Carnivals and coffee!

She did it again!
That silly woman over at TherExtras let me into another one of her Blog Carnivals.
Still no cotton candy... Barbara, are you listening?????

Anyway, Barbara is awesome. She's a therapist, who should probably have a newly founded credential, because she does it all- PT, OT, and although she probably doesn't realize it- SW. And she's smart. And opinionated. And a mom. All wrapped up into a crispy tempura...oh wait- that was my lunch.

I know doods, she totally let me in on her own accord.
I didn't have to buy a ticket or anything.

The topic of the Carnival is Childhood Expressions. So I am reposting two submissions of stuff my kid says that make my face squish up all funny, then I "get it".

New Math
Jaysen: "Let Rylan come out and play with us!"
Me: "No...he just had a bath, and I don't want him to get all dirty. Plus, it's his bedtime."
Jaysen: "Equals what?"
Me: ...huh?
Jaysen: "Equals what?"

Plus it's his bedtime. Got it.


The Case of the Mysterious Thumb-Foot
Jaysen has a hangnail on his big toe. He won't let me try to "get" it, for fear it will hurt worse, so for the last three days, he has been through a battalion of Spongebob band-aids. This morning, he was awkwardly bent over his foot.

"Jaysen, what are you doing?"
"I'm putting Spongebob on my thumb-foot."
His thumb-foot? Ah... I got it.

If you want to read more about the crazy stuff that comes out of my kid's mouth, click the "Jaysen-ish" link on my sidebar.

Be sure to stop by TherExtras and say hi to Barbara!
Tell her mommy~dearest sent you! I hear she has some new tattoos!
Oh wait, that's a rumor I made up about her. Okay, forget the tattoo.
Touche Barbara! Love you and have a great carnival!

I??? Am totally laying off the coffee now...

Honest Scrap Award

Mom2spiritedboy at Spirited Blessings tagged me for this award- thank you, thank you, thank you! At least someone still loves me...

I present you with... oh wait. I need to post Teh Rulz first. *sigh* alright.

1- Brag about the award.
2- Include the name of the blogger who gave you the award and link back to that blogger.
3- Choose a selection of blogs that you find brilliant in honest content.
4- Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with this award.
5- List at least 10 honest things about yourself.

Got it? Let's proceed.

10 honest things about me. Well, I'm going to bite on mom2spirited boy and list 10 random (but honest) things.

1- I became peeved that I couldn't just copy and paste Teh Rulz from mom2spiritedboy's blog. I had to actually type them out.

2- I am a natural born cynic (hey- the world needs us too!). Which also makes me a great "devil's advocate" to bounce stuff off of.

3- When I was about 2 or 3 years old, I was pretending to be a surgeon, so I stuck a pair of tweezers into an electrical outlet. Big *boom*, burned my hands- parents had to call the fire dept and everything.

4- I have a love for books. Like serious love for books. I will probably never own a Kindle because part of the whole reading experience for me, is the feel of the book itself.

5- Although I make up my own funkilated words and end sentences in prepositions, I really am a spelling and grammar junkie. It irritates the hell out of me when I see things like "alot" and "could of". In 6th grade, I won the school spelling bee, beating out the 7th and 8th graders. I went on to the State spelling bee, where I lost out to the word "afoul".

6- I have an extreme fear of public speaking. Extreme. Think social phobia. Which is one reason I lost out on the word "afoul". I took a college class in Sign Language when I was in high school- I skipped the final exam because we had to Sign in front of the class.

7- I tend to get into craptastic relationships because I have the bird with the broken wing syndrome.

8- I originally wanted to be a veterinarian. Somewhere down the road, I switched to wanting to be a speech pathologist. I started college with an OT major, toyed with the idea of switching to Linguistics, and eventually graduated with a Bachelors in Sign Language Studies. I wish I would have taken the chance on linguistics, although my dream job would be as an advocate.

9- If I have a semi-full bladder, I pee when I sneeze. Thanks, Rylan.

10- I busted out my 2 front teeth in high school, trying to show off my diving skills. Smacked my face on the bottom of the swimming pool. Was mortified. They're bonded, but I still can't drink red wine or bite into an apple.

11- I have 6 tattoos and 10 piercings. I married my tattoo artist (Jaysen's father) he got me into doing body piercings. I was a professional piercer for almost 10 years. I wished I could have done it full time, but there's no insurance.

12- I'm adopted, and I'm proud of it. I have the most wonderful parents. Love you Moppi and Peepa! It does irritate me when people ask me who my parents are after I've told them Moppi and Peepa, and they say real slowly "nooo... your real parents", or argue with me that my sister is actually my "step" sister. Um...no...you're just a moron.

13- My favorite number is 13.

So there you go. Sorry they're not as interesting as maybe you were expecting, but I'm really quite boring. Just apparently did a lot of stupid shiz in high school. Haha.

And... I tag...

YOU!

There is no word for just how nasty THAT is...

I have to share.
My sister has had a sinus infection, and just finished her antibiotics.
She just emailed me, wanting to know if she should go back to the doctor because of what she blew out of her nose.

Her email subject line was: What is this?

I hid it behind a link just because OMG.
Nasty Shit Outta Sissy's Nose

Try it. You'll like it. Or barf.
Either way... yes Sissy.
Call the doctor- and let them know you just blew 10 I.Q. points into a kleenex.

Not all suckage is bad.

I cannot lie. I am loving my time off from work. Loving it like I-need-to-find-a-rich-husband-so-I-can-be-a-SAHM kind of loving it. I've gotten to see both boy's swim classes, Rylan's music class, been available for Jaysen's school needs, and even gotten to nap. Nap! I know! So please pardon that I've been missing in action, but I've really just been focusing on...me. Enjoying myself (even though I was healing from surgery), and also doing a lot of introspection.
Snapping back to reality, I go back to work on Friday.

And I quit smoking. Again. Which sucks.
I figured now would be a good time, since I was at home on painkillers, and could just sleep when I wanted one- which is exactly what I did. It's funny though- I don't know my actual quit date, since I was so out of it. Whatever. It still sucks.

But here's something that doesn't suck...

Rylan's 3 and a half. He still has a pacifier. His "paci". He really only uses it at home while relaxing or sleeping, but when I say he uses it, he really uses it. That kid sucks on that paci harder than... well, you get the idea.

So it's time to rid him of the paci.

We decided to have a Paci Party. I got decorations and a cake, Moppi and Peepa brought in a wonderful dinner. After dinner, we helped Rylan put all of his pacis into a big manila envelope. he said he wanted to send them into outer space, so I addressed the envelope accordingly. We tied the last paci onto the string of a balloon.

After cake, we all went outside and Rylan put the package into the mailbox. Then he released the balloon and we watched as his last paci floated up, up, up, up... and got stuck in our neighbor's tree. Oh yes- stuck in the damn tree. Luckily, the tree was so high, only the adults realized what happened. As long as the kids don't look too far up, it'll be okay.

He's had a rough couple nights, but it's getting better.
I totally know the withdrawal he's going through.
We're detoxing together.
Now that's love.


The preparation:



Into the mailbox it goes:


The send off:

Running for the paci- second thought anxiety?

Oh shit...

So yay for Ry going to bed commando with no pacifier!

And yay for me for my um-teenth day of not smoking!

So now if you'll excuse me, I'll be enjoying my last 4 days of being temporarily unemployed- trying to figure out another surgical procedure to have, just so I can do this again. Except Jaysen is now on Spring Break. Ugh.

Checking in, be back soon!

Surgery went really well.
Recovery's been a bit slower than expected.

Hope to be back soon!

Friends, a uterus, house drama, and strawberries.

Just going to fill in the blanks of what's been going on at Chez Quirk lately-
Already, this has been a year of tremendous ups and downs.

My 2 best friends (only friends?) moved away- one up north, and the other clear across the country. Boo.

Anyone remember my lovely, and by "lovely" I really mean horrifyingly painful ablation experience? Yeah, well I wasn't one of the lucky 80%. So I'm having a hysterectomy (LSH). Next wednesday. Like a few days from now. Unless I'm still sick, because I now have strep. Lovely. Ugh.

Our house is still not even close to being built. Like the builder doesn't even have the permit yet. Ugh. I'm really starting to stress.

But check out my fantastonishing parenting skills-
Jaysen is putting on way too much weight.
He's now "The Jiggly Kid".

No fun.


Most of his crap-eating is at nighttime. I know. Wonderful timing.
So I mad a firm decision to limit him to ONE bedtime snack (90% of the time it's popcorn).
After said snack, he is only allowed something healthy to snack on, and water.


For those new to this blog, it's important to know that Jaysen has some pretty significant food aversions. He is the carbo-kid. Aside from the baby food I forced down his gullet, he has never, and I mean NEVER eaten a vegetable. Raw, cooked, covered in cheese, pureed, pureed and hidden in food, silly shapes, dipped in a variety of sides... I've tried it all. The times I forced- I mean coerced him, he turned red, eyes watered, and gagged. Not the gagging that you get when you brush your teeth, but gagging like holycrap I.Can't.Breathe! type gagging.

On occasion, Jaysen has been able to choke down red grapes and thinly sliced, peeled, apples.

Anyway, back to my evil plan.

The first few nights, he thought this entertaining little game of mine was a challenge of sorts, and actually went along with it. I love that he humors me. After a few nights of this, he was not amused anymore. He would get into bed, and ask for popcorn, cocoa puffs, cheese its, goldfish, or some other previously allowable bedtime snacky-type foods.

Denied.
You get fruit or veggies, and water.

He begrudgingly agreed to apples. Begrudgingly like I was making the poor kid eat sticks and rocks.

I remember back to the time my kid ate Special K red berries cereal. He wouldn't touch the cereal part, but would pick out the freeze dried strawberries. The next day, I was on a freeze dried strawberry hunt. Love you Trader Joe's!

Now, he gets into bed and says, "Can I have strawberries?"
Aaaaaaabsolutely!

Only problem is the damn things are so expensive! I mean seriously, I can only find them at the one store, and they're almost $4 a bag! And he blows through a bag a day.

So yay! He's eating "good foods" at night!

Messing with a good thing.

They're trying to make me crazy.
The school district, that is.
Everything revolves around budgeting.
No money here, no funding there...
What to do...what to do...
Let's mess with the schools!

The voted on proposal that passed, was to close 4 elementary schools (that's 1/3 of our elementary schools), make the remaining elementaries K-4, have 2 middle schools for grades 5-6, and 2 more for 7-8.
Does that make any sense?
Apparently to someone it does.
*sidenote - One of the schools that's closing, is the craptastic school that treated Jaysen horribly, so... Karma, biatches! *

Jaysen has been doing so well this year, comparatively. I mean so well.
He's staying in the Gen.Ed class almost all day, and tolerating it. He has friends. He's even in an after school tutoring program one day a week.
This is the first year he's actually going to school every day without a fight.

The new plan for our schools means:
Jaysen will only have one more year at The Awesome School. And it will be a transition year, so focus will be put on transitioning, not the things he's just started to work on this year, like increasing his workload tolerance and academics. Dammit- he really needs that extra year at this school.

So. One more year at The Awesome School.
Then he'll go to middle school for 5th and 6th grade.
After 6th grade, he'll go to a different middle school for 7th and 8th grade.
Then to high school for 9th-12th.

That's 3 transitions. And I'm talking transitions in only the physical location sense. I'm not even counting the internal transitions of "new school", "new teachers, peers, classwork, routines, etc".
This is going to be hell on a kid who doesn't transition well.
As soon he gets into a routine and settled, he's going to have to completely switch schools again.
Fuk.

I need to get my advocacy cape back on.
I know this sounds bizarre, but I'm not even sure what it is exactly that I'm preparing to advocate for!
Has anyone else run into anything like this?