I'd rather be doing housework?

I have discovered that being back at work full time means that I don’t have any time left for anything anymore. So it goes without saying that I’ve been a terrible blogger and for that I apologize. Not that I know who exactly I’m apologizing to because I doubt that I have any readers left at this point.

So what’s been happening in the Ordinary life? A whole lotta working and chores it seems. I’m really finding that I feel like I don’t get to see enough of my little monkey anymore, and I’ve been having a hard time with that. I’m told it gets easier…but do I want it to? I don’t want to get used to missing him. Even when I am home with him I feel like I can’t give him my full attention because there’s laundry and dishes and chores…My solution? I’m hiring a cleaning lady. My husband tells me I’m being ridiculous, but he doesn’t do the housework now does he? Pick up a dust cloth or mop once in a while and then you can have an opinion. He knows when to shut up.

Hmm…what else? Since the little guy had surgery to get tubes in his ears, the whole constant ear infection thing was supposed to get better. Well now, that would have been too easy. He’s been leaking what can only be described as GOO from both of his ears ever since he had a cold 2 weeks ago; I’m grateful that he’s no longer in pain, but I was really hoping the ear infections would stop. He’s still needing antibiotics and eardrops.

I was really hoping he wouldn’t need antibiotics anymore because they’ve been killing his appetite – all he wants is bread and Cheerios (and Arrowroots!) – he won’t touch fruit or veggies or meat. And of course being allergic to dairy limits our options too. I tried so hard to avoid creating a fussy eater! Boo.
I guess one bonus since his ear surgery is that his language development seems to have really
blossomed. Maybe a coincidence, but it makes me wonder how well he was hearing before. It’s such an incredible thing to see him learning so quickly – it seems every day he learns a new word or two: Bum. Box. Bubble. Bye-bye. Boot. (This week has been brought to you by the letter “B”). It doesn’t stop being adorable.

Aside from me worrying about my little man, we’ve been busy trying to get our house finished so that we can move in next month. There’s been a lot of delays and hiccups along the way, but things are looking really good. We’re just finishing the flooring and paint, and then the kitchen and bathrooms can go in – very exciting. It will definitely make the headache of moving again worthwhile.

Okay so I better stop there because I’m fairly certain this isn’t considered “work-related”. (Don’t judge…like I said, I’m still having difficulty finding the balance). Till next time.

O Christmas tree, how ever-synthetic your branches

Each year I am faced with the same Christmas dilemma...real or fake?  The pure, fragrant, traditional, nostalgia of a real tree?  Or the hassle and mess free ease of an artificial one?  Years ago we started using an artificial tree and haven't really looked back, except that for the nagging sense of guilt that I feel every year as I pop the tree up, lights and all, in two minutes flat. 

You see I'm the kinda girl that takes a certain pleasure in the simple things this world offers - home cooked meals, baking from scratch, walks in the woods, you get the idea.  And I really try hard not to get caught up in the commercial consumerism that has become Christmas for so many people.  So an artificial tree kinda goes against my beliefs, if you will.

But then I remember.  You see, putting up the Christmas tree brings back some childhood memories that are the complete opposite of joyful or merry.  After my parent's divorce, there wasn't a handy man around to do the manly things required to get a tree from the lot to your living room (like strap a tree to the roof of the car or saw off the bottom branches).  My mom didn't let that stop her by any means (she's a champ) but the going was tough.  By the time we had the tree home and ready to go into the stand we were all pretty worn out.

Ah yes.  The tree stand.  I'm pretty sure they've come a long way since the last one that I had to deal with almost 20 years ago (for you real-tree people I truly hope they have), but the one I remember was green metal with four curved legs coming off of a round bowl.  There were 4 bolt-like pegs that poked through the bowl so you could tighten them into the trunk of the tree to hold it up. 

It sucked.  I vividly remember my brother and I fighting to hold the tree upright as my mom tried to tighten those stupid pegs to secure the tree, all the while we were getting poked in the hands and arms by a thousand little needles.  After what seemed like hours of battling to get the tree just UP, we still had to untangle and string lights.  Once the tree was finally decorated, it would inevitably fall down in the middle of the night and we'd have to start over again.  I remember one year all three of us ended up crying over the tree that just wouldn't stand.  That was the last year we had a real tree.

I guess all the memories aren't bad.  I do recall the excitement of running through the maze of freshly cut and snow covered trees with my brother trying to pick the perfect one.  And of course there's the unbeatable fragrance of pine in your home.  And once we finally did get the tree up it was always beautiful.

So I do feel a little guilty having an artificial tree, but not nearly guilty enough to go back and relive that nightmare.  Plus, the baby would totally just eat the needles and I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be good.  Oh yeah and I'm also saving the planet a little by not cutting a tree down.  So there.

Domestic disturbance

So yesterday was pretty much the worst day ever.

It starts out with me getting up at 5:30 with our son who barely slept all night because he is sick with a cold.  Why, I ask, with the advances of modern medicine, have they not come up with cold medication that is safe for babies and toddlers?  He doesn't know how to blow his nose for crying out loud.  He tries to eat and big snot bubbles are coming out of his little nostrils.

In addition to his cold, and a tooth popping through, the little monkey has had an ear infection for like six weeks now.  He just started his third kind of antibiotics the other day, which gave him a rash and upset stomach so I stopped them.  So he's totally miserable.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, our house has been for sale.  We've been trying to sell it in time to buy this other place that we wanted to fix up and flip.  So yesterday our agents call.  Good news: our house sold.  Bad news: the individual selling the house we want decides at the last minute to increase the price we verbally agreed upon by forty thousand dollars, so essentially we wouldn't make any money flipping it (lesson: you can't trust anyone).  But our house is already sold.  SO, we have exactly one month to find someplace to go.

So my hubby comes home from work and I give him the bad news, all the while the baby's wailing because his teeth or ears or tummy or something hurts and apparently Tylenol isn't cutting it.  Then I catch a whiff of something not normal and I ask my husband to assist me in changing one nightmare of a dirty diaper (I guess it was his tummy hurting after all).  So as we're trying to argue discuss where the hell we're going to live, my hubby is trying to hold the baby still while I clean up the other end.  So naturally the baby screeches louder and tries even harder to do back flips on his change table, effectively getting poop everywhere.  So I snap at hubby to hold him still, and he snaps at me that he's trying to.

And then he catches a glimpse of the rash from the antibiotics and is all, "Holy crap! I don't want him to have any more of that shit." And I'm like, "I already stopped giving it to him.  I knew that stuff would make him sick".  And then he says, "Well if you knew it would make him sick then why'd you give it to him?"  I think my jaw dropped because I saw the look on his face as he realized what he'd said.  But it was too late.  I had officially exceeded my ability to cope, and all my ugliness came bubbling over.  "So it's my fault he's sick?  You're an asshole."  And then I stomped off in a most mature fashion.

Now just to be clear, we're not a couple who call names or swear at each other.  We decided very early in the game that it was too damaging and promised we wouldn't do it.  So we squabble and bitch and even yell sometimes, but we don't hit below the belt.  Until today.  Anyway, my words apparently hurt me more than him because I was the one who ended up blubbering into the sofa cushion.  I felt terrible for reacting that way, but mostly I was upset that we had fought in front of the baby.  Another thing we promised never to do from the beginning.  And I hope we don't forget that promise again.

We ended up both apologizing and realizing that the combined stress of being exhausted, having a sick baby, and selling our house out from under us had gotten the better of us.  So at least we didn't go to bed mad at each other. 

But it was still the worst day ever.

That hat

Where to begin....

My husband has this hat.  He bought it as a souvenir on a trip we took to Alberta several years ago.  It is the unrivalled winner when it comes to things to argue about in our house.  Hands down.

He loved his new hat, more commonly known as "the Banff hat", and wore it every day for the longest time.  Even at inappropriate times like when we were out for dinner (argument topic #1).  He wore it so much that it started to fade and tear and come apart - but he continued to wear it anyway, even though it made him look unkempt and sloppy (argument topic #2).  We had this argument once on our way to dinner at a friend's place when I was pregnant.  I don't remember the entire fight, but I do remember crying (gimme a break I was pregnant) and holding that stupid hat out the car window threatening to throw it.  I don't know what stopped me but I've since regretted my hesitation on many occasions. 

The hat finally started to look awful enough that some friends started to tease him about it along with me, and then it finally got demoted from his "everyday" hat to his "work" hat.  I could live with that.  I thought...



Hat prior to work use.  Note frayed edges and sweat stains.


But we weren't done fighting about that hat yet.  You see, my husband builds homes for a living, so most days comes home looking like he crawled out of a mud hole.  So needless to say, the hat is filthy.  I mean filthy.  And the smell of it would make your eyes water.  How anyone could put a dirty, reeking hat on their clean head in the morning is way beyond me (argument topic #3).  And then he complains that he's losing his hair, and refuses to acknowledge the possibility that it's because he wears that radioactive thing on his head day after day (argument topic #4). 



Hat today - on my table

 Sure, I wash it whenever I can get my hands on it, but it doesn't matter because it's dirty again the next day anyway.  Really, the fact that he wears the disgusting thing to work doesn't really bother me that much.  It's the fact that I find it lying around the house that I have a problem with (argument topic #5).  Like on the kitchen counter.  On the table.  On our bed.  On the couch or floor (where the baby can, and does, find it and put it in his mouth - GAG).  Need I go on? 

I don't want to look at it.  I don't want to smell it.  And I really don't want to touch it.  Yet for some reason I still seem to have to get up close and personal with that hat on a daily basis.

The things we do for love.

Confession: My fridge looks like it belongs to a hoarder

I finally cleaned out the fridge today.  This is a big deal.  I decided it was high time I did something about the state my fridge was in after my sister-in-law did nothing to hide her horror when she opened the door on the weekend.  She's always known that I'm a slacker when it comes to cleaning out the fridge, but as she rummaged around trying to find a spot for something she finally exclaimed, "That's it!  I'm coming over this week and we're cleaning out your fridge!  This is ridiculous!"

I was suddenly reminded of an episode of Hoarders where this lady wouldn't throw anything out of her fridge and it was so full of rotting food that she couldn't shut the door and her family had to do an intervention...well, you get the idea.  It's not that I have some unconscious need to keep the crap that's in there.  As a matter of fact, if some magic cleaning fairy came one night and cleaned it out for me I would be ridiculously happy.  I guess it's just laziness.  That and the fact that I have better things to do (ahem, rationalization?).

It's not as though I never clean it out.  It just doesn't get done until:
     a) there's no more room to put things,
     b) something smells bad, or
     c) I put my hand into the crisper drawer and pull it out dripping with sludge from an unknown source.

Anyway, it's a problem and one I'm not proud of.  It's humiliating actually.  Because, aside from the fridge, my house is pretty clean.  Sure, I have my issues with stashing clutter and putting off laundry the same as most people, but dirty I am not.  So there was no way in hell I was going to have my sister-in-law coming over to do this - I decided then and there that I would clean out the fridge today, come hell or high water (plus, me sticking my finger through a liquefied english cucumber pretty much sealed the deal).

Among the treasures in this stainless steel chest were:

• 3 expired sour cream containers, one unopened
• 2 nearly empty jars of salsa
• 5 jars of jam (count 'em, FIVE - I kept one, the rest weren't quite empty but were low enough that you couldn't get the jam out without getting all sticky)
• 3 empty mustard containers
• 4 containers of unidentifiable leftovers
• 2 nearly full bottles of Bailey's Irish Cream - one from last Christmas and one from the year before (you got it - that would have been 2008)
• 4 leftover chunks of butter, all expired
• 2 half-empty jars of Cheez-Whiz (I don't even remember buying or eating Cheez-Whiz)
• 3 english cucumbers - all at different stages of decomposition.
• about 50 of those little plum and soya sauces that come with chinese take-out

THE SHAME.

I wonder what the garbage man will think when he sees my recycling bin.

But it's all done - squeaky clean.  And the process was surprisingly cathartic.  I'm going to seriously try not to let this happen again.  Seriously.

Open house

We're in the process of selling our house, which is not a process I enjoy.  It essentially requires making your house look like one out of a magazine that nobody lives in, and then keeping it that way.  Keeping a house clean and tidy enough to have buyers come through at a moments notice is not an easy task, even without a toddler tearing around the house like a Tasmanian devil (keeping it even civilized is difficult with this little monkey).

Plus, it's kinda creepy to think about strangers snooping through your home when you're not there - opening closets and cupboard doors (I have a bad habit of stashing clutter in these places to put away "later"), scrutinizing every detail.  I have anxiety every time we leave the house about whether I've adequately hidden embarrassing unmentionables or forgotten to flush a toilet (yes, sometimes I leap off the toilet just in time to stop the baby from eating a handful of cat hair or a dirty Q-tip out of the garbage and forget to flush...so sue me). 

I remember one time when we were kids and my mom was trying to sell the house.  We were rushing to finish dinner and get out so people could come through, and my brother threw up all over the carpet in his bedroom like 10 minutes before we had to leave.  Just thought I'd throw that out there.
I don't know what would be worse - an unflushed toilet or a room that smells like vomit.

I'll be glad when this is over.   

Kraft Dinner anyone?

Lately I've been feeling pretty sorry for my husband at mealtimes.  Since the baby was born my time, energy, and motivation to prepare interesting meals has pretty much gone down the toilet (or I suppose 'into the diaper pail' is more appropriate).  We still eat pretty healthy meals, but variety?  Forget it.  I'm out of ideas.  Dried right up.  Perhaps it has something to do with the TV being perpetually tuned-in to Treehouse instead of The Food Network as was the case pre-baby. 

Not that I think I should have to prepare interesting meals - or even meals at all  (I'm all for equal distribution of household duties and woman power and all that), but the unfair truth is that for almost 10 years I did make a pretty solid effort in the kitchen, and it's not really fair to lead the poor guy on like that you know?  Not to mention the fact that he's a positively hopeless cook (before we met a typical dinner for him would consist of a bag of microwave popcorn or a Mr. Noodles cup - frankly I don't know how he didn't have scurvy).

My tongue-in-cheek claim to be a domestic goddess seems to be less accurate as each day passes - let's face it, I'm no Nigella or Giada.  I can see my secret dream of quitting my career in nursing to pursue my interests in the culinary world fading into the past.  Maybe I'll be able to revive it one day.  But for now...the proverbial Kraft Dinner box will still have a home in my pantry.