ammogirl

Well, the girls are gone.  I dropped them off at the airport this morning to spend the summer with their dad.  They are so funny.  And fun!  I wish I could transcribe some of the things they say and have it come across as hilarious as it is in real life.  Granted, they tend to run towards my brand of humor, so perhaps they are only funny to me.  I will miss them.

Oh, I am embarking on a personal challenge, wherein I try to post without starting a paragraph with “I”.  I was looking back through my archives the other day, and it seems I tend to think it’s all about me.  Oh, wait, it is.  What I mean, I use ‘I’ too much.  Jesus Christ, now I can’t stop using it.

Anyway, for the next week I’ll be by myself, and then…John comes home!  There is a lot of stuff to do in that time, like…get a pedicure, get a haircut, get a dye to cover up the one million gray hairs currently located on my scalp.  That sort of stuff.  Not that he would care, of course, but I would like to look fairly presentable when he gets here.   And not like I’m complaining, because I love to do all that sort of stuff.  Beautifying is fun. In fact, to be 75% honest (seriously, who is totally honest ALL OF THE TIME?  That phrase needs to be retired, I think.  We should lower our expectations as a whole, and shoot for an average amount of truth telling.  What do you think?) I actually just got back from getting a pedicure about an hour ago, but that was a “I survived five months by myself with two teenage girls…and LIVED TO TELL THE TALE” celebratory pedi, and it was well-deserved.

Damnit.  Not starting with I is hard.  Let’s see…okay.

There are several things I’ve learned as a parent, and I would like to pass on my supreme knowledge to you.   In other words, here is a short list:

1.  There is no right way.  You figure shit out as you go along…every single episode things change.

2.  No matter how right you think you are as a parent, and how many times you think, “that’s final!”  or “Enough!”  it’s not ever.  You will never have the final word, because you will be having the same fight at least 5400 times more.   And over the course of those fights, sometimes you realize, “hmm…maybe I AM wrong about that.”  And that’s okay.

3.  Sharing a bathroom with two girls is never a good idea.  Oh my god.  Please, just trust me on this.

4.  No matter how much they love a food, DO NOT BUY A STOCKPILE.  Within a week, they’ll hate that shit, and then you’ll be stuck eating it.

5.  Genuine hugs, although they come few and far between as kids get older, will always melt your heart.

There!  A whole post without an “I” on the far left.  I should quit while I’m ahead.

Tschuss!!

Now the minivan is working fine, so basically I learned that panicking and being overly dramatic…solves everything!

I have to tell you, I think it’s quite possible I’m overdoing it a bit (note to self: ‘abit’ is not a word, no matter how many times you try to make it so) on the smoothie situation.  I mean, I’m consuming upwards of 10-12 servings of fruit and vegetables a day, and while I feel fabulous over all, with like, dramatic reduction in hungry feelings, my digestive system is a little overwhelmed with all the company, if you get my meaning.  So tomorrow I believe I will not be relying exclusively on smoothie nutrition.

But!  I made the absolute best combo today.  Banana, cantaloupe, peaches, raspberries, homemade almond butter, wheat germ, and lite vanilla soy milk.  YUM!  It tasted like creamy sweet cream!  I can’t wait to demonstrate the Vita-mix when John gets home, because yesterday we were on the phone and I sensed a healthy bit of skepticism from him concerning the necessity of a $400 blender.  Wouldn’t you think he’d be HAPPY that I purchased something that made me stay in the kitchen?  Men are very inconsistent when it comes to…well, anything, really.  Also, he made some sort of statement that went like this:  “I can’t wait to come home, so I can play Call of Duty 4 and we can play Rock Band.”  I was all, “waiiitttt a minute…what do you mean, ‘I’ and ‘we’?”  I mean, don’t you think I’ve pretty much established ownership by now of the Xbox 360 AND the Wii AND the TV?  I sense a period of readjustment ahead, wherein John realizes that what’s his is no longer, and I rule everything.

Anyway, I have to take the girls to tennis.  Also, my stomach hurts.

Tschuss!

Soooooo…when you leave a vehicle parked for five months without driving it, EVEN IF you stare at it a lot while washing dishes, does not keep the battery charged. Who knew? I thought the two times I started it up and let it run for 30 seconds would keep it good until John came home but alas, I am screwed. See, this morning, I woke up and while making a superfabulous carrot/banana/orange/cantaloupe smoothie in my new Vita-Mix blender, I looked outside and thought, “huh. you know, John is coming home in less than two weeks, and being as you promised him to start it…way more often than you did, perhaps now would be a good time to make sure everything is running smooth.”

Actually, I thought that Friday morning, while not making a smoothie, so I’m not only horrible car sitter, I am also a liar. But Friday was just too hectic, I was tired, and running behind, and, and…I DON’T KNOW! Why didn’t I just drive that stupid mini-van more often? Because this morning, I jumped in it, and turned the key, and I got NOTHING! Not even the ‘click click click” that happens when the battery is almost dead, but not quite. I thought, oh FUCK, and then drove my car to work, and as soon as I saw Bobby sign into his messenger, I walked in his office and said, “Hi. How was your weekendIHAVEANISSUE!”

Fortunately we are COMPLETELY dead this week, as in, REALLY, REALLY dead (and I wish everyone would send me an email [agisfab@gmail.com] so tomorrow at least I can have something to do) so at 9am Bobby and I headed to the house and started that bad boy right up, first turn of the key, with like, seconds of charge time. I breathed a sigh of relief, because really, this minivan is held in high regard by my husband and he would NOT be happy with me if it was dead due to my negligence, and we drove it back to work, and it was fine, running smooth, yay.

A bit of an embarrassing moment came in the form of Bobby saying to me, “So, maybe it’s not starting because of that weed back there.” and I looked on passenger side and saw foliage that was at least three feet tall growing out of the wheel well. Although I don’t think that’s nearly as bad as the rabbit that lived under it, and yes I’ve known about the rabbit for awhile and YES I KNOW, why didn’t I just DRIVE THE DAMN THING?!

Anyway, later that day I made an appointment for Taylor to get her hair thinned out because when you put her hair in a ponytail I can’t even put the fingers of one hand around it and that shit must suck, and of course I left two minutes later than I should have, so OF COURSE when I got in the van and turned the key I heard…nothing! AND THAT SUCKED!

At this point I thought everyone had gone home, so I considered my options and ended up seriously contemplating getting a taxi AND/OR RUNNING HOME, and home is three miles away, and while I like running, I don’t like it as a MODE OF TRANSPORTATION. So I figured I could at least try the vault on the other side of the hall, because they usually work much, much later than we do, but fortunately my Captain was still at work and after some jockeying we were able to push the van out of the tigghhhhhtttttt parking space it was in and hook it up to his car.

This time, it took around five minutes for the charge to work, and I think that means, officially, that I am screwed.

I haven’t told my husband yet, by the way. We should keep this one to ourselves.

Oh, also, in case you were wondering, I had to cancel Taylor’s appointment. And I blame it all on the van.

Tschuss!!