The other day, I brought the kids home from an afternoon at their grandma’s house. When they are at Grandma’s, they tend to snack non-stop.  So we don’t usually have supper those nights. Because they won’t eat it anyway.

Well, yesterday, we didn’t have supper. And it get’s to be bedtime, so Truck makes his usual “I’m hungry, and thirsty!” claim. Which appeared to be solved by a glass of juice…..

Everyone is tucked in, and falls asleep quickly. A little while later, I hear this tiny voice crying. So I go upstairs to find Truck rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He had woken up from a nightmare.

So I ask him what’s wrong? He looks at me with these big eyes and sobs, “Ebbybody ate my food!”

“Everybody ate your food?”

“Yeah, my hawtdawgs all gone. Ebbybody ate my food!”

“Everybody ate your hotdogs?”

“Yeah!”

“Are you okay now?”

“Yeah.”

And goodnights were said. Again. And kisses and hugs all around. Again.

And off to sleep he goes. A little while later, I hear him fussing again. So I run upstairs, to check on the boy child. I walk in, and he sits up, and he mournfully says, “Lizzy stoled my sammich!”

“Lizzy stole your sandwich??”

At this point, mommy caught on. So downstairs we went, for some string cheese and milk, and snuggles with daddy. This seemed to put an end to the nightmares.

The boy slept the rest of the night.

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I’ve made jokes before about how I’m always cold. I must be descended from reptiles, I’m so cold blooded. I’m the girl you see wearing a sweatshirt when it hits 70(F) out, nyuk nyuk nyuk.

Um. Yeah. Only partly kidding.

Tonight, I got up and shut all the windows in the living room. Because I was freezing.

My husband made me go check the thermostat, to see what temperature it was in here.

It said 75(F), people. 75.

Descended. From. Lizards.

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We’re in the kitchen. We’re trying a new brand of breaded processed frozen fish, but have discovered, alas, that we are out of tartar sauce.

No problem, we’ve both cooked for a living before, and have faced down worse situations on Friday Fish-Fry night. (Running out of tartar sauce? Hah. Try running out of fish!)

So we gather the needed ingredients (mayonnaise, relish and lemon juice), and pull out the trusty wooden spoon.

After inquiring about how long we have owned said spoon, and why it might, after six years, be time to buy a replacement spoon, and also discussing what is the correct size of the handle and the appropriate curvature of the bowl of the ideal wooden spoon…AFTER this….

My husband turns to me and says something about how wooden spoons are green. I ask “Oh, like recyclable?” He goes on and says something about renewable resource blahblahblah.

And after this thought-out theory on his part, I come back with, “Well, yeah. But you could recycle a wooden spoon, right?”

He looks me, and shrugs, “Yeah, I guess you could recycle it. You could sharpen it and make it a zombie shank, I suppose.”

Of course. Zombies.

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I  meant to write, I really did. Just like I meant to get through the mound of laundry, do my homework and sleep more than 4 hours. But I got distracted.

So while I go off and write “Procrastination is not a viable talent” 100x on a sheet of paper, please enjoy some Stuff I Didn’t Write!

*******

Posts You Should Read

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First, there is Talk to Me Baby over at Blogher@Home (by Kim) with bonus giveaway! Go on over there and enter to win!

I Am Not A Failure, by the talented Finn

It is ‘That’ day by Lu (also co-hosting Blogher@Home)

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Other Items of Interest

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10 of the Strangest Unclaimed Luggage

Best Dating Site for Zombies

Inappropriate Children’s Books

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Hopefully those will keep you entertained for a bit, while I try to come up with a witty way to close this post.

Until then!

Jen

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I broke my blog. It was scary.

And I was veryvery lost.

But it’s all okay now. Thankfully. And I learned some things, too. Which is always cool.

But you may want to update your feed subscription. And if you notice an unusual hiccup or two, bear with me please!

Thank you,

Jen ThePsychobabble

PS Look!—>Pretty Buttons!

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Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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For a quick rundown of wtf I’m tracking, read about my summer goals.

#1 Yeah, two strikes against me, and I almost didn’t bother this week. But. Follow. Through.

#2 Am passing my classes. Home work done on time. Which reminds me, I need to go do that tomorrow night.

#3 Is looking more unattainable every day.

#4 Yes, have managed to do this. So yay!

#5 Failure all the way around. Blah.

#6 2lbs. In 3 weeks.

#7 Read two books not worth mentioning.

Here’s to hoping next week is back on track.

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I’ve written of how Facebook is clearly of the devil before. Part of my reasoning was the distracting games. They are like crack. My downfall was the original Farm Town. I wasn’t going to school at the time, and was only working part-time. So my farm was beautiful. It flourished. My crops rarely withered. If it wasn’t for the fact that my productivity was limited to an on-line game, I would have been proud.

But then life happened, I got busy and virtual farming got pushed to the back burner.

But just because I quit playing, doesn’t mean that everyone else did. My inbox was flooded with gift requests and neighbor requests. My feed was full of news about cows and crops. And I rolled my eyes at it. How annoying, I said. Nearly spam, I said.

Until a few weeks ago. Enter Frontierville.

I had some extra time one day, and this little “Try this new game!” ad popped up. So I did. And I got hooked. I’m building cabins and schools. I’m tending crops and animals. I’m clearing land and fighting critters.

And I’m clogging up my friends’ inboxes with gift requests and neighbor requests. I’m cluttering their feed stream with silly updates about how I just kicked a rattlesnake’s ass, or moved my spouse out to my homestead.

I’m eating crow, in other words. A big ol’ slice of humble pie. But, see, I can’t build those buildings on my own! I can’t unlock certain items until I have MORE neighbors! I need to harrass people, really! Otherwise I’ll be a Tenderfoot forever!

So, won’t you? Won’t you PLEASE? Won’t you be my neighbor?

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The husband and I don’t generally talk about where we met. Most people assume that, since we’ve been together since high school, we must have gone to high school together.

Yeah. Not so much.

I was working at McDonald’s. Drive-thru diva extraordinaire. He was hired on as a grill boy. Burger flipper. Not exactly a romantic venue to meet in. No locking of the eyes across the crowded room here thankyouverymuch.

I couldn’t remember his name for 2 weeks. We flirted back and forth, every time we worked together, for about 6 months or so.

Reluctant, we were.

Okay. I was reluctant, and socially awkward. So he wasn’t sure I was interested.

I wasn’t sure I was interested. I take that back. I was mostly definitely interested, with all the emotionality and physicality that 16-going-on-17 year old hormones can muster. But I thought I shouldn’t be interested.

I was on the cusp at that point. Dancing the line between hard-core religiousity, and wild child syndrome. I saw him as a “bad boy”. And perhaps, compared to the other members of my Sunday School class, perhaps he was.

Okay, compared to them? Yeah, he was a bad boy, a rebel, a wild card. But he really wasn’t THAT much of a badass.

So. Met at McDonald’s. Flirted for six months. AND I bailed on our first date (oh yes, I was at least as smooth then as I am now. At least.)

It’s no wonder he married me.

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Events of these past few weeks have dredged up memories from less stable times like a month ago.

And while digging for nylons that didn’t have major runs in them, I found my duct-tape covered Binder of Angst. Where I wrote page after page of depressing poetry between the ages of 13 and embarrassingly-old-for-that-sort-of-thing.

I’ve been fairly open about my struggles with depression and anxiety, I think.

Those that have known me since way back when can probably tell you that I’ve had these “issues” since at least adolescence. Example? Excerpt from angst-filled poem written when I was all of 14.

Losing control
Out of my mind
Selling my soul
One piece at a time

I don’t live
I just exist
What kind of life is this?

Clearly not the mind of a well child.  Of course, I couldn’t really see it at the time. My head was clouded, both by mental demons and by religious convictions. I was convinced that I, too, could be normal. If I just read my Bible every day, and prayed a little harder.

There’s a song that I learned as a child that actually runs through my head every time I see the phrases. It went (in part), “Read your Bible and Pray ever day, Pray ever day, Pray every day. Read your Bible and Pray every day, and you’ll grow, grow, grow!”  But I digress. I think.

I wish I could look back at that and shake my head, and say, “Gosh, am I ever glad I outgrew that!”

But I can’t.

Because I haven’t outgrown it yet. Not the hopelessness that catches up to me more often than I’d like to admit, nor the tendency to write angst-riddled, poorly constructed poetry.

The main difference is that at least now I admit and embrace my lack of skills, rather than convincing myself that I will someday be rich and famous. Don’t laugh, 14 year old girls tend to have rich imaginations, you know.

I realized the other night that I’m much farther from moving on from that stage than I thought.

After a week spent picking fights with the husband, bankers and the dog, I lay there in my darkened bedroom, possibly because none of my family/friends could stand being in the same room as I, contemplating how physical pain is closely linked to mental pain. I realized that clearly there are times where I am still just a scared, pissed-off little girl.

I wish there were a better conclusion to this post. I wish I could say, “And so I realized that, in order to fix everything, I merely need to start doing XYZ! And then life will revert to rainbows and snuggly puppy hugs! Yay!”

But. Alas, no such clarity was bestowed upon me.

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