Friday, June 18, 2010

Wedding

I am getting married in 4 months.

This is my second marriage. The first time, I didn't have a wedding as I was in somewhat of a scandalous predicament and my parents didn't approve of having a big flashy wedding whilst I was trying to cover my baby bump.

So this time around I wanted a "real" wedding.

Yes, I am a maschocist.

When I started planning this affair, about 18 months ago, I had every intention of being a savvy DIY bride. I was gonna do EVERYTHING myself, and be able to save myself oodles of money. I was gonna do the invitations, the programs, the centerpieces, hell I would have made my own dress if I thought I could figure out how to sew a straight line.

As time went on, the combination of me being insanely busy with real life, being a unforgivable procrastinator, and needing to catch up on season 5 of Lost so I could watch 6, caught up with me. Slowly but surely, things are being delegated off to the professionals. And of course, I have wild and great excuses for doing this. "Well, if I have to buy all the paper and envelopes myself AND pay for printing, I will only spend $100 less for invites. And isn't my time worth a lousy $100?" Of course it is. So off those were sent. Same thing goes for the programs. "Well, they have to match the invitations....." So off those were sent too. Now, I am still doing the center pieces (at least for now) and I guess we will see how THAT goes.

The last piece of the DIY puzzle is my flower girl's dress. My flower girl is my 2 year old daughter. I bought her a stunning white dress with pickups that is floor length. I decided somewhere along the line that since all the other dresses in my bridal party are red, that her dress needed some red in it too. So I am hand sewing over 100 red crystals to her dress.

Brilliant, right?

By the way, the last wedding that this child was in last summer, she had another beautiful white dress covered in tulle. A mere 2 minutes before we started pictures, she ran head first into the pond that they were taking pictures by; a pond filled with green algae and brown muddy water. I spent the next hour scrubbing her dress out with baby wipes.

But of course, in my mind, that was someone else's wedding and she wouldn't DARE do something like that for MY wedding.

So I will get to use my DIY knowledge after all, when I am busy scrubbing grass stains out of her dress in 4 months.

Mission accomplished.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Dreams of summer

On the kids last day of school, I stare off into space like a love-struck teenager, dreaming of sleeping in, lounging on the beach listening to my iPod, just generally being a lazy slob.

Then 7:30 am comes.

Day 1, and I walk into the kitchen to find half of a bag of cereal dumped onto the floor because the older kids become zombies the minute the TV is turned on, and the 2 year old twins become experts in demolition when they are unsupervised.

The fighting has started before I even got to the kitchen. Children fight about the most ridiculous things, anyone with kids can tell you that. The big fight at my house is over milk. Who takes it out, who puts it away. They will literally have a staredown/screaming match over whose going to get the milk. They have a long list of rules about milk responsibility. If you get your bowl first, you have to get the milk, unless someone else gets a bowl around the same time as you and puts cereal in it before you. If you use the milk first, you have to put it away. If you use the milk last you have to put it away. (As you can see, their rules change depending on who feels like doing what.) They can fight for 15 minutes about milk.

Idiots.

I wish I could say as my kids got older, they have become more civilized. When a child is born, you hold them in your arms and dream about making them geniuses by taking them to art museums and the symphony. Then they turn about 2 and all those dreams go straight down the toilet as you deal with temper tantrums and 14 straight hours of Dora the Explorer. And again, you dream about when they get older. "Then," you tell yourself, "I will be able to show them all the amazing things in this world."

Yeah right. I wouldn't take my kids to a restaurant that doesn't sell cheap Chinese-made toys and "almost" chicken nuggets, let alone take them somewhere that grownups have actual conversations.

So, while my summer dreams may have to be adjusted, I again tell myself the lie that maybe in a few years, when they are teenagers, I will be able to do cool stuff with them.

Dream on sister. Dream on.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Why not?

The way I look at it, I spend way too much time on Facebook playing games that are clearly made for children, worrying about if my pet has enough food and trying to save up money to buy that new painting that will go in that spot on her bedroom wall. I don't even have a painting in my OWN room, so really, this is just depressing. I figured a little creative writing might keep my brain from turning into complete soup.

Let me first tell you about myself. I am 32, mother to 5 kids, full time student, undercover crazy person. I was probably always a little bit crazy, but 10 years of changing diapers, cleaning up vomit from hallway carpets, and knowing the theme songs to every major children's program that has come out in the last decade certainly hasn't helped matters.

At first glance, I certainly don't come off as a weirdo.

Just give me 10 minutes.

For example, within a few weeks of starting school to become an EMT, we were shoving old stereoscopes in our ears (I sanitized mine first. I have issues with people's nasty parts touching mine), trying to listen to each others lungs. I was not of the students saying things like "Oh yeah, I can TOTALLY hear that one lung has junk in it" Bunch of ass kissing fakers. You couldn't hear anything. My instructor was walking around listening to people's lungs, looking for people with really loud respiratory infections so we could hear what they sound like. He found 2 women who were sick, and compared their sounds by saying "She is wetter than you are."

Too easy, right?

I immediately burst into a bad case of the giggles and walked to the other side of the room. My teacher noticed, and came after me to see what I was laughing about (he is a VERY good sport). After denying any impropriety for a minute, I finally admitted what I was laughing about. He looked at me for a minute, then laughed and declared. "Oh, I'm gonna like you."

From then on in, I was "that" girl, the one that made the teacher laugh at the idea of comparing the wetness of 2 middle aged women.

I should probably be more mature than that, I shouldn't laugh at the same thing 7th grade boys do, but I can't help myself sometimes. (And before anyone sends hate emails or calls social services on me, NO, I do NOT say things like that in front of my kids.) People in this world make it WAY to easy to make fun of them, and I just want to be a contributing member of society. It's what we all want, isn't it? So this is my contribution. You don't like it? Go on the internet and complain.