Like almost every other parent in the Pittsburgh area, I read Burgh Baby. One of the things she has said about the challenge of blogging every day is that she asks herself "What was different about today?" Some days that answer is good, some days that answer is bad.
Today was one of the bad days in my house. Jamie is apparently working on another tooth and it's making him just about as miserable as he's ever been. He can't nap. He can't play. He can't eat. His whole world is revolving around the pain in his mouth. He's crabby, to say the least.
Liam isn't much better. Teeth are not his issue but I'm pretty sure the colony of bugs that crawled up his butt are causing some problems. His day can be summed up in one simple phrase: if given the choice between Devil or Angel, he chose Devil all day long. Jumping on the furniture? Check. Purposely doing things to make his brother cry? Check (as if Jamie needed any help with THAT). Sassing me? Checkity check check check.
I felt as though my whole day was spent yelling at one of them, attempting to console the other, and trying not to lose my cool.
Also different about today was the fact that I am in a frenzy of trip planning and packing as we are headed to Deep Creek for the holiday weekend. We're renting a house with my parents as well as my sister and her family. There are so many things to remember to pack that I have an entire pad of paper filled with lists and my head is regularly spinning. In between bouts of screaming, teething toddler and sassy, attitude-filled 5 year old I was attempting to take a whack at packing.
And then there were two moments, one really good and one enraging, that also made today different. I'll start with the good one just to break up all this whiny stuff.
I took the kids outside to play in the kiddie pool this afternoon. It was Jamie's first time doing so and he was pretty into it. I took a blanket out there with us and spread it on the lawn so I could sit and be comfortable while watching the kids. I took their towels and made a pillow so I could lay down and watch the fluffy white clouds drift by. I sat there listening to the wind in the trees and the laughter of my children. I thought to myself "Well, this is so much better than how the rest of the day has been!"
The enraging moment comes courtesy of a trip to the blog of Virginia Montanez. She has a post up today about Amy Ambrusko and the playground she is attempting to build in the memory of her two children who died in a car accident a year ago. Please go read the post for the full story as it's really too long to summarize here.
Suffice it to say that after I read it I was enraged. To think that some people would pull the "not in my backyard" crap when a woman who is grieving is just trying to do something to benefit others makes me stabby. Truly, truly stabby. What is wrong with some people? I sat there seething - I had such a long, miserable day with the kids and this only fed into my ridiculously bad mood. I was outraged for Amy.
Which led me to think about this: my kids may have driven me completely batshit insane today but they were here. Amy doesn't have that luxury. Who am I to let my bad mood get the best of me in the face of that? Of course, yes, I'm allowed to have a day in which I find being a parent to be the ultimate challenge. But, in the end, it's always good to remember that it could be a whole lot worse.
So there you have it. That's what was different about today.
Showing posts with label life sucks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life sucks. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Walls Were Just The Beginning
You know that old adage about how bad things come in threes? Well, it's holding far more true than I would like when it comes to home repairs.
Our house is 35 years old. It is a veritable baby in comparison to our previous home that was 80 years old when we moved out. I assumed that having a younger house meant less silly "oh that's really old and now you're screwed" type of repairs. Here is where I reference the adage about what assuming does.
Anyway, the point is that in the middle of dealing with the beginning, middle, and completion of wall construction, a number of OTHER things went wrong with the house. Money is flowing in a mighty torrent from my bank account to the repairmen of Pittsburgh. (Repairmen of Pittsburgh -- decent band name.)
First, our garbage disposal went haywire. It got stuck in the "on" position. We have one of those nifty professional models that turns on by twisting the drain plug in the sink. No switch on the wall by the sink. Just reach down, twist, and churn away. I'd never seen one before we moved here. Now I know why. That sucker got effed up somehow (I don't know how!) and it got stuck in the on position. I'll let you go ahead and imagine the frantic attempts to shut it off to no avail until I finally cut the power at the breaker box. As luck would have it, the thing is on its own circuit so I didn't lose power to anything else in the process.
I haven't had anyone in to fix it yet but it will probably be around a $250 job to replace the batch feed switch on the silly thing.
Then there was my garage door. I was standing in the library one Saturday afternoon (yes, we have a library - we have too many books and the formal living room became a library) and I heard a huge crashing noise. I ran around for 10 minutes trying to locate the issue until I decided that maybe it had happened outside and I hit the garage door button to check.
The door went up about a foot and a half.
The door opener tried to lift it further, got nowhere with that effort, and sent the door back down again.
Lather, rinse, repeat about 4 times until I satisfied myself it was not a fluke.
So, I went over and while the opener was running, I lifted that damn door all the way up so that I could get my car out. And then I noticed that certain pulleys and wires were hanging willy nilly off the tracks of the door. Ah. Yes, THAT would be the problem.
I called in a repair guy who said I had bad springs. He replaced them both for me for the low, low price of $70 (yahoo!) and also left me with a rather nice little quote for new garage doors. If we can scrape the money together, that's a project for the fall.
So, the door was working well for a few days.
And then it crapped out again. This time, it would start lowering, go about a foot and a half, get caught up somehow and go back up again. Joy. This occurred on the first day of wall construction.
I called the repairman back and he came back out and gave that opener a piece of his mind. Really, he just adjusted the thing to accommodate for new springs and it's working fine now. Even better, he didn't charge me.
Two days later I decided that I had better do some laundry before we went out of town last weekend. (That's another blog post.) I got an error on the first load. We have a front loading high efficiency washer so those codes mean diddly-bo-jack-wop-shit to me. I cleared it out and sent it through another rinse and spin cycle.
That crapped out, too.
Bonus. Now I had a washing machine problem that I needed fixed immediately in order to have clean clothes to pack. I called a local repairman and when I told him what kind of washer I had he ran away. And told me that every other local dude would run, too. Sigh. So I called the next option - a large appliance repair company. They said they'd be able to send a dude out that same day. Hurrah!
I went to the laundry room to remove the wet clothes from the washer. Now, this is the first time I've ever had the washer repaired - we only bought it 3 years ago. So, I didn't really think about the consequences before I opened the door of the FRONT LOADER WASHER THAT WASN'T PROPERLY DRAINING.
Water. Everywhere.
I got it cleaned up the best way I could without, you know, having a working washing machine and waited for the repairman to show up. He showed up, took the thing apart and removed a single bobby pin and some lint. Let me repeat that. A single bobby pin and some lint. Then he put everything back together and charged me $134. For a single bobby pin and some lint.
But, wouldn't you know, that washer works again and I had clean clothes for the trip.
Dear Household Fairy - UNCLE.
Our house is 35 years old. It is a veritable baby in comparison to our previous home that was 80 years old when we moved out. I assumed that having a younger house meant less silly "oh that's really old and now you're screwed" type of repairs. Here is where I reference the adage about what assuming does.
Anyway, the point is that in the middle of dealing with the beginning, middle, and completion of wall construction, a number of OTHER things went wrong with the house. Money is flowing in a mighty torrent from my bank account to the repairmen of Pittsburgh. (Repairmen of Pittsburgh -- decent band name.)
First, our garbage disposal went haywire. It got stuck in the "on" position. We have one of those nifty professional models that turns on by twisting the drain plug in the sink. No switch on the wall by the sink. Just reach down, twist, and churn away. I'd never seen one before we moved here. Now I know why. That sucker got effed up somehow (I don't know how!) and it got stuck in the on position. I'll let you go ahead and imagine the frantic attempts to shut it off to no avail until I finally cut the power at the breaker box. As luck would have it, the thing is on its own circuit so I didn't lose power to anything else in the process.
I haven't had anyone in to fix it yet but it will probably be around a $250 job to replace the batch feed switch on the silly thing.
Then there was my garage door. I was standing in the library one Saturday afternoon (yes, we have a library - we have too many books and the formal living room became a library) and I heard a huge crashing noise. I ran around for 10 minutes trying to locate the issue until I decided that maybe it had happened outside and I hit the garage door button to check.
The door went up about a foot and a half.
The door opener tried to lift it further, got nowhere with that effort, and sent the door back down again.
Lather, rinse, repeat about 4 times until I satisfied myself it was not a fluke.
So, I went over and while the opener was running, I lifted that damn door all the way up so that I could get my car out. And then I noticed that certain pulleys and wires were hanging willy nilly off the tracks of the door. Ah. Yes, THAT would be the problem.
I called in a repair guy who said I had bad springs. He replaced them both for me for the low, low price of $70 (yahoo!) and also left me with a rather nice little quote for new garage doors. If we can scrape the money together, that's a project for the fall.
So, the door was working well for a few days.
And then it crapped out again. This time, it would start lowering, go about a foot and a half, get caught up somehow and go back up again. Joy. This occurred on the first day of wall construction.
I called the repairman back and he came back out and gave that opener a piece of his mind. Really, he just adjusted the thing to accommodate for new springs and it's working fine now. Even better, he didn't charge me.
Two days later I decided that I had better do some laundry before we went out of town last weekend. (That's another blog post.) I got an error on the first load. We have a front loading high efficiency washer so those codes mean diddly-bo-jack-wop-shit to me. I cleared it out and sent it through another rinse and spin cycle.
That crapped out, too.
Bonus. Now I had a washing machine problem that I needed fixed immediately in order to have clean clothes to pack. I called a local repairman and when I told him what kind of washer I had he ran away. And told me that every other local dude would run, too. Sigh. So I called the next option - a large appliance repair company. They said they'd be able to send a dude out that same day. Hurrah!
I went to the laundry room to remove the wet clothes from the washer. Now, this is the first time I've ever had the washer repaired - we only bought it 3 years ago. So, I didn't really think about the consequences before I opened the door of the FRONT LOADER WASHER THAT WASN'T PROPERLY DRAINING.
Water. Everywhere.
I got it cleaned up the best way I could without, you know, having a working washing machine and waited for the repairman to show up. He showed up, took the thing apart and removed a single bobby pin and some lint. Let me repeat that. A single bobby pin and some lint. Then he put everything back together and charged me $134. For a single bobby pin and some lint.
But, wouldn't you know, that washer works again and I had clean clothes for the trip.
Dear Household Fairy - UNCLE.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Stick A Fork In Me, I'm Done.
I know this blog has been generally lighthearted up until now but allow me to change tone for a few minutes.
Christmas this year sucked. Don't get me wrong, the kids had fun. They enjoyed the toys and the presents but beyond that it sucked from one end to the other. I spent weeks tearing around trying to get everything ready to go. Between the cleaning, the decorating, the baking, the shopping, and the wrapping I felt like I had something to do every single second of the day especially because I was trying to fit all those things in around taking care of the kids. Throw in the added stress of all the bills (I hyperventilate when I think about our credit card bill) and I'm really struggling with my life.
Liam was a royal pain in the butt leading up to Christmas. He was exactly what a four year old should be but I thought I was going to lose my mind. The kid who gets sent his room maybe twice a month was getting sent to his room three times a day. He simply could not behave properly. My patience with it was thin anyway because of all the other crap going on and I just couldn't take it. I thought it would settle down once we got through the Christmas Orgy but instead he now insists on getting between Jamie and his toys. Liam wants to play with them and he thinks he's playing with Jamie when in reality he's just taking over and blocking the kid from his toys. We've told him a hundred times to knock it off and he seems incapable of doing so.
Scot is fighting his migraine problem more and more and it seems as though the specialist he's seeing really isn't that much help. He ended up in the ER two days before Christmas because he'd had a migraine for 5 straight days and all the meds he had at home couldn't break it. So he's frustrated with the fact that he's getting very little help for a problem that's been plaguing him for at least 6 months. When he's incapacitated with a headache he can't cope with the kids and that leaves me to deal with them. I don't blame him - far from it - he wouldn't choose to be this way if he had the choice. But I feel trapped with the two kids all the time and even when he tries to give me a break it inevitably falls on a day that he's worse rather than better which makes me feel awful because he's got to deal with the kids.
I feel like we've spent much of the last year and a half mired in illness in such a way that our lives are a mess. First I was pregnant and sick, then I was pregnant and bitchy, then Scot fell down the stairs and fucked up his wrist, then I was *really* pregnant and *really* bitchy, then Scot had surgery on his wrist, then I gave birth, then Jamie was a wreck for the first three months, then Scot started fighting incessant headaches. It's one disaster after another and we keep trying to cope and keep trying to deal with the kids and I feel like all I do is pick up slack and try to stay sane.
To add insult to injury Jamie is teething like mad and screechy much of the time. He's not sleeping properly and he's so cranky that I can barely walk out of the room to pee without him having a screaming fit. So, he's *always* with me and *always* climbing on me. I'm getting ready to wean him because I can't take being attached at the boob anymore. I know that people think it's easy to just pump a bottle and go but it's not. It's takes me 3 days worth of pumping to gather enough milk for ONE bottle. Because I don't pump on a regular basis and because I'm near the end of my nursing relationship to boot (and thus don't have extra milk production) that's just how it is. It's more hassle than it's worth unless there's some big event I need to attend.
I'm just really not very happy with my life right now. The kids are driving me nuts. The house is a wreck. My husband is nearly always incapacitated in some way through no fault of his own. I'm overweight. I'm bound to an infant by the boob and I'm ready to scream. I don't get enough sleep and haven't for FIVE SOLID YEARS.
Now I have to look forward to undecorating the house from Christmas (how exactly do I keep Jamie out of all those boxes?!), the dark, cold, frigid depths of winter, and all the screaming of a teething infant that I'm trying to teach to sleep through the night.
Welcome to my little slice of hell.
Christmas this year sucked. Don't get me wrong, the kids had fun. They enjoyed the toys and the presents but beyond that it sucked from one end to the other. I spent weeks tearing around trying to get everything ready to go. Between the cleaning, the decorating, the baking, the shopping, and the wrapping I felt like I had something to do every single second of the day especially because I was trying to fit all those things in around taking care of the kids. Throw in the added stress of all the bills (I hyperventilate when I think about our credit card bill) and I'm really struggling with my life.
Liam was a royal pain in the butt leading up to Christmas. He was exactly what a four year old should be but I thought I was going to lose my mind. The kid who gets sent his room maybe twice a month was getting sent to his room three times a day. He simply could not behave properly. My patience with it was thin anyway because of all the other crap going on and I just couldn't take it. I thought it would settle down once we got through the Christmas Orgy but instead he now insists on getting between Jamie and his toys. Liam wants to play with them and he thinks he's playing with Jamie when in reality he's just taking over and blocking the kid from his toys. We've told him a hundred times to knock it off and he seems incapable of doing so.
Scot is fighting his migraine problem more and more and it seems as though the specialist he's seeing really isn't that much help. He ended up in the ER two days before Christmas because he'd had a migraine for 5 straight days and all the meds he had at home couldn't break it. So he's frustrated with the fact that he's getting very little help for a problem that's been plaguing him for at least 6 months. When he's incapacitated with a headache he can't cope with the kids and that leaves me to deal with them. I don't blame him - far from it - he wouldn't choose to be this way if he had the choice. But I feel trapped with the two kids all the time and even when he tries to give me a break it inevitably falls on a day that he's worse rather than better which makes me feel awful because he's got to deal with the kids.
I feel like we've spent much of the last year and a half mired in illness in such a way that our lives are a mess. First I was pregnant and sick, then I was pregnant and bitchy, then Scot fell down the stairs and fucked up his wrist, then I was *really* pregnant and *really* bitchy, then Scot had surgery on his wrist, then I gave birth, then Jamie was a wreck for the first three months, then Scot started fighting incessant headaches. It's one disaster after another and we keep trying to cope and keep trying to deal with the kids and I feel like all I do is pick up slack and try to stay sane.
To add insult to injury Jamie is teething like mad and screechy much of the time. He's not sleeping properly and he's so cranky that I can barely walk out of the room to pee without him having a screaming fit. So, he's *always* with me and *always* climbing on me. I'm getting ready to wean him because I can't take being attached at the boob anymore. I know that people think it's easy to just pump a bottle and go but it's not. It's takes me 3 days worth of pumping to gather enough milk for ONE bottle. Because I don't pump on a regular basis and because I'm near the end of my nursing relationship to boot (and thus don't have extra milk production) that's just how it is. It's more hassle than it's worth unless there's some big event I need to attend.
I'm just really not very happy with my life right now. The kids are driving me nuts. The house is a wreck. My husband is nearly always incapacitated in some way through no fault of his own. I'm overweight. I'm bound to an infant by the boob and I'm ready to scream. I don't get enough sleep and haven't for FIVE SOLID YEARS.
Now I have to look forward to undecorating the house from Christmas (how exactly do I keep Jamie out of all those boxes?!), the dark, cold, frigid depths of winter, and all the screaming of a teething infant that I'm trying to teach to sleep through the night.
Welcome to my little slice of hell.
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