Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Blogging and facebook

UPDATE:  OK, the word is slipped, not spilled.  It was TOTALLY a contest to see who caught my typo, congrats to Shari!  I mean, I would NEVER just completely replace a word with the wrong word, re-read it twice and not notice;  it was obviously intentional and I am grateful that Shari figured it out!  Grammar police, I am NOT holding a contest to count how many times I start a sentence with "and" or "but" or end with a preposition.  Those I don't care about at all, and I'm going to pretend that's part of my charm. ;)

Original post, edited to fix the typo that Shari won the contest for:

I decided to give up facebook for lent.  I know, for some it's not a real sacrifice, but for me, facebook was quickly becoming too much of a focus during the day.  I could just hop on and read what people were up to, make a few comments and likes and then get up and get to work, but I was finding that I was just hopping on for a quick couple of minutes several times an hour.  I would finish the dishes and one of the boys would want me to read him a story and I would tell him, "Sure, buddy, right after I check something on the computer really quick."  Putting my children off for facebook is never a good thing.  Having your focus on something that was not God or family is never a good thing either.

I wanted some time to get away from the draw of it all, and lent seemed like the perfect time to do it.  I could take the time to re-adjust my focus and have the kids and my Bible become my first priority, have those things be what draws me after I finish the dishes after lunch.  So far, it's going well.

Well, kind of.

I didn't realize how much I relied on the comments that would come after I posted something funny that the kids did.  That is quite often my only interaction with grownups besides my husband, and I miss it.  Quite often, something will happen, and I've already started mentally writing the facebook post in my head before it catches up to me that I won't be posting.  That part is tough.  I miss the comments, the back and forth that comes from an online chat with friends that can happen while the kids are screaming and I haven't showered.

And seriously, y'all, I actually slipped on a banana peel yesterday.  For reals.  I honestly didn't think that was actually possible, but I did it.  The heel of my shoe landed on the edge of a peel that was right next to the garbage can (thank you, small children) and my heel went skidding forward and I tensed my leg in that way you do to try to keep from doing the splits, and I pulled my groin muscle just a little bit but enough that it hurt for the rest of the day.

It was a banana-peel injury.  A banana-peeljury.  A banajury.

Clearly, I need to get out more.

Anywhoo, since Ash Wednesday, my house has been cleaner, I have started three or four new projects (but not finished any of them, because some things never change) and I have spent more time in the Bible.  Those are good things.  Well, the primed-but-not-painted laundry room is half of a good thing, but it will be a good thing when I am done.  Until then, the laundry is just lined up against the hallway and is slowly creeping into the living room.  But to be honest, just the dull, flat primer covering the totally rad late-eighties printed wallboard is a huge improvement, even with the blue painter's tape and the fact that we can't put the laundry hamper in there.

I will try to blog more often, but I kind of have this mental block that facebook statuses can be short but blog posts have to be long.  I never used to be that way, and I'm going to try to get over it.  I need to blog about things other than getting peed on at Costco, because while those posts do great things for my blog traffic, I hope to never have to post another one of those again.  Sorry, folks, I like to be here for your entertainment, but a girl's gotta draw the line somewhere.

It's called boundaries, people.

(Although I did offer to get peed on for a dear friend recently who was having a bad day.  I am willing to make sacrifices for those I care deeply about.  That's love.)

Clearly, I'm starting to ramble, so I'll end this before I make an even bigger fool of myself, and I'll go get some more coffee.  Oh, yeah, I started drinking coffee recently!  I am kind of wondering how I survived the last ten years or so without it, but I'm learning quickly.  Coffee with creamer and some hot cocoa mix is fabulous, by the way. 

If you wouldn't mind, could you kindly leave a comment on this post so I know you read it, and to save me from the rapidly approaching insanity?  I love comments.  And coffee.  Thanks, you guys rock!

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Costco, Revisited

We went to Costco yesterday.

Not noteworthy for most people, I know.   But if you have been around Still Seeking Sanity for any length of time, you know that Costco and my kids have a history.

And sometimes, even when you do your darndest to stop it, history repeats itself.

Yeah.

So my whole plan in Costco has been to avoid the bathrooms at all costs.  It seemed like a reasonable plan, but I forgot the diaper bag yesterday and Drew had filled his diaper to the point that the ever-popular scrape-out-the-bulk-of-it-and-line-it-with-paper-towels backup plan wasn't an option (oh come on, you know you've done that); so he was wearing undies while we were out running errands.  And as any mother of a not-quite potty-trained child knows, if the kid says he has to pee, you take him to pee.

Even if you are in Costco.

We had a chat as we walked down the hallway.  It went something like this, "You will not pee on each other.  At all. Got it?"

I know, that's quality parenting at it's best right there.

Ben was walking down the hallway playing with all the padlocks on the employee lockers and apparently not listening to his mother, because he missed the memo.

So into the bathroom we went.  Emma into her own stall, and the boys and I in another.  I like to keep them close, so I can monitor the flow, if you will.

But I only have two eyes, and there are three flows.  I kept an eye on Grant, to make sure he got his pants down far enough so we wouldn't have a repeat performance.  I watched Drew, who is still learning and is likely to "miss".  However I didn't watch Ben, who was trying to sword-fight with his brother's, uhm, stream and decided that the best place to cross his stream with Grant's was just as it was leaving Grant's body.

So basically, in a nutshell, Ben peed on Grant's legs and pants on purpose.

Once again, I didn't know it was happening at the time.  Grant started screaming as I was holding Drew up to the level he needed to be, and I didn't see it at first.  Then Grant hollered, "BEN!  You are peeing on my legs!"  To which I said something calm, cool, and collected, something like, "Are you freaking kidding me?!?  What did I say about not peeing on each other this time?!?  Ben, what on earth are you thinking?!?"

And the mother of the year award goes to....

Probably not me.

Emma, who was a couple of stalls down, yelled "Seriously, they peed on each other AGAIN?!?" And I didn't even want to think about what everyone else was thinking, because like every time this happens, every stall was full.

Thankfully, it wasn't the entire bladder's full.  And thankfully, Grant was wearing warm-up pants so it all wiped off pretty easily.

And I had a sudden, earth-shattering realization of how crazy my life actually is when I replied to my daughter across a full public bathroom, "Don't worry, honey, it was just a little bit of pee and it is cleaning up pretty easily.  No big deal, it's not as bad as last time."