Is It Normal...?

Is it normal to dream about accidentally eating a ham sandwich a few weeks after giving up ham? I bet it's not uncommon...

Teaching My Kids to Share

This morning I made biscuits for breakfast because I really wanted to try the veggie sausages I had in my freezer, and I thought a sausage biscuit sounded like a good way to do that. I knew Lulu was going to want to try it too. She usually eats about half of my breakfast, and she looooooves sausage. So when she said, "What's that?" all interested and hungry-sounding, I simply said, "It's made out of vegetables..." and that settled it. She didn't want any.

Pete Says:

Pete is peeved that I haven't shared my new DS game with her yet. I told her she could play it when I am finished, but she's gotten tired of waiting and told me this:

"If you don't share, that's your moral fiber breaking down."

Bye-Bye Big Bed

You have to promise not to judge us if you read this, and if you do judge us, with your perfect parenting prowess, you have to come here and be us for the past 2 weeks and then you'll change your mind. Got it. Good. Here we go:

Yesterday, Husbandguy put Lulu's crib back in her room and propped her big-girl mattresses in the corner. See, it wasn't working out, this sleeping on real mattresses. She hated it; she said she was scared; she woke up EVERY NIGHT (starting before we put the bed in her room) screaming herself hoarse, inconsolable, miserable, 4 or 5 times a night. And during the day she was impossible, difficult, mean, cranky, tired, just generally unpleasant. So Saturday night, after both HG and I had gone in to try (without success) to calm her a couple of times, HG asked her if she wanted her crib back. This is not a question I would have thought to ask because I'm all stuck in what-the-experts-say land, and They say not to go backward. But it was the best choice, turns out. Thank goodness HG doesn't read or heed parenting advice from strangers. She helped him rebuild the crib while I was at church and then was a different kid after that. She still doesn't listen well (because she's 2), but she has been more cheerful and easy-going and relaxed. She napped peacefully in her crib after lunch, and she did wake up once last night (yelling, though, not screaming), but she went right back to sleep when I reminded her that we'd changed her bed back so she wouldn't wake us up all night. It worked.

She had been excited about the mattresses, said she wanted them, told her teachers and friends and everyone about getting them, but the reality was apparently different than she was expecting. So this is going to be like the potty I guess. The mattresses are there when she's ready, but it's going to need to be her choice entirely because it's too exhausting for everyone to try to force her to like it.

Friends

2 things today. just random. about people you don't know. for the most part...

A male friend and I were talking and he commented on how he doesn't mind when his kids call him Mom because that just indicates to him that the care-giver role is blurred in their family. I'm not saying that clearly, but you get what he means, right? Mom and Dad are interchangeable and so both fill the same role. Anyway. I was thinking about that later and remembered that there were a few times, when we had Howie, that Pete called me Howie and I wish I'd remembered that when my friend and I were talking because I would have liked to know what he thought that indicated about our family. What do you think it means?

(I guess this second thing is actually about Husbandguy and me, but it starts with a story about someone you don't know) A different friend got her hair cut recently, and she told me she was angry about it because the stylist cut it too short and took a really long time doing it (so long that my friend had to miss her yoga class). My reaction to her story was, "That sucks!" and I offered to be angry about it with her if that would help. When I told HG about it later, he had a very different reaction. He said, "Why didn't she stop her from cutting it so short?" again demonstrating how different we really are. Me: I'm sorry that happened to you. Him: It's your own fault. In this situation it was funny. When he does it to me it drives me nuts!

Can It Still Be Called a Coffee?

Remember last month when nobody knew about the Principal's Coffee and only 1 person showed up? This morning was the next one. To avoid a repeat of last month, I sent out a note on the message board last week, which was picked up by the PTA communications person and forwarded to everyone, and our principal mentioned it in her newsletter last week instead of this week, giving everyone time to plan. And it worked. There were quite a few parents and grandparents there. Except, this time? There wasn't any coffee! AAAAAAA!!! Well, at first there wasn't. But I tracked down our FANTASTIC, life-saving head custodian, and he had it brewing in minutes, and it was ready before most of the people showed up, although not at the beginning.

My fear-of-failure problem, which we've talked about before (just click the PhD label below to read more about that), made it difficult not to blame myself for the lack of the second main ingredient at these gatherings (the principal is the main ingredient). Damn it! I screwed up 2 months in a row!! But I think I'm the only one who blames me because it's not actually my fault, and I was able to fix the problem this morning without any actual trouble (thanks to Mr. M). And just like last month I have learned from the mistake and left Mr. M a note with the date of the next coffee before I came home, which will go perfectly because what else can go wrong? Uh-oh. I bet I just jinxed it...

Where'd I Go?

The specialty pharmacy that I have to use to get my MS medication faxed a refill request to my doctor's office the other day and got this response: "Not our patient." Yeah. Um, nooo. That's not right. I've only been your patient for the past 13+ years and you've only been faxing this prescription to this particular pharmacy for 2(?) years (and other pharmacies for many, many more years).

What gets me, though, is that clearly there was a mistake made and no one bothered to double check or get in touch with me, not the doctor's office or the pharmacy. If they had done either of those things, it would have been straightened out lickety-split because nobody knows how to advocate for me better than I. Practice makes perfect, you know.

So I told Husbandguy that I'm just going to have to get cured of this pain-in-the-brain disease because that would be the easiest and best thing to do. Wish me luck!

What if Someone Asks Me Why I'm a Vegetarian All the Sudden?

So I was thinking, what do I say when someone asks me why I'm suddenly a vegetarian? Nobody has asked me that yet. Well, except for Pete. She said, "Why don't you eat [meat] anymore?" and I said, "Because it's gross," and she said, "Oh." But someone who has already been 7 years old might need more of an answer than that so I've been thinking.

It started as kind of a personal challenge. And it really was all-of-the-sudden in that I didn't say to myself awhile ago, "I'm going to stop eating animals in early March." But I had thought about it here and there. Mostly I thought, "What will I eat if I don't eat meat?" or "My family won't give up meat so how can I?" But then I talked to Meme who said that I don't have to eat meat just because Husbandguy does and a couple weeks later I stopped. And my reason was simply to see if I could do it. That's how I quit smoking too, but that was harder.

The more I think about it, though, the more reasons I find for why this is a very good thing. First of all, I feel better. We talked about this a couple of days ago. Remember? It's nice to feel clear-headed most of the time instead of muddle-headed all of the time. Also, I can have carrots and peanut butter for a snack (I could before, but now I justify the peanut butter as needed protein and feel better about it). Another reason is that I was always worried about undercooked meats and stuff. HG will testify that it was especially tricky to cook chicken for me; if it was even slightly almost pink looking, it grossed me out and I couldn't eat it because I didn't want to be poisoned. Hamburgers were the same way. I did like my steaks cooked medium, but if they bled when I cut them, I couldn't eat them. Also, when you're eating that stuff, sometimes you take a bite and get a chunk of something, gristle, bone, goo, whatever, and there's no way to know for sure what it is and that always grossed me out too and made me have to stop eating whatever it was. And now I don't have to worry about that, really. Vegetables don't have bones. Some have goo, but I just don't eat those vegetables.

Randomly, I have learned a few of things that probably won't interest you, but here they are anyway.

• You can't really replace the meat in sloppy joes with lentils unless everyone is on board with that because it's hard to pretend like they're not lentils. It's good if you like that kind of thing, but not if you're HG ("It would be good as a side dish," he said). Plus, it's kind of wet and might make the bun soggy, but it's tasty if you mix in some rice.
• I don't like eggplant. Not yet. I'll keep trying.
• HG and I thought a good name for tofu bacon would be tofakon, but I don't know anything about tofu or whether you can make it look like bacon so I'm not inventing that today.
• I hadn't planned on giving up fish, but I really don't like fish and so have given it up along with all the other animals. But not eggs and milk because I'd really miss ice cream.

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Oh, by the way, I am disappointed in the lack of response to my poetry challenge from the other day. Mommy T is my only taker so far (Yay Mommy T!). You don't have to commit to a daily poem, but come on! You can try to write a little, can't you?

One Less Sippy Cup for Lulu

This morning, Lulu was playing in the play kitchen and reached into her microwave and pulled out a sippy cup. A sippy cup that wasn't empty. And had clearly been in the pretend microwave for a while. Ew! I'm not sure what had originally been in the cup, but whatever is in it now is solid, yellowy-orange, and has mold on the top. Like Dial soap with fur. Apparently we need to do a better job searching for dishes when we clean the real kitchen. Or be better about encouraging Lulu to return her dishes when she's done. Needless to say, I'm not interested in cleaning the cup (or experiencing the smell when I take the lid off to clean it) so we now have one less sippy cup. Oh well.

Is It All In My Head?

I used to blame the fact that I always felt dizzy to some degree (anywhere from just mildly foggy all the way to nauseating vertigo) on my MS. It made sense. It seemed like it was probably neurological. You know? But I noticed today, after not eating meat for almost 2 weeks, that I feel WAAAY clearer all the time. When I'm upright and all normal and stuff, I actually feel normal. Not like I'm underwater or just getting off a roller coaster or any of those other ways to feel that had become "normal." And I have to wonder: was it what I was eating? There's no way to test it. I'm not going to Arby's just to see if a beef and cheddar makes me dizzy. I suppose I'll just enjoy it and hope changing my diet really has changed my life (more than I expected it to).