Bad food; worse parenting

I've been doing some more blog slacking. [All apologies, inserted here]

Anyway, today I went to a pot luck. I think this was my first play date in with the group in a few weeks. Although my little hiatus was brought on by illness, I can't say that I didn't enjoy it. I love going to play dates (most of the time), but a mom can only do so many.

So anywho, today was pot luck day. We all know how the past ones have went. Going to these things is always like a game of culinary Russian roulette. I'm not even sure I'd call the experience "culinary" most of the time. These ladies are stay at home moms, and that does not always have anything to do with their domestic prowess in the kitchen. Today's, however, wasn't that bad. The food, for the most part, was palatable. Not everything was amazing, but it was edible -- which is more than I can say of the last pot luck I attended. I took some Apple Chicken Bites, which we all ended up affectionately referring to as Chicken Balls. They were actually very good. I'd never made the recipe before, but was pleasantly surprised. I mean, you can't go wrong with a fried meatball type thing, right? [Well, actually...] I also took a towering plate of PB&Js because I wasn't sure how much kid friendly fare would be showing up.

The worst dish award, I have to say, goes to the attempt at green bean casserole. It was mushy and the only distinguishing aspect between the green beans and the other ingredients was the color. The french fried onions on top were equally as soggy...and to top it off, the lady brought it in a crock pot. Come to think of it, the last dish she brought to a pot luck was in the very same crock pot. The contents of the pot last time were equally as horrific...but possibly worse. Last time she attempted some sort of creamed spinach and cheese crap. Gross. And I'm using crap affectionately. I really think this lady should just stick to picking something ready made up from somewhere. I mean, you choose your battles...and her cooking skills are not winning.

Even more than the bad green bean casserole rubbed me the wrong way was how I noticed one of the moms acting. It's not like this is out of the ordinary behavior for her. I've noticed it before -- at every single play date she attends...I just don't think I've ever blogged about it before. She has a little girl who is under a year old and a little boy that's four-ish. He is a holy terror. Constantly. My first encounter with him was a few months back when she first joined the group. We were at a playground and he pestered me the entire time to pay attention to him. I should have known something was up then. Since that first play date, I've noticed how he acts out toward other children and toward his mom. Today she couldn't even get him to put his own shoes on to leave. And he refused to stand up to walk out the door. At play dates he generally runs a muck and she seems oblivious. Here's why:

She's so busy doting on her daughter, that she rarely even takes the time to check and see what he's doing. Today I watched as she sat at the kitchen table baby talking and feeding her daughter while her son sat across the room eating. She had her back turned to him the entire time. She plays with her daughter and shows her what I think is almost entirely too much attention while her son is climbing the walls to get even a little bit of attention. It's obvious to me that the reason he acts that way is because he is starving for some affection...even the negative type. To add insult to injury, she's pregnant. So just imagine how horrible his behavior will become after the new little sweetie is born. I hope she gets a wake up call pretty soon and starts showing all of her children equal amounts of affection.

I know her son is from a previous relationship, and judging by her age, most likely a high school aged one. I can only hope that her neglect of him is not stemming from some sort of resentment issue...although I'm sure it is. I just don't understand how a mother -- or any parent -- could show such clear cut favoritism toward one or more of her children. I had to keep shoving my foot in my mouth today. I wanted to scream at her to pay attention to her son too. I guess I'll just keep my thoughts to myself.

Nerve Gratin' Time, y'all

My Mom came up to visit Monday evening and she stayed until Wednesday afternoon. She brought a friend with her.

At first, I'd been excited to meet her friend. After all, she is down visiting from Maine and had been my grandmother's best friend before she passed away. Over the past few years, she and my Mom have become friends. Anyway, what you expect is not always what you get.

One of the first things this lady did after arriving was pick up a rash of spilled cereal from one of Adrien's snack cups. I was completely aware of the cereal being on the carpet -- I just didn't see any sense in picking it up at that point because it would just get spilled again. The entire visit went on like this -- her picking up after me. The end result was me not loading the dishwasher the entire visit just so I could get on her nerves. The first night of the visit I ate a bowl of ice cream. I'd noticed her behavior and decided to purposefully leave my dirty ice cream bowl out on the bar that night. She moved it to the sink the next morning. Like I knew she would. At dinner that night she even proceeded to tell Adrien (while I had my back turned getting a plate of food) that he wasn't allowed to throw his food on the ground. How does she know I don't let him do that. Maybe I like him to. I wanted him to throw the food all over her. By the way, the food that fell on the floor didn't get swept up until the next morning...just to bother her.

The next morning she asked if she could do a load of laundry. I let her, but had to switch something of my own from the washer to the dryer. She took a shower while it was in the wash. In the meantime, I'd heard the dryer buzz and removed my clothing. A little while later she asked if I'd gotten my things out of the dryer and when I said yes, she replied, "So I can expect my stuff in the dryer?" Um. No. You can't expect that. I insisted she let me do the honor though. Later on, she decided to give me some advice on putting Adrien to bed. I was waiting for Adrien to fall asleep in the living room while watching a movie, and she decided to ask why I didn't just "put him down with a good book". Um, great. That would be amazing...if it were realistic. All throughout the day I had to listen to comparisons of Adrien to her grandson who is apparently 6 months older than Adrien, but a regular Baby Einstein. She insists he does his "counting," and when I countered that Adrien is learning to count to three, she corrected me in assuring me that by "counting" she meant he was starting addition and subtraction. She was sending him math books in the mail, dontcha know.

Wednesday was full of extraordinary annoyances as well. While my Mom was dismantling her air mattress in the living room, Adrien thought he'd help. He took some sort of plastic hose gadget and decided it was a good idea to try to "plug" it into the wall. My Mom's friend scolded him for it, and I assured her that it was completely fine because we had outlet covers. Boy was I wrong. It was not fine at all. She informed me it still wasn't a good idea. Thanks for the advice.

The last straw was snack time Wednesday morning. I was trying to figure out what Adrien wanted to eat and had the fridge open, allowing him full range of the contents. I asked him what he wanted going down the list "Carrots? Grapes? Cheese?" No, no, no...he didn't want any of that. He wanted some animal crackers -- or "tookies" as he says. Totally fine. He'd had a healthy breakfast. I guess grandmother of the year noticed my choice in snack and decided to let me in on a little secret: "It's nuthing for Abraham (her grandson) to eat vegetables for breakfast. He just doesn't know any beddah." Well woopty-fucking-do, lady. I'm so glad Abraham doesn't know any beddah. But the fact that Adrien knows and likes all of his food groups gives me greater hope for his nutritional future than a kid who knows nothing about the existence of tookies. Besides, all kids should have tookies. And who wants vegetables for breakfast anyway? Broccoli for breakfast and subtraction for snack time? I'm sure that kid is barrels of fun just like his grandma.

To top all of these annoying behaviors off, I had to listen to her gruff and grating New England accent the entire time. Sorry to all the yankee readers, but nothing grinds my nerves worse. I'm sure you guys would say the same of my drawl. I had to listen to words like cah (car) the entire time. Damnit woman, enunciate! There's an R at the end of that word, not an H! On top of it, she smokes like a chimney, drinks her wine with ice and has the personality of a rock.

My biggest peeve with her though had to be the fact that she found it necessary to pickup my house after me. Don't be so presumptuous, bitch. I'm glad she's gone. She can take her lack of manners and annoying accent back to Maine and stay there.

Holy Flaming Grass, Batman!

Alrighty, I've been MIA and I apologize for that. I've got a horrible sinus infection and my antibiotics just don't seem to be working fast enough. My head feels like it's going to explode...but it's getting better by the day. I think.

This past Saturday we had a little get together at our house to watch a Nascar race. I know, very redneck of me. But hey -- I live in Texas. What'd you expect? So I cooked up some awesome hot wings, the hottest jalapeno poppers you've ever had and some really great stuffed mushrooms.

I was standing in the living room a few hours before the party was to start and happened to glance out into our back yard. I saw a strange shadow pattern happening on our back fence, so I went to our back window to check it out. I saw some smoke coming from our neighbor's back yard. Oh, wow -- I thought they were barbecuing. About that time I see some fire creep under our fence and spread to our back yard. I could not believe my eyes! I yelled at Andi that the back yard was on fire.

He rushed out to get the water hose, but it of course was in the garage since it's winter and no body waters their lawn in winter. As he rushed to try to get the water hose he yelled at me to call 911. I got our phone and dialed those three numbers -- 9-1-1. My call was not met with a dispatcher asking for me to state my emergency...rather it was met with a recording saying "This service is not available in your area..." Or something or other. What?!? NOT AVAILABLE!? I live in one of the biggest metroplexes in the country. It most certainly is available. But we've had that problem before, we've just never reported it to the phone company. We've always forgotten I guess. So then I started searching for my cell phone...which was MIA. It was in my purse/diaper bag which I couldn't find. I later found out that Andi had put it in Adrien's bedroom -- for some strange reason. So then I was off to find Andi's phone. Okay, so Andi's phone is brand new. He has one of those new fangled iPhone thingies. You know, with all the bells and whistles. Needless to say, by the time I figured out how to work the damn iThing and got a dispather on the line, Andi had the fire out.

Somewhere in the midst of all the rushing around to find a phone that would connect me with an emergency official, I had started to rush over to the neighbor's house to inform them of their flaming back yard. I never made it all the way to their door. As I made my way over to their house, I saw through the spaces in their fence that they were in their back yard apparently trying to out the fire...and nowhere in there did they send someone to warn us of the danger. Thanks. A lot. What if we hadn't been home, or what if I hadn't glanced at the back yard when I did? Our grass is so dry from being dead due to the winter, that it took all of about two minutes (probably less) for this to happen:



Part of our fence is burned, although you can't really make it out in the picture. Andi took some pictures of our neighbor's yard through a few holes in our fence. Their yard is entire burned -- right up to their house.

After Andi the insta-fireman put out the inferno, he climbed up on the fence to see what was transpiring in the neighbor's yard. He tried to pry some info out of them...which wasn't very successful. Apparently one of the people next door was trying to put some sort of fire from their grill (?) out by throwing whatever was on fire into their grass. Genius thing to do. Their water hose wouldn't work -- apparently -- so the fire spread quite quickly because they were trying to douse the flames via a bucket of water filled from inside the house. But oh my goodness. Our house could have caught on fire...the whole neighborhood could have! I mean, on the other side of our neighbor's house is an empty lot full of tons of dead grass and weeds. Behind our house is a HUMONGOUS empty lot (a few acres wide) full of nothing but dead grass and weeds. With the wind being what it has been lately and the dryness, it's amazing to me that it wasn't any worse than what it was.

So about 911. I've gotten that recording in the past. Once when we first moved in, when we were reporting a burglary in progress next door (at our non pyro neighbor's house) and once not too long ago when Adrien's leg was caught in his crib. For whatever stupid reason, I'd never called the phone company to report it. So needless to say, I called them promptly after this little incident. It took me forever to find an actual phone number call on ATT's website. Nearly all of their "contact" pages give you an e-form to fill out. I didn't want a stinkin' e-form! I wanted a human to talk to. When I finally did get a hold of someone, they informed me that 911 service was out of their control, but she'd put me in touch with repair. Repair told me they didn't understand why that would be happening, but she'd have a programmer contact me. This was the extent of that contact: 10:24 pm Saturday night our phone rings. Caller ID says "ATT" and gives a local number. I answer the phone (albeit slightly peeved that it was so late) only to hear "Sorry, I've got the wrong number. [Click]" The next morning when I was on my way out the door to church (literally - I was getting into my car when I heard our phone ring). Someone from ATT tech support was calling to get some info about our unfortunate situation. This is about how the convo went:

Hi, ma'am this is so-and-so from ATT technical support.

Hi.

Our technician says he contacted you yesterday...

Um, I got a call at 10:30 last night from "ATT," but when I answered the guy said he had the wrong number.

Okay. Well, we're trying to see if your problem has been fixed.

How long is this call going to take? I'm on my way to church.

As long as it takes. Could you please try to dial 911 to see if it works?

No. I am not going to dial 911 -- I have no emergency. Don't you have some way of knowing whether it's fixed or not?

Thank you, ma'am. We'll just try to resolve this on our end. [Said rather snippily]

Oh my goodness. Did this lady NOT know that calling 911 without an emergency is a HUGE legal offense? Ya, just let me dial 911 for no good reason. What am I supposed to say to to the dispatcher? Um...no emergency. Just wanted to make sure this was working! Right. Then I got an automated call yesterday saying that my technical "issue" had been "resolved."

I guess we'll have to wait until our next life threatening emergency to find out.

Bloggy Award

So, I love this blog (and the super cool lady that writes it).

Anyway, she's doing this Leap of Faith posting thing, and I thought her post for today deserved madd props. So I made her a bloggy award. I think she deserves this award because not only does her blog kick butt, but her post made ME want to kick some butt.



Everyone should read her post! So go read it now!

Double Trouble -- Squared

The goop appeared on Saturday. Green goo at the corner of his eye. Nothing horrible, just a persistent appearance of a green glob. Remember what the doctor said a few weeks ago about the appearance of some fluid in one of his ears? I chocked it up to a bi-product of an ear infection. Adrien's eye was mostly fine as long as he was awake. It's just when he wakes up in the morning -- or from a nap -- that the goop is really prevalent. Monday it took over both eyes. Surely it couldn't be pink eye. Surely. There was no pink in his eye. After all, I remember clearly having pink eye and my entire eye was red and inflamed. His just weren't.

After a few nights of getting little sleep (actually, I got plenty of sleep -- my husband suffered through and slept on the living room floor with Adrien), I called the doctor. I was just so sure it was an ear infection. And now with both eyes extruding green nastiness, I was sure it was two ear infections.

The doctor confirmed the ear infections. Double whammy. Don't ask me why he insists on getting so many of those darn things. [Although I will say this is his first ear infection in about 6 months, so that's a record that's Guinness worthy for him] One look at the eyes and she knew what that was all about too: Pink eye. Apparently there was a little pink in his eye. Apparently the strain going around isn't horribly bad. Lucky for him I guess.

But really, what'd the poor kid do to get two ear infections and a double case of pink eye? It really, really stinks to be him right now.

Chocolate milk pusher

So I got my Jeep. Super, super excited. I got the black one. I have never had anything so nice in my entire life. I love it!

Haven't had a whole lot going on this week. Yesterday I took Adrien to a local Sonic to play on the equipment for a while. That was fun -- until it started sprinkling briefly. It was pretty windy, so we left after about an hour or so. Since the weather was so iffy, I ran through McDonald's to grab some lunch on the way home. Yes, we played at Sonic but ate from McDonald's. Sonic has the outdoor play area and the weather yesterday was so nice! It is today as well. It's overcast and warm. Although it's a tad too humid for my liking, I am enjoying the warmer weather. I haven't had to run the air in the house for the past two days. I love warmer weather when I get to save on the electricity. Right now I have the windows open. It's so nice!

So anyway, I'm waiting in the enormous drive through line at McDonald's and when it was finally my turn I pulled up to the window. I ordered my food and then ordered Adrien's. I was going to get him the cheeseburger happy meal with water. Easy enough, right? You'd think so, but no. As I proceed to order "The kids meal with a cheeseburger and water to drink..." I'm stopped mid sentence and asked "bottle water?" I say "No, just a cup of water." [I have to explain that Adrien likes the cups with straws. Also, who trusts a 21 month old to run around with an open bottled of water?] Anyway, onward with my story. So I simply request a cup of water. My teeny tiny request was met with a barrage of argument with the lady saying "The kid's meal comes with a drink. Why don't you just order apple juice or chocolate milk? It's the same price." I tried to explain that I was aware of that, but would still like to have the water -- in a cup. She met me with more argument. Broken down, beaten, and really stinkin' hungry, I ordered a chocolate milk. I just didn't have the fight in me. This lady was determined that I wasn't going to get my dang cup of water! I realize that I was paying for a "drink" and not getting it. I made peace with that long ago.

Is a cup full of water that hard? It's not like I wanted a dollar knocked off my bill or anything. I realize that McDonald's isn't the healthy choice for lunch, but when I tried to make a healthier decision with water to drink, I was argued with!

I mean, really. Water. In a cup.

That new car smell

My Mom is coming to town tonight. That should be fun. It'll be nice to see her again and Adrien hasn't seen her in a while. She's bringing her friend with her...who is coming to buy my car. Yes, we're selling my car! I'm very excited. You know what that means...I'll be getting a new one! At least that's the plan anyway! So tomorrow we're off to the dealership. I think we're going to be coming home with this one. Maybe not though...if I find something else I like more. I would like some more space...but I don't want horrible gas mileage. I was happy with the Jeep though. The first car we test drove was a Dodge Caliber. Although I really liked it, it was too small. The back seat had to be in a reclining position with the front passenger seat all the way forward just to fit the infant carrier into the back seat. Not to mention the fact that Adrien's feet were well within reach of the seat in front of him, making for a great game of kick the momma. The Jeep, on the other hand, had adequate room for everyone. I think I just need to buy a bus for all the room I'd like to have.

So anyway, I'll post soon to let you know what happens! Let's pray for a financing approval. Not sure why but I just picture this scene where we aren't able to buy a car for some unforeseen reason and then I'm stuck car-less and at home all day every day.