It's Iditarod and birthday season

Wine?
Check.
Crappy show on TV?
Check.
Time to blog.

Crazy times in our world.  Evie turns two on Sunday.  And while that means a whole host of things to me on an emotional level, it means even more to me on a "bug the shit out of me" level.  Cause now I have to decorate and plan and purchase and wrap and hide and create happy.  And that sucks.  We took the easy road with Evie this year.  I bought a bunch of crack head Elmo shit to send to daycare and let them do the dirty work.  Fortunately I dropped the pinata, cupcakes, ice cream, party favors, bags, hats, napkins, plates and table cover off the night before.  Layla decided to get sick.  Like, puking on the floor sick, so her and I loaded Evie into the car and dropped her to birthday heaven.  And turned around to take the sick one home.    Unfortunately for all of us, Mike was sent to Elba's for picture duty and observed first hand that it's a young crowd and that while that is okay for Evie, Layla's birthday may not be what we want for her.  So that plan to send dinosaur shit to Elba's and let them do it went out the window.  On to bigger, better, and more expensive plans.

Venue exploring I go.

Whatever.  It kicked off my spring break with a sad little bing, and not the bang that I wanted.  Good thing I have the Iditarod to look forward to.  I had to giggle while driving to get my wine as I gazed out at all the snow being carted in to downtown for the start.  Hilarious.

We've made a decision.  One that I am so damn excited about, I can't even tell you.  We're taking the girls to daycare next week while we're on spring break.  That's right.  All week, and I'm stoked.  I'm certain that somewhere on the shitty parent meter, we just scored off the charts, but it's going to be a great break that I plan to relish.

Layla informed me last night that "a long, long, time ago when she was a little boy, she was sad because she had a boob in her vagina.

Parenting FAIL.

City folk

The girls are very lucky to have parents as diverse as Mike and I.  Says me, who feels the need to remind herself of that every couple weeks or so, in a last ditch effort to show appreciation for the differences that fight their way through our existence day in and day out.  

WTF is that?

A couple of weeks ago we had a situation where the differences in our upbringing was anything but incidental.  

Mama, what's a baby cow called?

Well shit.  If that isn't an invitation to watch as many calves being born on YTube as humanly possible, I don't know what its.

So, together Layla and I sat watching video after video of calves being born.  Nature is a beautiful thing, no?  

"Daddy, I saw the mommy eat the placenta".  

Ahhhhhhhh!   Fuck you, Layla.  Why  you gotta let your daddy in on all of our little secrets?

I can't WAIT until you get your period.

On, Wisconsin!

I don't really want to talk about my kids.  I don't particularly like either of them right now, and it's been a bitch of a week filled with 12 hour days of parent conferences.  Do I dare blog about parents, conferences, students, or anything school related?  Heh.  Hell, I need the insurance.

I'm from a pretty simple upbringing.  Not simple as in dumb country hick, but simple in our understanding of what was right and what was wrong.   What was worth fighting for, and what was worth letting go so as not to offend some idiot was stuck on an issue that was above their pay grade to comprehend.

And I'm from Wisconsin.

Wisconsin.

What images does it conjure up for most people?  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Those of hairy, frozen, drunks in Lambeau Field.  And while my brother is out there, he is more multi-demensional than you may expect.

Which, surprise, surprise, brings me to politics.  Because while Wisconsin may bring to mind images of simple folk chewing cud, you fail to appreciate the depth of trailblazing that my peeps have done.  Wisconsin was a pivotal force in the abolitionist movement.  They were dumping milk in the 80's when it was anything but cool to do something like that.  And today, THIS day, they fight for unions.

Unions.

Right and wrong.

The voice of the masses.

One of a handful of things that I remember my father being passionate about.

So?  So.

So.  Fuck you, Gov. Scott Walker.  You'd better ask somebody, cause Wisconsin isn't going to roll over for you.  We know the meaning of work.  Of family.  Of unity.  Of right and of wrong. 

Scottish?

It's been hammered into my brain since the dawn of my time, that I am "full-blooded" Norwegian.  Yeah, my brother would joke about rumors of an Irish infiltrator, but Norwegian was what we clung to.  And holy mother of god, are we ever Norwegian on my father's side.  Way back.  The WHOLE way back.  I've been doing our genealogy, and it's difficult because those stupid square-heads had a bad habit of giving their kids their first name as a form of their last name.  For instance, Lars Olsen would have a son named Ole Larsen, and a daughter named Ingrid Larsdr.  Ugly, annoying, and a bitch to track lineage.

But my dad's side has been tracked out to death, so I turned my attention to my mother's side.  And guess what?  Yep, a god damn Irish infiltrator.  And only 3 generations back!  And to make it even more scandalous, they are from Scotland, via Canada and Australia.  Can you say criminals?  I wonder if this qualifies me for Canadian citizenship.

OH!  AND that line, traced back eventually to England, has me descended from second cousins that married and a shit load of kids.  Probably cause they all kept coming out fucked up and they were trying for a keeper.  Or at least one that they could show in public.

So there you have it.  My fun little romp through my ancestry finds me with an entire branch that doesn't belong.  Not only that, this particular branch doesn't "branch" as much as it should.

Not that the purity, or lack there of, of my bloodline matters much now.  Especially since I have one daughter who self identifies herself as gray.  While bathing the other night, she was watching Mike shave.  She told him that he was brown.  When asked what she was, she answered repeatedly that she was gray.  I have no idea where that comes from.

Speaking of not knowing where things come from, Layla also informed me the other morning that I was "chesty".  All joking aside, where the hell would she even hear this term?  It's terribly dated.  Can't be from daycare because they only speak Spanish.  Not anything that Dora or the Dinosaur Train would discuss.  So, it's a mystery.  I mean, she's right.  I AM chesty, but it's still a very odd thing to have fall out of her mouth.

fleshy

There are two things in this world that I am certain of.

One.

I'm not cut out for this mothering shit.  And it keeps getting more and more difficult.  I spent Monday home with two sick and miserable kids.  The miserable part is normal, as they seem to exist in this state the majority of the time right now.  But the sick part certainly moved it from code yellow to orange in this mom's ability to handle whiny and inconsolable children.  We all came out of it alive and with no visible marks, so I'll call that day a success.  It did it's part to set up an exhausting and stress filled week, though.

Evie has been having some sleep issues as of late.  She'll wake up screaming and can't be comforted.  If I get in bed with her, she does the dying fish flex and flop move while kicking me with her heels for about 30 minutes until she falls asleep.  It's not fun, and it hurts.  She is usually okay if we pull her in bed with us, but Tuesday night was not being kind to us.  3:30 wake up call found her in bed with us, where she simultaneously runs her fingers through my hair and twists the fingers of her other hand around Mike's locs.  Just as she was drifting off, she startled while yelling choo choo and proceeded to cry.  Scream, would be more accurate.  Screaming in our room isn't an option, so every nerve of my body fired up while the realization that I was going to have to get up with her hit me.  And as I snatched her little body up out of the bed, the following words came out of my mouth:

"FUCK.  Shut up".

To really understand the classiness of this moment, you need to picture my teeth clenched and using a full three second count while hissing/growling/yelling the fuck part of this humdinger.  Followed by the crisp and loud shut up portion that rained spittle for a good 4 feet.  Fortunately for everyone involved, Mike took over and was up with her that shift.  But the damage was done.  It couldn't be unsaid, and I still can't seem to bring myself to feeling the level of guilt that this situation should probably cause in me.

Two.

April, under no circumstances, should ever get new knives again.  I'm closing in on two months with this set of new knives that I bought.  I moved from knives so dull that I had to stab the tomatoes to break through the skin and smush the "blade" through the rest, all while mangling said tomato.  New knives?  Wicked sharp.  And I have cut the shit out of my hands and fingers, including five pretty significant cuts, enough times that my kids are now asking if we're having the OTHER other white meat with their dinner again.  Monday left me with a cut that bled for 30 minutes and probably should have been stitched.  It's very difficult to not get nervous now, every time I have to use them.  And we all know what nerves do for our fine motor skills.  I had better get this figured out, I don't have much flesh left.