Why you should not wear a bikini on the beach

So we're well ensconced on our family vacation. I've got WonderDad, Wonderboy, The Alligator, WonderGramma, WonderPapa, WonderGrammy and WonderGrampy all with me. The other day I was sitting on the beach with the Alligator. I was wearing a bikini. It's not too showy. It's got a halter top and a bottom that's big enough to make sure that my butt is fully covered. The Alligator and I were sitting in the surf just letting the waves wash up on us. Suddenly I realized that it felt like I had a just taken a big poo in my bikini bottom. Now of course I didn't! But all that sand had started washing itself up into my bottoms. WonderGramma said that I should go out into the ocean and rinse off. I tried but the sand had actualy worked itself into the inner liner of the suit. Yeah. So I tried as gracefully as possible to leave the beach and change my suit. That suit has now been designated as pool only!

Just Wrong

http://www.chiaobama.com/
I have no words. This is just wrong.

Paternity Leave

Ok so this is probably not going to be a very welcomed notion but I honestly believe that in MOST cases extended paternity leave is stupid. I'm not talking about parents of preemies, sick children, multiples, spouses with massive post partum depression or complications, or couples that are waiting to get into daycare. I can understand the leave in these cases. However, people who take leave months after the child is born who are not doing it for bonding purposes but rather for an extended vacation are ridiculous. I'm sorry. My husband took 2 days off with our first child and 1 day with our second child. I just didn't need him to be at home with us during that time. All the baby is going to do is eat, sleep and poop. Sure he can change a diaper but he wasn't going to breastfeed the little nugget. After 7 weeks of maternity leave I went back to work. The first time I didn't have an option. I didn't qualify for the Family Medical Leave Act since I had only been at my job for 4 months. With my second child, I could have stayed home for 4 months. I was so antsy, I couldn't do it. I'm not busting on moms that take more time. I'm not busting on stay at home moms or stay at home dads for that matter. However, there are a lot of men where I work and where WonderDad work that view this as vacation time. F*CK OFF! Be a man and go to work you lazy bum!

Will this frustration never end?

So I've been irritable again lately. Big surprise. Mostly I've been agitated at my family. Not Wonderdad or the kids but rather my Mom, Dad and sister. Here's the deal. Last Thanksgiving Opa said that he and my mom would come visit this summer. We had taking the kids out there for the umpteenth time and they promised. Thus far no scheduled trips. They actually have not been here since Wonderboy was 2 months old.

My mom and I got into an argument back then about the fact that she could not press on my newborn's belly to get the gas out and that it was not a good idea to have a just fed baby in a verticle incline. She said she had been a mother longer than me. I said that's my kid. She threw a fit and locked herself in her bedroom. The next morning she started screaming at me like a maniac and tried to hit me while I was holding the baby. She then tried to swallow a bottle of pills. Well not really. She put all the pills in her mouth but didn't swallow any of them. She was just being dramatic. What can I say? The woman is insane. She then locked herself in her room and refused to come out and made my dad leave 8 hours early the next day for the airport that is 15 minutes from my house. She didn't speak to me for a year. It was a quiet year. She finally started talking to me again but she never apologized for her behavior. Wonderdad put his foot down and said that until she apologizes she can't stay in our house. They can come see the kids but she has to stay at a hotel. They have never been back.

Anyhow, they promised and they lied. Oma started saying that Opa had to go to Switzerland to get the steamer trunks that have been there for 30 years! How that prevents them from taking a 2 hour flight to see their grandkids I don't know. I was talking to her about Thanksgiving this year. She starts talking about how she has to go to Singapore and to go help my sister who is pregnant with her second child. I said that if she goes to Singapore this year she will not have seen the kids once this year at all since we won't travel to New York for Christmas. And I was annoyed about her going to see my sister.

I'm not evil and all but here's the thing. When I was due to give birth to the Alligator I asked if she was going to come down like she did with Wonderboy. She said, "You've done this before you don't need me." Thanks. So I was irritated that she was so adamant about having to go see my sister. Plus she said that now that my sister's husband is working full time they will need her help. I was pissed because my husband and I have always worked full time. She didn't even see the Alligator until he was 6 months old. She skipped his baptism. She skipped everything else. She only saw him at 6 months because I begged my folks to join my family on our family vacation to Tampa. If I hadn't she would not have seen him until he was a 1 year old. And we were talking at that time! Not that my dad is innocent in all of this either. It's not like he came to see the kids either.

Anyhow, I was talking to my sister and I mentioned that mom was going to visit her. I started to say that I was annoyed at first about the idea but I didn't even manage to get the sentance out. She cut me off and said that she didn't want to hear it. I told her that she could at least let me get the rest of my sentence out which was to say that I was annoyed at first but then Wonderdad reminded me that she was going to have a C-section and her daughter doesn't go to daycare like Wonderboy does so she probably would need the extra help. My Sister just continued to bitch me out and say that she wasn't choosing sides and she didn't want to hear about any of it. I got so annoyed at her yelling that I just hung up. I didn't feel like arguing with her. I didn't feel like pointing out that I wasn't asking her to choose sides. I just was talking and wanted to tell her how I felt.

The thing is that I know my mom doesn't like me. She is only nice when she wants something. It's always been that way. She likes my sister. My sister isn't a bad person. She's just self involved. She never visited me in college. She never let me visit her. She never cared about anything in particular in my life. Hell she wasn't even there when I graduated as salutatorian from high school. When I was a freshman in college I knitted her a beautiful blanket in her school colors. She put it UNDER her mattress so that her mattress wouldn't slip. She's seen the Alligator once at her daughter's baptism. My husband was a godparent. At her wedding I was told the week before that I would be doing a reading and I wasn't given the reading until the morning of the wedding. After saying that she wanted me there when she got ready, she decided that her friends were enough and told me not to bother. There was one family picture. Are you getting the picture here? I've really questioned whether it's me but I seem to have friends and most people I know think that my mom is insane and my sister is a princess. Not just my friends. My friends parents. Hell even some of my parent's friends that are closer to my dad think so.

So why have I spent nearly 32 years of my life trying to be my sister's friend and to get my mom to like me? I don't know I'm taking suggestions.

Another rough morning

I went out to the car this morning, got the kids in and then tried to start the engine. I got nothing. Turns out that the sweet Alligator decided to play with the interior lights of MamaSigi mobile last night. Well with the heat at 6PM still at 101 and the lights on we were left with a dead battery this morning. Not a I can jump this and go battery. No a dead one. One swift call to AAA and they had it jumped enough so that we could go to Sears to get a new battery. Well actually I called Sears to see what the wait was like and they said that they had one tech on hand but he was allergic to battery acid. Who the fuck isn't? I don't want that shit on me either. Really allergic? Luckily WonderDad was still home this morning. He drove to the mall and picked up a battery so that I didn't have to lug BoyWonder and the Alligator through the Sears scolding them to "not touch anything" and "no we are not buying that now". I finally got to work at 10:30. I had to park on the roof of the parking garage. It should be lovely to get into this evening.

And then the cat peed...

I've been having a rough couple of weeks. It feels like nothing is going right at work. I have investigators complaining left and right about stuff I can't fix. There was Teacher appreciation week at school last week, which was miserable and my baby is growing up.

Teacher Appreciation Week was particularly trying on me. I adore the teachers at daycare. I really do. However, daycare is fucking expensive and a full week of appreciating someone (or more aptly 6 someones) is not cheap. I had not intended on sitting on the planning committee. I got roped into it at the last minute. The swine flu stuff was was on hand so I wasn't at the initial planning session. I did send a note out to the parents on the planning committee asking that we not go crazy this year. I feel like each year people were trying to top the year before. I just can't afford to deal with people's egos that way. I also mentioned that in the last year we had two increases in daycare costs. Well the head of the committee forwarded my email to the director of the daycare and she sent me a nasty note saying that they had only been one increase. WRONG. My bank account says otherwise. Things were going OK for a while. Here was the schedule of events:

Monday - Bring some sort of flower. I bought seed packets. I can't grow shit.
Tuesday -Breakfast for the teachers. Donated by Dunkin Donuts
Wednesday -Spa day. We were supposed to bring lotion of something for each teacher. First of all I bought the baskets for every teacher at daycare. No reimbursement. I made rice heating pads for the 6 teachers I had to shop for.
Thursday -Chinese lunch donated.
Friday -Early pickup, gift cards and notes from each child.

Sounds pretty sweet right? Here's where it got nasty. The woman in charge of gift cards (we had to give $10 per kid. Told you this shit was adding up.) sent an email showing the breakdown of the gift cards. Well somehow the director and the secretary had more than some of the teachers. I sent an email basically saying that that was ridiculous. The money should go to the teachers not the secretary that sits on her ass all day (I'm not knocking secretaries here. I was one at one point in my life. I just can't stand this lady.) and not the director that gets paid a lot more than the teachers. Well a bunch of parents backed me but a few didn't and were nasty about it. There was sparring all day over email. I can't stand this shit.

OK so that was finally over. On Friday it was also the Alligator's second birthday. He was not thrilled about it. There were many cries of "NO BIRTHDAY" and they weren't just from me. I picked him and Wonderboy up early and took them to the zoo. We met up with S's family, and had plans to see J's family later. It was supposed to just be the 9 of us. However, before S's family got to the zoo another child from daycare spotted Wonderboy. M is a nice boy but he is crazy rough and his mom is a simpering dolt. M actually spit in S's mom's face last year and hit her (OK maybe he's not THAT nice) and his mom did nothing. They tagged along with us for a while, irritating me all the way. M wanted to run off and I wanted Wonderboy nearby. After a half hour of M getting into everyone's faces and being too rough with Wonderboy I told him that he needed to stop or he could not play with Wonderboy. His mom mummbled, "M, do you hear that? M?" Ugh. Well he did it again and I was so peeved that I told M's mom that my kids needed to not be around M right now. I was not leaving S's family either. She packed M up and left. We did have a good time after that though.

My in-laws flew in and we had a small party of the Alligator that evening. We picked up barbecue and I even baked the cake. That by the way is a big thing since I don't really cook. It was in the shape of a tractor. Pictures to come. Wonderdad's friends/co-workers P and A came. A came with his family. We also officially found out that our neighbors are moving to Florida. I continue to be depressed by this.

The Alligator got lots of presents. Most of which he didn't want to open. He 'd open a few then want to play with them. We finally opened the last of the gifts last night. WonderDad and I managed to go out on a date with A and his wife, S. It was great. We went to Bonefish for dinner and Starbucks for dessert. Then WonderDad and I saw Star Trek and came home for sex. A good night was had by all.

OK so so far nothing sounds too bad. And in general nothing is horrible. But there are just days like yesterday that it feels like nothing can go right. I found myself being snippy with my co-workers. Alligator's godmother showed no sympathy and basically scolded me for being a working mom and allowing someone else to raise my kids (daycare in her mind), I had a massive headache and when I got home the cat had pooped in one spot upstairs, had a furball in the living room and after all of that was done I discovered that he had in fact peed on a cushion. I was frackin miserable. Wonderboy though gave me a big hug and patted my back. He said, "It's OK Mama. It will be alright." I kissed that big boy on the head and read him another chapter of Treasure Island. I told him he was my superhero. I did manage to finish Angels and Demons and WonderDad was awesome and snogged me but good. OK, I really shouldn't complain should I? In the end I know I'm luckier than many people. I have a home that's paid for, an awesome husband and tremendous kids. But let's face it every one in a while a girl needs to bitch about stuff.

Smells like Vampire Spirit

The other day I thought that I might freshen up the my office and get an air freshener. Our windows can't be opened at ThePlace and sometimes it just reeks after lunch. I bought one of those Glade Wisp Flameless candles. I don't do flowery scents so this was clean linen. I got to work and put it on. Within a short period of time I was overwhelmed by the scent. I was gagging on it. It was so cloyingly sweet that I ended up with a headache. At the time I was thinking that maybe this was what the werewolves thought that the vampires smelled like. It was the only thing that made me smile as I threw the thing away.