My boy has spent the last week house sitting at his dad’s, while they are on vacation.

I miss my son.

A lot.

At first, I didn’t think it would be a bad thing, less laundry to wash, fewer dishes in the sink, and no bickering between the kids.

It hasn’t worked out that way except for the laundry part. The boy still stops by the house on his way to and from work to eat a little something.  In those few moments he is home he manages to pick on his sister just long enough for her to get all worked up for the rest of the day.

I still miss him.  Usually when he is here he is downstairs in his boycave, doing boy things, but I know he is here.

And that gives me comfort.

I’m not so much worried about him as I am just missing his company. I figure, if he gets into any trouble at his dad’s house it is his dad’s problem.

I keep thinking about a mother duck and her ducklings. The duck walks along with her babies following behind. She lets them wander off a little but always has an eye on them and if she gets too far ahead they come running, or waddling, to catch up to her. And then sometimes they fall into a grate and the mother duck freaks out until someone comes along and pulls the duckling out from the sewer.

I miss him so much that mentally remodeling his room no longer makes me happy.

He comes home tomorrow and I can’t wait.

What am I going to do when he goes to college in a year?

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Big hat tip to Cardiogirl for posting this prompt on Tribal Blogs. Because if she hadn’t I’d have to post pictures of the chocolate chip cookie waffle experiment.

Before I Was a Mom:

I Was Fun

I really used to be a lot of fun. I had no problem going out to a club and drinking all night long. I’d even throw caution to the wind and dance a little. I didn’t nag all the time and I wasn’t worried about anything. Now that I am a mom I worry all the time and I nag even more.

I Had Money

If I wanted to buy myself a pair of insanely expensive shoes that I would probably only wear once I could, and I did. If I wanted to eat out every night, I did. I have been wearing the same pair of Crocs for the last 5 years. I bought the purse I have been lugging around 16 years ago. Thankfully, it’s a Coach so it still looks really good, out of fashion, but it looks okay. I can’t remember the last time I ate out, like, at a real restaurant where you sit down and someone brings stuff to you that was ordered off a menu that you didn’t have to read from your car window.

I Was Fashionable

I wore the latest fashions. Which is too bad on many levels because I haven’t not been a mom since the early 90′s which means I am still wearing shirts with shoulder pads. I have always had big hair because since becoming a mom I don’t have an extra hour to iron it straight. Ponytail holders have become my best friend. One very nice thing about missing a lot of the fashions of the last nearly two decades is that I still have straight leg jeans (purchased in bulk when I had money to burn, talk about foresight) so I haven’t had to wear those awful wide leg jeans that only come up to your pube line, the ones that show your ass crack if you even think about bending over.

I Slept Through The Night

I haven’t slept through the night since February 10th, 1993. In fact I haven’t gotten a straight three hours of sleep since that date. Sure, both of the kids are sleeping through the night now but the big one goes out at night which means I have to wait up for him, and the little one will occasionally fall out of bed or need to go to the bathroom. Why she thinks she needs to wake me up and tell me that I don’t understand. If the kids aren’t waking me up the cat is.

I Traveled The World

Before I had kids I actually left the state of Minnesota. I once hopped a flight, standby even, to Italy because a friend was going and asked if I wanted to come along. It helped that I was already in England since the flight wasn’t all that far. I had no problems changing my plans from a week in England to a summer in Italy. We went there not knowing where we were staying and not speaking the language. I also managed a summer in Italy on $400. Since I became a mom I have been to Mexico with my family (which is no vacation when you have a toddler) and I have crossed the border into Canada a couple of times. I have also driven across the country twice but that was for a move and hardly considered fun. I haven’t renewed my passport in over ten years. In fact, in the last ten years I haven’t traveled any farther than the Wisconsin border.

I was a different person before I was a mom. My kids don’t understand this, they think I have always been a tired, boring, nagging pain in the ass. When I tell them I used to be fun they look at me like I just sprouted a third arm. They just can’t see it.

I wouldn’t change anything, I love my kids to death. I can say that now because I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel. In another ten years I might get to go dancing, sit down at a real restaurant and buy that new purse I have been thinking about for the last decade.

This kids get out of school in ten more days.

Yay.

I am looking forward to not having to nag about homework for a few months and I am also really excited about not having to wake the dead each morning. I’m not looking forward to feeding the children now that they are home all day but I’m getting used to that. I know that after that first blissful week of summer vacation people will start getting bored. I’m not even thinking about that right now.

I’m looking forward to having someone to talk to during the day besides the dog.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Stanley and he never talks back but it seems as if I say the same thing each day.

“Move”

“Stop following me”

Stop barking”

“Shut up!”

I don’t talk to the cat during the day, she’s too busy sleeping. I talk to the cat at 2am and usually I only say one thing to her:

“Bitch”

It’s a simple statement and probably not that nice but when all she does is sleep all day and then meow by my window at 2am, I don’t have much of a vocabulary.

Now that the kids will soon be home I can expand my talking by repeating things such as:

“Put the cat down”

“No, you can’t have another cookie”

“If no one is in the living room why is the TV on?”

“Clean your room if you are bored”

“We can’t go to the mall everyday”

“Bubbles belong outside”

“Stop painting the dog”

“Stop picking on your sister”

“Stop picking on your brother”

“Can’t you two just get along?” (said in my best Rodney King impression)

“I have to work”

“Shut up!”

“I’m on the phone”

“There will be no potion making with my best plastic containers”

“Worms need air and dirt to live”

“No, we can not get a puppy”

On second thought I guess I am not really looking forward to talking to anyone besides the dog.

Summer officially begins in just a couple of weeks. If you are anything like me you aren’t the least bit prepared.

It’s been unseasonably cold here for the past month, so much that I have been confused about which season is beginning and which is ending.  Just yesterday I pulled out my warm weather clothes.  We went from using the furnace to using the A/C over the weekend.

I’m not ready for summer. But, I still have two weeks to prepare so I’ve made a checklist of all the things I need to do before it is officially summer.

1. Find Activities for the Kids

God knows I don’t want to entertain them so I better figure out something.

2. Grocery Shop

My kids and all their friends will be hanging around the house this summer. My grocery bill is going to skyrocket. I’m pretty sure they can eat their weight in Munchos and hot dogs each day.

3. Books

It’s time to pay those overdue library fees because there will come a day when we will have nothing else to do and I will have to drag them to the library to check out books they will never read and which I will return late.

4. Bathing suit

I’m going to have to take the kids to the pool. Does Spanx make a bathing suit?

5. Remember the windows are now open.

Summer will start out nice and mellow. We will have activities for the first day and a half. After that I have to remind myself that when I yell at them for setting the dog on fire or trying to build an indoor pool that the windows are now open and everyone can hear what I have to say.

When does school start?

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Last August I took my daughter to get her ears pierced.  Actually I took her several times to get her ears pierced because she kept wimping out. I documented the whole process here.

She never had any problems with her ears, no infections, no irritations. She found a pair of puppy earrings and wore them everyday. She loved her grown-up look.

Until Halloween.

We were invited to a Halloween party at our neighbor’s house, after trick or treating. There were many kids who ran around and played in the yard while the parents sat by the fire laughing and partaking in adult beverages. It was a really fun party until one wild and rambunctious child grabbed my daughter and spun her around somehow pulling the front part of her earring off. The earring just broke, it did not pull through her ear. She didn’t even cry, until the next morning when she saw that the post was still in her ear.

From that moment on she swore she never wanted to have pierced ears again. She took them out and that was that as far as she was concerned. I tried to convince her she was being silly, and I told her that the holes would close up if she didn’t wear earrings. I also made it very clear that I was none to pleased about going through the expense and the ordeal we went through just so she could have the holes close up. I pulled out my spare mom guilt and tossed it at her. I also shot from the hip and told her if she let them close up I was not going to take her to get them pierced again. EVER.

The thing is she looked really cute with earrings, I loved the idea of buying her cute earrings for Christmas and her birthday. I imagined buying her a nice pair of little diamond studs when she was 16. All that mother/daughter stuff I never got to do with my mom. I was sad that she decided to let them close. But, I know my daughter and if I keep pushing I will just make it worse.

So I forgot about it, or tried to.

Every now and then I would try to see if the holes had closed up, she wouldn’t let me actually examine her ears so I had to be sneaky about it. I’d try to look while brushing her hair but she didn’t like me doing that either.

Eventually I just gave up.

Last weekend she said she was ready to get her ears pierced again. I was so excited about it that I completely forgot about my empty promise not to take her to get them re pierced.

So once again, in the rain, we left to get her ears pierced.

I should have read my post from last August before I grabbed my car keys.

We went through the exact same thing, she got scared and chickened out.

The problem was she wasn’t ready to give up. She really, really wanted to get her ears pierced again. She was just too afraid of the pain.

I mentioned that the last time she did it, when she finally went through with the deed, she didn’t flinch and that she told me it didn’t hurt. I tried to convince her that since she had already done it once there was nothing to be afraid of.  I named all of her friends who had pierced ears, even the younger friends. I went so far as to say that one little girl, (the mean one) was a baby and a scaredy cat, if she could do it then Maddie could too.  All to no avail.

My daughter sat in the piercing chair crying. Strangers walked by and surely thought I was trying to force her to get her ears pierced.

And I was.

I knew if we didn’t get them pierced that day we would have to repeat this whole process again and possibly again. I just wanted to get it over and done.

The thing is she didn’t want to go home without her ears pierced, she just couldn’t get past her fears. We sat there, well, she sat there and I stood there, pinching each other to show how much it might hurt. I wasn’t going to lie to her, it was going to hurt for a brief second. So I held my pinches just a little bit.

I gave her pep talks about facing her fears and plowing through them. I told her she being afraid was ok but refusing to proceed because of fear was just going to hurt her in the end. I was talking like the best of the motivational speakers out there. Of course she had no idea what I was talking about.

She asked me to get my ears pierced to show her that it didn’t hurt. I thought about this for about a second then asked her:

“If I do this do you promise to go through with this?”

“Yes”

“There will be no chickening out, right?”

“Yes, I will go through with it, I might cry, but I will do it if you get yours pierced.”

I didn’t want to get my ears pierced again.  It seems every time someone gets their ears pierced, I do too, just to show them that it isn’t that bad. I’m running out of room on my ears to pierce.

Without taking up more of your time, can you guess who got their ears pierced on Saturday and who didn’t? Can you guess who will be taking her daughter to another mall because there is no way in hell I am going to show my face in that last mall again? Do you want to hazard a guess at how many times and how many different malls we will visit before her ears are pierced?

And finally,  just guess how many holes I have in my ears now.

The worst part of this whole thing, aside from the fact that we are not actually finished with this project, is that I have to go and get more earrings now.

I like symmetry. I can’t be symmetrical anymore because I don’t have enough matching earrings. I bought one pair of diamonds when I got divorced the first time, I bought another pair of slightly smaller diamonds when I got divorced the second time. When my mom moved to the home she gave me her diamond earrings that were right between the other two in size. So basically I had three diamonds on each ear getting progressively smaller. When I pierced the cartilage on my ears I just wore the fake diamonds, I hadn’t gotten married again so I hadn’t bought myself anymore earrings. I can’t put cubic zirconia next to the real thing. I have six weeks to figure this out, provided I don’t get them pierced again.

That is not a picture of me, it just came up when I searched for pierced ears. I like it, it reminds me not to be a moron again.

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Last Thursday was Earth Day. I know this because everyone was talking about offsetting their carbon footprint. I learned that my blog gives off 8lbs of CO2 each year and that my hair dryer emits 57 lbs of the stuff.  I won’t ruin your day by telling you what your car, air conditioner, lawn mower or dishwasher puts out.

I don’t worry about offsetting my carbon footprint and I certainly am not going to buy carbon offsets, though I wish I had come up with a scam like that. Selling carbon offsets is much like the church’s practice of selling indulgences for sins. At least when you buy a carbon offset, a tree gets planted.  I am in complete agreement with George Carlin regarding saving the earth. I am not going to stop driving my truck, using my hair dryer (no one wants that) or writing my blog.

Luckily for me they were giving away carbon offsets at my daughter’s school last week. She came home with three saplings in a, get this, plastic bag!

Daughter came home with three saplings. Two evergreens and an oak tree. Stapled on the bag were directions for planting the trees. Basically dig a hole big enough so the roots aren’t all balled together, cover with dirt, water and wait for 20 years or so to have a little shade.

What it doesn’t say on the bag is that in order to plant the oak tree I need to call my utility company to find out where my gas and water lines are so I don’t hit one of their rusty pipes and break it, causing a problem. The directions also don’t say anything about where to plant the trees. I know how big an oak tree can get if I don’t run over it with the lawn mower but I don’t know how fast the evergreen trees are going to grow or how much space they might need. I don’t know what kind of damage the acidic needles are going to do to my grass or other plants that were there first. I don’t feel like doing a whole lot of research for these things either.

My front yard is the size of a postage stamp and I already have a maple tree in it. I also have two lindens on the boulevard in front of my house. One of them might be falling sometime soon but that still leaves very little room for a big ass oak tree. My back yard is only slightly larger than my front yard and I already have a maple tree there that creates more raking than I would like. I have lilacs and peonies and other shrubbery. The only place to put a big ass oak tree is right in the middle of the yard, at the bottom of the slide. I just don’t think it will work.

I could probably bring them up to the lake where we have more room for these carbon offsets. The problem is I have to keep them alive until I go up to the lake, I have to remember to bring them to the lake, and then I have to actually plant them.

None of these things were part of my plan for spring.

Now I have all kinds of anxiety about keeping these damn trees alive. I’ve kept them moist since Thursday by placing a wet paper towel (I know, I should have used cloth) in the bag. I think they are alive but I really can’t be sure. These trees are just like the stupid hermit crabs. I can’t tell if they are alive either and I keep forgetting to water them.

How long can they stay alive in their plastic bag? They aren’t getting much sun in their plastic bag, that can’t be good for them. I don’t know when I am going to the cabin next, it could be this week or it could be the next week. Do I have to make a special trip just so I can plant these damn trees?

I considered putting them in the compost container but that just didn’t seem right. I’m not a hater of trees, I like trees. Trees are fun to climb, they provide shade, they provide homes for all kinds of animals that I am trying to kill with my slingshot, and in about 100 years the oak tree will provide someone with some great firewood. I’m all for trees.

Yay, trees!

But I didn’t ask for these trees. I have enough people, animals, plants and crustaceans to be responsible for, I don’t need more. I don’t need anymore guilt, I have a mother who makes sure I am getting my daily requirement, the trees are just overkill.

Why didn’t they just give her a puppy?

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