Oh So Many Choices

I have 5 days to decide what to do with 2. My parents have requested my children for the weekend. They are even going to meet me half way to pick them up. That means that they really want to see them. Who am I to refuse?

Now I have to decide what I am going to do all weekend with no kids. Well, Nathan will still be here so I guess I should try to incorporate him into my plans. Everytime I know that I am not going to have my kids for any amount of time I get all excited thinking about the temporary freedom Nathan and I will have and all of the things that we could potentially do. We could go out to the bar, we could go to a movie, we could drive out to Jasper for a night, the list could go on and on. The major problem with all of the previously listed activities is that they require money. Something that is extremely rare and difficult to come by in this house. It is kind of like commercial-free programming. You know it exists, just not in your world.

Now without any money the list of things to do while temporarily free gets substantially shorter. We could.....clean the house, do yard work, start kitchen demolition, teach the 3-legged cat some new tricks or maybe even talk to each other. You will notice that this list does not seem nearly as fun as the one requiring money.

I figure that the solution to my problem is somewhere in Red Deer. I will bring the kids to my Dad. We will meet in a parking lot. I will hand over the kids and he will hand over a plain envelope filled with money. With said money in hand I will gleefully drive home, making plans all the way. After the first hour or so of freedom and not being able to decide what to do Nathan and I will come to the same conclusion that we do every other time our kids are gone for a few days. Money is not nearly as fun without having kids to spend it on.

Small Things Amusing A Small Mind

So as I sit here on a lazy Sunday evening, waiting with baited breath for The Sopranos to begin, I decided to do some blog cruising and there it was.....on the very bottom of the list.....My Friend Told Me I Should....listed on someone other than Cammy's blog. I am so very excited!! I told my family and well, they don't particularly care. I care though, very much. The list of people that I am boring to death has expanded. Today I bored one more person. Tomorrow, world domination!!!

Cheesecake = Appreciation

As I sit here in front of my computer amongst mess and disaster in the background I hear the lovely noises that Ryleigh makes as she gets excited listening to the saccharine tunes of Barney and his friends. The sun is shining outside and it is currently +13 here.

My laundry is washing, my cheesecake is chilling (very first one I have ever baked. Cross your fingers it tastes good), the 3-legged cat is sleeping and there are no signs of awesome father-in-law thus far. My baby and I napped together this morning, her with her head using mine as a pillow, in my comfy bed on clean, fresh-smelling sheets.

I am loving every moment of this day. I love it even more so because of Nathan. For months I have been stressing out about my EI running out and what are we going to do about money and this, that and the other thing. He can see how much I enjoy being at home with our girls right now and so he is off at work so that I don't have to be. Not that he wouldn't be there otherwise but I would have had to go to work on Monday. The guilt that I feel about not being at work was and still is very overwhelming. I have never not worked or gone to school with some sort of income. I have always contributed in some way financially but for now I am on strict orders to be where I want to be, at home, with my baby. My husband and other family make this possible for me. I hope the cheesecake is good enough to show my appreciation. If not.....I guess I will bake an apple pie.

Disarray

So, here I am two weeks after signing off so that I could paint my computer room. Well, here is the update.

Computer room - still not painted. I had to put the painting on hold to prepare for our rockin' party (which rocked by the way...a little too hard for me but that is another story). I had full intentions of resuming painting on the Monday after said rockin' party but awesome father-in-law was still here. I was kind of hoping that the disarray of my spare room would have scared him off....but it didn't. I was going to resume painting this past weekend as the weather sucked and it would have been a perfect time to paint. Apparently it was a perfect time to have a cat with a broken leg too. My poor Squeaky-boy has a cast on and has now been confined to the unfinished mess that is my computer room. Can't paint now. I can handle a cat with a broken leg but I do not think that I can handle a cat with a broken leg that is high on paint fumes.

Squeak will be lame for the next 4-6 weeks. I cannot hold off painting for that long as I need to have some of my house put back together before the total chaos that is kitchen renovation begins. At this point I place the completion of the computer room sometime around May long weekend. I am hoping that awesome father-in-law will find an alternate place to stay while he is here next week (only because without the spare room my kids lose their beds....yes, both of them!! Maybe that is not the only reason, but that too, is another story). Maybe a chaotic computer room is not such a bad thing. Maybe I could put it in a bag and sell it as awesome father-in-law repellent.

So at the moment, my cat is essentially 3-legged, my baby is teething, my computer room is a mere shell of its former self, Nathan is back at work (both good and bad), my awesome father-in-law should be here in days, I have no money due to a 3-legged cat, my mop is missing, my eye is itchy and, all in all, my life is completely upside down. I hope that I can get it somewhat together before I have no kitchen.

Procrastination At Its Best

List of things to do before Thursday....

1. Wash, dry and fold mountain of laundry that is covering up one of my children.
2. Paint computer room so that Ryleigh can have her room back (a.k.a. getting the futon the hell out of there). This job is done in joyous anticipation of awesome father-in-law's impending visit.
3. Pack clothes for ALL of the kids to spend the weekend at Gramma & Poppa's house. YAY!!!
4. Take kids for haircuts between various activities on Tuesday and Wednesday night.
5. Clean entire house in anticipation of rockin' party to be held on Saturday. YAY!!!
6. Order keg for rockin' party on Saturday. YAY!!!

So they are not all bad things but just too many to try to have done before Thursday. I have more stuff that needs to be done on Friday and Saturday morning, but those things can wait until then.

Did I mention that I will not be home all day on Wednesday and that I am leaving to go out of town for the night Thursday afternoon.

Well now comes the time to shut down the computer and make its home all pretty and new. Will post before and after pics within the next week (I HOPE!!!!!).

Ok. Here It Is.

Last night (or very early this morning) I was lying in bed thinking about the Real Moms thing. I kept thinking about all of the things that I could say make a Real Mom. I thought about how I would type out my thoughts and then realized that some of the things that I say might offend some other people and then it came to me.

REAL MOMS ARE CHANGED PEOPLE.

Once upon a time, long, long ago I am fairly certain that I would not have worried about offending people. I had an "I don't give a shit" attitude. That attitude served me well and got me in trouble all at the same time but at that point in my life it was what made me who I was, good and/or bad. I have come to realize that no matter how much I try to convince myself that I am or will be the same person after having had children, I am not and cannot be the same person I once was.

I can no longer have an "I don't give a shit" attitude (well, I guess I could but then I could not fault my children if they were the same way). I can no longer always make myself #1. Granted, it is very important for Moms to do that and I (we) should do it more consistently but the days of "takin' care of #1" are long gone. To me, #1 now means Darian, followed by #2 Camryn and #3 Ryleigh (of course this does not mean that I take care of any one of my children more than the other....except Ryleigh but that just goes without saying right now).

I look back at my attitude and actions and think about how they contributed to the person that I am today. While my past is a significant portion of who I am it is when I became a Mother that made me Me. My life and who I am is like a puzzle. My past is the completed border but my children are the pieces that fill the inside.

Still here

I have been neglecting the blog lately. It is solely because my life is boring and I do the same thing everyday. Today I am rearranging Ryleigh's bedroom in an attempt to temporarily put our sofa bed in there so that I can paint our computer room which should have been done a month ago. I really should be doing laundry though. See aren't you glad you tuned in for that compelling update!!!