where I’m at right now.

Currently, I’m 1 hurricane, 1 huge Pyramid Hefeweizen, 1 stiff Margarita, and 1 tall Guinness into a 3 day weekend THAT, provided I get laid, looks pretty good.

Granted, I’m not ridiculous enough to be bragging about the amount of money I make pretending to be a professional anything but that’s alright with me.

How’s it go… you can take a girl out of the trailer park but you can’t take the…

never mind.

It embarrasses me tremendously to even think that I had affection for such a creature. For someone to be so delusional and… ugh. Shutting up now. Seriously.

WOLVERINES!!!!!!!!!!

Friday night buzzes kick ass.

That is all.

Maybe it’s back to school blues… maybe it’s more than that. Although, I’m not depressed, I don’t think. I’m just a little tired or a lot tired, maybe. I can barely stay up past ten and I’m having a tough time dragging myself out of bed before 8 whereas typically I’m up by 7am or earlier. Certainly Rowan has longer days now that she’s in the first grade. It’s just that somehow I didn’t take into account that her longer days meant longer days for me. Which sounds ridiculous, I know, until you consider that once I’m done with lessons I have to turn around and start working for S.O.

Last night I ended up making dinner after 8pm – enchiladas. Easy, but it does take some maneuvering. I was wiped out after rolling two trays full and went to bed without eating. I can certainly afford to miss a meal or two… so I’m not complaining about that. But, S.O. is complaining that I’m “edgy” and “snappy.”

I get it, we’re both burning it at both ends and one of us doesn’t really get paid while the other one is still looking down the barrel of a pay cut. And, while I’m aware I have a lot to be grateful for (jesus, can’t I just express myself without feeling guilty for it?) house, income, etc. I’m worn out, I’m missing whatever it is that is supposed to recharge my batteries.

I’ve been told I need to take care of myself more. I’m afraid beyond a shower and painting my own toenails, possibly reading a book – that I have no idea how to do this anymore. Maybe I really never did. I’ve never been the “get my nails done and have a pedicure” kind of gal. I’ve had one massage my entire life and it’s been two years since I’ve had a pedicure of any sort. I take bubble baths in the winter, but can hardly bring myself to do that in the summer when it’s so damn hot around here all the time.

As wrong as it is, I occasionally look to S.O. to maybe make some attempt to sweep me off my feet. Maybe a “here, let me take you out for dinner…” and maybe open the door or that sort of thing. Don’t get me wrong, we do that on occasion, but it’s more like “wow, glad we got work finished up, why don’t I buy you a beer.” Which I do appreciate, but it does make me feel more like a co-worker and a whole lot less like a wife.

Blah, maybe I’m just really in need of a three day weekend. I just hope this one doesn’t end up being more work than it’s worth.

Most of the summer, especially the last few weeks of summer break I began a daily prayer, “Please God, grant me patience. I suck in that department and Rowan requires A LOT of it. Please…”

It’s the end of the first week and I’m doing less tongue biting and silent counting than I was last year. First week… I know. Except I have zero patience so any improvement at all is HUGE in my book.

I wish I had the same patience for Rowan’s “teacher” – she is very sweet. BUT! She is so technologically impaired that it appears she doesn’t even read her emails completely. My inbox currently has about 10 emails from her in the last 24 hours that are sent to all the parents at once and most are repeats of the same information ie. how to log in, how to record attendance, etc. It’s obvious that she’s technologically impaired and is leading a bunch of other equally or worse impaired people.

Not to toot my own horn – but I am not one of them and I have little patience for being at the mercy of someone who is.

Monday I had issues logging into an online course. I got them handled with the tech support but was stupid enough to drop her an email just to make sure that it wasn’t an issue that EVERYONE was having.

Tech support got back to me within 20 minutes and everything was fine. Rowan completed a couple of lessons and we moved on with our day.

Now here we are on Wednesday her “teacher” is just now getting back to me and instead of reading her emails – I sent a follow up right after tech support got back to me letting her know that all was taken care of and it was fine, she went to her administrator had a new account set up for Rowan and removed the old account AND ALL OF ROWAN’S PROGRESS.

I’m livid. LIVID. LIVID.

So I sent another email explaining that we didn’t need the new account but since we were obviously stuck with it to PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE.

It’s been 20 minutes since I’ve gotten a repeat email of something stupid and in the realm of “see this? Click here” complete with pictures – so I’m betting I’m going to get an email tomorrow where she has fucked the accounts up all over again.

I can’t think of a nice way to say – “never mind, it’s cool – I’ve got this, please don’t fuck with my shit again.”

“A negative attitude will send you down the road to unhappiness. There is no avoiding it, it will absolutely happen, and it doesn’t matter what the problem. A positive attitude will put you back on The Path to inner peace and happiness. Again, there is no avoiding it, it will absolutely happen, and it doesn’t matter what the problem.” – Neale Donald Walsch

This is my mantra for today. Admittedly, it’s a long mantra but I’m all in. Today is officially the first day of school for Rowan although we are already 3 days ahead which is just 2 days short of my goal to be 5 days ahead. Still 3 is better than none and if I really snap up this week we can get those two extra days as well.

See, Rowan’s school schedule is one week off of Deirdre’s. Rowan gets out for Spring break the week after Deirdre and school is out for Rowan the week after it is out for Deirdre. Which sounds like it is no big deal except then I have to deal with Rowan watching Deirdre enjoy her vacations while she wonders why she is still doing school work. I know, in any other situation I would say, “ahh, it’s a life lesson, stuff isn’t always fair.” Except, Rowan’s dissatisfaction makes it very difficult to teach her anything because she become so uncooperative. I’d rather work a little harder now and have her be a week ahead and thus able to stop when Deirdre stops.

Back to being positive and all that jazz…

In short, I’m trying. It all comes down to a simple choice – do it or don’t. I’m deciding to look at the cup as half full rather than half empty. Sure, my PG&E bill was $700 last month. I paid half of it and will pay the other half in the upcoming weeks. I could get irritated about that because on top of that bill I have other bills coming down the pike as well. But, right now? The bills are paid, nothing is going to get shut off and there won’t be any annoying phone calls. That? Is a good place to be in and I’m going to relish it for a bit.

I’m overweight… but yesterday I glanced at my reflection in the sliding glass door outside and thought – wow, you look cute for being overweight… Good job!

I’m going on two months without anti-depressants and I’m feeling better than I have in years.

Positive, positive, positive. I’m just going to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.

I’d like to beat myself up for being a crappy friend. I have a friend who escaped from her abusive husband and is now traveling across several states to the refuge of family far far from the jerk. I fell asleep the other night and missed her call.

Another friend messaged me on Facebook to help design a blog template. I kind of left her hanging a bit. I know she understands how jacked the first week of school usually is, but still. Ugh. Poor form.

Those are the top two on my guilt list right now. So, to you wonderful women – I apologize. I’m going to do better this week. I promise.

But, all that being said… how are you? Really? Catch me up! You guys are always right there for me and I feel like I’ve been really self-centered lately. I’m sorry.

Onward and upward!!!!

Oh dear God. I’m running around trying to be SuperWoman and a super woman… I am not. Seriously.

It’s only Tuesday and I swear it feels like Thursday. I don’t know how my kids (minus the youngest) are even functioning.

S.O. tries to take Deirdre to school in his work truck as often as possible. He made it yesterday, the first day of school, but not today since he had a meeting. That meant I had to take Deirdre which, in turn, meant waking Rowan up early which is NEVER a good thing. In a desperate move I pulled her out of bed, stood her up on her feet and made sure she was standing and ran out of the room to handle something else. Deirdre tried not to laugh as Rowan promptly marched into the wall while trying to walk out of the room.

While S.O.’s work load has tripled Princess Twatface is MIA (becoming her usual M.O. these days) making full-time pay for not even part-time work. Which, I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about because if you can work out a sweet deal like that because daddy owns the company then good for you. Although, in the dad department mine kicks some total ass because he wouldn’t begin to tolerate that bullshit from either of his daughters.

Although, my dad also has a tendency to go overboard in that department and at one point wanted me to work for him but the requirements were that I had to CALL him Mr. [insert my maiden name here] which I looked at him and said, “Dude, I am pregnant with your THIRD grandchild. If you fuck with me I will call you Mr.ASSHOLE and insist all the other employees do so as well… you don’t want me calling you “dad” at work that’s cool, but let’s stop with the delusions of grandeur.” He backed down because I had become known as the “crazy, pregnant chick” around the office where I often stopped in to help out and manage websites and email, etc. for FREE.

But, I digress. Apologies.

I wouldn’t care about Princess Twatface’s sweet-ass deal except it doubles my husband’s work load. She can do 30% of her work AT HOME – but if she decides to call in sick (or whatever she wants to call it) she doesn’t do SHIT and it gets dumped in S.O.’s lap entirely.

She had my cousin call in sick for her last night. Yup. Meanwhile she’s on Facebook eliciting sympathy with numerous status updates of how deathly ill she is. She probably should have thought twice before asking someone to put her out of her misery – she clearly doesn’t remember I’m on her FB friend list.

Anyway, Julien’s first two days of college seemed to both inspire him and completely wear him out. He’s enthusiastic which is great but he also hasn’t cleaned his room, not so great.

Deirdre is up to her eyelids in advanced classes and working on the school paper… she’ll be in a coma by the weekend. Her bedroom is a nightmare and she’s barely managing to get through her chores (which are few I might add) after school. In fact, I think she missed most of them yesterday.

Rowan is slowly and I mean S-L-O-W-L-Y creeping back into school. Thank goodness she doesn’t have to start officially until THIS Monday but it would appear that my dreams of being a week ahead are dying a slow and agonizing death right before my very eyes. We completed one math lesson yesterday just in time to run to a bookstore to meet with her teacher (in our homeschool I am known as a lowly learning coach – she still has a teacher we meet with quarterly or some such nonsense) by the time we came home Rowan was super grumpy and starting to fall asleep. Today we have managed a phonics lesson… I don’t know what will happen to either of us when she realizes that she is back to a full school schedule with 5 subjects daily and an hour of Spanish.

Add in laundry, maintaining the house, OH and that pesky little thing known as our business and I just wasted waaaaay too much time writing this post.

S.O. get this newsletter called “Inspirations”

Sometimes, they are crap you have read in any self-help book or in some forward from Aunt Dippy-Doo or whatever. Sometimes they are actually poignant and sort of arrive at just the right time. I don’t believe in coincidences (I think I’ve said that about 8.5 million times) so I have to believe that messages reach us when we aren’t looking for them but are aware they might arrive anyway.

Anyway, long story short… but not really I suppose, S.O. sent me this last night:

THAT’S THE WAY THE BALL BOUNCES

Legend has it that when India was colonized by the British Empire, the game of golf was introduced to the city of Calcutta. Aside from the usual obstacles, golfers had to contend with an unusual hazard: wild monkeys dropped from the trees and played with the golf balls, tossing them to and fro, and leaving them scattered about.

Although it was inconvenient, the players soon found that the rule had some unexpected benefits. While the monkeys frequently left golf balls in hard-to-play spots, sometimes they actually placed a ball in a better position for the golfer. As writer Gregory K. Jones puts it, “It did not take long before the golfers realized that golf on this particular course was very similar to our experience of life. There are good breaks, and there are bad breaks. Our job is to make a game out of whatever life brings us.”

Today I’m trying to better define my next move in a complicated game and I’m definitely playing with monkeys. Wish me luck.