Randomness

We just signed up for Peetniks! I'm so excited... Now we'll get our coffee every 35 days - just like Gevalia only better! Very exciting. Peetniks takes your order and sends the order to you the next day from that day's roast! So you know your coffee is super fresh!
It's good stuff, if you're a coffee hound, check it out.

We had a great Christmas! My mom was here, it was great that she was able to drive here. It means she's made great progress since her stroke. It also boosted her confidence enough to offer to babysit for us for New Years EVE! YAY! The little guy had so much fun unwrapping presents and playing with his new stuff. And hanging out with GRANDMA! He wanted not much to do with us. He just wanted GRANDMA! So fun to see them bond so well, and a nice break for us!

I cooked a beef tenderloin which I'd never done before. It was amazing! I had extra money from teaching piano lessons so I splurged on a great cut of meat for Cmas day. It was worth it. And we have GREAT LEFTOVERS!

We go to the same party every year for New Year's Eve. It's become the only way we see some of our friends (who also go to the same party every year). When I was single, I would stay the night and the party always goes into the next day starting with STRONG coffee and sticky buns and watching movies and playing games ALL DAY LONG! It was great fun. Well now we're not single, and we have a small child so it changes things but it's still fun to go.

In a few minutes I'm going to take the little guy to a mall where there is a great kids play area... he can run off some of his energy there. It's cold and snowy and icy here. We don't have much of a yard either, so off we go to the mall.

Also, on an unrelated note, the little guy is starting to get braver about his eating. I'm so relieved. He'll eat more of what we're eating now and is less picky as long as I give him some choices on his plate, he usually wants ate least one thing there. I was getting SO FRUSTRATED! It was so hard to feed him there for a while. Very picky guy. Yesterday I made him a banana smoothie and he drank a LOT OF IT! wow. And we took him out to eat with us last night... he ate some of my pasta and some of daddy's potato and filled his tummy right up! He even ate some broccoli "trees" on Christmas Day! Merry Christmas to Mommy!

My mom drove us a little nuts the first day. She has this issue with food (from growing up in the depression, I'm sure) and she ALWAYS brings a ton of food to our house, even though I am perfectly capable of feeding us all very well. It kind of bugs me. She even was late getting to our house because she decided to stop at the grocery store and get stuff for Christmas even meal - even though that was my gig. So I told her "Mom, I got it handled, you didn't have to do that." She says "Oh, I know, I just thought what if it snows more and we can't get to the grocery store and we have nothing to eat?" I was really ticked off at first but I found compassion the next day, because it's not like she is going to do anything about this now. We've discussed it before, to no avail... so ::sigh:: I am trying to let her be her, and be me, and find a way to not let that kind of stuff color our times together too much.

Also, she's had a few strokes in the last few years so all of these things that used to be a little weird have gotten WAY weirder. And she talks CONSTANTLY now. There is no break. No silence is oK with her. She'll even say she's uncomfortable with silence. And that is not who or how she used to be. It is exhausting for us, because we're very much not like that!! My husband and I have gotten a system down where we "take turns". One of us sort of wanders off for a "break" while the other listens, and vice versa later... and so on. I feel like I've lost my mom - the friend I used to have in her. She's very inward focused now. I've talked to her about some of this stuff, but she doesn't get it or whatever, and again... I'm learning to let her be her and me be me....

Do I sound like a broken record?! :o)

Pissed Off Rant

For a few days or weeks. I'd like to know how it would feel to use MY Personality and my Filters Background as a free get out of jail pass.

A great big Shield that lets me whine to everyone else: Don't treat me with anything less that extreme care because I have a BACKGROUND and a PERSONALITY that MAKES me this way.

I'm tired of walking on eggshells today. Can you tell?

Listen here, you: You want to use your Filters and your Personality and your Background for protection? Well I'll give you a Background that will blow yours right out of the water. And a Personality that is so ripe for neurosis you will wonder how I haven't killed myself yet. And I'll show you some Filters that will curl your toes.

Here's the thing: Filters can be counteracted with new filters. Here's my biggest one: I will not - absolutely WILL NOT listen to my own bullshit!
Personalities can become our assets. They come complete with GOOD and bad. I work on the good stuff and try to find healthy ways to live with the bad. And it sucks for me sometimes to be me. But I can learn my way around the suckiness and NOT ASK OTHERS TO BOW DOWN TO my PERSONALITY!
Backgrounds can be re framed, or at the very least NOT USED AS AN EXCUSE to walk around completely victimized day after day after day. Especially when people genuinely care about you and are not out to get you.

And YET.... I am trying to learn how to let people be who they are. Be Who They Are. Human, Ordinary and wonderful, Holy Children of God. And, I should add, that I'm learning how to let ME be who I am. Whoever the hell that is....

God help me.

Adult Conversation

Today I have my class at the Dominican Center.... that means 6 hours of class, but 1 hour of having lunch with adults where I don't have to cut anyone's food or help anyone drink their milk.

And after, we're going to coffee! At the grungiest coffeehouse in town.

Well, maybe not the grungiest.... but close.

There we will have MORE adult conversation and I will not have to share my whipped cream with anyone!!

Thanksgiving Weekend Updated

My weekend included:

A visit to Urgent Care
Food Poisoning (Burger King)
1 Amazing Hotel Room
1 Not So Amazing Hotel Room
Toddler Travelling Well
Toddler Making His Parents and Grandma Laugh Hysterically
Toddler Keeping Parents Awake at Night
Toddler Being So Stinkin Cute During the Day
Dinner OUT - without Toddler
Lunch OUT - without Toddler
Sushi
Turkey
Pumpkin Pie
Beowulf in 3D
Hoobity
Lots of Coffee
Lots of Christmas Loot from Grandma (we celebrated Cmas early)
A visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Smooth Travelling through the City of Chicago
New Slippers

Misc.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The turkey is in the oven, the dressing is too, and the potatoes are cooked. Mother In Law will do the rest now. I am taking a break.

Guess who got food poisoning on the way over here? Can you believe it!? What a load of crap. Literally. Actually I think I got it at burger King, and It's not as bad as it could have been. I'm thankful for that. Thank GOD for having only "minor" food poisoning? Whatever....I'm gonna be fine.

Our little boy did the trip over like a trooper. He rocks so much. I can't stand it sometimes. We had the best EVER hotel room. Accidentally I booked a hotel I thought we'd stayed at before, turned out it was the same chain only a step up that is usually lots of $$. But since it was thanksgiving they cut their rates. We had a HUGE room - the nicest one since we stayed at the Amway for our honeymoon. Very nice blessing.

Husband has been taking over with childcare and helping out soo much while I've been under the weather last night and today. It's been great.

The Packers won - we're in Wisconsin and I usually don't care about such things but when we come back here, the Mister turns back into a rabid Packer fan. That's OK.... He deserves it.

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday weekend with family and/or friends. Friends can be family too. Or dogs or cats. However you spend it, I hope it's full of blessings.

Roller Coaster

I dont' think I mentioned yet that my husband is losing his job soon. We're not especially sure when. It seems the middle of next month.
See, the guys who bought the company he's worked for don't really know how to run a company. So they ran a company that wasn't doing all that well but had promise into the ground in short fashion. When you have people owning a company and don't know how to run it, but won't ask the people who might be able to help them run it any questions, then you have disaster on your hands.
Have you ever worked for people like this? I have. And my husband now has too.
So anyway, my husband is a unique and wonderful human being with unique and wonderful ways of coping with this sort of stress. He also has unique and not so wonderful ways of coping that frankly wear me out.
Lucky for us this is not 3.5 years ago when we first got married - I had no patience then for his flailing. Now, I can at least listen and keep my mouth shut. But dang, that wears me out! It's a lot of work keeping my trap shut mostly and responding ever so carefully if I do respond. He verbalizes a great deal of his processing, which what woman wouldn't love, right? But alas, I don't always have patience for hearing him one day telling me how the world is ending and we'll be on the street in a month and the next day telling me about his epiphany of how God is going to take care of us. Then the next day of woe and doom and gloom and then yet another epiphany of how God is going to take care of us.... etc. Roller Coaster.
I also must say that he's doing better than he has in the past with big stuff. He's a very mature wonderful man. And he's also getting on my nerves today. So I, rather than run my mouth at him, chose to tell him to please take the day - or at least part of it to work on job search stuff. So that later he can engage with our family like a real person and take a break from it. A break for all of us. "Promise me you'll then take the evening off and not talk about it whatsoever."
So far so good.
This is going to be a long ride, and I never like the roller coaster of his dealing with this sort of thing. But it's going to teach us a lot. And in the end, it will be OK.
It really really will.

My New Helmet

Tonight Husband and Little Boy and I are going to A Gruesome and Ghastly Soiree for Freaks, Geeks and Monsters!

We were told that there were whispers of spookiness & tidings from the supernatural at our friends' house. If we dare to witness the haunting or tremble at potential alien abductions we must go. We also are to bring an offering to appease the dead - a tasty rotten treat or vile potion. Also we are required to have a disguise against the ghouls or at least a fashionable alien repulsion device!

If we did not RSVP we would have been doomed to dwell the fiery pits of hell without cable!

The event is sponsored by the Putrid Piccolos & Fiendish Friends League from Heck.

Now, doesn't that sound like fun!? How could we turn down an invitation like that?

Here's my fashionable Alien Repulsion Device:

It's my personal ionic field deflector helmet*, and I know it's going to protect me! Or at least get me into the party. Little Boy is going as Elmo and Husband is going as Afro Geek with Rectangular Ugly Glasses.

*also known as a colander covered in aluminum foil