Last night, Mike came over with Super Scrabble and Starbucks in hand. Despite him being nice enough to come over (bearing coffee, no less!) I still stomped him– 640 to 549. As I’ve stated elsewhere, Super Scrabble is to scoring what vanity sizing is to clothing: the numbers aren’t based in reality. Mike did have one 58-point word, which is pretty impressive, I have to admit. ;)

I had more to say, but have been interrupted enough times in the last five minutes to have lost my train of thought completely. Maybe it will return later?

It’s only Wednesday, and I’m ready for Josh to come home.

I’m hungry for steak. I eat steak maybe once or twice a year, if that. It’s not on my list of favorite foods, though I don’t dislike it, either.

Anyway, it’s weird to be craving a big slab of meat. Maybe it’s the anemia rearing it’s ugly head again? NEED IRON! EAT RED MEAT!

Today the A/C repairmen came to inspect our unit. It does, indeed, have a severe freon leak. I was actually glad to hear that, because it means that the near-$3oo-a-month electric bills we’ve been having aren’t normal. The bummer is that the new unit they quoted me is almost $5000. Ouch! Does anyplace buy kidneys? I have one for sale. $5k, good condition.

In the meantime, they did refill the freon– it makes a huge difference. Funny, hmmm??

Just in case you’re one of those people who think that your parents need to be paying for your psychotherapy, I want to inform you that your mental problems are not your parents’ fault. It is, in fact, your fault that your parents turned crazy to begin with. My children had better be successful, because in the future, I’m going to have some huge therapy bills that will need paid. I wasn’t this crazy before. Crazy, yes, but not this crazy.

This is exactly what I need: the iSkin Shuffle Duo.
via popgadget

I also need more Java Chai… the addiction sets in so quickly.

It’s been said that trying to clean house with children around is like trying to shovel the drive in a blizzard. It’s so very true. I’m making negative progress, if that’s even possible. What’s the opposite of progress? Regress? I swept the kitchen after breakfast, and Khai spilled his snack– dry cereal. I swept the kitchen again, and he spilled his snack again. I can’t stop feeding him… but maybe I can feed him sticky things that don’t fall out of bowls. Maybe.

On that same token, I scrubbed the bathroom, only for Max to have what he calls a “pee explosion.” He makes it to the bathroom, gets his pants down, but sometimes doesn’t get the toilet lid open in time. Gaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh. Welcome to my life.

That’s all tempered by Khai telling me that I’m his best friend, though, and Max told me I was the best sweeper ever. And I wonder where the grey hairs come from… HA!

Is the weekend already over? It slipped by so quickly… and while a lot of things got done, almost nothing around the house got accomplished. I guess that will keep me out of trouble this week.

It feels like I’ve been running on empty for days, maybe weeks. The boys have been waking up earlier and earlier: Khai was up before 6am on three different mornings last week! I don’t do mornings– at least not happily. I guess this is a good thing in disguise, though; since Max has been waking up around seven on his own, I don’t have to drag him out of bed against his will. That helps in getting him to school on time.

One of my many little idiosyncrasies is that I hate having people over if my house isn’t perfectly clean. Josh thinks I’m crazy and wishes desperately that I’d let this go, since I stress out over it more often than I should. I’m trying, but it’s hard. On Saturday, I had to get over it in a hurry– not one, not two, but THREE of our friends were over while the house was in a pathetic state. Toys everywhere. Floor unvacuumed (it had only been two days since the last vacuuming, but in my House of Messy Children that is TOO LONG). There was rice on the kitchen floor from lunch — and though I’d swept earlier in the day, it looked as if I hadn’t swept in weeks. It pains me to think about it. I’ve spent the past several days working on Katie’s website, and literally wrapped it up a mere minutes before everyone arrived… which left no time to make the house look less like a barn. This all leads me to a giant thank you to Jess & Daniel for staying with my boys– I appreciate it so much! Thank you also for not sneering at me because of the rice on my kitchen floor.

So tired. Sleep calls. We have to leave for the airport at 6:30am… which means I should have been in bed an hour or three ago.

I’m quiet lately, though on the inside I’m screaming.

Java Chai is good. It even has less sugar than Oregon Chai’s original version. Really, I shouldn’t be left alone with access to this.

Yesterday, the husband watched the kids so I could leave the house for a few hours. Katie and I had manicures and pedicures! I had an iced soy latte! We even went to the mall. It was a much-needed escape– amazing how just a few hours can recharge the batteries.

We had a low-key weekend at home; I think the boys needed lots of Daddy-time since they aren’t used to him being gone so much. I haven’t noticed anything wrong, but they did miss him last week and asked about him a lot. This next week he’ll be gone for five days rather than three– hopefully they will handle that all right.

I need to stop being sleepy and break out the pilates DVD.

There are a lot of things people don’t talk about when it comes to parenthood. You start down that road, and people say, it will change your life. To those in the circle, it’s almost an inside joke– because there’s no way you can *really* get the full meaning of it until you live it. It doesn’t just change your life– your old life is OVER. The Era of Parenthood is ushered in, and the child becomes the ruler of your new life. There are a lot of good things inherent there– with the child being the new priority, it’s easier to make smart and unselfish decisions. Note that I said easier, not easy.

One of the things omitted from the “So You’re Going to Be A Parent” book is that your children will potentially break everything you own. Every. Single. Thing. If you put it up high and deem it off-limits, it only becomes more coveted and is suddenly a more worthy target.

My boys have recently figured out that they can work together, and beyond that, they’ve figured out that they can blame one another for things. They’ve gotten good at judging how long I’m going to be in the bedroom putting laundry away, or how long it will take me to load the dishwasher. They take full advantage of that time, and craftily pull the coffee table or the ottoman up to the big tv so they can reach the things on top. Things that are up there so they can’t get to them: my glasses, the digital camera, and the pencil I took away because they were trying to stab the furniture with it.

Fortunately, I have the Super Mom Ears which hear all– not only did I detect that they were too quiet, but I actually heard the sound of the pencil being pulled along the top of the tv. I didn’t even know I could do that! I walked in, just in time to see them excitedly crawling down with their booty– and just in time for Max to say, “Khai was getting stuff off of the tv!” Of course what Max doesn’t realize is that I know Khai isn’t tall enough to reach up there, even with the help of the ottoman. This is where Max gets in serious trouble, as we’ve told him that lying is the thing he will get punished for above all else. Once confronted, he admitted it was him, but that Khai wanted to have the pencil. I was just helping him! It tugs at the heartstrings.

Yesterday, when I caught Khai with my last headband, broken in two (the last of FOUR, I might add), he rendered me defenseless with the puppy-dog eyes and a woeful, Sorry, Mommy. Kiss you. Too much cuteness.

In the end, I can’t stay mad at them. I stay consistent and talk to them about what they’ve done, why it’s wrong, etc.– and even through that, they bounce back and are ready to give me hugs afterwards. It’s tough, this mom thing, but it’s also really good. Really, really good.

I do a fair amount of bitching about living in Texas. The heat and humidity alone are enough to send me into a tirade. Throw in the crazy-high number of Bush-supporters and the DFW traffic, and I’m doing nothing but trying to devise ways to get out of here ASAP.

However.

I have to say that I really like how green everything is this summer. The drive to Max’s preschool is nothing but trees and thick undergrowth, lush lawns and flower-garden borders. It’s beautiful! One of these days I’ll actually remember to grab the camera as we’re rushing out the door, and I’ll show you the good side of the rain and humidity we’ve had lately.

Another good thing about living here is that it’s cheap. Well, relatively speaking. There aren’t many other metro areas of this size (and thus, with good tech jobs) that are as affordable, housing-wise. Every time we think about moving, we start doing web searches on schools and houses, and are horrified at how expensive it is to live other places. I’m not sure I could stay home with the boys if we moved somewhere else– we might need those few hundred dollars I’d have left after daycare. I’m not willing to make that trade right now.

In other news, there has been some new developments in the navel-gazing department. I’m discovering that I’m much more a creature of habit than previously suspected, and that I don’t do as well without a routine in place. Stunning! Now that Max is back in school, we’re settling into a new routine– and I realized that I haven’t been quite right since the old routine fizzled away with the end of school in May. I wish I’d figured that out sooner, because I might have had a happier and more productive summer. Who knew!?!? I’m going to work on letting go of the negative attitude I have toward routines– they don’t have to equate complacency and stagnation. They are a means to an end, and if that end is a happier and less-stressed life, then how can it be bad?

Naps are wonderful. I slept for an hour, which is unheard of around these parts. The boys got two hours in, and despite it causing bedtime to be pushed back, it was so worth it.

I should nap every day, because I actually feel normal and happy– more like my usual self than I’ve felt in a long while.

One of my ‘things to do before I die’ is to see Paul McCartney in concert. Of course that might be better amended: ‘to do before HE dies’. Last week I saw a billboard that said he was playing in Dallas in November; however, a quick web search shows that the concert is sold out. The cheapest tickets I could find for sale on less-reputable sites were $125 each! OUCH! I’d still pay it, though. It doesn’t seem like a very fiscally responsible thing to do… but it’s Paul McCartney. Hopefully he’ll be around (and touring) for several more years still. I don’t like the idea of a Beatle-less world, and we’ve only got two of them left!

Max has a new word for polish sausage: saus-dog. Heh! It’ll catch on quickly, don’t you think?

I’m still thrashing about in my down-and-whiny emotional mess. It’s like on cartoons when the raincloud follows people around… only I’m both the cartoon AND the raincloud.

Today is a very sleepy day, thanks to the alarm going off at 5am. I got up early to see Josh off to the airport, and while I’d like to take a nap, the boys will have none of that! What am I thinking?

The ‘about’ page still needs to be built and linked, but other than that, I think most of the site is finished (for now). Why is that so difficult? I feel the need to have a colophon, mostly because I *always* look for one when visiting other sites. They’re hard, though. What gets included? What gets left out? I can’t summarize myself in a few lines, paragraphs, or even pages. Of course, I guess there’s more of me in the actual content itself— the ‘about’ page is full of facts & figures, in a sense. Likes, dislikes, interests, etc. It will get done in time; I just have to boil myself down to a concentrate first. No problem.