So, I got off my (large) ass and made an appointment with and endocrinologist, which turns out to be a smarter move than I’d previously thought. I had my last labs sent to me to bring in (cue ominous music)…

Yikes. Holy yikes.

Looks like I’ll have to start checking my neck for goiters until I see my endo.

Seen on the wall at Jimmy John’s,

Sometimes we’re the pigeon,
Sometimes we’re the statue.

Ain’t that the Lord’s Truth.

Lack of sleep has left my poor brain a lone stem complete with misfiring neurons, so I bring you a post in snippets, because, well, I’m too damn tired to put any more thought into anything that doesn’t need it (I looked for a meme to do, but I couldn’t find any. Well, by “looking” I mean, I “thought about looking”). I’m starting to think that Alex is trying to break me. Right now I’m about ready to confess to anything. Why YES I DID kill JFK! AND Jon Benet Ramsey! NOW can I sleep? PLEASE?

*My phlox looks terrible. In fact, the winter killed off 95% of my bulbs (well, at least the ones that I liked). I had all of these grand visions of doing some fall planting, but it’s looking damn near impossible right now. I’m so out of it that I might accidentally plant the baby in the ground by accident. What do YOU do to get your yard ready for winter?

*Alex is terrified of the nicest piece of furniture that we own: his crib. This means that he’s still sleeping in one of three places, depending on my mood, his bassinet, his swing or one of his bouncy seats. I am unhappy about this, as I am a bit tired of sleeping in the same room with my ickle one. Any suggestions (assuming crying it out, like I’d like to do, wouldn’t work)?

*I need to buy some simple (but nice) frames for pictures. I’d been needlessly waiting to hang pictures, as I’d imagined that we’d be painting all of the hideousness off of the walls first, but alas, with Alex being, well, Alex, painting isn’t going to happen this year. So where do people buy nice frames (that don’t cost a fortune, but aren’t made of plastic)? And is it a bad thing if I have a ton of extra pictures to frame of Alexander in 8×10 but not so many of Ben in that size?

*With Christmas looming around the corner, we have decided to do something a bit differently this year. Rather than spend a bunch of money on toys that neither of the children need, we’re going to pool our money together and get them a wooden swingset. And then pay someone to install it. I don’t know if this qualifies for most boring parents of the year or most awesomist parents of the year. I remember there being an age where quality was better than quantity, but I cannot remember when this was.

I make myself hurt, I am so damn boring today (see, yeah, TODAY. Normally I am HILARIOUS! Let me be delusional). Anything else you want me to pointlessly pontificate upon?

When I was eleventy-hundred months pregnant with Alexander, I got into a discussion with a couple of pregnant women in my OB’s office (as a rule, I avoid pregnant women like the plague because well, someone once told me that pregnant women were 3 doors down from the nuthouse, but I firmly believe that they are actually much, much closer than that). The subject: 3 year olds. The concensus: 3 was much, much, much worse than 2. I agreed wholeheartedly, 2 was great, 4 was great, but 3? 3 found my hands making repeated contact with his cute, ickle, tantrum-y, willfull, annoying, butt.

Just like I would never tell a woman pregnant with her second child that having 2 is much harder than twice the work of having 1 (follow me?), I remain mum with my friends who rapidly approaching the dreaded 3. Until they mention it to me, I have nothing to say about the matter.

I don’t mention to newly pregnant women how sick I got while pregnant, I don’t tell them that labor hurts like hell, and I pretend that having a newborn and breastfeeding is great fun. Once they’ve gotten past all of those milestones, I’ll commiserate, but not before that point.

Why would I avoid something that so many others like to blab about (especially to complete strangers)? I don’t want to be a naysayer and I don’t wish to make others fearful unnecessarily. It’s not fair and it isn’t nice. Just because those were my own experiences doesn’t make them universal.

Just like you cannot actually prepare a child fully for the arrival of a sibling (try as you might, but no child could possibly wrap their mind around it. You may as well tell them that you are moving to the moon in a couple of months. We bought Ben a book that was actually pretty scientific and read it over and over, which meant that we had to listen to a multitude of songs written by Ben which went “I’m the lucky spermy who met the ova and that became ME!” Thankfully, he didn’t ask how the sperm got to be there in the first place. Yikes.), no amount of naysaying will do any good to anyone else because their experiences will probably be different than your own, so why bother if you’re just trying to scare someone?

I’m using children as my example here, but fearmongers (thanks Al!) know no boundries. Have a puppy? (OhmyGOD, when *I* had a puppy, I was up *all* night! for weeks! It’s SOOOO hard!) Have a house? (OhmyGOD! the furnace went out and we had lead paint! and I HAVE TO PAY SOMEONE TO MOW THE LAWN. Why not rent instead? Owning SUCKS!)

You can smell what The Becky is cooking.

I tried to be her friend, really I did. At least this is what I told myself to assuage my own massive guilt. But the truth of the matter was is that when the going got tough, I bolted. I cut my own losses and chalked her up as a “lost cause.” I’ve felt guilty for years about this, as I know how badly I really fucked up.

In truth, I’d reached that pivotal point in my life where I realized that I had been heading down the wrong street (hell, I was in the wrong state) and I promptly bought myself a map and changed directions. She had not. Her bad decisions seemed to top each other in a frightening pattern of self destruction.

And I know self destruction.

Maybe it was self-preservation on my own part. Having dealt with pill-popping alcoholics for parents, I knew what a tricky situation that could be. I happen to be the only one in my family who confronts these situations and tries to make them right. Mainly because I have this vision of being at the funeral of someone that I loved very dearly and remarking that “I wish that I’d done something to help them.” But as you cannot help the dead save from letting them be, I was stuck wishing and wondering what could have been. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

I ran into her mother today (again), and recieved some devestating news. She was back in the hospital after another gruesome suicide attempt. And I realized that now it was my time to help. I’m done with excusing my inaction to my fears, I’m done with hiding behind my children and my (not really so) busy life, and now I must act. She had once been a good friend of mine, and now I will try like hell to be one to her.

This is where those of you who know her must help me. Get over the fact that you don’t know her as well as I do and buy a card. I’ll give you her address. Hell, if you send it to me, I will address it and stamp it and send it myself. She needs to know that people who knew her (however well it may or may not be) care about her. Period.

No one should ever, ever, ever feel as alone as she does now. No one.

(Is there anything else you can think of that I can do for her?)

Back when I worked outside of the home, The Daver and I divided up the house chores. I tried like hell to do mine and Dave’s, well, often went undone (let’s just leave it at “he works a lot” and be done with it. Normally, I’d make some sort of joke here, but I am trying to get laid. So, no jokes). So when I started to stay home, almost all of the chores were taken over by me. Save for two: mowing the lawn and doing the catboxes, as pregnant women aren’t supposed to actually touch kitty poo (not that I scooped it with my bare hands or anything. That’s nasty).

And the fights about doing the catboxes, they were mighty, as The Daver hates that chore possibly more than he hates putting away his laundry (which, judging by the fact that his laundry has sat in the baskets that I’ve put them in for 7 or 8 months, is a lot. To his credit, when my mother-in-law came out to stay this summer, I noticed what a fanatic she was about laundry and suddenly I understood my husband much, much better. You might even say that my sympathy grew quite a bit.). In order to avoid said fights, and the less pleasant option of letting the cats poo on the carpets and the sinks, I take care of them about half of the time (especially gleefully when I am offered sex as a bribe. What can I say? I’m easy) because I am no longer with child.

The lawn, however, would go unmowed to the point at which I would actually hide from my neighbors (this is especially easy when one’s lawn looks remarkably like a prairie!) so that they couldn’t yell at me or give me nasty looks. Alex never sleeps, so I can’t do it at his naptime, I cannot safely mow the lawn while holding him, and although I have threatened to get a goat, I’m certain that the neighbors might hate that smell even more than the waist high grass.

A couple of months ago, while having coffee with one of my neighbors, her teenage son walked into the room. It was then that my brilliant idea was hatched: I can pay someone about $20 a week to do something that has become a major source of contention in my marriage AND BE DONE WITH IT. Everyone walks away a winner!

His father, who is coincidentally my son’s soccer coach and the father of his best friend came to assist the first time, and they did an asskicking job. Although we were a bit sheepish about this arrangement, the same way you feel when a 50 year old man delivers your pizza, we were assured that his father was merely showing him the ropes. The check was written for $30 because the lawn had been in such sorry shape, and we made the teen promise to buy his father something nice as well (again, we were embarressed at ourselves here).

This may have been our fatal flaw, because the following week when I dropped by his house to give him his check for $20, he looked at it and got kind of, oh I don’t know, surly over the amount (which had been agreed upon beforehand). I’m sure he was hoping to get $30 EVERY week, but hey, he’s 14 and it takes him 45 minutes because my lawn, it ain’t sprawling.

It happened again this Sunday, he came by, mowed with our mower, and when Dave brought out the check, he got a bit salty. He’s never actually complained out loud to us about it, but you can tell that he isn’t pleased.

This annoys me on several levels. First, he’s 14 and $20 is a lot of money of 45 minutes of work. I dare you to find me a job at 14 that pays that well, besides of course, prostitution or porn. Secondly, I am literally surrounded by teenage boys that would be more than happy to make a quick buck. I’ve been offered many times by most of them that they are available to do odd jobs for me (too bad there are no cabana boys here). Third, it’s a lot more money than the job warrants. Period.

So I’m stuck between some grass and some taller grass here (get it? Because he’s MOWING MY LAWN! HAHAHAHAHA.). I can’t just tell him that he’s no longer needed and hire another kid, as his mother is one of my best neighborhood friends AS WELL as the mother of Ben’s best friend. Plus, he’s never actually SAID anything to me about it, just gotten sort of grumpy when the check is delivered (which, yeah, at his age, I babysat, and you know what? I never, ever bitched about what I was paid, because it was damn easy work. I also walked uphill to school both ways in the snow WITHOUT SHOES. Damn kids these days!)

What the hell do I do?

I’m in a total fog today, which I am attibuting to my wonky thyroid. The baby slept well last night, and yet I am still exhausted and full of The Laze. I cannot seem to get my ass off of the couch to do anything, and it’s driving me completely bonkers.

To compound matters further, Alex seems to be completely immersed in some nasty attatchment issues, so I cannot physically be farther away than two feet at any point in time, because I might disappear for good! Forever! Which in his mind is about thirty-five seconds. It’s very sweet and completely heartwarming most of the time, but sometimes, I just have to go to the bathroom, kid. Alone.

What I need to do is to get off my duff and make an appointment with an endocrinologist, but that would be facing my biggest fears: I am not suffering from an underactive thyroid, but actually full of The Crazy. THEN where would I be?

Stupid hormones.

I’m pretty sure that we’ve established that my two children couldn’t be more dissimilar if I’d tried, haven’t we? Alex is an Eater, Ben is a Sleeper, and yet I’m still shocked when I find yet another difference.

Alex is currently holding strong as my cuddliest child (which is my polite way of saying needy), which vacillates from flattering the hell out of me and driving me bonkers. Most of the time, it’s incredibly endearing that when you walk past him, he strains his entire frame while protesting loudly, like “Hey, bitches, I’m down here. Pick my ass up!” When he’s plucked out of whatever gizmo he’d been happily occupying UNTIL YOU REMINDED HIM THAT HE HAS OTHER OPTIONS, he’ll burry his head in your neck and try to give your jaw a hickey. Pretty cute, right?

Until you are actually attempting to do something that does not involve lugging a 17 pound child around, like, for instance, brushing your hair. Or cooking on the hot stove. Then, it’s just a bit tedious.

My neighbors must think I’m a bit touched in the head (especially after they’ve all seen me walking around without my shirt. Sorry for any infertillity that may have caused, but the kid wouldn’t let go of the boobs for very long, and I would just kind of forget that the ladies were just hanging out there, because, well, THEY WERE ALWAYS OUT THERE.), because now, if you were to come by when I was trying to do something, ANYTHING, you’d likely find me crawling around on the floor, past the couches that block his view of me until I was completely out of his line of sight.

(whew, that was a long sentence. Can we say run-on, boys and girls? I know I can!)

It sounds excessive, I’m sure, but the thought had recently entered my head to blow up a full sized picture of myself, glue it onto a Becky-shaped cardboard cutout, and be done with it. Maybe I could even just past a picture of my head on the hulla girl.

Because somedays, somedays, I’d really like to get stuff done.

With a heart as cold and black as mine, it should come as a major shock to anyone who does not know me that I love the holidays. I LOVE the holidays. So much that when they’re all over and it’s summer I’m genuinely sad, because there are no decent summer holidays, well, unless you count my birthday, which, after the fiasco of this year, will never again be counted unless I am promised Vicodin (the one highlight of this years ER trip). Mmm, Vicodin.

(Do you hear that noise, Internet? That is the sound of my husband, somewhere, offering up a prayer that I never, ever have an extremely painful injury that requires loads of Vicodin. Because I would shortly become an addict. My father recently sustained a dumb injury–he walked off the edge of the sidewalk and tore a ligament–I guess strange injuries run in my family. Sorry preemptively Alex and Ben. My initial reaction was to wonder OUT LOUD to my mother if he might notice if he were missing one…or thirty.)

Well, um, anyway, yeah, the holidays.

I was recently at Target, oh joy of joys, and I fell in love with this Halloween decoration. I went home, slept on it, then convinced my husband (in all of his thoughtful generousity) to spend his birthday money on it for me. Er, US.

Back to Target we merrily trekked, where I was immediately informed that they had no more in stock, but that I could “call back in the morning and see if they’d gotten any more in.” Har-dee-har-har, RIGHT. Because on the next breath, the ever helpful employee informed me that even if they had one in stock, and I promised to run immediately over, they would not hold it for me. He seemed unfazed that I had a baby with me, as he was probably blissfully unaware that going ANYWHERE with a baby who is not in one of those awesome portable carseats is tricky, if not impossible, especially on a schedule. AND WITHOUT THE PROMISE OF MY SWEET, SWEET DECORATION.

Since we live in Suburbia, there are at least 3 Target’s in my immediate vicinity (can you say amazing?!?). So after I raked all of the leaves in the yard AND did the catboxes BY MYSELF, Dave was summarily informed that he, in fact, owed me a trip to another one. Inside we ran, through the gales of wind (it’s really, really windy today), I myself nearly knocking over an old lady and the Starbucks chick in the process, where we ended up in the Halloween area. And were promptly informed that they were ALSO out. But we could try a store 30 miles away, but no, they wouldn’t hold it for me. So, I could very well trek out there and not have my sweet, sweet decoration.

Fuck that, I said. Not being an overly competitive person, I have completely given up. I will be at Target again this weekend, and if they should have it in stock, I will be happy to pick it up.

Otherwise, I give up. The consolation stuff I got was cool, but I’m still a bit bitter. And suprised, really. When did my taste in decorations go so mainstream?

Besides, of course, the totally rad Coors Lite sign in my living room. That NEVER goes out of style.

I have decided what I will do when I finally lose the rest of the baby weight: I’m getting a shorter (not too short, I look like Pinhead even when thin) haircut. Because, you know, longer hair hides the 30 extra pounds.

But several days prior, I will be doing something I’ve always wanted to do: I’m going to give myself a mullet. And it will be freaking sexxy.

——————

Several nights ago, during a dinner that Dave didn’t happen to make it to, Ben proclaimed that he was going to draw a picture of his house with Alex and I in it. So I asked if Dave was going to be in the picture as well, to which he replied, after thinking about it for awhile,

“…Yes….BUT he will be crying.”

I nearly choked on my own saliva.

—————–

Wendy’s new slogan “That’s Right” irritates me tremendously, because every time I’ve ever been to Wendy’s (which is very, very infrequently), my order has always been completely wrong. I’m considering complaining to coorporate about it because they are LYING. It’s NEVER Right.

—————–

I left the baby in his Exersaucer near the television yesterday while I ran down to throw a load of laundry into the dryer. When I got back, I realized that he was studiously watching a television program. I heard the phrase “incestuous relationship with his sister” and realized that I had left him to watch a biography of Caligula, The Deviant Emperor.

Somewhere, some therapist is rejoycing at the shear amount of money he/she will be recieving in the future from my children.

————–

Over the weekend, my father, the pharmacist informed me that all of the infant cold remedies had been pulled from the shelves as some 65 deaths had occured over the last 10 years from parental misuse.

Unfortunately for my son’s poor chest, he’s right. I checked today.

————–

Operation Dave’s Little Minion is commencing full force this evening. Dave and Ben will be heading out to the unveiling of the new Star Wars exhibit.

Man, it’s too bad that the baby is sick and I can’t go…really, I’m crying.

Between this and the adoration of video games, it’s no wonder that I keep telling Dave that Ben will live in our basement for most of his adulthood.