TGIF

My eye is mostly better, and I have forgiven the little bugger for her stray fingers;-) I still like her...

What I like less? Snow. It is not the least bit charming right now. It is just a giant, cold, depressing mass piled really high in every intersection restricting traffic and making it hard to walk anywhere. OK, tomorrow morning when I wake up and don't have to leave the house and can just look at it glimmering in the sun, it may be a little charming. But walking to work through it is not at all fun.

So lets see...we have to do some baby proofing this weekend. The girls are crawling around a lot and ready to get into all sorts of trouble if we don't keep an eye on them. We will put up some gates, plug up the electrical outlets and move some things up and away from their reach and then hopefully not have to worry about them maiming themselves:-)

I think that we will probably go to some open houses on Sunday morning...if we are going to seriously consider moving, then we have to get on it soon. As much as I dread the thought, and as sad as I will be to leave my condo, I really do think we would benefit from a little extra space. Now, if any of you would care to contribute to the massive pile of cash that it will cost to get a larger place, that would be just awesome...

Munchkin has a basketball game tomorrow afternoon that I will go to...maybe bring one or both of the girls, depending on how we all feel. Beyond that, there isn't much going on in AM-land this weekend. Should be nice!

Ouch!!!

LK poked me in the eye on Monday night. You know what? It really, really hurt!!! It is still uncomfortable, but much better.

This will teach me to keep her fingernails clipped...

Counting all of the degrees with your thumbs

First of all, it is really, really fucking cold outside. Like...painfully cold. It was -4 when I left the house and I don't think it is going to get much warmer than 12 or 13 later on today. The upside of that is that the girls get all bundled up in fleece body suits, hats, mittens and other stuff that makes them look like tiny versions of Randy from A Christmas Story. Kind of adorable...

Also, there are rumors of another big snowstorm this week, which would not be all that cool. They are saying Wednesday, which means I don't have to leave the house, which is good, but we already have too much snow sitting in giant piles on the sidewalks...we need some thawing before we get any more.

I never left the house this weekend:-P. I came home on Friday, and stayed in all weekend long...The Boy took LK to a party for a little while on Saturday, and he took MA grocery shopping and over to a friend's house yesterday afternoon to watch football. I, however, elected to use my divine right to sit around in my pajamas and take naps all weekend. And it was pretty awesome!

Moving chronologically backwards, I got a huge raise on Friday. Like, a really big raise that caught me totally by surprise. However, it comes with a little bit of a string attached...I lose it if I don't go back to school in the fall.

This was clearly Papa Bear's doing, and is his way of making sure that I finish school. He told me that they will begin paying me as if I have finished school, but that they can't do that forever if I don't actually finish. On the one hand, it will make it that much tougher to cut back on my hours come September, but it will also make it kind of mandatory that I do.

I can certainly recognize that it was going to be difficult to stop working again and go back for one semester this fall, so this is probably a good way to skip right past the excuses to put it off for another semester indefinitely. This way, short of a major health issue or something similar, I will find a way to make it happen.

Total change of subject (again). I think I want to get a new car...as much as I like mine, it is just getting a little bit old.

New Schedule

With all of my new found free time, I am tweaking my schedule up a bit. Previously, I was at school all day on Monday and Thursday and at work all day Tuesday and Friday and home with the girls Wednesday. Just by dropping school, I could have three full days off during the week and two full days of work.

But I think I would like to be more flexible than that. First thing I did was check with St. Mother in Law to see if she was still up for having the girls every Thursday...since we don't really need her to do it, I wouldn't want her to keep up with it if she didn't want to. But she loves her time with her Granddaughters and doesn't want to give it up!

My plan, then, is to work four days a week, but not nearly full time. I will either walk to work with Munchkin in the mornings, which gets me to work at about 8:00, or I will take them to day care if need be, which would mean getting to work around 9:00 (The Boy takes them some days).

I can work until 5:00 if I have to, but I am probably going to knock off around 3:00 most days, either to go to something of Munchkin's (basketball games, plays, recitals and whatever else she packs into her over-scheduled days:-)) or to do errands or hang out with the girls. No rule says that I can't get them early from day care if I want to:-). I will still be home with them on Wednesdays.

And that, to me, sounds pretty fucking delightful!

Some kinda big doings

The weekend turned out to be tiring, but ultimately good and very eye-opening.

Munchkin and I left on Friday morning and didn't have any problems getting out there. The suddenness of my Aunt's death had everyone kind of a mess, and it was good to be able to be around during the grieving. There was a two session wake that we stayed for most of, and had dinner with a couple of our cousins in between. We stayed with BFFg (and her fiance that I introduced her to in their spectacular apartment...I digress) and it was really nice to see her! I still talk to her almost daily, but it has been entirely too long since I have actually seen her.

The funeral itself was actually really nice...my uncle (her brother) gave a really nice eulogy and a couple of other people said some brief things. We were all invited to speak if we wanted to, and there were things that I would have liked to say, but I didn't think I would get through it...and I really just wanted to sort of reflect quietly the whole time instead.

So...the eye-opening part. Actually had nothing to do with my Aunt or my family or anything else like that. It was all about Munchkin, and a stark realization that I have been a pretty bad mother lately. For her, at least.

She is wildly independent and incredibly mature and adjusted...but that is no excuse for me to shirk my responsibilities, and I have been doing that too much lately. I do it because it is easy to...she doesn't get in any trouble or act out or otherwise suffer outwardly if she doesn't get enough attention. Her grades remain impeccable, her social life is booming and she remains a complete joy to have around. It may not be obvious, but it matters to me, and it is unacceptable for me to let it happen.

Having children is not an excuse...you don't get to forget the older ones when you have new ones. My responsibilities to her haven't changed just because I have two kids now, and I am somewhat ashamed that I let it get to this point. Because it was my decision to stay in school the whole time and it was my decision to go back to work last fall, and that is where the problem lies.

What I realized is how nice it was to have three days with her non-stop...and sadly how removed I have become from her life. I won't go into the specifics (which are boring and probably not as alarming to you as they are to me) but I am far too distant. Not by sister standards...I am a lot more involved still than most anyone is with their sister...but by mother standards. And I have a moral (and, ahem, legal) obligation to her to be her guardian and her parent as well as her sister.

The net result is that I found it necessary to make a pretty big decision. Not one that I am really happy about, but one that I think I owe to Munchkin, whether she says so or not (she would never say it). The easy thing would be to quit working for the next four months until school was done...and that was my first thought.

But that is easier said than done. I would feel obligated to finish a project I have been working on, and at the very earliest that will wrap up in early March, and that kind of defeats the purpose. In addition, we are still planning on moving this spring or summer, and the plan for that involves my working until then...I don't want to put that off if we don't have to.

Add in my general frustration with school, and that becomes the thing that I want to cut out for now. In the interest of full disclosure, I sort of considered this a month ago, and I talked to the dean about the possibility before eventually deciding against it. So, I had already kind of figured out what I would need to do and how to go about it.

I still have a semester to go, and I am a little upset about not graduating with my classmates. But not really that broken up, at least not enough to re-think the decision. I also thought about maybe just taking a class or two this semester and another one or two in the Fall, but decided that I will benefit from the total break. I am simply taking a leave of absence for the Spring semester, and will go back full time in the Fall to bang out the last part of the degree, and have it done by next Christmas.

Ideal? No, but it is the best I have for now.

Peace

My Aunt died last night:-( As they raised her body temperature, there was no brain function at all, nor was there any hope that there would be again. After a brief time of hoping against hope, her husband made the decision to remove life support and she passed away very quickly and quietly thereafter.

The forthcoming storm makes travel a little iffy, but Munchkin and I should be fine to get out there on Thursday or Friday in time for the funeral and whatnot. The Boy's Mom is going to come and stay over to help with the girls while we are gone:-)

I will miss the girls while I am gone. And, I am very, very sad.

Bummed

Super bummed out today...my Aunt had a heart attack yesterday morning and has been on life support since then, and it doesn't look like she is going to recover. She stopped breathing for a long time (possibly as long as 15 minutes) before they were able to get her to the hospital. Standard practice, I have been told, is to then lower the body temperature in hopes of stopping some of the chemical reactions and other processes that result from oxygen deprivation, and that is where they are now.

There is some hope that, as the body temperature is re-raised, that she will regain some brain function, but I am not getting the sense that there is really much hope of that. And that, of course, has me really bummed out.

This is my Mother's older sister (the younger of her two older sisters) and is the member of her family that I hold in the highest regard. Munchkin's middle name is her name, too.

I also found out something really interesting that I never knew...I actually lived with her for over a month when I was about a year old. My Mom must have been in some kind of mess (shocker) so my Aunt took me in for a little while to get things sorted out. But no one ever told me this, and now it is unlikely that I will get a chance to talk to her about it.

Anyway, that has me in a pretty bad mood and, combined with being a little sick and totally worn out from the girls being a little sick and not sleeping well all weekend, just makes me want to curl up on the sofa under a pile of blankets and pillows all day. So, if you need me, that is where you can go looking...

A Literary Analysis of the ManWhore

So, I just finished the Millenium trilogy (or "The Girl Who...") which is an enormous amount of reading for me, what with the six free minutes a day that I have.

It was kinda awesome, although the third one was a little bit of a let down and I felt like there was a whole bunch of stuff that was just waiting to happen but didn't. The introduction of like 25 new characters was confusing, and the whole think with Berger at the other newspaper was unnecessary. Also, I kept waiting for the sister to show up again, but she didn't, or any of her other siblings. Or, for some more dramatic conclusion scenes...there was one murder attempt, but that was sort of a letdown as the conclusion of a three book series.

But Mikael Blomqvist? MAN WHORE!!! Seriously, I know that the Swedes are a little more liberal than we are, but keep it in your pants! He banged just about everything that moved, save for his sister (thank God for that). And honestly, given her emotional problems, I could have done without him sleeping with Salander, but that was kind of a minor complaint.

And she is just awesome, period. And not just because she is even tinier than me and beats the shit out of some really scary dudes with a variety of golf clubs, sex toys, tasers, shovels and nail guns.

Anyway, I liked them all...the second one was the best, and the third was the worst, but I was pretty well engrossed in the whole thing. And pretty fired up that Daniel Craig (I have discussed my crush on him, correct?) will play the man whore in the American movies.

And now I need something else to read!

New Years

I have really become the worst blogger on Earth, haven't I? This last week really should have been my chance to catch up, be a diligent blogger and commit some actual thoughts (as opposed to the drivel I have been turning out lately) to this space.

But no...it was so nice to have some free time that I found myself wanting to nothing that involved even the slightest bit of thinking. I did, however, have a really nice visit with Tinkerbelle:-) We played with the girls on Wednesday when we were all home, and then on Thursday we went to the MFA because I have been dying to see the new Art in the Americas wing. I would have liked to spend a whole day there (it is really awesome) but I felt like I was really lucky to get three hours out of her and didn't want to press my luck. She enjoyed it, but it clearly was not as much fun as a Justin Bieber concert...

We also went ice skating at the Frog Pond (which I have never done before, for shame) and ate canolis for lunch on Friday:-) The cornerstone of any nutritious diet!!! Stayed in on Friday night with the girls, and they thankfully didn't make it remotely close to midnight:-). I offered to let The Boy go out and to stay home with the girls, but he was completely wiped when he got done with work and was asleep by about 9:30...so just Tinkerbelle and I made it to the New Year. Which was actually sort of nice:-) That makes two years in a row that we rung in the New Year by ourselves.

Then I talked to Munchkin and went to bed!

Speaking of...she got home yesterday afternoon with a killer tan and two new foreign admirers (they didn't come home with her, just the stories;-). Yes, for serious. These are not two that she admires back in any more than simply finding it cute, but apparently she is a big hit across all of Europe.

I'm telling you...this girl is a boatload of trouble!

So, a couple of days late...Happy New Year everyone!