Quick Update

I’m not sure the last time I updated this thing.  Not only have I been stupid busy, my laptop is in the shop.  Or at Best Buy getting a new screen.  I’m at the grandpeople’s house now, picking up my offspring since they spent the night last night.  Immediately upon arriving an hour ago, I raided the fridge and asked grandma to make some coffee since I still haven’t mastered her new coffee pot.  Anyway, Matt and I broke up a few months ago.  I’m not going into any details on a public blog, but basically I got sick of dating a fourteen year old girl.  Since then I have encountered a few characters.  There was the scientist I dated for a short time.  After a month of seeing each other regularly we decided to tell the Facebook world we were in a relationship with each other.  An hour after the update he called, frantic, basically hysterical.

“Oh my God, something really really bad has happened,” he said, “it’s really bad.”

“What’s up?” I asked.  I was already used to his dramatic outbursts and had been extremely busy inhaling a bowel of ramen.

“My mom and sister saw our relationship update and they’re really mad.  They want me to date this girl they’ve been trying to set me up with and they said they don’t want me to date anyone else but her.”

I was annoyed that this was the “really bad” issue and said, “I fail to see why this is our problem.  They’ll get over it.”

“No!” he screamed, which startled me slightly, “my mom and sister don’t just get over things.  Plus the girl they want me to date had cancer.”

I was becoming irritated with the conversation and let him know that.

“Where’s your compassion?” he asked, “my mom already told her that I was going to date her and now she’s heart broken.  She had CANCER five years ago.  She’s already seen enough pain.”

“This is the most retarded conversation I’ve had in over a week,” I told him, “I have no idea why I haven’t hung up on you yet.  Calm the shit down and tell those people to go bother someone else.”

“We have to take down our relationship status and pretend like we’re just friends until I get this straightened out,” he said, “give me a few months to ease mother into it.”

“Unacceptable,” I told him, “But good luck with yourself if you do that.”

“My sister and I were verbally abused when we were kids,” he said, “so my mom is really protective and she just isn’t ready for me to date anyone she hasn’t known for a while.”

“Verbal abuse is what parents do,” I said, “grow some balls or something but I’m over your retarded freak out.”

I hung up on him.  The next week his mother and sister called him every time we were together, yelling at him for not dating the girl they had chosen for him.  They told him how cruel he was for rejecting someone who had survived cancer.

“Look on the bright side,” I told him during dinner, “that girl is ALIVE.  Cancer isn’t a goddam crutch.  This girl is throwing a fit and she gets a group of retards all worked up because she had cancer five years ago?  Sounds like someone should bitch slap some common sense into her.”

He was horrified and told me all the negativity was causing his spiritual life major trauma.

“My bed levitated three feet off the ground last night,” he said, “and some shadow was screaming latin at me.”

“We both know that did not happen,” I said, “enough.”

“Jess, it did.”

“That is called schizophrenia,” I said casually, “I suggest you seek medical attention.”

After that, I pretty much decided he was a freakshow and something gross was going on between him and his lunatic sister and creepy mom.  I told him he reminded me of a VC Andrews novel and not to contact me again.  Between that moron and now, I’ve experienced some lunatics.  There was the guy who drives yellow vehicles and sent me a picture of himself holding a whole bunch of cash.  I was unable to take that yahoo seriously.  There was the bodybuilder who spent more time than me making himself look pretty and constantly griped at me for my eating habits and “poor skin regime.”  There was the guy who claimed my love for the ninja turtles was a sexual fetish.  Retard.  So that’s what has been going on in my ever stable love life.

The kids and I moved into a new apartment recently.  I love it but hate how messy Caleb is able to keep it.  We have this rail upstairs that he loves to throw things over and he throws things faster than I can clean.  Makayla is a good girl about stuff like that and quick to try to help when he destroys everything we own.  She’s also really good about reading to her brother while I attempt to clean the catastrophes he creates all over the house. 

That’s about all I have to update right now since I’m about to go to Pizza Hut.  There was alarming curiosity over the dumb scientist which is why I even mentioned that yahoo so now we can all stop talking about it.  Namaste friends.

The Sickly Children

          Last night, I tucked in, smooched, and hugged two healthy children.  At midnight, I was woken up by Caleb.  I had fallen asleep on the couch, and he had his little face right on my ear, whispering, “Mommy!  Mommy!  Are you in there?”

I saw he was covered in child barf.  For some reason, before I was totally awake, I thought he had spilt oatmeal on himself.  Within seconds, I realized it wasn’t breakfast; it was the middle of the night, and my child had puked.  I changed him, cleaned the mess, put him to bed, and told him to come get me if he started feeling sick again.  At three in the morning, I heard him shriek from the bathroom, “Mommy!”

I stumbled out of bed and went to the bathroom, and saw he had pooped water…everywhere.  In his attempts of cleaning himself, he had managed to get his child poo on the wall, the floor, the back of the toilet, and all over himself.  Eww. 

I brought him to bed with me after that.  This morning, I woke Makayla up for school, and the first thing she said was, “I think..I think I’m…”  She gave me “the look,” the look that means, “I’m about to throw up.”  I am familiar with said look and said, “OK, it’s OK, run to the bathroom.”

She ran to the bathroom.

“Over the toilet, over the toilet,” I urged.

She put her head over the toilet.  And then barfed on my feet and the floor.  It never ceases to amaze me how a child can have a perfectly good toilet right under them and miss it completely when throwing up.

I took her temperature, saw she had a fever, and called in to her school.  I learned there was a bug going around.  Caleb woke up and both children looked at me with glassy, feverish eyes.

“I’m sorry you guys are sick,” I said, “You may watch TV and relax today.”

Caleb went to the window, looked outside at the rain and said, “It’s raining.  The moon is pulling all of this water down.”

Yesterday, he asked if the moon makes us cold since the sun makes us hot, and Makayla explained that the moon makes the waves in the ocean.

Makayla was too tired to argue with him, which is astonishing, since she is very big on correcting her brother.  I don’t see the point in correcting every single incorrect thing a four year old says. 

“Did the moon eat up the sun or sumpthin’?” Caleb asked me.

“No Bubba,” I said, “It’s just cloudy and the clouds are covering up the sun.”

“The sun must have got cold then,” Caleb said.

“What?” I asked.

“He needs the blankets, probly,” Caleb responded.

Oh.  Duh mom.

Caleb's Discovery

        Written yesterday afternoon:

  Monday through Friday has become such a routine.  The alarm goes off, I snooze it, it goes off again, and I lurk into the kids’ room to wake up Makayla, vowing to go to bed earlier from now on.  Kayla gets ready, and we wake up Bubba, who always whines for five to seven seconds about how he’s not waking up, before he leaps out of bed, demanding oatmeal and Mario Brothers.  Today was no different.  Even though Makayla’s school is a five minute walk, we always have to leave a good fifteen to twenty minutes early since you would think my children have never seen leaves, bugs, puddles, or flowers before.  Every day we see the same thing; every day, the children marvel over the same stuff.  And every day, it makes me smile.  On the walk to school, Caleb pointed to the moon and squealed, as if he was pointing out a box full of gold and screeched, “Sister!  Mommy!  Look!  It’s the moon.” 

“Yes Bubba,” Makayla said in her helpful, big sister voice, “It is the moon.  Earth only has one moon.  Some planets have a lot of moons.”

“Uh huh,” Caleb said.

We walked a little more, me gripping Caleb’s hand, Makayla stomping on bugs and picking up leaves.

“Mommy,” Caleb said.

“Yes son?” I asked.

“If the sun makes us warm then does the moon make us cold?”

“No Bubba,” I said, “The moon does not make us cold.”

“Then what does it make?” he asked.

Before I could say anything, Makayla said, “Bubba, the moon makes the waves in the ocean because it pulls on the earth a little bit and pulls the water.  That is how the moon makes waves.”

“Will the moon suck us all up?” Caleb asked.

Makayla looked at me with wide eyes.

“The moon will not suck us up,” I reassured them.

We dropped Makayla off at school, chatted with the crossing guard, who every morning mutters about “these drivers,” and started on our way back home.  Halfway home, Caleb found a pecan that was still green and stopped to pick it up.  I am very used to having to stop multiple times anytime we walk anywhere, while Caleb picks up random things or inspects bugs.

“Mommy…look,” he said, showing me his green pecan, “Are there caterpillars in it?”

“No Bubba, that is not a cocoon.  That is a seed.”

“I want to keep it forever,” he said, “I want to see what’s in it.”

When we got home, he tried to stomp it open and failed.

“Would you like for me to break it open for you?” I offered.

“No,” he said, “I would like to just play with it.”

“Do NOT put that in your mouth,” I told him, “It is not food and you could choke.  You can play with it if you promise not to put it in your mouth or throw it at the kitty.”

“I promise,” he said.

“Do you want to run in the front yard before we go in?” I asked him.

“No,” he said, “I don’t want to get an injury.”

Haha.  Two days before, while running, he had tripped and scraped his knee.

We went in and I got on with my daily stuff.

“Can I watch TV?” he asked.

“You cannot,” I told him, “Remember, you are grounded from TV today for getting into the coffee mix.”

“That’s right,” he said, “I am grounded today.  I will never get into that stuff again.”

I went on with laundry and dishes and cleaning, and since I hadn’t heard from Caleb in a while, went to check on him.  He was sitting under the kitchen table with a sharp pair of scissors, cutting into his green pecan.

“Stop!” I shouted, horrified at how close he was to cutting himself, “Bubba, put the scissors down!”

He dropped them and looked at me with a confused expression and said, “Why Mommy?  I’m seeing what’s inside of here.”

I crawled under the table, grabbed the scissors, put them up, and came back to him.

“Do not get into the scissors son.  You could have cut yourself and it would hurt.  If you want to see inside your seed, come get me and I will help you.”

“OK, Mommy,” he said, “But LOOK.”

He showed me his green pecan.  I saw he had successfully cut it in half. 

“That is neat, huh?” I said, “It’s fun to see what’s inside of seeds.  But we do not EVER put stuff like that in our mouths.  You could choke or it could make you sick.”

“I know it’s not food,” he said, “I just wanted to see what was in here.  It’s cool in this seed.”

I marveled his pecan and said, “That is very neat.  Let’s break it apart more to see the rest of it.”

“No!” he screamed, which made me jump, “I don’t want to hurt it.  It’s my friend.”

He cradled the two pieces of broken pecan, took his shoes and socks off, put one piece in one sock, the other piece in the other sock, stuffed the socks in his shoes, and said, “It’s time for them to take a nap.”

Ok then.