NO means "NO" - A Lesson In Self-Control

Pizza seduces me. It tempts me with its slightly browned cheese and its rich and nommable tomato sauce. It whispers, "Eat me" and without hesitation I do. I can't help myself.

I was having a(nother) piece of pizza at dinner tonight, despite the annoying little voice that said,

"No, Erika. Put that back. You don't want another slice."

I ignored that voice and went for the second helping:

"Add more crushed red pepper! Mama-Mia, I like-a the spicy pizza!"

*shake-a shake-a shak-AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! MYEYESITBURNSMYEYESOWOWOWOWOW!!!*

Yes. In my fevered frenzy of seasoning, the smallest particles of (really) crushed red pepper caught the wind of the ceiling fan and...I peppered myself.

Ow.

After about ten minutes of flushing my very sore, very red eyes under the bathroom faucet and cursing the employees of McCormick Spices and their offspring and their offspring's offspring and anyone who knew their offspring's offspring, I spent another ten minutes enduring watery eyes and an uncontrollably runny nose. I now understand what it is that pepper spray will do to an assailant.

I have learned my lesson. If I insist on forcing myself on the pizza, I MUST NOT ARM THE PIZZA. (Clearly, I was asking for it.) Better yet, I should steer clear of that Italian-American tease and never think of it again.

"NO" means "NO". I get that now.

I guess I didn't really want that piece of pizza after all. Now that I think about it, it probably had a parasite in its pepperoni.

(Ah-HA! Did you see what I did there? I rejected the pizza, it didn't reject me. I dumped it first, therefore I win. Humph!)

*quietly* Slut.

There's No Place Like Home?

After seeing the musical Wicked the other night (which was a completely amazing experience), I'm stuck with multiple Oz-related references resounding through my cranium. But Dorothy's famous click-of-the-slippers catchphrase hits me much closer to home than the lions and tigers and bears that we saw at the zoo today.

I've been at my mom's house for three weeks. This weekend, I'm packing up the kids and returning home. I sorta have to, right? After all, I do live there. I have bills to pay and obligations to fulfill, my kids are enrolled in swim lessons at the local community center in August and will be starting school again in September...and oh yeah, my husband is there.

My marriage has been so emotionally tumultuous over the past year that I was on the verge of filing for divorce a month ago. I changed my mind when my husband experienced what seemed to be a genuine change of heart just before I left. My only explanation for his apparent turnaround is that he could tell how disconnected I was from the relationship, and it helped something click for him. I can't quite explain it, but he acts much differently towards me now. I can tell that he is feeling things more deeply and has gained some awareness of his own emotion.

He calls it a miracle. If it turns out to carry any sustainability, I might use the same word.

That should be a good thing, right? Honestly, the lack of any deep sense of connection between the two of us was one of the biggest voids in our marriage. And it seemed that all of a sudden, his emotional light bulb went on--but it felt more like a stadium flood light than a 50-watt reading lamp.

That's typical for him, though. He's a very extreme person overall. With him, there is almost never such a thing as a middle ground. His positive emotions are smothering and his negative emotions are crippling. And now, even though I can clearly sense that he feels things much differently than he has before, I am still very much aware that he is still the same highly intense person he has always been.

I want love to grow in my marriage, without a doubt. But it feels like his love for me has turned from a tiny seed into a mighty oak overnight, and any love I might feel for him is still a young, tender shoot that needs gentle and proper care--not a sudden blast of desert sun doused with a tsunami of water, but something warm, nurturing, and appropriate.

Although I feel ready to go back home and get back into my regular routine with my kids, I carry with me a sense of dread about the emotional roller coaster ride that awaits me. Caring for my husband is a hell of a lot of work. I hadn't realized how much until being away from him for a while. And ultimately, I've been much happier while not having to live with all that uncertainty about what my day to day life will be like.

Living with my parents can be difficult, for sure, but at least it's predictably so. I know my mom is anal about crumbs on the counter and dishes in the sink, I know my dad is rather silent and endearingly protective, and I know that my kids have to clean up after themselves around here or they'll send my mother to an early grave.

But I can always count on that, every day. It's secure. It's stable. It carries a vague sense of lunacy and a slight air of dementia, but those things feel comfy here because they have always been a part of this house. It's much easier than living with a person whose personality is so naturally volatile that he can seemingly turn from an arrogant bastard into a smothering emotional flood overnight.

I have been able to discuss some of these feelings with my husband over the phone, and I can tell by his responses that he is listening and understanding at least a portion of what I'm saying. But the conversations feel eerily vacuous when I lack the ability see his face or read his body language, and I can't feel confident that the person I will be living with when I get home will be at all receptive to my efforts to communicate with him.

I'm going home because I live there, because I want to give my marriage another chance, and because I know my husband needs me. But I wish I needed him as much as he needs me. I wish that I was going home with a sense of excitement and anticipation. I wish that I really missed my husband and couldn't wait to see him again. I wish that I could trust him to ask me what I need from him instead of assuming that he has already figured it out.

But mostly, I wish that I could be as certain as Dorothy that there's no place like home.

Can't live with 'em, can't sell 'em on Craigslist.

I've noticed a lot of my mommy friends are encountering the same stressful problem right now. Our seemingly delightful offspring are fighting more and it's bugging the snot out of us all. Summer is here and we're still trying to get everything done that we normally do, only now we've got all these little needy people in the house and no school to send them off to during the day...and they're BORED little needy people.

Planning things to keep them busy will work to cut the fighting down a lot, but I know I'm not always that on-the-ball. So when we fall asleep at the Parental Wheel and the fighting begins, what can we do to keep our cool?

There are a couple of quick and easy fixes, that I use myself, They really will work. I just need to remember them in my day.

Say this. Don't think about it, just say it.

"I charge a dollar a minute to listen to children argue. Solve it yourselves."

Then look at the clock. Those kids will skedaddle out of there faster than you can blink. If it comes to fisticuffs, so be it. They'll learn other ways of solving their disagreements without bringing you into it.

For those kids who have no sense and very few cents, toys can be easily substituted for cash. Only the most awesomely cool, most played with toys are confiscated. Then they have the opportunity to earn the toys (or money) back by replacing the energy they drained out of you in doing some extra chore(s).

One for the tweens and/or teens who need to be chauffeured everywhere is this little gem: "I'll drive you to (wherever) as soon as ____, ____ and ____ are done." If these ____s are not completed before it's time to leave, the kid doesn't go. Simple as that. Their friends' birthday parties are not a grade requirement.

Whatever you need to get done today, make your job less stressful by getting those able-bodied young'uns to help. They live there, too. Home is more than a place for them to eat and sleep and ask for sh*t.

These are actually a couple of techniques I picked up from Parenting with Love and Logic, and although I can't take credit for them, I can certainly tell you that Love and Logic really does work.

Even the toddlers can do this stuff! It keeps me ahead of the AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH Moments when I remember to use it.

I hope I've just made your day easier. If you like these, use them. If you don't, forget them. Just remember that we DON'T have to do it all. Really. Keep your cool. It's summer and it's a jungle out there.

Spoiling Kiddo.

Kiddo is my little sister. I'm not quite sure how she got the nickname, but it stuck - even some of her teachers refer to her as Kiddo. Oh, and by little sister I mean my nearly 16 year old 5'9 or so sister who has curves in the right places and makes clothes look good. Did I mention I'm 5'5 on a good day? Her legal name is Nicole Christen.

Kiddo has been having difficulty with backstabbing faux-friends and assorted other high school drama. It seems to have peaked lately, with one girl telling my sister to watch her back. Ugh.

Through a state funded program, my sister got a job that pretty much teaches her how to work. It is, in essence a paid internship. She gets $800 for 4 days a week for 5 weeks. Not bad for a first job. She has her official interview tomorrow (even though she already has the position, and starts Monday). Until my friend Kate and I took my sister on a shopping spree at H&M, she had no clothes that I would deem interview worthy. The only caveat was that Kate and I had final say on her clothes - since I was buying, I thought it was only fair. We picked out everything for her, living vicariously through the skinny girl.

She left H&M with a black pencil skirt that falls right at her knees, deep charcoal semi-wide leg dress pants, and salmon colored skinny fit dress pants to cover her 'non-butt' as she puts it. She also took home a gorgeous deep purple top that fits her like it is tailored just for her, a nifty looking non-fitted black top with flowers printed at the bottom hem (to go with the salmon pants) and a turquoise sundress.

We then headed over to Old Navy where she got two nice dressy tee shirts (one is Pink and the other is Teal), followed by Famous Footwear where she found a really cute pair of black low heels (not too easy in size 11!) on clearance.

Lucky girl made out like a bandit. She looks like an adult, instead of a trend-worshipping teenage drone. I walked out of the mall nearly $200 poorer. I spent a portion of my tattoo fund on her. I don't even spend that much on clothes for myself, but without hesitation I bought her every single thing that looked great on her.

However, Kiddo deserves it. She's the baby of the family who got shorted on so much, because my parents had done so much for my brother and myself that there isn't extra to spend. Kiddo watches Connor whenever needed, without asking any repayment. She rarely complains about anything, especially the lack of spending money that her friends have. They're the annoying girls at the mall that I hate with a passion.

Back to my point - my sister is one of the best people that I know. She is selfless, she gives and gives without expecting anything in return. To see her reaction when she saw exactly how much I'd spent on her was priceless. She was shocked. And unlike most people in her generation, grateful.

That is why I love spoiling my sister.

Where did I go wrong?

My oldest son is 9 years old. He used to come and talk to me all the time. Then suddenly he wasn't able to talk to me about things. Now he comes and stands in front of me and just stares at me. If I ask him what he wants he puts his head down and talks so softly I can't hear him. If I ask him to repeat what he said he starts to cry. Sometimes he will write out his question, toss it at me and run away. The thing is I usually say yes.

This has been going on for a couple of years now. It is getting to the point where I just want to send him away as soon as he comes to me with that look on his face. I don't even want to try to deal with him because I know it would be easier to milk a bull that to get any information out of the child.

I know something has to change, but at this point I don't even know how to go about getting there. At the moment I am getting frustrated with him and yelling at him. I know that doesn't help the problem, but asking him nicely doesn't get through to him either. At this point I just want to scream.

I always hoped that I would have a really good relationship with my kids. I wanted to be the mom that all the kids came to. I want to be the cool mom. I feel like I am the mom that just yells at my kids and can't get them to listen or get through to them. I wanted to do 'do today' with my kids. My dad used to sit with us before bed and ask us 'what did you do today.' It was shortened to do today. I want that. I would ask my son when he got home from kindergarten what did you do today. NOTHING. I know you did something, what was it? Ever since then I can't get through to him. What happened? Where did I go wrong? At what point did I lose that little boy that use to tell me everything? I don't know. I do know I need to do something about it. I jsut don't know what.

Specializing in the removal of live things

"If it grows, it goes."

I'm forming a new landscape company, and the above is the company motto. Screw the careful delicacy of only removing weeds. Nevermind a well-shaped wall of hedgery. You want us to prune your trees but leave them standing? You need a different company. I and my mighty army of weed whackers, clippers, shears, hedge pruners and lawn mowers will remove everything in your yard to a close-cropped three inch height.

I'm done with having to choose what stays or goes in the yard. I give up on trying to remember if I planted X. Having to decide if it's a foxtail or something destined to be pretty. Should that random fig tree stay, or will it eventually wreak havoc on a plumbing line. Nope. Not gonna do it. I've spent my time in the trenches carefully nurturing what became a burr nursery. I once weeded a patch of the yard, convinced that I was yanking up a patch of soon-to-be ickery-stickery pokery things, and realized later that I'd removed the sproutings of a packet of Alyssum seeds. I'm plagued with tree of heaven rootlets everywhere, and the oaks I DO want to grow keep falling down.

Part of the problem I face is that I've got some of the best dirt on earth. The only place that nothing will grow is under my olive trees. (Really, what does one plant under a tree that oozes acidic oil 8 months of the year?) Anything that can grow, WILL grow, and when you're confronted with 18 varieties of "Well, it's green, it has leaves, and it's in the dirt", it's hard to determine what you've got. If it's all three inches tall, who cares?

I can't even kill what I do want dead. Two summers ago, I decided to intentionally kill a rose bush. It was in the most inconvenient of places; I'd fallen into it several times because it's right by a walkway, and due to its size, there wasn't a chance of being able to transplant it. In the middle of a Redding summer, I cut the thing to the ground, didn't water it for the rest of the year, and figured it was done for. The next spring, it blew back out of the ground bigger than ever. The only thing I'd managed to do turned out pretty impressive - I'd whacked the outer canes far enough down that they grew out as wild bright-red roses, and the inner portion of the rose bush spits out buttery yellow blooms.

Beauty, even in my failure.

Post-Consumer Waste and Impressionable Young Minds

Pondering jingles.


Yes, I was thinking of commercials and slogans and my brain wandered as it tends to do and it ended up here. I know you like to get a ringside seat to the craziness, so I decided to share.


I’ve been stuck on Band-Aids ever since I was a Toys-R-Us kid eating hot dogs…Armor Hot Dogs. I drank Pepsi before and after it became the Choice of a New Generation. I’ve celebrated moments of my life with International Instant Coffees. I filled it to the rim with Brim (of course I would’ve rather had Taster’s Choice, especially if Rupert Giles was likely to show up at my door).



My bologna had a first name. I made things last a little longer with Big Red. I soaked in it because Madge told me to. When I spilled a drink, I reached for the quicker picker upper. A sprinkle a day helped keep odor away! I had it my way at Burger King.



Now I’m tired and rambling. I digress…but WAIT!



Speaking of jingles and the like, what made execs approve the Juicy Fruit song?
“...Take a sniff, pull it out. The taste is gonna move ya when you POP it in your mouth...

(That’s pure pervy genius, right there.)


When I think of how simple some of those little song snippets were, I’m certain I have what it takes. After all, it’s probably so easy a caveman could do it.