I don't understand...

...how parents do it. This past Saturday I babysat my nephew, Marcus, for about 6 hours. Luckily for the first hour or so, my husband was there to help entertain him while I cooked dinner. Marcus is 4 years old and a bit of a handful. He tires quickly of activities and has to move on to something totally different within 5 minutes. We have a lot of toys at our house, but of course he really doesn't want to play with those. He'd rather get into things that are breakable or not for kids like the computer and video games. And you have to keep a constant eye on him or he is into the candy (it was Easter so candy was abundant), going upstairs for something or just off doing something mischievous. So, in order to keep him busy here is what we did:

• We colored
• We ate dinner
• We played board games
• We read comic books
• We went to the park
• We walked around the neighborhood
• We played catch
• We played make-believe outside for about an hour
• And finally, because I was so exhausted, I gave in and let him play video games

Marcus is obsessed with playing mario cart and for a 4 year old, he's pretty dang good. I know there are better things for a 4 year old to do than to play video games, but it keeps him busy and content for a good while and all I have to do is sit on the couch and watch him. I couldn't really get anything else done besides just watching him play or playing with him. And this is where I can't, for the life of me, understand how parents do it 24/7. Even with 2 people it was difficult to get anything else done while he was there. How do they clean, cook, work on things, or even take a shower and get ready?! It is seriously beyond me. He doesn't take naps anymore nor does he go to bed early - he is always going, going, going. And of course, he's really difficult to ignore, so that's not an option. I just don't get how parents do it. I'm in awe that Marcus' parents haven't fallen over and died from exhaustion, because after just 6 hours I was ready to collapse.

Eating Habits

Ok, here it is, another rant blog. There are several eating habits that I just absolutely cannot stand, so here goes:

• Slurping: AAAAAAGGGGGGHHH!!! I can't stand slurping. Unless you are in the middle of some dental procedure where your tongue is numb and you have no teeth, there is never an excuse for slurping. It's really damn annoying especially because if you slurp, you are just being lazy. Yes, it is possible to eat soup and drink beverages without slurping. Trust me, I do it all the time. I know people that slurp everything! Like things I didn't even think you could slurp like mashed potatoes.
• Chewing with your mouth open: What, are you 3 years old? No? Then close your damn mouth when you are eating. I don't want to listen to your chomping and squishing nor do I want to look at your food when you eat. This also goes for gum chewers. Seriously, shut it and keep your chewing to yourself.
• Loud Crunching: This can sometimes be combined with chewing with your mouth open to create a truly frustrating experience for me. This usually happens at work. For some reason, the people around me only bring crunchy food to snack on all day. I can hear it over typing, people on the phone, copy machines and what ever else is going on in the department. It's like their crunching is magnified just to annoy me.
• Heavy breathers: Ok, I understand that if you are sick and can barely breathe at all it can force you to breath heavier when you eat. But this is for those who just breathe heavily when there is nothing blocking their airway besides the food they are shoveling into their mouths. This habit actually makes me nauseous. I don't know why, but when you breathe heavy while eating, I want to puke. So, breathe like a normal person and spare us all the nausea.

I think that most people that have these annoying habits don't think they have them. And even if you told them to knock it off, it really wouldn't do any good because it's been ingrained over their lifetime. But seriously, the next time you eat, stop and listen to yourself and if any of the above occur, please know that you are annoying the hell out of me. Thanks.

Woohoo! New Furniture!

When Ev and I first moved into our house, nearly everything in it was either a hand-me-down, a garage sale find or came out of a box from Target. Our first major furniture purchase was our bed and then it was another year and a half until our next purchase: an entertainment center. We've bought small things along the way like end tables, a bookcase and some shelves, but still the majority of our furnishings were not originally ours.

Our living room furniture was no exception. My sister gave me her large purple sleeper sofa, over sized chair and ottoman about 4.5 years ago. At that time, I was still in college and living at home, so I rented a storage unit to keep it safe until I had my own place. It was a lovely, hip set and for the price of nothing, I couldn't just let it go. Of course after a year or so of renting a storage unit I probably could have bought new furniture for that money, but oh well. So when we bought our house, in came the large purple furniture pieces. They are quite comfy but after 3 years of our use and another 3 years with my sister before that, their shine had worn off. The cushions were all out of shape and there were a few stains and general wear and tear. (BTW: I am selling the set if you are interested: http://denver.craigslist.org/fuo/1096559726.html)

So, this weekend, we finally purchased a new living room set! It was just delivered today is sitting in my living room as I type this and I can't wait to go home and see it. They are smaller (and MUCH lighter than that dang sleeper sofa), light blue and cute! Although they need some breaking in as they are bit stiff, they are OURS!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today is my dad's 66th birthday. There are a lot of people that have told me I'm a lot like my dad. Although I look a lot like my mom, I think about 60% of my personality comes from my dad. My dad is a perfectionist - down to the core. Whether he is making dinner by perfectly following a recipe or changing oil in 3 cars in one day or ironing creases into his jeans, he never does anything half-assed. His work is precise and accurate every time. It's actually quite exhausting sometimes to see him work. When I'm ready to say "that's good enough" he continues on for 20 more minutes until it is right. Oh, and he can fix anything. I love that. Any problem and the solution is only a phone call away. My dad also knows everything about just about everything. I know everyone thinks their dad is pretty dang knowledgeable, but I'm pretty sure my dad is close to a genius. And if he doesn't know something, he'll read about it until he knows more than the guy who wrote the book. I don't even know how that's possible, but it seems to be how it is. He's also a genuinely good man, who loves his family and always makes sure everyone is taken care of.

I may be the only person to say this about their parents, but I'm glad my parents got divorced. It allowed me to see who my dad really was and I think my parents are much better people apart. When they were married, my dad assumed the typical patriarchal role to provide for the family and to be the disciplinarian. But after they divorced, I got to see my dad for the person he was and not the guy he thought he had to be for the family. I also honestly think I "get" my dad. He's kind of a hard guy to read and seems difficult to please, but it has never been a problem for me. I think that's because we think in kind of the same way and I don't expect him to be someone he's not. It just works between us.

Anyway, I'm glad my dad is my dad. I couldn't imagine having a better one. So, Happy Birthday, Dad!

Holy Tooth Ache, Batman!

I would like to start with the fact that tooth aches can kiss my arse!

Anyway, on Monday night I went to bed with a slight ache on the lower right side of my mouth. I have a tooth, second from the back, that was crowned about 3 years ago. The ache was bugging me, but I really didn't think much of it. I tried to ignore it and went to bed. Through out the night I was awoken by the tooth ache and just tried to focus on other things and go back to bed. Well, by 4:30 am I had enough and went to go take a shower and take some advil. I got out of the shower and started getting ready and that's when the pain became unbearable. Like, crying, shaking and writhing on the floor unbearable. Well after about 10 minutes of this agony, the pain killers finally kicked in. They didn't completely take the pain away, but they dulled it enough to where I could call in sick for work and climb back into bed.

I had my normal dentist cleaning scheduled for the next day, so when I went back to bed I thought maybe I could tough it out until my appointment. I woke up at about 9am with a little pain, but not bad enough that I couldn't eat some cereal. I finished my bowl and the agony set in again. I rushed to the bathroom to take more advil but knew it would be 15 minutes before it took affect. So again, the writhing in pain thing. Not fun. I called up the dentist and described my excruciating ordeal and they said the earliest they could get me in was 10:30am the next day. Lovely. So then through out the day I had to continue to take 2 advil every 2 hours just to keep the pain at bay. And there were times within that 2 hour window that the pain would briefly resurface and send me into hysterics. And if I didn't down another advil in time, I would be in complete agony until the new pain killers kicked in.

Finally at 9pm I was ready for bed and I took 3 advil in hopes that I'd maybe get 3 hours of sleep before waking up to the feeling of someone stabbing 100 needles directly into the nerve of my tooth. So, from 4:30am to 9:00pm, I had ingested 16 advils and had essentially been in pain all day long. I did pretty well last night and slept from 9:30 until about 2:30am. Got up immediately and downed another 2 advil. The pain was really bad this time because it had been too long since my last dose and so I didn't get back to sleep until almost 4:00am. Then, I was up again around 6:00am, took another 2 advil, but was still in tears and near hysterics from the pain. After about 20 minutes of thrashing in bed from the agony, I feel back to sleep until about 9:15. And then, you guessed it, took another 3 advil, took a shower and got ready for my dentist appointment. This time it seemed as though the advil had no effect whatsoever and I was in tears and shaking on the way to the dentist. I told them to screw the cleaning and get right to work fixing my tooth.

They took an x-ray and sure enough there was an abscess on one of the roots of my crowned tooth. Then they told me they were short staffed and weren't quite sure whether they could work on me today. I almost lost it. Luckily, they worked it out and the next thing I knew they were numbing me. SWEET BLISS!!! I didn't care that I couldn't feel half of my face, for the first time in about 30 hours I didn't feel like ripping all my teeth out. It was heaven. At this point they could have done whatever they wanted to my teeth and I would have conceded without a second thought.

The dentist got to work quickly on the root canal. He drilled a hole through the crown and then cleaned out the roots of my tooth. I didn't feel a thing and it was heavenly. Within an hour he was done. I was prescribed an antibiotic and some vicadin just in case I experience some pain from the procedure. Although I have to go back next week to finish up and to get the permanent filing in my crown, I am so happy. It is now 5:15pm and I haven't had any pain or any advil. There's a little soreness from where they poked me, but it is really nothing at all. I never thought I could be so happy about a root canal. The root canal was easy, it was the 2 days leading up to it that was the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life!

Scrubbing in the Shower

Admittedly, I don't clean my shower as often as I probably should. Instead, I wait until the drain is sufficiently clogged enough that the water won't drain. Then it's time to clear it out and scrub down the whole shower while I'm at it. So last night was the lucky night when I had to time to clean the darn thing.

First, I start with the drain. This is actually kind of fun despite being stomach-turning. The fun part is thrusting the plunger against the drain clean-out hole thingy. (I'm sure it has a real name, but I don't know what that is). So I'm whacking the heck out of it until big hair balls pop up through the drain. Hey, I told you it was stomach-turning. And then it is my duty to grab the hair balls before they fall back down the drain. It's a miracle that I'm not bald, because there was certainly enough of my hair in that drain to make one hell of a wig.

Now that the drain is clear, it's on to the rest of the tub. Can someone please explain to me how a shower can have build up that is white, pink and peach in several different spots? Seriously, how does that happen? Luckily, no matter the color of the gunk, it cleans off easily - well except for the soap scum. The fact that soap - a material that is supposed to clean things - leaves scum behind really gets my goat. And no matter what I do, it always returns. After scrubbing for an hour or so, I'm finally done. And if I don't pass out from the fumes or become paralyzed from the horrible positions one has to contort their body in to actually clean the shower, I will live to clean it in a month or two. Hooray.

P.S. Yes, that's me as a singing janitor.

Birthday Cards

Yesterday during lunch I look a trip to one of my very favorite stores: Target. I had a gift card to spend and needed to pick up a few odds and ends. Included in that were 2 birthday cards for 2 girlfriends of mine. Now, picking the perfect birthday card is an art form. I have to read through dozens till I find the perfect joke, the right illustrations and overall feel. Apparently, I was in a certain mood yesterday as both of the cards I picked out had sex jokes. Very tame and not at all crude sex jokes, mind you. Typical girl friend type stuff. In fact, both cards had 2 ladies on the front. Anyway, I had the 2 cards in my hand as I was walking around the store and realized that maybe I should be a bit more discreet about my cards since one of them did have the word "SEX" in bold, capital letters on the front. So, I positioned them under another item, out of sight. I laid them on the check out counter in the same fashion, but didn't really think much about it as I was sure the clerk had much better things to do than care about my birthday cards. But of course, I pick the one checker that feels the need to read each and every word on my cards before scanning them. I felt a bit violated. Those are MY cards, if you feel the need to read greeting cards, take your break in the card section and don't nose through my stuff! At this point a few other people were behind me in line so they could hear the checker proclaim, "Those are nasty" before putting them in my bag. I was angry. They were not nasty, nor were they any of his business in the first place. So I snapped back sternly, "No, they're funny" and threw him a dirty look. I was judged. Judged at a Target. For buying birthday cards. Stupid clerk.