Warning: Explosive!

I think it might be a good idea for me to slap a sticker on my forehead, warning others that I am currently very highly-strung, majorly combustible, easily provoked, and being plain old bitchy. Is there a good word for all that?

Oh, right- “Explosive”.

Yeah, you might want to back away now. Slowly. And don’t look me directly in the eye.

Poor Clint is getting all the absolute worst of my terrible mood swings in the last few weeks. I don’t remember having them this badly when I was pregnant with E, and I’m hoping that the intensity of these mood swings isn’t a sign that our little girl is going to be a major drama queen.

On the other hand…what little girl isn’t a drama queen?

The other night, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep on the living room floor- yeah, the hard wood floor, the one I am barely able to get up from when I’ve just been sitting there. The weird part? I was extremely comfortable there, until such time as Clint hollered at me because I was snoring and he couldn’t hear The Hills Have Eyes 2 over it (is that a movie that’s really worth listening to? I mean, I was sort of listening without watching, and I had no idea what was going on, so the screaming can’t have been important to the story…right?).

Then, once I’d managed to separate myself from the spot on the floor, we went to bed. At which point my anger kicked in, and after nearly half an hour of listening to me yell, Clint informed me I should be on Xanax.

Well! I had every reason to be cheesed off!

1. My left hip (the one I generally sleep on) has been doing this lovely thing where the bones grind together when I move. If I’m standing when it happens, I just about keel over. This makes it a bit difficult to ever be truly comfortable, even when lying down.

2. Clint was too close. Really. He was lying on HALF OF MY PILLOW! It’s MINE, you hear me? MINE! And I do not share pillows. Pillows are precious to me. BACK OFF!

3. Clint was too close. He was lying in the center of the king-sized bed. His knee touched me. His arm was on me. His toe touched my foot. Oh, HELL no. BACK OFF!

4. Clint was too close. He was in the same room. BACK OFF!

5. I tried to explain why I was so tired:

a) I’m growing a baby

b) I spend about 10 hours a day alone with a toddler

c) My sleep is interrupted every single night by a combination/sometimes all of the following reasons-

*My bladder is full

*I’ve been snoring and Clint has to make me roll over

*I have sudden heartburn and have to take something

*Mr. E has woken up crying

*Princess Zelda is trying to eat me

*Princess Zelda is destroying the house

*Princess Zelda is knocking toys down the wooden stairs

*I’m thirsty

*Clint’s alarm has gone off four times

*Princess Zelda is making the other two cats hiss at her

*I’ve drooled in one spot so much I wake up afraid I’m drowning

I figure that on an average night (average for the last two or three weeks, anyway), I’m waking up at least five times a night. It’s really tempting to wake Clint up with me every time, but in the light of day, this idea is irrational and not worth the effort. I’ve also been tempted to kill Clint when he’s asleep, just because he IS asleep and I’m not…but again, in the light of day, I reject this plan based solely on the fact that when I’m not sleep deprived, I actually quite like him.

And then there’s the fact that he hasn’t killed me for being a psycho every night. Really, how many guys can stand to be yelled at every single night by their wife and still somehow like her?

Probably I should hang on to him…and maybe, just maybe, tone down the insanity a bit.

We’ll see about that.

 

All Aboard the Crazy Train

Ever have one of those days where you put your hand into the pocket of your hoodie and pull out several pieces of wilted lettuce?

No?

Huh. Well, maybe that’s just me, after allowing Mr. E to run around the house shredding lettuce. This was, of course, after initially having handed him the entire head of lettuce, which he proceeded to throw like a ball. Maybe that was a bad idea.

Yesterday was a constant test of my patience. E was giving me whiplash with his going from screaming and crying to talking and laughing and back again in under five minutes. There was a lot of yelling on his part, mostly because I kept accidentally saying the word ‘cookie’ in a conversation with my sister.

Yeah, E knows all about cookies, and once the idea is introduced in our home, there is no peace until a cookie has been had. It’s the same way if someone says the word ‘bath’.

Instant melt-down mode. Cripes.

Of course, we didn’t have any cookies available, although even if we had at that point, E wouldn’t have gotten one just for screaming his head off about it.

Then again, there’s not a lot I wouldn’t do to avoid hearing him scream like that, so maybe I’d have given up and given in. I did, late in the day, take E to the store for a cookie. After the fits seemed to be over.

On Tuesday, I had a tummy-check appointment. Everything looks fine with our little girl, and I’m scheduled to do the horrible glucose test in a couple of weeks, plus getting a Rogam shot. That one is thanks to my blood type being negative, just in case baby girl’s is positive. Not fun stuff, but it’s kind of whatever at this point.

After the doctor, I took E to Walmart (of course I took him with me, what was I going to do, send him to work with his dad? That’s actually pretty tempting…). Amazingly enough, there were zero issues inside Walmart that were Walmart’s fault. The worst that happened in the store was…well…

Waiting in line to check out, there was a tiny, shrivelly old woman standing nearby. She had on a thick, fuzzy brown coat, and super-sized round glasses, and a red hat. I didn’t even notice her until E started pointing at her and saying, “Monkey? Monkey?”

Um, no kiddo…and don’t point, it’s rude!

The lady might not have heard what he was saying, but she saw him pointing at her and so she smiled and came over to pinch his chubby cheek the way old women seem unable to resist doing.

Outside at the car was where the trouble started. We have automatic locks. We don’t have a fancy new car or anything, but everything is automatic. I unlocked the doors, and while I was buckling E into his seat, I heard weird clicking sounds. When I stood up, I saw the trunk had popped open. I wasn’t even using the trunk, so that was odd. Then more clicking, and I watched the locks pop up and down on all of the doors for a minute before I went and slammed the trunk closed.

Just as I turned to get in the car, there went the trunk again. I slammed it, it didn’t even latch. I slammed it, it popped open. The doors were still going psycho. At that point, I realized I should probably pull the fuse that controls the locks, so I opened the glove box and was immediately overwhelmed- way too many fuses. No idea which one to pull.

So I settled for getting back out, slamming the trunk of my obviously possessed vehicle again, kicking the door, and yelling, “Where’s an exorcist when you need one?!”

Funnily enough, as soon as I started the car, all the craziness stopped.

However, unbeknownst to me, there was a lady sitting in the passenger seat of a truck just one space away from where I’d parked, and as I was getting into the front seat, she asked if I was okay. Quite aside from scaring me half to death because I didn’t think anyone was around to see my little episode, I didn’t know how to answer that. So I smiled sheepishly and drove away.

Thank God it was just a Walmart parking lot, instead of the one at the grocery store I generally shop at.

On a completely unrelated note, how much bacon is acceptable, or rather, necessary, for one BLT? Two slices? Three?

And, if you cook up most of a package of bacon, and there are complaints that there is not MORE bacon available, so you cook MORE bacon…

Is it acceptable, or rather, necessary, to kill the person who requested MORE bacon and then only ate ONE of the extra slices, leaving three behind that nobody else will eat?

It was shortly after this that I discovered the lettuce in my pocket. Really, it’s no wonder I’m losing my mind.

So, So What? I’m Still a Rock Star

*Brief political commentary! Beware!

I just want to share that I am, in fact, disappointed with the result of the presidential election. I spent several hours dwelling on it, and worrying, and being irritated. However, I am quickly reverting to my usual state of “I don’t much care”, and as the true optimist that I am, will hope that this does not all end in tears.

I would also like to add, for the 30 seconds more that I have given myself to care, that I think the electoral college business is seriously out-dated and no longer necessary.

Oh, and my state voted to legalize pot. Erm…whatever, on that one.

On an unrelated note, Mr. E has taken to “helping” me like a duck to water. Whenever I change his diaper, he now says, “Want? Help!” Which means he wants to hold something for me until we’ve got a dry diaper on him. He can also pick up his toys when I ask him to; about three of them make it into the toy box before he starts taking others out.

We’ve also started having drawing time a couple times a day. I give him paper and colored pens (crayons get eaten), and he makes the prettiest scribbles I ever saw. Of COURSE he’s an artist in the making. Although, it would be nice if he would stop putting the pen in his ear and turning his ear lobes pink or blue.

He does his best work surrounded by a mess- crumbs from his snack, apple juice, and of course his phone must be handy.

On yet another unrelated note, Clint and I got a start on putting Christmas lights up outside last weekend. On Sunday night, we turned them on and took E outside on the porch, where he spent the next half hour running from one end to the other yelling “light”, “wow”, and “yay”.

And, last and probably least, our kitten, Princess Zelda, has somehow gotten a noodle stuck in her fur on her back, and it’s been there for the last five hours. I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t know why she’s leaving it there.

So, this is my life lately. Not exciting, but I kind of like it.

Load Me Up on the Short Bus…

…because I belong in Special Ed.

At least, that’s how I’ve felt for the last week or so. Two weeks? Three? All year?

I couldn’t tell you for sure when it started, because it seems like most of my life has been speckled with really ridiculously “special” moments. And then, I got pregnant the first time around and my brain took off on a vacation and never returned (probably Venice, the bastard).

And do you know, ‘baby brain’ doesn’t really go away after having the baby? This is bad news for me. Although, how I can claim to have baby brain and no brain at all, at the same time, well. Just goes to show, I’m right that I’ve turned into a lunatic or someone who ought to be wearing water wings and a helmet.

Not so very long ago, I was preparing to cook dinner using the Crock Pot. The inside part was in the dish rack, which, moments before, I had been very pleased to see; it doesn’t always happen that I can just throw stuff into a pot and go, since there is usually at least one dish that has to be washed first.

So, I cracked open the two different cans of cream of whatever soup I needed for the recipe, and dumped one in directly followed by the second.

And, um, there was no Crock Pot IN the Crock Pot.

Lots of fun, scooping/scraping condensed soup out of a shiny metal contraption that isn’t meant for having food directly touching it.

Worse, I didn’t notice my idiot move until after the SECOND can of soup.

Later on that day, I fell in the toilet. I’ve not done that in ages, despite having failed to convince Clint that he should put the seat down for me. In fact, I’m so used to checking the seat for down-ness that I can stumble into the bathroom in the middle of the night, in the dark, with my eyes shut, and still never fall butt first into the toilet.

Score another dummy point for me! I also managed to bend my thumbnail backwards when I tried to catch myself. Fear of drowning, and whatnot.

A few days ago, I put up plastic over our living room windows to help keep in heat/keep out cold. It’s sort of a big job for one person to do (although when I work with Clint, it just turns into a sort of big fight). First, I had to get the double-sided tape around the window frame. Then I had to peel the paper off one strip of tape, unfold the plastic sheet, stick it to the top of the window frame in a somewhat straight fashion, and so on and so forth until the window was covered. Once that part was done, I had to take the scissors to the excess plastic, trying not to cut like a drunk person, and then find an outlet for plugging in the hair dryer so that I could shrink the plastic to get rid of wrinkly spots.

Success!

Since then, my household is conspiring against all that tedious work by trying to bust through the plastic, thereby letting in the cold draftiness from the very old single-pane windows, and completely negating my efforts.

Mr. E likes to put his fingers on the plastic and push, or fall against it with both hands. The kitten likes to run from across the room to jump in the window sill, not realizing there is a barrier there, and she bounces off and flies several feet back toward where she came from. The older cats think it seems like a good place to try and sharpen their claws.

So, I’ve spent the time since I finished this job trying to protect my work; E gets in trouble for messing with the windows, the cats get booted outside or sprayed with water.  There have been several threats casually thrown around, mainly implying that the punishment for putting a hole through the plastic might possibly be death. Or, more realistically, I’ll just throw a pregnant-lady tantrum, get over it, and re-do the whole window with a fresh sheet of plastic.

Damn it.

And then, I was sitting here at the computer with a glass of iced tea, and needed a place to set it out of E’s reach. Without thinking about it, I went to set the glass in the window sill. My hand bounced off an invisible barrier and startled me into dropping the tea on the floor. Didn’t break through, but left a mark (wrinkled spot in otherwise perfectly smooth area).

At this rate, the plastic MIGHT last another week. Maybe.

At this rate, one more really DUH moment might just kill me off.

*Since posting this about half an hour ago, my old, mean cat has torn not just one, but TWO holes in the plastic. This cat makes me want to shoot her on a daily basis. Commencing Operation: Fix Plastic. GRR!