I Hope I Don't End Up Being This Kind Of Parent

This is just a random list of observations/ rant about things that drive me nuts about things some parents do. Feel free to ignore me or laugh at my sanctimonious little self while thinking that I'll end up doing all of these things. :)

--I work at Taco Bell (yeah, I know, how totally lame is that) so I see this alot: people who come in with their kids and order food, and the kids always want you to take off EVERY SINGLE VEGETABLE. Even stuff like salsa and whatnot. And this seems to be even more common with overweight kids. I understand that kids are picky. But it's fast food! The nutrional value of it all is practically a negative number. Up until my mom remarried, fast food was a very rare treat, as was soda. I intend to do the same thing. I was a rather picky kid, but the only thing I ever took off fast food was onions. But lots of people don't like onions. It's not like they're a miracle veggie anyway. And if the wee dragon decides he doesn't like the veggies on his taco or hamburger or whatever, well guess what little man, then you can wait til we get home and eat regular food.

--On another fast food (or restraunt in general) related note, many parents of small children leave huge messes. It's so inconsiderate. I understand that sometimes they are tired or harried or whatever, but it takes all of 2 seconds to put the wrappers and napkins and things on the tray and dump it out as you walk out the door. Have some courtesy, will you?

--People who smoke in the car with their kids in the backseat. Or even better, with the windows rolled up and their kids in the backseat. I find it hard to believe that people are unaware of the health risks related to smoking. It's one thing to decide to risk it and subject yourself to such a life-threatening and nasty habit, but to subject your kids to it should be considered some kind of abuse.

--Helicopter parents. Enough said.

--In that same vein, parents who don't let their kids ever play in the dirt, or get dirty, or pretty much don't ever expose them to any kind of germs. I have a healthy respect for germs. I wash my hands often and have a little thing of hand sanitizer on my keyring. I wash my hands between handling my cats and handling food or things like that. But I know that it is both impossible and inconvenient to live in a bubble. Germs have a purpose. There are things like salmonella and e. coli and playing with cat or dog poo that one should avoid, but come on people, get a life!

--People who refuse to admit that their kids may have done wrong. That is so wrong on so many different levels, and totally unhealthy.

--People who talk to their kids, especially little kids (the instance I recall involved a 15-month old) as if they are adults. I don't know how to really explain this. The best I can put it is using a tone and language best suited to a business conversation with your boss. There is nothing wrong with using words with more than one syllable. I am all for it. I have a pretty large vocabulary and I hope I can pass that on to the wee one. It was just the way this lady talked to her kid that just seemed so... inappropriate.

Now on a more positive note, there are some parents that I completely admire and aspire to be like.

--People who teach their kids manners. I have manners, and i really appreciate it and when little kids are polite and well behaved in public. It must be such a relief for their parents, too.

--People who discipline their children properly, even in public. Now, I don't mean spanking or anything like that. Here is an example. I was in Safeway one day, and this lady with 2 little boys was standing in the cereal aisle. They were probably around 3 and 5. They were acting up and whining to have some kind of sugary nutrionally devoid cereal, and she told them no several times and warned them that they would leave if they kept bothering her. Well, apparently they didn't beleive her, and kept it up. She took them both by the hand and walked out. I think that that takes guts. If she weren't obviously busy, I would have told her how totally awesome she was.

--People who know how to have fun with their kids and treat them like kids. Pure awesomeness.

There are lots and lots of other things that I think people do that are awesome too, but I can't think of them right now. Mostly because for some reason I witnessed most of the things that irriate me today at work, so they stick out more in my mind. But to all the awesome parents (and I think that regardless of self doubt and all of that, you should be able to recognize whether or not you're a pretty ok parent), you rock, and someone should remind you of that often. :D

--dragon Read more!

Sick

I'm so tired of this. I constantly feel like I'm walking on eggshells trying to avoid hurting Erik's feelings. He's just so incredibly emotional. To make matters worse he deals with his emotions like a child.

Tonight he apparently wasn't feeling good and went to sleep around7:30 or 8pm, which is incredibly early for him. I was completely unaware as I was in another room reading since early in the evening. He had promised to pick up his sister from work when she got off at 11pm and I went in there once to ask why he was in bed so early and to remind him to pick her up and take the laundry down to the laundry room on his way out the door. He made no mention of the fact that he felt sick. Absolutely none. So I went back to my room, completely unaware and didn't talk to him again until about 10:45 when I just so happened to finish the book.

I went to wake him and he was acting all like "poor me" and finally told me after I asked about 5 times that he didn't feel good. Ok, fine. but the way he said it implied that he wanted me to go pick her up. Which would have been fine... if he'd asked me earlier. I was pretty much ready for bed, tired, and not looking forward to going back to work with only one day off (which wasn't really a day off because I spent the entire day cleaning the house while Erik got to "work" for about an hour and a half and then sat around at his sister's watching TV all day). I especially didn't like that he refused to straight out ask me and then got mad when I said that I didn't feel like it. Of course this escalating to him getting all butt-hurt and when I tried to get him to call his sister to ask if she might be able to get another ride he refused because most likely he wanted to make me feel bad (he likes to play the victim alot). Luckily she called and said her boyfriend had showed up and was going to take her home.

Finally, this all was over and we had to go downstairs so he could find the change he'd left in the car for the laundry and I could put stuff in the washer. I put the clothes in and he went upstairs. His sister stopped by because we had her house key, and at that point Erik decided that he was going to be all dramatic and go stay the night at her house. He said he didn't want to have a fight (hello, said fight, if it could even be called that, was totally over by then) and he just didn't want to be around me. Please. For one, I was downstairs. He was upstairs. You can't be bothered by someone who isn't even in the house with you! I told him he was being rediculous and overreacting, and that it was an especially bad idea to try and take his car (it's broken and makes the most awful hissing noise you've ever heard), and on top of all that if he was feeling so tired and sick it was dangerous for him to drive. Finally I talked him out of it and he came back up to the apartment and went to bed.

I'm sick of this. I'm totally sick of having to walk on eggshells all the time for fear of hurting his poor little feelings. I wish he'd just grow some balls and act like a man, not some whiney little boy. I'm not saying I think he shouldn't be able to express how he feels or cry or any of that, but I have thicker skin than he does. Every. Little. Thing. hurts him or upsets him. He won't stand up for himself at work or to people that overstep their boundries, he won't do anything except mope about it. I just can't stand it. As I've probably said before, I tease, I joke around, I sometimes play pranks on people. All harmless. I don't say mean things or belittle him, but somehow he manages to take everything completely wrong. How in the world did he get through school with such an attitude? I mean, he's a bully's dream.

I'm just fed up and I don't know what to do. I've gotten so much better and more easy going since I've been taking my medication, but he still acts like such a baby. How am I supposed to respect him or even want to be around him if all he does is take offense to everything and cry and run away from anything that he doesn't like?

ghaaaaaa... Read more!

Gas

So I know that pretty much everyone in the U.S. is talking about this particular topic. And for good reason: for the amount of money to fill up my tank (a paltry 8 gallons) I can feed myself and my fiance' for the better part of a week. It's pretty sad. I live abouta 25 minute walk to work. So on cooler days I do make the effort and walk, but the problem is that it is only May and already there are days when it hits 100 degrees. I'm pregnant. There's no way I'm going to walk 2 miles there and back in that kind of heat. Even if I wanted to, my mother would probably kill me. As far as Erik is concerned, he works a job that requires one to have a working vehicle and a license. He drives all over town taking care of disabled people, and there's no way either walking or taking the bus he would be able to keep his schedule. So it's kind of hard. On the rare occasions we just want a soda, or a movie or something, we walk because there are plenty of stores within a few blocks of us. But there are people I know who drive half a block to go to the gas station for a soda. Not to mention these same people are the ones that drive giant, road hogging SUVs. I at least drive a nice little sedan that gets about 23-25 miles to the gallon (not the best, I know, but it's older and in dire need of some repairs). I'm just so sick of the prices. I live right next store to a gas station, so I am always aware of how much it costs from day to day. We can barely afford rent or electricity right now. The last thing we need is to be wasting half of our paychecks on gas. We boycotted gas the whole week of May 15. We carpool and give rides to people whenever we can so that we can help lower overall usage as much as we feel we are able. (less than .000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% I'm sure) So what is a person to do? It's not like there's anything we individually can do. I'm sure, as a nation, there is, but without some sort of organized consensus, every few weeks it will go up a few more cents. Until, by the end of the summer it will be up to $5 a gallon or more. $5 a gallon: that's two gallons of milk. That's a movie rental at Blockbuster. You can get a whole value meal at a burger joint for that much. In fact, for $5, you can get a pair of pants or shirt on clearance at Walmart or Ross or the like. That's $20 to fill my tank up halfway. that lasts me for maybe 4 days. Can you imagine? Are we going to let it get to that point? Maybe the problem is that everyone else feels the same way that I do. Maybe we all just feel helpless and don't realize that there's something we could do. I don't know. At this point the only thing I can think of is government restrictions, but that would open up a whole other can of worms I'm not sure I'm ready to contemplate. Read more!

Love and Hate and Everything Else or Relationships and How They Shape Us

I've been reading Thordora's Blog all evening. She talks fearlessly about her battles with bipolar disorder, the loss of her mother, and her struggles with motherhood and life in general. In short, she is my blogging hero. Her blog makes me feel less like a freak. She talks about alot of things I'm afraid to talk about, things I fear and would never have the courage to tell anyone else. In one of her posts she talks about the anniversary of her mother's death, and her desire to make the day a better one for herself. She asked for stories about our own mothers, and it got me thinking about my mom, and what I love and hate about her.

She taught me how to sew and cook delicious meals on a tiny budget, how to clean up after myself (too bad for her it didn't really take effect until I moved out), how to take pride in my work and do the job right the first time. She taught me to take the high road, although it's hard and so much less gratifying at times than giving a jerk their come-uppance. She taught me to question everything and to love books, and is the only person I know who I can have lengthy intelligent conversations about absolutely anything. She taught me so many things as well as allowing me to learn a lot of other things on my own.

I love that my mom has always allowed me to make my own choices, my decisions. I've had friends that she absolutely knew were using me and walking all over me (I unfortunately seem to have a sign on my head saying HUMAN DOORMAT!), but she wisely kept her mouth shut about it. If I asked her what she though about things like this, she let me know how she felt, but she never tried to ban me from seeing anyone or treating any of my friends like anything less than respectable, decent human beings (although I can definately say that some of them were pretty much the equivalent of human garbage).

She also never tried to rescue me from my mistakes. At the time I hated her for it and wondered why I always had to suffer the consequences when so many of my friends got off scot-free. Especially the time I got put on probation for a dumping this gloopy mix of ketchup, mud, mayo, beer (don't ask me how we got that one) and various other random fluids on a neighborhood kid who wouldn't stop bother me and my friends. They both managed to avoid probation: one moved to Arizona to stay with her rich grandfather for the summer, and the other got placed in a foster home because it was discovered that her mother was on some serious drugs and left her 5 kids home alone for days or even weeks on end with no food or money to buy any. Granted, in retrospect, I realize that being placed in foster care was possibly worse than probation, but it irritated me to no end that they got away with it, when it was their plan and I just happened to be present, and I got in trouble for something I still consider to be absurdly asinine. Many other times I had to take responsiblity for myself when I didn't want to, but now I'm glad that she didn't rescue me from everything. Many of those kids who I would use as examples when I tried to explain to my mother why she should let me get away with things have grown up to be sad and pathetic, turning to drugs and doing a lot of really stupid things. They can't function without someone to rescue them from themselves and manage every aspect of their lives.

On the other side of the coin, my mom was often very distant growing up and when things got to be too much she would run from me and my brothers and hide in her room. I used to think she was weak and couldn't handle anything and it made me furious. I swore I wouldn't be like her and run from my problems. I understand now that this came from very severe unmanaged depression and being overwhelmed by four small children clamoring for her every moment of the day. She would hide because she was literally afraid of hurting us or herself, but to this day I go into a rage when someone walks away from me when I'm talking to them. She tells me she feels guilty for this, and fears that her distance when my brothers and I were young caused us to have attachment problems and abandonment issues. I have a really hard time getting close to people, both emotionally and physically, and my brother Sam is incredibly clingy for a 16 year old. (I can't speak for my other 2 brothers, they live with my dad and I see them very rarely)

Because of her running away whenever things got tough, it's now very hard for me to deal with someone walking off from me in an argument or discussion. Erik has the habit of running from a situation whenever he gets overwhelmed, much like my mom, and all I want to do is tie him to a tree and force him to listen. It got to the point for a while where I would chase him down and scream at him for ignoring me, because that's what it feels like: I feel like I'm being abandoned, like my thoughts and feelings are unimportant and invalid. I'm trying to get over this, and the last few times he's done it I just told him he was being completely juvenile and that he could go throw his tantrum somewhere else if he liked, but it wasn't worth my time and effort to chase him down. This is especially difficult because he's so incredibly sensitive that he constantly takes things the wrong way and assumes I'm insinuating he's a moron or something. When he comes back I explain to him what point I was trying to get across and remind him that if he would just tell me what he doesn't understand or what's bothering him, we could discuss it and not have anyone walking around with a bruised ego. But of course he forgets by the next time I manage to offend him, and it happens all over again. I told him today he's going to have a small child to deal with one day not too far away, and that no matter what the kid says or does he can't just walk away. I have no idea whether he really understood that concept or not.

I wonder though, if my mom had been different, and didn't run away, how I would handle this. To be honest, I can't really even come up with what she could have done as an alternative. It's just the way it always was, infuriating though it may have been. I try to think how I can react to this kind of situation, and it leaves me equally at a loss. My only option is to try and ignore it when it happens and give her or Erik or whoever else does it their space, but it's So. Incredibly. Maddening.

I wonder how life would be if things were different-- if she didn't have depression (and consequently, if I didn't have it), if she had been more controlling when it came to my choice in friends, if she had bothered to give me a curfew instead of trusting my judgement as to an appropriate time to come home, if she had made me work harder at school when I was being rebellious and slacking off. A thousand if's with a thousand possibilities. There are times when I hate her and can't understand how she can possibly reason with herself that she is doing the right thing, and I tell her how disappointed I am and how angry I am that she thinks that she's doing the right thing. But at the end of the day, I always call her again and tell her all the silly or interesting things that happened to me. I am glad she's my mom and that despite her failings, she's still the only mom I would ever want. Read more!

Roommate Troubles, Part II

Finally! He's gone! Yay! *dances around and throws confetti in the air* Erik and I were terribly pleased to discover that Rob left for Maryland this morning.

Unfortunately, last night he came by and picked up the last of his things. While he was here, he and his little slut of a girlfriend vandalized my car last night before he left. They slashed my passenger side rear tire, and poured baby powder down into the a/c vents. Jerk. If he was going to slash the tire, he could of at least slashed on of the front ones because those are in desperate need of replacement anyway. We had to borrow some money from Erik's dad to replace the tire (but he's actually giving us enough to replace all four, which is fantastic because they're really really really needing replacement).Also, we tried to clean the baby powder out of the vents, but it pretty much just made a huge mess and the whole car was just rank with the scent of baby powder. not that baby powder is that bad of a smell, but it's completely overpowering. What a completely worthless jerk. I'll get my revenge though. Buddy boy is going to get taken to small claims court over the repair costs and the PG&E and AT&T bills he never paid for. And since he will be in maryland, he obviously isn't going to show up for the court date. If he doesn't show up, he forfeits and we automatically win! At which point they can attach his wages. Muhaha. Although that doesn't do anything to get Crystal in trouble. I have half a mind to buy a thing of baby powder and find out when she works and go in and dump it on her, and then ask her if she likes it. Granted then we might get banned from Winco forever, but that just might be worth it. I probably won't, but it sure would be absolutely hilarious if i did though. Read more!

Bloop!

Recently I've begun feeling the baby kick. I've been feeling it the last few weeks, actually, but until about this week I wasn't really sure whether it was the baby our just random bubbles in my tummy. Well, I now am pretty certain that it is the baby. And boy, does it feel weird! The only way to describe what it feels like is that it feels like "bloops". They even make that sound when the midwife takes his heartbeat, you can hear him kicking and it like "bloop" "bloo-whoop". :) Yesterday I really really had to go to the restroom, and our roommate and his girlfriend were in the shower. I didn't want to wait another half an hour, so Kire and I went down the street to Safeway, as we needed to get some things from the store anyway. As we were sitting at the stop light, the baby was doing what felt like tae-bo on my bladder while Erik was sitting in the passenger seat fidgeting and shaking the whole car. Finally, I yelled "Stop it, both of you!" It was pretty funny to see the look on Erik's face, because obviously he didn't know who "both of you" was.

The funny thing is, I'm 23 weeks and I still don't wear maternity clothes. It might have to do with the fact that I never seem to have enough money to go out and buy new clothes, but also, other than a few pairs of pants, I don't need them yet. You wouldn't know I was pregnant unless I told you. Also, most of my favorite shirts are in the longer style anyway, so I haven't needed to buy any maternity shirts. I guess that's a good thing, but I wonder how long it will last. Read more!

Dramatic Bulls---

So today I took care of my correction ticket. $20 and I was out the door. We tried to take care of Erik's correction ticket, but because we got the car insurance at like1:00, and the ticket was written at 10:00, apparently now we have to pay some rediculous $224 fine. Uh, no. Sorry, not happening. Erik, of course, freaked out and when I tried to tell him to calm down and forget about it, we would take care of it another day, decided to play his stupid fricking theatrics and jump out of the car while it was moving. That pisses me off. It really, really pisses me off. The only other thing that pisses me off nearly as much is when he pulls his other little dramatic stunts and ignores me because he says that he thinks that if he doesn't say anything, he can't piss me off. How incredibly stupid. Every time he does it I want to rip his face off. I've told him time and time again that I don't care what he says, there are only 2 sure ways to make me really frinking angry: ignore me or jump out of the moving car. Not to mention that every time he pulls that little stunt, he ends up damaging the door because the inside is loose from the outside, and it makes it so you can't open the door because the inside is stuck on the latch. I don't treat his things like that, but I swear, the next time he does it I'm going to start breaking strings on his guitar. Fixable, sure. But also incredibly disrespectful. Which is exactly what he's doing to me. Also, the next time he pulls that little bit of drama, I'm going to call the cops and tell them he's suicidal. Obviously he must be if he thinks that jumping out of a moving car is a good idea. And then he tells me that the reason he did that was because he didn't want to start a fight. WTF????? Yeah, that makes about as much sense as a fundamental christian defending abortion. Sorry, that doesn't happen. We weren't fighting in the first place. He was throwing a hissy fit about something that we couldn't do a damn thing about today, and then he acting like a child by giving me the silent treatment because he was mad for me telling him not to worry so much. Literally. I said "You need to stop worrying so much. You're freaking out and it's stressing me out." So buddy boy thinks that that is a viable reason to give all of Mangrove Ave. a street performance. Not to mention when he did that I nearly got rear ended because I slammed on my brakes for fear that he would get hurt. Some days I just want to strangle him. Sometimes I wish I was dating a guy who actually had a normal level of intelligence. Erik never thinks about anything. He never has any plans. He never thinks about the consequences of his actions. His one goal in life is to get by with as little effort as possible. He's so incredibly mentally lazy. It's not that he's not capable of thinking, it's that he doesn't feel like it. It's such a waste. Read more!

Roommate Troubles

Maybe it's because I spend a large amount of my time reading articles regarding very small children, but I can't help but think that our roommate is nothing but an overgrown toddler. He's acting like the biggest a'hole I've ever had the misfortune of spending any copious amount of time with. First, he just in general started acting like a jerk. Then he'd throw a huge tantrum when we would ask him *nicely* to clean up after himself or refrain from making a mess in the kitchen that I had just spend about 2 hours cleaning from top to bottom. This of course included calling Erik and I "hypocrites" and "slobs" because we never do anything around here. Which, if you ever saw my house, you would know that is absolutely untrue; as my house is always clean and usually totally immaculate. Then he had the gall to put me down because I am getting a job at Taco Bell. I could care less that it's fast food. It's a paycheck, and right now that is the only thing job-wise I am worried about. The funny thing is that I'm going to probably start out making at least fifty cents an hour more than him and he works at a gas station. As if buddy-boy has any room to talk. Then we were recieving notices from the phone company threating to shut off our phone service if we didn't pay the bill (which, by the way, we were late on because we were waiting on a payment from Rob) so Erik decided to just pay the whole thing on his own and have Rob pay him back. Now, we were essentially broke to begin with, and after that we were completely broke. So we ended up running out of food, at which point we asked Rob again, *nicely* (believe me, Erik is pretty much incapable of being rude or demanding to anyone. He's such a pacifist that it drives me insane sometimes) and even told him we needed the money to buy food. Rob threw a sh't-fit and started calling Erik names and again putting us down for the jobs we held and all that. Now keep in mind that Rob knows I am pregnant and that I can't just skip meals. So this went on for the past 5 days, where each day Erik would nicely ask Rob to pay for at least part of the money he owed and each day Rob would act like a little b'tch and call Erik names and such. Finally, we were forced to ask our relatives if they could help us out, and Erik's mom, Francis was really nice and went out and bought us $125 worth of groceries (about 2 weeks worth). Thank God for caring relatives. After all this, we decided that we'd had enough, and so we stopped allowing Rob to use the phone. His girlfriend (who, by the way, is a complete idiot and a loudmouth who constantly overstays her welcome and eats all our food, leaves a mess for us to clean up, and uses our things without asking) called asking for him and we explained that since he refused to pay his bill, he was no longer allowed to use the phone, and so she told me to f' off and hung up. Lovely, really. So I blocked her phone number. It's not likely that Rob is going to pay his bill before he leaves in a few weeks anyway, and I don't want to hear her loud mouth anyways. Then, this morning, he went to make coffee while I was in the kitchen putting away the dishes, and I politely told him he wasn't allowed to use my coffeepot anymore. Then I said, "If you're gonna be an a'hole to me, then I can be just as big an a'hole right back." Well, of course he threw a fit over that one, grabbed the pot part of the coffeemaker and ran out of the room. He held it over his head like he was going to throw it and I said "So you're going to break it now, are you? Real mature, Rob. Real f'ing mature." So he gave me a dirty look and tossed it on the ground. Needless to say, I moved the coffeepot to our room for the time being. I'm just sick of this crap. We let him stay with us because he had nowhere to go and I was trying to help out a friend. As usual, that backfired. Everytime I try and help someone out, I get screwed over. No more. I'm not ever going to have a roommate again. I'd rather live on the street than live with another self centered asshole. But thankfully he'll be gone soon. Not soon enough, but soon. Read more!

Baby's Room

I came up with the greatest idea for how to decorate the baby's room. I've never really liked all the baby decor with pastel cartoon animals or everything in baby blue or baby pink or whatever, and last night I came up with this awesome idea on how to decorate the baby's room uniquely as well as pretty cheaply. I'm going to buy a bunch of bandanas in bright green, black, and white, and on one wall cover the whole wall in a checkerboard pattern with the black and white bandanas. Then I'll find some cheap furniture, i.e. dresser, chest, etc. and paint them in corresponding colors and use a stencil to make little paisleys all over them. I think it will look so awesome. Not to mention it won't look "babyish" so we won't have to drastically change the room decor until he gets much older. Read more!