clickmom

gonna do stuff

Not a single drop of deodorant will come out of the bottle of deodorant that does not make my hyper allergic arm pits swell up.  I planned a couple of errands today to conveniently take me by whole foods, where I purchase the semi effective, but seemingly benign deodorant, and whole foods was closed due to no power.  Oh yeah.

I'm gonna smell nice tomorrow.

When you are someone who happens to be in a sweet heavenly island of no electrical outages it is hard to remember that right down the street someone can't take a shower, cook a meal or flush their toilets thanks to the latest freak weather Nor' easter that tore through here and dumped about 6 inches of wet slushy snow/ice 2 days before Halloween.  Who ever heard of climbing over snow drifts to ring doorbells on Halloween?  Snow in October.  Seriously.  Sheesh.  Weather.  In stepford (92% is without power in the dark tonight) the town has declared that Halloween will be celebrated on Nov. 4th this year.  I couldn't make that up if I wanted to.  That is some good comedic fodder right there.

I'm gonna milk that one.

Also, now that I brought Sylvia to the dealer for her 100,000 mile check up, and forked over a big chunk of cash thinking I'd be able to drive her pitiful dented self for at least another 50,000 miles, she is falling apart, and I can't help but suspect that the dealer didn't mess something up under her hood.  In addition to NO HEAT (bad timing!  Hello snow!) she almost overheated on the not quite two mile trek from Josh's elementary school to our new town house.  She was hot enough that she was almost in the red and that the warning which said "ENGINE COOLANT HOT" came on.  Fracking frackety frack.

I'm gonna call the car dealer tomorrow.

I called all the neighbors in utopia and reminded them that we have a generator in our house, since pretty much the entire town is without heat.  The sentry tried to go down to my house and make herself some coffee.  Guess whose generator isn't working!

I'm gonna call the electrician tomorrow.

Also, I have to find a painter.  If I have to live one more week with a sunshine daisy yellow faux something ragged/sponged painted dining room I'm going to start puking smiley faces, for that is pretty damned close to the color of my current new town dining room.

I just might paint it myself.

But I fear I am too lazy.

Knowing me I'd only paint half.  That might be worse.

I had a fantasy this morning that I could build my own furniture since I know precisely what I want, but don't know where to find it.  At least don't know where to find it in a price range I'd be willing to consider buying it at.  Wouldn't it be awesome to see something and go into your wood shop, or welding studio, or what ever you need and just whip one out?  I'd totally reproduce all the most expensive museum worthy pieces out there.  

I'm so tired I'm going to fall on my face.

Matt went back to Hipster U this morning.  I miss him already.

 

not your run of the mill fall day

Well.

The weathermen lied!!

They said new town was in this blissful slim band of an inch or so of snow.  Not so!  We have about 4 so far.  

Mercy!

Matt was supposed to go back to Hipster U today.  My original plan for the day was to zip down to the airport, slow down just enough to open the door and push Matt out onto the sidewalk, high tail it back to new town, grab Josh, dash by the halloween store for some last minute costuming, swing by an art store for some paper for the printing class I signed up for that starts Tuesday and then re-sweet-lax the rest of the afternoon until Josh's scary all family Halloween party this evening. 

Matt and I left the house at 10:50 for the hour plus long drive to Laguardia airport.  When we hopped in the car a barely noticeable light sprinkle had just begun.  10 minutes later there was about 100 yards visibility and the huge clumps of wet snow were coming down fast and furious.  I had to super focus on the road.  The past few times I've gone to Laguardia I've taken the Whitestone Bridge.  GPS (who very obviously hates me) lady suggested I take the Triboro instead, which hello?  Was renamed?  was it RFK?  Way to confuse a apace cadet NY!  Guess who missed to the turn off because there was a fork in the road and GPS lady didn't tell me which way to go and I guessed wrong and ended up driving down the west side highway instead?  West side highway?  You might be astonished.  I sure was.  GPS lady also changed my destination to somewhere in lower Manhattan, so I followed her advice thinking she had some kind of clever trick up her computer generated voice sleeve until I realized she had pulled a fast one on me, and then I drove cross town and through the mid town tunnel.  I realize this means nothing to you if you are not a New Yorker, but what it would look like on a map is if you used one of those spirograph rings that old people like me drew flowery circles with as little kids (kids who did not know the mind numbing glory of all day cable TV  children's programming or the internet.  (Al Gore had not yet invented it)), my route was, indirect, at best.  Laughable.  It took us a tad over two hours to get to the airport, which was fine since we had left plenty of time.  I dropped Matt off during a full and complete stop with tears streaming down my cheeks and a big hug and drove away.  Then the husband called to say that Matt's flight was now 2 hours delayed instead of the 40 minutes we had been earlier informed, and I decided to park and hang out with Matt until his flight actually took off.  Just in case.

Guess who is spending another night in new town!  Yup.  Flight cancelled.  New ticket issued for tomorrow.  So, with a big smile (on my face, Matt was DYING to get back Hipster U) we hopped back into Sylvia (go 4 wheel drive!) and headed back.  I was kind of psyched for Josh that Matt would be able to attend the Halloween party scheduled for tonight.  Matt makes things fun.  It was a long frightening white knuckled obstacle course the entire way home.  There was horizontal blowing snow, tress, branches and wires down everywhere, and giant heavy clumps of ice and snow falling from the still leafy trees that managed to remain upright.  All these other crazy people were on the road with us.  WHY PEOPLE??  SIX hours and FORTY minutes after departing this morning Matt and I pulled right back into my now thickly slush covered driveway and stumbled into the house.

The Halloween party has been postponed.

Current forecast is for 4- 8 inches, snow continuing through the night into the morning.  Matt's new flight? 9:30 AM tomorrow.  Fingers crossed.

 

dusting myself off, getting back on the horse

Whoops I forgot to open the door for Matt to highlight some of my additional inadequacies yesterday.  Oh well, I have a little more time before he scampers back to Hipster U.

After an incredibly frustrating morning, where the dude who was supposed to show up to install a fireplace mantel for me at 9:30 showed up at 12:15 (I was tearing my hair out!)  Matt and I rushed over to New Haven, home of Y@le  (hopefully my soon to be institution of higher learning in my journey to an MFA)  where I got to stalk the Y@le campus, eat a delightful Thai meal with a tweedy crowd of intellectual looking people, and purchase a brand new iphone.   I'm totally going back for more stalking and maybe even more of that Thai food.  It was all good.  Y@le is incredibly beautiful.  And I so liked being there with Matt.  I bought a Y@le t-shirt.  I told Matt I'd burn the shirt if they don't take me, but I'm more likely to sleep in it every night until either they do accept me or it disintegrates.  

My step sister offered to help me with my application to Y@le, which is awesome.  She just got her MFA from another institution of higher learning out on the west coast.  During a discussion, in which I lamented how few people they accept every year, my step sis said "So, you'll apply again next year."   Wow.  I never thought about possibly needing to keep trying until they take me.  I have to wrap my mind around that now?  I want to start today!  Oh, how I wish I knew a Y@le grad who wants to donate a new wing and who would put in a good word for me.

I haven't been treating myself well lately, I didn't find a place in new town to exercise  (No gym for over 4 months!!) and I have been sporadically eating gluten and dairy, which means I have pain and discomfort in too many ways to list.   Then last week I ran out of deodorant.  Of course I use this aluminum free herbal elixir that I pick up at Whole Foods, and the new Whole Foods didn't have any on the shelf.  I grabbed a new deodorant to try and (no surprise here) managed to have an allergic reaction to the new deodorant.  At first I marveled over how noticeable the extra fabric in my heavier shirts was underneath my arms, and then finally I shaved my pits and realized that my underarms were all strangely swollen.  I can't get a break people.

Next week I am determined to find and join a new gym by the end of the week.  I started vegetable juicing again this morning.  I was enthusiastically juicing for a month this summer and not only did I feel great, but I lost some weight too.    As soon as I hit PUBLISH on this post I am going to hook up my (photo editing) desktop computer and start figuring out which 20 photos I am going to use for my Y@le portfolio.  What pressure! 

I suck

It's 10:30 and I am just now possibly hearing Matt moving around in his bedroom.  I've been fighting the urge to wake him up for the past hour and a half.  I want to wake him so I can look at him.  I'm so happy he's home, even though he has, with extraordinary diplomacy, told me that he pretty much has some less than stellar opinion of my parenting, especially in the area of properly feeding my kids.  He thinks I'm all talk and no action.   BWAH HA HA HA.

I wish I had sent him off to a more typical house to live.  I always loved that show where two extreme families exchaged kids for a couple of weeks.  My kids would have been traumatized!   Then Matt could see other parents giving their kids fast food and premade frozen food every night.  Heck, I wish Matt could time travel back to my childhood.  He doesn't even know what a Swanson TV dinner is and he's never had Jeno's pizza rolls.  I'm not even sure Matt can imagine how many different varieties of vegetables come in a can!   Of all the things for him to look down his nose at me about, I'm kind of surprised that he chose food.

I always figured my kids would secretly talk about what an emotional disaster I can be.  I cry way too easy, I am way too sensitive,  I have anxiety issues.  But food?  I find that intriguing.

Also, he finds it interesting that we as a family are not politically passionate.  He admits that his father is incredibly knowledgeable when any political subject is raised.  Matt seemed to suggest that perhaps we are apathetic maybe?  That was my word not his.  In any case, he judged.  

He's going back to Hipster U. on Saturday.  I'm going to try to tease out all the other ways I (we) don't measure up out of him before he leaves.  I know he has to go through this stage.  I'm rolling my eyes.  On one hand I want to tell him to call me when he's 25, on the other hand I'm thinking of installing a nanny cam in his room so I can stare at him while he sleeps.  

hey there

It's tough to post these days because my internet connection sucks.  Yes, it is in my house, but the dude who set up the modem assured me that the far away from 99% of where we all do most of our computer time was still close enough.  NOT.  It seems that my almost 4 year old dinosaur of a lap top is having the hardest time of all the lap tops.  It's as slow as dial up.  It hurts.

The best news of recent is that Matt is home for a week.  Hurray for fall break!  Yes, I just picked him up from the airport and Yes, he is already hanging out in his room, but just the few hours we spent in his deity of an 18 year old like presence was like everything being right with the world again.  Also, again I embarrassed myself in public my making some kind of bizarre primal noise of happiness when I turned around and saw him standing there at the airport.  Having him leave us, despite his eventual adulthood and independence being the alleged goal of all of my thoughtful parenting, is devastating for me.  I can't help it.  I love it when he comes back.  I'm in heaven.

There was another heavenly happening this week.  I attended an all day print making marathon.  I chickened out and brought lots of my own landscapes to use as inspiration, when what I really wanted to paint was dead animal shots.  Usually I take a shot of the whole animal to keep as a record and I thought maybe I'd use those shots as inspiration.  But I don't know these people. so I went with the neutral subject matter instead.  There were four of us printing that day and we all whipped out what we had brought with us, and one lady whipped out dead bird scans.  I'm not kidding!  She has a cat that brings her dead birds almost every day!  I was so (jealous) happy that I was shaking.  I tried to be friendly and enthusiastic with her without being stalkerish and crazy sounding.  In the end she told me her web site so the next morning I checked out her web site, and found her email address in the contact me section and shot her an email telling her how much I liked her work (I did) and said I would come to her drawing class (I will) and asked her if I could have her cat offerings (birds) when she was finished scanning them.  She replied with "cool and will do." which I am hoping to mean "I will call you on the cell phone number you provided when I have birds to share."  It's so hard not to come on too strong during these potential subject situations. Without my ace road kill spotter photo friend from stepford and the known road kill (through the land preserve) roads I used troll, I've been in a real long dry spell over here. Also, I'm pretty sure spring is the best time for finding stuff.

Tomorrow I am going to call the ex-manny from across the street and remind him that I'd like to see his hunting bounty.  Hopefully I didn't miss anything this weekend.  Now that he's been fired, my fingers are crossed that he might hunt during the week, when I have more free time.

hung

Something came over me today and I took all of our pantings, photos, prints, wall decor out of the excessive (but thankfully protective) 10 layers of paper wrapping and super taped corrugated cardboard.

Then I hung some of it up!  Nothing really fits in the new house,  this house couldn't be more different than the stepford house, but I hung stuff anyway.  It'll be a more eclectic look.  I'm not buying new art.  I'm still in a bad place over moving from a house with a design that was just close to perfect for me and mine to this house.  I still hear that voice in my head screaming WHY? every once in a while, though admittedly less often than I heard it 6 weeks ago, I guess I am just acclimating.  Or giving up.  No!  Not giving up!  Just quietly planning my next house!  By next house, I mean the house I'll move into when all of my kids abandon me.  

Speaking of parent abandoning children,  I can't believe the big hollow echoing gaping hole that is our present without Matt.  I feel bad for wanting him to come so much, because really, the goal is for the children to be happy and independent, which he is, but I feel like a teenager with a broken heart because he isn't here with us.  

Also, Matt totally listened to Josh talk about video games.  Josh can not stop himself from telling me about them without Matt around and he loses me before the end of the first sentence.  I have no idea what he is talking about. Ever.

Tomorrow I'll hang a few more things, even in the appallingly bright yellow dining room, which I haven't gotten around to having repainted yet.

 

always helpful

Josh obviously took note of the positive reinforcement I doled out to Evan this afternoon when he loaded the groceries into the car for me.  I like to lay it on nice and thick when the boys are helpful because I really want them to grow up and be husbands who participate in the family and not just men who sit around waiting to be doted on.

When I opened the dishwasher to unload it later on this afternoon, I saw that I hadn't run it FOUR DAYS AGO when we left for utopia and now there was a washer full of crusty food covered probably won't come off in the wash plates in the dishwasher.  I was so annoyed with my forgetful self that I shouted out loud "I'm so mad, I'm gonna shoot myself!"  And Josh from the next room, only partially listening due to the thrill of a video game being played by Evan calls back to me in his sweet little Josh voice "Want help?"

misc

If you are so congested that you can't smell anything does aromatherapy still work on you?

I like to spray a little lavender on my pillow to help me relax at night.  I haven't done it since getting sick almost TWO WEEKS ago.  I'm just wondering.  Lavender doesn't really go with menthol though.

Can a girl become addicted to the Vicks?

I've been having to slather up every night in order to breath comfortably.  The two nights that I tried to go Vickless I ended up waking up having painful coughing fits.  I'm running out of old shirts to sacrifice to the greasiness which is the goodness of the Vicks.

I made an attempt at reaching out to someone today.  When I went on the new student tour of the elementary school with Josh there was another mom who I took notice of when she asked if the school lunches were free of trans fats.  She approached me at the welcome back to school picnic, where I learned that she is also a print maker, so I called her today and asked her if she'd like to go to a near by art school.  I am hoping that it can rival the place where I took my photo class near Stepford.  The other print making lady was very happy that I called and wanted to go with me, but not until next week.  Now I have to wait to check this place out. Waiting is a drag.  I also found out that the other print maker takes an hour long walk every morning.  Me too!  Except I do it with bear bait and I get to start 1/2 an hour earlier since Josh takes the bus to school and she walks her kid to school.

 

 

all by myself, don't wanna be

Still on the mend over here.  The cough, the congestion....  it's annoying and it is disrupting my beauty sleep.  Without my beauty sleep I am one useless cranky bitch.  Seriously.  This whole sick thing is incrementally better every day, and then I must not sleep a wink in one night and I lose all perspective and want to spend the day rolled up in the fetal position crying.  That would have been today.  I lost my stamina around 10:30 this morning and spent the next 5 hours first wandering aimlessly around stores and then sitting in my den trying to muster up the energy to make phone calls but eventually dozing off in a chair.  I think my lofty goal for tomorrow will be taking an actual nap in bed.  

Bear bait is still a big ball of nerves over the original dog hating electric fence this property came with.  Today I drove her to pick up Evan from football practice with her collar on because it never went off driving in and out of stepford, and then she got shocked coming home.  She probably got zapped leaving too but the radio was so loud I didn't realize it.  She made a sad little whimper.  I felt awful.  Getting zapped was the last thing this dog needs, she'd already afraid of the yard.

Being in new town is a good thing.  I feel like people are nicer here.  But I haven't done much to search anyone out and it's starting to get lonely.  As far as other mothers at the elementary school go, I am like the old grandmother mother, so I'll have to find my new people other ways.  I need to look in artsy places.  I feel like making art.  I should find a class.  This morning would have been my photo class, if I was still in stepford.  Photo class was a highlight of my week!  I'm very sad today.  I'm feeling isolated.  I couldn't wait for Josh to get off the school bus so I'd have someone to talk to.