Four Bullets and a Giveaway

• Do we need a gaming console? So far we just play games on the computer. The boys find all kinds of games to play for free online. But Ben's pining for a DS or an XBox or SOMETHING because all his friends have them. I'd like a Wii, because it has a physical component and is unlike anything they could play on the computer. But Brian's not so sure about that. Since I'm the person who plays the least video games in this house, I'm not getting very far convincing him. Thoughts? Advice?

• The boys are home from school today. We're going to color eggs and make brownies. Should be fun, once they get over the shock of being asked to stop playing computer games.

• It's Friday and 1) Brian's coming home from work early, 2) we have a babysitter tonight (thanks Dee!), so we can go out to eat with some friends from out of state, and 3) my mother's coming over tomorrow so Brian and I can run and errand or ... something. Then the Easter Bunny will be here to replenish our supply of chocolate. Oh and let's not forget the celebration of Jesus rising from the dead. Looks like we're in for a great weekend.

• I'm giving away a copy of Braincandy's Smell My World DVD over here, and will accept entries until Monday at midnight. What are you waiting for? It's a cute video. Go enter!

Spring Moods

Contrary to the impression I may have given in my last post, things are fine here. Good, even. My father-in-law dropped off his bicycle, and I've ridden it a few times. It's in the family room on one of those back-wheel lifts. Tonight we ate dinner at the dining room table for the first time this month, sitting around it like the Waltons, instead of being crammed along one side, with various appliances lined up on the other side. Setting the table felt great. Running my garbage disposal and getting filtered water from the spigot were nearly orgasmic. And I don't use that term lightly.

After dinner I read a bit of Fast Food Nation while Ava took her bath, then I cleaned the back of the toilet, removing a basket that had long since served its purpose. Wooh! How I love decluttering.

I often forget that the Amplification Rule applies to blogging. When I worked as a customer service rep many moons ago, I learned that sarcasm, attitude, boredom, anger, whatever emotion that comes through in your voice is amplified to the listener. The same goes for blog posts. Any time I complain here, kvetch, whine, list off the ways in which the world is not cooperating with me, I come off like, well, a whiny, kvetching complainer.

Which I'm not. Usually.

It's just that, it's spring. I've heard it's common for people to become depressed at a certain time of year. Is that true? Do you have that? Right now is my time of year. I'm not sure why, but it's persisted for long enough that I try to accept it without it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm not depressed, really, this time around. Things are just that little bit harder than usual. Enough that I notice it.

The fog usually lifts by May or June, and looking at my calendar, I won't have time to feel blue by then. With a first communion, my wedding anniversary, three birthdays, mother's and father's days, a wedding in which I'm maid of honor, and the beginning of baseball season, I'll be too busy trying to keep my head from spinning off my shoulders.

I know I'll get through it. And I know you guys understand.

Top 5 Reasons Why I Haven't Posted

5. I'm still sick. Had to go to urgent care today. I've got a case of the gooey eye and a sore throat x 5 days. The nurse practitioner WANTED me to puke, I swear. She smiled as she stuck two swabs down my throat and wiped away for a good 45 seconds. I had to punch her.

4. My kitchen sink and dishwasher became operational just last night, so, Monday to Saturday with no kitchen. Now, Brian has placed every item from my lower cabinets on my kitchen floor. For cleaning purposes. Except, is he in there cleaning? Am I? Nooooo.

3. Ben's sick, and as of last night, Ava is too. Oozy noses to go with my gooey eye. UPDATE: John has presented with a sore throat and runny nose. Trifecta!

2. I'm so busy running to the acupuncturist, orthopedist, and physical therapy, applying heat and ice, and doing exercises for my ankle (aka, the ankle from hell). It still hurts but has stopped swelling for no apparent reason. Now it must have a valid reason, such as elliptical machine shopping or too much walking.

1. Because of all of the above, as well as my own inherent laziness, my house is a disaster zone. No, seriously. Even worse than usual.

I'm feeling a tad desperate these days. Desperate for normalcy. Desperate for a house that's functioning, without these clogged walkways I have everywhere lately. Desperate to have my kitchen and my ankle back. Desperate to go for walk, to break a sweat, to blow off some steam.

When I feel this way, my vegetable consumption goes down and my carb and fat intake goes up. I start staying up too late. The Viscious Cycle begins. Maybe you've been on that ride before? I think I'm too old for it now.

What gets me the most at times like these, when I start to lose my inertia, is that I don't get to hang out with my kids the way I want to. I can't give them the kind of day I want them to have. I miss out on the time with them, the memories, and they miss out on the day too. Or the week.

Once I can get some cardio exercise, everything else will fall into place. So, to that end, I'm off to do some toe weightlifting.

Yes, that's right. I'll be wearing the ankle-accentuating bathing suits this summer.

Free Food!

I'm giving away some coupons for a free Horizon Organic product (up toa $4.99 value) at my other blog. Come on over for your chance to win!

Ritual

When Ben was about 2 or 3, we started a goodbye/good-night ritual of giving a kiss, a hug and a high five. I think I started it because he always had a tough time saying goodbye to me. Even today, at 7 1/2, he's the one to come running across the house when I'm leaving, to give me a kiss, a hug and a high five. Although I don't get the full treatment at the school crosswalk anymore. He's too cool for that.

My six year old, John, has one of those minds that's always counting, measuring, comparing, listing, wondering... thinking. Which explains the patterned, highly choreographed goodnight ritual he has come up with.

First, we hug, with him standing on his bed, me standing on the floor. Often, we'll stand there for a few minutes, just hugging, me rubbing his back and enjoying his stillness. John is otherwise never still, unless he's asleep.

After that, he kisses my cheek, then I kiss both of his cheeks. I've taken to grabbing his head in my hands when I do this, like I imagine an Italian grandmother might do it.

Next comes my favorite part: John kisses my left hand, then my right. I'm not sure where he got this from, but it's very old-fashioned and sweet.

Then he holds up his hand, I give him a high five, and he jumps up in the air and falls to his bed in a heap. He springs back up and I hold up my hand and wince. He likes to try and take my hand off when he gives high fives. He hits my hand, falls to his knees to great effect, then stands and smacks my hand again, leaps into the air, does a 180 and crashes onto his pillow. Then I have to "spread his blankies all out," and believe you me, it must be perfect, otherwise I will hear about it until it is. In a battle of wills over the spreading out of John's blankies, John ALWAYS wins.

He likes to mix up the sequence of this little ritual. To keep me on my toes and to make sure I know he's in charge, I guess. It can get quite annoying, when I go in to kiss his cheek and he says, "No! Hug me now," and the next night I go to hug him and he says, "No, me first!" It would be really annoying if it wasn't so damned cute.

I'm just glad he never wanted to carry the whole thing out at the school crosswalk. Even the hand kissing wouldn't have made that bearable.

Monday at 10 p.m.

• This cold snuck up on me. Sore throat and now stomachache, all day long. Taking care of kids while suffering with a stomachache = torture. Plus I got my period.

• My ankle's all puffy. Even acupuncture makes it swell. What is up with that? I have my second acupuncture appointment tomorrow. Can I do acupuncture and physical therapy on the same day? Will my ankle retaliate against me? Will my checking account balance ever recover?

• We ate McDonald's for dinner. I promised Ben a happy meal if he did what his swimming instructor asked (instead of hanging on the rope the whole time and acting afraid to jump into 3 feet of water while wearing a bubble and holding the instructer's hand). My stomach and I are questioning the wisdom of eating those french fries and Ava's leftover chicken McNuggets. Next week, I'll promise a trip to the dollar store.

• It's 10 pm and Brian's about to rip out the kitchen counter and sink. So tomorrow I'll be doing dishes in the bathtub again.

• We're all grumpy around here. Kitchen Renovitis. I'm off to bed with Advil and a huge mug of ginger tea.

Playing Favorites

Andrea, the talented and prolific author of The Bean Blog, has tagged me for the “Favorites Meme.”

Here are the rules:
Go back through your archives and post the links to your five favorite blog posts that you’ve written. Post your five links and then tag five (or more) other people. At least two of the people you tag must be newer acquaintances so that you get to know each other better.

I don't know if these are my absolute favorites, but they fit the "getting to know you" bill.

Link one must be about family: Six Wierd Things: Family Edition
Link two must be about friends: Love Thursday: Friendship
Link three must be about yourself: A Day in My Life
Link four must be about something you love: I'm in Love
Link five can be about anything you choose: And Three It May Be

I tag:
Gina
Kristi
Amanda
Rhonda
Mom6705

Woulda Shoulda Coulda

No, not Mir's blog. I'm talking about the posts I could have written today. The lists I could have made!

Were it not 10 pm on Saturday night, after a long rainy Saturday. The couch calls to me. And the nachos.

I was going to post about:

- John's good-night ritual.

- Things I don't want to forget about Ava at age 2 1/2.

- Things that make my ankle swell. No really! It's interesting! Ok not really.

- The favorites meme.

- The status of my ankle/acupunture/physical therapy.

- The status of our multimillion-dollar elliptical machine purchase.

I've got a couple of giveaways on deck too. No, I didn't forget about that pile on my desk. Ok, I did forget. Then I remembered.

See what happens when I post tired?

Weekend Rentals

• Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium, which I enjoyed except that my children, otherwise known as wild animals, mistook "movie night" for "gymnastics night," so I couldn't focus, see the tv or hear it.

• The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which I rented two weeks ago and didn't get a chance to watch, forcing me to to rent it again.

• The Easter Bunny Is Coming to Town, for which I paid $4.75, and it will probably be on TV Sunday night.

• Doogal, which apparently was a horrid choice.

• Lassie, circa 2005.

Total video store damage: $17.05

I am so joining Netflix.

Love Thursday: Friendship

For a long time, I had a best friend. That changed five years ago, soon after she moved out of state. She stopped being my best friend. She stopped being my friend at all, really. For now anyway.

Without going into maudlin detail, we met as young teens, became "BFFs", then drifted apart a bit through high school and college, reconnecting just before I left UMass. We lived together my last semester in Amherst. She was the maid of honor at my wedding. She's my seven year old son's Godmother.

Since our relationship changed, we've exchanged a few emails a year. Some have sparked a hope in me that the friendship will rekindle. That hasn't happened, though. Smoke, no fire.

Last summer she emailed that she was moving back to Massachusetts. I asked where she was moving to but got no answer. Several months later I emailed again, asking if the move went through. No reply.

Part of me worries. Is she ok? Or fataly ill and sparing me the pain of knowing?

I've gone through the gamut of emotions surrounding this friendship since it ended, for all intents and purposes, five years ago. At first, it felt like a catastrophic loss.

Then, as I prodded her with emails over the years, trying to reconnect, I felt confused and sad. What happened? Couldn't we just talk about it? Couldn't I fix it?

That gave way to grief. My best friend broke up with me. I got dumped.

Now, I just figure, people come and go. Friendships go through stages, some hot, some cold. Take what you can get. Maybe in the future, we'll reconnect.

Still, even though I've come to an emotionally mature place about the whole thing, unseemly feelings hijack me from time to time:

- Sadness to have lost a friend, missing that connection.

- Fear that we were never as close as I thought we were, that my annoying personality traits slowly poisoned our friendship until the kindest thing she could do was back off the way she did.

- Humiliation.

- Anger because I suck at making friends, I'm lonely, and if my best friend couldn't stand me, how will anyone else?

- Embarrassment, that the friendship mattered so much to me.

Like I said, I don't let these feelings get the best of me. When they percolate to the surface, though, they make me wish I felt nothing at all.

That's how love can be.

Things I've Neglected to Mention

- My mom's been sick. Last week, she reacted badly to her antibiotic and passed out (i.e., hit the floor) in a grocery store. While she is perfectly healthy and fine now, and suffered no ill effects from the fall or the resulting medical tests (thank God!), she's still recuperating. She hasn't been over in three weeks, whereas usually she comes over twice a week. And I miss her!

- We were without a kitchen counter/sink/dishwasher last week, and, will be again for two to three days early next week. But, we're getting a new kitchen counter, sink and dishwasher! No more bright white Formica. No more grime from 1971 (don't ask). Yippee, and also, what an expensive hassle!

- My seven-year-old son Ben will not go to bed. He sneaks down to the dining room, starting random conversations with Brian or me, snatching treasures to steal back upstairs, sprinting the perimeter of the first floor should we try to, ahem, hasten his return to bed. He's also taken to yodeling in the upstairs hallway, which is SO HELPFUL while his 6- and 2-year-old siblings try to FALL ASLEEP. He also, since January, fights homework. We were doing so well, and now: chaos.

- It's Lent. I haven't given anything up. I'm doing morning readings, pondering a Palm Sunday craft for my 1st grade CCD class, and waiting on the Easter feast: pierogis, kielbasa, horseradish, Chrusciki. I was shocked to learn that I am not, in fact, Polish. These traditions resulted from the some Polish neighbors when I was a kid, I think. Luckily, my sister-in-law is Polish, and Brian's grandparents are Polish and Lithuanian. So the dream lives on.

What are you all doing for Lent, if anything? Do you have any Easter food traditions beyond eggs, ham, chocolate, and jelly beans?

Pee and Extra Calories

Today I cleaned pee, with the ensuant clothing, bedding and children, three times. Cleaned, laundered, and refrained from kvetching. Mostly.

Today I overate, with the following unfortunate choices contributing to what I assume was a 5,000-calorie day. Keep in mind that I also ate breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks:

- A fourth cup of coffee with cream and sugar.

- Five Dove dark chocolates and a 1/4 can of mixed nuts.

- A cup of ice cream with Hershey's chocolate syrup.

- That fifth fish stick.

- Half of a tray of French fries that I couldn't let go to waste. I was a little disappointed, frankly, in my kids' French-fry-eating capacity. The fries were good: shoestrings, crispy. This would never have happened had Brian been home.

- The extra 1/2 cup of peas that I took off of Ben and John's plates. I always make fun of diet plans that limit peas, but even I realize there's a limit.

- Two beers. And counting.

- The nachos and salsa that I haven't had yet but that I sense are in my future.

Today I furthur influenced Brian toward buying that expensive elliptical. And, I got a better price for it from a dealer in New Hampshire. I have not puchased it. Yet.

Today was a good day.

Sometimes

Sometimes ...

... I can't have what I want.

... It seems nothing's going my way.

... I just want some ice cream.

Sometimes ...

... The mess can wait.

... The worries can wait.

... The TV shows can wait.

Sometimes, the most productive thing I can do is go to bed.

10 Reasons I Want the Elliptical I Can't Afford

10. I haven't exercised since November -- thanks stupid no-impact-allowed ankle -- and I am desperate.

9. It has the "MOM" feature: it locks so my kids can't use it. (Suprisingly uncommon in ellipticals.)

8. It's shiny.

7. Four words: automatically adjusting stride length. *swoon*

6. I'll use it, and I have the track record to back up this claim.

5. I've always had champagne taste and a beer pocketbook. It's time I had some champagne!

4. Its pedals are fully adjustable and closer together than on other brands, making it less likely to aggravate my hip or ankles. And, no, I'm not just believing the sales guy. This is Google-affirmed research!

3. It's purty.

2. We haven't taken a vacation in three years, damnit.

1. The frugal/"don't buy stuff" movement is so hip right now. I prefer to be nonconformist.

And Another Thing

I've decided to take a shot a NANOBLOMO this month, because the theme is lists. And if I can't come here and jot down some kind of list every day, then I should pack this blogging thing in and get a new hobby.

• It's snowing. Again. My mother told me yesterday that New Hampshire is a few inches away from breaking the all-time record for the snowiest winter ever. If it were Massachusetts, I wouldn't be so impressed. But in New Hampshire? They get a lot of snow to begin with. I feel like I should send my brother and his family a gift basket or something. No wonder my aunt responded with a combination of swears and prayers when I mentioned the possibility of snow on Easter, which she hosts. That had seemed a little .... odd at the time.

• The snow today means I'll have to cancel my 11:30 appointment to be stuck with scores of needles. I'm bummed about this. However, it will give me a few more weeks to save my pennies.

• I have a new ailment! Exciting, right? Now my left wrist is killing me and I can barely lift a cup of coffee with it! I guess it's official: I'm middle-aged. Also: Ava's too heavy, finally, for me to carry with one arm.

• I recently read one of the best novels ever written: I Know This Much Is True, by Wally Lamb. Nine hundred pages, and I believe I read the final 400 pages in less than 12 hours. I just could not stop. According to the Internets, a movie's in the works. Hopefully the movie will be 4 hours long because they MUST NOT cut ANYTHING from this book. I highly recommend it. She's Come Undone, Lamb's debut novel, was incredible too, although I can barely remember it. I remember loving it, and being amazed (AMAZED!) that a man wrote it. But.... that's about it. See? Failing memory + sore joints = middle-age.

• Last year I came thisclose to buying a treadmill, and now I'm so glad I didn't, what with my aging joints and all. Today, I'm going to buy an elliptical. That's right, I'm going to take the $75 I save by not going to the acupuncturist, and use it to buy a $1500 elliptical. That's how math works in Kris' World.