The Aftermath

Pictures:

Nathan and the one and only picture I could get of him before he started to tear at his costume like I had just put fire on him.

Good vs. Evil : The Ultimate Show Down

An Angel, Batman and a Devil walk into a bar...

Well the tricks have been played, the treats have been passed out, the cavities have started to form, the little ones have finally crashed from their sugar high and I am slowly get more and more nauseous from the amount of Tootsie rolls I have eaten in the last 20 minutes. Good news...no razor blades were found. I read somewhere that whole razors in the candy is an urban legend and the only two cases reported of kids dying from Halloween candy were involving the parents trying to poison their kids. The one guy put arsenic in his kid's Pixie stick. Sick bastard!

But with that being said I still was not convinced and proceeded to eat my weight in fake chocolaty goodness. I have to say the candy was kind of lame this year. My kids got a lot of banana laffy taffy and alot of vanilla tootsie rolls (which is just wrong). The one full size candy bar was handed out by our neighbor down the street...Score! but was quickly booed and that house shunned forever when it was discovered that it was a 3 Musketeer Bar.

The one thing that sucks about our neighborhood is the lack of sidewalks and the amount of dumb shits driving in our neighborhood at 60 miles an hour when their is literally a 100 kids trick or treating tonight. That along with the fact that my 22 month old refuses to be carried, ride in a stroller or wagon and would rather eat cat food then hold my hand ( I know because he has literally eaten cat food instead of having to hold my hand...gross) made for a very sweaty half jog half sprint to keep him from becoming road kill. I had to remind my girlfriend of what I thought was a universal Halloween rule:"Don't come a knockin unless there is a porch light on", and the other rule that needed repeat numerous times to my trigger happy kids, "Ring doorbell one time if no one answers move on"...

I must have been out with my kids around peak trick or treating time because by the time we got back home I think I maybe got about 10 more people. Which was good for them because I had about 4 tons of candy to give away, bad for me cause I still have about 3.5 tons of candy left. Damn polite kids nowadays only taking one piece of candy then nicely telling me to have a nice night and leaving. What the hell is wrong with kids these days?? By the end I am throwing handfuls at the kids, while getting lectured by a little lippy 5 year old that she doesn't want her teeth to rot out so did I have any organic candy? Move along little girl I don't have time for your nonsense.

Also my cat got out about 15 times tonight and went and howled it up with all his kitty posse and is now meowing at my only open window but refuses to come inside. But the excitement of the night was definitly when Nick's Batman cape was accidentally caught on fire by a very overzealous pumpkin carving family and their love of fire. Fortunately my son had just had a fire drill at preschool and knew to Stop, Drop and Roll. Which was completely unnecessary but extremely funny to watch.

Well another Halloween is over (thank god) and now its on to Christmas ads followed in mid-November by bikini sales. Ahhh gotta love America.

Halloween Hater

Well maybe hate is too strong of word...maybe I am a Halloween disliker. Now I know that the majority of people, adults and of course children, this is the greatest holiday ever. I just never have seen the appeal once I reached the age of um... older than 21. Halloween night scares me. The idea of kids walking around neighborhoods in the dark knocking on stranger's door for food, carefully explaining again and again what to say when the people open their door, to only take one piece of candy and then reminding them to say thank-you,listening to loud parents shout at their kids...I think I would rather spend a Saturday morning in Walmart. I am not into the horror movies or anything scarier than lets say The Blair Witch Project which was so lame I can't believe it even classifies as a horror movie. I get scared easy, I am not a big fan of the dark, and people over the age of 13 banging on my door for candy irritate me. Especially when their "costume" is black clothes and they have been to my house 5 times already. I was invited to a costume party this year and I can't go to it because I really don't have anyone to watch the kids, They are fun and its always interesting to see your friends drunk dressed as Brittney Spears or Freddy Mercury...but its kind of like going out on New Year's way too many crazy people out there, and I am sounding like my mother right about now...damn I just noticed that. Well shit it had to happen someday I suppose : )

I really liked the year it rained and my kids just went room to room and I gave them candy from a bag...I know Bah Humbug, but I am a much better Thanksgiving person or even Christmas, or hell even Valentine's Day I can get behind, but Halloween? Not so much. I have bought the kids costumes and I will take 4,000 pictures, I will take them around the neighborhood and enjoy it through their eyes. I will try and limit the sugar intake and eat all the good stuff tonight out of their bags, you know just to make sure that there isn't any poison in the Snickers bars, or razor blades in the M &Ms. Cause that's the kind of Mom I am... Hey just cause I don't like the holiday doesn't mean I can't eat the candy....right?

Take Me Home Country Roads??

I am truly a Midwestern girl. I think cornfields are beautiful, and farmers are sexy. I love beautiful fall days, cold winters, and hot humid Summers... Colorado can have their mountains, Florida you can shove your beaches up your old people butts. New York take your high fashion, exciting nightlife, and fancy drinks away from my Gap store, Bunco games, and Coors Light. Give me the smell of a hog farm and burning leaves any day . I was no where raised on a farm, probably would have a heart attack if my hips had to see the inside of an overall, and it makes me laugh till I pee my pants thinking about me as a farmer's wife, but I like the whole idea of it anyway. I thought I would live in Peoria forever, I had no intention, desire, need, or legal reason to leave Illinois. I was born here and pretty much thought I would die here and was okay with that.

About 11 years ago my Mom up and decided that she was going to move to Seattle after visiting there with her boyfriend the previous Summer. She found a job out there, sold my childhood home, and off she went with her hiking boots,Birchenstocks,and my sister in tow. I was 21 and was sad that she was leaving but I was dating my future ex-husband at the time and thought he was all I needed, the whole "livin on love" bullshit we thrived on back then. So we waved good-bye and almost immediately I couldn't function because I missed her so much. Now those of you that know me or my mother know we didn't have a lovey dovey, brush each other's hair and gossip kind of relationship. We had the don't fuck up and I won't yell at you kind of one. Which as disfunctional as that sounds suited me fine. We were oil and water really two very head strong, stubborn women... it was probably better that we would be 3,000 miles away from one another. I thought that, until she left. I cried every night. My mom and sis loved it out there and they would sing the praises and the beauty of the mountains every night on the phone and it wore me down, my thoughts that I was going to live and die here were replaced with "Why the hell am I wasting my life in Peoria?" So over pizza one night I told D that I had made the decision to move out to Seattle and that he could come with me or else we needed to end things (Reason#327 why we should have broke up long before we got married) I wasn't all that sad if he decided to stay. He was unusually attached to his Dad and I really couldn't see him breaking that apron string anytime soon, but to my surprise he said he wanted to come with me. So we had a kick ass good-bye party and off we went across the country to start our brand new life with each other...too bad we couldn't really stand each other for more than a couple of hours at a time and every state we traveled through were more and more reasons we should have parted ways...but hindsight is a bitch sometimes.



So we get to Seattle and it is big, and noisy, and overwhelming to someone who rarely went anywhere bigger than the Chicago suburbs all her life. We were broke and our relationship was straining because we couldn't go out and party like our friends we had to work 2 jobs to pay the bills, expensive big city bills we weren't used to in Peoria. It took its toll and I hated it there, I missed my mom but not enough to live nearer than a 100 miles from her. So we, for whatever reason, I think mainly it was the "get married or move on" thinking, we got engaged and moved back to Peoria, 2 years later.



Fast forward 8 years....four kids, divorced, back in school... rethinking where I want to be 5 years from now or 10 years from now. And yes it has a large part to do with the fact that I am in love with a man who I would go anywhere with. I know he tells me otherwise, but I don't think he would be happy living his life out here. He was intrigued by bigger cities. I as previously stated love corn mazes, and John Mellancamp.

I took Lily to visit my Mom in Seattle when she was 2 and the regret I had that I didn't stay longer in the city was overwhelming. I would love to move out there to live in that city , to be closer to my mom and sister. But....life worked out different and the fact is my kids have their Dad here and E has 11 year old girls in Kewanee, and neither of us can picture being the one to move away from them, or to be the parent that takes them away from their Dad. So we'll see, maybe my desire to get the hell out of Dodge will change. I do love Illinois I love the Seasons and the rivers and the trails, and small town living. I have time to decide this time and will hopefully find a good happy medium where we can all be happy... and you know where I can find John Denver on the jukebox.

Getting Older Blows

So I am taking my make-up off tonight and staring at my skin...why do I do that? I should blindfully go about my ritual, brush my teeth and get my book to read but no...I stare. Shit what happened??? I am 31 years old, relatively young in the grand scheme of things. I love the Chris Rock joke: "Fourty isn't young...it's only young if you die at 40 or if your dating Cher"hehe But I am not any where near 40! So I am young damnit, and should have young skin?!? My mom who is pushin 60 looks great for her age, she looks like a young 50ish older active woman on the go. My Grandpa is 93 looks like he's not a day over 60 and all of my Dad's side look young even when they are collecting the social security checks. So what happened?? I smoked when I was younger, maybe for about 5 years, I sit in the sun on occasion, but rarely since I also must have inherited from someone, along with the bad skin gene, the pale (you can see my blood running through my veins) skin color gene. So I tend to avoid the sun. So what happened? Four kids? Single momhood? Bad moisturizer? What? Tell me? I want to age well.. I want to be one of those women people say "Wow you have aged well", not "Damn she looks rough.

I NEVER ever have gotten a pimple before, I shit you not, in my life till I turned 30and then BAM suddenly I am a teenager, or what I am assuming a teenager has to deal with since I never got a f**kin pimple ever as a teenager. Did I mention NEVER!? I have a pimple forming on my cheek, a big red spot that is sometimes really red sometimes decides to go away on my other cheek. My skin is kind of rough and I have a bunch of sickly little white heads on my nose that even the damn Pore Strips wont take off...Damn I sound sexy don't I?? So I am sitting her writing this with some sort of miracle mask on my face, wondering what happened to my youth??

Pseduo Stepmom

My son this weekend told me that Grandpa W came and took Daddy's furniture away. Now he rarely is completely correct on his stories and seems to have a new one for the Preschool teacher daily...so I calmly asked if Daddy was getting new furniture? "Yes Suzanne is moving in with Daddy for a long long time" Awww isn't that special? Suzanne is my ex-husbands girlfriend for approximately 6 months. She had previously lived in Lincoln and was coming to his house on her weekends...actual weekends that normal people get not Tuesday-Thursday like D gets. So great I am happy for him, hopefully she has better furniture than D had after I moved our old stuff out. She has a daughter that was born about a week before Nathan. So now he has his own happy little family. Do I sound bitter? Trying not to, even though it is hard in the back of my head to remind myself that he didn't want his family anymore when he left me 2 years ago, and yes I realize that he loved his kids, and didn't want the marriage with me part anymore, but it still makes me sad that he will have Suzanne's daughter 7 days a week and his own daughters two days a week. And am desperately hoping that my girls don't feel left out especially since he works on weekends and so when he has his kids they are in school till 300 so they get to see him for about 4 hours a night. And his promises to look for another job that have weekends off is I am starting to think pointless since we all know if I offered to keep the kids full time he would have no problem with that. Now that isn't me being mean just honest. He really wasn't cut out to be a Dad. Not the kind who love to spend time with their kids and who would fight tooth and nail for them. I had to fight to actually get him to spend time with them at all. And now he has Suzanne and her daughter and yeah I guess that pisses me off a bit.

I haven't met her yet, I have no bad feelings toward her, I am glad she is there and maybe just maybe she will help dipshit not put my 2 year old clothes on the 4 year old when he goes off to school? She actually did their laundry last weekend. Usually Dale just sends their dirty clothes back home to me in a big garbage bag, so I take them and throw them in the laundry room, so last Thursday I get the bag, go to throw the clothes in the washing machine and they are all folded and smelling nice and clean...bitch. ; )



My kids love her...alot..and this is basically how all my conversations go with Sophie for about 3 days after her weekends with her Dad:



Sophie: Mom one day can I help you make those brownies for dessert?



Me: Of course you can, but Sophie all it is is breaking the squares off and putting them on the cookie sheet (Yeah I know all you perfect mothers out there laugh it up, but they are easy and mine wouldn't taste half as good if I made them from scratch)



Sophie: Suzanne makes homemade cookies with us when we are at Dad's.



Me: That's nice Sophie, is Suzanne still fat?? ( No I didn't say that, but I do like the fact that that was how Soph described her to me when they first started dating)



Here is another example:



Son: Mom Suzanne helped me make Army curtains for me room at Dad's. And we are going to paint my room army...Mom why is my room here still pink? (I am busy alright)



Sophie: Yeah and she helped Lily and me paint our room purple and make curtains out of rainbows and did I mention when she poops it smells like lilacs? (again I am exaggerating but geez)



Now Lily is my girl she would never tell me anything fun and exciting about Suzanne out of her loyalty to me, but I know she loves her just like the other ones do. And I do love that. I am glad they are little enough and resilient enough to go through all of this at a young age and they will be the better for having her in her life.



Do I love all the inadequacies that they keep pointing out of my mothering? No ...who would? I don't sit and read to them all night long, especially not Little House on the Prairie books that she gave my 7 year old to read. I put in a movie when I need an hour to study, I go to McDonald's more than I care to count cause I either don't have anything to cook or just don't want to cook. I am jealous of all the working Moms out there sometimes and long to put on pantyhose and high heels and get blisters walking in them all day. I shush and yell more than I should and sometimes wish I was child free again. But then when they see me and tell me they are glad they are home, or Nick tells me "Me missed you mom" it makes it all worth while. Hell I get a "break" every week, and most Mom's don't get that so I am blessed.I love my role as Mommy, and I am glad they will have Suzanne there, here's hoping she doesn't make me look like too much of a putz

I Hate Technology

I hate it.. I hate emails, and Instant Messaging, and blogs and computers and cell phones! Everything. I think we should go back to writing on stone tablets, and having pigeons fly our messages written in ink...not on a computer. I think we need to go back to where the phone cord is only 10 feet long and you can't talk on your phone in the car. We shouldn't have cars we should all run, or bike or ride horses. If you are expecting a response for a question the person will be forced to answer you because you are standing right in freakin front of them instead of waiting all damn day by your computer for them to write you back!

I need a drink or a Xanax, or a very long run. All three of which I can not do at the moment because of the damn computer!!!!

And on another note: Why the hell would Pinky Dinky Doo pick "hideous" as her great big word to teach my almost two year old, who barely says anything besides cookies and No, but now he says hideous...what a stupid word to put on a children's show. And why can't that damn duck on Wonder Pets talk without a lisp??? Ahhhh again my perfectly normal sounding 5 year old always thinks that's how she needs to talk after watching it...lesson learned...turn off the damn television and pick up a book!

Alright I feel better now...happier posts to come.

Duel

So I had a scene right out of the Stephan Spielberg classic movie Duel today on my way home from Kewanee. Now those of you that haven't seen that great piece of cinamatic history, it stars Dennis Weaver as a guy driving home when he passes a semi truck and for whatever reason that pisses the guy in the truck off and it is as the tag line on the DVD case says :"Terror in the rear view mirror". It is filmed in 1971 and everyone looks like they have just stepped off the set of a bad porno, it is a lot of terrified looks on the man's face , and alot of shots of a menacing truck barreling toward the terrified man. The main reason I ever happened to watch the show was thanks to my Film 110 class and that teacher's need to show us movies all for whatever reason involving road rage and sex.

So I am not a big road rage fan. Even despite the fact that my now 5 year old's first words were "Go lady" and still to this day asks me why we have to wait so long at the stop lights... I digress...I think it is wrong, and unsafe, and dangerous and I never or should I say rarely ever lose my temper at another driver, and shit I live in Peoria for christ sake its not like we are in a major big city. It takes you 15 minutes to get anywhere you want to go so what is there to be pissed off about? I drove for 3 years in Seattle and while most of those people are very friendly and zen like, they still will sacrifice their first born for a spot in the carpool lane. Talk about scary...But this morning I was rushing back from E's house, I usually leave pretty early in the morning on Thursday's just cause my kids come back from their Dad's and I usually need to clean up a bit or do dishes. But today I slept in, and took my time getting ready and leaving his house. As I am merging on to 74 this semi-truck won't get over to the other lane...now that is probably my biggest driving pet peeve. Get the f**k over if someone is trying to merge especially if there is no one in the other lane. Which there wasn't. There were surprisingly few people on the road this morning so the asshole could have gotten over and I wouldn't have had to make a complete stop before getting onto the highway. So I honk my horn and scream a profanity at him and go to pass him, but instead of letting me pass he gets into the passing lane! Errr so by this time my sleeves are pushed up and its Game On. Now my attitude may have something to do with the fact that at that moment my iPod playlist had changed from my "driving music" with James Taylor, Sean Hayes, and Dave Matthews, to my "running" playlist with Eminmen, Ludicrous, and Black Eye Peas. (hey what can I say I like to run to gangsta rap) So my adrenaline was kicked in to high gear. It was me, a truck and the open road ( another tag line from Duel). So fueled by the lyrics to Back that Azz Up, I pass the truck and give him the finger ( I know not at all mature, but the rap music made me do it) He looks at me yells something I think looked like "Suck my you know what" and gave me the finger back. SO I am past him thinking we are done with our little exchange and back I go home again home again. Nope he is behind me going really fast,too fast, since I am going over 80 to pass him and he is literally on my ass. So I slow down thinking he will pass me, but nope he stays like that till the Brimfield exit when I am freaked out enough that I take that exit to see what he will do. Well he honked his horn, flashed his lights and sped off into the crazy trucker sunset. Wheww. I was actually a little bit concerned for my safety, and knew I wouldn't be able to pull of any cool minivan stunts like driving over the median or flipping the car around to go in the opposite direction, or the ultimate driving off some sort of ramp and go flying through the air till the War Drive exit is in view, while landing safely without a hair out of place(hell i watch alot of manly movies while I am in Kewanee) without injuring myself and my new van : ) Damn why couldn't I have gone to stunt driving school??