Day 278 or The Day I Lost My ...

Brain. Oh I mean credit card. (Now did your mind go somewhere else? Naughty. Naughty.)

But back to my lost card. My husband is about to take a big trip. A trip North. Very North. Needless to say, life in Texas has not necessarily prepared us for all the contingencies of the Northernmost regions of the world. So yes, we pulled out the old reliable for a few necessities.

Unfortunately, I pulled it out while we were in the kitchen, unloading groceries (me), cooking dinner (said husband), and bickering (children). At some point I believed that I gave my husband the card. Except that when he was about to head out, he asked for it. WHAAAAT?

I gave it to you. No, you didn't. Yes, I did. No, you didn't. So on and so forth. So we start looking. And looking. And looking. For hours.

Now I have one of those houses with a Bermuda Triangle quality. Not because it's messy. In fact, we were expecting company so we had cleaned all day. Yet things just seem to disappear. So after looking in all the obvious places, we looked in the less obvious places. After all the less obvious places, we looked in the stupid places. And after stupid places, well... I just started to lose it.

Had I created a memory? Because that means you're full-on, padded cell, white jacket crazy. It is entirely different than forgetting something. If I had not given it to my husband, what had I done? And why did I think that I had?

So just shy of pure "Gaslight", I had pulled out the microwave, I pulled out the stove, and the frig. I cleaned places that nobody cleans because nobody sees it. Because nobody loses their credit card, where? Drum roll, please.

In the Ziploc box. Yes, you read that right. The Ziploc box. It seems if we could have rewound the tape of our lives, we would have seen that while I was dividing up the huge pack of beef (that I got an awesome deal on) for the freezer and my husband and I were trying (and I do mean trying) to have an important conversation about this trip while my children were simultaneously fighting and calling my name every two minutes, I picked up the card with the extra Ziploc bags and promptly deposited them and the card into the box.

When my husband found it, I literally dropped to the ground. I cried. I'm not CRAZY. I'm just a very distracted mom. Very distracted. And I need to slow down and not try to multi-task so much.

So lesson learned.

Well, for today. But I am a mom. And we are expected to do more things in one day than any human is capable of and it is not just possible but entirely likely that I will attempt to do more than one thing at a time.

Probably tomorrow.

But for today, I will try to do better.

P.S. The good thing that came out of it -- my husband saw how thin I was stretched and made me a very large White Russian and a hot bath. So as they say, all's well that ends well.

Day 208 or My Husband is So...

Lee over at Headaches, Hormones, & Hot Flashes and Deb at Menopausal New Mom have joined together in Wonder Twin Power style to create a new meme called My Husband is So... and their entries made me laugh enough to be willing to try. But first a disclaimer. My husband has been a diligent reader of my blog since Day One (in fact, for the first few months, he was often the only reader!) so honey, please remember that I love you! Okay, that base covered...

My husband is so ridiculous with illness. Mine or His. Are all men like this? (And yes to my male readers, let me know what you think! All three of you...)

It has been well documented (at least in this blog) that last week was hell to the -acious in this house. We were racked by illness. It started with me. And I was sicker than I have been in years. And strike me down with lightning (please don't!) if the man didn't get angry. He's stomping around like the three year old. So here I am semi-conscious trying to deal with Mr. Grumps who can't seem to do anything without me. I can't tell you how many times I had to tell my children to go ask their Dad and have them return three minutes later.

But then it got worse. Before I was fully well, he had the audacity to get sick. And then we further regressed from the three year old to an infant. The man ran a slight temperature and you would have thought that Scarlet Fever had descended on the western front. He moaned and whined. Basically, he was a Big, Fat Baby! (Come on, hun! You know that it's true!)

But here's what I don't understand. This man has been to war. He has dealt with RPGs and IEDs and yet, he can't deal with the same virus with which he thought I could maintain all my household duties! He doesn't understand that I might be taken down by something but he should be able to sleep ALL day. ALL DAY.

So, does your spouse (husband) show great bravery/aplomb in one area of their life and then demonstrates a complete lack of anything in other arenas? Or am I the baby? (I'm not the baby!)

Thanks again to Lee and Deb! Head over to their place if you want to join in!

Happy Wednesday! (Especially to my beautiful, wonderful, warrior husband who allows himself to be fodder for my blog. I love you, baby. Even when you act like one!)

Day 170 or My Valentine

Gotta love a man in uniform!

Day 113 or Your Eyes

Fifteen years ago, I married my high school sweetheart. My best friend. My everything. And tonight we celebrated our lives then and now. We had a dinner that did not involve sippy cups or high chairs. We shared a bottle of champagne and toasted years to come. All those years ago, we danced to Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" (a song that we loved and that we thought was original but has since become one of the most popular wedding songs). The words are still true as ever, so here they are in all their glory for the man who still makes me weak in the knees and feel safe at the same time.


Love, I get so lost, sometimes
Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart
When I want to run away
I drive off in my car
But whichever way I go I come back to the place you are

And all my instincts, they return
And the grand facade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

In your eyes
The light, the heat
In your eyes
I am complete
In your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
In your eyes
The resolution of all the fruitless searches
In your eyes
Oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light
The heat I see in your eyes

Love, I don't like to see so much pain
So much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away
I get so tired of working so hard for our survival
I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive

And all my instincts, they return
And the grand facade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

In your eyes
The light the heat
In your eyes
I am complete
In your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
In your eyes
The resolution of all the fruitless searches
In your eyes
I see the light and the heat
In your eyes
Oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light,
The heat I see in your eyes
In your eyes in your eyes
In your eyes in your eyes
In your eyes in your eyes

The words are still true all these days later.

P.S. I had a lovely blogging week. I won another giveaway, I received one of my giveaway's items, and I still have an award to share. I will be making my many thanks to all tomorrow. 'Til then, cheers!

Day Sixty - Two or To Stuff or to Spread?

Are you a stuffer? Or a spreader?

I'm a spreader. When I have a stack of papers or other items, I like to spread out with a series of specific stacks and I don't pick up the stacks until I find the perfect place. Not "a" place, mind you. "The" place. Now this worked really well when I was young and single. I was naturally an insomniac (sound like any kids you know?) and rarely slept more than four hours a night. Some nights I didn't need sleep at all. So when I embarked on such a project, I simply stayed up until the project was complete. My closets were beautiful and nothing was just lying about.

Flash forward to now. I love sleep. Need, need, need sleep. Have two children that understand the phrase, "Please don't touch, Mommy's not finished" about as much as they would if I said it in Mandarin. And, here's the kicker -- I married a stuffer!!!! So I take the time to spread out everything for sorting and if I walk away from it for more than five minutes, assuming my two kids haven't already gotten to it, he stuffs it. He stuffs it into drawers, stacks everything into one and places it "somewhere", or worse. Worse -- I found stacks on the floor of the closet -- Really? Really?

This makes me looneytoon, over the cuckoo's nest, Crazy with a capital K! See he treasures clean surfaces -- can't stand my stacks. And I can't stand stuffed drawers and not knowing where anything is. So where is the happy medium here? (Hey, if we can figure this out, maybe we can solve health care reform!)

I know that my stacks don't always look pretty (okay, rarely look pretty) but I know where things are. And I'm the one who gets up with my son and has him ready to go to school at 7:00 am. So I think I should have priority (especially today when I am frantically looking for a due library book) but he wants everything to "look" clean. To me it's not clean, it's just hidden.

So here we are -- at a stand-off. I know that time is not my friend and I appreciate that my stacks sometime stand for a while, but I can't find anything his way. Any suggestions? To spread or to stuff, that is the question.