Torture

What do these three things have in common?

Water Boarding, Pulling out fingernails one by one, swimsuit shopping

If you said they're all forms of torture, then you win the prize!  (Not an actual prize, but one of those self congratulatory pats on the back kind of prizes.)

For an hour this past weekend I was tortured.  No, I didn't suddenly find myself in the hands of some North Korean prison guards.  I found myself in two department stores trying on swimsuits.  Ugh.

I've needed a couple of new swimsuits for about a year now.  We go swimming a lot and mine are worn out, as in the little elastic bra thing in the top of my tankini top is no longer elasticky.  I thought I'd take advantage of the Memorial Day sales and get a couple of new suits.  Ha!  Little did I know that no one makes a decent looking suit for a petite mom of three who can't seem to get rid of her pooch of a belly.

Because he truly has a good eye for what looks good on me, I brought Ryan along.  He sat in the "husband chairs" (you know, the chairs right outside the ladies' dressing room), held my purse and shared his opinions on the dozen or so suits I tried on.  To his credit, he didn't once comment on the jiggliness (hey, if Sarah Palin can make up words then so can I) of my thighs.  He did raise an eyebrow to a couple of the more revealing suits.

I discovered a while back that I look best in v-neck clothing so those are the suits that I gravitate toward.  For some reason, swimsuit designers seem to think that women who like to wear v-necks also like to show their wares to every Tom, Dick and Harry.  You know what?  Not all of us want to show that much boobage....some of us just like v-necks!  

So, anyway, the only suit that really fit me was a blue plaid tankini with, I am not kidding, ruffles on it.  Yes, ruffles on a grown woman's swimsuit.  Really?  I felt like Elly May Clampett and vetoed it immediately.  Who in the world wants ruffles around her hips?  Doesn't that just scream, "Look how wide my hips are!!"?

I don't know what I'm going to do.  I really don't want to wear my old suits anymore.  I know kids are often embarrassed at how their moms look in their swimsuits; mine are so bad, I'm embarrassed for myself.  I also don't want to torture myself any further by trying on any more of them.  

How hard can it be to design a decent, dignified yet cute, swimsuit?

If I'm going to wear something that amounts to, let's face it, underwear that is worn in public, I've got to have some standards. 

And apparently current swimwear designers have no standards whatsoever.

Letters

Dear Homeowner's Association,

I dare you to send us another letter about the condition of our yard.  In case you didn't notice, we had several freezing days in a row and everything in everybody's yards died.  It's called winter, you morons.  We've spent a good 25 hours the past few weekends raking, trimming, mowing the grass and sprucing up the flower beds.  So if you send us another "polite" letter, I'm going to "politely" tell you where to put it.

Sincerely,
The Homeowners

P.S.  You nosy people have way too much time on your hands.
__________________________________

Dear Pollen,

You win.  We're all sick.  Now go away.

With Sniffles,
Our Stuffy Noses
__________________________________

Dear Rain,

Please come wash away the nasty pollen.   We'd be ever so grateful.

Kisses,
Our Sinuses
__________________________________

Dear Future Vacation Bible Schoolers,

I have worked really hard to develop a fun curriculum for you this summer.  I'm sorry if you don't like everything I've picked for you to do, but seeing as I'm not an elementary level teacher, I think I've done a pretty good job.  I hope you have lots of fun making butter and ice cream, tasting various spices and doing several fun cooking experiments!

On Pins and Needles,
The VBS Curriculum Coordinator
_________________________________

Dear My Little Tomato Plants,

This is the first year I've attempted to grow anything other than herbs.  You're looking great now, but I have a brown thumb and I'm worried for your future.  Please hang in there.

Fingers Crossed,
A Hopeful Gardener
__________________________________

Dear Kindle,

Oh, how I love thee!  I still enjoy reading regular books (with all your bells and whistles, you still can't replicate the smell of a book), but I can already tell that we're going to have a long relationship.  Although, I do wish I could figure out how to find more free books because yes, I'm still cheap frugal.

In Heaven,
A Happy Reader
__________________________________

No Sleep for the Weary

Y'know, if it's not one thing, it's another.

Last week, Evan threw up on the off-white living room carpet...after eating blackberries.  Everyone talks about how blueberries are so staining, but no one ever mentions blackberries.  Luckily, the giant purple stain came out and it was one of those non-repeated fluke pukes.

And then I caught the stomach bug from you-know-where.  By day three of consuming nothing but miniscule sips of water and tiny bites of saltines, I thought I was going to die.  I never had a fever and thankfully no one else caught it, but for a while there in my delusional mind, I thought for sure that somehow I'd contracted some mutant combination of rotovirus/cholera that was going to land me in the hospital.  But, hey, I'm five pounds lighter now, so why should I complain, right?

And now, on top of his recent and on-going medical issues, Ryan has a terrible cold.  As I type this at 6 something in morning, he is snoring like a freight train (and has been since 4 something), which is about twenty times louder than your usual run-of-the mill train-type snoring.  I'm lucky that I got to sleep so much during my bout with the stomach bug because I'm sure as heck not going to sleep again any time soon.

I'd go sleep in the living room, but a) it's adjacent to our bedroom and I can still hear him snoring through the door (yes, it's that loud) and b) he's been diagnosed with a slight case of apnea (which might be causing the seizures) so I spend most nights just dozing and making sure that he's breathing and not sleeping on his back.  So I guess it's not like I've been getting lots of sleep anyway.

The doctors said we should look into having his tonsils taken out and that might alleviate the apnea issues and in turn that might lower his chances of having more seizures.  We thought about waiting a bit so that we can get through Evan's tear duct surgery next month (yes, yet another medical issue!), but as I listen to him snore so deeply that the bed is shaking right along with him, I'm tempted to go find a kitchen knife and perform the surgery on him myself.

Don't get me wrong, I love him more than life itself, but y'know, I need to sleep.  I haven't had a good night's rest in nearly a month and clearly it's taking a toll on my mood and my sanity.  Not even Christmas can get me out of this grouchy mood.  Now that's pretty sad.

Pet Peeves

I woke up in a mood this morning.  Everything seems to be getting on my nerves for some reason.  I know it will pass and by this afternoon whatever bee flew in my bonnet will fly away, but for now, I'm just in a mood.

What better time to vent, right?  Currently, I'm peeved by:

- the wind chimes that I usually adore.  We put them up in the back of the house so that we can hear them, but a cold front came through at 4 this morning and they've been jingling non-stop and I've been awake ever since.  (I think I've just figured out why I'm in this crummy mood.)  I'm fairly certain the wind chimes will be finding a new home soon.

- parents who take their kids out of school (real school, not pre-school) for an entire week or two to go skiing, to Disney or something similar just to "beat the crowds."  It's one thing to take their kids out for a few hours or even a day to go see relatives or something, but a whole week?  To go to Disney?  Really?  What are they teaching their kids about the importance of education?

- people who don't buckle their kids into car seats.  When I see a small child walking around in the back seat of a car or sitting on an adult's lap in the front seat I want to scream, "What is wrong with you people?"

- bloggers who edit their posts to only show a sentence or two in a feeder so that if you want to read the whole post, you have to go to the actual web page to read it.  I know they do it so that they get a higher number of page views for advertising/payment purposes, but all it does is make me delete them from my blog roll.  So long, Crockpot 365.

- people who don't understand that we don't like dogs.  We're just not dog people.  Two of our three kids are warming up to them and aren't as scared of them as they used to be, but one is still terrified of them.  We're working on it, but in the mean time, I wish some people would be a little more understanding.

- the yummy garlic chicken recipe that makes the house smell like garlic for three full days after I cook it.  It's too yummy to not cook it anymore, but sheesh, the smell is killing me.

- the list of people we have to buy gifts for this Christmas keeps getting bigger each year.  Between us, Ryan and I have three sets of parents, five siblings (with spouses), eight nieces and nephews (with another on the way) and four great nephews (and another on the way).  I honestly don't know how much more I can stretch our Christmas budget.

But, on the upside, the boys asked Santa for only one thing each this year and I managed to find them online yesterday at a pretty good deal.  Whew!  At least I feel can feel good about that!

Wanna play along?  What's one of your current pet peeves, holiday-related or otherwise?


P.S. I promise to be in a better mood for my next post.  :)

Irritated

When we joined a church in The Land of Fruit a while back, we decided to get as involved as possible.  We teach Sydney's Sunday School class once a month, I've taken the training to serve communion and I've gotten involved in the committee that puts on the events for children and families (Easter egg hunt, fall festival, etc).

So far everything has gone quite well.  I've cooked pancakes and prepared hot dogs, sold tickets to events, donated many bags of candy and spent countless hours cleaning up after all of these events.  I haven't been able to help set up for the events as much as I'd like because they always seem to do that on Fridays and I don't feel comfortable letting the boys run around the church while we're trying to work.  At ages two and three, I feel like they need a lot of supervision and I just can't give them that while decorating tables and such.

So at today's meeting to plan our Christmas event, one of the committee members lamented that she winds up doing most of the decorating by herself.  I pointed out that I'd be happy to help on days that the boys are in Mother's Day Out, but the setup days never seem to fall on one of those days.  I said that I couldn't really work with two kids needing so much attention.

Her response?  "That's a load of bull.  I've been bringing my son up while I do all the decorating myself since he was eighteen months old.  I just let him run around and entertain himself while I do all the work."

I felt like I'd been hit in the stomach.  I simply don't think my boys could entertain themselves for hours on end without destroying things.  It's great that her kid is so well-behaved, but you know what?  My boys (one, in particular) are rambunctious, energetic and even a bit mischievous.  There is absolutely no way I'd let them just "run around."

I don't know if she saw me steaming or what, but another committee member agreed that she'd love to help decorate, too, but her boys were also too rowdy to be left alone.

In the end, the committee chair promised to look into hiring the church babysitter to watch all of our kids in the nursery for a few hours while we set things up.

But now I'm irritated.  One part of me feels like telling them to shove it and the offending committee member can just continue to play the martyr and do all of the decorating herself.  And the other part of me feels like showing up, putting the boys in the provided nursery and working so hard they'll wonder how they ever did it without me.

Ugh.  Some people.

No wonder various churches, charities and organizations have a hard time finding members and/or volunteers.

What's that old saying?  "Don't bite the hand that feeds you"?  Maybe that should be amended to, "Don't bite the head off the volunteer willing to help you."

Farewell to FB Friends

Dear Former Facebook Friends,

I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm no longer commenting on your status updates. I haven't had the courage to completely drop you from my "friend" list, but I have hidden you from my main page.

While I enjoy reading about what you're up to, your kids' first days of school and the new cars you've purchased, I don't want to read about your political beliefs. An occasional news link here or there doesn't bother me, but when every single status update contains something political or inflammatory, I lose interest. Besides, I have my own opinions; I certainly don't want to hear all of yours.

In case you haven't figured it out, life is short. And having my blood pressure rise every time I read something you've written probably isn't good for me. So....goodbye. I hope you have a great life. I may occasionally check out your FB profile or wall to see what you're up to, but I'm not going to subject myself to your closed-mindedness and/or political diatribes on a daily basis anymore.

Sincerely,

Jana