Cranky Mommy

The time has come for me to quit this weblog. Who knows…. I make come back to it some day. Right now I doubt it.
I have nothing to say that isn’t either too personal or terribly boring. I’ve done this since 2003; I’m not feeling it, and haven’t for a while. I hope to take up something productive, or creative, or something! At least something more productive than Popping balloons.
Thanks for wasting a few moments of time here. For those of you still at it, good luck with your writing. I can still be reached at kira ~~at~~ crankymommy ~~dot~~ com, for now.

It’s been 11 days since I last posted. I even failed to post on Mother’s Day, which I suppose in the Mommy Blog world, is some kind of faux pas.
But I don’t have much to rant, whine and complain about… I’ve been in too good a mood. I had the best Mother’s day gift of all — my son is finally potty trained. (Really, this time).
There have been times in my life when I thought some things would never end. High School. College. Pregnancy. Sleepless nights with the baby. Breastfeeding. And, especially potty training.
No more holding it for six days.
No more pull-up diapers. Or Once Upon A Potty, and Your New Potty, and every other stupid book or video that didn’t help at all.
Cancel that appointment with the Pediatric GI.
I’m not asking why or how (although toy bribery sure helped, no doubt), who cares, it’s done. Just don’t ask me for any potty training advice, I’m the last person you’d want to ask because I sucked at it so bad. I’m just so happy to be done with it I could skip down the street giving flowers to strangers.
I will never, ever, ever miss changing diapers. And with some luck if I ever have grandkids, I can talk them out of letting grandma change the diapers and I will be off duty for life. Woo Hoo.
So, that leaves me with little to blog about, at least that I feel comfortable putting up here in a public forum. I still have that tube in my eye which has mostly fixed things and will be with me for the next 6 months. I’m busy with working with my husband doing housepainting. I’ve been doing a lot of volunteer work. I’ve put on a couple of pounds.
Yawn.

When I was a little kid most of my nicknames didn’t stick long. A couple of friends called me Kir, but not many. My mom used to call me Ki or Kira Deara and still does, but she is the only one that uses those.
She also used to call me Little Buttinsky which I thought was cute until I grew up and realized it meant little butt-in-sky.
In fourth grade, because I was such a space cadet, a few kids called me Earth To Kira. I didn’t like that much, although it was accurate. And because I used to fuss about the small things, one obnoxious little boy in 4th and 5th grade called me Ms. Picky Picky.
Years later I was watching an epsiode of Big Brother and I noticed an obnoxious guy on the show who looked just like that little boy who teased me in 4th and 5th grade.

Some people never grow up (he didn’t win, woo hoo, and no I’m not bitter). Anyhow, I digress…
Anyhow, as of the last few weeks, my son has been giving me some nicknames. I’m not sure how I feel about them. One of them is sorta cute. It’s Lappy. I guess because he likes to sit on my lap. the other one I am not to fond of. It’s Salami. I guess it is because it rhymes with Mommy. Mommy - Salami. Ugh.
Of course he has a few nicknames, too, that aren’t any better. Some of which we don’t use anymore, and some have stuck around a while. His name is African and unusual in this country, so most of the old people in the neighborhood can’t pronounce his name right so I just tell them to call him Mr. T.

I don’t think he has any idea who this guy is.
When he was younger we gave him a few names that were transitory. When he was just a few weeks old it was Mr. Bobble Head and when he kept biting it was Mr. Bitey and the inevitable nickname of all babies, Mr. Poopy Pants. Mr. No Sleep, well we still use that one. He still doesn’t sleep much.
There is also Mr. Irrational Exuberance, for when he is manic, and my new favorite, since he is so into dinosaurs, Crankosaur, for for when he is tired and cranky. On occasion I do use my my mother’s old nickname for me, Buttinsky, since he is always in the middle of whatever I am doing. However I will probably do what my mother did and shorten it to Binsky, but before he figures out what it means.

Care to share any especially funny nicknames?

Friday I had the tear duct surgery on my eye. As surgery goes, it was pretty minor, but I’m of the opinion that any kind of surgery is not minor. I have no idea how these people get elective surgeries like nose jobs and boob jobs!
It’s amazing what they can do with the human body these days. I now have a tube in my right eye, running from my top tear duct, down to my bottom tear duct, and making a loop somewhere inside my nose. Kind of like this:

The tube, which you can see about 1/4 inch showing if you have good eyesight, will be removed in several months, creating a new place for my tears to drain, to get around the obstruction. So, I won’t have tears pouring down my face anymore. Kinda cool, kinda gross… if you care to read about it here.
The drag is, I still have tears running down my face. Tomorrow I will call up and find out if I have to wait until the tubes come out to see if this damn thing is going to work. And something happened to my left duct, which is partially blocked, when the surgeon tried to unblock it, or something (who knows, I was knocked out). That’s the eye that I didn’t get the tube put in… and now I have a black eye on that eye.

Now, instead of people looking at me thinking, “Is she crying?” they are looking at me thinking “Is she crying? And who punched her in the eye?”

Yesterday and today my son, for the first time in many months, has had a little pooping-on-the-potty success. I’d gone to the toy store to get some “rewards” and all I can say is, nothing like bribery to get you somewhere. So, today he got his “reward”. It was a mini stuffed animal triceratops and a mini puzzle. He immediately put it next to his stuffed stegosaurus, Stego, and gave it a name.
What else for a triceratops?

Horny.

Yep, Horny the triceratops. Gotta love that one. He’ll be hating that one in about 5 or 6 years.

There’s something odd going on with me. Something is… inexplicably different with me the last couple of weeks. The little black raincloud that hangs over my head constantly, is, for whatever strange reason, not there.
I’m actually… happy.
It’s to the point that when my friend Emma drops by in the way she does (constantly) with one or two of her kids in tow for a play date, she looks at me and says, “You are in a good mood, again! It’s so strange, you are freaking me out!”
There really is no good reason for the good mood of mine, but perhaps there are a few minor contributors. Tax refunds. A few better nights of sleep. The fact that when everyone is complaining about their springtime allergies, mine seem to have disappeared. I’d like to say it is the sunny, 78 degree weather and the fact that the days are longer, but my good mood started when it was raining and dreary, so that theory is suspect.
A few minor things have been resolved in my life, but I still have some things that aren’t. I still have no career direction, my artistic muse is on vacation once again, my child is still having GI and potty issues, and I am having my minor tear duct surgery on Friday. But luckily right now, it’s all water off a duck’s back.
If this good mood sticks around, does that mean I need to change the name of my blog?

We all turn to PBS for wholesome family shows. You know, the kids shows that you don’t have to worry about giving your kids nightmares after viewing them. Educational, informative, safe. And also providing horrible role models for small children. Let me give you my list of the top PBS kids offenders*.

1) Cookie Monster. He gets an F for table manners and gluttony. Practically every parent has had the misfortune of cleaning up after a child imitating Cookie Monster while eating something. Diagnosis: Binge Eating Disorder.

2) The Man in the Yellow Hat on Curious George. Totally negligent pet owner, the SPCA should be after him. Diagnosis: Animal Cruelty.

3)Zoe. That little monster never wants to share, and is way too into that stupid pet rock that everyone has to pretend is alive. If Zoe were alive and human she would need a therapist to insure that she wasn’t having a paranoid break. Diagnosis: Schizoid Personality Disorder.

4)Ernie. And no, I’m don’t take any issues with Ernie and Bert being ambiguously gay. Rather, Ernie is rude for keeping poor Bert up at night and not letting him go to sleep. No wonder Bert is so cranky. Diagnosis: Insomniac.

5)Jetta from Clifford, the big red dog. Sure she looks sweet, but nearly every episode she brags and lies, then has some kind of catharsis and regrets it by the end. But somehow, by the next episode, she is back to being her bragging and lying self. Diagnosis: Borderline Personality Disorder.

Care to add to the list?

*This is all tongue and cheek of course. Really we love PBS, we do. Even Cookie Monster.

Somewhere a while ago, I read an article that said that married men live longer than single men. I don’t remember the reason they gave for this fact, however I believe it to be true. For the wife’s goal in life is to keep her race horse in top condition and doesn’t want to be stuck with a bum horse that is stuck in the barn, unable to run. Thus she nags him to death - The Nag Factor - to keep him in fine shape; to go to the doctor, to stay away from the fatty muffins and cookies.
The husband may hate it, but deep down inside he knows that the wife really cares about him and isn’t just doing it to be a royal pain in the ass. She’s likely to live longer than him, so she has to make sure he’s fit and fine and free of excess junk.
Since we have been together, I have done a good bit to keep him from eating that junky stuff. When I first met my husband, his breakfast was an extra large coffee with cream and sugar, a pack of Tasty-Kake Creamy Krimpets, and a half a pack of cigarettes. Those days of excess are long gone. But really lately he has been awful. It’s all due to having his gallbladder out.
If you ask me, that bad gallbladder was the best thing to happen to him. Because, it was like a little angel sitting on his shoulder with a pitchfork saying, If you insist on eating those cookies, you are going to pay and I am going to stab you in the gallbladder with a pitchfork and keep you up until 3 A.M. Nothing like pain to keep you motivated to eat right! With a little help of diet modification, the 2 years he suffered with a bad gallbladder, his bad cholesterol went down and his good cholesterol went up. Thank you, bad gallbladder.
Of course, my husband has been on a fat and sugar and junk tear, ever since he got the darn thing out. All the good eating he did for two years, he had to make up for it. He wasn’t exactly back to Tasty-Kakes and cigarettes, but he wasn’t exactly eating well. And the whole time of course, I nagged him to stay out of the bakery section at Eddies of Roland Park at lunchtime, go get a physical and get his cholesterol checked. My husband was optimistic about the results, but I suspected his refound love of junk food would give us some results that might change his mind.
This morning we got his cholesterol results back. And (as usual, since I usually am, if I say so myself) I was right. Cholesterol up 20 points! So off to work my husband went, with a (healthy, low-fat) lunch I packed for him. Bye-bye, Eddie’s Bakery.
Anyhow, it’s the least I can do. Although, I wonder if this means I am going to have to eat all the brownies I just baked (gulp).

Why blog and stuff, when you can waste time just popping balloons.

It’s a great stress reliever, and an incredible waste of time, and somewhat addictive. And something to do when you don’t feel like writing, painting, or… thinking.

…And Mom, also known as the Easter Bunny, is too cheap thinks it is ridiculous to spend $1.50 on a tiny bag of pastel colored shredded paper Easter basket grass so she is cutting up construction paper to make grass with.
After all, he is just 4!
I bought my Easter basket stuff at Target today, and my God they have a lot of useless stuff that they, and every other store in America, are try to pawn off on parents at Easter time. Among the things I saw were plastic “candy holders” in the shape of the Superman emblem. Somehow that just doesn’t seem very Easter-y.
Or how about a dart gun for our 7-year old? That really just reminds me of Jesus rising up from the dead to forgive us of our sins Easter.
And then of course, their are those Peeps.

I suppose they are kinda okay, if you have the taste buds of the under-6 set. I’ve been known, on rare occasion, to eat them before (if I am needing a sugar fix and there is nothing else nearby). But everywhere I have been lately, every store seems to be a… Peep pusher. They have huge displays with rows and rows of florescent sugar coated marshmallow junk. They even have stuffed animal Peeps, I saw some today at Target.

The bunnies are kind of scary… kind of like, Thalidomide bunnies. Really, do these look like much fun to play with? Maybe they make good pillows.
So, if you are doing the whole Easter basket thing, what is in your basket?