer in, and my husband, bless him, has a secure (knock wood) job that provides for our family, and you want to know something? I still called him on his cell phone and yelled at him that he was wrong about the triple sec and made him get off the bus at a different spot so he could stop at the liquor store and buy some more. People with two or three or eight children have days like Wednesday ALL THE TIME. Of course Kate Gosselin is a controlling harpy! She's trying to raise eight kids and support a family of ten. Of course she yells at her husband and her kids, its completely understandable and not surprising to me at all. Reese Witherspoon, that sage master, was quoted as saying, If you don't yell at your kids, you're not spending enough time with them, and I think she is completely right. Same goes for the husbands. Do we go to their offices and rearrange their work spaces and mess with their routines? No. They're on our turf when they're at home, and we are entitled to a little eye rolling and snarkiness.

And another thing! If I had eight children to feed and put through college, and I had a popular show, I would be striking while the iron was hot and squeezing every last dime out of it while I could. She may not have a job next year, and the way people are going after her, she may not be able to show her face next year. I think her hair looks weird, too, but I also think she's doing the best she can. Anyone who thinks that moms are always sweet and nice and smell like freshly baked cookies and give their husbands BJs every day is wrong wrong wrong. The honeymoon is over, and it things can get ugly.

You go, Kate Gosselin, you shake your groove thing and rock on.

School's Out for the Summer-like Weather

Today is the last day of school. I was walking through the campus this morning after drop off, and I started tearing up. Then I thought, What the hell is wrong with me? I'll be right back here in two and a half months, and I can visit Leila's teacher whenever I want. There's nothing to be so sad about. Except that our principal, whom I love, is retiring, and my life is rushing by so fast and I'm almost forty, but, other than that, what's the big deal?

I have some moments of rest today, between the first grade party yesterday and the camping trip tomorrow. Last night, though, I went to the PTA cocktail party at E's house. I was in charge of cosmos, which I made in abundance. I used a whole bottle of cranberry juice cocktail and I think I have enough left over to meet my personal cocktail needs for the entire summer. Now, I've said it before: This is not your mother's PTA. Or, frankly, maybe it is, who knows, I was a kid at the time. Anyway, these are all sharp ladies who volunteer their little hearts out for all the kids in the school, and they know how to party. This time, after C had had a cosmo or two, she went out to her car and wrestled in her Karaoke machine which easily weighs more than she does. First song was I Love Rock n Roll, complete with heavy metal scream, and the next was, of course, Rick Springfield. They just can't get enough Jessie's Girl. E had the mic, and didn't need no stinkin' words on the screen. Its like she'd been preparing for this moment since 1982. Then her five-year-old came out in his footie pajamas and told her to knock it off. I really have to remember to bring my camera to these things.

Tomorrow we leave for the second camping trip of summer 2009. Leila is so anal about what I can call summer. I know summer doesn't actually officially start until the solstice, and we're really still in spring, but come memorial day, its summer; last day of school, summer. She's reduced me to saying "its summer-like weather" instead of calling it a nice summer day. She's such a freakin' stickler. Anyway, unlike the last camping trip, I haven't really started packing. I did all the shopping, and everything is planned out, but normally I would be running around with my spread sheet, all in a dither, but I'm chillin' instead. Also, unlike the last camping trip, I plan on bringing a whole duffle bag full of cold weather clothes so I don't freeze my t**ts off again. Now that was winter-like weather.

Countdown to the End of First Grade

Thanks for sitting through the three-part series, its over now.

This week is so crazy! Its the last week of school, and there are parties, and crap coming home from school, and, unexpectedly, all kinds of emotions about the end of first grade. Leila doesn't want it to end, and I think I'm way more excited about summer vacay than she is. I was making a play list for the end-of-year party at the park tomorrow (along with cupcakes with twinkie filling; so disgusting, but so delicious) and I was getting all teary listening to all these stupid songs, lamenting the passing of time. No more little baby. The eye-rolling has started, the trying to stop me from singing in the house, the closed bedroom door, but I still have the hugs, and the tickling, and the reading aloud at night, and the little hands and feet, and the giggles, so I'll be okay. I just can't help thinking that in a scant 10 years, she'll be gone (hopefully,) all the animals will be dead (hopefully) and this house will finally be the right size for Rob and me, if we still like each other. If we don't, it will still be way too small.

Yesterday and today I had laundry-palooza, and its all done. This morning I went to the grocery store and bought nothing but crap to the tune of $107. First grade party, PTA cocktail party (I'm in charge of the cosmos) and camping this weekend, you know how it goes. Aside from a bag of salad, there were no fruits or veggies in my cart, but things like marshmallow fluff and Vodka, and Doritos were front and center. One of these days, when all the potlucks are finally over, I'll shop like a normal adult again. I put the groceries away, and made duncan hines cupcakes, filled them with the twinkie-like filling, and now all I have to do is frost them. I washed all the mixing bowls and measuring cups and put them away, I ate lunch, I created a How Well Do You Know Me quiz on facebook, and voila, here I am. What's wrong with me? I'm never this productive. I haven't taken one nap today or anything. I do have Food Network on in the back ground while I'm writing this, though, so my sloth is not far away. I even made the two phone calls I've been putting off for weeks, and paid my car registration. Something's up.

I have a pimple on the edge of my nostril that's driving me nuts!