ammogirl

So I rescheduled the test. I got nervous! Plus I didn’t sleep well last night, and you know what they say about getting a good night’s rest before a big test. I’m just listening to the experts! Now I have until next Tuesday at 1 pm to find new ways of procrastinating, and really, is it any wonder my kids wait until the last minute to do stuff? Or is this a good example of do as I say, not as I do?

Speaking of kids, Taylor and I have bonded over the new season of Top Chef. Yeah, I don’t want to know your opinion on a tv show as a bonding aid because she likes cooking, I like cooking, we both like to eat, and…she’s nearly 13. I’ll take what I can get. If she wants to sit on the couch with me and hold my hand while we watch it, then I say bring on the Top Chef marathon and the popcorn.

Also, over a period of seven minutes last Saturday evening, I got the “I hate you”, “You’re ruining my life” AND “(sobbing) But you’re my (sob) BEST FRIEND!” speeches from Lindsey over the fact that she is not allowed to hang out with her friends at the base food court on Friday afternoons anymore. Surprisingly enough, I managed to keep my calm during the entire seven minutes, which is hard to do when faced with three of what must be the most common teenage arguments all at once, for the first time, ever.

Maybe I am too strict, I don’t know. Until this school year, they still had a bedtime of 830 pm, which seems both appropriate for kids and tantalizing to me. I only ended that because one night Taylor told me that the two girls down the street they babysat one time didn’t have to go to bed until 9pm…and they were only 6 and 8 or some nonsense. At that point I reassessed and thought, okay, FINE. Now they have to have lights off by 10, and all I can think is, why would you WANT to stay up that late if you didn’t have to? Kids. Oh, back to my point. According to them I am very strict, yet they repeatedly tell me stories of how strict their friends’ parents are. Or maybe it’s just that my tendencies lean in a completely different direction, i.e. I don’t like my kids to roam around unsupervised, I don’t like them to talk on the phone after 9pm, I require them to maintain As and Bs, and if they get a C, I better have been helping them as they struggled to comprehend the material that got them that C, if that makes sense. They have to do chores, granted, not many, but certainly more than I ever had to do (none) (not complaining, mom and dad).

On the other hand, I don’t care if they cuss. We’ve always made it clear that we know they cuss around their friends, and that as long as they don’t do it around adults, who cares? It’s just a word. I cussed when I was that age, I do now, and I bet you did too. And you know what? Lindsey never says anything more than “crap” around me, very occasionally, and I’ve never heard Taylor say anything like that, period. Makeup is the same way. If you want to Take A Stand and Make A Point, then go ahead and talk about how the opinions of the other kids in a Junior High don’t matter, and if other kids talk shit about being different they aren’t worth their weight in salt. But again, you know and I know that that shit is not true. If you are not the same as the other people within your social circle, then you have it hard in a teenage-based environment. As long as you don’t look…like me and my friends did in the 7th grade, with shimmery pink and light-blue eye shadow, who cares?

I learned that from my friend Noreen and her husband Terry, Noreen being the middle school counselor and Terry being the in-resident psychologist at the high school. It’s called worrying about the things that really matter. Anddddd…that small speech comes powered by a full 54 minutes spent with my baby, who renewed my faith in being a parent simply by cuddling with me on the couch. You’re welcome.

The Ambien is still giving me crazy-ass dreams, but as I mentioned earlier in this post, it’s starting to lose it’s effectiveness a wee. It’s supposed to do that, but it still sucks. I’ve never had a good night of sleep in my life, ever. Those nights I had previously thought of as “good”…trust me, totally mistaken. To counteract the waning effectiveness, I could start taking a whole pill instead of half, but I’m pretty sure that is called “being addicted”, so. As you can imagine, the military sort of frowns on “being addicted”, unless it is, of course, cigarettes you are addicted to, in which case they talk a lot about it but really just turn a semi-blind eye to, all the while selling them on the cheap at the BX and commissary for your inhaling pleasure.

I will be entirely truthful and say that honestly, I’d take sleeping pill addiction, if it meant I get an insanely awesome night of sleep every single night.

Yep. My name is ammogirl, and I’d be an Ambienholic, if only I could.

Tschuss!!

I’m supposed to be studying for a test on Tuesday, so of course I’m looking for socks online.  I mean, what could possibly be more important than socks?  Certainly not a test that I have been ignoring for nine days now, saying “tomorrow” every time I think of it.

The thing is, socks are elusive!  Sure, I could (and can) just buy socks here at the bx, but they aren’t the right kind–oh.  I should mention these socks are for the girls, meaning not just any sock will do.  They have the basic white, of course, but they want colorful fluffy, and…well, as I said, elusive.

I do this thing every once in awhile where I decide today will be the day I find and purchase many pairs of socks, and I search and search online, and soon I get bored or distracted and the next thing I know, it’s a few weeks later and there are no shipments of socks coming in.  Today was the same way.  I started studying, immediately my mind started wandering, and a light bulb went off, and the word “Socks!” was flashing on and off in my head.  I thought Target would be a good place to find socks, so I loaded up the site and typed in “socks” in the search bar, and while I frustratingly did not find anything that would be purchasable, I DID see the perfect addition to that Colonial Period outfit I’ve been dying to wear.

You will notice those are only available online, and that they are not in any way connected to any sort of  costume.  And all I can think of is the Ben Franklin episode of The Office, when Jim was in charge of hiring strippers for Phyllis’ bachelorette party and hired a Ben Franklin impersonator who got all flirty with Pam.

Anyway, I was very busy yesterday, with actual goals and the accomplishing of them.  Remember I said my boss was bringing over big tall plants?  Well, that was not an exaggeration.  One of these plants is, ohhhh….eight feet tall, easily.   Sort of ridiculously lucky of me, really, to have scored so many houseplants that I don’t have the room to put them all.  However, some of them needed new soil, and as all my own, older houseplants also needed new soil, I decided to repot the lot.  I ended up doing all but the three biggest, because I can barely move the pots, let alone replace everything in them.

When I was done, I started to do laundry, but literally mid-stuffing of the washing machine, realized it was the last thing I wanted to do.  I said, to no one in particular, “I don’t feel like doing this AT ALL”, left the washing machine half-stuffed, with clothes hanging out of it, and shut the door.  Then I vacuumed, made a sweet potato for dinner (the girls were at their friends’ houses) and alphabetized our entire collection of dvds, something I’ve been meaning to do since we arrived here in Germany and loaded up the racks all willy-nilly just to clear out the moving boxes.  So, if you want to relate all that back to the great normalization of 2008: two steps forward (accomplishing a goal, leaving the laundry), one step back (alphabetizing dvds), which still equals progress.

Of course, it could be that the only reason I’ve been so productive this weekend is because I want a reason to not have to study, which brings us back to the beginning, i.e. test on Tuesday, which means: I have to go.

Tschuss!!

I saw a man today wearing a dashing fur hat at a jaunty angle.  It was one of those things that hits you out of nowhere and cheers you up, like kittens or quotes from your favorite movie.  I was glad of it, because I have totally crabster the past two days, and needed a little cheering up.

I really don’t often get mad at work (really!), but one thing that will always irritate me is when I am dealing with a situation, and the situation is almost over, and somebody overhears the wrap-up, and decides to get involved.  It’s like, if I needed your assistance, I would’ve said so, but I don’t, so go away.  Right?  So I was irritated, and then this person starts discussing actual procedures that they have never done in our career field, and I interrupted and said, “When was the last time you worked AFK?” and I didn’t MEAN anything  by it, just that if we are going off of knowledge levels, between myself, who has worked AFK many years, and the other person, who never has, I probably win.

WELL.  There ensued a whole tangential situation from that, with my co-workers finding that to be The Big Burn of 2008 and giggling and repeating me, and the guy I said it to being all, “I’m not mad you said it, I don’t care” when CLEARLY HE DID, and the very moment I realized that, I said, perhaps with a bit of eye-rolling, so: not sincere, “Look, if I offended you when I said that, I’m sorry, but I was seriously JUST ASKING BECAUSE IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE.”  For example, (and I said this too, but am tired of quotes), if I told this person how to fix a part on his car, wouldn’t he want to know my experience with cars before taking my advice?  And, most likely, NOT take it once he found out I have never worked on cars?  Yeah?  Yes!  That’s true!

And then he said, “no offense, but your problem is you have blinders about this situation and didn’t want to see my side of the story until you had calmed down” and I said, “Wait, no.  Let me make myself clear:  I STILL stand by my point, I was just explaining to you why I maintain it.  I haven’t changed my position, at all.”  And he was like, “Oh.”

The next few minutes I felt like a cat or dog that has just gotten in a fight and starts stalking around all stiff with their fur raised.  In my head I was stalking around the office, because the whole thing had become not about the initial issue but about me asking what his experience was.   That made me mad.  And I know know KNOW they thought it was because I didn’t want to be wrong, but it WASN’T THAT, but that I fully believed I was right, or else I wouldn’t have made a fuss, and it irritates me that they found it funny that I was so adamant in that situation.  But if I fully believe I know what I’m talking about, why would I not defend that?

Seriously.  I wanted to tell them: Come ON.  If I’m wrong, I don’t care!  I spend 45% of every day telling you guys, “Whoops!  That was dumb!”  or, “oh CRAP, I totally didn’t do that right, did I?” or, “I don’t know what to do!” and the other 55% laughing with you about my mistakes, so how can you possibly think I don’t want to admit I’m wrong?

I don’t know.  To me, there’s a line between not admitting you’re wrong, and believing you are right.  I’ll admit it’s a fine line, but a line, still.

And just like every other time this sort of thing happens, I thought, god DAMN I take after my dad with my slow-to-burn, but-stealthy-and-surprising temper.

But!   Do not fret for my state of mind, because the guy who gave me his houseplants just called and he is bringing by even MORE houseplants, ones that he couldn’t bring in to work like the others because they are BIG and TALL and TREE-LIKE and that, like the jaunty fur hat, makes me happy.

Tschuss!!