Random Outlaw

A Hefty Dose Of Stupid...

Normally I run out of work like a bat out of hell so I can get the Moosh up, fed, dressed, and safely dropped off at school before I start exhibiting signs of narcolepsy.  It is a complicated dance.

This morning, however, I have a training class that lasts until 10:30 AM.  My boss made an extra effort to tell us that this class was NOT OPTIONAL, so I made arrangements with R so that he could drop the Moosh off at school instead of me. 

It sounds simple, but was in fact relatively complicated because R hadn't ever been to the Moosh's school before.  We had to get an extra car seat because we only had one.  R went with us on Monday so that he would know how to get the Moosh logged into his classroom properly. OK? OK.  All lights are green for go.

So today I got very little sleep (thank you, parent-teacher conference!) so by the time R got home from work I fell into bed with nary a word to him and slept straight up until it was almost time for me to leave.  I scrambled around in a rush, making sure I was dressed and ready for work, and on the way out the door, I hastily grabbed the keys to the car I normally drive to work.  Which was the car R was supposed to take in the morning to get the Moosh to school.  The one with the car seat in it.  Ooooooooops.

Luckily there is no problem, it's only a slight inconvenience for R... he'll have to install the spare booster seat in another car and take him to school in that, but still.  I was the one that made all the plans.  I was the one who was shrill about it.  I was the one who made sure R was up to date on all the plans... then I drove off in the wrong car.

Doh!!

Damned

1. I have locked my keys in the car.
2. The Moosh is stuck at school.
3. The locksmith is coming from the other side of the planet.
4. I feel stupid.
5. We were supposed to go to my parents' house tonight and now we can't.
6. The Moosh is going to be even more disappointed than I am. If I ever get him home from school, that is.
7. I was really needing family support because we are being audited by the IRS.
8. I really hate my life today.

The More You Know...

Apparently I have been tying my shoes incorrectly for 25 years.  I had been reading jo(e)'s site, catching up on all her posts because I had gotten so far behind on reading her site that I had given up all together (sorry jo(e)!).  Anyway I found this post from back in November about how her shoes were always coming untied and I was nodding vigorously the whole time going, "Yeah, my shoes are always coming untied too!"

In the comments to that post someone posted a link to Ian's Shoelace Site where he explains the ins and outs (quite literally!) of shoe tying and how it is quite possible to tie a bow that will come undone quite easily, which I have apparently been doing for the last 25 years.

I have now learned a cool new way to tie shoes, which I intend to teach to the Moosh, mainly because that technique always creates a correct bow.

I feel 12 kinds of wrong.  I am totally going to give my mom a hard time for teaching me to tie my shoes incorrectly.  How could she? Damn you mom!!!!

Solutions

I feel better.  Last week sucked though.  Lisa V. was right when she wrote in the comments that I was in a low period... I was sick.  Sick, sick, sick last week and loathe to take a day off because it was only the 2nd week in January and I can't even think of using my precious sick time in the first 2 weeks of the year. It makes me twitch.

I have decided to rearrange my schedule so that I am doing almost all of my chores in the morning and leaving the evenings free for relaxation and family.  I had made this elaborate menu plan but all the stuff just takes way too long to make.  I think I will cook complicated meals on the weekends, and feed R leftovers during the week while the Moosh and I eat pasta and chicken nuggets.  We'll waste less food that way, too.   I used to make the Moosh's lunch in the morning, but instead I decided to move the lunch prep to the evening before and make it with the Moosh's input (so that he will acutally eat it rather than playing with it).  Moving the lunch prep makes room in the morning for a quick run to the store before I get home.  I also decided to reallocate 20 minutes from the afternoon after I wake up to the morning before I go to bed (so I will be waking up later) and making sure that I utilize the time well rather than slogging around the house doing absolutely nothing.  Waking up later also has the benefit of making me less tired at work... so I think this will be a winning situation all the way around which makes me hap-hap-happy.

I have also decided to let the TV watching go as long as we are getting other stimulation and everyone is happy.  We have a unique situation in our house with a husband who's gone all the time, a working mom, and a kid who cannot spend a single minute by himself without practically having a heart attack... we have to make judgements based on OUR situation at THIS time, and me beating myself up over something so trivial is not helping.

Whew.  That was boring!

I am really enjoying the winter solitude at work these days.  It is notoriously slow around here in the winter and I love it.  It's a good down time before the whole country gets rained on in the spring.

I Thought I Would Be Better At This

I've been thinking a lot lately about parenting because honestly I think I'm doing a pretty crappy job.  I was such a great parent before I had a kid!  I envisioned all these things we would do together and how wonderful it would be... and while we do things together and it is occasionally wonderful, there's also a whole lot of work involved. 

I know what the primary problem is: I am an introvert, and the Moosh is an extreme extrovert.  He fills his cup by spending time with people.  I had hoped that being at school all day would help him, um, leave me alone more at home, and it kind of does, but all he wants to do is watch TV.  When the TV is off, he wants to be with me.  But if I have spent every waking moment of my day cooking/cleaning/picking up from school/etc. I need time to wind down, or else I become a horrendous bitch.   So what happens is that the TV gets turned on when we come home, and I feel massively guilty because it pretty much stays on until R comes home.  That is not to say that the Moosh sits there like a lump in front of the TV all night - far from it, actually - but it's still there, and it feels like a constant intrusion.

I thought parenting would be more fun.  It turns out that I am just not that good at being pulled in 17 directions.  It's not something you can really know until you're being pulled in 17 directions and you start going slowly insane.  THEN you know that you're not good at it.  That's how I feel now.

I am really worried about the Moosh starting real school in the fall.  I don't know how I am going to handle homework on top of everything else.  The Moosh is really opposed to me doing anything structured with him at all. He won't even let me read to him these days.  It's very discouraging.   I worry about how is school performance will suffer if I can't help him with his homework.  We all know R is not going to be around to help. 

I thought writing this out would help, but I'm feeling more down about it now.  I'll stop here an revisit later if I can.

Week From Hell

Whiny, whiny.

Oh man last week suuuuuuucked. 

I started the tax process on Monday, only to realize that I screwed up the accounting for one of the companies for the business.  Which meant I had to do it all over again.  Then I had to do the business taxes, which led to a lot of head slamming against hard surfaces.  Trying to reconcile all the quarterly tax filings to the yearly tax filing is an experience that I do not want to repeat. Ever.

I worked on the taxes in the evenings from Monday - Wednesday while the Moosh enjoyed the company of his rectangular headed parent (i.e. the television).  I am such an awesome mother that I totally ignored his ever-increasing illness until I got his entire lunch back from the school on Wednesday.  Then I compounded it by making him go to a half day of school on Thursday.  Poor baby.  I hate the fact that the business stuff gets in the way of my parenting, but there it is. 

I took the Moosh to the doctor on Friday and they determined that he had a sinus infection.  I already knew that because I also have a sinus infection.  It hurts.  The doctor surmised that the drainage from the sinus infection was causing some reactive airway issues (aka asthma) so they did a nebulizer treatment and after that he felt much better.  He is now on a long course of antibiotics to try and kick the infection.  I hope it works because the kid is a walking pharmacy these days.

I'm at work currently, miserable and wondering if I also have an ear infection in addition to my lovely sinus infection.  Sigh.  I fear there is another trip to the doctor in my future...

Items For The New Year

Lots of things to cover, so I'll jump right in:

Santa

I caved like a cheap canvas tent on this one.  It was all Santa, all the time at our house until, like, yesterday, when I told the Moosh that Santa is now firmly esconced in his ice palace in the North Pole, and no, we can't visit.

Honestly he buys into Santa so deeply that even if I did tell him that I am Santa, I don't think he'd believe me, so I decided just to go with the flow.

New Year's Resolutions

I tried to make these attainable this year, because I usually fail miserably at them.  So, without further adieu:

• Extend the Moosh's school day to 7-7.5 hours, thereby allowing me to get more beauty rest.
• Treat school like school and not daycare... no more skipping even if I happen to be off that day.
• No more picking the Moosh up early on Fridays as a matter of course... I need downtime, and I am paying for it anyway.
• Try to get in a massage/hair cut/eyebrow wax/pedicure once a month (picking one, not all of them!).  If I go to the beauty school it is not at all expensive and I need to pay more attention to myself.
• More exercise! My T-Tapp schedule got thrown out last July and I need to at least do BWO+ 3x a week.  That's 45 minutes.  Surely I can come up with 45 minutes a week!

That's it, boring, I know.

Fucking Taxes

R didn't pay me last month causing me to swear loudly, and go on strike, so I was secretly hoping that he would continue not paying me so that I could blithely ignore the looming tax season.  But no.  There was a shiny, shiny check sitting on the desk for me this morning, so I need to prepare to send out W-2s and finish cooking the books balancing the accounts so that our accountant can file our tax return ASAP.  Even though I upped my withholdings considerably last year I am due a fairly sizeable return as long as the business didn't make any money (which, if it did, would only be about $500 - $1000 but it still screws things up because we have to pay mega taxes on that money).  I know for sure that one company lost money, not so sure about the other one.  So we'll see.

Hope nobody got too drunk over New Years.  I was at work, so no drinky for me.