February 9, 2009 5:40 a.m.. Our alarm went off. Our bags were packed, the pre-registration forms were stacked neatly on my special pillow, and Oma slept downstairs awaiting her three-day babysitting duty. Our other two children slept on, not aware yet that by day's end, they would welcome their new baby sister into the family.
But the alarm wasn't for her.
The alarm was set so that I could be on a computer at 5:59 a.m., along with every other Stay at Home Mother in town, ready to log onto our local parks and recreation department in order to register. This wasn't Harvard. This was well more serious. This was trying to get my daughter into the 9:00 Pre-school prep class because no way did I want to be in the 11:00 one yet again. Three times already we'd landed in that 11:00 crap-slot. We've done our time. This time I will conquer.
This was trying to get the kids into a swim lesson at the same pool and the same time on a day that we'd actually have enough parents per kid in our family to have enough in and out of the pool where needed.
This was trying to get my son FINALLY enrolled in his own class. Middle Child Syndrome was hitting him pretty hard-core as he hadn't even had but 21 months as the baby before the next in line came about. This kid needed something just for him!
6:00 a.m..
My looming belly got in my way as I clicked that laptop favorites section, found the site, logged in. Mommy was going to earn her baby that 9 a.m. slot! Wait! Messed up password. Phew! I'm on! Oh $%^, that's not for the Spring session, it's still coming up Winter! What the ... ??
6:03 a.m.
Yes! I'm finally on-line. Mommy is going to enjoy photographing her kids in the pool at the same time while totally dry as DAD could be there! Yes! Mommy is going to get Jackson his own class! Yes! Mommy is going to get that 9:00 a.m. slot.... But! &#%^! What??s
That 9:00 slot was already filled. A quick look at the clock and I noticed it was only just 6:04. At least 15 Mommies had ALREADY gotten on-line (Bet they didn't have a belly blocking their password!), gotten into the site (bet they had the Winter section come up correctly), and clicked in the code for the 9:00 class!
There is no sense wasting time panicking. The OBGYN expects us in that birthing room at 7:00 a.m. and I still need to get to the hospital and sign in. I don't have time to be pissed.
6:10 a.m.
We will settle ONCE again for the 11 a.m. class. Then swimming. Then Middle Child Syndrome. Now it's time to pay. Yes,I actually got my kids enrolled and still have time to grab a bite to eat. You never know how long it will take to birth a baby, you know.
6:11 a.m. It won't let my credit card go through.
6:12 a.m. I am on the phone with the Park & Recreation department. It seems their computers are having problems, but I should just go on and try again.
6:15 a.m.. $@*%^! The swimming class: Already full. Let's call the Park & Recreaction again, this time seeing if they can register us over the phone. Nope. (In hind-knowledge, I know they did this for others: I must have given off that "Don't worry, I have all day" vibe?) Back to the sign in page.
6: 20 a.m... Click in the 11:00 a.m. slot, this time really concerned that it's actually going to be full, then another swim class time, then the Middle Kid thing. It tells me that the kids are already registered. But they aren't! I haven't even paid! You.have.got.to.be.kidding.me! I guess I'll forego the shower, one that I won't be having again but in a hospital cubicle, for three or more days!
6:22: Sign on again and try to register again! Damn, it's letting one kid register and not the other!
6:25 a.m. I have a massive freak-out telling my husband what is going on, asking him what he thinks I should do, nearly in tears over the idea that my failure as a computer registrar is going to lead to my children not having anything to do ALL Spring, being behind all their friends in swimming, not being ready for pre-school, and having a son who will be so resentful due to his un-resolved middle child syndrome that he'll hate me forever.
Husband gives me a strange look: "Sara, we have to be at the hospital by 6:45 a.m.. Can't you do that there?"
6:26 a.m. It's not even worth it to explain this to him.
6:30 a.m. I am at my wit's end and the only thing that pops into my head is that I have to make up new children. This system has twice told me that my children have already registered and calling the P & R does nothing. I need to get creative. So, I make up a boy and get him enrolled in the Middle Child special, I make up a girl and get her in the swim class, and then the pre-school tells me that even the kid I'm trying to make up is enrolled, so I then make up a new one for that. Click the credit card information, cross my fingers, and then a 'click'.
6:36: My kids HAVE BEEN ENROLLED! We!ll, my 'new' kids, anyway. Swim Class: Yes! Class for Jackson: Yes! 11:00 slot Pre-school class: YES, how awesome is it that I got into that slot! How AWESOME! I love the 11:00 slot. Glad we could get in again. Fantastic luck!
.
.
.
.
.
August 3rd, 2009, 6:00 a.m.. I have to do it again. Tasha isn't even old enough to take any classes. Too bad as I had an awesome name to give her new 'fake' sister when the registration goes haywire yet again.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Fight Osteoperosis
First, you get a tub of Cool Whip. Then you get an Oreo cookie crust pie. Then whatever leftover ice-cream hot fudge you had during your last fudge-binge should get pulled out of the nether-regions of the refrigerator where you put it during your "Weight Watchers: Tomorrow!" moment. Then you get some Oreo cookie pie filling. Mix it all up in some format, including about 1 1/4 cup milk, freeze it, and then stick some Oreo cookies on top (They sell low fat ones, no doubt). Wa-lah! Calcium.
The best part of this dessert is that you can eat about 1/4 cup of the pudding/Cool Whip mixture while preparing it, and no one can tell anything is missing in the finished product.
Let's all work together to fight Osteoperosis in every way we can.
The best part of this dessert is that you can eat about 1/4 cup of the pudding/Cool Whip mixture while preparing it, and no one can tell anything is missing in the finished product.
Let's all work together to fight Osteoperosis in every way we can.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Scrapbookingopoly
I have at least three large rubbermaid containers filled with scrapbooking supplies in my garage and one in the master bedroom. They are filled to the brim with papers, stickers, stencils, embellishments, scissors, punchers, embossers, and laminators. They probably are worth more than my entire wardrobe. Possibly my house, in that they have literally taken over my house. Not the payments, but the controlling interest.
And it keeps coming in. I have three children now. I take like 45 pictures of each kid a week, have 15 more forwarded to us or texted to us every month, not to mention we attract piles of receipts, brochures, posters, mementos, art projects, hair cuttings, and Thomas the Tank Engine postcards like poop seduces flies. These things end up in piles of their own, typically piled on TOP of said scrapbooking boxes, in some random semblence of order dictated by how many kids are tantruming at that moment. Only one tantruming? Things are placed in historical order. More of a typical afternoon? Things are thrown and scattered.
At some point a young mother stops and realizes that she's not going to be the perfect mom in playgroup, who manages to do laundry, cooking, working, or cleaning, while at the same time scrapbooking each memento into albums or shadow boxes (and journaling it next to it too!). Unless she does something quickly, she's going to end up buried in mementos without her sanity much less a recorded list of what toppings Junior asked for on his pizza his first day of soccer class.
I got to that point today. It hit me that pre-scrapbooking fad, life was easy. You bound your photographs in quick-and-easy photo albums, and any leftover mementos were either boxed or glued into 'Found Books". Found Books used to be really cool and unique, but once more modern 'scrapbooking hit', it seems they died. It was a simple spiraled notebook with hard cardboard-stock paper (much harder than in scrapbooking books), where you slabbed on glue, flung on menentos, and quickly write notes and dates next to items of importance. Acid-free paper be damned. Embelishments be damned. It wasn't about pretty. It was about getting it down, hopefully in some sort of order. It took 10 minutes to memorialize seven months of time. It was awesome!
I scooped up all three children to head to our local Michael's to buy the type of book that I used to use before all of the scrapbooking fanaticism. I wanted a Found Book.
We entered the store and noticed four aisles of stickers, one of embellishments, one of organizers, one of binders, one of paper, and one of various tools. Thousands of different types of paper, stencils, metal clasps, cut-outs were out on display. But nowhere could we find what we needed. When asked, the saleslady proudly showed me the lines of scrapbooking binders, pointing out how cute we could make it with newspaper backgrounds, calligraphy, and even computer print-outs of my journaling. Why not make a separate book just in regards to one of our outings? Why not a separate book for each child in each month? Why not laminate the receipt for the zoo trip and overlay it on the park map, where we've inserted pictures of our children at each spot?
Why? Because... just no.
So, now instead of easily putting the last year into a Found Album, I get to glue and tape these objects onto some flowery themed-paper (I have NO interest in making the paper match the items or the timing of this thing) in some hogwash order as now I'm just frustrated and have lost my initial drive.
All because scrapbooking has totally taken over the world of putting memories down.
My guess is that like me, hundreds of mothers out there have piles of photos, piles of trinkets, and boxes full of scrapbooking items that are rarely opened but often criticized. My guess is that, like me, these things are never going to all be scrapbooked beautifully. Let's face it: We spend all day setting up and cleaning up and organizing, why spend our free time doing the same thing? So, these mementos will sit, un-memorialized, for months.
And now I have something to blame: Scrapbooking. Scrapbooking, in all its modern day definers (Why not freeze-dry the actual rose your child picked for you, laminate it, magnetize it, and then press it onto a cut-out of your husband's sperm's sillouette as the co-creator of your child?), has created a monopoly in regards to memory-keeping.
And it keeps coming in. I have three children now. I take like 45 pictures of each kid a week, have 15 more forwarded to us or texted to us every month, not to mention we attract piles of receipts, brochures, posters, mementos, art projects, hair cuttings, and Thomas the Tank Engine postcards like poop seduces flies. These things end up in piles of their own, typically piled on TOP of said scrapbooking boxes, in some random semblence of order dictated by how many kids are tantruming at that moment. Only one tantruming? Things are placed in historical order. More of a typical afternoon? Things are thrown and scattered.
At some point a young mother stops and realizes that she's not going to be the perfect mom in playgroup, who manages to do laundry, cooking, working, or cleaning, while at the same time scrapbooking each memento into albums or shadow boxes (and journaling it next to it too!). Unless she does something quickly, she's going to end up buried in mementos without her sanity much less a recorded list of what toppings Junior asked for on his pizza his first day of soccer class.
I got to that point today. It hit me that pre-scrapbooking fad, life was easy. You bound your photographs in quick-and-easy photo albums, and any leftover mementos were either boxed or glued into 'Found Books". Found Books used to be really cool and unique, but once more modern 'scrapbooking hit', it seems they died. It was a simple spiraled notebook with hard cardboard-stock paper (much harder than in scrapbooking books), where you slabbed on glue, flung on menentos, and quickly write notes and dates next to items of importance. Acid-free paper be damned. Embelishments be damned. It wasn't about pretty. It was about getting it down, hopefully in some sort of order. It took 10 minutes to memorialize seven months of time. It was awesome!
I scooped up all three children to head to our local Michael's to buy the type of book that I used to use before all of the scrapbooking fanaticism. I wanted a Found Book.
We entered the store and noticed four aisles of stickers, one of embellishments, one of organizers, one of binders, one of paper, and one of various tools. Thousands of different types of paper, stencils, metal clasps, cut-outs were out on display. But nowhere could we find what we needed. When asked, the saleslady proudly showed me the lines of scrapbooking binders, pointing out how cute we could make it with newspaper backgrounds, calligraphy, and even computer print-outs of my journaling. Why not make a separate book just in regards to one of our outings? Why not a separate book for each child in each month? Why not laminate the receipt for the zoo trip and overlay it on the park map, where we've inserted pictures of our children at each spot?
Why? Because... just no.
So, now instead of easily putting the last year into a Found Album, I get to glue and tape these objects onto some flowery themed-paper (I have NO interest in making the paper match the items or the timing of this thing) in some hogwash order as now I'm just frustrated and have lost my initial drive.
All because scrapbooking has totally taken over the world of putting memories down.
My guess is that like me, hundreds of mothers out there have piles of photos, piles of trinkets, and boxes full of scrapbooking items that are rarely opened but often criticized. My guess is that, like me, these things are never going to all be scrapbooked beautifully. Let's face it: We spend all day setting up and cleaning up and organizing, why spend our free time doing the same thing? So, these mementos will sit, un-memorialized, for months.
And now I have something to blame: Scrapbooking. Scrapbooking, in all its modern day definers (Why not freeze-dry the actual rose your child picked for you, laminate it, magnetize it, and then press it onto a cut-out of your husband's sperm's sillouette as the co-creator of your child?), has created a monopoly in regards to memory-keeping.
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