Yesterday my daughter was talking about her birthday. She is already making a list for what she wants for her birthday this coming February. I don’t know if she realizes that she is skipping right over Christmas of if she simply realizes that she won’t possibly get everything on her Christmas list. Of course she still believes in Santa so she probably was just mentally counting all her bootie.

Usually the conversation starts out like this:

“Guess what’s after Christmas, Mom”

“New Years” I say.

“Do we get presents on New Years?” Daughter will ask.

“No, but it’s really important to be quiet on the first day of the new year, in fact it’s a great day to spend with your father.” I tell her

“Guess what’s after Christmas?”

“What’s after Christmas?”

“My Birthday!” Daughter says excitedly.

“No, my birthday, then your brother’s birthday and then your birthday” I remind her.

She doesn’t really care about all these other birthdays but since daughter and son both have a birthday within four days of each other, and her birthday is after his, we are caked out. I still make two cakes but there is always half of his left over. Last year I got balloons for son’s birthday, I would have gotten them for her too but his were still up and they said “Happy Birthday”. Yeah, I know, but he didn’t care to play with them, she just wanted more.

Anyway, I got to thinking about my birthday. Mine is in January and usually by December I have already aged myself. I suppose it’s just easier to start getting used to that higher number a month or two in advance.  I never used to do this but my ex#2 always did and the habit stuck.

So I am in the shower yesterday thinking about my birthday and I realized I wasn’t sure how old I was.  I thought I was 44 and was fine with that number except I knew I was not going to be 45 next month. That just wasn’t happening. It seems like yesterday I turned 40 so there was no way 45 had already snuck up on me.  Also my brother had just turned 45 or 46 last month (I’m not really sure about his age either) and he is two years older than me so it didn’t seem possible. So I had to do the math.

I was born 1/17/1966

That makes me 43 for the moment and not 44 like I have been telling everyone, for nearly the last year, who asks.

They don’t usually ask, that would be rude, but I do because I like to compare myself to them if they are the same age as me (only if I look younger).

I have been nearly high on this information for the last day. I don’t usually care about my age but I am still surprised to find that things like Live Aid or the fall of the Berlin wall was 20 years ago. It seems like they just happened. Even 9/11 was almost ten years ago. Time flies and it seems to speed up as we get older.

Realizing I am a year younger is like finding a $100 that had been tucked away and forgotten about. It was always there but I had forgotten about it and now it is like free money.

I got a free year.

This day started out so promising. I woke up early, and refreshed (which never happens), so I grabbed a cup of coffee and decided to jump on the computer before anyone else was awake. I woke at 5am so I had another hour and a half before anyone else was likely to stir.

I stopped at a few websites and in my visits I stopped over at Daisy’s blog and she had a riddle. I guessed the correct answer and thought to myself this is a good sign for the rest of the day.

I’ll take where ever I can get ‘em.

Eventually the kids woke up, ate breakfast and started to head off to school. The boy wanted to use my car since he had a robotics meeting after school. He likes my car better than the truck that he is supposed to be driving. The truck has had some problems lately and it was low, very low, on gas. So I said he could take my car and I would use the truck.

It was very cold this morning so instead of walking the girls to school I was going to drive them. I needed to stop at the post office to get some boxes so I could send out my holiday treat samples to everyone.

Because we were driving to school we didn’t need to leave until a few minutes before the bell rang. Daughter had been up and wanted to play outside with Stanley which seemed fine to me since that way she would already be dressed in snow pants, hat, mittens and coat. I could just grab her on the way out.

As I am walking out to the car I realize I can’t find my key to the truck. I couldn’t find the key because I had left it in my car. The car my son had at school.

The bell was going to ring in three minutes.

I quickly called my neighbor to ask if I could borrow her car to take the kids to school and to also go and grab my keys out of the car that my son had. No problem she said. I have the most wonderful neighbors in the world.

I drop off the kids and head up to the boy’s high school. Only seniors can park in the lot, everyone else has to park on the street. My son goes to a rather large public school which sits on the edge of a golf course.

Where the hell was my car?

I thought I could text him to ask where he had parked but I wasn’t driving my car and didn’t want to risk getting in an accident. I drove around the school and the golf course looking for it.

Eventually I found it and grabbed the key. I hurried back to the house to drop off the neighbors car and stopped in my own house to grab my purse which I had forgotten earlier.

I was greeted by a very guilty looking Stanley.

The daughter had left her Advent Calender, which happened  have a chocolate candy in each window, on the coffee table.

Stanley ripped the calender to shreds to get at the candy.

I often wonder what kind of anxiety dogs have when they are left with the remains of whatever it is they have chewed and their master hasn’t arrived home yet.

Do they just sit there looking at the mess, the evidence, and think to themselves:

“Well, I’ve done it this time. She is going to be mad at me. Too bad I don’t have thumbs or I’d clean it up and she’d never have to know about it. Why didn’t I think about that before I ate the candy? Now I’m busted and there isn’t a thing I can do about it but sit here and look pathetic.”

(I know dogs aren’t supposed to have chocolate)

So I cleaned up the mess. Told Stanley he was bad but he had already forgotten what he had done.

I then grabbed my coat and headed out the door to go to the post office.

The truck wouldn’t start.

I just had it fixed last week. Some battery problem that they said was taken care of with a new connection doo-hicky-thingie.

I got the charger out of the garage and hooked it up to the car. Something I had been doing for the last several months due the doo-hicky-thingie problem.

I wasn’t paying attention and hooked the battery up wrong.

Black on red and red on black.

Way Wrong.

Luckily the truck did not start on fire or explode. I switched the connections and let it sit there for a half hour. It fired right up but now the light doesn’t work under the hood. It’s probably the bulb.

I go to the post office to pick up the boxes. The first post office doesn’t have any. The second post office only has two. The third one has four which was just what I needed.

It’s 11am now and so far I haven’t gotten a damn thing accomplished.

I go home to start packing up the sample boxes. I hadn’t noticed before I went to the post office that on the six boxes I did have my daughter had drawn all over.

At this point I don’t care. They are getting used.

I have no packaging material I realize so I use zip loc bags and paper napkins. Nothing Christmasy or holiday themed. I did manage to find some Christmas cards though none had envelopes anymore because daughter liked the color of them and used them to write letters to the reindeer.

I need a Sharpie to write the addresses of everyone. Regular pens never work on boxes and markers always smear. I usually have a dozen or more Sharpies around but not today.

I found one, under my daughter’s bed. Luckily a black one but the tip had been smushed to where it was no longer sharp. The packages weren’t large enough to use such a large tipped pen but I used it anyway. The only other alternative was to use a yellow Sharpie and the post man would not like that.

So, I have sent out all the sample holiday treat packs. The packaging stinks and the cookies will probably break during their journey.

I don’t care anymore.

What was I thinking? I have thumbs, this should not be happening.

I’m having my cookie sale in about a week, something I have been doing for years but never online before. I’m going to give it a try online this year too. I need 5 to 10 people who want to try my cookies, bourbon balls, and fudge, and if you like them write a quick post about them.

I’ll mail a sample pack to whomever wants to sample them on Monday.

These are awesome cookies which I have sent to Australia, England and all over the US in past years. I made five dozen last night and they are all gone already. The boy invited friends over when he smelled them baking and ex#2 grabbed a few handfuls when he tried to fix my phone. I only had two cookies. Really.

These are my grandmother’s recipes which I have finagled a little here and there over the years. There is nothing low calorie, gluten free, or remotely healthy about these cookies unless you consider bliss healthful. Which I do.

I use nuts (walnuts, pecans and almonds), no peanuts but often these nuts are packaged where peanuts have been used and are not considered allergy free so please keep that in mind.

I also use real Bourbon in the Bourbon Balls so those are not for kids. Grandma liked to cook with booze, what can I say? She was an awesome cook. I guess being half in the bag allowed her to be a little adventurous when cooking.

If you want to try a free sample of these fantastic cookies please leave a comment and I will contact you about where to send them.  For the samples I am only sending them within the US, sorry.

Thanks and I promise these are worth the time on the Stairmaster.

I am in a foul mood today. I don’t know why I just got up on the wrong side of the bed. I’m not mad at any one person but I want all of my children to stay the hell away from me today. I don’t want to talk to anyone, I don’t want to drive anyone anywhere, I don’t want to cook and I so badly do not want to empty the dishwasher.

Laundry I can skip. The laundry room is in the basement so I don’t have to look at the mounds of stinky clothing down there. The dishwasher indicator light is just mocking me. The dishwasher is clean and the dishes need to be removed and placed in the cabinets but I just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to ask anyone to do it either because I know that conversation will set me over the edge.

“Son, would you please empty the dishwasher?”

“Yes Mom, I’ll do it in a few minutes”

Which means I will have to repeat this conversation at least four more times if I want to the dishwasher emptied. That’s if I don’t want to go all ballistic on my son. I’m not sure I can stop that from happening today since I am already in such a bad mood. I’m ready for a fight at this point but I don’t want to talk to anyone. I can empty it myself but that will make me more crabby. My son doesn’t realize it but he has already lost. There is nothing he can do at this point. Had he noticed the little green light and emptied the dishwasher on his own we could have avoided this inevitable argument that we are destined to have. But since I am going to have to ask him to do it, and probably many times, he has lost the battle without even knowing it was on.

My kids should understand me by now. I don’t understand why they don’t. I don’t expect them to anticipate my moods but when they hear me snap at the dog first thing in the morning they ought to know that they better be on their best behavior. The dog and cat both know to keep clear, I don’t know why the kids can’t figure this out.

I don’t get in a bad mood all that often. Usually I’m pretty easy going and can stand to ask several times for a chore to get completed but not today. I want everyone to be able to read my mind today. I want someone to ask what they can do for me. They won’t but I want them to. In the absence of that I want them to get out of my way. And then stay out of my way.

This will pass, I will feel fine tomorrow I am sure but right now I want to be alone. And I want someone to empty the damn dishwasher.

This is a quick post, which I am sure everyone will appreciate, because it is birthday week in my house and I’m being interviewed this evening. I’ll tell you all about that in an upcoming post so look out for it.

Tuesday was my son’s birthday. Like all things I am unorganized with regard to birthday card and present. When I was a kid my parents would let my brother and me open our presents before we left for school. School started at 8:15am when I was a kid not 7:15am like it does for my son. We do not roll early in the morning at my house and the boy barely wakes up before he has to catch the bus at 6:50am. Our house in the morning does not look like a cereal commercial on TV with everyone sitting around the table eating a healthy bowl of sugar. If I am lucky I can throw a bagel at him and he might eat it on his way to the bus.

Because I missed the morning to give him his card and present I had it all figured out before he got home. Except for the card which I needed daughter to sign so she could be involved. I handed her the card and asked her to sign her name on it while I tried to quickly wrap his present before he got home. I was not paying attention. Daughter can not read and write yet but she can write her name. She is learning how to read and she can write a few words like “mom”, “love”, “dog” and “cat”. She announced that she was finished and handed me the card.

Let me just say here that my kids are ten years and four days apart. I thought by having such a large gap between them that I would avoid all of the bickering that my brother and I did as well as the sibling rivalry and all the other stuff that goes with having kids only a year or two apart. I was wrong. My kids pick on each other relentlessly. The daughter is the instigator but son will give it right back and he doesn’t believe in giving her a handicap because she is so much younger. I let them duke it out as long as there is no blood. I figure they will eventually come to appreciate the other and there are truly moments where they love one another.

I almost didn’t look at the card before sealing it in the envelope. Almost. I took a quick glance and this is what I saw under her name:

I H8 U

She is so not getting a cell phone anytime in the next ten years.

Why isn’t there a book on middle aging? There is a book to explain to us where we come from, what happens during puberty, all sorts of books on when we start having sex, books about what to expect when we are expecting and books about what to expect before we die. Nothing in the middle. There is about 30 to 50 years of uncovered territory there. And I need to know now because most of this is a mystery to me.

Sure they tell us about short arm disease and there are books and magazines devoted to telling us what to do while we are middle aged, like buying that red convertible or having an affair, but where are the books that explain the other things?

I understand why we don’t tell potential parents about parenthood. I understand that if we told potential parents that they wouldn’t get eight hours of sleep, in one night, again for the next 18 years they wouldn’t bother having kids. I understand that if we explained to them the worry that fills our brains ever day about our children they wouldn’t believe us. I understand that if we told them their house and their belongings would never be as they liked them again and that they would never have any money no matter how many hours they slaved they wouldn’t want to bring the next generation to life. I understand that if we were to tell them that they would lose all intelligent thought for the next two decades they would laugh at us and say we were crazy. I get that. It’s important to keep that information from the under 20 crowd.

What I don’t understand is why keep the facts of aging from the aging? It isn’t as if we can avoid the process. Why didn’t anyone tell me that my joints would start to ache before it rains and that when I kneel down to help my child tie her shoe she has to help me get back up? Why didn’t anyone tell me that my hearing would stop being selective after a while and I would have to constantly say “what?” when the person talking to me is five feet away? I’d like to know where all the veins came from on my hands? They were never there before. Where did the fat on my legs go? They used to be sort of shapely and now they are just skinny and undefined. I know where the fat went, it’s on my ass and around my middle but why did it decide to go north when everything else has gone south?

I expect a few gray hairs, I have been plucking them out from my head for years. One here and one there. The other morning I looked in the mirror and saw what I thought was a grey hair on my temple. I plucked it out only to find that there was another one. And another one. I plucked out ten grey hairs that were not there the night before. How does this happen? And no one, no one, ever mentioned anything about grey pubes.