Come on get happy

Sometimes in life there are mysteries. And while I support unraveling the enigmas and conundrums of this vast and wondrous world we inhabit, there is one thing that I believe should remain shrouded in uncertainty.

Dentistry.

I don’t want to know anything about what a dentist is doing inside my mouth, unless he is implanting one of my molars with a tracking device for the aliens. [For the record, I watch a lot of “X-Files” on Netflix streaming.]

I had two fillings this afternoon. The only thing the dentist told me was “I’m going to put this topical numbing stuff on your gums now.” So after he did that, he never said “Now I’m going to use a needle and inject you with medicine” or anything of the sort. He hid the needle from me and I just looked away, or I did as best as I could laying in a dentist’s chair. He just did what he had to do, speaking to me in a soothing voice and it was a relatively positive experience overall. It was so awesome – he didn’t even tell me when he was starting to pull my wisdom tooth.

So thanks for keeping the mystery alive, Doc. You’re rad.

And my mouth hurts. Thanks for that, too.

I hope you had the time of your life

The Elliot’s personality is really starting to shine through now that he’s walking and a lot more independent, and if there’s one thing I’m becoming more sure of it is this: my kid is kinda weird. Which is pretty par for the course when it comes to our house. This morning The Elliot is walking around the house with his new favorite toy. It’s a plastic knife from the kitchen/tea set in his room. Not weird, right? Well, he’s walking around the house with this thing, shiving the furniture like he’s leading a revolt in Alcatraz. And every time he thrusts the knife he giggles.

In other news, we did something so very awesome this weekend. We loaded up the van and drove 45 minutes to the drive-in! And in the words of The Joey, “This is the best night of my life!”

And in case anyone is thinking about renting or buying “Rango”, just don’t. It was an awful movie and it is what eventually put everyone to sleep. “Mars Needs Moms” however, is just awesome. And it provides an endless supply of “Do you want the martians to come take your mommy to Mars because you’re misbehaving?”

So we decided ahead of time to pick up some pizza on the way and eat in the van and watch some movies. I thought I was so prepared, stopping at a 7-Eleven on the way to get some drinks and cookies. Well, the pizza and drinks didn’t even last the entire wait before the movies even began. The cookies made it through the first five minutes of the movie (ten for Elliot), and by the time intermission began I was listening to “Mooo-oom! I’m thiiiirrrsty!” So The Husband and I began making our “let’s be better prepared for next time list”. MORE DRINKS. MORE SNACKS, or at least more cash for the concession stand. BUG SPRAY. The play pen so The Elliot doesn’t have to sit in his stroller completely immobilized for the duration of two hours. Toys, for the time in between when we arrive and when the movies start after the sun goes down. Blankets and pillows for the back of the van. Not to say we didn’t have a good time this first time, it was just very evident that we were the newbies. But the boys had a great time.

I can’t wait for the next time.

Hey, hey, do the zombie stomp

If you know me personally and not just online, you know I have a special spot in my heart and mind for, um… zombies.

brains….

Luckily I have found in The Husband a mate who shares this love. Frankly, the couple that plans for the zombie apocalypse together stays together. And before you start thinking we’re crazy or anything, we prefer to sit and watch movies about zombies. And watch tv shows about zombies. And listen to audiobooks about zombies. And read books about zombies. And talk about zombies (seriously – if zombies are, in fact, dead, how do they digest human flesh? Aren’t all their organs dead? So why do they eat human flesh?!). And dress up our baby as a zombie.

Okay. We might be crazy.

So crazy, in fact, I’m instituting ZOMBIE FRIDAY!!!! here on momnipresent. I think it might catch on.

Last night The Husband and I couldn’t find anything we really wanted to do so we sat down and watched a zombie movie. It’s our go-to when we’re bored and/or indecisive. I recently found out that netflix has a zombie genre, so I added a couple of films I thought sounded interesting. And I landed on a gold mine. I present to you…

“AAAAH! ZOMBIES!”

This is seriously awesome. ZOMBIES WHO DON’T KNOW THEY’RE ZOMBIES!!!! Truly a game-changer.

Tune in next week to find out what’s next on…

ZOMBIE FRIDAY!!!!

How much do I know, to talk out of turn

Along with a lot of the country, I’ve been following this mess going on in Washington, D.C. concerning the government shutdown. I read about how it’s going to impact our daily lives, etc. I see on the news how we’ll still get our mail, but we won’t get our tax refunds and we can’t go visit a national park. Well let me tell you what’s going on in our house.

The Husband can’t go to work. As an employee of the 136th Airlift Wing of the Texas Air National Guard he is deemed non-essential. And if he’s not at work, he doesn’t get paid. We aren’t eligible for the promise of back-pay. And since I stay home with the boys, he’s the only person bringing money into this household. We were lucky enough to have already received our tax refund so as long as this shutdown doesn’t last too long (or happen at all), we might be okay. We don’t have a savings account. We were all set to start one a few months ago, but something else happened.

We had to file for bankruptcy. Yeah, it’s been something we’ve been keeping under wraps for a while. Mostly because we’ve been doing what we need to do to get to our future goals and we just didn’t feel the need to put our shit out there for everyone. But I’m pissed now, and the only way to explain it is to explain it all. When The Husband began to work in Fort Worth The Joey and I were still living in Hell (or Howe… whatever). We tried for a year and a half to sell the damn place and during that time the housing market tanked. At the end of that year of a half The Joey was having night terrors every night The Husband was gone, I was essentially a single parent and we were officially upside down on our home. It was a terrible time and the choice came down to either we do something to alleviate the stress on all three of us or I was going to do something about it on my own, i.e. relocating myself and my son to Houston… without The Husband. We just couldn’t take it anymore.

So we essentially let the house go into foreclosure. We knew we’d have to take a hit and there would be consequences we’d have to weather before we could buy again, and we assumed those risks. Then The Husband became a federal employee. Our home loan had been guaranteed by the USDA and a few months ago they came after us for the remainder of our home loan to the tune of $36K. And they added on another $10K for fees and fun. They were garnishing The Husband’s wages, about $500 a month. We were still paying on The Elliot’s week-long hospital stay for pneumonia, The Joey had just had pneumonia (yeah – I still don’t know how they both got it!) and had to go to the ER, but everything was manageable without The Husband’s wages being garnished. We had been saving, we had been living by an envelope budget (thanks, Steve Ramsey!) and things were pretty awesome. Not anymore.

Now with this shutdown looming over our heads I am just pissed. We play by the rules. We don’t live outside our means. We’re doing what we can to pay back our debt. We just want to move forward and create a good life for us and our children, with a house and a yard and good schools. And now not only are we giving the government our expendable income, not only does my husband serve our country every weekday and one weekend a month, now the government won’t pay him for his [albeit civil] service and we don’t have anything to fall back on because we give it all back to pay a government agency. And why? I really wanted to know and I kept seeing things on the news, reading them on Huffington Post and CNN, and hearing them on NPR.

"It looks like it's headed" toward a shutdown, Reid said on the Senate floor. "The numbers are basically there, but I am not as nearly as optimistic -- and that's an understatement -- as I was" on Wednesday night after a previous meeting with Obama and Boehner.

Reid said the differences between the two parties "are no longer on how much savings we will get on government spending." Instead, he insisted, the major obstacle at this point is Republicans' insistence on including provisions related to abortion and environmental protection.

Republicans are, among other things, pushing to strip all funding from Planned Parenthood as well as trying to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

In a statement Thursday, Planned Parenthood noted that "by law, no federal funding for Planned Parenthood goes toward abortion." Cutting its funding would harm Planned Parenthood programs that provide contraception, cancer screenings and help deal with sexually transmitted infections, the group said.

"A small group with an extreme political agenda is forcing a shutdown of the United States government over a dangerous proposal that would bar women from getting the lifesaving health care they need," said Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.

-From CNN

So now I’m not only pissed about our financial situation and the possibility it’ll only get worse and we’ll never catch up and move our kids to a better school district, now I’m pissed because Republicans can’t keep themselves out of my vagina and uterus. AND they want to make toxic air acceptable for my children to breathe – a big topic here in Fort Worth due to the ongoing issues and unknowns concerning natural gas drilling.

I’m kind of torn. Do I support those refusing to back down on women’s and environmental rights, two things I feel extremely strongly about, or do I support having income to feed and shelter my children? The two should never have been entwined but now that they are there just doesn’t seem to be an answer.

I promise my next post will be happier.

I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?

So every year I begin the spring season with high hopes of beautiful flowers and herbs. I head out to Lowes or Wal-Mart or wherever and load up my cart with planters, planting soil and seeds. I get myself outside (a rare event in and of itself), I get dirty (an even rarer event) and I dig around in the dirt planting things. Sometimes I even sweat (the rarest event of all). I water my little planters of dirt every other day religiously. I watch some seedlings poke through and then I talk to it, watering it every day and relishing in its growth and maturation process.

Then summer comes.

It’s too hot. Blazing, irradiating, scalding heat. The faucet singes my hand when I try to fill my watering can. Sometimes I swear I can feel the hellfire and smell the brimstone of the hell that is Texas summer. So I’ll attempt to con The Joey into watering my plants for me because it’s summer and he wants to live outside. But, as it happens, he’s only five and is about as reliable as I am in the watering-the-plants department.

Every once in a while I go outside with him (slathered in sunscreen and praying to God I don’t start sweating) and I’ll notice the poor withering, wilted, curled-up Plants Of Death and Dying. I begin my most sincere and heart-felt apologies to the plants (yes, I talk to my plants), watering them and nursing them back to health. But the cycle begins again; I don’t water and the Plants of Death and Dying eventually just die.

Here are some pictures I just took in my backyard:

IN MEMORIAM:

These are the remains of my basil plant. I used to make awesome pasta sauce with the help of this guy. Basil, you will be missed. Trust that you will be remembered fondly and often.

Alyssum and four o’clocks. R.I.P.

Alyssum and sweet peas (the flower). Do not go gentle into that good night.

Sunflowers, I don’t know how I’ll get over you.

Out of all tragedy comes a renewed hope in life. New life brings with it a sense of completion, a fresh start. In this case:

Sunflower sprouts and clover!

I planted sunflower seeds two years ago. And I’m still getting sunflowers. It’s awesome. And I know clover is a weed, but those little yellow flowers are so pretty! Of course, I know nothing about plants and for all I know those little yellow flowers could be something else entirely. So here’s a better picture in case you can identify it:

All joking aside, I really want to try again. Yes, again. It’s spring and I’ve got planting fever. The Husband and I have been discussing transforming our driveway from this:

to a wonderful patio oasis. We recently bought a sandbox for The Monsters, we’re looking at and pricing out patio furniture, and our plan is to create a barrier around our driveway space with large planters (I’m still on the hunt, if you have any suggestions. I’m going to Garden Ridge this weekend.). Yes, planters! You know what that means, don’t you?!

I GET TO PLANT FLOWERS!

This year I’m getting ambitious and I’m going to plant herbs, too. I love to cook and I miss Basil. But I don’t have planters yet, and we’re still in the planning stages of The Great Transformation (aka The Driveway Project). So on a trip to Target this week (danger, checkbook, danger!) I impulse-bought a greenhouse. Here is a collage of what I planted today:

In this picture (and in my greenhouse) are Texas bluebonnets, parsley, sweet peas, basil, cilantro, oregano, rosemary and four o’clocks. The herbs are pretty self-explanatory. I chose bluebonnets because I love bluebonnets and I kinda miss being out in Hell and seeing a ton of them everywhere. I call The Joey “Sweet Pea” and I’ve tried to grow them every spring for three years now. Finally, I chose the four o’clocks because when The Elliot decided to make his entrance and my water broke, I looked at the clock and it was 4:05am. I really hope they come in! After that, I really hope I keep them alive!

The last time I tried to use one of the greenhouses everything just molded and I got really sick. Because I’m allergic to mold. But I thought I’d give it another go and added plant food to the dirt mixture all in the hope that I see some sprouts in the coming weeks. For now I’ll have to settle for this:

All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free...

So I know I said I was all about picking this whole typing my thoughts into the computer for the world (or just some friends) to read, but then came the wrist brace. Yup, the wrist brace. And while I could tell a truly rad story about how I was walking into the bank with Elliot on my hip and took out a robber thus injuring my poor wrist, I'll go ahead and tell the truth.

It was a sewing injury.

Apparently all you people having babies or babies' birthdays led me into a hand-sewing frenzy and I got a little carpal tunnel. So I had to stop the sewing (sorry, Hollis - Stella's gift is coming, I promise!) and start wearing the brace. But I'm doing much better now. Thanks for asking.

Anyway, I made a big old batch of crawfish for Fat Tuesday this year. I tend to get homesick around Fat Tuesday every year. Not really because we used to do any Mardis Gras festivities, but because Fat Tuesday makes me think of crawfish and crawfish makes me think of home. All you Houston people know what I mean - during the season you can't go two blocks without seeing huge signs: "WE HAVE CRAWFISH!" "CRAWFISH SPECIALS!" "CRAWFISH BY THE BARREL LOAD!" Okay, maybe I made that one up, but I bet you get the idea. You're all smart people. I remember going to Fiesta with my dad, where he taught me how to pick the best crawfish. I remember helping him purge them in the kitchen sink, opening the doors because the spices made our kitchen into an experiment in tear gas. And of course, I remember the awesome yumminess that was the end result to an all-day affair.

When I was pregnant with The Joey I had this dream. It was one of those super-vivid sensory pregnant lady crazy dreams. I was back in my family's old house on Lost Oak (shout out, Cypressdale!) and I was walking down the hall. And I could smell something ridiculously delicious. So I walk into the living room and see through a cutout in the wall (I'm not a student of architecture so I don't know the correct term) that my dad was at the stove with his back turned to me, stirring something in the huge stockpot reserved for crawfish. As I walked into the kitchen I said, "Dad...?" because it was just so real. And just as he was about to turn around - I could even see the grin forming at the corner of his mouth - I woke up.

Now during this time I was pregnant with The Joey I felt very alone. I was hundreds of miles from my parents, all my friends had graduated college and moved away and here I was, knocked up and getting to know my husband who I had been dating for all of under a year before we got married. Don't worry - we know each other now, and we like each other. I've always been close to my dad, but unfortunately my mother and I had a HUGE falling out over the aforementioned situation of being knocked up and married and as a result my dad and I didn't really talk much, either. What I'm trying to emote here is that I had a very real reaction when I awoke from this incredible dream.

I was hungry.

Not just "I could eat" hungry. I was drooling on myself, "nothing is going to satisfy this hunger other than crawfish, and oh by the way I mean NOW" pregnancy craving on crack kind of hungry.

Oh yeah, and I was crying, too.

The Husband, Godlovehim, found a place in the middle of nowhere near Lake Texoma that served crawfish.

So whenever I want or make crawfish I find myself pretending that I'm in that kitchen on Lost Oak with my dad, going through the motions we've been going through for years and years.

And now I'm about to cry again. But not in a bad way - in a soul-stirring appreciative kind of way. Because no matter what happens for the rest of eternity I had that time with my dad, and the memories are enough to keep him so close that I can bring him from Houston to Fort Worth just by reliving them in my mind.

Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here....

Hey all!

I was reading Life in the Land of Douglas and the thought occurred to me that I haven't been here lately. So I logged on and lo! and behold, it's been over a year. That posting was about my evil frustrations about breastfeeding and the meltdown I had one night when I refused to feed him. Well... I wound up continuing a couple hours after that meltdown after some rest and I had gotten out all those evil feelings in a really good cry. The Elliot stayed on the breast until he was almost 9 months old, and I made all his baby food until he was graduated to super-chunky food. We attempted jarred baby food, but it made him very upset so we began him on table food a bit early but "The Tank", as we call him, has never looked back. That kid is ridiculous!

So what else? We're just still truckin' along, enjoying our life with our two boys. It's kind of crazy when I stop and think about it: I have two boys. And boy are they boys! Last week they tripped me at least three times as I stupidly attempted to walk across the living room while they were wrestling. They eat enough that I now buy bigger packages of food (meat, especially) and we're eventually getting an additional freezer from The Awesome In-Laws. But we've pretty much gotten the hang of everything, as much as we're ever going to be able to.

The Joey is getting bigger every time I turn around. He's tall and lanky and so Joey. We're continuing to battle with some behavior issues and him "using his brain" both at school and at home. We've wondered if he may have some kind of hyperactivity or attention deficit, but all my research notes that doctors don't like to diagnose until seven. So we'll be fighting the good fight for another year and a half and hopefully we'll get to the bottom of it eventually. The Elliot is walking more and more, which is just amazing. He's 14 months (tomorrow!) and has figured out how to remove the "child-proofing" electrical socket covers. The best I can deduce The Elliot watched me take them out to plug in the vacuum (yes, I clean... sometimes) or my sewing machine (which I use sooooo much more than my vacuum) or whatever; he can do it because he watched me do it! When he watches us do things he really watches. You can see the gears in his big head turning and when he puts them into practice and does something/anything you can see the joy of satisfaction on his face. It's freaking adorable.

I guess that's about it for catching up. I'll attempt to do better. But I have boys.