Erika

Good morning Buddies, I am happy to report that I will finally be able to resume my tiling today. Good thing, because with all of the stress here lately I have been eating like a rabid wolf.

Ethan replaced the old fixtures and to my suprise enlisted the help of a friend and installed a shower as well. Because our house is so old, the main bathroom only had a tub, and now it has a shower too!

We have all been using the shower we put in the basement when we moved in, but this will be so much nicer. He even bought me one of those insanely large shower heads.

The bad news is that I now need a lot more tile for my new shower. I have two new walls to do, and instead of just going half way up the wall as planned, I now have to go to the ceiling. It’s probably going to be a good 2 weeks until I am done.

So I’m going to get back to work, and back to eating right. It doesn’t help that TOM is here, I know I put on at least 5lbs…and no it’s not water, it’s weight. Stupid stress eating!

The school picnic is on June 12th and I want to lose at least 20lbs my then, if I could just get on the ball I coukl pull it off. So it’s another day of starting over.

Hey Buddies, sorry I have been missing this week. It seems like the lives of everyone around me are imploding. From a neighbor’s pipes that sprung a leak and rained in their dining room, to my friend who is in the hospital and her resistance to the antibiotics.

Mostly my focus has been on a dear friend who after months of struggling, finally confided in me how bad her finances are. She broke down and admitted that there is no food in her house, and her 3 kids have been eating Girl Scout Cookies, eggs and toast all week, and that too was running out.

Their best meal of the day was at school, and with the weekend approaching she wasn’t sure what she was going to do.

Why is it so easy for friends to reach out and ask for emotional help and support, and yet so hard when it comes to money?

After 15 min of me demanding that she come to my house, she agreed. Ethan and I ran around like lunatics emptying the cupboards and our deep freeze. We were able to pull together 8 bags of groceries, enough to pull them through until she could get some emergency aid from the state. Thankfully that came through today, and we are on our way to the grocery store in a few minutes.

After she left with the groceries, I cried for an hour. Just the thought of looking my children in the eyes, knowing they are hungry, and not having anything to feed them is too painful for words. I can not imagine what it would feel like in reality.

Her family came to visit later that evening, and her oldest son came up to me and gave me a hug. He held on so tight and just whispered ‘thank you’. He knew that there was no food in the house when he left for school, and when he came home there was. I didn’t think she would tell him where it came from, but she did.

I had to leave the room after that…more crying.

Then Friday, Jarod got into a fight with the playground bully. He knocked Jarod to the ground, which sent his glasses flying. Instead of immediately defending himself, Jarod tried to get his glasses. The bully advanced at Jarod again, but this time found himself flat on his ass.

Remember the boy that thanked me for the food? Well he saw what was happening, came flying across the playground and punched that little shit dead in the face while screaming, “Get away from my best friend!”

He gave him a bloody nose, and the kid cried. Did I mention that the bully is a 5th grader, and Jarod and his buddy are in 2nd?

Anyway, my bathroom is still under construction. Somehow one of my boys ( they will not confess who ) managed to break one of the spickets. The fixtures are so old that they don’t sell replacement parts, so the whole damned thing needs to ripped out and replaced.

Hopefully I will be able to catch up on all of you this evening and tomorrow. I hope you all are having a great weekend!

One final thought, if any of you have the means or the desire to do so, please make a donation to your local food bank. You can give money or just drop off a bag of non-perishables. Too many children go to bed hungry, $5 can buy enough pasta and sauce to provide a dinner for a needy family.

I think my arms may fall off soon Buddies.

 I got about a third of the bathroom tiled yesterday, and I am really feeling it today. I went through 25lbs of grout so far, what an improvement! We picked a white hexagon tile with small deep blue diamonds at the corners.

I spent the better part of the day today ripping down the old tile on the other walls of the room, my fingernails are shot!

Even though I am tired, I am finding it very easy to stay on my eating plan while involved in these projects. My Lowe’s card may burst into flames, and Ethan may have to take another job, but damnit my house will look great and I’ll be thinner! Broke….but thinner, crippled….but thinner.

I’ve noticed that once I get submerged into a project like this, I stop thinking about food, and only stop to eat when I am truly hungry. So if I show up at your homes with a bucket of spackle and a paint brush, just indulge me. Eventually I will run out of rooms here to rip apart and re-do.

A dear friend called me today to tell me that she is in the hospital with a staph infection, and may require surgery. To make matters worse she had a very bad reaction to the IV antibiotics they gave her.

To make matters even worse, her father seems to be MIA. They have had a very bad relationship since her mother passed away 3 yrs ago, and while he knows she is in the hospital, he appears to not be concerned enough to even answer his phone.

She called to ask if I would be her emergency contact and sign papers declaring me with the authority to make medical decisions should she not be able to. We have been friends since Jr High, actually we took tap and jazz together for 5 years. Yes…I can still do a mean time step.

I will be on my way to see her in an hour or so, luckily the hospital is only 4 blocks from my house, so I could be there in a hurry if need be.

Hopefully if my arms do in fact fall off, they will wait until I am there. 

The bedroom is finished , now it’s on to my bathroom.

So Ethan and I go to Lowe’s yesterday to pick out tile and get everything I need to remodel the bathroom. This clerk Keith was helping us and said that he would come back and check on us once we had made a decision about the tile. Well I had a question and went in search of Keith, couldn’t find him so I asked another clerk to help me….and that’s where the fun began.

As women, we have all had this kind of moment. When a man, either a plumber, machinic, electrician, Lowe’s guy, ect..talks to you like you are a complete moron just because you happen to be a woman.

I asked this man the same question 3 times, to no avail. He just wasn’t hearing me. He even went so far as to draw me a little diagram on how to begin tiling the shower floor…small problem, I’m not doing a shower floor, I’m tiling the walls! Finally he suggested that I go to an office store, buy some graph paper, design something “pretty”, and come back when I knew exactly what I wanted.

Ethan literally took a step back, so I just smiled said to this idiot….

” I have one more question about the tools I will need for this job, is a penis really required? ( volume getting louder ) Because I don’t have a penis…. nope, not a member of the penis club! ( getting even louder )  But you seem to be implying that the only way for me to be able to do this, or understand how to do this, is to go find me someone with a penis who can do it for me. “

At this point both the clerk’s and Ethan’s face were purple. So I leaned in and told him, ” I have two things I want you to do…#1 go away… and #2 go find Keith “  Kieth apparently was listening to the whole thing and came around the corner laughing.

I like Keith, Keith is nice…Keith gets the whole ‘I don’t have a penis but I can still understand basic instructions’ thing.

So I have mortar, and grout, and a tile saw….oh my! Keith also gave me his card and told me to call him if I get stuck. After all that bs with the clerk, the real kicker came at the check out.

While Ethan was checking out, I was talking to the manager. I flagged him down to tell him how helpful Keith was, and what an idiot the other guy was. Ethan was talking to someone in line and wasn’t paying attention to what the checkout girl was doing.

Once we got to the car I looked at the receipt, and found that instead of charging us for 9 boxes of tile, the girl charged us for 9 pieces of tile….we were undercharged by $220.

We went back in and found that same manager, it took me 5 min to get him to understand what the problem was. He thought they over charged me for 9 tiles, instead of giving me 81 free!

Finally he understood, but said that he was really suprised we would come back. We got a 10% discount.

So I’m off to start prepping the bathroom, happy Monday all!

Now that I find myself with extra time on my hands, I decided to put my hands to work, and work I did. Every part of my body hurts this morning as I spent the entire day yesterday remodeling my bedroom.

I started priming and painting and moving furniture at 10am Friday morning and finally gave up at 2am. I am almost finished, almost meaning I have about 5 hrs worth of work left to do. I even used a power saw to cut and size crown molding and a chair rail, I swung a hammer like a pro and didn’t even smash my thumb. I am also proud to report that I only fell off the ladder once, with no real injury.

We have 11ft celings, so I painted the top half of the walls a sandy color, the bottom a chocolate milk color, and put up a white chair rail seperating the two and then the white crown molding. The colors look great against the burgendy carpet. I still have white shelves to hang with beautiful brass braces, and various other nick-knacks, candles, and picture frames to put on them.

My house is almost 100 years old, so the bedroom has a small room attached that was once a nursery. The previous owners converted that into a dressing area with a built in vanity and extra closets. That’s what I will finish today.

I can’t tell you how happy I am to no longer be sleeping in a dark green dungeon, I let Ethan pick the color when we moved in.

So I am off to finish my beautiful bedroom, and then next week I plan on ripping apart the bathroom.

First off I would like to thank everyone for their support and kind words yesterday, I can’t tell you how much it meant to me.

I’ve done a lot of thinging on the subject and I if nothing else I can walk away from the situation knowing I did the right thing.

I was right to fall in love with those kids and treat them like my own.

I was right to allow them to become a part of my family, including them in all of the treats and special moments that my children get.

I was right to be kind to their parents even when they didn’t deserve it, and not to punish them for their parents disrespect for me.

Finally I was right to stand my ground and force a bad situation to find it’s end.

I’ve heard a lot of  ‘you’re too nice’, ‘people take advantage of people like you’, and ‘that’s why I don’t get that deeply involved’ from family and friends over the last two days.

I don’t want to be one of those people who don’t care, who don’t invest emotionally, and who keeps the world at arms length. I think my compassion and empathy are my finest traits, and I refuse to have that beaten out of me by the actions of a few.

So I will continue to live and love in the way that it comes naturally for me. Regardless of what has happened, I still believe that kindness attracts kindness.

I had a random moment this afternoon that re-affirmed what I believe, one that I needed very badly.

 We were at Wal-Mart grocery shopping and as we passed the display of baked beans Jarod asked if we could have some with dinner this week.

I told him to go ahead and grab a can, his exact words, ” No Mom, I want the kind that you make at home, they’re soooo good.”  I told Jarod that while I appreciated his faith in me, I made those baked beans by opening the can and heating them up.

A woman with a 18 month old standing next to us burst out laughing, and told me that she hopes when her son is Jarod’s age that he will be as confident in her. She told me that I must be a really good mother because my kids look so happy and are so well behaved. She said that I was the kind of mother she wanted to be, laughing in the grocery store with her kids. 

In regards to those worring about how this will effect me financially, we’re fine. She paid me very little, I agreed because she said that was all she could afford. Truth be told the lion’s share of that money went back into feeding, entertaining, and caring for her children. Once that is all factored in, I will be losing about $20 a week.

Thank you all again my friends.

Today has been a trying one Buddies.

Many of you will remember the problems I have been having with one of the women I babysit for. Well today it came to a head and exploded!

It was a string of little things….having to beg for my supply of diapers and wipes to be replenished… agreeing originally to watch the children for 6-7hrs a day and it turning into anywhere from 8-12hrs without extra pay and without so much as a phone call to tell me she will be 2hrs late…. bringing me a child who just threw up ( still with vomit on his pants and shoes ) and telling me to call if he gets sick…bringing me that child 2hrs earlier than expected, claiming to have an early meeting, but actually wanting to go to the gym…. not being able to reach either of the parents without having to wait 3hrs for a return phone call… their refusal to address bad behavior, and the latest…making me chase her down to get paid, every two weeks for the last 3+ months.

Today we locked horns for the final time, and she informed me that I would no longer be watching her children if I was going to be so overly sensitive and over-react to these issues.

She went on to tell me that I was completely undependable, siting the 4 times in the last 7 months her husband was late for work because I wasn’t able to take the children on time, the 2 times she had to find other childcare to cover for me, and the 1 time she had to come home early to get the kids.

Those incidents are as follows, 3 trips to the hospital for Jarod when he had pnuemonia for a chest x-ray, 1 trip to the ER for Logan when he was doubled over with stomach pains and a high fever, 2 days of me having the flu ( remember the vomiting child ? ), and once when I had to call myself an ambulance when my heart rate was over 150 and my blood pressure suddenly spiked to 210/120. Stress induced perhaps?

The truth is that I would have quit a long time ago were it not for my love for those children and the friendship between hers and mine.

She even went so far as to have her husband pick their oldset child up at school to avoid having to see me at the bus stop.

It is hard to explain how much I have done for her and her family. From planning, hosting, and paying for the majority of her bridal shower ( did I mention I wasn’t in the bridal party? ) to hosting a wake for her family, the list goes on and on.

This goes up to and including insisting that the little one be taken to a doctor after my not seeing him for 3 days, only to find out that he had a double ear infection and was dehydrated to the point of needing an i.v.

My boys are very upset, but understand that I had been allowing this woman to take advantage of me for the last 2 1/2 years. They are hurt, but support me. Ethan has been begging me to quit for the last year, it’s been that bad.

Sorry to be such a downer, it’s just infuriating to me. I have to say that I do feel that a weight has been lifted from my shoulders and I look forward to not waking up angry as I have almost everyday that I have been caring for those kids.

After reading so many blogs today by women who are feeling poorly about themselves, be it self imposed or thrust apon them by others, I felt compelled to write about it.

How is it that we: the mothers, wives, and caretakers of family and friends, can be so compassionate and giving to everyone else but ourselves?

When did we decide that our happiness and sense of self worth was dependant on someone else’s mood?

When did we become accepting that every extra inch on our waistline was directly related to the ammount of disrespect we will tollerate?

Who came up with the idea that we are only allowed to feel beautiful and worthy of love after the weight ticker shows some arbitrary number, and not a moment before?

And who the hell is responsible for convincing over 50% of the population that the approval of a man trumps one own inner voice?

I for one am tired of it!

I am tired of seeing beautiful, vibrant, incredible women accept less than the very best from the ones they love and the ones who love them.

I am tired of seeing those same women feel like they have to hide from society and pretend they don’t exist.

So to all of those Buddies out there who are ashamed of who they are, and have bought into the self defeating thinking you have been programmed with….STOP IT!

Stop doing this to yourself, stop agreeing with the people who hurt you by believing and internalizing their nonsense.

It’s possible to love and be proud of yourself right now, and still want to be better.

You are not crazy, overly emotional, nor are you defective.

You are wonderful, and graceful, and appreciated. 

Yeah I said it, and I’m not sorry!

I never asked him to make a sweet romantic gesture, and he did it anyway. Can you believe he had the nerve to bring me roses and truffles this weekend?  My favorite gormet, champagne, raspberry, and strawberry truffles… that bastard!

Yes Buddies, I fell off the low carb wagon big time Friday evening. I fell with such a thud, that it reverberated all the way to Sunday.

I have such a chocolate hangover, that you would think I was on a 72 hour bender consisting of nothing but vodka and cigarettes. Yes, I had a few of those too.

I’m just glad that the roses weren’t edible or I would have eaten them too.

It’s a good thing that I had my fill, and that the idea of eating any more candy right now repulses me, because my house looks like Willy Wonka’s livingroom.

Jarod and Logan got 7, count them…7 Easter Baskets each!  Between the Easter Bunny, my parents, and some very kind neighbors, I doubt that there is a piece of chocolate or Peep available for purchase in the Tri-State Area.

So it is back to low carb boot camp for me today, and yes…I plan on complaining about it for the next few days. This could get ugly Buddies, as the PMS monster is due to arrive any minute.

Wish me luck, I’m either going to need a lot of support or perhaps a good lawyer. Does the Twinkie defense work for those suffering carb withdrawl? Anyone? Nikki?

I have been sitting here trying to think of how to describe Jarod’s performance yesterday….

It truly is a ‘you had to be there moment’, but I will stretch my launguage skills and do my best.

I love my boy, and I think he is perfect. Usually, I am happy with the fact that he takes after his father so very much, with the exception of Ethan’s coordination and rhythm.

As many of you know, 2nd grade recitals come complete with  Temptation-esque or Gladys Knights’ Pip-like choreography, most often related and sycronized to the lyrics.

Tears are coming to my eyes as I laugh typing this because I am picturing my sweet boy and his two left feet….

If the group went left, Jarod went right. If they jumped up he crouched down. When they shook their heads ‘yes’ Jarod shook ’no’. He knew he was messing up and didn’t care because he also knew that all eyes were on him.

 He even gave himself the ‘ I could have had a V-8 ‘ head slap when he made a particularly obvious error. A head slap that was met with roars of laughter and Awwwwws from the audience. 

 Some how he even managed to get confused on Head and Shoulders Baby ( a sassy, up tempo, hep-cat version of the original ), as they went for the knees and toes he appeared to have gotten stuck and all you could see of him was his hand popping up to do the assigned finger gestures for the lyric ‘1-2-3′.

The spectacle reached an all time low, when during the closing number ‘Spring’, Jarod decided to just make up his own moves.

Did I mention that this was the only song where there were no dance steps previously specified?

He was acting out lyrics like…

find a fun song to sing  ( his best oprea singer impression )

fly a kite on a string  ( mimicing holding said kite’s string )

take a ride on a swing ( pretending to pump his legs back and forth while holding on the swing’s chains….which looked a great deal like he was dry humping the little girl in front of him. ) 

Yes folks, mine was the hit of the show. Even Logan, my 5 yr old, looked at me and said. ” Mom, what the heck is he doing? “  To which another mother turned around laughing and said, ” Stealing the show. “ 

So I am off to take my little star and his mortified little brother to see the Easter Bunny. Hopefully we will be able to avoid the paparatzzi and autograph seekers.

Happy Friday all.