A mother's work is never done...

We had a great mother's day. I woke up to the KM with his nose about an inch from mine saying "Happy Mommies Day, Open peasants? (presents)". So we got up and opened peasants. They got me a really cool new oven mitt I wanted and a under cabinet mount radio/CD player. Which was also installed on Sunday -- this sort of thing never happens at our house.

Then the chaos began. We had my mom, grandma, great-aunt, sister and brother over. This doesn't seem like very many people, but it sure was hectic. It probably didn't help that I had a slight headache, which was just throwing me off all day. I just couldn't get in to the swing of things. The day was long and never ending. It would have been great if I had been in the mood. Lately we have been doing a lot of entertaining. Our friends come over a few times a week for dinner. It's great, but sometimes it feels like all I do it cook.

So on Sunday when every one was over, all I wanted to do was sit and enjoy the day, but instead had to cook. After dinner when I asked my husband to help clean up, he said there was enough people to do it (i.e. my mom, grandma, great-aunt and sister). This was pure bull shit, it was Mother's day, and not dad sits on his ass day. He wandered in to the kitchen and was going to pretend to help, after I got mad at him, and couldn't figure out why he needed to help or why I was so mad at him. I just yelled "Fuck It!". At that point I think he understood that I was not happy and that he should get his ass to cleaning up lunch.

Part of the reason I was so cranky at him was because last year on Mother's day I painted our bedroom. We were trying to sell our house, and we agreed that some of it needed to be re-painted. So while he said he was going to help, he ended up taking a 4 hour nap on the couch, while my mom watch KM and I painted the room by my self. So this year I had high hopes of being treated like the queen I should be and actually getting to relax a bit. Instead, while I prepared all of the things for lunch, and my brother did the grilling, my husband sat on the couch and watch baseball. Didn't even bother to talk to anyone who was over. GRRR! Sometimes that man really pisses me off. Excuse us for being in your presence sire, we shall leave whilst the holy baseball game is on. Never mind we were here to visit you.

I had to get a little upset with him last Friday as well. He has been working on a job for a friend of ours, so when work is done they sit and have a few beers. He shows up at home when ever he feels like it. This is so irritating. When I get done with work, some days I would like to just sit and have a beer too, but instead I have to go and get KM from daycare, then go home and make dinner, do the laundry, give KM a bath, pick up the house, do dishes etc. Never crosses his mind that some days I am tired too. On Friday when he did get home, he took KM outside for a bobcat ride and I went back in the house for a few minutes to just sit, and when I poked my head out the window, I heard KM squealing with laughter and wanted to see what they were doing, husband tells him that mom has never seen daylight and she hates it out side. She won't come and play with us. That just hit my pissed off button. There are plenty of times KM and I play when dad is no where around, and I don't tell KM things to make him think dad doesn't like playing with him. Then they came inside and I was laying down, and husband says there's the King lying on the couch. FUCK YOU -- it's the first 5 minutes I got to myself in a while and now I'm the King who expects everyone to do what ever it is that I tell them -- I don't even know what he was really referring to but when ever he calls me King, I get so angry at him.

This turned way more in to a ranting than I had originally intended, but that you have it. My frustrations with the husband. It's not all the time, or even a blanket statement like "lately", just a few isolated incidents. Needed to get them off my chest.

The Few, The Proud, The Soldiers

There hasn't been much to say lately. Life has been boring. But coming up was always something that would change our whole family, and I know I have been avoiding thinking about it, talking about it, or even living it.

My cousin was going to be deplyed at first to Oklahoma, then to Iraq. He is in OK now, and will be back for a short bit this summer. But then he will be gone for, I'm guessing, 18 months. It's hard to watch from the outside. His fiance and 2 little girls are missing him like crazy. Not to mention the rest of the family. I can't even imagine what it would be like to miss out on that much time with my baby. Some days he drives me crazy, but I wouldn't trade that for all the tea in China.

I am hoping to do the best that I can to help out with the family. We are the ones that live the closest to them. I am going out west to bring my other cousin home (his sister). She needs to be closer to the family, and we need her to be here too.

I try not to think about it right now, he's only in training at the moment. But soon, he will be overseas, and everyday will be hard. Much harder for him than us, but hard none the less. Do you go on living life, like nothing has changed? How could you do that, knowing that it has, at least for now. How do you keep him up to date on what the kids do? How do you have a marriage from thousands of miles away? How do I write a letter, what do I say?

I worry that he won't come back and I know everyone else worries the same thing. I try not to think about it, but if it doesn't even cross my mind, would it be even tougher to deal with if I hadn't even thought about it? I like to think that sending out good karma his way will help keep him safe, but I don't want to be completely shocked either if something happened, even if he lived through the something, I think I need to be mentally prepared for almost anything. I won't be much good to others if I am mentally paralized at what has happened. Maybe it's the mom in be coming out, but I need to be useful to others in a time of need.

For now, I guess I will go on thinking that live is a bowl full of cherries, but soon, I will need to think about all the "if's".

GRRRRR Sisters

Friday night, we had some friends over, ate dinner, nothing to exciting. Saturday, took KM to Gup-pa's house so we could go to a wedding. The wedding was for a friend of mine (who is also my bosses sister, and she used to date my brother) but over all I would consider her a friend first when introducing her. I digress. My husband and I, along with my mom and sister were all invited. Husband went to the ceremony with a little complaining, but he went. Then after that, he wanted to go home, before we ate. We had a little spat over it and he left. I rode with my mom and sister to the reception.

The reception was shaping up to be really fun. Food was really good, especially the mashed potatoes and gravy! YUM!! My sister and mom didn't know too many people there. I knew a few more, from having been at a few of the family things that they do. But over all, it was a little awkward, but really NOT that bad. Shortly after dinner, my sister gets a text message from a friend of hers about a party at a friends house. She says "I knew this would happen, that if I can to this, there would be something better to do at home." Pretty bitchy I think. People only get married once in a lifetime and our friend Amis (the bride) has been living out of state for 6-8 months. So we hardly ever get to see her, much less hang out. But my sister had things that were SOOO much more important.

The night moves on, and I have a few more drinks and dance, my normal routine at a wedding. I had no idea they wanted to leave, no one ever said anything to me. At some point during the evening, my sister called my husband and told him he need to come and get me because they were leaving. OK, maybe you should tell someone that you want to leave and then the group can make a decision from there. She had to call and bitch at my husband, and it was all because there was something funner going on somewhere else. TOO FUCKING BAD! You should have stayed your ass at home then, "just in case" something else cooler were to come up. I fucking hate her some days. She is a whiny, stuck up, spoiled, self centered little brat, and I mean that, and those words will be here for all of time. She pisses me off and I am getting sick of her poor me attitude.

She wants everyone to feel sorry for her because my dad won't buy her a car, meanwhile she has no job to put gas in it. But she says she can't get a job because she doesn't have a car. I bet there are about 10 million Americans without cars, that are working RIGHT NOW. But what the fuck do I know. Her big argument is The Monkey's Momma (ME) got a car from dad when she was 16 -- lest you forget, or block out of your stupid mind, is the fact that I had a job when I was 13, and continued to work even before I had a car or license. I won't lie, I got a lot of things in life most people do with out, but I also worked a lot and earned or paid for some of those things myself. I am so sick and tired of listening to her whine about her no car situation, but will do NOTHING to change it. Hey Sister, that horse is DEAD, stop beating it!!!!!!! No one gives a shit that you don't have a car, and the more you whine about it, the more people DON'T want to help you change it.

I have a small nugget of news that I haven't shared with her yet, but am really thinking I should. My dad just bought a new car for their nanny. I don't have the time or energy to go into why this is SUCH a big deal in our family. But trust me when I tell you, sister would LOSE HER MIND if she found this out. I think she deserves to know about it, but if I am the one to tell her, then I have to listen to her cry about it for, well let's just say I'll have to hear about it for the rest of my life. I don't have that kind of time. So for now, I talk to Husband about it and we laugh. I know it's not nice, but she hasn't been all that nice lately either, and I am tired of it.

She is on the shit list from KM's birthday party. Her and her boyfriend broke up and she couldn't come because she was sad and didn't want our dad or brother to say anything to her, and she knew she would blow up and yell at them. Get over yourself. You have ONE nephew and ZERO nieces, and he has a birthday ONE time a year, sorry to inconvenience you by trying to celebrate it. Next time we'll try to make sure your silly high school romance is on solid ground before we go planning something that has NOTHING to do with it.

So my final words for the day are -- GET OVER YOURSELF SISTER AND START THINKING ABOUT SOMEONE OTHER THAN YOURSELF FOR ONCE!

Phone Calls and Memories

This morning I got a most unusual message on my phone, I guess not really considering the source. It was pretty much par for the course from her. It was from my friend/cousin. It was a message playing "My Town" -- Montgomery Gentry. This is one of my favorite things to send and receive. A song, between us, that is special to us, and only "us" knows why this song means anything, and every time we hear this song we think of each other. The "us" could have more than one song or only one song. But I love that no matter where we are, or what we are doing, we stop for a moment, re-connect and go back in time, to the time when that song turned from just any old song, to OUR song.

The particular song takes me back to the summer I was going to get married and my friend/cousin and I would pick up a six pack of Busch Lite and drive the hour and half from where we lived in the cities, to my home town. We would do this more than once a week and usually on a week night, where the next day we had to be back in the cities to work, at a very early hour. It makes me think of the windows down, sun shining, wind blowing, radio cranked up, stuck in traffic. And as soon as I think of how the windows were down, it reminds me of another memory, my husband who decided that our home town was "His Town", so when the song came on for him he would roll down the windows and drive around "His Town". He had to "make the rounds" as he called it, to check on "His Town". This is exactly why we would roll down the windows when ever we heard this song.

I love that forever, whenever I hear that song, I will think of here and she will think of me. I miss the days when we young, and wild and free, and usually drunk! Life was so much simpler back then (all 4 years ago). We did what ever we wanted and on weekends were usually a 6 pack in by Noon. I distinctly remember, shoes off, sun shining down on us, slight wind blowing, and we were ankle deep in the only mud puddle we could find. It couldn't have been more than 5 sq ft big. But it was enough to get our toes dirty.

Time will never be like that again, but I will always treasure the memories we made driving down the road, and it makes me look forward to the road trips of the future.

Baby not on the way...

We have trying/not trying to get pregnant for about a year. Not overly seeking, but doing nothing to prevent it either. In the last few months, I decided it's something I think I could do again. My first pregnancy was fairly uneventful, no major health problems and no major complications, but still wondered everyday why people do this more than once. I get it now. Once they are no longer babies, you begin to miss it terribly. Every day I was excited for KM to learn something new and to hit his next milestone. I still am, but I miss him being so little. He is much easier to live with now. He can feed him self and walk. He can help get dressed and pick up the toys. He can tell you what he wants -- Milt (milk) or jooosh (juice). But he is growing up fast, and I feel like I am taking it for granted.

I was really good at keeping up with his baby book when he was smaller, now I haven't seen it in probably 3 months. I take a lot of pictures of him, but am bad a writing down the things he says. I will miss his voice and actually am already starting to miss it. He used to say Gup-pa. Now he says Gam-pa. I want him to forever refer to my dad as Gup-pa, but that was clearly short lived. He calls our friend Keg-ie. Soon, it will be her real name. I just want him to stay this age forever, or at least for a few more years, until I am done with him being 2, which I know will take much more than a year.

I decided a few weeks before his birthday that this is the year I am going to HATE the most. It seems a bit harsh but it's true. Now at his 2 year birthday, he is still part baby. But by his 3rd birthday, he will be all BOY and NO baby. He will be talking in full sentences, and asking "Why?" about everything. He will do things on his own, and go to Pre-School. He will not ask me to sing "The Big Cow" song (Mama, don't let your baby's grow up to be cowboys, Willie Nelson) any more and want to play in his room with out us. I am SO VERY NOT ready for all of this. As much as he doesn't' need me, I NEED him to need me. It makes my life make sense. And thus, ladies and gentleman, this is why people have more than one child, so they can torture themselves with these emotions and feelings year after year, as each child grows up and doesn't need them any more. This is exactly why people who swore they would never have more than one child, have more than one child.

They need to feel needed again. I need to feel needed again. I don't miss the waking up in the middle of the night, or the breast feeding (well maybe just a little), I don't miss having to make sure we had formula everywhere we went or even the price of formula, but I know it's all worth it, every stinkin' bit of it when KM sits with me on the "cow-ch" and snuggles in, because he is trying to delay bedtime. And even though he thinks he's pretty smart, I actually tell him it's bedtime about 20 minutes before it actually is so he will snuggle with me and have me sing "The Big Cow" song.

It's all worth it when he gives big hugs and kisses at bedtime. I love him so much. And that is why we are willing to do it again, and again and again.

To work or Not -- This is my question

Down time at work is not at much fun as you would think. Some days it's nice not to have much to do. But those are only the days when I am hung over and that is not very often. Today is one of those days where I actually wish I had something to do or could go home. I am feeling a little like I don't matter at my current job. The important things to be done around here are not trusted to me. I can do the filing, but I can't write the checks? It just seems so silly to me. I have enough spare time anyways to do this. But we pay someone else to come in and do it.

Sometimes I think it's time to move on in my career -- or my job, some days it both. But then I think of the incredible benefits I get here and I think of how hard it is to start over. It's comfortable and it's safe and it's going no where for me. I will still be doing the same job in 10 years with only a slight pay increase and probably no more responsibility. I don't want that. I like being important, and recognized and needed and counted on. I like knowing that what I do matters daily in operations. Most of the time this is not the case here.

Husband tells me to quit and move on, that I am smarter than I am being given credit for. But still, it's hard to move on to the next job when I feel like there is more that needs to be accomplished here. I also don't like moving on with out knowing who's taking my place and if they know EXACTLY how I do things. I know this is ridiculous, because they can do things however they want, but my way is the only way things should be done. My way is the best and smartest way and it makes the most sense! (You know you have felt this way about something).

So for now, I guess I'll stay. I have other things I want to do in life, but none of them will make me much money at first and this scares me. I need to make money. Even if Husband has a job and is making lots, I need my own to spend. I don't like asking him for money. One day I will take the big scary leap and move on to the next thing, but not this week.

Missing my husband

My dearest love of my life was out of town for a few days and as much as I didn't think I would miss him too much, I really, really did. We have been away from each other before and for about the same amount of days. But for some reason this time was different. Maybe it was the snow (we got about 18 - 20"), or maybe it's that Kermit is so much busier now, or maybe I just love him that much more than I used too. I felt very alone, and very helpless, with everything. Not that he shovels the snow (some one else comes and plows it -- we're lucky, I know), or not that he does all the cooking (we share this duty), not that he takes Kermit to daycare (I always have), but this time, I was missing him terribly. I guess I felt like the protector of the house was gone, and what if...... he wouldn't be there to save us. Normally when we hear a weird, loud, different noise in the house he tries to send me to look. I tell him that's the husbands job. These thoughts are kind of all over, but I really missed him this trip. We were fine and plenty of things to do. But the snow was romantic and we were snowed in and he wasn't there to share it with us.

I realized (not that this is even close to a comparison, but it's the closest I have) that when my cousin had to go back to MT, and she was missing her man, I could see what she was feeling. Now they are totally different because Husband was coming back in 6 days, she doesn't know when she'll see Him again. But leaving someone you love, or having them leave you, even if only for a short time, makes you think about how much you love them. It makes you think about how life is so much different when they are not there. It makes you think of all the things life would not be, if they are not there, or if they were never there. I could see why she was so very sad. I'll admit that I even cried. Sappy, sappy girl, I know. But things have been going so well in our family lately. We have been having dinner together every night, talking, playing with Kermit and enjoying life like people should do. Maybe I was just sad that it would not be like this for a few days.

My husband makes me want to be a better mom. I sometimes run out of patience with Kermit and he is there to pick up where I am failing. He is the playful one, and I am the laundry, dinner, read the books before bed time mom. Kermit and I have a different routine when he is not around. We snuggle more on the couch (after a long day at work, I just don't always feel like running around), we read books and learn new words and count and sing the ABCB's (that is not a typo -- that's what KM calls them). When dad is around they play more and run and "fight" and play ball. I guess I should cherish this time because when dad is around, sometimes it's like I don't' exist. Only time for dad.

I try not to focus on bad things, but what if he didn't come back, or what if something happened to us while he was gone. Would he get on a plane and come home, would he send my mom to make sure all was well, would he just not worry about it? I pretty sure I know the answer (#1) but I got to thinking.

I guess what I am trying to say is, I am glad he'll be home today and I'm glad that he picked me to marry him.

Another worry for another day: What if we can't have more babies? This has been on my mind a lot lately and I'll have to write it out one day.