My perogative

It has been kind of a long week with a lot of things going on. SO yesterday on my way to the grocery store I remembered that I had a free coupon for a cone at McDonalds. And by me I mean Olivia. What is up with the fact that kids get cone coupons and I get coupons for the lousy yogurt parfaits? Anyway, I totally redeemed that puppy. She'll never remember and it is not like the kid will never get an ice cream cone again.

Then i followed a series of psychotic Lexus drivers, totally affirming my theory that if you drive a Lexus you have anger management issues. Seriously, if you drive a Lexus or know someone who does, get help. You have the money, you drive a Lexus.

Happy almost birthday to me

So I had wanted to do a big 30th b-day and 100th post celebration, but they both kind of slipped by me. So here I am, I have finally opened my birthday gifts, written the thank you notes and admitted out loud that I am, indeed thirty. I am trying to pump myself up by telling myself that your thirties are the best years of your life. That all the missteps, bad choices, being completely broke (as opposed to house-rich, money-poor) and unsurity of who I was and where I am going is behind me now. My thirties are when I am going to grow into myself and be the most confident and productive person I will ever be.

So why do I just feel fat and tired?

So happy 103rd post to all my blog readers, without your comments I would have never made it this far. Who knows, maybe the next one-hundred posts will be the best yet?

Twilight

I am sorry that I am behind on posting, but with company here, it is harder. I was sitting outside the other night and it was nice and crisp. It made me miss Fall, and I thought, that's a true Wisconsinite for you. No matter what season you are in, you always wish it were another.

Lake Affected

Some shots of our Father's Day, because in Madison no holiday can be celebrated without a trip to the lake. I am thinking about turning the center picture into my banner at the top of the page. Thoughts?

Saving Grace

i never thought this would be the case, but the saving grace of my sanity is the fact that my father-in-law arrived last night. He makes me crazy on all sorts of levels, but I love him a lot and he is a great companion and we get along great totally outside the company of my husband which, I think, says a lot.

Having him here means at least some breaks from the kid, and he is always super productive when he is here. I don't know if our priorities are always the same, but I am at the point where feeling like I am doing something is enough to chill me out a little. Plus Chad is super-excited to have his dad here and that is contagious.

Do you ever have that day?

Where you just want to quit. i think the crappiest part of motherhood is that you never get to quit. No sick days is one thing, but my beautiful daughter is waging a one child war of terrorism on me and today is the day where I just can't do it even one more day. If this was a job where my boss hit, kicked, screamed at me, told me i was horrible at my job, contradicted everything I said, constantly undermined my authority and showed me no respect I would have quit weeks ago. Today the last straw was rubbing feces on newly washed sheets and freshly bathed her. And then laughing and smiling when I discovered her doing it.

She is only three, I have to do this for the rest of my life. How the hell am I going to make it?

C'est n'est pas un birthday

Technically yesterday was the day i was born thirty years ago, however I have made it clear to everyone that i am choosing not to acknowledge this fact at the current time. I have several reasons for this. First, it was Father's Day and anyone who has a birthday on a holiday understands why this sucks. It especially sucks for my husband who gets screwed, and I didn't want that. Second, I am choosing to think of my age as the old adage if a tree falls in the woods. . . if i don't celebrate my birthday I am not really thirty.

The reactions I have gotten to this are, to me, baffling. They range from laughter, to winking disbelief to down-right indignation. Why should i have to celebrate my birthday? it's mine to celebrate, or not. Don't foist your issues about not being given parties as a child on me.

Dream Daddy

it is said that all little girls want to marry their daddy and little boys want to marry their mommy. I don't know that this is really true, but i certainly have seen it in action with some friends and family. I asked Chad the other day if he felt like he married his mother, he had the typical guy response of, "No! That's creepy." As a girl with a couple of daddies (and like most girls with a couple of daddies i also have a few extra father-figures and related daddy issues) i had to dig deep to commit to marriage to a man that was nothing like any of them.

Somebody must have done something right, though, because even though I love both my dads, my Grandfather and my Uncle Paul I have to claim with confidence that my husband is the best father I know. Maybe i have to say this because saying anything else would admit failure on my part, but I don't think so. Chad is universally lauded as a great father by his friends, even my family, even my mother who doesn't think anyone is good enough for Olivia.

So, I know my anniversary post was not the sappy love fest it should be to celebrate eight years of marriage, but all of my blog readers are going to have to endure a gaggy post about the love i have for the father of my child.

Chad's secret to being a great father is very simple, he loves his daughter and genuinely wants to spend time with her. Nothing is ever too important, no day is to busy to take a call from her. Some days the call is all the time they get together, and that makes him sad. This is the magical trick I guess, actually liking your kid. Yes, he inadvertantly taught her the f-word, how to head-butt another person and how to spit water out of her mouth like a fountain (all over her mother), but when she cuddled up in bed with him yesterday morning and told him that she loved him the look on his face is what made me realize that if i have done anything right by my child in this world i chose a great father for her.

I love you Chad, I am proud of you and I try hard every day to be as good of a parent as you are. I hope that Olivia tells everyone someday that she wants to marry a man (or woman) just like her daddy.

Addendum

I would like to add an addendum to last night's post.

6) Garage sales are like traumatic events in the sense that when it's all over you know who your friends are.

My neighbors felt so sorry for us sitting in the heat that they brought us ice cream and presents. Best neighbors ever.

Everything I Needed To Know I Learned By Having A Garage Sale

1) I am never, ever buying anything again for fear that I will have to re-sell it in a garage sale. The past two days has completely reinforced my dual theories that consumerism is the root of all evil and that I am not even sorting through my father-in-law's stuff after he dies it is all just going away to the Salvation Army.

Not only does all the work involved in physically setting up a garage sale suck, but watching the alarming amount of crap people will buy is down-right disturbing. That said, my neighbor has an awesome vintage metal lunch box that I must have.

2) There are some crazy freaking people out there and i always run into them when I am alone.

This goes back to the whole portrait of Americana from Newsing with Oldies. It's a real slice of life to see who is available for garage saling at 2:00 on a Thursday. I had a Panera employee give me day old bread in exchange for discount on books, just so he wasn't screwing with karma by taking the discount. Oh yeah, those people-live here.

3) It is sometimes worth a few dollars to retain a positive view of humanity.

My husband, my neighbor and I all watched an elderly woman shoplift from our garage sale today. At first we gave her the benefit of the doubt that she was just forgetting to pay for the item that she walked away with, but when my husband tried to gently remind her that she had it, she totally made a run for it. We let her go, choosing to believe that it was a misunderstanding.

4) I can talk about the weather for 16 hours and still smile everytime I say, "No, I can't remember the last time it was this hot."

Seriously, no one, not one, failed to comment about how hot it was. Which leads to. . .

5) Even if you are doing nothing but sitting in a deck chair 90 degrees if really freaking hot.

I have heat rash on my feet. I am covered in so many layers of sunscreen that I think that I can be certified non-stick and Aquafina should change their name to Liz in honor of all I have done for them.

When all is said and done (though not really done we still have one day left) the past two days have been an exhausting way to see the impermanence of objects in our lives, the value they have to you and others and all the pitfalls of putting your personal self on display for the world to see. Garage sale: Consumerist microcosm.

Just because I can't help myself

Farm Day

So every year a local farm opens itself up for tours and breakfast and we thought that we were just going to drive out, eat breakfast and let Olivia pet some cows. oh, no. I literally could have put up ten more pictures. olivia driving the combine, Olivia dancing with the bluegrass band, Olivia measuring herself against tractor, and on and on. We had the best breakfast ever, and then continued to eat all of the local dairies new products, marscapone cheese, seaberry yogurt, ice cream, until we wanted to puke. The best kind of puke though, the puke of eating strawberry ice cream sundaes at 10:15 in the morning. Yum.

You Can Take A Girl Out Of The Midwest

The biggest complaint I get from my friends who refer to the Midwest as "the flyover zone" is that there is no natural beauty. No mountains, no ocean. I take issue with this. Not only is the rural Midwest one of the most beautiful places I have ever experienced, and yes I have been to said mountains and oceans, it is actually a place that serves an honest functional purpose. Farms grow your food, people! I just find something incredibly peaceful about green as far as you can see. I like the flat, I love to give into the idea that if you stand on your tiptoes you can see forever. My husband and I are glad that we have brought our daughter back here to this magical place. Cost of living, friendly people, good schools are all nice too, but I love to drive ten miles outside of town and see this. Not strip mall wasteland.

Student Driver

Why do you always drive your worst when you are on the way to the DMV? I had to renew my license today and I don't know if it was because I was driving Chad's car, or because the mere thought that i was going to the DMV was enough to put me in a tizzy, but i sucked it up today. Not to mention the fact that I had to pull over twice to figure out Chad's car.

Fancy

Because you can have too many Carrie Underwoods, but never enough t-shirts. Thanks to getTrio for reminding me of one of my favorite Chi-Town shops. You get to vote which t-shirt designs are your faves and whichever designer wins gets a prize.

Training Day

I love going to a restaurant or, for the purposes of this post, a brand new Starbucks and watching new employees be completely oblivious to logic and just desperately try to simulate their training. So today I walk to our new Starbucks at the Target and the very chipper person there takes my order after some fumbling and me repeating my order, then showing her where it was on her register (so very, very telling of how i often I visit the Starbucks) she asks me for my name. I look around, I am the only one in the Starbucks. Logic would tell you that you this employee should be able to just hand me my iced tea. The drink you are making is mine. The only drink you are making is the only drink for the only person here. So just to be spiteful I reached over the counter and helped myself to my own straw. I actually saw the pause where she reached to hand me the straw and then didn't know what to do with herself when I already had one.

It makes me sad to think that in about two weeks she will not even make eye contact with me when I order, will not take my name, and the whole time she is filling my order will be complaining to the other girl how much she hates her job/boyfriend/other employees as I am desperately flagging her to say "Decaf! DE-CAFFFF!"

A Good Laugh For Today

So I am pulling out of the Target parking lot today and I ntice everyone staring at me. So i do that quick check that we all do when we notice more than one person looking.

1) Is my hair sticking up/Do i have food on my face?
2) Is there something wrong with my car?
3) Am I driving too fast? I am in a hurry to pick up books at the library.

After i answered no to these questions i took a look at myself from the perspective of everyone else in the parking lot. They saw a mousy little momma with her big mom bag and khaki shorts carrying her Target bags and her Starbucks get into her station wagon with a car seat and heard her turn on her car. All the sudden there is Kanye West with the bass turned up and the woman who is driving (you know I was car rocking) appears to know all the lyrics. Apparently, the other soccer moms are not quite as used to the word nigger in their musical selections as I am.

The best part? Getting hooted at by some black guys-in a minivan. People with dorky cars of the world unite.

I think i am getting stupider

While I rail and rant about the misperception that stay-at-home moms don't use their brain all day, this week I am worried. I tried to write a letter to the editor of my local paper yesterday about the state's recent proposal to cut off their subsidies for Olivia's pre-school. Could not do it. A letter that in the old days would have taken me fifteen minutes was a rambling mess after fourty-five. It was pathetic. My husband tried to cheer me up by saying that we are tired, still sick from our latest family cold, overworked, etc.

I was really stressing until I read a blog post from one of Angie's friends about how much the routine gets us down. You realize how cluttered your mind becomes with all of the trivial "have to's" and you never get to any of the "want to's". I realized that none of what Chad gave me as a reason was true because that is every week and has been for months.

So tonight is going to be my marathon, I am going to get rid of as many have to's as I can, get a good night's sleep and maybe tomorrow I can wake up my dormant brain, that maybe just needs to be rebooted because it is getting smarter everyday and is trying to keep up with itself?

Also, my stove comes in two days, so maybe my want to will be to finally put up my new blog template that will now need a new, expanded, what I am cooking section.

A little gem

A little known fact about me is that my first college major was Photo-Journalism. i still love to take photos, but when I want to take good photos I really need to have time to concentrate and you can guess where all of that went. So i found this site today that i really love because we live right near our airport, which is something that I thought would be then end of my sanity and property values. It hasn't simply because Chad and Olivia both love everything airplanes and flying so sometimes we just sit and watch.

I could get really deep and blog about the serenity of witnesssing perpetual motion while standing still, but I have to pee and the kid is asleep and the husband is gone and I'd much rather be tackling the mountain of books.

So, to sum up, add this to the list of things I will purchase when I start winning (and playing) the lottery.

First foray into the blogosphere

For all those wondering, visit with the 'rents went fine. Crappy weather and all. They might even come again, when Olivia graduates from high school.

Anyway, the point of this post is to say that I never post comments on blogs of people I don't know, but i found this blog on Fuse #8 and I couldn't help myself. i love any blog that agrees with my base assertion that children's literature deserves the same sarcasm and derision that adult literature does. So I posted a comment to show my enthusiasm, and he did a post about my comment. Very exciting for a small-time blogger. Check out the blog and laugh at the treasures of your childhood.

Rainy Days and Mondays

I am as giddy as a school girl because my mom and dad are here to visit. This is a rare occasion on the level of Haley's Comet and I am so excited. Chad and I's family and most of our closest friends all live far away and so anytime we can get anyone to come visit us it is really exciting. i usually express excitement with a carefully planned menu and itinierary (my in-laws can attest to this). However, tragedy has struck. My minute by minute itinerary where I planned activities for both my mom and dad as well as special Olivia activities so that my parents could see her in her natural environment have all been ruined by severe thunderstorms. It hasn't rained in weeks, today, it pours.

This is extra tragic because I was hoping that if this trip went super-well that my parents would actually visit me more than once every four years. Oh well, the bribery and fanfare will continue with my extra-yummy potato salad and my mother's homemade extra special birthday cake.

PS-Father-in-law, your menu is already planned, you better book your ticket soon!!