Encouragement from DesertGirl

In an effort to encourage you no matter where you are in life, let me tell you a little bit about my day. I woke up slightly tired. Jayd woke up with nightmares around 2:30 am and I moved her into the guest room with me. She needs total darkness to sleep, but kept seeing a bizarre flashing light. I discovered a digital clock that had been reset during a power outage and was now flashing. Understanding the thorough thing to do would be to set it with the proper time, I went promptly to the bathroom and got a large towel to cover it up with.  I kept seeing flashes though, so I got up again to investigate. This time it was lightning, portending that crashing thunder that will keep my child up was close at hand. Yay. We were finally both asleep when a final light came into the room and woke us. This time it was our resident nut job looking for his bible. Because maybe, just maybe, we took it in there at 4am? He finally found it right where he had left it. Life is crazy that way. Sigh.

Jayd and I get up and get rolling as usual around 6:30, make breakfast, and find a princess CD that had long ago been accidentally erased from the iPod and subsequently never listened to again because honestly, I can't be asked to carry around hard copies of CDs anymore. I mean, what is this? 1993? I think not. In an attempt to be supermom, I quickly download iTunes onto my computer to import her CD and copy it back to the iPod. In my rush I didn't notice I wasn't on the REAL iTunes site, so instead I downloaded a huge package of MALWARE. The bonus in all this is I hadn't worked with registry edits and command line codes for uninstalling and repairing my computer in years, so I got a great refresher. While I was bringing my technical skills up to date with my new project, Jayd ate a baggie full of candy from last Halloween, completely under my radar. Supermom? No.

Cleaning up candy wrappers and listening to the princess CD on the iPod with GREAT satisfaction, the doorbell rings. It's the cops. luckily, it was for my MIL. Unluckily it's because someone tried to charge a $2000 air ticket to Africa on her credit card. You can't make this stuff up. (It wasn't me. I swear when I said I was running away to Africa it was a joke. Really. I SWEAR).

I have one hour exactly left before the kidZone closes at my gym, so I have to get my buttootie over there. Jayd collects every toy she owns and slowly installs herself and everything she needs for the 5 minute drive into the car and we are off.  1 mile from the gym, I see flashing lights (yes, more flashing lights, ironically). I am being pulled over for speeding, but at least he just gives me a warning. I got an AWESOME 30 minute workout in. LOL. Now I'm at home. I've surrounded myself with crucifixes, garlic cloves, antivirus software and poison detectors just to make sure I actually live through the day. And I'm wearing steel shark-bite prevention netting clothes of course. Because anything is possible. :)

 

I hope all of you have a wonderful day!

The secret to life - finally revealed.

Hahahaha. You thought I had the secret to life. That's cute. OK, anyone who sees me on a regular basis knows I'm having a medical issue lately. Called aging. I don't really mind growing old and plan to accept it gracefully - in about 40 more years. For now I'm struggling to kung fu fight a seemingly endless crew of aging-symptom-bad-guys. As soon as I slam one down, another one sneaks up behind me. Sometimes I lose.

Here's a little story about a giant, nasty, vein-thing that popped out of my right shin about 5 years ago. It isn't a spider vein. It's like a couple of night crawlers fighting underneath my thin shin skin. I'm sure I could have some kind of surgery to have it removed, or just have my leg cut off altogether. But for now I've just learned to accept that I have some creepy stuff going on that doesn't really bother me if I don't look at it. But sometimes I DO win. Sort of.

For example, I noticed those "fine lines" on my face looked more like a pug dog, so I bought some super awesome chanel face products. And Arbonne. And some others. The good news is, I really do think it's making an improvement! The bad news is, whenever someone says, "oh, you still look young, LK," my heart starts to race and I wonder if I can really afford $500 of face cream every six months for the rest of my life! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO????? I'm sure there are lots of good options. Like selling my blood or something. Is there a market for old lady blood? No? Hmmm.

The worst thing that can ever happen to a woman is that she can gain weight. (Yes, I'm aware of all the tragedy in the world and I'm just being sarcastic. This is a blog for goodness sake so stop being so serious). I run. I work out. I gained weight. I got more serious and measured my food on a scale. No change. I did a 24 day challenge (Well, 20 days, I gave up at the end) and still no real difference. Last night I was reading something that mentioned "unexplained weight loss." Who has that? What is that like? Oh hey, I had Mexican food last night and a couple of margaritas, but I'm down another 2 pounds. Yessssss! I know there are cancer patients out there who lose a ton of weight and aren't happy about it, but that is EXPLAINED. I want unexplained weight loss. So if someone has that, please email me and explain it to me. Thanks!

In the mean time, I'm going to go put some of Jayd's inheritance on my face. Have a great day!

It's all about the budget

Have you ever found yourself lost in thought on the potty (uh, mom slip) toilet? Don't judge. There are times when the child is asleep, the house is quiet, no one is over, the phone isn't ringing, you don't have a burning desire to check Facebook or lululemon.com and you realize that you are still sitting there because you can't manifest enough "give a crap" to get up for a couple of minutes. You know you have things to do, but you just enjoy the rest even though you're not, well, manifesting the other kind of crap either. It's not like we sit down a lot when we have young children. Any seat will do.

I think about my schedule for the day. I think about my friends and whether they need encouragement. I think about hanging another rack in my laundry room so I can do three loads of hang-to-dry laundry on the same day without becoming overwhelmed with wet clothes draping off of every surface of my laundry room. Because we all know I am never, ever going to learn to space them out so the first one can be dry before the next one needs to be hung! But I'm getting off track. Well, in such a moment I had a silly thought. You know how some people love to talk about how they hate to just "flush money down the toilet"? I wonder how many of those people buy toilet paper???? I saw three of those cardboard things that toilet paper comes rolled around sitting in the garbage can and I started to think about it. Literally we just flush it down the toilet. I'm not advocating denying yourself the use of toilet paper. Its time between just sitting there on a roll and going down the toilet is brief, but at least you don't have stinky poop stains on your briefs!! Or your bikini, or your thong, or something new that I haven't even heard of yet...

Suffice to say, at that point it was time to halt the crazy-thoughts-train, get off the potty and go do something productive. Like find some space for that third load of laundry that just finished and has absolutely no place to be hung. In the interest of more rest, I decided to share my deep thoughts first in my blog, but now I better get to wallpapering my laundry room with delicate lulu outfits. Enjoy your snow day and stay warm!

The Amazing Evergreen

Many of you have children. That means you remember having a 3-year-old. A 3-year-old doesn't really say much. HAHAHAHAHA. I just threw that in for my friends who don't have children. We all know a 3-year-old talks constantly. Constantly. And they really only ever want to know one thing: What is that? How does it work? How did it get made? What is this string for? Oops, how did it get broken? Where did it come from? How old was I when it got there? What is it going to be like tomorrow? Why? How? Yeah, but WHY?????

I like to answer all these questions, again and again. Much like I enjoy holding something heavy for a very long time. Because otherwise how could I get stronger and better? Patience is just another muscle, right? Let's flex that baby! Is that all you've got Jayd?? You're not even TRYING to wear me out!! In reality, I want to answer all these questions because she's thinking and learning, and for a very short time she wants to talk to ME. Constantly. I know I will ache for these days when she is 15 and in her room for 16 hours a day listening to some kind of music genre that hasn't even been invented yet.

Occasionally though, we get the treat of her explaining something to me instead of asking me to explain things. These are the sweetest moments. She is so matter-of-fact, and interjects appropriate teaching lingo like, "you get it?" It's cool sometimes to realize that she understands a concept that I wouldn't think is very important to her (ie, it doesn't have to do with princesses). Mommy, when you eat, that gives you energy. You need energy to do other things, like run in a circle with your friends before dance class. You get it? Yes Jayd, I get it. It's especially rewarding when she throws in, "you never knew how to get energy before! Now you do! Isn't that AMAZING?!" Haha. Yes, Jayd, that is incredible! Shortly afterwards she will say something like, "why isn't that car moving? Maybe they ran out of gas. Cars need gas for energy just like we need food." Yep! I have a baby genius on my hands. I KNEW IT.

And that brings me to the amazing evergreen. Jayd was telling me all about evergreens. "They stay green all year, and the cold doesn't kill them. But sometimes they die from other things..." I promise I'm listening, but I admit I'm sorta doing the mom uh-huh from the front seat while she talks and I'm also, sort-of going over the list of things I'm out to buy, thinking of the best way to hit the stores without letting frozen things melt or drive to the same area twice. "...And sometimes they blow over in wind, and sometimes they are cut down."

"uh-huh"

"And sometimes you take a pine tree and you put it in the oven to bake it and it turns more yellow and then you put sugar on it and you bake it again and that's how you get PINEAPPLE!"

"Wait, what?" LOL. Actually baby, pineapple is a whole different thing, but they both include the word pine, and they are both plants, and pineapple is sweet as if someone added sugar. As I say this to her I think to myself, SHE IS A GENIUS!  So if anyone is interested, I think I'm going to set up the Jayd school of horticulture. Because until now, you never even KNEW how we got pineapple. And now you do! It's AMAZING.

Almost as amazing as the evergreen.

In a time before the hashtag #isthatonewordortwo

Sorry I've been gone so long. My computer broke 18 months ago and we all know typing out an exciting blog on an ipad keyboard would take me the same effort as writing it out in blood from pricking my own finger. But I got a new laptop for Christmas, so I can start boring you again with my two obsessions - my super awesome amazing daughter and my running (note, nothing super awesome or amazing about that. But I love it).

So, about the hashtag. Many of you have seen the Justin Timberlake SNL video about this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57dzaMaouXA&noredirect=1
I don't belong to Twitter yet, so I haven't found the opportunity to excessively use the hashtag. However I do see it in everyone else's posts and #ikindofgetit. #Anyremainingthoughtafteryoursentenceendsjustgetsaddedhere. #omgitscrazy.

I would try to get some kind of old lady and behind-the-times paranoia about how my daughter will never learn when words end and new ones begin, except I have had this "compound word" problem my whole life. I don't think I'm alone either. My old boss once busted one of her employees for "not working" when he asked if spider monkey (spidermonkey?) were one word or two. She later busted me, actually, for asking how to spell Leprechaun, but that actually was sort-of about work, and also is completely unrelated to compound words. So just forget I mentioned it.

OK, OK, so I doubt you use the word(s) spider monkey every day. But what about carseat. I send a text that I'll just pick my daughter up from school and she can get a little catnap in her carseat. Which turns into a big mess, because my overbearing control freak of a phone wants me to use "real" words. It turns catnap into Camaro and Carseat into Corset. So suddenly my child is getting a Camero in her corset - which just sounds more uncomfortable than anything wimpy Scarlett O'Hara had to endure with her Mammy pulling on those dang strings to give her an 18 inch waist again. I mean, right? The holidays were unkind to my body, but I still doubt a Camero would fit into any of my undergarments.

So I guess I just need to learn how to separate my words. Maybe the hashtag is my saving grace. While I know it's supposed to be written never mind, I could still be right if I just wrote #nevermindthewholething #myworkhereisdone #desertgirlout

The MIL edition

It's Thanksgiving. A time to be thankful. A time to be enveloped in the warmth of your family and your home. But who are we kidding? This four day weekend usually ends with a couple of family members no longer speaking to each other and a few others on new prescriptions of valium.

Unfortunately, since my husband and I are each one of only two siblings and because our families are geographically dispersed, I don't get to see large fireworks displays. However, I DO get to rub shoulders even more than usual with the creature that lives in my basement - my MIL. That would be short for Mother-In-Law. No F at the end.

"More than usual" is actually somewhat of a misnomer this year, since we have been existing in something Dante never bothered to write about that I will call "Sprained Wrist Hell". My MIL sprained her wrist in mid-October, magically becoming a blind paraplegic. The doctors can't really explain this, but I can. It's called "just her usual personality, but with a sprained writst".

For example, she has always micromanaged everything she observes in the car, probably out of a fear of some crisis that the rest of us wouldn't even imagine. For example, two minutes after leaving our driveway we get, "Jayden, don't sing the alphabet so loud. You're libel to make your mother distracted, cause her to drive off the road, and we will all end up in the hospital!" (I swear these are real quotes). And then there's always my favorite which is the constant comments on the way back from our neighborhood grocery store, "slow down, you're going to have to turn right when you get over this next hill." Once I snapped, "Do you really think I don't know how to get to my own house from two miles away?!?" - but she didn't notice or care. The next direction was delivered within 30 seconds. I was actually relieved, because then I knew I hadn't hurt her feelings. Whew. That was a close one. 

I actually do love my MIL, and she is a sweet lady. She loves me, my husband and my daughter, and she honestly tries really hard to respect my area of the house. A lot of women have worse mothers in law. It is important to understand that before I say this - I think she has a real condition that causes her to have severe anxiety over a multitude of crises that will NEVER happen. The obsession over these will cause things like a random text one day warning me never to use dryer sheets on Jayd's clothes because some of them have certain chemicals that completely destroy your ability to function physically and mentally - or something like that. I stop reading after the first 5-10 sentences and go on to my usual household chores, such as to throw Jayd's clothes in the dryer (with a dryer sheet). On my way back across the hall, by the door that functions as a gateway between my "home" and "the basement" I will discover a series of paper notes that have been pushed under the door, and I will also have a voicemail and an email. All addressing the current urgent issue of dryer sheet toxins. She does this instead of coming to talk to me - in the interest of not disturbing or bothering me, because there is absolutely nothing disturbing about that, right? But at least her heart is in the right place.

What a sprained wrist adds to all this, of-course, is that she needs to be driven everywhere, and subsequently escorted around wherever she is. This is where the hell comes in. Between multiple trips to various stores, post office, doctor, and whatever, we get to hang out a lot. Her sprained wrist makes her helpless, and I get such honors as holding the produce bag open while she very closely examines 10 or so pears one at a time and places them in the bag. She asks for everything in a kind of helpless little voice and makes a big production out of lifting a bag of broccoli (with her good hand). And that brings us to... THANKSGIVING!

She is, because she actually IS very sweet, making a pumpkin pie for our Thanksgiving. Pies can be fickle, and my husband is picky about his pumpkin pie, so she bakes them in my oven instead of her basement appropriate toaster oven that's probably from the 50s. As such we got even more quality time together this afternoon. She started by asking me to read her the recipe, because she can't read with only one hand. My sixth grade self had to bite her tongue to hold back the "...you read with your eyes and not your fingers..." comment that was begging to be said. So I'm reading the instructions when she interrupts me to say, "if I do it like that, it will be gummy because the pie filling will seep into the crust and..." she kind of trailed off into an incoherent mutter. I stopped reading and waited to be directed. Was I free to go back about my business? Was I meant to keep reading? Finally she said, "Well, maybe some people like it gummy. Do you like it gummy? Is that why you want me to make it that way?" Now my teen self was biting my tongue. Because 14 year old Elle would have said "WHO LIKES GUMMY PIE? WHO???? And I don't care HOW you make it. I'm reading YOUR recipe to you at YOUR request. I'd rather be writing a blog about how fricking crazy you are!!!!!"

OK. Sorry. Just had a little break and some deep breaths. Out of curiosity, is it valium then beer then liquor? Liquor, pills, then wine? Just wondering for a friend of mine who wants to know. Not me. But let me know, so I can tell her.

Well, I'm signing off. I'm being beckoned to take a pie out of the oven. And that's ok, because that does actually require two hands. Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Guess What I Learned Today

I have learned a couple of valuable lessons this week that I absolutely have to share. The first is, if you leave some laundry in the washer too long and it starts to stink, unless you like to smell like stink for months afterwards, it's a good idea to wash that load with one full cup of baking soda, a full dose of Tide with Febreeze, and the hottest water your fabric can handle. My mildew laundry was spring fresh again. Woohoo!

The second lesson is even better.

Gremlins are real. They got into a berry colored sharpie marker and caused some damage to some of my daughter's clothes. The evidence that creatures who are largely believed to be imaginary OBVIOUSLY did this is as follows: It's almost a full moon, which is when gremlins come out. It's almost Halloween, AND, this is most important, my princess-angel toddler would never EVER do that.

I naturally considered just throwing the newly designed clothes into the washer with a full cup of baking soda and a full dose of Tide with Febreeze. It seemed to be the laundry answer of the week. But instead I went to work with some stain remover and color safe bleach. The verdict is still out, but the likely answer is - the marks are indeed permanent as is clearly written on the casing of the marker.

Exhausted and anxious I went into my bedroom to see if the gremlins also got my light-cream, almost white carpet. They didn't! But even as my lips were attempting to curl into a smile, I felt them dragging back and revealing my teeth in more like a werewolf effect. The gremlins had marked all over my expensive wood bedroom suit. The one my husband bought me for our anniversary 2 years ago.

With thoughts of trying to personally sand and refinish the furniture perfectly such that my husband would never notice, without him first seeing the marks, and without him noticing furniture stain smells, I got out my phone and consulted my best friend, Google.

With very little effort I found what I needed... on a finished surface, a sharpie could be removed with isopropyl alcohol. Hubby was giving princess-angel a bath, so faster than Flash, I got the alcohol and some paper towels and wiped at the marker, completely forgetting the recommendation to first test a non-visible area of the wood. Voila! The sharpie was gone! And the finish was fine!

Whew. Good thing the darling husband doesn't read my blog. He never has to know. Now to pop some popcorn and curl up on the couch. I'm done for today. I leave you with this advice: If you do happen to see the Gremlins - please don't feed them after midnight.