Stephieface

We start moving tomorrow (sat) and finish the move on Sun. Then I won’t have internet until after the 4th, so no posts for a week or so.

Yesterday we were putting out our couches for trash, my BIL helped me as the Mister had to go to work. We got the love seat down fine, but encountered some issues when it came to the couch. “How the [expletive] did you people get this up here?” was uttered more than once while we tried to maneuver the couch out of the living room and over the banister of the steps…. the operative word there being “tried”.

The couch was doing its best impression of when a little kid gets their head stuck in a banister… you can get it through the first time, but when you try to get it out you’re inevitably stuck.

So we did as I’m sure anyone would do… we destroyed it. Well, actually my BIL destroyed it with a kids Home Depot hammer… and by destroy I mean break that puppy down to pieces of lumber and springs.

The whole time I was wishing I hadn’t packed the camera… I thought “Gosh, this is so bloggable”.

Til next week!

Right now I should be packing… and I will, I’ve already packed for most of the day… I’m just hiding from it for a few peaceful minutes. 4 more days… 4 more days… and we’ll be in the new place.

I got to re-tour the new place today, I was once again astounded at the amount of closets available to us. Here in this house we have 2… two closets… period. The new place will take some getting used to, as all new places do. But I like it already ever more than I did before. The neighbors are nice and the service guy is really sweet- so this bodes well.

It seems a little smaller than this place, but then its probably not. Our third floor was really just one big old bedroom, with some convenient walls and chimneys. In the new place, the Mister and I will have a door… and that, my friends, is swanky.

I have no idea what it is about my children, why it is they insist on choking on things.

When I first started dating the Mister, his having a child already scared me. I debated long and hard on if I wanted to continue a relationship with him or not, because my belief was regardless of if it worked out or not the time I would spend with him and his son would in some way effect his son. ‘Even a drop of water in a pond makes ripples’ kind of thing. This however, in no way, prepared me for motherhood.

Upon the arrival of Sam, I was pretty sure that all those “instincts” people tell you about was all a bunch of bunk. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea how being a mom would effect me. I had no idea about how to take care of a baby. I just simply had no idea. I was amazed to find that the hospital will let you take your baby home with you when it is painfully obvious that you have no clue about what to do for it.

My first go at actual motherhood wasn’t easy. I made a lot of mistakes… I breastfed on demand… Sam had no schedule, I put him to sleep whenever he seemed tired or when he fell asleep… he co-slept with me and the Mister in our bed until he was 2… when he would cry endlessly I’d keep him in the room with me because the fear of him spontaneously (for no reason whatsoever) stopping breathing was greater than the stress  of hearing him cry after I had provided all I could… I held him constantly (even when I went to go pee)… I hovered over him incessantly, not allowing him to go beyond an arms reach of me… I got about 4 hours of sleep a night – maybe… Sam got about 4 hours of sleep a night – maybe…

(Its really a wonder how Sam has turned out to be such an adventurous, climbing, building, defeating mommy genius considering how I did first go round…… and really no wonder why Sam is the one I will find smuggled in my bed when I wake in the morning,  the one who gets the most frustrated when things aren’t just so, the one who can be a little nervous when by himself considering how I did first go round.)

I was certain that the instinct for motherhood had somehow skipped me, or maybe just wasn’t included in the package.

This past weekend reminded me that, like a few times in my life, I underestimated myself. Danny was chewing on a biter biscuit, and though I hovered close to him as he ate it he still managed to start choking on not one… but two pieces of it. After I turned him over and practically upside down, slapping his back, and sweeping my finger in his mouth while he was still upside down dislodging the pieces and getting them out I recalled all the times that I’ve had to do this for my children. I remembered the first time I had to do this with Sam, when he sucked on the tiny pieces of bread I gave him and pushed them to the roof of his mouth to make a super chunky piece and tried to swallow that… how I had no idea what to do when he started choking, how I just gripped him up turned him over and started doing whatever I could to get the bread out so my baby could breathe… then I thought to how later when someone sneaked adult food to TJ before he was ready to eat that kind of food and he started choking on it, and I grabbed him and did the same before my paramedic trained friend reacted… then after the chunk of Arby’s roast beef hit the floor my paramedic friend complimented my textbook baby heimlich when I had no idea- I was just doing what worked the time(s) before…

And then I realized after all that, that maybe I do have some instincts after all.

First off, I am super sad that CBS canceled Moonlight. Now where am I going to get my hunky vampire detective fix?

Still packing for the move. I never realized that we had so much stuff. Where were we putting it all? Where was it all hiding? Jeez. M Day looms closer, next Friday (the 30th) starts the weekend of the big move. It’s so very close, and not everything that needs to be done is done. Yet, I am very excited and I am really looking forward to moving now. I’m excited because:

1. I’ll be getting away from the window killing neighbors who shoot at my house and throw rocks through the downstairs apartment window when they aren’t trying to sick their pit bulls on my kids

2. I’ll get to see if the landlord will notice that the girl he thinks lives downstairs is no longer living there but three gentlemen are instead (well, they aren’t really living there, they stop by every now and again and go in and out of the apartment- but they rarely stay the night)

3. I’ll have my own personal just for my house only parking space, and this will be awesome. After fighting for the last 8 or so years over the uber prized parking spot right in front of my house, but still having to park at the top of my hill and walk down, it will be nice not having to carry all of my groceries up and down my street. Oh and my laundry. And my fell asleep in the car children. And basically anything really.

I will miss the odd random things that happen here though. Like the squirrelly invasion, and secret peonies. The house, not wanting to let me down, provided me with one more weird thing before we leave. Earlier this week, as my MIL was dropping off my kids, I’m pretty sure I saw the window killing neighbors hit a bird with their van. I’m only “pretty sure” because I saw them screech to a halt (going uphill) and then saw this big black bird shape hurriedly land on my roof… I’m really only adding 2 + 2. Anyways… I went back inside the house and kids started going on about a creature. Exasperated with me they grabbed my hands and pulled me to the window so I could see for myself. They wanted to know so badly what the creature was… and while I knew it was a bird, I was stymied as to what kind…

I had never before seen such a thing. Was it a hawk? A small falcon? I knew it was bigger than a pigeon. Sadly, I couldn’t get much closer to get a picture, I was already hanging out of my windows and trying to shoot through screens to get these.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t pay it too much mind, but I was sure it was hit by a car and it sat there for a good four or so hours. It didn’t help at all that Ben had no clue what it was and though I had thought it injured… no where around here that I could find would take it if it was.
It took a while to research, but I’m pretty sure it was a whippoorwill. I had never seen a whippoorwill before, so I was particularly vigilant in watching over it. It stayed there until it got dark, too dark for me to see it on the roof. After everyone’s assurances that I would it be dead the next morning, I awoke to no bird at all. I’m hoping it didn’t meet a grisly end and instead flew away to eat the scarce few night bugs out in our chilly weather. I’ll take whippoorwills over squirrels any day.

I did laundry today, and as I was driving back home I was listening to the radio. It was the 80’s station lunch request time slot. The caller asked for the Men Without Hats song “Safety Dance”, and I immediately started thinking about this guy I used to work with at CompUSA named Jeff. I recalled that whenever we went out, if that song played, he would do the Safety Dance regardless of where he was or whatever it was we were doing (or if even he was trying to impress some club chicky) without fail. The man was addicted to doing that dance.

So this became the mental anthem I gave him. The song that was Jeff.

Then I started thinking about this more, like about how Notorious B.I.G’s “Big Poppa” makes me think about my one friend Shawn, the Clarks “Chasin Girls (and Dinkin Beers)” makes me think about another friend named Jeremy, the Oasis song “Don’t Look Back In Anger” makes me think about an ex, and how Queensryche’s “Silent Lucidity” makes me think of someone long gone.

Then I started to wonder what song people would recall me as, then I started compiling a list of possible ones, though this is what I think people would say… not necessarily what they actually would.

House of Pain’s “Jump Around”

Hot Chocolate’s “You Sexy Thing”

Jackal’s “Lumberjack Song”

Garbage’s “Number One Crush”

and Jonathan Coulton’s “Skullcrusher Mountain”

What’s your memory song?

I know I have been really lame about posting lately, and that’s because I’ve been getting ready to move at the end of the month. So forgive me guys, just this once, k?

For your weekend entertainment:

I’m apparently behind the internets curve, but I discovered this site this weekend that I thought was pretty kick ass. Its called Pandora, and you can make your own internet radio station without having to host it on your computer or using your files. You enter in an artist you like (this is called a song seed) and it immediately starts playing music from that artist and music that is like that artist. Then you get to vote on if you like the song or not, yes and it tries to find more like that song…. no and it tries to find something else. Then if you want, you can add another song seed (artist) and it will use that to find more songs for you. Then after you get going you can share your station with other people you know…. or people can stumble upon yours and listen along- which is just awesome.

Things I don’t like about it…. well, I don’t like that you are limited in the number of times you can forward past a song- you only get 5 skips an hour. I’m not real fond of the fact that you can’t skip backwards, once you pass a song its passed until it comes back around in rotation. The biggie that I don’t like is that you can take someone else’s station. If you queue up someone else’s station and vote on the song, you are given the option to take the station, and if you do you can start making changes to it because it is now yours. Of course I could go back and retake it back, but still…. not an option I’m fond of.
Still though, when I’m running the werewolf game its nice to have music that’s tailored to the setting in there to give the mood….. especially with my song seed of “Animal I Have Become” by Three Days Grace…. I find that its just too fitting.

In other news, my Mom got her tumor removed and is recovering. Then she’ll be getting new boobies to replace the ones that were removed…… though, I’m not certain how I feel that my mom will have perkier boobs than I do (younger too!) but at least she’ll be healthy.

Too Many Things seems to be the theme of my month of May so far.

I have too many things to pack
I have too many things to do
I have too many things I have to get ready for
Too many, too many

I remember when I moved into this house 8 or so years ago, granted I didn’t have much stuff back then, but my move was relatively quick and painless. Now, almost a decade later I haven’t personally accumulated much more stuff than I started with, but the 4 kids and husband I accumulated in that time sure do.

Add to the packing stress that the Mister promised and planned a camping trip for the middle of the month, there are pictures and stickers on the calender for the kids to know what’s going on. And they are really looking forward to it.

So I have to do things about packing for a move, packing for a camping trip, and this is in addition to the kids’ field trip to the zoo, the field trip picnic at Dormont Park, and trying to get the kids all switched over to a new place (school wise).

Whew.

BUT
I’m glad we’re moving, and I’m glad we’re having family time, and I’m glad I’m able to do stuff with my kids… so what’s a couple hundred boxes, right?

I was tagged by Shirley from Woolly Knit Bits for a meme…. so here goes…………

The rules:

Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.

Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.

Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

Let them know they are tagged by leaving comments on their blogs.

So, here we go then . . .

Having thought I would be moving a few months ago I had packed alot of my stuff. Then when it became apparent that we weren’t going to be moving anytime soon I started slowly unpacking…. only to discover earlier this week that we are actually going to be moving (out to Moon in the beginning of June- hey it rhymes!). Now I’ll have to repack everything back up.

The meal I eat 85% of the time (daily) is stir fried veggies… no rice, no nothing else with it, just the veggies

I like for a little fuss to be made about me on holidays

I participate in the Discworld group board on Ravelry more than any other board

I am obssesive about details

Though I appear all nice and patient and sweet…. able to handle the most angry of my fellow man…. to do so I give the secret finger when no one is looking. I’m sure there are a number of security cam videos somewhere of me flipping off the door, the phone, a cash safe, and the flurry flip where I do a crazy person dance flailing my flipping fingers in the air while in a dressing room.

I will not fart in front of or in the presence of people… I will excuse myself to the bathroom- always.

I’m not a big tagger, so if you want to be tagged- go ahead and consider yourself so.

But you did read that right, we are moving. I’ve just given notice to our current landlord and starting looking up what’s where around where we’ll be. We’ll be moving out to Moon Township, so that’s exciting… especially since within the last week alone a rock has been thrown through the downstairs apartment window and cords and cables were ripped out of the side of my house. This is in addition to beer bottles being busted on my front door. What makes this really annoying is that we haven’t called the cops on any of our neighbors for a year or so now (I think- I’m pretty sure it was a year ago when the neighbors tried to kill one another in the middle of the night)… so I have no idea why this is going on. I’ll just be glad to get out of here.