Lots On My Mind Today

Lemme think where to start - well, let's see, R (DH, if you're playing along at home) has worked at his job for 2 years coming up next month. Prior to that, we were one of the families that the church adopted for Christmas. That was one of the more humbling experiences of my life, so the holiday season kinda gets me down. It should probably make me grateful for all that I have, but it really just crosses the line into where I feel guilty for all that I have. And then I feel like I have the brattiest kids alive who always want more toys to replace the ones that are on the bottom of the pile of unplayedwith toys that they won't put away.

I haven't slept through the night since March. Literally. I'm lucky to get a four-hour stretch of sleep, then an interruption of some sort, such as getting one of the boys a cup of water, then maybe (or maybe not) fall back to sleep for an hour before either the alarm or one of the kids wakes me up again. I'm used to it. I can function on no sleep. I've done it occasionally when I had to take one of the kids to the ER and didn't get home until the next morning.

The last time I can remember getting a good night's sleep was the night after Randy got me set up on Microsoft Money so I can better track our spending - the month before, a $300 check we had written 3 months earlier suddenly cleared, leaving us with $400 worth of bounced checks and bank fees. I wanted to die. Financial management has never been my thing, and I didn't want to manage our money because I wasn't the one with the big fat wad of credit card debt. This was a major thing when we were first married - I didn't think I should have to dig us out of a hole I didn't put us in, but the more I thought about it, he is clearly incapable of managing it, so somebody needs to or it's never going to get any better. Sure, I could have stuck to my principle that I didn't have to clean up a mess I didn't make, but I'd be stickin to my principles under a bridge. So, long story short, I became the money manager. That was the last time I slept well.

During the last few months, I've come to discover that the most interesting dreams occur when you're not all the way asleep, and somehow I seem to remember them more clearly than the deep-sleep dreams of my fading memory. If having a dream twice qualifies it as recurring, I've had the dream where I'm Martha Stewart's apprentice twice now. I've thought of all the stuff I want to say to her, how passionate I am about everything I do, and how I'd love to work hard and sharpen my own skills with a team that's committed to her passion, and contribute to a company whose focus is to grow and learn and adapt in order to dynamically impact the world that its customers live in. I even had a vision of what I'll make for my Knitting pals for Christmas. See? Wouldn't Martha just want to wrap me up in a hand-knit afghan and crown me Martha Junior? What does this dream say about me?? I watch too much TV.

Next topic - basic manners. A couple of weeks ago I took my youngest child (who will be 3 the day after my sister's wedding) to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Two interesting things happened there. One, I witnessed the most ridiculous display of poor manners that I've seen in a long time. As the birthday child opened each gift, his mother handed the parent of the child who gave whatever gift was just opened an envelope. I didn't open it right away because I thought, there's no WAY that's the obligatory thank you note. Then I saw another parent open hers and I felt my skin tighten on my bones. I opened the envelope and slid out what was not a kid's thank you note. This was one of those that you'd expect to get from your grandmother after you sent her some socks for Mother's Day or something. I'm pretty sure I saved the actual note so I can scan it. Inside, it said "Thanks so much for the gift." Tacky beyond measure.

The second thing that happened filled my heart with the sort of fiendish glee usually reserved for the moment when you witness a practical joke befalling its victim. I saw Kim - a girl I'd gone to school with since 5th grade (in 4th grade I visited the school she went to and she gave me the tour, so I felt like we should be friends), who has never,ever been nice to me. She was one of the Mean Girls, a Queen Bee. I'll be first to admit, I was a geek, an easy target. My dad was a minister and my family didn't have a lot of money to spend on cool clothes so I got a lot of hand-me-downs from women that my mom knew. Kim was not particularly pretty, but had two pretty and very popular older sisters and a divorced mom who indulged the three of them. She knew all the cool high schoolers and set the fashion trends. We all hated her, yet of course we wanted to be her.

The last time I saw her, she had a baby on her hip and was gigantically pregnant with another. We were outside of Shop N Save, and she said hi to me and introduced me to her husband, her marital status having changed since the big 10-year reunion that she spearheaded 2 years earlier. I'm pretty sure she wanted me to pass the info through the grapevine that she was married with kids so as to dispel the popular belief that she had a touch of the Peppermint Patty thing goin' on. I said hi to her son, who was 11 months old, and asked when her baby was due. Any day, she said. Wow, congratulations. Great to see ya! Yeah, call me sometime! Sure, that'd be great. Buh bye... As I walked away with R, 4 year old Beebie and 4 month old Pie, I thought to myself, my GOD I would die if I had babies that close together. I even said it out loud to Randy. Little did I know I was pregnant with Tito at the time. My sons are 10.5 months apart. Oh, bitter irony.

So this time I saw her and she didn't say hi to me. I know she saw me. And I looked fantastic. Apparently the 40 pounds I'd lost since I saw her last when straight to her ass. Nothing in this world makes me happier than when people I hate are fatter than me. It was a moment I've waited for for many years. I could feel my inner child breakdancing with my inner bitch. Am I being petty? Sure. I'm so junior high. Humor me for a moment, won't you?