Just when you thought I might take a vacation

Me: "I was wondering what time you'd like me to bring the girls over for their sleepover."

My mom: "Oh..." Big pause. "You're still planning on going out to dinner?"

"Um, yeah? Why?"

"Well, did Mike talk to you at all about what's happening at the mill?"

Panicking. "Maybe... tell me what you've heard."

"Dad said they're going to shut down the #2 machine for 14 days and the #1 machine for 8."

"Yeah, I heard that they were taking down time, but I didn't know how much." Silence. "I guess I don't have to eat very much..."

- and this is where things turn around -

My father is one of the supervisors at the mill where Mike works. (And no, this is not a case of nepotism.) I immediately called him to confirm that Mike's machine was shutting down for half the month.

"There's nothing to worry about... at least right now." Laughter. "Things change so fast. It's already changed. We're back to only TWO DAYS of down time."

I never thought I'd be relieved to hear that the mill is shutting down for two days.

And yet, here we are, sweaty palms and all.

Perfect time to plan my vacation!

Did I mention the company stock is down from $33/share in March to $5 today? This is when I figure out which body parts I could live without.

Anyone need a surrogate? I have a uterus for rent... eggs optional.

This is why I need a break from my life

There are so many things on my "to do" list that I'm thinking of burning it and starting over.

I know it's a particularly stressful and busy time when I have over $5500 in tax money coming back to me and I haven't found the time to file my taxes.

Do you want to know what's so important that's taking up all my time?

Yesterday, I hanged hooks on the wall where the girls can store their backpacks. Oh, and I made a clothesline display area in their "schoolroom." And then I took time out last night to meet my sister for margaritas and chips and salsa.

All very urgent, I know.

What is wrong with my priorities?!? What happened to me?

I am Miss Efficiency. (Mike is Captain Obvious... we're superheroes.)

I am the one who says, "No, Mike, you cannot make a special trip in town to see if that store is open. They have a phone. Call them."

I am the one who plans our bathroom trips according to shortest walking distance and time spent.

I am the one who gets pissed when Mike buys food and beer from the gas station for ten times the normal retail price when I could buy it at the grocery store just as easily.

I don't spend hours contemplating these things. I've gotten so good at time management that it's become a reflex.

So what is going on here? I've gone completely mental. It's like the time I was pregnant and working at the jewelry store, and I couldn't add up a customer's purchase. I couldn't hit the right numbers no matter how hard I concentrated on them in my head. (Remember that? Remember how completely incompetent I was at the end? The only thing I was good for was for building customer rapport... "Oh, you don't want to buy that diamond tennis bracelet? Well, she's having triplets...")

I digress.

That's how stupid I feel lately. This is why I need a vacation. And I'm taking one. Mike had his turn and wasted it on boobs and beer (although I'm sure that's not a waste in a guy's mind), and I'm going to take my car and DRIVE.

Hopefully I can find my way.

It is, after all, a 4-hour drive to Milwaukee.

I hope my cousins are up for housing their mentally challenged relative because I'm comin'!

Happy Ass Wednesday!

To get Ass Wednesday off to a rip-roarin' start, Emma showcased her talent as only child alive able to use mouthwash, fart and laugh simultaneously.

Google gave me Cancer

I've got some serious dizziness going on tonight. It's so bad that I can't put away the groceries. Every time I bend over and stand up, I lose total balance with my body and go keeling over. I slammed into a wall and got sick, so I finally gave up.

First I thought it was a sinus infection or something easy like that.

But I've been having some other annoying symptoms for weeks...

- nausea with dizziness (ramming into walls is sexy)

- tinnitus

- fatigue

- dime-sized stinky tonsil stones (sexy!)

- difficulty swallowing and a feeling like something is stuck in my throat

- hoarse voice (sometimes sexy)

- severe pain in joints

- heart palpitations

Basically? I'm falling apart.

So I didn't really have all those symptoms in mind went I went onto Google to find out what was ailing me. They just kept popping up like some sick and twisted Cancer checklist.

Apparently it's thyroid cancer, which I hear, according to Google, is the Cancer du jour and best one to have. Boy I'm lucky.

I'm thinking I can Google a medical supply shop, then I can Google how to remove the nodule, and then I can Google a support group for while I'm recovering.

So besides the big C, does anyone have any realistic idea of what the hell is going on? I'm not pregnant - that was proven 1 day early this month - so think again.

Do I have any takers? Sinus infection? Too much of the house wine?

Weirdos!!!

How many of you are stalkers?

Raise your hands, I'm taking a head count.

How many of you are pedophiles? sexual deviants? priests?

I can say that because I was raised Catholic.

I'm just wondering because one of the biggest concerns people have when blogging is how much information to divulge. Should I use real names or fake ones? Give my location or tell everyone I'm Inga from Sweden? Should I use pictures when I'm not too lazy to add them to my posts?

Here's my theory...

I could just as easily get a stalker or weirdo by going to Target - which we do... frequently - as I could by blogging.

So yes, I use our real names. If a person searched hard enough, they could find my full name, maiden name, address, favorite restaurant, cup size, and date of my last period.

It's all out there.

But it's also no secret.

If someone walked up to me at Target, I'd probably share all of that and more because I am shameless.

How many of you are shameless, too?

Anyone? Anyone?

Triumph and tragedy - please read

Michele posted a tragic story today of survival and then loss of a baby. But the story doesn't end there. This family is enduring one of the most horrific rollercoasters I have ever heard of. Please read their story. If nothing else, feel grateful that something like this hasn't happened to one of your loved ones.

The blog is dead

Not really. It's all part of an exercise from Pro Blogger. What would people say about your blog if it died today? Most importantly, what would your blog's obituary say? Let's find out, shall we?

Sweetened Taters

November 2006 - February 2009

On February 20, 2009, Sweetened Taters went back to her maker after a long mental illness. She will be missed - the blog, not the maker - by most all who knew her and read her from time to time, even those weird once-in-a-while pop-ups in Indonesia and Russia. Even those readers who loved to send hate mail and spam would miss Sweetened Taters, as the loss meant they'd have to find another blog to terrorize.

Sweetened Taters was most known for her candidness and frequent use of swear words, as well as an unabashed approach to venting her familial frustrations via the internet. Perhaps the only person who will not miss Sweetened Taters is the maker's husband, Michael, who most certainly received most of those beatings.

A memorial service will not be held because her maker is a cheapass. Suck it up.

Okay, so what do you think?

I'm up for Parent of the Year... in HELL

I just realized this is my 1001st post. What better time to discuss my shortcomings as a parent?

---

We are in February. The girls have been in school since August. (Let me do the math... over 6 months.)

I just realized today that, if you show up to drop your kids off BEFORE 8:29, there is a LINE of cars up to the door.

That would explain all those notes we kept getting talking about waiting your turn in line. I was like, "What line???"

---

Another brilliant move: I was belting out the lyrics to some rock song, and it turns out they actually still *bleep out* offensive lyrics on some station. So when I went to sing the chorus "Space Lord, motherf*cker," even though I turned down my volume knowing that a swear word was coming up, the unexpected bleep out gave my kids: music music music F*CKER music music. Awesome... not.

---

I took the girls to Barnes & Noble yesterday. They were being SO GOOD, holding hands and following behind me. I got some coffee and bought them a cookie, then we went back to the kids' section.

I noticed this older woman reading kids' books and silently watching my kids. Then she made her move - the one where she walks toward me, but I try to ignore that I see her coming, and then I look up, surprised. That one. Anyway, she walks up to me, and she says something I'm expecting: "You probably hear this a lot, but your girls are adorable."

She continues with something I'm not expecting. "I'm a teacher, and I just wanted to say God Bless. Your girls are so well behaved. God Bless, God Bless. Really. God Bless. I try to make it a point to tell parents when I think they're doing a wonderful job, and you seem to really enjoy being these girls' mother."

We spoke for a while. I asked her about her teaching career, and she asked me questions about the girls and our "family history" of multiples (if you have multiples, you know what she was asking). I thanked her and told her it was nice to meet her because truly - it was.

---

I neglected, however, to tell the teacher how, just yesterday, the girls and I went to the Post Office. All three girls had missed their nap, and they were horrid. I put Alison on time out, and she eventually started to cry. Then they kept sitting on the floor and wouldn't stand up when the line moved. Even as I calmly balanced punishing the kids with keeping them happy and taping 500 clothing items in a one foot by four inch box, the other customers were less than pleased.

It is possible that the inside of a Post Office is the least efficient business I have ever seen in action. By the time we reached the desk, it was obvious that I was on the brink of wrapping my kids in stamps and stuffing them into the mailbox..

At that point, I considered it a WIN that at least no one told me they were a former teacher, and they had just called CPS.

---

At the pinnacle of good parenting, the girls and I went to the dentist yesterday. They were wonderful! I was already back getting my teeth cleaned, and the girls were taken in separate areas. I thought things were going SO WELL. And the cleaning was going SO FAST.

Then I was told they had a combined 17 cavities.

You read that right. SEVENTEEN.

I don't deny that they might have one or two each, but SEVENTEEN??? I brush their teeth every day. We don't do lots of juice (we never have). I try to keep sugary stuff to a minimum. I don't GET IT.

Until I started talking to other moms about the use of something I like to call the Magical Tooth Decay Lying Wand. You might not recognize the name, but it's the little light thing that beeps your teeth.

The assistant told me that through the use of the Magical Tooth Decay Lying Wand, they found most of the cavities. And then, even though my insurance pays for them, they decided not to take x-rays. After telling me it would cost me $1480 to fix said cavities (that may or may not even show up on an x-ray).

I asked which cavities were "in dire need." The only one the assistant mentioned was Kristin's which is visible to the naked eye. It is. I looked. Okay... so what about the other SIXTEEN?

I'm torn. These are baby teeth. I've been told (and have read research that says) the Magic Wand can get lots of false positives, and it shouldn't be used as a primary diagnostic tool. Also, teeth with deep crevices - which my kids have - or teeth that aren't completely clean and dry - which could also have been the case - will read as a cavity.

Considering that I already feel a bit like a bad mother, I feel even more so after talking myself out of fixing most of my kids' teeth. Yikes. I said it.

I'll probably take them back for x-rays before I do anything else.

I'm not completely ruthless!

Any dental hygienists reading this? What do you think? I love my dentist, and I don't think the hygienists are trying to screw me, but I think they're using a tool that maybe is skewing the results.

Help!

Oh dear Lord, I married a drama whore

"We might be going... a guy just walked in the bar with a pool cue bag, but I don't think it's a pool cue bag. It's a baseball bat bag. I gotta go."

You know how I know my husband is a drama whore? He's in Milwaukee with three guy friends, getting trashed, and he was on the phone with me ten minutes ago, talking all sorts of drama. He sounded like an 11-year-old girl. The alcohol was forcing liquid lies out of his mouth.

"I paid for dinner at Hooters. Dick and Rick and Slick all thought they paid for it, but I did. I paid for supper. And we're trying to hook Rick up with every girl we see at every bar we've been to. We've only been to Hooters. And this bar. Well, we went to other bars, but they weren't worth a damn."

I apologize ahead of time for any drunk dialing Mike may have done, especially to my cousin Erin. (He told me he's called you twice tonight, and I told him to stop.)

For the record, Mike hasn't gone out in a long time. I just wonder if this is the best venue for him on his virgin voyage. You know, considering that he can't hold his liquor and the last time he was drinking out of town, he tried to get killed by a Chicago cabbie at 3 AM outside of a liquor store. Good times, good times.

At least I'm not there to witness it.

And I told him if he gets arrested, I'm leaving him there.

I called him tonight to see what kind of shape he was in, and to make sure they had someone to take them home who hadn't been drinking.

Where we're at right now: he's drunk, in a bar, wildly imagining that some guy has brought a baseball bat to hit someone with, and he's probably out of money. Next stop? Probably a strip club.

I'll sleep soundly tonight.

There sat a family

A few months ago, even before the girls' self-given hair cuts, we had several incidents with misuse of scissors. One such incident I had forgotten about until recently.

I was rearranging my furniture to prepare for guests, and when I wiped down the table legs in our dining room, I noticed that there were tic marks down two of them, about every 1/2 inch or so. Then I had a flashback to a day I had given the girls some paper and their scissors to keep them busy while I did some stupid task around my house. I found them giggling and snipping the posts, leaving white stripes in the black paint.

Frustrating as this might be, I shrugged it off and learned my lesson (or so I thought!)

When I went to my parents' house today, I saw a poem copied onto a yellow legal sheet and taped to their fridge...

It's just a kitchen table
much the worse for years of wear,
with memories in each scratch and stain
from all that happened there -
the paint that never would come off,
a scissor nick or two,
the dent where something heavy dropped,
a bump of dried-up glue...
the scorch left by a cookie sheet,
the surface worn and faded
where hands were held and elbows propped
and countless stories traded.
It doesn't show the teardrops,
and it has no voice to tell
the secrets shared, the joys revealed,
but those are there as well.
Around that kitchen table,
life was happy and secure,
and my heart will feel that love
as long as memories endure.
- Author unknown

I had always wondered when Mike and I would cave in and refinish the table or buy a replacement. From now on, when I look at our scarred and scratched table, I can smile at how many memories have been made there, and how many more are yet to come... scratches and all!

Happy Valentine's Day, Michael Jackson

This evening, I was staring at the Valentine's Day decorations dangling from our ceiling. I was tired, but still, something looked 'off' and I was trying to figure out what it was.

The girls had cut out huge hearts on white paper and glued bits of red and pink paper to them. Because I am very proud of my little girls, I immediately displayed the decorations right where we could admire them best - above the dining room table.

Unfortunately, my kids' cutting skills aren't so great.

And then it dawned on me... In the dark, it looked as though I had hung three pairs of bright whitey tighties over my dining room table.

Imagine someone looking in through my window to see this:

... and thinking I'm some sort of pedophile pervert!

Could you imagine the hilarity if someone called the cops on me? Hahahaha! (It's only funny because now I have photo evidence that they are, in fact, innocent decorations, not the trophies of a 55-year-old armpit-stained child molester.)

Note to self: teach children how to cut.

Other note to self: buy more caffeine; obviously need more sleep if didn't notice that decorations looked like little boys' underwear.

They're all yours!

It's my belief that the relief a parent feels after dropping children off at preschool rises exponentially with the number of children involved.

I don't want a large Farva, I want a goddamned litre o' cola!*

I must be a child expert. I have people clamouring to have me watch their kids for them. Well, really only one person. And it might be because I'm cheap, easy, and disease free.

Anyway, the girls and I were joined this morning by a young boy in their class. I agreed to watch him while his mom went to work. Not knowing what to expect - not every kid is as trained with safety and kitchen knives - I woke up extra early to make sure the house was clean. Extra early meant 5 o'clock in the AM. You read right. FIVE O'CLOCK. For the person, moi, who routinely goes to bed after 2 AM. Our guest arrived just after 6.

By 10 o'clock I was wishing death upon myself, and by 11 I was 'resting my eyes' for ten second intervals. I was running out of steam. Apparently 3 hours is not enough sleep before watching 3 4-year-olds. By the way, I'm still not completely convinced that I couldn't handle quads, although my resolve has been shaken. You just can't scold someone else's child like you can your own...

While this little boy was sweet and played wonderfully, he withheld my mandatory movie alone time. After ten minutes of Madagascar 2, he wandered up to me: "I don't want to watch a movie."

Well, who do you think you are? Hahahahaha...

So we played with trains instead. That's about as far from surfing the internet as you can get. Well, that, or whittling wood.

The boy and I played with almost every toy the girls own. "What does this do?" "Can we bring the (toy) kitchen out here (livingroom)?" "Moochie (the cat) likes me!"

Like I said, he's adorable, in a completely non-sarcastic way.

I especially loved when I thought he called the fish in "Let's Go Fishin'" - the game where the fish spin in a circle - an obscenity. I thought he said, "Let go, you little f*cker." I just about died! I think I actually guffawed for the second time in my life. At that point, I was in love.

When his mommy came to pick him up, I was only relieved because I was SO ready for a nap.

I won't have to wait long to see him again. He'll be arriving promptly at 6:15 tomorrow morning.

I've got my 2 liter of Pepsi and little fuckin' fish ready to go!

(* By the way, the title is a little "Super Trooper" humor.)

She's a conman, man

I am so angry right now.

Besides some familial issues (which we will just leave to the imagination), I watched the TV interview with the octuplet mom.

I will repost what I posted elsewhere online:

I honestly think they need to bring down the dosage on her happy pills.

To her, everything is just one big blessing. And a half-truth.

(It's not "getting your lips done," it's having a suction cup stapled to your pie hole. She claims that, even though we are not blind and can see her before and after pictures, she did not have her lips worked on. That's just one of many half-truths, but by far the most glaring and sadly hilarious.)

No one is saying to her what needs to be said: you played a gamble with children's lives by knowingly implanting 6 embryos, not just once, but over 8 times!!! She had to know that at some point she would end up with trips, quads, quints or higher. Just like at some point while playing Russian roulette, someone's gonna get the bullet. Oh, but she claims to know the statistic is something like .00000001%. Way to pull that one out of your butt!

She is a LIAR and is DELUDED.

And if I see her PET those kids one more time I'm gonna SCREAM!!! Preemies that small do NOT LIKE TO BE STROKED. They like pressure and containment, but their skin is too sensitive to handle that kind of movement. Did you see the smallest baby squirm and open his mouth when she petted him??? To him, it feels like sandpaper on a wound. They aren't PETS. They are PEOPLE.

Mike and I were both pretty livid about it, and Mike eventually left the room.

She seems to think that because she can hug her kids and love them, that that's a good enough reason to keep having them, even though she admits to having no income and living off her student loans. She says she has never been on welfare. While that's true, she forgets to mention that the $400/month in food stamps she's receiving is from the government. She says that's okay because it's need based. She claims that people are picking on her because she's a single mom. No. People pick on her because she already had a ton of kids who she was not able to support or care for on her own. She is unemployed. If a married couple did the same thing, I'd still be pissed.

And she keeps saying, "I'll be able to afford them once I'm done with school." Then why the hell didn't she wait until after she finished school to have more babies? Or at the very least, use some common sense over the last dozen IVF treatments and limit the number of transfered embryos to 2 or 3?

I wish I could say I feel better, but I'm still pissed. This woman should be locked up.

What they do while they're pretending to sleep

How many boxes of Kleenex does it take to absorb all the water out of a toilet bowl?

Surprisingly, only about one third of one box.

My kids are overachievers. They went ahead and put the whole box in, just to be safe.

Remember yesterday when I said, (oh... where's that quote...)

"... And I haven't stuck my bare arm in a toilet for over a week, so BONUS at that!"

Honeymoon over. Arm in toilet.

I'm incredibly cheap, and until I confront a toilet that can't be unplugged with time, a strong will, a bare arm and a toilet scrubber, I refuse to buy a plunger.

Because this is only a phase.

It has to be.

And that, my friends, is how you get pink eye.

Everything but the kids

It's a pretty sad day when the highlight was getting the cat to use the cat box in the basement. Like I said: sad.

Then again, nothing terrible happened today (*glance at clock to make sure it's after midnight... yep*) so it's a win overall. And I haven't stuck my bare arm in a toilet for over a week, so BONUS at that!

Considering David Letterman hasn't contacted me for rights to my Top Ten List and Oprah still doesn't want to pay me $2 million for my life story, I'd better find more constructive things to do with my time than playing Candy Land and trapping a cat in it's litter box until she poops.

I'm thinking of holding a giant garage sale. I had set up a free forum for people to advertise their stuff, but I was afraid people might think I'm anal retentive. Then I realized, too late! Here she is: Everything but the Kids.

Yeah, I've only got one listing (and it's mine), but it's a start, damnit!

Top ten reasons to LOVE the octuplet mom, Nadya Suleman

10. Tom Cruise now seems mentally well-adjusted.

9. She gives new meaning to the word Octopussy.

8. Bill O'Reilly finally has something to bitch about besides those crazy socialist lefties.

7. Angelina Jolie, in comparison, no longer looks like a blowfish.

6. Oprah will buy her story only to have to recant it six months later.

5. Because, let's face it, people are running out of things to talk about with moms of multiples as they juggle their children in the checkout lane.

4. The Duggars finally have some competition.

3. We'll now be seeing PSAs on "What NOT to do in case of infertility" every 30 minutes on TLC.

2. Rosie O'Donnell is no longer the person voted Last Person On Earth I'd Like to Have as a Mother.

And the #1 reason to love Nadya Suleman...

1. Jon and Kate who?

Laughing hysterically at myself

I have never claimed to be photogenic. But this is outrageous. I am laughing so hard I have tears in my eyes as I go through all these old photos I found tonight. I picked a few to share with you on a timeline of my life. Pay close attention to the clothes...

Here I am in my junior year of high school, sporting my volleyball uniform: a t-shirt and spandex shorts. And yes, those socks are stretched as high as they could get.

Here are a couple pictures from dances. Can you spot me in this first one? (The guy on my back was not my date, for the record.)

This was a really nice guy who knew my friend's family... we were set up as a blind date. He was so nice I had absolutely no physical attraction to him whatsoever. (Sorry, B!) Do you think my outfit could've said "I like you like a brother" any more? Either that or "librarian." Hahahaha...

My friend and I took a break from working at Claire's and went next door to some photo place. We got our pics taken for free since we looked so hawt. GAG! I blame my mother for those stretchy green corduroy pants.

Then Mike came into my life.

And he proposed. While I was at work. In a jewelry store. After he bought the ring on a whim right in front of me. I didn't believe he was actually going through with it until my coworker looked at me (shaking my head and saying, "he's just fucking with you") and looked at him who nodded to swipe the card. This was a picture my coworker took.

Then Mikey went to college and got a little chunky (sorry, monkey). Don't feel too bad for him. He thinned out, and my time was yet to come!

Here I am trying on my wedding dress while drinking.

Getting ready for my bachelorette party.

And here we are all together. This is one of very few pictures I have of us as a family.

This was the summer of 2006. Then I fall off the face of the Earth. I have almost no pictures of me anywhere in my house.

Considering the high quality of pictures in my past, this probably isn't a bad thing.

Please watch this... it will make you happy!

I hate using videos as a post, but this one is so neat! I could watch it 1000 times in a row and still... smile. (Hint: she sleepwalks without leaving the bed.)

I'm becoming my mother

As a child, I grew up on the slow end of a short, go-nowhere road in Northern Wisconsin. Pa-Tray Lane if you care to Google it. I never knew how good we had it. Fabulous neighbors, a peaceful existence, beautiful scenary while close to town... I lived in a fairy tale.

Mind you that this town was a town of under 10,000, and we were very close to most of our neighbors, minus the ones at the curve whose toddlers mooned us and flipped us off. (We swore the mom was a witch... she disappeared in her house as a morbidly obese brunette for almost an entire year and came out super-skinny with coal black hair and high heels. Scary! Anyway...)

I always remember all of our neighbor's houses as being very clean. Not being exposed to anything different made it seem that that was the norm. It was all part of the fairy tale existence.

Somewhere around the age of ten, new neighbors move in. They were nice, but very different from the usual neighbors. I babysat for them infrequently, and when I did, there would be laundry covering the entire kitchen and *stuff* strewn everywhere. The couch had stains and the carpet had food crusted to it. Their kids wore footed pajamas with the feet removed once they outgrew them, turning them into 3/4-length-sleeved capri PJs. It was odd.

My mother, who liked them well enough, made one comment about the state of their house.

One comment.

I've remembered the sentiment my entire life. Having a dirty house is bad. BAD.

As a pre-teen babysitter, I found myself cleaning and folding laundry while the parents were gone and their kids were asleep. I felt horrible that they had to live with their house like that. I would clean so hard that I would fall asleep on their couch.

I guess I didn't consider the source of that comment. My mother had a cleaning obsession. It wasn't a bad obsession - in fact, some of my favorite memories are from the summer weekends we'd spend listening to the Top 40 on the radio with all the windows open while she cleaned.

Even more vivid is the memory of that family. I think of them at least once a week as I look around at my dish-covered countertops or the laundry-covered livingroom floor.

Can you see why I am horrified when people drop by my house unannounced and the place is a mess?!? I've even invented a new practice in my house - the "courtesy call" as people are on their way over. Those last ten minutes are spent scrubbing and vacuuming and dusting and throwing and shutting doors. I vacuum before I take pictures, and I crop out messes in the background. I haven't had neighbors over to my house in months because it takes too much energy to keep my house clean. Not to mention my biggest fear of becoming nose-deaf to my house... does it smell good? does it stink?

It allows me some dignity to have at least an outwardly clean home. I don't care if I have a room with paperwork stashed on every flat surface, as long as you don't see it.

I've spent the last two days cleaning my house. My goal is to get to some sort of "finished product," something my home has never been. Am I delusional? (That's rhetorical.) I really don't care if I am.

My mother set the standard so high, it's damn near impossible to meet it.

I just don't want some mother ten years from now thinking of my house as she looks at her own messy life.