marginalia

I am an avowed literary preservationist.  I read and I preserve.  I don’t happen to feel the need to leave footprints or thoughts in the books.  Being that I’ll read a copy of a beloved book until the pages literally fall out, I like being able to form different reactions and thoughts each time I pick up a story.  That works well for fiction but what about non-fiction or reference books?

I’ve been reading a lot on marginalia.  Not only on Steve Leveen’s blog on Levenger, but also in different reference books on effective study practices.  Remember the 80’s or 90’s movie on women in the FBI?  I can’t remember the name of it now, but one part always stuck with me.  The one woman was teaching another how to study the textbooks including highlighters, flags, and colored paperclips.  I don’t remember much from the movie but that – highlight, flag, paperclip.

I have a ton of reference books based on literary endeavors, religion, psychology, and art creation and history.  Even though this is only about 50 or so books, it probably is a literal ton in weight.  Around 10 are in continual use.  The rest I have to hunt for when I need them.

Now that it’s NaNo time, I need nuggets of wisdom (highlight) – not a leisurely stroll through interesting facts. I’m sure anyone who has attempted NaNo knows what I mean.

I’m trying something new this year (in regards to how I write.)  In my stories, I’ve always leaned towards plot driven stories.  I write circumstances and let my characters be formed at will.  I read much the same way – I prefer plot over character.  However, I value characters and I spend time wondering about them.

So this NaNo, I’m spending quite a bit of time on character creation.  I’m letting them tell me about themselves almost like they’re filling out a 360 degree survey often used in business to evaluate effective management skills.  It’s not only how people view themselves, it evaluates how other people view them.  How direct contact people view them as well as the odd acquaintance or stranger.

My idea is to have 6 characters who are put into a situation go through the same event and see what each character picks up on.  They’ll each tell the story in a way that is important to them.

Anyways, back to reference materials.  I have a copy of The Outlandish Companion by Diana Gabaldon and I’m looking through her commentary on character creation.  I’m actually having a conversation with her in my head, so I decided to write it down.  In the book.

I wrote it down.

In the book.

In a book I only own 1 copy of.

I did, however, write it in pencil so that if I have marginalia remorse later on, I can go in and erase it.  I better paperclip the page so I know where to find it.

Highlight.  Flag.  Paperclip… and now notate.

Next thing you know I’ll be dog-earring books.  (No, probably not.  Do you know what happens to dog-eared books?  The corner that was folded down forms a nice little perforation where the page wears down and rips.  Dog-ears turn into sad little cornerless pages.)  Three words:  small metal paperclips.  Plastic ones are too thick and will warp the spine.  Small.  Metal.  Paperclip.

 

NaNo Dares and Happy Monday

Today is a happy day.

The doctor called in my meds and the pharmacy filled them.  I only had to make 1 phone call.

I took some Zomig today.  It’s a nasal spray and it normally gives me hiccups.  With my latest habit of vomiting after every ounce of food, I didn’t think this would go so hot.   It’s actually the REASON I didn’t take my migraine meds all weekend.  I was out of anti-vomit pills and I was pretty sure the Zomig would create a hiccup induced inferno.

So far I’ve gotten away with an itchy mouth and throat but thankfully no hiccups.  I actually attempted an ice cream sandwich and so far, it’s staying down.

957 words in NaNo today.  Not great – but not bad for not having a single plan or plotline ready.   I did grab some great dares to work in tomorrow.  Hopefully by then the disco lights are gone from my vision and I can see my computer screen without feeling like I’m tripping.

Here they are:

1. Use three and four word prayers.  (This is something I do daily.  They go “oh Lord Jesus.”  or “Holy Mother of God.”)

2.  Include a hedgehog.

BP if the hedgehog is on medication

TBP if the hedgehog is on psych meds

3.  Write story in first person w/ multiple characters narrating

4.  Use the lines “it happened because I was naked” and “It was when I was wearing my purple spandex pants.”

5.  Use a charachter w/ an urge to tell really inappropriate stories

6. A character dies due to an unfortunate accident with scissors

BP if they’re the zig zag type of scissors

7.  Have a character that starts every sentence with “Well, actually….”

And now, thanks to Happy Monday, and my migraine  meds, the text on this screen is kinda loooooopy.  My spatial reasoning skills have left the building.  I’ll be catching up tomorrow.

 

 

NaNo Disco

I signed up for NaNoWriMo yesterday and I think I may be able to pull it off this year.  I still don’t have a good plot line in my head, but I think I have an idea.  I should just start writing and see what happens.

First I have to clean off my desk because I’m barely reaching my keyboard.  My Circa, a stack of books and drawings, and a spool of packing tape are in the way at the moment.

I really hope my doctor gets her shit together figures out her voice mail system and gets my meds called in today.  For the last 5 days now I feel like I’ve had a disco ball for a brain.  Every time I stand up my vision pixelates like a poor quality youtube video and the crazy flashes of lights are just a little disconcerting.  I’ve been sick to my stomach and ill like a hornet and I can’t sleep worth a damn.  I’d go to the hospital, but I’d just come home with 2 more mutations of the swine flu and less money that could be spent on fun stuff – like my medications!

I need to see if I can put the disco on hold for a minute while I get the kids breakfast and delivered to school.  If not, I’ll just have to find some techno music and go with the flow.

punkin head

What is it about little kids where they don’t understand that you can’t carve a pumpkin to have tiny little flowers all over it?  I say “draw a big face on the pumpkin” and I get a forest of 1/2 inch daisies.  Can daisies form a forest?

Anyways – we have to get these pumpkins carved.  I scooped the seeds out almost 3 days ago and they’re starting to get a little funky.  The sooner they’re carved, the sooner I can put them outside.  (Yes I am being a halloween party pooper.  Deal.)  My ass had the clever idea of giving the kids sharpies to draw on the pumpkin with so it would be all awesome and theirs and stuff.  We’d all laugh and be happy and take pictures.

Reality is they somehow have a way of getting sharpie all over themselves, the table, the dog, the kitchen floor, the computer monitor behind them, and the bottom of the stool.  What is on the pumpkin is this:

: – )

It took about 3 minutes for me to go OK, WE’RE DONE.  GO MAKE FACES ON PAPER AND I’LL DO IT!!!!!   After that, I got one lopsided face in 30 different colors and something that looked like hashmarks.  My 4 yo is coding his pumpkin in binary.  (If you say this out loud you immediately hear “what’s a binary?  Is it like a bicycle?  Can I have a new bicycle for my birthday?”)

LJ asked me yesterday “wouldn’t it be awesome if you were a preschool teacher?”   I’m trying to think up ways to say OH HELL NO without totally making him think being a pre-k teacher would be absolute hell.  Really, for me, it would be hell.  I’d have the kids marching in formation by the time the first day was up.  The kids would tell their parents “Miss Cyndi said that the fly on my shoulder has more status than I do.  Then she called me soldier.”

I’d like to say something about that driving me to drugs and drinking, but that’s not true.  I’d just get all martial arts instructor on their asses (because that’s the only way I know to deal with more than 3 kids at a time) and they’d be in sync and counting in Korean.

Because the problem with little kids is that they have no pattern to their thoughts.  If you were to map their neurons, you’d get a spatter pattern with a heavy emphasis on cookies.  Find the average idiot and you’d at least get a few steps to obtaining cookies.  Map my German Shepherd’s thoughts and it would be like Pinky & the Brain overthrowing the government to get a way to lift them up to the top of the fridge and get down the box of cookies.  The Great Dane has 2 steps – look cute, get cookie.

I guess I’m going to go carve hashmarks into a 20 lb gourd.  I really hope my doctor called in my meds today.  I’m gonna need them.

Good Deal

Back to a serious post… if anything that goes on here can be considered serious.   We go from OMGWTF? to HAHA-AWESOME! in less time than it takes to butter a piece of toast.

The kids are starting to get a lot of our sense of humor (finally) and we haven’t even started indoctrinating them with Monty Python and Mel Brooks movies.  They have seen Down Periscope multiple times, so that helps.  It’s pretty awesome to see them crack cynical, sarcastic filled jokes and it’s even better to see them understanding and using puns.  LJ is a LOT like me – he says “puns work because of a misused homophone.”  Absolutely child.  Absolutely.

Me and LJ – we have an odd sort of relationship.  It’s been hard for me from the beginning with him.  There was a time where we almost refused placement with him – it was that bad.  See, I’m an alpha female.  I have been since the moment I was born and everyone in my family will tell you that.  LJ, when he first came to us, was under the impression that a woman’s job was to cook and take care of the younger babies.  This woman who will never exist was supposed to see a 7 year old boy as having more status in the household than her.  (I know I’ve written before about how the household is like a dog pack.)  Well… as you can tell, this attitude didn’t work.

So, over the 2 years we’ve known him and he’s come to live with  us and become our son, we’ve been working on this.  At times I’m overbearing and at times, he is.  For the most part, he’s figured out that he doesn’t get to tell A&E what to do and I try and give him responsibility over himself.  (I do get to overrule stupid things like wearing shorts to school when it’s 50 degrees outside.)

We meet at loving books.  He loves to read and so do I.  We’d rather read in our bed than talk to anyone.  The problem is that he’s not real sure where the lines between fiction and reality are.  He told some teachers at the school earlier this week that a dragon had bitten him on the neck.  Of course, no one believed him, but the counselor called home to tell me what was going on.  He’s had some pretty big stuff come up in the past few weeks so she knew this may be something we need to discuss.

He and I sat in the car and talked while in the carpool lane to pick up his sister.  We talked and talked and talked.  He didn’t understand that the words he says to people cause reactions – no matter what you say, you’re going to get a reaction.  We talked about how if people knew he just made stuff up all the time that no one would listen to him if something was actually wrong.  We talked about believable stories – dragon bit you?  Obviously not true.  (though, it’s probably better to make up a story that can’t possibly be true than say something equally untrue but believable.)

We talked about appropriate things to share with people (conditional boundaries) and what would happen if those boundaries weren’t respected.  We talked about kids in the foster care system (when we were picking up our AA check at DFCS, he saw some classmates in the waiting room) and the different things that could cause a child to need care.

We spent a lot of time talking about severity and differences – not all kids go through the same thing he did.  For some kids, they had an easier time of it.  For some, they had a time that was much worse than his.  We talked about how everyone, everywhere has something in their past that hurts and how we deal with it determines the kind of person we are.

After all that – we made a deal.

Until November 15th, he is not allowed to either make up fantasy stories or read fiction novels.  He still has to read every night – but he gets true stories.   He’s involved in a biography of Cal Ripken Jr. right now.  I’ll probably go to Goodwill today or tomorrow to pick up more kiddo friendly non-fiction books.  If not that, then we’ll visit the local library.

Things have been moderately better since then.  He’s been meeting my eye and making jokes with me.  He’s been helpful and respectful to the little bits.  Last night, we even put everyone to bed with the sound of laughter even though it was an emotionally difficult day for everyone.  He woke up this morning and told me – amazed – “I didn’t have any nightmares last night, Mommy!”  Awesome.  Pure awesome.

This morning we talked about how to say “its not your business” to people who made them uncomfortable with questions.  We talked about whose business it is – the family’s and the doctors.

After going through foster care and adoption, this is something all of us need to rebuild.  We all need to work on appropriate levels of privacy for ourselves and each other.  We’ve all just gone through so many years of having to report every little thing by phone and in writing.  There were always people in and out of our house – I couldn’t let the laundry go or not load the dishwasher because at ANY moment, someone could pull up and get to judge our worthiness.  This is partly why I’m so open on the internet – it would be hard to rape our privacy and background any more than what it took to become a foster/adopt parent.

Now, we’re having to work on telling people it’s not their business.  Truth is, most people aren’t looking to help – they’re looking for gossip.  Shaun and I are also having to relearn to trust our own judgment.  We’re both grown but we’re too used to having every move picked apart.   That causes stress and anxiety for all of us – we can’t just relax and have normal everyday fights.  Everything is a possible catastrophe.  Everything is caused by this event or that event, and everyone has a different opinion of what caused what.

I mean, I just want my child to feel free enough to scream “I hate you – you’re the meanest mom EVER.”  Right now, we’re still all worried about what we’re saying and trying to use proper communication skills.  In foster care, if they said “I hate her – she’s so mean” to a case worker it wouldn’t be about whether I confiscated the Nintendo DS – it would be “are you feeding them properly?  Whats your discipline policy?  We need to have a face to face meeting about this placement.  I need to talk to my supervisor.”   Basically, if you get mad and immature, your whole life could be turned upside down  (and immature is probably 30% of my personality.)

I want to be able to say “I don’t even want to see you right now” without it meaning “she may not love me enough to keep me.”  No, I just need some time not seeing YOU.  I’ll get to where I want to see YOU again but first I need 5 minutes to look at something else.  Every word that I say has to be examined from how they’ll receive it and how it will sound if they repeat it or how it will sound when I tell the therapist about it (because I can’t lie worth a shit and they can tell when something is going on.)  Then the kids see that I’m uncertain and they start thinking that maybe I don’t know what I’m doing and maybe they don’t have to listen to me.   Or something.

For now, it’s just repeating “I’m your mom.  I was your mom yesterday and I’ll be your mom tomorrow.  I’ll be your mom next year and the year after that.  I’ll be your mom when you get old and have babies.  I’ll be your mom no matter what.”   If we say it enough, maybe we’ll all start to believe its not fiction or fantasy.

Believe your own legend

*update – as of 12 hours after posting this, it had 1 view and that was Shaun’s.   If it were any more ironic, I’d need a new hipster messenger bag.

Fall Out Boy may have said that… but I know for sure they said “I’m in love with my own sins.” I think they actually said “pretend you don’t know your own legend” or something.   I’m not gonna look it up.

I’ve been schooling myself in my own legend today.  I haven’t been this mad in a long time.  Back when I had a “real job” I used to get mad like this pretty often.  That’s why I have a legend.

This bitch right here, she’s got a legend.

<on a true note – I made it about 2 paragraphs into writing this and started laughing.  I’m just this frigging entertaining and that’s NO legend.>

_________________

It goes like this:

Oh no she did not just say that.  Does she know who I am?  She must not have worked here for very long because that bitch don’t know me.  Other folks must not like her because if they did they’d warn her not to piss off that Cyndi bitch.

They say “who?  Mrs.  Dollins?  You better back the fuck up  and say “yes ma’am.”  When she gets mad, shit goes WRONG.  People get fired all the way up to corporate and even Iran gets to pointing a photo-shopped missile at your ass. “

“People hear her name on the phone and just hang the fuck up.  And you know what?  She calls the fuck back.  Then people meet her in real life and think ‘damn that girl is hot’ then they realize who they’re thinking about.  There’s a word for people who like to be around her – masochist.”

Then someone else says “that bitch, Mrs. Dollins?  She’s like a well-trained pit bull.  She’s all quiet and nice and stuff but as soon as you act a fool she’s got her teeth in your neck and you’ll be screamin’ for Jesus to save you.   Nobody’s gonna be standin’ by with a lead pipe or a shotgun to help you neither.  That’s because that lady may be a bitch – but she’s RIGHT and I don’t believe in shooting pit bulls.  I ain’t ever known that girl to be wrong or get too close to a pit bull with a bad attitude.  Ever.  Its best just to take your who0pin and apologize.  Then she’ll get you to write an apology letter to everyone who saw what happened because that shit’s traumatic.”

See, you don’t talk to me like that.  I may be little and cute and even my 9 yo looks more grown than me but I’ll shoot you.  No, I won’t shoot you – I’ll just write the Governor.  You’d rather be shot when I get through with you. The Governor knows who to call.  Actually, his staff knows who to forward the email to. The pen is mightier than a sword or a .22 or some shit.

It could be worse, though.  I could rat you out to the internet.  See this blog?  It’s got companies weeping all over it because someone was fool enough to fuck with me.  I’ll be leaving traces all over Google cache that will prove to my kids I was never a mature adult.  Twenty years from now they’ll be reading my memoir and be like “she was right – they shouldn’t have talked to her THAT way.”

See, cause I’m an internet super-FUCKING-hero.  They don’t even say NYPA to me because I know not to ask.  I just start fucking shit up and they play along.  Next thing you know someone will be paying me money to take off my bra. I’ll be making Encyclopedia Dramatica pages about your ass and leaking your dox to wikileaks.  Now don’t feel special or anything, because the internet isn’t looking FOR YOU.  Trust me, that ED page isn’t going to get any views because the INTERNET DON’T CARE about you acting wrong.  They’re just here to see me and that won’t last long either.

Me?  I’m that bitch that has balls big enough to walk up to Dr. House and dare to have lupus.  I’m trying to sell shit to telemarketers that call me.  I got a collection call the other day and ended up getting PAID.  Sure, it’s true I didn’t get paid by the company calling me but a couple hours later, I got some money and a couple hours after that my bank account balance went up.

I’ll be sending you emails like correlation =/= causation and stuff.  It’ll have the spoiler to Twilight in it and be telling you that Pluto’s not a planet anymore.   I’ll find newspaper articles from like last year to make it so that you’re not entirely sure of the date anymore.   I’d send you poo in a box from that site that sells poo in a box but I’m too lazy and broke busy to look up the URL.  Speaking of that, I get paid too much to deal with this shit.  Forget you.  FORGET YOU.

_____________

See?  Now who would really mess with me after knowing that legend?  I wouldn’t.  I think I’ll buy myself a beer.

appearance of intelligence

Me:  Sometimes I wonder about our kids’ intelligence.  It’s like they’re super smart most of the time but sometimes they just do the most retarded things!

Shaun: I know what you mean.  I bet our parents said the same thing about us when we were little.

Me:  They probably still do.

reoccuring nightmares

Every 45 mins or so last night I was woken by nightmares.  Sooooper scary fucked up ones!

I was dreaming that I had been hired back on at the company I used to work for.  (I haven’t worked there in almost 2 years.)  I would get hired and get to my cubicle that was way too small to hold dual monitors – much less a keyboard – so I would have to balance things on boxes and put the keyboard in my lap.  I was forced to sleep there as well and my spot on the floor was between two guys I know for a fact are straight.  (My personal practice is to only sleep with girls or gay guys if beds must be shared.)

After I realized how badly it sucked (and it sucked differently every time) I would go to find the boss-person.  The boss-person ALWAYS hated me and tried to fire me but for some reason they couldn’t.  Me, having the winning personality I do, would then troll the shit out of the boss-person.  When I finally pissed them off I’d quit.

How long is it going to take me to stop dreaming about that place?  On the most part it didn’t suck but I’ve only had 2 or 3 managers that I actually got along with.  I KNOW what my problem is personality-wise and I’m only half willing to work on it.  (If they aren’t going to work on their personality flaws, then why should I?)  Almost 90% of my peers I loved working with – it seems I only have problems with authority.

Anyways… it was better than the night before where I dreamed I was making soap out of my colored pee.  It was striped all different colors.  In my dream I knew it was fucked up to make pee-soap but I couldn’t stop.   I’m OCD in my dreams too.

Bored on the internet

I really need some friends.  I shouldn’t be allowed to be bored at the same time as having access to the internet.

When it comes down to it, my life goes from “hey, awesome!” to bored in just a few months.  TABLP is probably the second longest I’ve stuck with something written, following my Love Stories blog over on writing.com.

I’m just one of those people that needs a constant flow of information running through my brain.  My psych report would probably read like Chickpea’s – if she’s not involved in something, she will come up with new and disastrous ways to fuck shit up.  (That’s not confidential info – anyone who has been in a room with her for longer than 5 minutes knows that.)

When I get bored I start relapsing into Internet Troll Personality Disorder.  I just can’t help myself.  People IRL are so used to me being an asshat that it doesn’t even register with them – but on the internet, there are NEW people to bother!

Its probably good that I have a really short attention span.  That means if I start to stalk you, I’ll be bored with it in a month and go find someone else.  Sorry, stalkees – I’m not faithful in my online persona.

(insert psychobabble about how getting bored online is an outcry from being overly loyal IRL… comments about needing to reread my Birkman, etc…)

It’s been terrible the last 7 weeks because I’m not allowed to do ANYTHING.  And now my pee is blue.

That’s right – I have blue pee.

I’m pissing Tidy Bowl because of the meds to stop the bladder spasms.  If I take my multivitamin I get GREEN pee.  Then of course I start thinking about the Death Cat episode of House and how he kept going at that red lollipop.

Back to pee.  I still haven’t written my super awesome post about my gyn visit.  That will have to wait – Shaun has the piggy flu and House is about to come on.  My internet awesome will have to wait until tomorrow.

your hard work is about to pay off

I’m consolidating all the little “do this” lists that are on my workstation, and I just found a fortune from a fortune cookie:

your hard work is about to pay off

God, I hope so.  I’m so damn tired.  I’ve been trying to stay upbeat and focus on the blessings instead of the distance we still have to go, but it’s so fucking HARD.

We’ve had some major breakthroughs these past couple of weeks with regards to LJ’s therapy.  He’s finally starting to talk about what happened to him at the group home he was in.  He’s been doing therapy two or three times a week since there was a BIG ISSUE and he finally started to talk about it while we were dealing with the BIG ISSUE.

It’s really too much to know… I couldn’t imagine living with that secret inside me, thinking that terrible things would happen if I told.  Now that I know part of the “secret” its hard to see it in a non-emotional way.  I’ve counseled and mentored sexually abused children for what seems like forever and this is by no means the worst I’ve heard.  It’s a fairly common story.

It is really just hitting me hard.  This is MY kid.  MINE.  I could decimate every person or circumstance that enabled this to happen.  I could sit down and cry for a week.  Neither Shaun nor I are able to sleep without nightmares and we’re always listening through the baby monitor because he’s been having nightmares.

Thank God for our therapy group, though.  This center has been the absolute best place.  They deal with foster and adopted kids, and they know the system.  They also haven’t lost their ideals.  This isn’t the first time they’ve had to report to the state about something that’s come up in therapy and mostly it goes without ever being checked out, but this time they flipped shit.  The proprietors involved with running the home didn’t seem to care one way or another what was going on.  They actually said that LJ was “a damaged, retarded kid” and was probably lying. (This is from the home that had him classified as autistic and mentally retarded.  He’s not autistic and his IQ is in the 120s.)

When this asshole said that to the lady who runs our local center, she… well… the Bible says “vengeance be mine, saith the Lord” but God sometimes subcontracts.  I would not willingly set foot in her path while she’s pissed off – and I’m one of those people who would stare down a hurricane.  So, now the COO of the national treatment center is making a report to the group that runs the DHR – which is over DFCS.

(Yes, this is the same home that called DFCS on me because of a facebook status where one of my friends joked that I was a dominatrix.  Didn’t you know that I’m a harlot because I have short hair, wear makeup, and have tattoos?  Well, I am, and that means any sort of deviance from the straight and narrow means I’m a BLASPHEMER!!!! AND OMG, I HAVE KNEE HIGH BLACK BOOTS!!!  I’m obviously a tool for the Devil himself and my facebook updates should never go unnoticed.)

So, back to LJ.  He seems happy during the day – almost carefree.  He’s a very somber kid so this is really a shock.  He has gone back to soiling his drawers and hiding them, throwing tantrums, and forgetting personal space b0undaries.  It’s expected… it’s not acceptable behavior, but it’s expected.

We’ve been talking a lot about what to do when you have scary memories that seem real.  (PTSD flashbacks, for us grown folks.)  We talk about how to get to a safe place physically where you can’t hurt yourself or other people, and then find someone who you can tell about it.  I told him the important thing is to talk.  It doesn’t matter who – and we’re not going to spread it around like “oooh, guess what LJ remembers!”  He just needs to get it out before he does something stupid.

We also have been talking a lot about other people having scary memories that seem real.  A (chickpea) has flashbacks during October and last year scared the living hell out of LJ, so this year we’re talking about how its normal for people who remember scary things to have this happen and also what to do if a flashback does happen.

I’ve had to tamp down most of the talk about Halloween.  LJ is so excited about it, but because he was separated from chickpea for so long he doesn’t realize what Halloween means to her.  Her little brain learned the routine: dress up for Halloween, get candy, eat dinner with family, then get sent to live with a new mommy.  She LOVES pumpkins and getting dressed up and the pretty colored leaves, but she gets so amped up thinking that she’s about to have to leave again.  She’ll get in trouble and scream “I’m bad so I have to go to a new house!”  I told her that I’m much worse than she is and I’m not in a new house yet.  If she doubts it, she can ask Grandmommy and Grandpa exactly how bad I was.  So, we’ve been talking a lot about how adoption means she’s my kid forever and how hard we worked to get her and that no one was taking her without a fight.  A very messy, nasty fight.

It seems like we’ve talked about good touch/bad touch 500 million times and its still an issue.  We’ve talked about “games” that predators play to make a kid think its ok to touch each other, we’ve talked about safety plans, we’ve talked about the rules that we have to have while they’re having scary memories… we’ve talked about secrets and about personal space and being respectful.

We’ve talked our little throats hoarse and still, we have to keep going “omg, wtf” then keep on saying it.  One of these times it will sink in and hopefully be remembered.

And E… poor little guy.  He’s taking a lot of crap from LJ and chickpea during this and he’s getting so mad.  He’s 4, but the size of most 7 year olds.  He doesn’t know how to process all this drama right now, so he’s acting out and destroying things.  He’s yelling and kicking and throwing tantrums.  He’s stealing food and lying.  Gah… It’s hard to even work with a 60 lb preschooler, much less try and peel him off the ceiling.

Next on my list is to write a post on my post-op appt with my OBGYN.  I won’t put it here because it’s absolutely not male friendly.