Reposting

This will be my life in just a few more weeks.... 

Where Did My Day Go?

A few quick updates: the youth athletic association that I am coaching for is obviously run by morons. A big group of morons. The disorganization runs far beyond the cheerleading section. And that's all I can really say about that right now, mostly because I'm too annoyed to be able to write halfway intelligently about it. On another topic, I was trolling around on craigslist last night and came across a picture of a penis with a watch on it. I'll address the first part of the sentence -- I'm a troll, except not the live-under-the-bridge kind of troll. Hi, my name is Stephanie and I'm a craigslist troll. About the penis and the wristwatch, I was like, who does that? Who actually puts a watch on their dick and then takes a picture of it? I don't know if he was trying to demonstrate his girth, because a sewing tape measure would have done just fine, or if he was trying to say something else, like, "Heeeeeyyyyy, it's penis time!" Too weird. What a freak.

I've survived the first two days of the children being back to school and I feel like I'm going to die. This will be my first full year of being a single parent, although in previous school years I felt like a single parent but I was also really bitter and angry that another adult was living with me but didn't do much to contribute other than give me guilt trips about why I wasn't doing more. So this will be my first full year of being a single parent who isn't bitter and angry all the time. Although the schedule is killing me, I've enjoyed not being really pissed off about why I'm stuck with everything. Maybe it was me subtracting that other, grown child I was raising?

This has been my schedule for the last two days. I expect that it won't be this hectic on the days when we don't have cheerleading practice. Those will be the days I live for.

5:45     My alarm goes off. Hit the snooze.
5:54     My alarm goes off. Hit the snooze and lay in bed and pretend that some hot guy is laying next to me.
5:57     Get up. Stumble out on the deck and smoke a cigarette.
6:08     Shower.
6:19     Wake the children up.
6:23     Pour a healthy bowl of really sugary cereal for both of them. Go dry my hair.
6:31     Get the first child in the shower. Remind them to wash their hair and their ass with actual soap and shampoo, versus the imaginary soap and shampoo.  Start on my makeup. Tell the other child to go make her bed. This isn't so bad, because the younger daughter has decided that making her bed is a pain in her ass, so she just sleeps on top of the covers every night. I'm down with that. As long as the bed is made in the morning, I don't care where you sleep, as long as it's not in my bed.
6:41     Ask if child in shower has washed hair and ass and am told no, they haven't. Think to myself, what the fuck are you doing, then? Get loud and irate with them, and yell hurry up! Your sister needs to take a shower!
6:42     Get myself dressed.
6:48     March into the children's bathroom and tell the child in the shower to get out now. I don't care what's washed, just get out. Get the other child in the shower and start blow drying the first child's hair. Feel pleased that they actually did manage to touch some kind of soap somewhere on their body when I find a few suds in their hair.
6:53    Still trying to get hair brushed out for drying, because of the drama of tangles. I don't know if she's shampooing her hair with a football cleat, but it sure does seem like it.
6:55    March into the bathroom and tell child in shower to hurry up! We need to go!
6:56    Blow dry hair halfway, because the child's hair is too long for me to want to do the whole job. Tell that child to go get dressed.
7:00    Make sandwiches for lunch. If I was smart, I pre-packed the lunch the night before and all I have to do is slap some PB&J together. Oops, the bread is frozen. Fuck.
7:07    Finish the lunches, tell the other child to get out of the shower. At this point, we've used more water trying to get hair and asses washed than an entire village in Africa will use in an whole week. I'm sure of it. I wonder what the next water bill will look like.
7:09    Dry the other child's hair, tell the child who just got dressed to brush their teeth and put on their shoes.
7:15    All hair is dry. I need a drink at this point. Tell the freshly dried child to go get dressed, and no, you can't wear just underwear to school.
7:16    Smoke another cigarette on the deck and get annoyed that some child is coming out on the deck to bug me. I need some quiet.
7:25   Make my bed, because having a freshly made bed keeps me from getting back in that bitch. 
7:30   Brush my teeth, finish my hair and makeup, put on jewelry.
7:42   Throw backpacks, lunch sacks, water bottles off on children. Tell them to go outside and hurry up!
7:45   On the way to before and after school care. Realize my lunch is sitting on the kitchen counter. Oh, well, I can eat some air for lunch. It's cool.
7:56   Arrive at childcare, rush children in, sign in and then they don't even want to give me a kiss? What the fuck is up with that? All this drama and no kiss for Mommy? You should be grateful you have a Mommy as awesome as me.
8:01   Bolt out of childcare, hop in car and rush to work.
8:18   Traffic is backed up on 95. Fabulous.
8:35   Make it to work five minutes late. I don't really care.
8:35 - 5:05  Try to be productive. Realize around 11:00 I haven't paid my bills yet and still need to clean out my purse. Dump contents of my purse out on my desk and spend 45 minutes sorting through my bills and organizing my purse. Take 25 minutes to go eat lunch in a co-worker's office after I find a can of diet soup in my desk and then eat half of my co-worker's chicken salad. Did I mention I only hang around people who share? Besides, he's on a diet and I'm just doing him a favor by eating some of his food. 2:00 comes and I realize that we'll only have fifteen minutes to eat dinner, so I take another lunch break and run to the grocery store to buy some Lunchables. Because I have just made them Dinnerables.
5:05    Leave work, traffic is backed up on 95. Fabulous again.
5:35    Arrive at childcare, bolt in and rush the children. Hurry up! We've got to be at cheerleading practice in precisely 50 minutes!
5:50   Get home and feed my children a wonderful Dinnerable, tell them that if they want more food after cheerleading practice, they can have some goldfish. Try to negate this in my brain by telling myself that it's okay, you packed totally awesome lunches today.
6:00   Change clothes, check my blog. Get sucked into facebook.
6:20   Rush children out of house, back in the damn car.
6:35   Arrive at cheerleading practice five minutes late. I don't really care.
6:35 - 7: 30   Cheerleading practice. I want to throttle some of these children. My stomach is making funny gurgly noises and feels funny. We need to get the hell out of here and get home because Mommy does not want to use that nasty porta-potty.
7:40    Get kind of testy with older daughter's cheer coach because they've run 10 minutes over on the practice and we have homework to do! That wasn't it at all, Mommy's stomach feels really bad and we need to get the FUCK outta here.
7:42    Realize I won't be able to make it home. Make a mad dash for Food Lion.
7:49    Arrive at Food Lion and goose-step the children inside. I'm pissed at myself at this point for ingesting about two gallons of caffeine today because this is what happens when I drink this much caffeine.
8:05    Emerge from Food Lion, okay, let's hurry up because we need to review homework and Big Brother is on, dammit!
8:15   Arrive home. Review homework and praise older daughter effusively for having the foresight to have gotten it done at childcare.
8:25   Big Brother! Because my priorities are straight!
8:35   Realize I haven't watered the my newly seeded topsoil. Fuck. Run outside during commercial breaks and water the topsoil, though I'm pretty sure I missed a lot because it's dark outside and one of my flood lights is burned out.
8:58   Big Brother is over, I've watered all I'm going to do during commercial breaks, children in the bed.
9:10   Get up from a few minutes of just staring stupidly at the walls.
9:15   Pre-pack lunches.
9:30   Send a few emails.  Troll around on craigslist and alternately stare at facebook.
10:00 Holy shit, where did the day go? Fart around on the internet and pack up book bags. Sort through the bill receipts.
11:10  In bed. Pretend some hot guy is laying next to me. Think about doing it all over again tomorrow and pass out.

At this rate, it'll be December in about a week. I can make it to the summer, I swear I can

Reposting...

Head Lice and Skid Marks

Our outdoor day summer camp experience is complete. Head lice have determined that my older daughter's clean blond hair is a great place to ride the wave into elementary school. Ha! Caught your little asses before that could even happen, motherfuckers.

It started Thursday morning, though not with the hair, but with an ear. She woke up a little whiny and said her ear hurt. The child's almost eight, so I asked if she wanted to go to the doctor or not. I know that sounds a little too democratic-parenting bullshit to some, but for real, it's her ear. She'll let me know if it starts to get out of hand. She said no, let's just wait and see. I was down with that, because I had a dentist appointment scheduled for the younger daughter and I was already going to be late for work, but I didn't want to be dentist appointment AND doctor appointment late. Thursday night I asked about her ear, she says it's fine. But her head itches in this one spot. Hmmmm, I sure hope that's not lice. But it can't be. She washes her hair everyday, specifically so she won't get bugs in her hair.

Our daycare had a lice outbreak a few years ago, five years ago to be exact. I remember this because it was shortly after the younger daughter had been born and I had just returned to the SHITTIEST job in the whole entire world from my maternity leave. Seriously, it was a horrible job and I hated everyone there and I hated myself for having to go there every day. Anyway, our daycare owner, who could also be called the Daycare Nazi, like the Soup Nazi, declared that any child who got lice would not be admitted into her facility until the parent had a doctor's note that the lice had been treated and were eliminated. Obviously, you see where I got the Soup Nazi reference from. There were daycare workers stationed at the front door every day checking each child's hair before entree was granted. If your child had lice, well then, NO DAYCARE FOR YOU! I used to imagine her saying that with a Russian accent like the Soup Nazi.

I immediately spazzed out, because I had just taken three months off from work on vacation leave. I didn't want to burn up any more vacation time, because I would need that to call in sick to go on job interviews because did I mention this was the shittiest job ever? So I went old school on my older daughter. I used the old country ass/prison trick of rinsing her hair with vinegar every night in the bathtub, because this was what the prison system used when hosing down all of the convicts coming in from the local jails. Worked for them for decades before they switched to lye shampoo. Yes, the child was stinking horribly for about two weeks, but no lice. Mommy had prevailed. Take that, you dirty lice.

But back to the story at hand. She's scratching a little bit on Thursday night, but her ear feels all right. Okay, maybe this is just something that's psychosomatic about being back with me after spending a summer with her father whom I am pretty sure just let her do whatever in the hell she wanted. Friday morning, her ear hurts again and she agrees that we should probably go to the doctor. She's asymptomatic for an ear infection, but she always was. And her head still itches, same place. So MommyKemosabe has a little look-see, and honestly, I didn't know what in the hell I was looking for. I didn't see much, other than three or four white flakes that I assume is dry skin from all the scratching. We'll have the doctor look at that, too.

Off to the doctor's office. Swimmer's ear and a middle ear infection. Glad as fuck I caught that before the weekend, because The Ex would have been miserable had it gotten worse, since this is his weekend. I was actually more relieved for my daughter, because screw him. And yes, we have nits. Lovely. I guess nits are baby unhatched lice. I didn't ask because it was gross either way. According to the doctor, lice like clean, light colored hair the best. Who knew? I guess I can stop strong-arming her into washing her hair every day and just go for every two or three days like she really wants to do anyway. I will continue to insist that she at least rinse her ass off every day though, preferably with the soap that I have kindly placed in the shower for that purpose. Off to the pharmacy to get the prescriptions filled, because apparently lice have become resistant to the over-the-counter treatments. Ewwwwww. Or this is just part of a larger conspiracy of the drug companies to get us to buy their shit. Whatever, I don't care at this point. The good news is that it's not a full-blown infestation, it's localized to that one spot. Thank God. And the doctor gave me refills in case the younger daughter gets it. Or in case I get it. What??? Uhhh, what the fuck are you talking about, in case I get it? Oh, hell no. Hell no. Mommy will not get lice. That would totally mess up my chi. Sorry, but quiet time with my vibrator will just not feel the same if I have head lice. It would be like that time I broke my wrist and had a hard cast. I refused to have any kind of sexual relations for the entire duration of wearing said cast because who has sex with a cast on? Seriously, who does that?

My older daughter was quite excited by all of lice-n-nits drama. As I was running her over to summer camp, I cautioned her that this is really something we should just keep to ourselves. Let's not tell any of your friends at camp, because they might make fun. When she asked how they might make fun, I felt this immediate sense of relief, as this was my biggest clue yet that my daughter is not a mean girl. I had to explain what making fun of someone was, and how badly she would feel if someone made fun of her because of this. She asked about telling her camp counselor, and I was like, noooo, this is something we just want to keep in the family. But you can call Nannie and Popeye and tell them if you'd like. I felt absolutely no concern about taking her to summer camp with an active case of head lice. That's where she got them at, so let's just take them back one last day for a little visit. We'll have this knocked out before she returns to the Daycare Nazi for before and after school care, and I will know I narrowly slipped through the net and got one over.

As for skid marks, I don't have much to say about that, other than exactly how old does a child have to be before they actually begin to apply the toilet paper directly to their ass instead of just waving it around down there? Really, it just made for a better title