Small Town Trap

With Dreams of Breaking Out

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Frick!

I am out of diet Dew. Therefore, I am slightly less ACTION-PACKED than yesterday. Definitely not as ACTION-PACKED as Richard, who is an ANIMAL with those Latin verb conjugations.
AAaaaahhhhh. I finally took my happy ass to the Evil Empire (Walmart for those of you who hate America, or something, I don't know what my problem is with Walmart) and filled up nine gallon jugs of the good triple reverse osmosis filtered water and OH MAN IS IT EVER GOOD. And not yellow at all, which makes it WAY better than my tap water. But I've been over that.

Did I mention that the reason I'm all hive-y is because the softener has no salt in it? Here I am, itching like crazy, and thinking to myself, "I'll take another shower, that should help," and really, it was making it worse. The government pays me today, looks like I'll be back at scary Walmart for some stupid salt tonight. I would have gotten it before, but I don't feel like carrying it. I'm girly like that. I did get some of those new Lean Cuisines with the desserts in them. Well, actually I just got one because I thought the other two had desserts because the first one I picked up had a red circle that said, "NOW WITH DESSERT" so I grabbed two other ones that looked good and when I got home I noticed that only one said "NOW WITH DESSERT" and the other two said "NEW RECIPE". Frick. But I got sundae cones. Mmmmmm. And I hid them. Is that evil?

So I just dropped the tall kid off at preschool and I was all extra happy and friendly to the other parents and teachers and...nothing. They hate me. Except for the one dad who was trying to read what's on my T-shirt or something because he looked at my chest like a lot. I've noticed people do that even when there are no words on my shirt. I wonder why. Maybe they really are dazzled by my big city beauty. I mean, I EXUDE star quality in my rubber flip flops, torn up jean shorts from junior year in high school, and ratty St. Mary's College shirt that belonged to my dad in 1970. That's hot. I should just find a new shrink down here and forget about it. (Good way of looking at that, someone paid to hang out with you. And offer advice without all the "you dumbass" stuff I get from other people.) Stupid human instincts, wanting me to socialize and shit. Doesn't this count as socializing?

OH. I drove past the high school on the way to the preschool, and they have the windows all painted for homecoming (I typed homocoming first, ha ha, that's a different building) and it says "SENIORS '06". Do you know what that means? I was a senior in '96. That makes me OLD. Frick again.

Hmmm.

I've noticed that my post titles (when I remember to put them in) are mostly just noises, not really words. I hope that is not indicative of the way I speak...well it sort of is. Boo. (See? Too much time around ONLY men has made me just grunt and gesture.)

Speaking of time around only men, I realized (while writing a comment, hi Jackie!) that in the two months I have lived here, I have met exactly zero people. In the same two months, I have talked to exactly two of my old friends from the old town. Neither of them has been here to visit, despite it only being two hours away. (Lots of two's. Does that need an apostrophe?) So I'm not really seeing those friendships lasting. I guess what I'm bitching about is...I have no friends. I can't just get in the car and drive over to someone's house and drink a beer. The only person like that down here would be Gina, the ex-stepmother-in-law, and we have all seen how it turns out when I hang out at her house. It sucks.

Nick, on the other hand, has TONS of friends already. As usual. The kid could turn a doorknob into his best friend. But then he works, so he gets to leave the house once in a while and TALK to PEOPLE who are unlikely to poop on him, which has him at a slight advantage over me. Now that I have to pick him up from work, I get to see these people, but they look at me funny too. Do I have a dick on my forehead? (I checked. I totally don't.) I don't get people in this town. (Did I mention we got rid of the minivan? Well, we did. So we're down to one car. It's interesting.)

Ramble, ramble, ramble. No forehead dick, yet still no friends. I'm joining the gym as soon as I have a little extra money to throw at it. Maybe I'll meet some super stellar people in a spinning class or something. Or maybe they'll think I'm weird too.

I found a CD in Nick's car (THE car) this morning that is labeled "Steph's Cool Mix :) :)" Who the fuck is Steph? The guys he works with have girlfriends named Brittany and Hattie...maybe that's why he's never home before eight at night. He found someone to make him cool mixes :) :) .

:/ .

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Oy.

Huh. I hear screaming. The kids must be having a doozy of a wrestling match. I am NOT going up there.

I am really thirsty for some nice, cool (but not cold, my teeth will cause my head to explode if it's too cold), crisp water. Too bad we're out of drinking water and we haven't had salt in the softener for a week or so which makes the tap water slightly more tasty than piss. I stood in front of the fridge for a long time, looking at the juice, the "Sam's Choice Cola", the boys' "juice" pouches, the fitness water, and you know what I settled on at 7:45 in the morning? Diet Mountain Dew. That tells me this day is going to be ACTION-PACKED. The scary part is, I don't even have a car today. I can't go anywhere! I'm stuck on the farm with the boys and no transportation. This is why I need a four wheeler. Will you buy me one?

Is it true that convicted felons can't vote or have passports? I need to know these things.

I'm still covered in hives. I still itch like crazy, but my new drug of choice is zyrtec because man does that shit work fast. It's funny how I felt all whiny and boo hoo depressed this morning (and for the last month) and every time I go to sit down and write it out, my fingers get all smartassy and type this bullshit. Huh.

Monday, September 19, 2005

I itch.

Who would have guessed how fun throwing a surprise party for your parents could be? I knew we'd blow the surprise part somehow, and we sort of did, but they were still shocked and it was still a blast. Being back in the old town for the first time since we moved was a bit odd, though. Time and distance have made it look...not just different, but somehow foreign and scary. Seeing the few friends I have left was strained and uncomfortable, too, which drove me to drink a bit more than strictly necessary in the company of my relatives but necessary is relative anyway, soooooo...yeah. Weekend. Woo. I missed the wine tasting completely so maybe everyone is mad at me now but I'm beyond caring because I have broken out in hives for some reason and I CAN'T FUCKING STOP SCRATCHING.

It all started when we first got up to my parents' house. Because I had to talk to lots of people I hadn't seen for years, my right boob itched like hell and made me want to cry so I snuck into the bathroom and whipped it out to scratch it to pieces and yay, hives. Then my shoulder started burning and yay, there too. THEN my wrists and kneepits and back and stomach although strangely, not my left boob all broke out and now? I am miserable and it won't go away. Fun. Oh, and I smell like my medicine cabinet and I may have taken too many Benadryls.

The boys broke another window this morning. Here I go again with the garbage bags and duct tape. It's sad that I'm waiting by my computer for all my favorite snark sites to cover the Emmys. I need a life, but having just discovered that I have no friends I think I'll just sit here quietly for a while. I had a dream about my high school reunion that will happen next year I guess that I don't plan on attending anyway, probably because of all the high school people I saw this weekend. I also had a dream I ran someone over with my car. Then I got woken up by thunder but I wasn't awake enough to realize it was thunder so I woke Nick up and told him to get the boys so we could all go down to the bomb shelter. (I actually have a bomb shelter in this house. It's rad.) Paranoid much?

Friday, September 16, 2005

Conversations with a two year old

*watching Tiny Planets, where Bing and Bong are helping some Flockers do something or whatever*
Nickolas: She did not say "fucker."
Me: No. She said "flocker."
Nickolas: Not "fucker."
Me: Nope.
Nickolas: "Fucker" is a grown up word.
Me: Yep.
Nickolas: So she did not say "fucker."
Me: Nope.
*lather, rinse, repeat every single time the word "flocker" is spoken.*

Nickolas: May I have some grapes?
Me: Sure. *hands him grapes* Hey, guess what?
Nickolas: What?
Me: I love you.
Nickolas: I just farted again.
Me: You are supposed to say "I love you too."
Nickolas: But it was a BIG DADDY fart.
Me: Oh.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Today is a crap day. Just crap. I have so many things I should be doing and I'm not doing any of them because I just don't feel like it. Nickolas unraveled a knitting project I've put a week into and I just fell on the floor and cried because I didn't even feel like yelling and carrying on like I normally would have. I think the crying scared them worse. Whoops.

Nick got pissed at me for being at Wife #3's house last night. (Explanation like, two posts down.) I told him there is no way I'm going to just stop hanging out with her. First of all, to the kids, she's still their grandmother. (Step-grandmother. Whatever.) They're too young to understand that Wife #4 is now Grandpa's wife and is now their grandmother. They don't know what to call Wife #4 except her name. They don't like to put "Grandma" in front of it, it doesn't make sense to them. So to keep some normalcy in their lives, Wife #3 is still "Grandma Gina." (Yeah, names. I don't fucking care anymore.) And they still love her. Not to mention her son, who was their uncle but now they are supposed to just forget about? Uh, no. He's one of their favorite people. He's fourteen, and would like nothing better than to have them tag along behind him all afternoon. Seriously. He loves them. But I'm supposed to just forget all about them, even though they still live like fifteen minutes away, and replace them in my brain with Carla and her son. No.

Well, to make matters even more awesome, this weekend is the Illinois Valley Wine Festival or whatever it's called. First Gina asked me to go, and I said hell yeah. Wine. Then Nick's dad and Carla asked Nick if he wanted to go, and he said hell yeah. Wine. I didn't know that Nick had planned to go with his dad, so when he came to Gina's last night, she asked him if he was coming with. He told her no, because his mom is coming down on Sunday. And then he hauled ass out of the house and left me there with his thunderstruck and very hurt ex-stepmother, who knew very well that his mother is not coming down on Sunday because I had already made plans with her to go to the wine thing. He didn't have to lie, you know?

By the time I got home he was higher than a kite and completely useless to talk to, so I'll try again when he gets home from work. I'm sure he'll be high then too, but I'll tell him I won't cook dinner until he talks to me. That'll do it. I hate new drama. Old drama becomes routine, and you get into a groove of avoiding it with stock responses and clever sidestepping of questions. But new drama kind of sneaks its way in and kicks you right in the crotch. I don't like being kicked in the crotch as a rule so I'm going to have to figure my way out of this soon. I refuse to drop Gina because she's been a better friend to me than anyone else in Nick's whole fucked up extended family. She was the only one that didn't think it was my fault when Nick left me, and she was the only one who knew my exact reasons for taking him back.

Fuck. Nothing like some crotch kicking drama to force me to spike my St John's wort tea with some nice, healthy Ten High.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Ugh.

The kids' preschool director pulled me aside to tell me they are behind on their chicken pox vaccinations, and I will need to have that done before the end of the month. Or what, I don't know, but that's my deadline.

Now, here is my thing. Chicken pox? We have to be vaccinated for that now? So now not only can you create your own designer little blond haired blue eyed boy baby, but you can choose which relatively harmless childhood diseases they will suffer? (And I'm using the word "suffer" very sarcastically. I had chicken pox when I was thirteen, when it's supposed to be horrible, and it still wasn't that bad. It was a week of no school and daytime TV.) I can see being vaccinated as an adult if you somehow made it through childhood without getting it, but what is the use of preventing it? And I'm no scientist (obviously), but if everyone becomes immune to a disease, can't it mutate and make some yucky superdisease? I'm just not crazy about the idea of introducing more crap into my children's bodies than I have to.

If I make an issue of this, which I'm considering, then I'll be instantly labeled the dirty granola hippie mom because these preschool moms and teachers are, well, they're yuppies. I'm the youngest by at least seven or eight years. (And I'm not really all that young.) I just moved here, I don't want to start out by refusing to follow the rules, but I'm not comfortable with this. Does anyone else have any info/feelings/input about this? Please tell me I'm not the only dirty granola hippie parent. Please?

Monday, September 12, 2005

Finally. A spare moment. It looks like my mass email went okay, thank goodness. Yahoo wasn't super happy about me sending a crapload of emails to the same domain name but I think I got them all to go. Stupid computer crap. Makes my brain hurt.

Lukas woke up this morning crying, "I puked." That was fun. Good thing we picked up a washer and dryer Friday night so it wasn't as big a tragedy as it could have been. Nevertheless, a puking kid is never my idea of a party so I finally gave him some of the nighttime cold medicine so he would take his cranky ass off to bed. Just in case Nickolas was getting any puking designs, I gave him some too. Mother of the year is totally mine.

So, the reason I moved, besides my gold membership dying, is that I think Nick's sister found the other site and she has a huge mouth. If I can't bitch about Nick's family, then I don't really have much to say anymore. Since we moved down here by them, it has been one irritating thing after another. See, Nick's dad just got married for the fourth time. His third wife, who is a good friend of mine, still lives around here. We still hang out, and she still wants to see the boys because they were her grandchildren when she was married to Nick's dad so it's not really fair to just cut her out of their lives and tell them she's been replaced. Right? Friday night Nick's dad and Wife 4.0 watched the kids so Nick and I could pick up the washer and dryer, and Lukas called Wife 4.0 by Wife 3.0's name, and they got super pissed. At me. The phrase they used, I believe, was, "Our hearts just sank." They told me that I was going to get a bad reputation hanging out with her. All I could say was, "Well, if the kid didn't have so many grandmothers to keep track of, maybe he wouldn't get confused. He's only three." Apparently that was the wrong answer because I have been pretty well shunned since then. Me being me, I think that is pretty damn funny. (See, I just couldn't have them reading this kind of stuff.) And before that all happened, I got reprimanded for telling Wife 3.0 things about Wife 4.0 and Nick's dad, which I didn't do. Why do guys think that they're all we ever talk about? Do they really think they're so interesting that we sit around and dish all day about them? So annoying. Amazingly, there are other subjects.

I should really think about waking those kids up now. They've been sleeping for three hours.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Hello again

So like, did you find me?

I'm seriously going to write a mass email soon. Hopefully everybody who should get one will get one, but I'm now all afraid of my husband's family finding this so if I forget you, I'm a whore and I'm sorry. Eventually I'm pretty sure I'll get to everybody.

Can you believe the name "xanaxandtractors" is taken? Whoa.

Oh, and? I have no idea how blogspot works so it's going to be a while before I get good at this. Whoo. New Simpsons in two minutes.