Laissez Le Bon Temps Rouler

Mmmmm....Beignets.


I am outta here. Kiddo is on her own until 6ish so the split shift is off. I am heading to Cafe Beignet and getting some quiche, coffee, and beignets. Yum.

Tiny Dancer In A Cast

My child has broken her ankle doing her version of Riverdance in her own living room. Fractured tibia.

She is so my kid. Unfortunately, she was put in an air cast by the urgent care docs when she should have been sent to ER to see a pediatric orthopedic doc. My mom the nurse freaked out and called Ortho today, who freaked out when they heard what had been done, and promptly called me. This means that I am dining on crow since I poo poo'd Mom's freak out last night. My childhood was spent with her pretty much veering between my faking illness or dying of something with 50 syllables, so I tend to roll my eyes a lot. Add to that, mom is Virgo and has a tendency to look for the negative and I think you can see why I did. In this case, mamasan was right and I was acting like a peg. Pass me some salt for my crow, kthx.

Kiddobean aka Dangermouse is home with her dad again today and is not allowed to be up and around excepting bathroom trips. She has an appointment with the Bone Clinic Monday over at the pediatric hospital and they will hard cast her. The fracture is too close to the growth plate for them to feel happy about the air cast.

Such drama! All this the same week that Intel is doing their huge lay off. The ex (husband variety) escaped the axe, but it was a tense time for all. Bad day to have to call in sick with your kid. Survivor guilt is hitting hard over there. I didn't think there was much of a chance of him getting "redeployed" as they call it. He has his faults, but the he is like the Rainman of computers. Freaky good.

So kiddobean is off school through her appointment on Monday. Her dad is out of town again starting Sunday. We have decided to just skip my taking her to dinner or having her Friday in favor of her staying at her dad's until I get her Saturday afternoon. Tomorrow I am going to do a split shift here at work and go hang out with her in the afternoon at his house so she is not alone. Saturday I am going to hit the Greek Festival and get loukoumades for Mia and then go pick her up. Must remember to bring Tupperware. Sunday, I have tentatively scheduled my nervous exhaustion breakdown. That is only partially a joke.

And now I return you to your regularly scheduled program as my lunch hour is over and work awaits. Oh, the joy!

She Told Me To Walk This Way

OMG. I get am having a rare treat of a day.

My usual day consists of:

Get up at 5:30 to have half an hour of quiet time and coffee

Get kiddobean up and ready if I have her that day

Go to work after dropping small child off at school if I have her that day. Start time varies, 7:30-8:15 depending on kiddo.

Working until my lunch at 1:45.

Taking my 1 hour lunch to drive out and pick small child up at school and then drop her off at my house every single day.

Drive back to work and work until 6ish.

Drive home (every other Wednesday, pick small child up for dinner then drop off at her dads)

Cook,Clean, Curse at growing dirty/clean laundry pile, etc etc etc

Bed

Rinse Repeat

Thanks to my darling child's usual lack of grace I am now off the hook for after school pick up and Wednesday night dinner. She was dancing in her dad's living room last night, and with our usual familial daintiness fell on her butt and sprained her ankle. She is couch bound for the entire day. No school and dinner is postponed until tomorrow night.

Now I am probably coming off like Mommy Dearest here, but I swear I have no problems with wire hangers. Just talked to the kiddobean and she says she is fine as long as she doesn't stand on it or try to rotate it. I am not a heartless mommy and would hate it if she were in pain so I was happy to hear it is not hurting her and she is spending the day watching bad horror movies. I think she is enjoying the day off, truth be told since I think today was geography. Not her favorite.

Of course, her dad will probably not follow my (excellent) advice and take her to an urgent care to get the ankle wrapped and x-rayed. That means tomorrow I will have to take her in after school. But for today I get to actually go to work, stay here, and then go straight home! I have chills of joy.

Working For The Clampdown!

Had a question from Belle on my last post comments. I am feeling long winded and have decided WTF make a post out of my answers. Lazy, I know.

Belle - I work for an healthcare system in their insurance sales department. I am kind of a tiny island all to myself in that I am the only one who does what I do. Which is kill a lot of trees to create the legal contract document for our group coverage for all of our groups. Glorified paper pusher! Seriously I am poster child for not living up to my potential. And I like it that way.

The plus side of my job is that I have a ton of flexibilty with my hours and I can pretty much work as much overtime as I want. The down side is I have to work at least 15 hours per payperiod of OT just to meet my standards.

Vacationing with the parentals is always a risk but if you go into the experience expecting my dad to screw something up and my mom to freak out about it, well then you can just "Serenity Now!" your way through it. We have gone to Hawaii with my parents for kiddos birthday twice now. It went pretty darn good all in all.

Funny thing is, when we were waiting for the condo to be built, right after the ex boyfriend variety was shipped back home to his mama, Kiddo and I moved in with my parents for 9 months. The first month was living hell, but after that it was actually kinda fun! Hella nice to have someone else cook for you!

Thinker - Stung on the lip?! I think I would be in a padded room just from having the damn thing that close to my face. I am shuddering right now thinking about it. Eeek.

Now, I need fried greasy food and some coffee to put a smile on my face. Over and out till later.

Girl, Get Me Out Of This Hell Hole

I fear vacation/relaxation time. Seriously. Every time I don't work on a weekend something ends up making wish to God I had. Remember my last post about the bucolic house in the mountains weekend? Try Amityville Horror instead.

As is usual, any trip with my parents is bound to include, at some point in the venture, a huge screaming match wherein Dad gets to keep his nuts by an incredibly slight margin. In this case, we had the showdown at high noon just to get it out of the way (or on the way) right from the get go.

The house has a lockbox. In the box is the key. After an hour and a half drive, naturally we are all more than ready to get inside the house. Dad had assured mom the day before that of course he had the code. And there was a hide-a-key. Unfortunately for Dad, he did NOT get the code and the key was not where it should have been. In addition he had not charged his cell phone and they had to use mine. Mom was PISSED. Mind you, she had just had an epidural injection of the lower spine the day before for her herniated disk, and was supposed to be laying down flat. She was in pain, and on cortisone. Cortisone is a lovely drug, but it brings out the psycho killer in everyone. Very short fuse on the old rage bomb.

I told kiddobean to just keep circling the property and never ever look the grandma in the eye. She was stomping through bushes like Bigfoot on a bad hair day. It was a truly impressive freak-out even for her, and she has had some doozies.

We finally find the hidden key and are gratefully headed indoors. Where we are greeted by a HUGE contingent of black flies. Like 50+. Nasty right? It got better when we looked around and noticed the dead ones all over the floor. Some of them appeared quite big. Hello friends and neighbors those biggie sized ones are not flies they are big black wasps!

Look up in the windows! It's a bird. It's a plane. It's 25+ living big black wasps.

They landed on my head and I reached up and brushed them off without thinking about it. Then I had a tiny baby shit attack. Small child insisted she was going to sleep in the car.

We ended killing a bunch of the wasp and then spending the weekend hiding out down in the basement rec room area. It was like being in a cave. Mom was so pissed she marched out on the porch, plucked my cigarette out of my mouth and took a good 3 puffs off it. She is a hard core reformed smoker. The very act of smoking in front of her grandchild and her husband should have been a sign to all and sundry that you were just NOT to fuck with this woman. Dad didn't get it of course, and it is a minor miracle he is still alive.

The no energy use house (it produces and sells to the grid more than it uses) was nice and all. But it had no microwave. It also had a restaurant coffee pot system that had to be primed with multiple pots of water before it could even make a pot. And it only made a full pot of coffee. And they didn't have the right sized filter. I had a killer caffeine withdrawal headache by 3 in the morning. I was awake, kiddo was awake, and mom was awake. Dad was snoring on the best bed in the house. I ended up boiling water and coffee on the stove and straining it through a dishtowel just to get rid of the headache. It was just delightful. And to think I could have stayed in town, and been paid 300+ bucks for 16 hours of work and been way less miserable.

We got back on Sunday and kiddo and made it home for a shower. She was so cute trying to be upbeat about the weekend. The pretty drive, the breakfast in Hood River, etc etc.

After a hot shower and the realization that the weekend was over, she looked at me and said, "That sucked."

Like a Hoover Vacuum.