Weirdo

Since this weird thing is going around, I thought I'd do one too. I've actually had a friend say to me "You know, the longer I know you, the more weirder you get!" I took it as a compliment. :) So here are my 6 things.

1. I'm barefoot most of the time. I know that's not too weird, but the weird thing is that I have a habit of taking my 2nd toe on each foot and I'll bend it underneath my foot. So then it looks like my 2nd toe is completely gone or I have a Ripley's Believe It or Not type of foot. My grandma just asked me over Easter weekend if I had a bump on the top of my foot and did it make finding shoes difficult. I laughed and showed her what I was doing. Yeah, she gave me a weird look.

2. I tap out song melodies with my teeth. Like I'll lightly tap my teeth together. I'm quite good at it, since I'm the only one who hears it.

3. I cannot fall asleep if my nose is making any sort of whistling or noise in any fashion. I will blow my nose or sniff and blow out a little in order to make it stop.

4. I can wiggle my eyebrows. Whoopee, you might be thinking. But no folks. I'm an entertainer!!! I can wiggle them together, my right one or my left one. Individually people! Try it! Can you wiggle one or the other without having the other one wiggle?? Okay, if you can...you're weird too. While growing up, people were always amazed I could do that because they couldn't.

5. I like watching DragonTales with my kids. It's one of my favorite shows.

6. I get anxious if we are in a restaurant and they bring out the main course before I'm finished with my salad. I always think "how am I supposed to enjoy the rest of my salad while this sits here getting cold?" And then I finish my salad before I start my main dish. I have to. I cannot let it just sit there and look at me, wondering how I could abandon it...

That's my 6. The last two are stretching it a bit because I couldn't think of anything. I guess I could have called people up to start asking them what they thought was weird about me, but well....that would've been weird. :)

Emotional days

Ever have one of those days that starts out right? Everything is just routine and normal as possible and then as the day progresses, it just gets worse? And I'm not talking about schedules and activities, but about emotions. I had one of those days on Friday. Everything was hunky-dory and then as my day wore on, it was like self-pity and depression just took over and by 4pm, I was bawling my eyes out while scrubbing the tub. The phone rang in the midst of this and I didn't hear it, so Bon pokes his head into the bathroom to let me know I had a phone call. All I can do is shake my head and continue crying. Luckily I calmed down enough to have him ask the question I had originally called for that morning (and had to leave a message). Being the great guy he is, he came back in and talked with me. What was wrong with me?? I'm tired. I'm tired of pretending to be happy all the time. What makes me think I have to be happy all the time anyways? Why is it that I carry that guilt if I'm not? I'm tired of how our house is. I told him that I just want everything to be done. A year. We've lived here for almost a year and I still have no kitchen. I just want to walk into my kitchen and make some cookies or make some bread. Make a real meal without having to time the microwave with the toaster oven because if they are both on at the same time, the circuit trips. When people learn that our "kitchen" is in our basement and consists of a small fridge, utility sink, electric skillet, microwave and toaster oven, they say how sorry and what can they do to help. Well....nothing really. Are they gonna fork over the money for some new cabinets or flooring? Have they invited us over for dinner at all? Nope. I guess that's okay, but man, that's just when my self-pity starts in. And I know that a lot of people have it worse than us. That makes me feel more ungrateful, knowing that I'm complaining about this, when some people don't even have any of what I have. And then it makes me think that hopefully someday when I am able to give, that I do. That if I see a need, that I'll be able to fill it.

I don't know where my post is headed. Just some ramblings I guess. But maybe I'll urge all of you readers, that if there is something that you can do for someone else, even if it's just small and might be unnoticed, do it. Your life will be blessed. You will feel something that borders on euphoria, because whenever I serve others, that's what I feel. That absolute calm, peace, happiness, richness, love. And what a better place we would all be in, if we experienced those kind of feelings daily.

Easter weekend

The following is just a boring spouting from me. I'm still harboring mean feelings, so feel free to skip reading. I just needed to get it out.

Sometimes I wonder how I came from the family I did. I mean, why is it that I am so different and well...normal compared to my sister? I get so frustrated with her and it's so draining.

Background: My sister is 32, hasn't ever held a real job longer than a year (I don't think, and it's not her fault (roll your eyes)), has been on one date when she was 17, has two close friends who are 60+ years old, lives with my 85 year old grandma, has OCD, will never admit she's wrong and will argue her point (which could or could not be wrong) until she proves she's right and always was, has always been bossy and motherly to me (which bugs the living daylights out of me), and is just annoying to me. Oh, and she doesn't get the whole "personal space" thing.

So, I go up on Friday afternoon with the kids. I should know by now that any longer than 48 hours spent with my sister will end up with me being frustrated and annoyed beyond belief. But I always think, "well, maybe this will be different.." It never is. Everything with my sister and grandma is done out of habit. They eat at certain times, not because they're hungry, but because they always eat at that time. And it takes them FOREVER to do anything!!! On Saturday, preparing lunch took an hour. An HOUR!!! Do you know what we had?? Tator tots, Chicken patties and hot dogs for the kids. Yeah. An hour.... They overly stress and worry about the dumbest things! Sunday I was helping get things ready for the Easter dinner and it was a joke! My sister was going to slice some strawberries to put on a pie and it took her at least half an hour. My grandma was busy doing other things (and it takes her a while since she's 85 with Parkinsons), and I was doing the relish tray and set the table and put things back in the fridge that we didn't need. The company wasn't coming for another forty-five minutes to half an hour and grandma didn't think we had time to make deviled eggs. We had eggs already boiled. They just needed peeled and prepared, but we didn't have deviled eggs, because there wasn't time to make them. Whatever. (okay, I'm a little bitter about that. I was really looking forward to having them, but she sent home some eggs with me, so I can make my own. I'm going to time myself and see how long it takes me...) So once my sister got her strawberries sliced, she went around doing dumb stuff, like changing the hand towel in the bathroom and who knows what else. But at least she gave commentary on EVERYTHING she did. "I think I'll change the hand towel, so that we have a dry one for when so-and-so get here", "I think I'll take the garbage out", etc. I was seriously about to go off.

And the OCD. Drives me crazy! She was putting the Barbie stuff away after she "played" with Reagan and said "I don't know why we didn't do this sooner". I asked what she was talking about. Well, putting the barbie clothes into card boxes instead of just throwing them all into a big box like "we did when we were younger". I was speechless. I thought some nasty things, but I didn't say anything. Then we were getting the kids easter baskets ready and she was counting out everything evenly and made sure the colors were even too. She was getting hershey kisses out of the bag for our 3rd cousin and was saying "pink, blue, silver..." over and over to make sure she had even colors of kisses to give her. My method? Grab a handful and toss it in. And when we colored easter eggs, Grandma asked what colors it made and she rattled off a list of colors and I looked on the box and she had actually named the colors in the order they were listed. Like she had memorized it. Now for most that would be a random coinsidence, but with my sister, I believe that she really did memorize it.

Okay. I think I'm done ranting. Go about your regularly scheduled lives...

Idle threats

When you become a mother, I think it's required that at some point, you must make idle threats to make your children think you have the upper hand in the mother/child relationship. However, when your child/ren become overly excited about your idle threat and actually want to see it happen...well, what do you do then? The other night I told Rboy to "Get over here now, or I'll break your legs!". I would, for the record, NEVER break his legs. But Rgirl was really excited about the whole thing. She told me that she wanted to see it. ("It" being the process of me breaking his legs.) I informed her that I wasn't going to really break his legs, I was just teasing him. Then she wanted me to break her legs. What is up with this girl? She's just plain crazy!! ;)

Oh and she now claims that Smart Money magazine is her favorite. I tried looking through it last night and almost died from boredom....

This kid cracks me up!

(Since our kids names start with the same letter, I'll refer to the girl as Rgirl and the boy as Rboy.)

Yesterday Rgirl had a nap, so that messed up her bedtime. She was still wide awake at 11 pm when Bon and I were crawling into bed. She was laying between us asking a whole bunch of questions. Most of them were hilarious. But at one point, I thought I was going to pee my pants with what she said. Here's the conversation....

Me to Bon: "I love you!"

Bon to me: jokingly "Why?"

Me: "Why? Let me count the ways."

A half second of silence...

Me: "You have a really nice bottom."

Rgirl: "One."

Bon and I cracked UP!!!!! Oh my gosh! She is so funny. Bon then said to her "You understand everything we say, don't you!?" Oh, sweet little girl...