Fat Tuesday

There has been nothing fat, or phat for that matter, about this Tuesday, except for me. And I am both fat and phat, so yay me.

The day started out with my eye doing that thing it does where it feels like someone is taking a wood burning tool to it. Some sort of stabbing/burning pain. Then I had an early meeting but no one to take Josh to school, so I skipped the meeting and prayed that this wasn't the day where someone got their panties in a bunch and fired all of the slacker meeting-missers. Work went smoothly. I rounded up Lexi and all of her gear, picked Josh up, came home for a few minutes, left to go up to Hill Air Force Base to get a visitor pass before the place closed, came home and started dinner, left to take Brittney to the base for derby workout, came home and finished dinner and fed one child, fought with another child trying to get her to let me check her blood and then trying to get her to eat, took both kids to pick Brittney up, came home and ate dinner. Could this night be any more of a pain in my butt? I asked myself. Why yes, yes it could. My little kids were being so wild, just like they are almost every night, and I was to the end of my rope, just like I am almost every night. The YW came over to give Brittney some cookies and they had "heart attacked" the front door. Very sweet. And about 5 minutes before the doorbell rang, Lexi had been goofing around and sent a glass flying onto the kitchen floor, shattering. I yelled, "SHIT!" Then while I was cleaning up the mess, Josh was trying to ask me about something unrelated to anything and I said in my I've-had-it-for-tonight stern voice, "I'm not going to think about that right now." So, I don't know how long it took them to tape paper hearts on my front door, but if they were out there they were most likely treated to my swearing and grouchy mom voice. Awesome. They didn't give me the stink eye, so hopefully not.

We had a fun birthday party at mom's house Sunday night. I ate too much. We stayed talking until 11:00. It was nice to catch up.

We didn't do a whole lot over the long weekend. Cleaning, errands, Sean worked some at Auto Zone, he did a lube job on the truck, just enough to be productive but enough to still relax a lot.

I am ready for spring. It's almost time for a March party. Gotta start planning it. If it's storming or about to storm, I can handle that. It's the sunny cold days that get me. And the inversion. I need warmth.

Lexi told me today that she doesn't want to go to kindergarten because she heard from a boy in her daycare that goes to kindergarten that it's boring. So she would like to go to grandma's house every day instead of school.

Counting down the weeks until spring break.

Friday Night Gossip

Well, big surprise. It's Friday night, Sean is working, I cleaned the house. He is going up to his grandpa's later to watch Gold Rush, and I will fold clothes and watch Hoarders or read a novel and fall asleep on the couch. We are quite predictable of late.

I feel like I cleaned forever today because I cleaned my stove/oven top to bottom, inside out, and underneath. We had a fiery little adventure last night while making dinner. The coil in the oven had started to disintegrate or corrode or something, and it started on fire in the middle of cooking dinner. I thought it was a little grease fire from something that had dropped down there, so I turned the oven off and dumped some flour on it, but that didn't help. It just got bigger. So then I panicked and yelled, "I don't remember what to do!" and then pulled myself together and ran down to turn off the breaker. The fire died right out. Meanwhile, Lexi ran outside. Ha! It was kinda funny, but I'm glad her first instinct is to run outside if there's a fire. So anyway, Sean took the old coil out and bought a new one to put in, but first I figured the oven should have a good cleaning.

Josh is pretty funny. I love little boys. It's so funny to me that he will carry on a whole conversation with you while naked and not think twice. He learned the phrase "pish posh" on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and will bust it out when you least expect it. Tonight we went to get Chick-Fil-A and he's all, "Yeah, get me 2 sandwiches. I think I can take em down." Ok, big man. He eats constantly, yet you put your arm around him and he feels like a skeleton.

Lexi's latest thing is "between me and you." She gets so embarassed if I tell other people the things that she says, so now she prefaces a lot of her stories or secrets that she tells me with "between me and you" to remind me not to tell anyone. She needs a haircut so desperately, but she refuses to get one. She begged me for lunch today, I gave her insulin to cover it, then she decided it was nap time and fell asleep in a chair without eating it. So now she had all this insulin on board and refused to wake up. I was trying to get her to at least wake up and drink some juice, and she kept saying, "No! Shhhhh! Be quiet!" Finally I said very loudly, "Sit up and drink some juice and I'll be quiet!" So she did.

I've been thinking a lot over the last week or two about gossip and being a nice person and related issues. The bishopric message this month was about gossip, and I've read a few things here and there on online forums about being nice and not gossiping and etc, and then I was reading the blog Snarky In the Suburbs, and all of these thoughts were rolling around together in my head... And I really think... Being nice is overrated. I don't feel bad that I gossip. I don't spread lies or conjecture about people. I don't gossip about my co-workers or sit and talk bad about my neighbors to each other. I'm not a Judgy McJudgerpants. Usually. Sometimes I do those things if someone has legitimately done something to bug me. Like if I e-mailed the counselor about something 3 times and he never responded, I might vent my frustration to a friend. Or we work with a crazy lady that I have talked about a time or ten because she tells lies and does things to try to make other people look bad and is crazy. But I don't diss on people for what they wear or what they look like or just because I don't like their personality. I like people that I hear other people talk bad about and I just don't listen or participate. But if someone flat out is rude to me or does or says stuff repeatedly that I think is stupid, I'll probably say something to someone eventually. And I don't really care that I do that. Like, my neighbor that used to let her three year old son with Downs Syndrome roam the neighborhood, getting into people's mailboxes, taking toys out of people's garages, climbing a ladder on the side of his house that his mom had left sitting there, playing in her car and starting it because she'd leave the keys in it. Sean went over there and got him once when he had started the car. And I'm sure I talked about her to my neighbor. I didn't seek out the conversation, but I'm sure when it started I was more than happy to participate. I don't know. I guess I feel like it's situational, and I do gossip, and I feel eh-who-cares about it. But the other day I walked into the English office and overheard some teachers talking about another teacher, and maybe they weren't saying anything mean, but it felt like they were, and it made me sad. Because I don't feel like she had done anything to justify it. They just don't like her personality or her teaching style. So I guess I have my own little personal set of situational ethics on this one and it's hard to define exactly. I think I vent frustration more than gossip. Hmmmm... gotta think about this some more.

Sean bought me really pretty pink roses on Valentine's Day. It was a really nice surprise.

I want to plan a vacation down south for Spring Break, but I don't know if I want to spend any money. Or drive in a car for hours with some of these people.

Between AutoZone and his regular job, Sean averages about one day off every 2 weeks I think. He hasn't been doing it long enough for it to be that big a deal yet, and it's winter so there isn't as much to do, but I imagine it's going to get old at some point. We'll see.

I think I've eaten at least a dozen sugar cookies this week.

For the first time since the second season of Survivor, I didn't tune in for the opening episode of this season on Wednesday. I think last season finally killed it for me. I just can't muster up any enthusiasm for it.

Fridays Are Magic

I'm sensing a pattern emerging here.... It's Friday night, and I'm blogging again. Sean worked, then went up to his dad's to watch Gold Rush. I cleaned the house, dropped Brittney off, picked Brittney up, cleaned the house some more, and now I am blogging, and then I plan to lay on the couch and read until I pass out.

For some reason, Josh and Lexi played together for a really long time tonight without fighting. It was truly amazing, and they did the same thing last Friday night. Fridays are made of magic.

Britt's derby team did some pics last Saturday.







I really think I should avoid the news and newspapers while the legislature is in session. Otherwise I just go around in a bad mood for three months. Seriously, there are some really bad bills out there this time around. Every time I turn around it seems there are more politically-related aggravations just waiting to bug the crap out of me.

I have blessedly few things on the agenda this weekend. First and most important is sleeping in. Other than that, I need to do the grocery shopping and watch two different productions of The Taming of the Shrew. Anything else I get done is just the icing on the cake.

My Way Fun Life

Well, here I am again. It's Friday night. I need to clean my house, but I don't wanna. Not. At. All. I'm tired. It's been a long week. Not that I'm complaining. I like long weeks. Usually life flies by at warp speed, so I'm OK with a long week. Sean is working tonight, though, so if I don't clean the house I probably won't be able to relax because I'll just feel guilty the whole time that he's working and I'm sitting around.

At the end of the day, at the end of the week, I just need to be by myself. I cannot listen to another person say my name and ask me for stuff. Unfortunately that ain't happening any time soon.

We have Lonestar tickets for tonight, but Sean had to work, so that pretty much sucks. I couldn't really even give them away because they are at will call, and I always show my ID to pick them up, so I don't know how to transfer them into another name or if you can. Blah. Oh well.

I got my hair done finally. Eh. Whatever. Nothing exciting, nothing bad. It's hair.

We are in the process of refining our Super Bowl menu for Sunday. The only thing I know for sure is that we will be making dad's queso. I don't really care much who wins this one, so I will be cheering for whichever team will win us money in the office pool each quarter.

I did the taxes the other day. I thought to myself, "Hmmm... do I have all the tax records? All the W-2s, 1099-INTs, 1099-Gs, the XYZs and PDQs? Why, yes, I believe I do. And besides, today is January 30th," says I. "That junk is required to be sent out by January 31. What could possibly come in the mail now?" So I clicked submit. And the very next day, January 31, I got a document in the mail that I forgot existed, and I had to go through a lenghty process for filing an ammended return, all to add $63 in income to Courtney's return, so that she could pay an extra $10 in taxes. Part of the lengthy process was computer issues, but still. Still.

I've been having strange dreams lately ever since Sean and I started watching Ghost Adventures on Netflix every night before we go to bed. It's our little tradition. We're running out of episodes, though, so I have no idea what we're going to watch when we do. Boo.

My two youngest children are quite cute and funny. However. They do not know how to play together for more than 4 minutes without fighting, and they do not know how to go to bed at night. It's so obnoxious.

I'm so annoyed with politics. I don't even want to write about it. Next year I will be adding a Planned Parenthood donation to my payroll deductions. That's all I'm gonna say about it tonight.

Lah. Dee. Dah. Guess it's time to go mop the floor.

Weekend Update

It's a pretty quiet night around here. Sean took Lexi up to his grandpa and dad's house to watch Gold Rush with them. He does that every Friday night. Courtney and Josh bought a new fish tank and have been busy all night assembling it. Brittney is asleep with a headache. I just finished cleaning the house and folding a billion loads of laundry. I always watch Hoarders while I fold laundry for some reason. Maybe it makes me feel better to watch it when I'm doing housework or something, because that's the only time I ever watch it. Now I'm going to read the latest Patricia Cornwell novel and not move until I fall asleep.

This week has been fairly good. Brittney got her driver's license on Monday, so that's really nice.

Last week Brittney got the chance to meet and hug the man of her dreams. She and one of her best friends found out that the guys from The Buried Life TV show were speaking at UVU and talked her friend's mom into taking them down there. So they skipped school and went. She and her friend have a list of things they want to do, and one of the things on it was to hug all 4 of these guys, and they got to cross that off the list. They got autographs, hugs, kisses on the cheek, and Brittney got to have a full-on conversation with the one she's in love with. A pretty good reason to skip school in my book.


Brittney's best friend Kylie in the middle in the striped hoodie with Duncan, the man of her dreams, and Brittney on the end


Brittney with her future husband, Jonnie Penn (and some other random girl)

Sean's fix-it-shop has been open for business lately. He fixed some stuff on my car for me, and he fixed my washing machine. Hallelujah. It would only spin on random occasions when it felt like it, so doing a load of laundry was an all day affair. I was not wanting to buy a new one, and he was able to figure out that what was wrong with it, buy the part for $50, and get it working again. Yay for that. He's going to be working all weekend, so no fun plans for us. I think I'll be doing the grocery shopping, trying to keep kids from killing each other, and reading my novel.

I love boys

I love boys. I love boys of all ages. I love teenage boys. They are pretty darn cute. I love how they are so much like elementary school boys. They draw pictures of sports cars on the backs of their quizzes and doodle little drawings of guys shooting each other and falling down cliffs. They think bodily functions are funny and they like to play tricks. They take any opportunity to throw things and try to make them into a goal or basket... wadded up papers into the recycle box, water bottles into the garbage can, white board markers onto the marker holder tray. They draw goofy stuff on my white board, people and cop cars and their names, and I have one super adorable kid, football and basketball player, smart kid, that makes me stuff using construction paper, scissors, and glue during study hall when he has nothing else to work on. Today he made me a monkey. Last week it was an Easter bunny and Easter egg. It's totally random. And totally cute.

I've had a sad awakening over the last few days with my teenage boys, though. Sexism is alive and well. I have heard some of the most jaw-dropping, at least for me, things over the last few days. Such as:
*It's a man's job to provide and it's a woman's job to take care of the kids. She had them; why wouldn't she be the one to take care of them?
*In a marriage, both people should have a say, but it should be the man that has the final say.
*Women want the man to support them, and the man puts in everything [by everything, he meant money] and she's just there, and then if they get divorced she wants half of everything.
*Seriously, how often does your dad make dinner? My dad never cooks. He doesn't know how. [some classmates agreed that their experiences were similar.]
*Men get better jobs than women, so they should provide.
We're about to read The Taming of the Shrew, so I gave them a list of about 13 statements that they had to agree or disagree with and tell why. Then we had a big discussion/debate about it. Some of the statements pertained to relationships, marriage, and gender sterotypes, because those are issues addressed in the play. I was blown away by girls agreeing with the guys on some of these. There are several purposes to discussions like these, and one is critical thinking skills. To have them challenge one another's notions and form and re-form opinions. And for me to push them to think more in-depth when necessary. One of the statements I like to give them for this purpose is "Boys should act like boys and girls should act like girls." They think it's so simple, but they really come up with some debate, and I push them to analyze what that really means and examine their biases and beliefs and better define them. But it's frustrating because they'll only dig so far before they become resistant or bored, and it's hard to get them to take the next step in questioning. What does it mean to "act like a boy" specifically? Who gets to decide? Why is one thing considered masculine and another feminine, and how do these things change over time? One thing I did love today was one of my favorites, a tough macho football player type who I get the feeling runs with a rough crowd, says, "Guys can be cheerleaders. It's not just a girl thing to be a cheerleader." Many people are quick to associate anything that is largely done by girls as girly, and I loved that he was considering each thing on its merits. He also brought up nursing as something that is often done by women but isn't girly. Then another student said that only girls are secretaries, and when I asked him why he thinks men aren't secretaries, he said, "It's a pretty easy job." I give up. I am quite curious, though, about the messages these kids are getting at home.

I've already hit a roadblock in my goal to be on top of birthdays. I bought a birthday card for my nephew, put a few bucks in it, it's all ready to go... no stamps. I tried to buy stamps at Smith's on Sunday, but it appeared it was going to take an act of Congress to get someone to sell them to me, so I left without them. So I'm late. But it will arrive in the same month as the birthday, and that still counts as improvement for me.

Strange thoughts

Term 2 has ended and the school year is officially halfway through. I had a little last minute scrambling by students, but not too bad. I did have one special soul who needed an assignment entered to bump her grade up to a D- so she wouldn't be grounded. She turned her assignment in at 1:00 Thursday afternoon, and by the time I got to work at 6:30 am Friday to enter scores she had e-mailed me twice and posted a message to me on facebook. Not my class facebook page, my personal one. Seriously?

I have the blahs. I'm in a screw-it sort of mood. I'm too fat, I spend too much money, I'm exhausted, so screw it. Who cares.

The pants I'm wearing are making me angry, so I think that's part of the problem. I wonder if anyone else's clothes make them angry like mine do. Like they seriously affect my mood. Certain things make me angry, just the sight of them, too. Like Sean's hair. If his hair is bad, it will put me in a bad mood just to look at it. I wonder if that's strange.

Speaking of strange... I was listening to "Red Solo Cup" on the radio the other day, and I noticed that you are allowed to say "ass" on the radio but not "testicles". I find that strange. Shouldn't you be allowed to use actual names for body parts before you are allowed to use slang? Hmmm... Also, that song is somehow the most stupid song ever written, yet strangely just a little bit awesome at the same time. Proceed to party.

I had a conference with Josh's teacher last week about his reading. He is always just barely below whatever benchmark he's supposed to hit. So he's always making progress, but as soon as he hits the fluency benchmark, they raise it. It's a little frustrating, because his comprehension is good. He just moves at a slow pace, and that's what his teacher thinks too. It's just his natural pace, and he likes to stop and think about things he's reading in the middle, too. Anyway, he does really well in math, and she told me that he is the fastest kid in the class at counting money. That cracked me up because that kid loves money. He's always trying to come up with a way to earn some, and he counts his money all the time. She said she'll hand out a paper on money counting, and before she can walk back to her desk he's finished. That's my boy. He's a lot like Sean that way, I think. Sean had a newspaper route or picked up odd jobs from the time he was little. He'd haul trees for the guy at the Christmas tree lot... anything to make a few bucks.

We had a derby meeting yesterday, and things are starting to come together. It's exciting. The girls have been shuffled around a bit, and there's been a lot of wait and see what other people are going to do, so they are now finally forming their own team and things are starting to come together. They came up with a team name (they are the Junction City Harlequins) and colors (red and black). They are designing a logo so they can get their shirts made up. They are setting up their bylaws and looking for venues to skate and bout, and they found an awesome coach who was willing to take them on. As soon as they get their shirts done they will do some photos, start making flyers, and start recruiting. I'm very excited for them! This new coach is already helping them so much. I'm so glad she agreed to it.

I think I'm going to do the Slim Fast diet. I do just fine all day until evening. Then I just eat whatever I feel like. So if I can have some Slim Fast in the evening, maybe that would help me. I told Heather it's because in the morning I'm motivated because I have to get dressed and look at myself in the mirror. All throughout the day I'm busy and I can only eat what I've brought with me from home, and I do fine with that. When they have donuts or candy at faculty meetings or things like that, I can resist just fine. But after dinner, I'm tired, I slap on some elastic waistband pj's, and all bets are off.

I'm reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I really like it. It's intriguing. I may have more to say when I finish with it.