Warning for Whinage...

Sometimes, I just need to... vent.

I am so tired of being... tired.  I am tired of the cycles of feeling kinda okay, and then feeling like absolute crap.  I am tired of not having the energy to do the things I want to do... or the things I need to do.

I am tired of watching my husband come home, exhausted from a day's work, only to have to take up my share of the workload because I can't do it.

I am tired of the headaches, the joint pain, the muscle weakness, and the overwhelming fatigue.  I am tired of my hair falling out.

I am tired of wishing the rest of it would just fucking fall out already so it would stop making my head hurt.

I am tired of my fingers looking like sausages when they swell.   Of the way my feet ache.

I am tired of being cold all the fucking time because my thyroid is playing dead.

I'm tired of my immune system playing helicopter parent and attacking every single part of me just because it's paranoid and thinks I'm about to get sick.  Or that I'm already sick.

I'm tired of having to say no to my husband and kids when they want to go do something that requires energy that I don't have, because I really, really, really want to go swimming and hiking and climbing and having adventures... but I can't depend on my body because my thyroid is an asshole and my immune system is stupid and...

I'm just tired.

Mostly, I have good days.  And I'm able to be positive and somewhat philosophical about having an autoimmune disease.  I try to look at the positives and try to basically make lemonade out of the lemons life has thrown my way.

But every once in a while, it just... overwhelms me.  There's so much to do.  So much.  Just doing a couple of loads of laundry will sometimes take me all day.  I just swept the dining room and living room and it feels like I've been cleaning the entire house, re-digging the garden, replacing the roof, mowing the lawns, and jogging a marathon right afterwards.

No, seriously, if I'm going to be this tired and sore, I want to have earned it, not just... gotten up out of bed.  If I'm going to hurt this bad, then I figure I should have, oh, I don't know, climbed a mountain.  Or taken on four teams of Navy SEALS in a hand to hand fight and WON.

I know that in a couple of days, I'll feel better and my mood will improve.  But right now?  Life sucks and I just want to curl up somewhere and cry for the next two or three hours.

"Don't stop, tick-tock, sun blows up today..."

Today is officially the start of my kids' summer vacation, since school let out Friday, and... apparently weekends don't count.  At least that's what I've been told.  Repeatedly.

Of course, they're still passed out, and I'm up, because I'm still in "gotta get up and make the lunches and take the kids to school," mode.  And because I know this is the only quiet time I will get today.  Now, a responsible mom would have rousted the younguns out of bed by now and had a variety of projects for them to do, but we already know that's not me, right?

Besides, after the tough year they've both had, they deserve it.  At least for today.

When they were younger, I used to look at summer break with a mix of "Yay vacation!" and "Nooooo... I'll be home alone with them... all day long!!!"  Which I know is probably not an attitude I'm officially supposed to take.  Officially, as a stay-at-home mom, I'm supposed to be all, "Oh, I'm so glad to have them home with me where I can nurture their little hearts and minds and be a mom!!"

Yeah... not so much.  Because you have to understand, I'm essentially raising Calvin and Hobbes.  And those roles are interchangeable, too.  Or you could say I'm raising John Sheppard and Rodney McKay.  Kirk and Spock.  Basically, think of any extremely bright, prone to getting into either excessive trouble or excessive mischief duo you can think of... and that's my kids.  My kids are extremely intelligent, very inventive, and attract trouble like a magnet.  I am barely one step ahead of them, and that margin gets smaller and smaller every day.  Thinking of things to keep the Dynamic Duo occupied, engaged, and happy is a bigger and bigger challenge every single year.  It's crazy.  And I have alternately loved and dreaded it for years.

However, in the last two years, I have met the advent of summer break with a huge sense of relief, especially on the Impossible Son's behalf.  We live in a small town, with a small school district, and good teachers are far and few between.  Inspiring teachers are even rarer.  And while the district has a strict policy about bullying... it isn't consistently enforced, if it is enforced at all.  Only when it's something drastic, or so big that it can't be hidden easily.  Like last year, with the kid who physically attacked my son.  Had he only shoved the Impossible Son, or called him names, the administration of the elementary school he went to last year would have made conciliatory noises at me and promised to "deal" with the boy, talk to him, etc, etc.  But because it was a big issue, where the police had to be called, and because the Husbandly One and I threatened legal action, especially when it was shown that the principal dropped the ball when it came to informing us, AND because there was a threat to younger, smaller children, the bully was isolated from the rest of the school population for about three months and counseled within an inch of his life.  Plus, the principal "retired" shortly after that.

His first year of junior high was a mixed bag.  Great, because he was in band and discovered a whole new group of friends and hey, new school!  And sucky because there's only one junior high in town, and five elementary schools' worth of kids are going there, so... not only are there new friends, but... the old bullies are there, too.  And they didn't wait too long to start in.

Not only that, but he had a teacher bullying him, too.  And when I switched him out of  that class, he waited until the last three weeks of school to tell me that his bullies were in the new class.  So they were in his first, second, and fourth period classes.  Fourth period was gym.

*sigh*

And... the Impossible Son also learned the social implications of hanging out with the Wrong People.   Hanging out with the kids who always got in trouble, who back-talked the teachers, who harassed other kids, meant that when he was being harassed and he appealed for help from the teachers, they weren't as willing to listen to him.  And tended to look the other way.  It also meant that when he found kids whom he shared interests with, kids who liked the same books he did, or read manga, too, they weren't as willing to talk to him because... he hung out with the kids who harassed them for reading or being smart.  And they were afraid of being played.

He also found out what happens when he hangs out with a kid who rubs Mom the wrong way.

Yeesh, that was a tough one!  I don't often go off on a kid, but every once in a great while, one of my kids' friends will send out vibes that grate on my nerves like coarse sand on sunburned skin, and I'll balk at letting them hang out.  And I'm always vindicated later on.  And no, I don't say, "Told you so!" or "I was right!"  I usually hug them and say, "I'm sorry."

Then there's the math issue.  Dear gods, if there is ONE thing about this district that makes me absolutely furious, it is the absolutely SUCK-TASTIC quality of the math education here.  Seriously.  They have absolutely no clue how to teach math here.    Can anyone explain to me how it is possible for my daughter to make 98's, 97's, and 95's in Pre-AP Physics... and 50's, 60's, and 70's in AP Pre-Calculus??  They're using the same math!!!  That's why they're taking them together!!

By the way, the reason she didn't fail completely (she passed with a 78) was because of the math she learned in Physics class.  I kept trying to the Impertinent One into asking Uber-Awesome Physics teacher for help, but she didn't want to overburden him.  Because she wasn't the only one.

And then there was my son, who had an actually semi-competent teacher this year, and when I could convince him to go to tutoring, he raised his grade from 56 to an 88.  Then... he stopped going to tutoring.  And when I got him back, his grade went up, but not as dramatically, and when I asked his teacher about it, she looked at me helplessly and said, "Mrs. J.  there's just so much I can teach him... and so much he doesn't know because... he never learned it."

He never learned it.  Because they didn't teach it to him in elementary school.

And you know, my son isn't alone.  

So, yes, I am relieved that school is over for three months, and I can spend this time again trying to get my son back up to speed.  And trying to make up for the lacks in what passes for an educational system in Texas.  

Ibuprofen, anyone?

I thought it was FRIDAY the thirteenth we were supposed to be wary of...

So far, today sucks.

I knew it was going to suck at 6:05 this morning, which is five minutes after I woke up. I realized it when it dawned on me that no, no one had snuck in during the night and driven a railroad spike through the right side of my head, and no, I wasn't just being horribly uncoordinated and yes, my thought processes were indeed as slow as molasses in January.

I woke up with a friggin' migraine.

Then the Husbandly One, on one of his forays outside, discovered I had a flat tire.

*head-desk*

And just to add to the fun, the Impossible Son's ear was hurting to the point of tears.

I was tempted to tell the Impertinent Daughter that she was absolutely forbidden to have anything wrong with her this morning. But I didn't.

THO aired the tire up enough for me to get Miss Impertinent to school, and then to Expert Tire, which has been our go-to for all things car related for a while. And I was really, really hoping it would be a patch job, not a new tire. And I was also hoping that when I called in to the doctor's office, we could get an early appointment so that Mr. Impossible could go to school afterwards, if he was cleared for it.

Yeah. Right.

There was a screw in the tire, the third they'd seen since 7 a.m. and yes, I viewed that with a rather jaundiced eye. Still, it was in a spot that meant no patch job. How convenient. Hello, new tire.

And the only appointment I could get for Mr. Impossible was 12:45, well after the "if you can get him to school before 10 a.m., he won't be counted absent" cut-off. Yeah, even with a doctor's note, they count your kid absent if you bring him in after 10 a.m. The things that drive me nuts about this district don't even need recounting, do they?

So... I'm sitting here, huddled in front of the computer, wishing I could take something for my head, but I can't because... I need to be able to drive, plus Mr. "I Have A Bottomless Pit For A Stomach" is eating everything in sight, and that makes me want to cry because that usually means he's about to have a growth spurt and we just got him new shorts!!

GAAAAAHH!!!!!

Chocolate. I need lots, and lots, and lots of chocolate. Now. That way, when I wake up from the chocolate induced coma, it will be a whole new day!!

Surprise Butt Grab!! And Other Stories of Jo's Not-So-Good Day...

Okay, I've had some time to decompress a bit, though I am still wired, to the point that I almost cannot sit still.

I had to go to San Marcos today to get a bridal shower gift for my second oldest niece, M. She's getting married in October, and I kind of wasn't looking forward to this trip, not because I'm not excited for her, but because, well... soccer season for the youth league starts tomorrow, there's all sorts of SNAFU's already, the kind that make you want to tear your hair out and yell, "This isn't rocket science, people!!"

I'd already dealt with a couple of phone calls that made me want to find somebody to chop into little bits so I could stomp all over them, so I was already feeling testy and twitchy and just generally very Bear-like.

Definitely should have had a "Beware of Bear" shirt on.

I should probably mention here that she's registered at Target.

So, looking at M's gift registry, I see she wants a pizza pan, and a bunch of other little things that are necessary to the working of the well-stocked kitchen. Our budget is somewhat limited right now, since I over-did it a bit on grocery-shopping, plus, I'm making her earrings, so... "shrugs* I had a kid's gift to get first, then thought I'd start with the pizza pan and work my way through the other things on her registry, already plotting a gift basket to decorate and how to set it up. The pizza pan she wants is on a lower shelf, so I bend my knees and bend over to grab it and make sure I have the right SKU number when... a large pair of hands suddenly grabs my ass and squeezes. TWICE.

Did I mention that my dad was in the Marine Corps, and didn't want his girls to be helpless in a man's world?

It was totally instinctive. I gripped the pizza pan, dropped into a crouch, stepped back and swung up with it as hard as I could, yelling, "HYYAAAAAA!!!" and brained him.

It rang with a solid CLAAAANG!! and knocked him back into the shelves across the aisle. Of course, I was full of adrenaline and totally pissed off, and I shouted, "What the hell do you think you're doing??"

He scrambled to his feet, waving his hands in front of his face with a rapidly swelling lump on his forehead, gave me this totally shit eating grin and said, "Oh, sorry, wrong butt!"

"Yes, it was!" I snarled, raising the pizza pan again. "And if you take one step closer to me, I'll show you just how wrong you were!!"

His eyes got wide and he RAN!! Of course, that might have been because a stocker the size of Montana came running up with a rolling pin in his hands (well, we were in Housewares!) and said, "I saw the whole thing and Security is on the way. Are you all right, Ma'am?"

"No, I'm not, I'm ANGRY!!" I shouted, raising the pan again, though I didn't really notice until he flinched.

When I looked at it, it had a huge dent in it, about the size and shape of my attacker's head. A burly security guy arrived at that point and asked me if I could describe him and I said, "Yes, he's about this tall, and he has a huge lump on his forehead!!" which made them both laugh, and that oddly enough calmed me down. I was shaking at that point, but not because I was scared. Because I was furious! Seriously, did he think I wouldn't react?? Or that I would just squeal and huff indignantly??

Fortunately, I didn't have to pay for the pan. My big, line-backer sized stocker took it away from me and handed me an undamaged one while Mr. Security rattled a description of Mr. Grabby-Hands off on his radio. And another stocker brought me something cool and theoretically soothing to drink without me asking. I say "theoretically" because I suspect it was massively caffeinated. It was sort of brown and frothy with a chocolaty sort of taste, and a little nutmeg, I think, and I was suddenly wired liek whoa!! Seriously, I think I was moving at warp two bazillion sixty after about two sips, and here it is, nearly twelve hours later and I'm still going!!

At least it was free.

They didn't find him, of course. They took my name and number and filed a incident report for their system and asked if they could report it to the local police, just in case, and I said, "Hell yes!!" and I had an escort for the rest of my shopping trip, plus an escort out to my car when I finally said, "I... just can't do this, I want to go home now," just in case Mr. Grabby-Hands was lurking in the parking lot.

I think my dad would have been vastly entertained. Well, pissed, too, because somebody touched his girl, but entertained, because I knocked the snot out of that guy.

Wish I could have kept that pizza pan. It would have made a nice trophy!!

*shakes head*

The rest of the day just went downhill after that.

I SOOOOO need to go to bed. A nice session with the Husbandly One would probably work wonders on my nerves.

I also need to find out what the hell was in that drink!! I'm definitely not allowed to have it again!!

Because sitting on them would only muffle the noise...

Dear Mom,

I just wanted to apologize for being the kind of kid who asked rapid-fire questions almost non-stop, the kind of questions that make a parent stop and go, "Wait, WHAT??" and promptly have an accident in the middle of an intersection.

The fact that Dad never did is either testament to y'all's patience, your skills at distracting me, or his awesomely fast reflexes or superior driving skills.

I haven't either, and I'm not sure why. But I can tell you this...

I now know why female animals sometimes eat their young.

So, I just wanted to say, Mom, I'm sorry, and thank you so much for allowing me to survive long enough to become an adult.

losing her patience one question at a time,

Jo