I'm sure this is normal

I mean, I know everybody has this kind of stuff happen to them. I mean, heck, poor Dan is running from the cops. But to have Justin have heatstroke from mowing the lawn at the old house; for us to slide into a ditch on Lipona that required a tow truck and some ingenuity (I was sure the side panels would be all dented, but no, it didn't actually come up that high) - the only reason we didn't flip over into the ditch was because Justin knew at the point of no return to actually steer INTO the ditch rather than fight it (which is what I would have done); and to have a phone call from Sharif (who evidently does like it) offering us cash for our old house. (!!) It's either a) a scam b) one of those "buy houses cheap foreclosure guys or c) some rich guy named Sharif d) who may want to not go through a bank and therefore avoid that level of scrutiny. (In that order of likelihood, too.)

This is on top of a normal weekend with two kids under four - tantrums, playing, not enough sleep, going down the escalator, potty training...

Sleeping for a week. I very rarely have had a time in my life when I've not been willing to take that offer.

Off to research...

One of the milestones of parenthood

Taking the doorknob off our bedroom door to let the cat out, as we didn't notice the kids had been playing with the lock, and when we shut the door, it was locked. Oops.

Dangit, am talking with mom and missed the Daily Show. Crap.

Bless my husband, who is putting the children to bed. I really appreciate getting that break; by the end of the day I've lost whatever patience I had with the kids during the day, as a general rule.

and, like a bolt from the blue...

am catching up on over 500 newsfire rss feeds, and saw an item - rumour from the UK is that war with Iran is guaranteed, already planned, and we'll be in it within the year. (This from the same people who were saying that the war with Iraq was planned when the Bush administration was still saying "no, no, it's a last resort.")

Talking with J - and it hits me (yeah, I'm slow)

We went to war in Iraq so we'd have a place to attack Iran from.

I'm sure most of you are going DUH!

We've got flyover rights from Turkey, Azerbaijan, & Turkmenistan; we now have bases & troops in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and some "staging" in Turkmenistan; Pakistan is our "ally" (altho I'm not sure how stable) - but we needed something close by on their west flank that wasn't just friendly, but was ours. With Iraq, that's it. Iran is surrounded.

Shall we start a betting pool? I'll guess we'll be at war with Iran by early 2007. Place your bet!

I am stunned

The patheticness is unimaginable.

I'm surfing the television. I come across "Cheaters" - a television show made up entirely of video shot of actual people committing infidelities. The intro stated - and I quote - "This program is both dedicated to the faithful and presented to the false-hearted to encourage their renewal of temperance and virtue. " God help me, they have a website.

Later I come across "Who wants to be a Millionaire" and the question is "who was president of the United States during World War I?" AND THE DUMB BITCH HAD TO CALL HER FRIEND.

Fuck Jefferson weeping. I'M weeping.

How I'm keeping myself busy these days, besides the usual housework (mended J's pocket this morning, I feel so domestic), birthday plans for C, unpacking...

heeheeheeheehee okay, this will probably make mostly democrats laugh.

but the good ideas aren't sexy, so it'll never happen, like so many other things that will never happen...

This makes the point that I've been making since day one: this war cannot be won by the military, because they're fighting an IDEA, and people living by an idea... I mean, think of it this way: what if you were trying to get rid of the christians in the US. Imagine a large number of them were fundamentalists that believed enough to bomb abortion clinics, believed enough to strap bombs to themselves and walk into gay bars, or the like. Now imagine trying to kill them all. Doesn't that sound stupid? For every one christian extremist you'd kill, you'd create an untold number more - that person's children, or observers that hadn't quite decided to be THAT much of an extremist, but now had a reason... *sigh*

So let this be a lesson to you...

I've told myself for years not to care what other people think. I've done a really shitty job of it. Most recent example:

My mom (who has said in the past that when I say things like "Argh, the kids are driving me CRAZY today, they make me want to shut them in closets!" she worries that I would actually do it) sees me spank my daughter once (she was doing the flagrantly disobedient, laugh while she's doing it in my face stuff) and now cannot sleep from concern and wants to talk to me about it.

My mother-in-law says I'm doing an awesome job as a mother, and tells my sister-in-law that my son is brilliant, but other than seeing her at school when we were dropping off & picking up M, she's not spent any time with us, so how would she know?

I remembered that my counselor said I should spend less time with my mother. Since he's said that, I've spent more time with her, sadly. J & I never thought my parents would be the ones to spend this much time with our kids. Between that, the money we owe her, and the health problems I help her with (currently it's post-operative wound care kinda stuff) I spend more time with her now than I have in years. And while generally I get along with her better, she also has the ability to press my buttons better than anybody in existence. (Probably because she created most of them, come to think of it.)

I realized just the other day that part of what drives me crazy about my mom is that she thinks I'm brilliant, gifted, awesome, a person she'd be glad to be friends with even if I weren't related - all that gushy stuff. And yet she cannot seem to not treat me like an incompetent moron. I'm guessing it's the result of her fucked up home life, which is why I keep wishing SHE'D go to therapy - but that'll happen when pigs fly. (And don't tell me they're working on that in the labs.)

Add to that, day after tomorrow is my son's birthday. I've sort of put off planning anything - one because I procrastinate almost everything; two because we were still moving up until a few days ago; three because my sister-in-law is going to pop any day now... that reminds me, I've not heard from her in a couple of days, wonder if she's in labour yet?

I'm going to go peruse consumer reports type things about vacuum cleaners, because we're going to need one at this house. The old red one that we inherited from a roommate sometime in the last 4 years is, well, old. I've replaced the belt on it several times. (It doesn't do so well with long hair. Oops. Between living with me & our exroommates, long hair was sort of a staple floor covering...)

Ah, PMS. How I love your mental instability inducing hormones. I've not noticed that the new mood-stabilizing drugs do much, but it's only been a little over a week - I know antidepressants rarely show an effect before two or three weeks; this is probably no different.

OOO! Possible trip coming up... going to do research now.

Notes from the front

I've been avoiding the news for the last week or so in an effort to maintain my mental health. J did, however, read to me the Honourable Gentleman from Alaska Ted Stevens's reason for voting against the net neutrality. If you've not read it, check it out.

Anyway, J was reading it to me because he thought it was funny - I said "don't read that kind of stuff to me! It's not funny, it just makes me want to kill people!"

What do you guys think about sponsoring a mailing to the people of Alaska that include some choice quotes of Mr. Stevens and asking them in large print IS THIS REALLY WHO YOU WANT REPRESENTING YOU IN WASHINGTON?

Lord, if Jefferson could see this, he'd weep.

WHAT THE F&$# IS IT EVER GOING TO BE EASIER?

Okay, so mom's in the hospital. She originally went in to have a seroma removed, as it was grapefruit or more sized and was making it difficult for her to bend over. Not a big deal; not expected to go beyond the fat layer.

Turns out it had grown into the mesh that had been placed over the weak spot of a previous hernia surgery; between that and another hernia that seemed to be developing to the left, the surgery was more complicated than expected. She's in the hospital on a morphine drip. She is, and I say this with much love (and she'd agree with me) a CRAPPY patient.

Okay, so I'm in the hospital with a 3 1/2 yr old and a 2 yr old. That was a blast. Realized that they both desperately needed naps, and mom told me to go ahead and go home (I was originally going to make a pallet for them on the floor with blankets) - so now I'm at the old house; C is asleep and M, of course, never went down after I took her (asleep!) out of the car. Did I mention we're potty training M? She did very well today - she waited until we were in the hospital dining room, far away from my bag of clean clothes etc., to have an accident. Oy.

The power is getting cut off at this house day after tomorrow. We can't get the pressure washer we borrowed from my dad to start. (I fricking HATE small engine things. Lawnmowers, you name it.) I have to be at the hospital at 7am tomorrow so I can talk to the doctor. Our friend Sue (bless her soul) is going to come to our house at 8:30 to watch the kids, because J can't get off work until about noon.

I started mood stabilizer medication last wednesday or so - hard to tell if there's been any difference; I sure noticed the difference when I remembered to start taking my flax seed oil capsules. Regardless, the stress is beginning to get to me. Between my mother, the house, our finances, and my (#*&@(#$*@# feet (heel spurs, and I think I've pulled both calf muscles) and the fact that I have a two year old who's enjoying being 2, and a 3 1/2 yr old who is going through potty training - I'm about to cry for no discernible reason. Oh, and my laptop isn't working as well with Ubuntu as we hoped, so I'm going back to Mac OsX, assuming we can find a #(*#@$@#&( copy, as I've managed to find Justin's original laptop cds, but not mine)

Disobedient children. I'm right on the edge of losing it. Would anybody like to take my kids for a few days? They're stressed out because they've spent so much time at my parents' house and have had no schedule and haven't seen a whole lot of J and I...

Okay, fuck it, am taking the kids and picking up J. Never got M to sleep and she's getting into stuff. Hope all is well with all of you. I'll concentrate on remembering the half-full part of the glass. (Mom came out of surgery fine, the kids are healthy, J's got a steady well paying job, we're living in a nice house, we have a nice car...)

I made the jump!

Okay, it's almost 1:30 am - so much for getting to bed early.

Blew away Mac OSX and installed Ubuntu on my iBook today. Have been putting all my files back on, installing packages, tweaking kernel... so far the only letdown has been Flash problems. (Macromedia doesn't support me, wah!)

Exhausted. Have been for days. So much to do. I hate moving. Lots of news. J not celiac disease, yay! Heard Brandie was pregnant, congrats to her, I know she was trying. I wonder if she still finds being compared to Coulter amusing.

Hope all is well with y'all.