You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch

So...yeah.  I officially hate Christmas.  I'm done with it.  And I know that makes me the Grinch.  What can I say, I'm extra grinchy.  Here is the recipe for making a grinch out of someone who generally loved this time of year for her whole life:

Start with my package to the Mos in beautiful CA getting manhandled in the post.  Probably my fault but I thought the word "fragile" meant something.  I think it's an illusion that the postal service grants us to make us feel better.  It really means something like "please drop kick this package all the way from Ohio to California, oh and make sure you run it over with a vehicle at least twice as well", exactly the opposite of what I thought it meant.  Strange.  I guess sometimes you use a word for years and no one ever tells you that the word doesn't mean what you think it means. 

Add to that the fact that we end up traveling to five different places to do Christmas at each one.  Seriously, I did Christmas for four days straight.  I'm so tired.  The kids are tired.  Asher looked at Ryan on actual xmas (our last day of running around doing the whole condensed 12 days of xmas skit that is our yearly ritual) and said he was tired of opening presents, that he just wanted to go home and play.  My child, tired of opening presents.  That has to speak more loudly than anything I can bitch about on here...

Stir in a heaping helping of gifts.  So many gifts.  Please don't take this the wrong way.  I appreciate that all the grandparents love their grandchildren and want to make them happy.  But more isn't always better. Seriously.  They don't each need more gifts than we gave them at home from each grandparent.  I've been trying to get the grandparents to cut down on the gifts and they pretty much just laugh at me.  We have more toys than my children will ever play with in their entire lives.  I don't have the time to figure out where everything came from and return it, and if I were to ask the grandparents to return stuff, then feelings get hurt.  When I was a kid my grandparents got us one article of clothing and maybe a book or a toy.  Those were the good old days.  I really don't mean to bitch about presents but...it's just too much from the grandparents.  Also, it makes me feel like shit that they give my kids more than they open under the tree at home.  Oh, and of course I don't want my children to turn into self entitled little assholes, too. 

Shake up vigorously with all the trash and children's toy packaging and mountains of junk. 

Add a dash of too many people smoking around me and my family. 

Just a pinch of too much driving with a screaming, teething baby.

3/4 a cup of little to no sleep.

2 TBS of general holiday stress combined with exhaustion due to the fact that I absolutly hate the consumeristic-ness of the holiday.  Yeah, I made that word up, deal with it.  I'm adding it the English lexicon. 

Bake for 4 days of christmas travel and  you get the perfect grinch recipe.

Oh, and add to all of that...the first present I got for xmas...was my period.  Thanks world.  Thanks a lot. 

I officially hate the holidays.

Hello, it's me. I've thought about us for a long long time

So, yeah.  I missed two months of blogging.  What a bad girl.  I've really thought about blogging a lot.  But...I take for granted that you're always there, I take for granted that you just don't care. 

Thanksgiving was par for the course.  I liked the food.  Got to see my Korea cousin briefly.  The fink was supposed to come hang out with me but was too busy with her friends from Kent, understandably so, I mean, she was  only here for such a short time...but it was a little sad for me anyway.  Now it will be a whole nother year before she comes back and I'm sure I'll only see her for 15 minutes then, too.

Oh well.  It is what it is.  And I never want to make you change for me. 

Someone had Todd on the mind...

Asher had the flu, like the real official flu last weekend.  It was rough.  Half of his class was out with it.  Seiry didn't get it, thankfully. 

I ordered this thing from foodie cleveland, it's a coupon book for a bunch of local restaruants.  JJ suggested I blog about it, and I think that's a great idea, so I'm going to try really hard to do that. 

I need a hobby.  I need to feel like a real person again.  All I feel like is a care robot.  And it's my own fault. I know this.  But I still can't stop myself.  So I need a "non" parent thing to do, something for me.  Maybe after we get through the holidays. 

I'm feeling disillusioned with the holidays this year.  I'm not sure why.  I just can't find the holiday spirit.  I hate the consumerism of the holiday and yet I feel dragged into it and responsible for the commercial happiness of my children.  How do you get out of that?  Also, how do you make the grandparents stick to a 1-2 gift limit for their grandchildren?  I'm tired of the grandparents giving my kids 50 presents at each holiday, it's sick.  It's too much.  It makes them expect shit all the time.  And I don't want my kids to be self entitled assholes.  I mean, any more than most 3 year olds already are naturally...

Sorry, this is a bummer blog post.  I'll work on it...

So I'm changing my lines and going into it blind

Hello.  Long time no talk.  It's so hard to find a few minutes to myself in which I can spend doing something that isn't personal or household hygiene related.  It's been a hard transition back to work for me and the kids, too.  So, frowny face on that.  I think Asher held the award for the most accidents in one week at school last week.  Four in one day.  I was sooooo mad at his school last week, too.  I'm not going to get into it right now, let's just say there was a complete breakdown of communication and it ended up in one really pissed off mom and an angry phone message for his teacher.  I'm waiting to hear back.  Maybe if I get a chance I'll write about it after I hear from her.

Gotta love City holidays, I got Asher off to school (you should have seen him go in, Ry told me about it because I had to drop off Seiry at Granny's house and then drop my car off for service), all hunch backed and glum.  Ry said if there was a can to kick he would have done it.  I have no idea why he's having such a hard time...he tells us he loves school but then when we take him he's all whiny.  We are planning on playing Borderlands today for more than an hour at a time, it's gonna be crumpets.  Cause crumpets are CRUNK!!!

By the way, terrible twos is totally an incorrect misnomer.  It's the "wish you could bypass the whiny misery" threes.  For real.

For those of you who don't want to know this, tough luck.  I had my first encounter with mastitis and it was freaking awesome. And by awesome I mean it felt like someone had used my breast as a punching bag for hours and when I nursed it felt like I nursed hot lava.  As if there is some other type of lava.  I mean, I was kind of quoting the Chapelle Show but still, hot lava?  I mean, cold lava is just igneous rocks, right?

My mom is getting married the first weekend of next month.  It's all been kinda whirlwind.  I got my dress yesterday. Seiry had a total meltdown in the dress shop and we hadn't even been there for 20 minutes.  I had to call Ry to come help.  And of course the minute he gets there she is totally cool.  I don't get it but it had me frazzled the rest of the time.  I did get a really beautiful dress for $99 though so that was cool.

I'm taking my water II license test next month, too.  And I haven't even begun to study for it. I'm going to try really hard to study for it this week but my calendar at work fills up so fast it should be in NASCAR.

And the first two haunted houses this year were both pretty good.  The first week we went to Spooky Rocking Ranch in Columbia Station which was fun and had some pretty great puppetry (also, if you go, play the "how many rocking ladies can you spot" game.  It's pretty boss).  Over the weekend we used our groupon for the Hinkley Cornstalkers, which was good again this year.  That one is pretty worth it, especially when you get the groupon.  Good times.

Thinking about taking Asher to the "shoot zombies" hayride thingy this weekend....he's pretty keen to go. Anyway, time for Borderlands...

Haunted house schedule....whooo scary ghost!

Yes!  It's time!  I already bought a groupon for haunted houses.  I love this time of year.  We will be starting Friday Sept 28th.

Here's some tentative travel nights, no particular order..

Night 1
Rockin R Ranch Spooky Ranch, Columbia Station.  $20 for 4 houses and a haunted hay ride.
Hinkley Cornstalkers haunted corn maze.  $10 with groupon discount.

Night 2
Fairvew Graveyard, Fairview Park.  $8 for one.
Hudson Haunted House $13.

Night 3
Haunted forest of carousel, Sheffield.  $13.

Night 4
Haunted orchard, wooster.  $15.
Nightmare in the wilderness, lodi. $15

Night 5 will be Pennsylvania...

I also started a google map with all the locations on the map, check it out, yo!  Also, if you have any suggestions or want to change anything make a suggestion.  Thanks!  This year is going to rock!

Maggots strewn about that crawl

No song title today.  Fact title. Maggots on the floor in our garage this morning.  Not even on anything, just crawling about according to Ry, the master maggot killer.  I killed a few, he got the majority.  Gross.  It actually just adds to all the dumb shit happening to Casa Glow like an ill omen.  

First, a few quick pics from the Second Annual Birthday Massacre Nerf War.   I'll post more as I steal them from facebook, these are some I took on my phone.  

Prepping for battle

Pre game

Post game spoils

Where'd it go?

So, cleaning up the mess the next day we discovered the sink was all plugged up, which sucked because even though we had plastic cups everyone wanted to use a big kid cup and so I had a sink full of dishes to wash.  We draino-ed it.  Then we draino-ed it again.  No dice.  Called my mom and she and Geoff came over and helped ryan snake the drain.  No dice.  Then Geoff came over again with sulfuric acid drain cleaner.  I should have questioned that it came in a plastic sealed bag with the terms "CUIDADO!" written on it in all red caps.  It said WARNING! really big on the other side, so don't fret that it was some weird foreign draino.  It was plumber strength.  I have no idea of the concentration, it probably would have helped later last night.  But I didn't even want to touch the stuff.  It did finish the job the draino started, though.  The job of burning right through the pipes to drain out on the concrete slab in the crawlspace of our house.  Shortly after discovering this awesome fact, we also discovered that when mixed with draino it creates H2S, or for the layman, hydrogen sulfide gas.  Which smells like rotten eggs.  And is an irritant to the mucus membranes. Did I mention it filled the whole house?  We ended up opening all the windows and putting out fans to aerate the house.  Awesome.  Then we dumped a ton of baking soda solution down the drain to neutralize the chemical reaction.  It actually worked as far as I can tell, my house isn't on fire, the smell is gone and there isn't anything else weird happening that I can tell.  Hopefully.  I guess I'll find out when the plumber comes later today. Yup, had to hire a plumber.  Lucky us.  

The second awesome homeowner event to happen this week: I called and found someone, Mad Hatter Chimney Sweeps, to come clean out our fireplace and fix it so it stops acting like an open door in the winter. He came out and cleaned yesterday.  And cleaned and cleaned.  Then told me I needed like $700 more in repairs done to the fireplace.  A new damper, replaced mortar and flue tiles, a new cap.  He said there was a chimney fire in there at some point which ruined some of the internal workings and that it hasn't been maintained even though it's been heavily used.  Awesome.  So, grand total so far for fireplace: $850, probably.  For a fireplace we aren't even gonna use.  But...it needs done.  

So, now I'm waiting for the third thing to go wrong, because things go wrong in threes, right?  Isn't that a statistical fact? I hope it's cheaper the the first two...  I wonder if I initiated something if that would work?  Like if I got the one broken window fixed?  Or the carpeting ripped out of the kids rooms and lamanent put down?  Does that count?  

I guess I'm glad these things happened while I'm still on maternity leave and I don't have to take off of work to be here to wait for the repair guys.  

Also, look forward to a post of the haunted house schedule this year...it's coming soon.  Post suggestions if you have any.  

sing a song that crawls

Hi again. Its been a while since I last wrote. Had a baby and all that jazz. It has been pretty boring and sleep deprived here, not a whole lot to report on other than having beautiful Seiry. I did have a successful VBAC, by the way, which im pretty proud of myself for doing. Perhaps I'll post my birth story here, I'll think about it. Unless you all vehemently protest.

 Today is Asher's first day of preschool. He seemed interested, I wouldn't go as far as saying he was excited. Oh well. I'm sure he will have fun. Ry and I are volunteering at his school's wine tasting fund raiser in September, hit me up if you're interested in attending. Its September 23 from 5-7. I'll be pouring wine and Ry beer from 6-7. It is in Hudson.

Some things I hate about being parents is unsolicited and unnecessary advice everyone seems to think you are in dire need of receiving. For example, don't tell me how to calm down my almost 2 month old daughter. I think I know her better than you do. Also, don't tell me how to dress her. She isn't too hot or to cold. Trust me, I think I know. And if I'm wrong, I'm the one who will deal with the crying till I figure it out so shut the fuckup thank you very much. Everyone is all of a sudden a professional baby whisperer one you have an infant, and they must, absolutely MUST tell you their every thought on how to care for your bundle of joy. Because obviously I am mentally incapable of reason and common sense when it comes to miniature human beings. I don't need breastfeeding advice from someone who's only experience with it is something they read once in a magazine. I don't need advice on sleep schedules or for people to criticize me for leaving the house with my newborn. Fuck you very much. I don't mind chatting about babies but when you are directly criticizing my parenting skills because you are so much better than me then fuck you very much.

Wow, that didn't sound bitter at all....

I lived through the 80's and that shit was crazy

Stole the title of this blog from my darling husband today.  Cause it was awesome.  It was in reference to this song, which I think is pretty awesome, compliments of Dave. 

Anyway...not much to put into a blog today that is worth reading.  I'm super done with gestating this child.  That's about it.  Unless you want to hear me complain about pregnancy ailments, which I don't think you do.  I don't even want to hear myself complain about them and poor Ry, he must be beside himself with how much complaining and whining he hears from me.  He's really been a trooper. 

The worst part is that I really want to go out and walk a bunch but walking in this heat makes me nauseous and then I am ruined for the rest of the night.  And that's no fun, either. 

I want to say something funny here but...I can't.  I really can't.  I think it's partially due to the exhaustion and partially due to the fact that I'm not a really incredibly funny person.  I think it would just sound forced and trite. Is that the right use of the word trite?  I can't think today.  I have no idea.  I should look it up but I'm not going to do it.

I am going to be on a boat in about an hour.  And I'm taking T-pain.  Actually, I'm not.  I don't know T-pain.  I am taking some minions, though.  Still, not as good as if I took T-pain.