Weekly Challenge - Stop Self Sabotage

The picture to my left is the little voice inside my head that says that even though I am trying to lose weight, it is okay to eat ruffled potato chips with ranch dip and shredded cheese for dinner. I knew it was wrong. I knew that it was evil. I knew that it wasn't good for me and those 100 calories that I burned on the Wii Fit didn't matter when I ate 12 bazillion calories worth of chips dipped in ranch dressing and then dipped in shredded cheddar cheese. I knew that I shouldn't have done it, but I did it anyway. Why?

Why do we sabotage ourselves? We know that we shouldn't do certain things, yet we do it anyway. What part of the human brain makes a person be rational one second and kick rational in the face and laugh in an evil manner while they stuff chips down their throat and watch endless episodes of Man versus Food the next? Why? Why? Why?

Attack of the Crappy Movies

Ok - maybe I am just a movie snob, but I am so sick of the stupid humor in movies and the fact that none of them have any sort of plot whatsoever. We spent weeks and weeks waiting on Hot Tub Time Machine to come up as available on Netflix. I watched about fifteen minutes of it and couldn't get past the overuse of the F word every other word. Is that really what film makers think is necessary to make a movie funny? I understand that sometimes it is quite humorous ... like the line in The Ringer "When the f*ck did we get ice cream?" Now that was funny. F-ing this and F-ing that throughout the entire movie is not funny. I gave up on Hot Tub Time Machine and went upstairs to watch an episode of Lie to Me (an intelligent show that has yet to even imply the use of the F word).

We also waited for weeks and weeks for the movie Cop Out to come up as available. If you have any brains in your head whatsover, don't even bother renting this movie. It almost took me an entire box of wine to get through it. At one point I was so bored with it that I actually started balancing the checkbook. How bad does a movie have to be when balancing the checkbook is preferable to watching it? Pretty F*cking bad !!!

Where are all the good movies? What has happened to Hollywood? Have you seen the movie Idiocracy - there is a scene in it where the latest popular movie is literally people sitting in the theater watching some guys butt up on the big screen. Is that where we are headed? If so then I am going to have to buy more boxed wine and open more checking accounts just to survive it.

My Cardboard Box in Heaven

Years ago, back when I still went to church, I heard a preacher talk about how a Christian is guaranteed to go to heaven. However, they are not guaranteed to get a golden mansion. He quoted scripture and talked about how our deeds on Earth determine what our mansion looks like in the afterlife. Hmmmmmmmmmm ... well ... um .... I am not counting on a golden mansion in my afterlife. Maybe a cardboard box. I am thinking that my past deeds will get me the box, but my current and future deeds might get me some hot pink glitter to put on it ... or maybe some little twinklee Christmas lights .... or God might grant me a Bedazzler. Oh yeah baby ! I am going to have the best looking cardboard box on the block .... might even add on a cardboard box garage with a cardboard game room and a cardboard sauna ... oh wait ... the hot steam might make the box sag ... scratch that .... how about a cardboard wine cellar made of boxes of wine !!!

I just hope that my box isn't behind the mansions of the people from my former church who treated me like crap when all of my scandal broke out .... or maybe they are hoping that their cardboard box isn't right next to mine. Muahahahahaha

The Bullies Just Get Bigger

Last Thursday was the first day of school and we didn't have enough money to buy Emily and Beth their shoes for PE yet, so I told them to just tell the coach that we were going to get them that weekend. They told him. So he called them out in the middle of the class and asked them why they didn't have shoes. Stood them in front of the group and YELLED AT THEM about how ridiculous it was that they didn't have their shoes for PE yet. Emily had to tell him that we didn't have the money to buy them yet. Just typing that makes me tear up. We have been through some major shit (pardon the Spanish there) in the past four years and we are literally living paycheck to paycheck. The manic spending while I was Paxilated plus the $40,000 that we paid lawyers (oh yes - that does in fact say $40,000) has put a major crimp in our financial situation. Maybe crimp isnt the right word ... crimp implies something small ... how about bend, fold, smashed all to hell and back. Yeah .. that works.

I am already hard on teachers, because I can't be one any more and this little example of how a grown man chooses to make himself feel better by belittling some thirteen year olds (my daughters were not the only ones involved) just proves several of my points about what is wrong with education. WHY DOES THIS JACKASS GET TO TEACH AND I DON'T ????

So Derek, my knight in shining firefighter uniform, went down to the school to talk to the principal, Ms. Grant. Of course her first question was "Did you talk to Coach Slate about this?". To which Derek replied, "Oh it's probably best that I NOT talk to Coach Slate about this." (Damn - I love that man of mine!) The really sad thing about all of this is that Emily begged Derek not to go talk to Ms. Grant about it, because she really feared that it would just make the coach act worse to her ... and I agree. Since there were several kids involved Derek asked Ms. Grant not to tell Coach Slate which parent came to see her, because we didn't want our daughter targeted any more than she already was. Emily is ready to quit basketball over it and I have to say that little Miss Emily is one hell of a basketball player. How dare that jackass treat my child this way and why in the world is behavior like his tolerated?

We have all sorts of programs in schools that try to educate children on the seriousness of bullying. Maybe we should have some for the teachers !

Happy Rebirthday to Me

August 25, 2007 was the first day in nine years that I didn't take that morning little pink poison pill ... not even a sliver of one ... not even a crumble (and it got down to slivers and crumbles there at the end). I had been chopping pills for about eight months at that point and it was time for it to be over. At first it was really strange to not take that pill every morning, but that strangeness was quickly replaced with the ability to laugh again - the ability to feel empathy for other people - the ability to have a rational conversation with somebody without yelling at them, belittling them, or trying to make them cry. It was replaced with me wanting to actually get out of the house and do things instead of sitting in front of the tv eating anything that I could get my hands on. It was replaced by my snarky sense of humor that had long been lost in the Paxilated haze. It was replaced by a love and respect and gratitude for the man who stood by me when every other man on the planet would have given up and only tried to save himself.

Things aren't all rainbows and unicorns right now. We are living paycheck to paycheck (thank you lawyer's fees and manic spending debt - both of those situations Paxil induced), one of the kids is sick, another one of the kids might not get to go to college, the rent house has fleas (oh yeah - FLEAS!), there are still umpteen projects around the house that need to be done, and we still haven't won the lottery. But don't feel pity for me ... don't you dare. I spent nine years in Paxil hell ... living in a tunnel without emotions ... acting like a completely crazy person who didn't care that I was slowly ruining my life. Even with the things that are going wrong in my life right now ... there are soooooooooooo many things that are going right. It is nice out in the sunshine and I will never go back to the tunnel. NEVER.

http://www.paxilprogress.org

Don't Look at My Boobs !

My hotmail email account had a link to an article about a 14 year old girl posing for racy bikini pictures and her parents defending her posing for those pictures.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/22/kendall-jenner-in-new-str_n_656433.html

Wow ! My twins are 13 and I cannot even imagine letting them pose for that first picture. How many grown men are going to see that? and what will they be thinking when they do? EEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWW !!! We as a society have got to stop sexualizing our children !!

Why are we allowing our ten year olds to dress like hookers? and don't even get me started on the crap on Toddlers and Tiaras .... telling a 5 year old to "shake your booty" at the judges is soooooooo disturbing.

and then the girls who dress like that get all pissed off when older men stare at them .... Rachel came home the other day completely grossed out that an "old man" was looking at her boobs and her butt ... my husband said "well maybe it was the giant blinking arrow that you were wearing in the form of a too tight tank top and shorts so short that your ass cheeks hang out" ... she just rolled her eyes

A friend of Rachel's wore this sexy nurse costume to a Halloween party last year ... when she was 16 ... oh how I wish that I were kidding.

Weekly Challenge - Know the Difference

Part of the Serenity Prayer says:



God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

I have a hard time with just letting things go. It's something that I need to work on. I need to be able to accept the things that I cannot change. I need to work on the things that I can and I really need to learn to let my children fall on their faces every once in a while. If we keep saving our children every time that they get themselves into a mess, then they will never learn how to rescue themselves.

Rachel informed us on Friday night that she might not have a grade point average high enough to qualify for free tuition through a program that they have in our state. We cannot afford to pay for our kids to go to college (and even if we could - we wouldn't). If college is important enough to them then they will figure out a way to pay for it. My first response to her news about the grade point average was to go into Mommy Mode and try to come up with ways to find her classes that she can make great grades in so that her gpa will improve. Then it hit me - why is this my problem? Haven't we been telling her for years that she has to have a good gpa to get the free tuition? Haven't we been talking to teachers, the principal, and the counselor trying our hardest to get them all to realize that we are trying our hardest to be good parents and help her? Doesn't she tell us on nearly a daily basis that she is nearly 18 (as if that magically gets you somewhere)?

So Derek and I have come to the conclusion that we are not going to go above and beyond to try to fix this for her. We told her last night that it is her responsibility to talk to the principal and the counselor about possibly changing her schedule so that she will have a high enough gpa to qualify. We also told her that the times of us babysitting her to make sure that she gets her assignments turned in or that she studies for her tests are over. If she wants to throw the "I am nearly an adult" malarky in our faces all the time then she needs to start acting like one.

It will be tough on the momma and I think even tougher on the daddy, but we have to let this one go. We have to know the difference and this is something that she is going to have to change on her own.