Typical annoying morning, the tenor of my life. Some days lately we have gotten to school at least a good 5-10 minutes early, but today was not going to be one of those days. I was going to need every minute of time. I have to watch myself as I am easily distracted even in a hurry, but I have 40 years of being rushed along, so I respond to being late by hurrying. My kids don’t. I am tired of pushing and fussing and yelling about it, so I tried just letting Bug set her own pace and deal with the consequences. That did not go over well.

So I’ve taken to setting the stove buzzer for certain key points. OK, the one coming up means it’s time to put on your shoes. The one after that will mean it’s time to walk out the door. The first buzzer goes off when Bug has barely been able to eat, so preoccupied she is with her new retainer and quad helix that she can’t get much down. Which makes me wonder, you know, why my parents didn’t get me orthodontia once they were concerned about my growing girth as a child. Would I be as fat as I am now if I had had braces as a teen? But she gets up and asks me to get her socks. She puts them on and her shoes, but I have to tie them for her.

The buzzer goes off to walk out the door. I am just finishing up on the tying of the shoes. I tell her to get her backpack, and she said it is still in my car. Oh no way, it’s not still in my car!! I brought it in the house so she could clean it out; throw away that disposable lunch I gave her on Friday because they had a field trip and her teacher wanted everything to be disposable. On that day I had had to hunt up a brown paper bag of the right size, and find a plastic spoon and give her the ice pack that came in a food package mailed from some chocolate berry company. A thank you gift to my husband for his new car purchase. The ice pack was reusable, but also disposable and was completely misshapen from melting and refreezing. So not only did she not throw any of the stuff away, she brought almost the entire contents of her lunch back, and I could smell the decaying fruit in my car on Saturday. I brought the backpack into the house, then, instructing her to clean it out. Of course that didn’t get done. She claimed she never heard me.

As an aside, on Saturday Bug had a friend visiting, and they went into my little retreat space and dumped a 1000 piece Lego set out to play with. Then they kept bugging to go to the bookstore I had said I would take them. As we were ready to walk out the door, I noticed that the Legos were still all over the floor. I kind of blew up about that, asking her what she was thinking. I mean, seriously, it’s gotten to the point that when the kids take just about any toy out, either my DH or I will say in that ominous tone, “You know you have to pick that up, don’t you?” Apparently, though, even with this dire warning, Bug still had no clue she would have to pick up all those Legos because, “you never told me to clean them up.” Insert head banging against a brick wall smilie here.

Back to this morning: Bug had her shoes on, but was trying to finish up some breakfast, cleaning out whatever gunk she had in her mouth that was caught in her quad helix. I took out her old lunch and put her new one in. I was going to go get in the car, but as I went and slipped my feet into my clogs, I saw Bug and Bean still sitting there finishing up. So I folded a few pieces of laundry that were on a chair waiting for them, and then realized that no, I shouldn’t be doing that now. I told Bean she could stay home since her Dad was still here, but she should probably come with us. She did. We got in the car and I buckled Bean into her seat and then Bug remembered her retainer (the one she is only to supposed to take out to brush it) was on the kitchen table. I ran in and retrieved it. At this point we had cut away any fat from our driving to school time, and there was literally only the time it would take to drive there and walk to the classroom.

I got in the car again, buckled up, put the key in the ignition, turned it and nothing. Nothing. The night before Bean had turned on the light by her door and I told her to turn it off and she said, No! I was parking in the garage at this point, and in an ill-fated moment, I decided not to turn the light off by the switch up front, but to get out and just make sure her light was out. Because, dammit all, I have to keep that switch turned off all the time and end up alone in the dark after choir rehearsal with no interior lights because I’m not allowed to have interior lights in my car because I have kids. Screw that, she was turning her light off. Even as she was saying no, I heard her click the light. But because I parked and opened the door, I guess she hit the switch several times. So now the battery is dead.

When I realized it, I jumped out of the car proclaiming we would take Daddy’s car. He was staying home sick today because of nausea, so his car was available. Normally that wouldn’t be the case. I ran in the house, got his keys and jumped in his car. My children were still sitting there, placidly buckled into their various seats and looking out at me. I turned away and got in his car and figured I’d get the seat adjusted and back it out of the garage. The engine started, spurring them to action and they stood there inside my minivan, crying because they couldn’t get out the door. I have no idea why not. Maybe because of the dead battery. I opened the minivan door with my key fob and they ran and got in the car. I hadn’t gotten it out of the garage, and now the fumes, even with the garage door open, were overwhelming. I turned the ignition off in order to buckle Bean into the booster seat in the back. Then I couldn’t get the car to start again. He has a keyless ignition, but the problem was I hadn’t put it back in park. Then I couldn’t get my seatbelt buckled, couldn’t find the emergency brake release, couldn’t figure out how to put my seat back forward. Bug helped me with that one.

We were driving down the street and at this point it is 9 o’clock. I figured I’d tell the woman in the attendance office that we had a burned out battery and had a delay in getting a new car. When I pulled up to the front of the school, there was still a little busy traffic with last minute drop-offs. I saw a space on the street open up as I was driving, but the cars were busy turning out of the parking lot. The speed limit in school zones is 15 mph here, so people will pull right out of the parking lot in front of oncoming traffic, as if they had the right of way. A white minivan pulled out right in front of me, and then damn if the bitch didn’t take the spot right in front of the school that I was heading for. So not only did she deny me my right of way, but she was coming out of the damn school parking lot to take my space. Then, to add insult to injury, she left a huge space right in front of her car and the car she was behind, so I had to park completely in the red zone, practically in the crosswalk. I got out of the car cursing.

I walked Bug into the school leaving Bean in the car. I wasn’t going to take the diaperless wonder out just to walk Bug the 20 feet into the front door to tell the nurse we had car troubles. The clock in the school said 9 exactly, but I figured the bell had already rung. I went into the nurse’s office to get the late slip and got a disapproving look from the woman working there. Normally I don’t even walk Bug into get the late slip, figuring that is her consequence from which to learn, but today we had a valid reason. Dead battery. Alas, the woman did not ask us why we were late. I volunteered that our car wouldn’t start, but it didn’t even slow the movement of her pen across the form or change the look on her face from one of smug disapproval to empathy. We’ve been late enough times that she thinks we should leave extra early to account for any problems. She told Bug that, actually, after we got screwed by a detour that doubled the distance we had to travel one day.

Well, you know, fuck that shit! Seriously. Fuck those smug ass be early everywhere people. As a chronic late person, the thing that sends me into a panic attack faster than anything is to invite someone to dinner at a specific time and have them show up early. But do they care about that? No, they actually think being early is virtuous. Not that I would mind Bug being early to school–no, not at all. She is allowed to be up to 20 minutes early. But I am seriously not going to stand and dictate every movement of my kid who will be 8 in May. I did that for awhile, saying, “Hurry, hurry, we’re late, MOVE!” in that excited tone that would be enough to drive most people into a frenzy. When my mom did that, we jumped into action. Bug just doesn’t get it. The buzzer will be going off, meaning we have to go get in the car, and she will sit down and decide she needs to change her pants.

So many times I’ve been tempted to jump in the car with her backpack, run in the classroom and drop it off triumphantly saying, “Look, I made it on time, I made it on time! Where is Bug, you ask? Oh, she’s still at home. I wouldn’t have made it on time if I had to wait for her.” (actually, I did run her backpack into class ahead of her in the first grade. her backpack made it on time, but she didn’t. she refuses to run, even when late). I am 40 years old and I am capable of being on time now. I have finally learned how. It was such a big thing for me in my 20s when I suffered from actual depression and self-loathing due to being late. I felt like I could never be on time anywhere and it was a fatal character flaw. Now I can be punctual! I am triumphant over tardiness! Woo Hoo! Oh wait, now I have to do it with kids. Well, fuckaduck, I’m right back to square one.

I guess I’ll be on time when I’m 60.

So there are many things I could blog about, but I specifically came here to write this down. Bean was lying on the floor just now, and it was a rare moment of silence as Bug is sleeping on the couch and DH went to bed. So she said, “Mom, how do we come to life? How do we die?” I told her we die in many ways. I didn’t get to answer her coming to life question, as she decided she wanted to watch Baby Einstein.

Of course my last post was about her and death, but I had completely forgotten that.

My husband just came out of the bedroom to tell me that our youngest (who is not yet 3.5) is worried about death. Because she won’t be able to see forever and ever, and Mommy will miss her.

I actually did say tell her that I would miss her when she was doing something dangerous. She was downstairs watching a video with her sister, and she came upstairs at one point to ask if volcanoes were dangerous. Then she said she didn’t want Bug to go to a place where there were volcanoes.

Today, for some reason, I had this burning desire to go and buy a blood sugar monitor. I started researching them online and found the one I wanted to buy, then I found another one I could get at a brick and mortar big box store. I ended up going out around 8 pm and getting it. My husband just laughed at my impetuousness, enjoying it because he is often this way and he thinks getting excited about at home diagnostic tools is just plain weird. He asked me to pick up an ethernet cable and a jar of red raspberry jam with seeds while I was out.

Almost 5 years ago I was visiting my family in Virginia and my brother from Texas was visiting too. He has Type 2 diabetes and had to test his blood sugar frequently. I wanted him to test me as well, and my bff from college, Craig, wanted his blood tested too. He had gone out and got a home blood pressure cuff as he shares my enthusiasm for monitoring this stuff. If there was a home cholesterol kit that could give me my LDL and HDL, I’m sure I’d try that too, but getting enough blood out would be a problem.

I admit I can be a bit of a do-it-yourselfer about these things. I recently tried to cut a cyst in my face with a razor blade to drain it, but have had limited success with that. I will cut my own hair too, but that is mostly because it just doesn’t seem possible to make time for a hair appointment with a toddler. Plus it seems a shame to waste money on that when I have a pair of scissors, and my dh is one of those, “Oh, but it’s so pretty long” types. Yep.

The first time I asked to have my blood sugar done for no reason was when I was working as a Health Unit Coordinator at a hospital, and one of the nurses was walking back after testing a patient. I asked her if she would test me too because I was curious. She did, then looked at my adipose body and then back at her machine before reported in semi-shock that my blood sugar was only 60. Or 66 maybe, I can’t quite remember, but it was in the 60s. I asked her if that was good, and she said it was really good. I think she thought her tester was broken.

My brother exclaimed in happiness over all the low blood sugar readings he was getting from me, Craig and my nieces who decided they’d be tested too. He said the average reading stored in the monitor’s memory was going to be much lower for awhile. I was, I thought, pregnant at the time although the baby had stopped growing a few weeks before and I didn’t realize it. A miscarriage was going to come along a week later, but I didn’t know it then. My blood sugar after coming home from dinner was over 100, but my brother seemed to think it was good. I figured not bad for a pregnant lady.

Because I am morbidly obese, I worry about my blood pressure, diabetes, all that stuff. My blood pressure has always been a little tricky, even at my lowest weights, with my lower number being a little high at times even though my higher number was fine. I’m 40 now and I don’t have the blood pressure I had when I was 20. I probably should have bought a blood pressure cuff or at least some reduced sodium V-8 for the potassium–darn it, I could have gotten it tonight when I got the jam. I take my blood pressure in those machines, and every once in awhile I get a good reading, but a lot of times it says I’m borderline or prehypertensive. In fact, it seems more and more it says that which I find a little worrisome. Yoga breathing, yoga breathing. I have to remember to take the deep relaxing breaths. I had a period of time with tightness in my chest where I never felt like I could get a good breath and I was starting to think I had asthma, but then I realized that I was always sucking my stomach muscles in while breathing and when I consciously relaxed them to draw in the deep breath like the yoga instructor taught me, I was fine.

So lately I’ve been thinking it wouldn’t hurt to do more high blood sugar prevention. I started taking a kind of fiber that is supposed to help reduce blood sugar. I read that decaffeinated coffee can have a beneficial effect on blood sugar levels, so I sometimes drink that after a meal. I try not to eat a lot of white flour type of stuff, but lately more is creeping back into my diet. And oddly enough, in the last month or so I have craved and drunk soda several times. Normally I am not a soda drinker, but I’ve been having sugar cravings. I’ve also been getting dizzy. I started wondering if maybe I shouldn’t actively try and reduce my blood sugar too much. I did that once with sodium when I was pregnant with Bug. I decided I needed to cut it down and started drinking reduced sodium tomato juice because I was craving tomato juice big time. When they reduce the sodium, they add more potassium salts so it has even more potassium than regular tomato juice. One day I woke up dizzy and craving salt, so I liberally applied the salt shaker to my tomato juice and decided to eat salt to taste after that.

I have worried that my blood sugar is fluctuating more now, and that it is a sign of diabetes coming. Hypoglycemia can be a pre-cursor from what I have heard. I have some native American blood, but I don’t know if it is enough to make a difference diabetes wise. My paternal grandmother did develop adult onset diabetes, but my European descent (Danish, English) mother who is 80 and morbidly obese does not have it. My brother blames his on his Agent Orange exposure and I could believe that as a player in all his issues. His wife who is 1/4 Chippewa also has type 2.

I know exercise is a big thing, and I do that. Sometimes more successfully than others, although I got in 4 walks this week even though I got sick. Yesterday and today I was feeling so bad I didn’t even try. But I did walk into the store and buy the monitor and a bottle of some sort of flavored water because I was absolutely parched and they didn’t have regular water. Wow, excessive thirst, isn’t that a sign of diabetes? I drank the water which contained 31 grams of sugar, then I came home and set up my blood glucose monitor. Finally it was ready and I was ready, hands washed, finger massaged. I poked myself with the lancet twice and got nothing but a little sting for my trouble. Finally I poked myself a good one and the blood flowed out. I put it in the strip and 5 seconds later it was done. 112. It was about 3 hours after dinner, but I had just had the sugar water. I figure I’ll test it in the morning and after meals for awhile until I get tired of it, and see what kind of averages I get.

Well, there has been a lot of negativity in my life with my kids lately–just emotional how we relate to each other kind of stuff, and me wanting to give it all up, but I think I am past that for the time being. So I am going to relate a few funny stories.

Today-Bug. She doesn’t want to go to gym class anymore, and this morning while getting into the car told me that she wasn’t going today and that I should see if I could cancel it. I told her I probably wouldn’t be able to get my money back, and that if she didn’t go back to gym, she would have to do something else for exercise. She wanted to know why and I told her it was for her health. She said with quite an attitude, “Why? It’s not like I have asthma or something, geez!” I wasn’t sure what asthma has to do with it, but a few years ago she watched an Arthur video and exercise was touted as good for dealing with asthma, but of course you have to be careful too, right? Anyway, this afternoon I had forgotten what her response was and asked her what she had told me. So she told me again and then said, “I’m going to stop telling you things so you can’t put them on the Internet anymore.”

Last Night-Bean. The power went out last night as Bean and Bug were up in her room, getting ready to go to bed. Bean freaked out and her dad brought her down to get a flashlight. I got candles and took them up and we went to bed. DH was in the room with Bean and Bug while I was getting ready to come up the stairs, and the wind blew really hard, causing Bean to scream right in her dad’s ear. He decided he was done and left them in the room. Bean was too frightented to sleep with Bug, and she came in the room with me and through her tears told me she was afraid that the trees were going to start walking. She had seen a preview for Bridge To Terabithia and it was coming back to haunt her, in spite of the fact that she has seen much scarier things. DH explained that it was all pretend and that trees don’t really walk. She perked up from that. She understands pretend and seemed calmer once she realized that walking trees weren’t possible. I thought that was interesting since Bug will be afraid of things that she knows aren’t real, but it is an irrational fear that she just can’t help–like the kind of I have.

Saturday-Bean. She and her sister stayed with a babysitter while I went to see Rent. Apparently Bean had a discussion with her about diapers and potty learning. Josephine told Bean that she wouldn’t be able to fit in diapers pretty soon and Bean replied with, “Helloh-ohhhh?” Josephine said, “Hello what?” Bean said, “Hello! They make diapers for grown ladies.” ROFL. She doesn’t seem like a 3 year old to me sometimes.

Well, I can’t read my comment but I just noticed there was a message feature and I have 2 messages. One was from early December. That’s pretty sad I didn’t notice until now.

To add to the non-lactivism, today was a rainy day and there was motor oil all over the parking lot of the video store where I was, so I was kind of freaking out about it. I took Bean’s boots off as soon as she got in the car. I put paper down for Bug to step on. She is constantly telling me my concerns about the cleanliness of my car are overblown, and I’m getting a little tired of her discounting my feelings when she has such strong ones herself. So as I was putting the paper in, I heard a guy talking behind me. I turned around, realized he wanted money, turned back around to the car to get some although I have basically none. He thought I was blowing him off, ignoring him and started talking louder, telling me why he needs the 85 cents. Normally people ask for change I give them a dollar or two or five if I have it. I had not a penny in my wallet, but some change in my change receptacle in my car. So I turned back around to tell him I didn’t have much cash, only change, and I’d give him that. I probably gave him over a dollar, I didn’t count, but it pretty much cleaned me out.

Bug was annoyed. Even as he was standing there she was asking, “Why does he need money? That’s stupid, he shouldn’t ask you for your money!” So I was explaining he needed money to buy things and I didn’t really know why he needed the money (nor do I care, really, I figure he needs it and I’ll give it to him). So driving home she got downright truculent. “Well he shouldn’t get your money that you earned, that’s not right!” I explained that I was freely giving it because he asked me, and it was my choice. “Well, you shouldn’t have given it to him!”

Doggone! The kid is coming with me to the next Family Promise thing at church.

In other news, before that we had been to a new dentist for Bug to have a cleaning and check-up. It’s been over a year and the last time she went was when I posted here (hey, I have a record of the date, cool, I just thought of that) about how upset I was when the dentist pushed on her teeth and said they’d be falling out soon anyway, because, you know, she’s still my baby. The man’s insurance changed and our old dentist wasn’t there, so I finally got them set up with this new office. I like the waiting room in the other place better, This one has better magazines, but it is longer and narrower and the space is shared with the chiropractor’s office on the other side. That office was closed for the day, but I could see how it might be a problem to find a place to get out of the way when they have patients too. Anyway, some teen boys were there and Bean was doing her normal crawling on the floor, angry hissing cat routine. So I was reading an old People, trying to get the article finished before I had to leave, and I could hear the boys laughing pretty hard at times. Apparently Bean amused them. She would go right up and crawl on their shoes. She would climb up on the chair between them and act silly. She even was biting the one guy’s tennis shoes. Ummm, yeah, OK. I distracted her with the kids’ table which I had overlooked as it was right by the entrance, and I read her a book and did a puzzle with her and such. Then she crawled away and a man almost tripped over her getting a new magazine. He sat down and petted her as she crawled by, though. He seemed amused by her too. I ended up taking her outside to splash in the parking lot because I felt like a little Bean can go a long way.

My daughter, the non-lactivist

Bug has told me before that she was going to bottlefeed, or that she has problems with breastfeeding. Today she was showing me some pictures that she had drawn in her I can draw 100 things booklet. Yesterday was the 100th day of school, and there were special activities there. Bug was home sick, so she gets to do all the work at home that she missed during the classroom day. For 10 soft things she drew 10 babies in pajamas. “And look, this baby is wiping the milk off his lip, and this baby is holding is bottle, and all the others have pacifiers.” I couldn’t resist and said in a dismayed kind of tone, “Oh, you mean they aren’t breastfed?” She said, “well, this will probably hurt your feelings, but I want to give my babies bottles.” I have heard this before, but I still test the issue when it arises. I asked her why she wanted to bottlefeed, and she said that she thinks it is better. I told her it wasn’t better, that breastfeeding is.

A little while later she wanted to know why bottlefeeding is bad and I told her it’s not that it is bad, but that mammals are meant to get milk from their mothers and anything else just isn’t as good, it’s just a matter of biology. So her response was, “But mama, we aren’t like other mammals.” Well, that is certainly true enough.

I feel like I haven’t journaled enough about Bean. She says things to me that seem like a sophisticated way of thinking, yet in that little voice with its odd R’s and S’s it is hard to tell. She has always claimed to have green eyes. I haven’t been able to tell what her eye color is, frankly, but she says they are green. I figured someone told her she has green eyes at some point, but I don’t really remember anyone ever saying it in our family. Her eyes are a kind of grayish green with an almost yellowness to them in the middle. I thought maybe that was the brown mixing with the blue and that they are considered hazel, but they are a kind of greenish color.

A few days ago I was nursing her and I was looking at her eyes in the bright room and they looked green to me. I said, “Wow, you have green eyes.” And she replied, “Yes I do!” Then she said, “I can see *everything* with my eyes” She was so enthusiastic and happy about it.

She says a lot of bad words. Today I dropped Bug off at school and I don’t think she made it into the class before the final bell. So I parked the car in an open space on the street and I got out to see if I could tell anything, but I couldn’t. I never heard the bell ring. We’ve had so many tardies this year, right after they changed the starting time of school back a half an hour and it messed up our cycles. The principal just sent a letter home and I’m to the point that I would rather she just miss school than be late. I think she was late today. Anyway, I didn’t go too far down the sidewalk since Bean was in the car. When I got back into the car, she said, “I told you to get in the car.” Not in the way where she was ordering me, but like she was explaining that while I was out, she was telling me to get back in the car and then I did. I responded with, “Oh you did, cool.” Then she said, “Yeah, I told you to get in the fucking car.”

She uses a lot of negative phrases. She calls things stupid all the time, says I hate you, calls people dumbasses (stupid dumbasses, fat dumbasses, probably fucking dumbasses although I’m not sure I’ve heard that combo yet). I never really cared about the swearing and I tried to ignore it and not give the words any weight, but I get upset when she is hurling insults around, and lately I’ve tried to tamp down on the swearing because people will interpret it negatively and it might upset them. I told her to stop saying those words as people will not like them. Bean replied with, “I’m not going to stop, I don’t want to say nice words.”

A bit of Bean:

Me: “Are you having fun?”
Bean: “Yes, I’m drawing a spaghetti monster.”
Me: “You are?”
Bean: “Yes, a black one…I like black.”

She sounds so cute with her hoarse little voice and inability to pronounce R’s. She was pleased with her drawing. She gave the flying spaghetti monster black hair. And she drew in his meatball eyes. She’s pretty happy right now.

This entry is x-posted from another blog, with names changed to place names in World of Warcraft to keep this entry consistent with all my others, as I almost never use real names.

The smell of woodsmoke woke me up this morning. The light in the room was dim and the from little bit of the day that I could see from between the edge of the shade and the wall, I decided it was foggy. The smell was pleasant and not too strong, so I went back to sleep. I woke up a little while later and the smell was much stronger. There was some sun coming through the glassblock window of the bathroom at this point, but it still seemed dimmer than normal. It was about 8:10, later than Bean usually sleeps. At this point the smoke smell was strong enough that I was worried something in my house was on fire–even though the smell was still really woody and not the harsh chemical smell of burning synthetics. I went down tothe kitchen and realized everything was OK, so I went out the front door. It appeared kind of smoky out and there was a strong odor. I looked towards the end of the road and the entire gully appeared full of smoke. I figured there was a brush fire nearby.

I was standing out in my nightgown, and it actually wasn’t too cold. It felt dry and the grass was cool, but not in the least bit damp. It was breezy and the sky was golden in places, and covered with clouds in others. I came back in and told the husband that it wasn’t our house that was burning, but that there was a nearby brush fire. We turned on the news to see where it was. These fires can be deceiving and seem closer than they really are. One year it was smoky with the smell of smoke in the air from fires in Oregon (OK, this is a real name, I admit it). Another time there was a big fire a good 50 miles away that I was convinced was just a few miles. So we turned on the news and a little blurb was running across one of the tv programs. It said the third fire was burning in Elwynn Forest, about 13 acres. That explained it. Elwynn Forest is about 18 miles away by car (shorter as the crow flies), and this explained the smoke I was smelling, so I thought. There was another fire in the Alterac Valley area, mostly contained, also small. I asked the husband if he wasn’t glad we weren’t living in Elwynn after all. The news captions started over again and then we found out that the biggest fire, 150 acres at that point in time, was right up the street. No homes were threatened, so I figured it was burning in the open area near a big planned community. I went back outside again and it was colder and the smoke had been blown out, but I could see the burning area in the open field where I walk sometimes.

Apparently the fire has gotten up to 300 acres, but it has been overcast for much of the day and rain started pouring down about half an hour ago. It switched to a kind of wet snow and now it seems to have stopped, but I don’t know if the fire is contained. It was proving hard when the winds were blowing, but they were expecting the rain to come and help things. Right now it is a kind of bright grayish kind of overcast that I associate with November (or maybe April rainstorms), and a light dusting of snow is visible on the lower elevation mountain range east of us.