Farewell Friday Funk

Feeling a bit of irritation/annoyance/rage and I'm gonna gripe about every bit of it.

Here goes:

I don't think I will ever eat a warm meal again. Ever. 

I am working on accepting this fact.  I cook and get dinner on the table, serve the boys and then inevitably, Wyatt is crying, wanting to be fed as well, while my delicious pillsbury biscuits sit cooling, uneaten, on the kitchen counter.

What makes it worse is when the very food I am dying to eat repulses the boys. Logan in particular is known to say, "This is yucky," as soon as he lays eyes on whatever I've made. Even if he loved it the day before or has never tried it before in his life.

In the same vein, I hate when I am trying to make dinner and the boys, who were previously occupied, suddenly feel the need to follow me into the kitchen to see what I'm doing, get into the fridge, and distract me from the task at hand.  The only thing worse than that is when the baby cries while I'm trying to cook.

I hate where I live. (My duplex, that is.)

Here is why:

1. I have slugs. Everywhere. Mostly in the kitchen & bathroom.  And all around the house outside.  In the kitchen, they come in and leave a slime trail along the bottom of my cupboards.  In the bathroom, Josh found one on his deoderant (in the medicine cabinet!) and we are constantly finding them in the bath tub. Wednesday night I found a three inch slug climbing up the side of the vanity. Gross.

2. I live in the ghetto. Everyday I hear bumping music, people swearing, horns honking & police sirens blaring.  I see people who are drunk, high & swearing at their children. (If they even know where their children are.)

3. My dishwasher sucks. And while, yes, I know, I won't have a dishwasher to complain about in Alaska, I was hoping to enjoy the last few months of dish washing free duty while I am here.

I hate household chores. 

Well, actually, once I am doing them, I enjoy them. Like Monica on Friends I get a disgusting satisfaction from seeing it go from unsightly to beautiful.  The part I hate is after it's done, and it looks great and I feel great, and then the kids just destroy it. If I've vacuumed, they spill Cheerios; if I've swept, they spill apple juice; if I've cleaned the bathroom, they spit toothpaste on the counter. It is inevitable. And painful to watch after I spent the last few hours getting everything to shine.  Sometimes I think, why bother?

It is ever-living hot here. 

It is officially fall, and today the high in Vancouver was 85 degrees people! I sold my stupid air conditioners at my garage sale last weekend, and now we're hitting the mid-eighties! The baby was even sweating.  Tonight after his bath, little tiny baby beads of sweat pooling on his sweet forehead. It's miserable. I guess it's making Marshall look pretty good.

Another gripe I've got- customer service phone lines.  

I have had to make so many phone calls to straighten out our life insurance, car insurance, phone lines, and health insurance, the numbers make my head spin.  This week I called the health insurance people to get our pre-existing condition stuff taken care of and after I put in my numbers and pressed 2 for English, 4 for being a patient, and 8 to speak to a person, I had to give her all my information again and tell her what I needed to talk about. Why do they do that? Why do they waste my time when they are going to ask for it anyway? All it does is make me one of those crazy ladies swearing at the poor customer service girl who's stuck at that lame job in a tiny office cramped full of people dealing with other irate customers. Who is this helping? Then... this is the kicker... she hung up on me. Oh, she pretended she was trying to "transfer" me, but I was immediately disconnected. Whoo-whee, I was livid!

So I called back and this time I got a girl who was pretty sure I was mentally handicapped, or at least that's how it felt cause she kept saying the same thing over and over, like if she said it enough times I would understand. Problem was, I understood what she was saying, but she wouldn't shut up long enough to let me explain what I needed her to understand.  Finally, she stopped talking and I told her what I needed.  Then she and I got on a three-way call with my old health insurance and after 42 minutes on the phone, we had the pre-existing condition problem solved.  Honestly, who has 42 minutes to waste, plus however long it took me to get through to Eve (yes, I write down the names of who I'm speaking to) just to be disconnected? I spent an entire nap time getting that ironed out.  Not how I want to be spending my nap times, let me tell you!

This one is the clincher. 

It started my Wednesday off wrong, and I haven't felt good since.

I had just pulled up at the park. There is only street parking at this park. So I opened both the boys' doors, told them to get on their back packs and told Jack (who was on the street side) to watch for cars before he got out. (This is in a residential area with minimal traffic and speed bumps.)  So while they were getting their packs on, I went around to the back of the car to get the stroller ready for Wyatt and pull the boys' bikes out for them.  So I saw a car coming, but Jack wasn't ready yet, so I wasn't concerned. Then it stopped, right at the back of my car, near the driver side tail light, while I was standing at the passenger side tail light. It honked at me. I looked up and the driver, maybe 65 years old, looked at me with a nasty face and held her hands up in the air expectantly.  I raised my eyebrows, looked at Jack, still safe in the confines of the car, looking out at her and asking why she honked, and I waved her on. Like, go ahead. 

She pulled forward, slowly, the length of my car until her tail lights were near my headlights and then she rolled down her passenger side window and yelled, "You should watch your kids!"

To which I replied, "Don't yell at me, please."

To which she replied, "I'm not yelling at you, I'm advising you."
And she drove away.

OMG

Seriously, if my children hadn't been present, I would have used some of my inappropriate grown up talk to tell her what she could do. Instead I finished unloading the car and called Josh.  I was irate. That woman doesn't know me, or my children. She had no right to stop & yell at me.  And what made me more mad was that even though she doesn't know me, she was able to get me so worked up!

I kept trying to make myself feel better. I know Jack. He's terrified of cars and getting hit by cars. He would never have gotten out without looking. If it had been Logan on that side, I would have left the door closed until I could walk with him, because he's more impulsive... I went on and on in my head. Then I wanted her to come back so I could tell her that given the circumstances, I really have my shit together.  That she doesn't know what crazy looks like if she thinks that was it.  That was a calm moment during a calm morning.  Those are few and far between. Had she been willing to stick around I could have shown her how much parenting I do, how much work these kids are, and what a good mom I am.  I often feel I am on the edge of being overprotective.  If she'd been willing to follow me home, to this neighborhood, where the parents allow their five year olds to ride bikes with no helmets where cars go upwards of 50mph, maybe she'd have been willing to recant her comments. Instead she just drove away, leaving me a raging mess.

So there you have it. My week summed up in a series of gripes.

What's been under your skin lately?

Please tell me I'm not alone!