Where has the time about to go?

I wonder sometimes what the girls will think of me, as a person.

These are the things that pop into my head at nearly 6AM and the sky is still black.

Like: will they heed the warning of my life and study harder in college so they won’t end up in the same predicament?  (going to college until the age of 31 just for a BA)?

Or: will they think ‘Mom screwed off for a few years and she ended up okay’?

Because some days, I don’t feel okay.  Some days, I feel like I got run over by a truck.  And tonight, I think I have the joints of an 80-year-old ex-football player.

This morning, I look around at all the Christmas toys, and I’m thankful that I haven’t had school for a few weeks so I had time to enjoy playing with the girls and watching them turn the livingroom into Hello Kitty legoland.  And watching Emma carry around that blasted iPod (read: $20 Best Buy special Sansa) so she can dance in every room and shout: GIRLS!  Look at my dance moves!!!

Because good GOD that girl needs some dance lessons.

(But at least it’s good entertainment.)

I call her Elaine, Jr.

It seems like – for the last few months – the girls have had to fight my homework for my attention.  I’m sure people think I’m a cold-hearted, self-centered bitch who doesn’t care that they miss me, but it hurts me to constantly have to tell them to occupy themselves elsewhere as I study.

It especially hurts when the girls ask: Do you have homework tonight? and I respond with a NO and get a celebration dance involving jumping and prancing.

Because I know that my school starts up again very soon.

In less than two weeks.

And the girls go back in less than one.

Am I ready for this?

And wasn’t I just complaining that Winter Break was sooooo long that it shouldn’t be called a “break”?

What was wrong with me???

PJs all day, dancing to the Wii, coloring life-sized cutouts, watching Cars 2…

If I had any sense at all, I’d spend the next six days showing the girls that I haven’t forgotten how to be fun.

HULK drink wine!

Is it really 4 days until Christmas?

Can I get a resounding Fuuuuck?

That’s my favorite word lately.  Very festive.  I almost care.

Like when I realized that someone had broken into my Suburban last night and ransacked through my receipts only to leave my Kohl’s cash on the seat because it was expired.  I would have laughed if they’d taken it.

I forgot to tell Mike until he walked back from his truck and said, Weird… my tools were pulled out from under my seat.

Ha, oh yeah, I forgot to mention that someone tried to rob (or is it burgle?) our vehicles.  Oops.  I guess it was low on my I give a shit list this week.  They can have my quarters and bags of dry cereal if they really want them.  Turns out they were only looking for electronics.

It doesn’t even feel like Christmas is in less than a week.  There’s no snow on the ground and I’ve been way too stressed about getting my degree audits straightened out that I’ve been forgetting important things like picking up wrapping paper when I’m by myself at the store.  Luckily, my kids are extremely gullible.

Girls, why don’t you each pick out wrapping paper and we’ll leave it by the tree for Santa’s elves to pick up.

YAY!!!!

My sister was so mad at me about that one.

I’ve also been drinking significantly more wine and fantasizing about “Going Rogue” on the Registrar’s desk knick knacks if she tells me I’m missing yet another 3 credit hours (for my minor this time… because Social Psychology is listed under Social Science instead of Psychology).

HULK ANGRY!  GRAAARRRRHHHHH!!!!  HULK SMASH!!!!

And then I laugh hysterically to myself.

That poor woman.  And she signs off every email with a smiley face because she can sense – from my increasingly agitated responses – that I’m somewhat emotionally unstable.

Even Mike is wary.

Mike, I love you so much.  So so sososo much…. sometimes I just wanna smother the love out of your face with a pillow until you stop kicking.

Which might be why he stayed up until 5 in the morning last night and finished off a family-reunion-sized bottle of red wine and is currently snoring in bed.

I can’t bring myself to do anything this morning since I’m still recovering from our shopping extravaganza yesterday.  At 8:30, we dragged our beaten carcasses (kids and all) into the Suburban and Mike cheerily proclaimed:

“On to Target, and then we can go home!”

I’m pretty sure people thought I was drunk when I staggered down the toy aisle from exhaustion.  I barely had enough energy to glare at Mike when he turned to me and asked, Do we even need anything from here?

No, fucker.  That’s why I groaned when you pulled into the parking lot.  And your child with the pink eye-slash-strep is crying and wants to go to bed.

But I’m so glad we found a way to spend $100, and I’m not even sure on what.

Fa la la la la… la la la fuck.

I was so tired that I bought a snow globe last night, even though I swore, after Emma's snow globe leg gash sans-insurance incident that I will never ever recover from emotionally, that we would never let another glass death ornament into our home.

My sister told me this morning: The gifts aren’t the most important thing about Christmas.

She’s right.

It’s how much pain and suffering went into ACQUIRING said Christmas gifts.

And if that’s the case, I am to painful gift-giving what Tiger Woods is to extramarital sex.

There’s enough to go around for everybody.

The end is near

Next week is Finals Week.

Or more accurately for me: Finals Monday.

But I’m not stressing about it.  Nope.

Not when I went to the Federal Courthouse to view proceedings for class and by the time I got there they’d decided to “close” them so I had to twiddle my thumbs (aka: chat with security about his woodworking hobby) for four hours until the next one.

Not even when I had to spend a timesuck lovely evening at the girls’ winter recital last night so I could see my kids sing for 45 seconds.

Or when I nearly OD’d on caffeine yesterday and got the shakes so bad I couldn’t type (and had to pick up a nasty coffee just to stay awake once I started to crash).

OR when I had to wake up at 4AM this morning to work on homework.

Nope… smooth sailing.

BUT…

I have to admit my blood pressure DID rise a few notches after going through Christmas Card Picture Taking Hell.

Really, girls???

All of you parents of many small children know EXACTLY to what I’m referring.

I spent about $200 on card-making supplies, so come hell or high water, you WILL be getting your G. D. Christmas cards this year.  There were many tears spilled during the picture process, mine and the kids’.  We WILL be sharing that special moment with friends and family.

I can hear my husband cackling at the bags of last year’s cards, signed and sealed, still hanging out in one of our craft bins…

My snowman is tipping over in my front yard like he’s been into the Manischewitz, Mike’s closet is so full of presents that I’ve forgotten what I need to get (or STOP getting…), I’m washing underpants on a daily, as-needed basis, AND my mom was so worried I was starving my husband from neglect this week that she sent home a huge pan full of tuna casserole.  Ick.

I’d start the countdown to the end of the semester, but I’ve forgotten what day of the week it is today.

It doesn’t help that the little neighbor boy I watched for a few hours kept referring to Thursday as “Humpday.”

(Which is especially funny since I know the neighbors well enough to know it could be either “hump.”)

It’s kind of like MY children exclaiming that the Happy Meal Auntie Stuffie bought them (with a Puss in Boots toy) “smells like Puss.”

Yikes.

Of course it was a few chuckles later that I intervened.  No, no, nonono… it’s NOT “puss.”  His name is Puss in Boots.  You have to say his whole name.

Sweet Jeebus.

But I’m getting sidetracked now, and I obviously don’t have time for edits.

I guess what I’m saying in this rambling mess is that I’m slightly more scatterbrained than normal, but it will end soon.

Only to be resumed in January.

I can’t wait.

My birthday jersey

The guy who sits next to me four days a week in Research Torture asked me if I could come visit with Miss Iowa this morning and donate a pint of blood while there.  His frat was putting on a blood drive.

But then I remembered I was sick.

And that I’d planned on getting just a tiny bit drunk on margaritas with my sister for my birthday later that afternoon.

So I figured giving blood would be the third strike.

At that point, I’d have been better off lying down mid-interstate and save Mike the car insurance paperwork.

Although he DID say there was a free t-shirt in it for me.  I spent at least two minutes fantasizing over all the reasons I could tell Mike on how I got ahold of a fraternity shirt.

But then I was informed that it was a Red Cross shirt, and I decided to postpone until I felt better and/or less like drinking at 2 in the afternoon.

And because we’re all friends, I deserved that alcohol.  I’m dealing with an angry uterus, and I’m doing my best to thoroughly piss it off while I can.

On a completely unrelated side note, I woke up this morning just before 1 AM.  While leaving through the front door.  Where am I going? is not a good question to have to ask yourself when standing with the door wide open and the –100* wind chapping your eyeballs.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever met me (hi.) but I don’t make a big deal about my birthday or getting older.

While shopping with Stephie the other day, she realized my birthday was coming up.  I’d forgotten momentarily.

Oh yeah, I guess that’d be on… Wednesday?

If it was ME, you would’ve started telling people four weeks ago already.  ‘It’s my birthday in a few weeks… don’t forget!’

So it’s not a huge deal that Mike isn’t a big gift person.

It might stem back to the time we were broke and in college and he bought me $400 worth of presents, including a fancy-shmancy leather laptop carrying case…

…and we didn’t own a laptop.

I thanked him and apologetically asked him to return them, knowing that I was about to seal my gift-receiving fate, possibly for eternity.

I was right, but it only last a decade.

Last night, he was so excited about my birthday that he dragged his gym bag up from the basement and had the girls hand me – with my eyes closed – handfuls of stainless kitchen serving and cooking utensils.  He looked like a little kid on Christmas.   I think I’m more excited about your presents than YOU are.

And that was saying something.  I was purty excited.  Hell, my first presents for birthday, anniversary, Christmas, for about a billion years!  I was beaming.  Plus I’d wanted utensils since last Christmas when I surprised my mom with a set that she desperately needed.

Then came the mixing bowls that I’d looked at a few months ago.

He made me wait for the last present today…

At the risk of sounding crude, I just about shat myself when I saw the jersey.  (For those of you who are following along from another country or a part of the United States that doesn’t have teeth televised football, that is a throwback Donald Driver jersey.  Um, yeah.  My last jersey was Sterling Sharpe.  Mid-90s.)

I think Mike should wear his Witten jersey and I’ll wear my Driver jersey and we can recreate the NFC Championship game.  I can win it, as long as he doesn’t pull a Slow Motion Trainwreck on me.  Those are the worst.

So it was altogether a pretty good day.

I’m trying to enjoy it while I can, especially if I’m only this spoiled once a decade.

*Sigh*

Time to go back to homework.  I’ve got a mini visitor coming in the morning and a court case to view while the kids are in school.

I can explain the degree fiasco on another day…