Thursday, December 18, 2008

There are times I don't love my job

Like when something breaks and I'm the only member of my team in the country and so I get to head into the office with rugrat in tow at 9:00 at night. It's now 11:40 and I still don't know what time we'll be heading home. Luckily for me Malia will fall asleep anywhere. Here's a lovely shot of her sleeping under the cubicle right behind me at work. She's been out and snoring for about an hour and a half.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

she shoots, she scores!

Rugrat went GREEN yesterday! She was so excited. I rewarded her by letting her take a toy out of the "give to the daycare because you keep getting red or orange" bin and she got to pick dinner. I know I'm not really supposed to reward her with food, but I caved and bought her Arctic Circle. I made the mistake of trying their "new" ham and cheese. Well, if it had just been ham and fake cheese it probably would have been fine, but there was some sort of bizarro sauce on there that was like a cross between honey mustard and hot dog relish. It was not a good cross.

Back to the fugrat...

I'm hoping that my new strategy is what prompted her to behave. Aside from the whole teacher having it in for her feeling, she really does need to be better about following the classroom rules and the main reason she keeps getting to orange is because she gets told to pull a yellow card and then cries about it and throws a fit which results in her getting an orange card for the tantrum. New rules at home are

Red = two toys in the bin mentioned above
Orange = one toy in the bin
Yellow = neutral, nothing happens with toys
Green = Remove one toy from the bin

I told her we wouldn't do anything with the bin of toys until it's full so at the very least I'm sure she'll get enough greens and yellows to keep the level of toys down in the bin. We'll see how that works. I am getting more information from the teacher about her behavior and what exactly she's getting in trouble for so things are getting better. I will be continuing to keep an eye on things though.

Edit: I just noticed I referred to Malia as the fugrat. Makes me giggle so I'm not changing it.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

More fun with the rugrat

I don't have anything particularly exciting going on right now except that I've finished up all my shopping completely. However I apologize in advance to JC/Carin/Zenock in case your package doesn't come before Christmas.

I realized last night that the recent stresses are taking a toll. After just about the crappiest last 5 days of work ever because of course everything breaks when I'm the only team member available, I needed a good baking to de-stress. I made chocolate chip cookies. Malia and my co-workers are quite happy about this. It was afterwards when Malia informed me that I wasn't any fun anymore and that I should take a hot bath and just relax and everything would be great. It just made me realize how in tune she is with my being in stress. I apparently need to deal with stress better and especially at home. I thought I'd share because really how many 5 year olds tell their mom to just take a nice hot bath and relax and everything will be just fine. She cracks me up and is such a delight even when she's a contributor to the stress sometimes.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Morning Drives like this one make it all worth while

Sometimes even the crappiest run of luck can have some outstandingly great times. Yes, I'm pretty sure I just made up a word, but it's my job so it's okay. This morning compared against yesterday was pretty fantastic. Not anything too spectacular, but just a good morning. Malia seems certain that she will get green today. She told me that every time she takes her Aurora doll as her toy for the day she gets green. So that is the toy she took this morning. The thought of this seemed to put her in a receptive mode because I only had to ask her one extra time to get dressed. I think the extra bedtime story is working to help her get to sleep. That and she enjoys it when I occasionally get tongue-tied reading her Dr. Seuss. We read two of the each night and her new favorite is Fox in Socks. That's the only one that really gets me because it's so easy to accidentally speed up when reading it out loud. She also really likes Green Eggs and Ham and has starting at least trying foods that I make instead of dismissing them outright as something she doesn't like. Who loves Dr. Seuss? I love Dr. Seuss.

As we jumped in the car to take her to daycare we were listening to a little Amy Winehouse. Again I must thank my friend for making me actually listen to her. I'd been reading about her in the tabloids for months but had never actually listened to her. I'm glad I did. Anyway, the following conversation took place:

Me: This is kinda dancing music, don't you think?
Malia: Yep, my bum cheeks are dancing!
Me: Oh yeah? Good music for it then.
Malia: My right one is doing the cha-cha and my left one is doing the ants in my pants dance.
Me:...
Malia: Oh wait, now they are both doing the Dave Mustaine rocks dance.

That's right, my five year old daughter referenced Dave Mustaine of Megadeth. She's also asked if I could get her some of his music because he rocks. This is due to an episode of Duck Dodgers where they defrost Dave Mustaine from being cryogenically frozen to come back and defeat the Martians easy listening Saxophone. I may have to hit up my Uncle Rick for some of his Megadeth collection since they are his favorite band.

She also popped out another gem as she was taking her jacket off at daycare. She told me, "My life was really great when I was three. I kind of miss those days." I wish I knew where she came up with some of this stuff, but that one had me and Dializ (daycare owner) nearly in tears laughing. My daughter is weird and I absolutely love it!

Here is the Dave Mustaine Duck Dodgers for your viewing pleasure:

Thursday, December 11, 2008

I feel I must share - wall of text ahead

I apologize in advance. It's been a rather tough month or so and I haven't posted much happy stuff. This is not a happy post either so I'm giving you a heads up now. Please stop reading if you're looking for something happy. If you just want something entertaining, then I'm pretty sure this will hit the spot for you.

I've already had one of those mornings where I wish I'd never gotten out of bed and it's not even 9 am. Mainly because my morning started at 3:30. That's right. I said 3:30. And I didn't get to bed until 12:30. The guy who lives above me has absolutely no concept of what is an appropriate time to be hammering. What is he hammering you may well ask. I honestly don't give a rat's behind of caring about what he is hammering. I'd really love for him to not do it in the MIDDLE of the NIGHT! I wish he would do it during the day. You know, when no one else is home and he's spending it sleeping. He doesn't work, he's home all the time. Apparently from what I've gathered he really only leaves to do grocery shopping and that's in the middle of the night. I don't really care what he does for the most part, but the music and television at full volume all the time even into the night was bad enough and now the hammering has started over the last couple of months. He gets a talking to and I'm pretty sure he's being fined as well for it. Every night I know that I will have to ask him at least 3 times to turn down the radio/tv. He turns it down, but then it goes up again within an hour. I've lived here for over a year now and it's not really any better than when I moved in. Unfortunately I think that the HOA may have to bring in the police over it because he's disturbing the peace constantly during the night and I'm not the only one affected. From what I understand it's been like that for at least 5 years.

It took me nearly an hour to fall back asleep only to be awakened by a huge crash of dishes in the kitchen. I admit I freaked a bit because I wasn't sure if someone had broken in or what. I grabbed a shoe and headed out there after verifying that the rugrat was in her room sound asleep. I know, a shoe is kind of dumb but I didn't have anything else and at least it has a pointy heel. To my relief there was no one there, but I did have a shattered bowl on my kitchen floor. It appears that one of the holder things for the shelf failed and dumped the contents. It was of course the top shelf in the cabinet because that's just how my luck goes. The bowl that broke is the middle size of a set of three I got at Costco. I'm sad because these were my favorite mixing bowls. Luckily I didn't use the middle size very often, so I'm not too sad. Along with the bowl on the floor there was a ton of silverware and my strainer. I'm a little behind on dishes and I got tired of doing them last night so I put all the silverware in the strainer on the counter. Yeah, they got caught by the falling mixing bowl. Is it bad that I just cleaned up the bowl and not the rest? I was too tired. Oh yeah and bleeding all over. Yep, you were probably waiting for that part weren't you? At least if you know me at all you were. I would have left the whole thing up except sometimes Malia gets up at night to get a drink and I didn't want her cutting herself. So I picked up the first piece and managed to slice open my left thumb. It doesn't look that bad, but that's because it's a pretty clean cut, just a bit deep. Not enough to warrant stitches thank heavens because I don't think I could have handled that this morning.

You may be wondering why on earth I wasn't asleep until 12:30. Well it was a not good day for Malia at school and the information I was given about her behavior. I talked about the color card system before. Well yesterday she was on orange. So I asked what she did and she told me she'd been patting one of the other girls on the head. I asked if she'd done it more than once because orange is the second card that you pull and she said that she hadn't. I admit that I didn't believe her and now I feel badly about that. She brings home a contract every day that is supposed to have her misbehaviors listed out on it. Starting the end of last week and the first part of this week it didn't say anything on it, just frowny faces and a comment that she was whatever color card she was. I wrote a note asking for the appropriate information because I can't back up their behavior program if I don't know what they feel she did wrong. Yes I phrased that correctly. I really think that the teacher has it in for Malia and has her pull cards for things that the other kids don't have to. Part of this is due to the mostly inane reasons given for pulling cards and the fact that the number of things she did wrong is not counting up to the number of cards she's pulling. She gets in trouble for things that all kids do. Like arguing over who gets to go first down the slide. She got a card pulled one day for climbing up the slide backwards. Seriously? That's worth a card? The other part is the way that Malia talks about it. She talks like she has to be careful about everything she does because she doesn't know if she's going to have to pull a card or not. I know she's not perfect and I know she misbehaves, but she's told me that she has to be extra careful in class to not get in trouble. She loves the school work but I can tell that she is noticing a lack of consistency on the teachers' part. I took a look at the contract for yesterday and sure enough it states she was on orange. It also says that the only thing she did wrong was pat a girl on the head. Nothing else. Am I just not getting their carding system? She's been on yellow before when she sat on a kid's feet. Is head touching considered way worse? I'm at a loss. I don't want to discount the whole thing to her because then she won't try to be good. I feel like I'm backing up a program that is inconsistent and frankly unfair as far as I can see. Anyway, I was up so late because I was trying to figure out if I'm incorrect in my perception and if there is something else I can try doing to get Malia to do what she's supposed to do. That is, if she doesn't start getting in trouble for looking at the other kids wrong. At this point in time I'm just kind of waiting for that. I added a note to her contract asking what else she did wrong yesterday because I didn't think that the information on her behavior was comprehensive as it didn't add up to Orange based on past contracts. Hopefully it wasn't too snarky, but it wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't.

Here is a picture of the remains of my bowl:

Sunday, December 7, 2008

An adventure in shopping

This isn't really an adventure, but I'm irritated by others after spending yesterday afternoon finishing up Christmas shopping. I have determined that next year for sure I am not entering any store other than for essentials after halloween. People are idiots when it comes to sales. Sales associates are also idiots and I must share the one encounter yesterday that really made me angry.

I carried my purchases at the old Mervyn's going out of business sale (which was rather nice, but I'm not going back in there) to the checkout where the following conversation took place:

Cashier: (looking at one of the items) I hope you aren't going to be putting liquor in those.
Me: Certainly not! Those are beer glasses, not brandy snifters.
Cashier: Same difference
Me: Well no, it's not. If you'd said alcohol then you could say same difference.
Cashier: Whatever, I really hope you aren't putting anything alcholic in them.
Me: Well, they aren't for me so I won't be putting anything in them, but the person they are for does not drink, but will really enjoy them regardless. Outside of that, it's really none of your business and rather inappropriate for you to even be giving me such crap.
Cashier: Drinking is bad for you.

He then refused to speak to me while he finished ringing me up except to tell me my total. The lady running the register next to him apologized to me and he gave her a dirty look.

Regardless of feelings about alcohol and it's goodness or badness, this kid was not joking and I was really annoyed by his insistence that I must not put alcohol into BEER glasses. I kind of wonder what he says to the people that buy wineglasses. I have wineglasses, but the only thing that goes into them is martinellis.

Sorry, but this just made me angry.

On the upside I am now finished with my Christmas shopping except for my brother because I apparently managed to completely forget purchasing him something. Hope I remember JC, or you're sharing Carin's present. ;)

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

I have been busy - UPDATED

I haven't posted anything in awhile because I haven't care to. Also because I've been doing a lot of reading and enjoying not worrying about the internet. I spent a lovely Thanksgiving holiday at the parents. I also managed to remain completely off the internet until returning home Sunday evening. This may be a record for me. Malia also managed to only go to Orange at school yesterday so that's a good thing. Anything is a step up from Red all the time. It's nice to open up her backpack to get out her schoolwork and not have a big red paper in there informing me she was exteremely naughty and misbehaved. EDIT: She got green yesterday! Viva la bribery! I'm pretty sure the idea that if she gets 10 green days she gets to pick a new Ponyville or a Littlest Pet Shop toy is the reason.

She and I got up our decorations Sunday afternoon. Not like it's super exciting or anything because we don't have a lot of room. I got a lovely 3 foot pre-strung tree at ShopKo and we got some snowmen and Rudolph cartoon ornaments. We haven't hung the Rudolph ones because I keep forgetting to pick up some hooks so we can. Hopefully I'll remember today on my way home after the baby shower. Is it wrong that I truly hate baby showers. I love my family and I love that they are having kids, but I hate baby showers and I'm not overly fond of babies until they are about 6 months old. I realize I'm a mom, but that doesn't mean I have to like kids. Outside of my family and friends anyway.

I haven't taken a pic of our tree yet, so in order for you to not feel bad, I've included a crappy camera shot I took yesterday of one at work... where they didn't measure and there are a good 6 or so inches of the tree squished across the ceiling.