clickmom

out with the old

LAST POST BLOG365 AND 2008!!

Holy cow, I did it blog365!

Patting myself on the back.

My goal was to go home roasted brown like a turkey. I just wanted to drink in some sun, store up some vitamin D, and go home cooked. The weather wasn't on my side. The first full day was overcast, yesterday was nice, but I held back and applied some serious sunscreen (base tan people!) because today I was going to go all out with some (bring me back to my childhood) coconut scented oil. Yeah, I was going to grease up, like the old days! But today, NO SUN. As a matter of fact we were forced indoors by the rain. I am going home with a tan, but not a professional sunbather (leather couch) type tan. I have more of a fun in the sun type tan. I'm sure I'll be thankful for the Bahamian cloudiness of this vacation when I look in the mirror 20 years from now.

I picked up a copy of US magazine at the airport because the last Biggest Loser was on the cover. She said that once she went home for the second stage home part she spent 4 hours a day at the gym, 8 hours a day towards the end SIX days a week. I'm sitting around these days trying to figure out if I can commit to 4 hours a day at the gym for the duration of the next fattie contest at the posh club. The last fattie contest was 8 weeks, and I am kind of hoping that the next one is for 10 or 12 weeks. I think that if I try to do it within the confines of the fattie contest, I'll be able to see the light at the end of tunnel, and be able to pullout all the stops for some quick pound loss. The one thing this weight loser said in her interview was that she had to change to change her relationship with food. I have to do that. I have to stop using food the way I do, to soothe myself, and start eating because I need fuel to keep on going. Knowing what I have to do and learning how to do it are two different things. I have to focus on this why exactly I am eating in therapy. Focusing will be my New Years resolution. Usually I do not make New Years Resolutions. Today is a special day. I think focusing would be a more constructive type goal than the result it is apt to bring.

New Years Resolution: Focus!

The husband and I are going to go to some kind of party they are throwing here at the hotel. My dad and the kids are going to hang in the room, order room service and watch movies.

I saw Roger Clemens at the dolphin cay, where the kids did a swim with the dolphins thing, this morning. I could have asked for a photo, but I decided to let him have some peace with his kids. I hear that Magic Johnson is here now too. Paul O'Neil is here too.

I'm keeping a list of famous folks I see at the party tonight. But I'm leaving the camera with the kids so they can take photos with my dad. (Priorities!)

Happy New Years Everyone!

read it!

countdown post 2 more to go:

A miracle happened here.

Well, maybe miracle is a bit of a heavy handed description for what happened, but I am pleased to say that I read a book. Normally I read a book here and there and then tear thru a dozen or so during the summer, and then I can say "I read that!" pretty much all year long when people start discussing books. After mom died last June the thought of focusing on a book was overwhelming. I brought my canvas bag of this summers books to utopia this summer, and I ended up using them as a door stop, never even peeking into the bag and instead filling the empty should be reading time gaps with tv series dvd's. I brought my bag of books home in September and now the books still sit undisturbed in their canvas bag right where I dropped them in my den.

But through it all there was one book that B put in my hands late last winter that I kept trying to read. That book went around in my gym bag/carry on where ever I went. In addition to our 3x a week gym treks, this book went back and forth to Florida with me twice in June, once in July and to utopia as well as here to the Bahamas right now. It's a good read. I recommend it.

See you tomorrow!

pass the bacon

3 more posts! Here goes #3:

So last night I had this dream in which I spent a great deal looking (with this total intense fascination) at my thumb nails because the edges of my thumb nails were scalloped. In my dream I stared and stared and thought how much my thumb nails looked the edge ridges on a Ritz cracker.

Weird huh?

The hostess at breakfast today told me that she thought I looked like Ricki Lake.

Except after a brief discussion which involved me saying how great Ricki looks these days and the hostess admitting she hadn't seen Ricki sine the days of Hairsray, or maybe a time or two on her talk show, it seems that the hostess at the breakfast buffet has not seen Ricki's after photos. Pass the bacon please.

After breakfast today I caught dad whispering something to the husband that made the husband laugh. It seems that at the casino last night dad thinks a hooker sat down next to him. When the alleged hooker tried to chat it up with dad, dad turned around and told the lady under suspicion that he was vacationing with both his wife and his girlfriend. I suspect that dad is not used to seeing so much silicone in everyday housewives. (PFFTT! A hooker!)

Dad told me today how glad he is to be here. That was really nice.

someone's been sleeping in my bed!

Maybe the most profoundly sad aspect of spending time with dad right now is that he just can't grasp that he is an "I" and not a "we" anymore. Dad says "We love it that the movie theater is so close to the house" or "We eat here all time. We love the food at this place." Stuff like that.

Poor daddy.

It just breaks my heart.

Dad called me mom's name about a million times. The last time he did it I think he was going to cry. So I just hugged him. I said "It's okay. I know."

But I don't. I don't know what it is like to be him, married to her for 37 years, and worship her and never imagine for a single second that he'd ever have to take a single breath on this earth with out her here by his side worshipping him right back. No, I don't know what that is like.

We have reached our second destination for this trip. We are in the Bahamas with dad. The husband met us down here. We'll stay for New Year's, because the point of this trip was taking dad away from his loneliness during New Year's when it sounded like things could feel worse for him at home.

Current battle: Husband thinks comfortable hotel room temp is 68 degrees. I'm wearing a wool sweater.

Current reason for celebrating: I'm not sleeping 1. with Josh the bed hogging blanket stealer tonight and 2. I'm not sleeping on the world's crappiest bed platform rock hard mattress tonight.

And I am admittedly beat, so I am off to sleep in hopefully a bed bug, other person's pube hair and bodily fluid free (Damn you investigative reporters! I forgot my ultraviolet light!) hotel bed. Ah, yicky.

to tart again and again

From the back seat of dad's caddy:

evan: Mom! Josh has two guys on his new didj! One is called POOP FACE and one is called RETARD!

Aaaand he spelled retard with a T so it's RETART!!

matt: Evan, POOP FACE used to be named EVAN, so you know... just ...

josh: Wait! Evan! How do you know I didn't mean to spell it with a T?

matt: Yeah, it's like Josh's guy is named Retart Johnson or something.

me: PFFFTTTT!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHA
I might have to hahahaha stop. hahaha I can't haha see I'm laughing hahaha so haha-hard.

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After my first sweltering night on the plywood bed I checkied to make sure the air ducts were truly open in our bedrooms. The vents ere open. So I figured I'd just open the windows at night. No such luck, after being locked closed for many years, the windows were completely stuck. The last thing I wanted to do was break dad's window, so I asked lil sis if there was any way to cool off the two bedrooms that the kids and I are sleeping in. (one which has a torturous southwest sun inviting view) Lil sis told me wait until dad went to bed and turn down the air conditioning. The key here is to wake up before dad the next morning and put it back on 77.

Dad keeps his air conditioner at 77. Dad is not environmentally conscientious (Hence, the caddy mentioned above) Dad is cold all the time. Despite the 77 degree airconditioner dad wears one of his cardigans (from his extensive old guy cardigan collection) every minute of the day- even outside.

So last night I waited dad out and when he went to bed I changed the temp from 77 to 73. Much better. Thanks lil sis!

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I have to say that one nice thing about vacation is not hanging out with the devil dog. I can do stuff like walk out the door with out being barked at, walk away from food on the kitchen counter and be all smugly confident the food will be there when I return and also, this is big, I can do stuff in the kitchen like cook or empty the dishwasher with out anyone whining at me trying to get a treat.

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My lower back in not liking the plywood bed I have been sleeping on. I am making a conscious effort not to twist and bend too much. If my back goes out on me now I am in serious trouble. I have no alternative medicine back up out here! Oh No!

mattres (leave off the last s for stone like)

My flight was scheduled to take off at 6:30 yesterday morning. Because the Garden State had been covered in a sheet of ice and slush plus a wind condition the day before I feared delays. But luckily if it weren't for the one socially inept on a plane family playing musical seats in 3 different rows, we would have been all seated and boarded and taxiing away right on time. Thanks to the heavily drinking (Yes! At 6:30 IN THE MORNING!) and yet somehow still unable to sit still mother, the rest of us who were half asleep because we had to drag our butts out of bed at 4AM and not because we enjoyed screwdriver after screw driver people were only about 10 minutes behind schedule.

I got all happy when we pulled away from the gate because SUNRISE! And I knew that if we didn't linger on the runway too long that chances are we would get to see the sunrise from the air AND I was on the east facing side of the plane. Yay!

We took off and the sights outside the window did not disappoint. Sunrise combined with a zillion lights of the city. And I sat there, in the middle seat, totally annoying my boys by saying "OMG! Do you see that? Isn't that gorgeous? Look look look!!! Look over there!" And then we flew through the clouds and I was going to see another sunrise from above the clouds. It was like beautiful groundhog day! I was just about giddy over it!

And then the flight attendant came on and said that today we would see a "feature". Hello! SCORE! No lame sit-coms! But then the flight attendant said "Today's feature will be "Fred Claus" and my heart re-blackened. But I dragged myself off the ledge knowing that I could also now use my approved iphone device and listen to the new Seal - Soul album I just got for the trip (because Fred Claus? I don't think so...) and also see the sun rise over a landscape of clouds. And then the flight attendant came on and asked us all to lower our window shades so that people could see Fred Claus but the sun rise hadn't reached maximum color show yet and I realized that being asked to shut out an above the clouds sunrise so as not to distract from Fred Claus is probably the clearest indication ever of everything wrong with our world today.

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Back when I was in college my boyfriend and I went to visit friends who had bought their own house. We got to their house late at night and the friend said that they did not have a spare mattress. They thought that we should sleep on the plywood platform bed frame in the spare bedroom anyway, so we could be in a bedroom. So boyfriend and I spent the night tossing and turning but not really sleeping on that plywood platform.

About 5 years ago in my mom's florida house (which is now my dad's house, except every inch of the house screams "Mom and her love of pastel colors and asian looking bric a brac was here") my mom finally upgraded from a queen sized to a king sized bed. For a couple of years she put her old queen mattress on top of the queen mattress in what used to be lil sis's room. So, first of all, the bed was oddly high in the air with two mattresses and a box spring in a smallish room and second of all two mattresses on top of each other feel like what I imagine it feels like if you sleep on top of a four foot high spray oil coated jello cube because the top mattress kind of slid around up there on top of the bottom mattress and when I would turn over in my sleep I'd have to find some level of consciousness to be certain that I wasn't going to end up sledding off the side of the lower mattress and go crashing into dad's fax machine.

The extra mattress is gone now, but the mattress that remains seems to have solidified or something. Last night every time I woke up to realize that I had lost circulation and all all feeling in my hip (side sleeper that I am ) I thought for a second that I was 21 and sleeping on that plywood platform.

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Dad looks pretty good. He is glad that his friends are not inviting him over for dinner every single night anymore. It was getting to be too much. We talked about how it has been 6 months since mom died and how that last 6 months have felt both like a lifetime and like a moment.

And you are not going to believe this.

Are you sitting down?

Dad's tv started turning on in the middle of the night too.

And then last night, his reliable (but I know it's like 30 years old) tv just kind of went to static. Freaky no?

Josh tried on hats at Target

For some reason I didn't want to meet my maker in the fiery plane crash (that I am sure is going to happen every time I board a plane) without sharing these with you first. I'm on my way to Florida with the kids to spend some time with dad. My heart breaks a little bit every time I think about how brave dad has been since mom died. sigh.

muzak

Husband takes the kids to the barber for haircuts. I tell him that only IRENE OR LISA can touch their hair and that if IRENE OR LiSA is not there today then the kids should not have haircuts. Did the husband listen to me? Of course not. Could I tell the second the kids walked in that someone ELSE (not reliable IRENE OR LISA) gave Josh a shitty haircut? Yes I could people.

Why does he do this to me?!?!!!!!!!

I went off to reintroduce myself to spin class this morning. I wasn't thrilled when I saw that the instructor who was teaching the class I was signed up for was one teacher who, when she first started teaching and I "tried" her, played some very non-inspirational vanilla boring type music. Having the same musical taste as your spin instructor is a key motivating factor in spin class. KEY. Also, this musically bland instructor is kind of hunchy and to be honest, her hunchiness freaks me, me who lives in fear of her own personal back pain and sees her chiropractor more than her spouse, out a whole lot just a little.

When hunchy sat down she announced that she only had two christmas songs on her playlist, and without even thinking, I booed. OMG ME!! The Christmas celebrating people around Stepford don't realize what a total complete DRAG it is to live in this Christmas consumed neighborhood when Christmas is a nothing for you. (Here is the pat where I confess to being just the slightest bit weirded out by the whole Jolly Santa lying to your kid/naughty/nice thing) Then I waited for my lynching to begin. But luckily no one, it seemed, was suffiently recovered from last night's pre-holiday drinking binge/today's hangover to get off their own bikes and bitch slap me up in the face. Whew. Another bullet magically dodged.

In the end Hunchy came through with a very decent play list, and a killer workout. I was glad I went. It is currently 5 hours post spin class and I am feeling a fair share of soreness creeping over my lower half. Go Hunchy!

Speaking of music...
My truck has XM satellite radio in it. The husband's luxury automobile has SIRIUS. It is for that reason that on the occasion I drive a long distance and the husband offers up his little slice of German engineering for my riding pleasure I forgo the ultimate driving experience (Wrong brand! Right country!) and travel in the comfy comfort of my shock absorber-less, non-road hugging, kidney blasting truck. I like knowing that all of my crap is near by, like my lip balm and my sunglasses, and my kleenex stash, but the over riding reason why I choose my truck every time is because I prefer the XM to the SIRIUS. And now, as if I am being punished for all of my evil Stepford related thoughts, XM and SIRIUS have merged and SIRIUS is taking over my fave XM stations. Weep weep weeping.

So I found a station called PINK the other day, and I'm thinking, could PINK, the performer who I have a very juvenile crush on, have enough songs out there to have a whole station? But NO, people, they are playing regular songs, maybe even girlish songs, but I'm a girl, so I'm all okay with that UNTIL I discover that the PINK SIRIUS station gives mental health type advice between girly lite muzac pop songs. Really! Between songs, a lady with some kind of psycho legit title, comes on and gives some quicky supermarket magazine type of advice for things iike "How to de-stress during the holidays" or "Strategies to avoid over eating during the holidays". Or right now, some other completely obvious unoriginal indispensable holiday (Your holiday sounds like a real vacation by the way) counsel.

That lady creeps me out too, probably even more than Hunchy does, mostly because it happens when I least expect it and I am driving all alone singing along with the radio when BLAM psycho babble lady is on the car radio and it's kind of like being hunted down by Jason, and I don't like it at all.

I will be in mourning for my XM now.

handy reality

I got Anastasia Beaverhousen's holiday card today. That just made my whole day.

I was just thinking the other day that I haven't suffered through taken a spin class for a while and then Boops called me out of nowhere like she had been reading my mind and suggested we take the Wednesday morning spin class. I wonder where my spin shoes are. The spin snobs already think I am a novice, at least I dress like I know what I am doing.

I forgot to tell you that yesterday I put 2 bras and no underwear in my gym bag. I had planned on wearing jeans. In addition to my heart skipping a beat (remember, I am not a waxer) or three with every post potty jean re-zip, I can confidently tell you that if your jeans are loose because you haven't gained back all of the weight you lost for the fattie contest, then they will really slide off if you end up going commando because you can't tell the difference between your beige bra and a pair of undies.

I brought Evan to Home Depot today so he could pick out his own Chanukah gift. He wanted something with which to sand or buff some wood sculptures he has been making with a pocket knife and old fashioned sandpaper. We were escorted to the guy in charge of the tools department and walked out with a cute little dremel for Evan.

What was remarkable about today's Home Depot excursion was the tool department who helped us. After asking some tool related questions with Evan the man looked at Evan, who was being typically (public out of the house behavior) mellow and respectful and the guy gave Evan a warning about being respectful to me, and he also sternly informed Evan that it would be unacceptable for him to ever date a woman that was not warm and loving towards me. The tool guy told Evan that I was the most important relationship in his life.

Whoa.

I might send Evan to live at Home Depot the next time he requires a big dose of reality.

chuckle

For some reason I woke up PISSED today. I yelled at Matt. I know, I can hardly believe it myself, I yelled at sweetest teenager ever Matt. Shame, shame, shame on me. On the drive to school Matt was ever so delicately trying to open my eyes to the slightest possibility that he was INNOCENT and did not deserve the tongue lashing I gave him.

I didn't apologize, but I did own up to just waking up angry.

Then I came home, saw that Evan had not taken the hot lunch I so lovingly packed for him and phoned the husband to screech at him during his morning commute.

Then I (somehow managed not to yell at Josh) took Josh to school only to be followed down the road by a minivan that obviously not been driven since Fridays snow/ice storm. The woman, for lack a G rated word, had merely scraped a little hole in the ice right in front of her face and was driving down the road while only being able to see out of about 1/3 of her windshield.

SHe turned into the elementary school behind me. I called the cops.

Oh yes I did! Bitch was driving in the school parking lot like that!

I told the cop who answered the phone and he said to me "What do you want me to do about it?" I said "I want to you to send an ambulance or two to scrape the run over kindergarteners off of the pavement."

I wish!!

Went to the posh gym and did a half-assed workout.

Went to the market and did a half assed shopping.

After shopping I thought about how much I had yelled that morning and I just started laughing and laughing.