Cranky Mommy

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?

So I’m back. It was nice to take a break. Seriously, I am thinking of giving it up. Not that it takes that much time, it’s just one more thing in my life I’m not sure I necessarily need.
Plus the little things in life seem to be taking over.
In short, what has happened since I last blogged:

So, how the hell are you?