Criminy

Ever feel like you're burning the candle at both ends? Or running around like a headless chicken?

I'm the latter. Wait, I'm the former as well.

Life has been absolutely turbulent lately, and I hate that. I am looking forward to the end of them month when everything is more harmonized and calm, just the way I like it to be. Then again, who does like it life be chaotic all the time?

My main goal for the month of July has been to get through V's All Stars tournaments (yee gads, I had no idea people actually spend this much time driving around) as well as pick out home school curriculum for the kids. They are currently on the wait list for CVCS (the k12 program offered in Chicago) but since it might be a while until they actually get in, I need to do it on my own for now. I've spent every waking, free, available moment looking into math and reading curriculum online - oh thank you Lord for the internet - when I'm not busy chasing around 4 kids and/or taking them to the darling baseball fields in the greater Chicago metropolitan area.

I also figured the pool out! Wahoo! It turns out the pump that comes with the pool is a piece of crap, just as suspected. I kept seeing that "dust" in the bottom of the pool, and could not for the life of me, figure out where it was coming from. I thought for a while that it was some dead algae, or dirt (but it was grey in color) or somethinanother. At any rate, I never did find out what it was, but i have finally gotten rid of it. I basically had to go out there every day, and kick it up with the pool brush and then what I did was, pour in this clarifier stuff that makes all the dusty stuff clump together a little bit better so it doesn't pass through the pump/filter like before. I also have been running the pump for - I kid you not - 12 hours a day. Twelve freaking hours a day!! What a joke. I've also been changing the filter inside the pump every day. I have 3 of them, and I just hose them off and reuse them. The chlorine levels and everything are more than fine, thanks to the new not-outdated test strips I bought. So after almost a week I have finally cleared out the darn thing. It worked out pretty well in the end though, because it's been too cool here to go swimming for the past week. PLUS, M had acquired a wonderful case of swimmers ear, and so we needed to have time to get that all cleared up. So the pool chaos worked for out in our favor, sort of.

Done

I'm so freaking done with the damn pool already. At least for now anyways.

I have been really....I mean REALLY, wanting a "real" pool for pretty much forever now. And this daggum Intex pool is really throwing me for a loop. I told dh initially that I CAN handle a "real" pool (you know, one from a pool store that costs a left lung, and has a real filter that actually does it's job, etc) and I was going to prove it to him by maintaining this blessed Intex pool. Mostly because this here pool is relatively cheap compared to the real deal, and we consider it the starter version for the pool challenged. Well, for the past few weeks that I've had it I cannot for the life of me get clear water. It looks like there's some kind of dust or sediment in the bottom of the pool and I can't get it to go away. I ran to the store and bought a boat load of pool chemicals and have been fucking around with that crazy shit every day. Turns out the test strips I have expired months and months ago. So who even knows if I would have been maintaining it the proper way this whole time had I some decent test strips, and *I'm* the one who caused it to get all cloudy and shit because actually the test strips are funky? Well, it turns out from much research and blood, sweat and tears that it's more than likely not anything I'm doing or not doing, but rather the dinky little filter that the pool comes with. The paper filters don't seem like they catch anything in the way of pool debris except for flying ants so the microscopic crap that goes through the skimmer goes through the hose, past the paper filter and right back into the pool. And I REFUSE to pay for a new filter, albeit a better one, because it's going to end up costing more than the damn pool is even worth. So suffer we must. I'll just keep adding enough chlorine so that we don't get Cholera or some other psychotic waterborne disease....

And not only that, but I got a goddam sunburn from being out there left, right and center messing with it constantly. Uggghh. Yes, I need the aggravation like I need a hole in my head. Turns out I also need some new glasses so I might be able to read expired labels correctly, LOL.

But whatever. The kids love the pool and we've gotten our money's worth out of it in the short time that we've had it so far. But I told dh that I'm not leaving him alone until I get a pool that works. He said maybe next year.

Ebarrassment

Yep, that's correct. I'm officially an embarrassment to my 9 yr old. This week, we have him signed up at a baseball camp thing. I've been taking him there every day. I drop him off in the morning and then pick him up in the afternoon.

All was well until I dropped him off today. We were a little bit early, maybe not even 10 minutes. I walked him in and normally, I don't go past "the gate". You know which one I'm talking about. It's the gate that moms are not, I repeat NOT allowed to walk past. I'm allowed to walk in the door thankyouverymuch, but once we get to that damn gate I need to turn around and skedaddle the hell outta there lest I do some kind of irreparable damage to my 9 year old son's public image, and make a mockery of my ultimate mom-dweebiness to boot. Nothing like feeling like an old lady. Sheesh. So anyway, I walk him in through the door. But since we were early, I took it upon myself to take a walk on the wild side and step past the gate. My reasoning was such that, we were early and V didn't see anyone that he recongnized and I didn't want to leave him there by himself. Fair enough, right? It would have been completely irresponsible of me to simply turn on my heel and leave right then and there. I was left no choice.

Now, this place is a gigantic indoor fieldhouse. Astroturf central. V walked past the gate, and I right behind him. He turned and saw me a few feet away from him, and his eyes got huge. It was like he was thinking, "Oh LORD. What does she think she's doing?!?!!! Walking past the gate!!!!!!". Yes, I'm full of nerve. I was ready to evolve from the ultimate hopelessly inept to merely utterly inept. And there was no turning back now. I continued to follow him across the indoor field, and our walk suddenly turned into a sprint. And then a run. And then a fast run. He kind of dove down (I think at this point he knew there was no way out), and while he was lying there, saying a silent prayer to himself that his mom wasn't really running after him through the field, and that he was going to click his heels silently and wake up from this abominable dream, I grabbed his hat off his head and continued to run past him. Then he got up and I yelled, "What's the matter? Do I embarrass you?!". He yelled back, "UHHHH, YEAH!!!!!"

Hahaha. LOLOL. ROFL. This kid doesn't know the meaning of the word embarrassment. What he needs to do is thank his lucky stars that he wasn't born to a mother who would take him to Burger King in an old, beat up, rusted up Caddy bondo-buggy while wearing rollers in her hair and cold cream on her face. I mean, here I am: dressed normal, makeup on, hair mostly done, carrying a cute handbag - basically I made a concentrated effort and was pulled together and left the geekiness at home - and I'm being compared to the mother from hell?! Nah, I don't think so. Not taking this lying down. Or not without a fight at the very least.....

If I'm going to be forced to be an embarrassment, I'm going to make it worth my while.

Tomorrow is his last day.

I'm going to stand at that gate when I drop him off, force a big hug and kiss on him. And then, just before he's about to die from what he will realize is true embarrassment, I'm going to wait until he's almost with the group and I'm going to yell, while waving my arms wild in the air, "Hey V!!! DON'T FORGET!!! I LOVE YOU VERY MUCH!!"

Oh My Garsh

It has been so long since I've posted an entry on my little 'ol blog. I don't like thinking that it's feeling all lonely and unloved, and it pains me so to brush it aside for so long.....

But I've been so BUSY.

I hate being this busy. I get to feeling all wild and harried, as I try to keep all of my plates spinning and none breaking. Plus, it's like summer. HELLO! Aren't we supposed to be taking it easy? Chillaxin'? Instead, I'm chasing kids that are coming out of the woodwork and at the end of the day find myself passed out on the couch fully dressed down to shoes. Like some drunk on a park bench.

Anyhoo. The past few weeks, I have helped my kids wrap up their last few days of school, withdrew them from said school (we're going to attempt to home school...or "home learn", sorry I'm still getting my terminology ironed out here) because the CPS is a crock of horse manure, and because I haven't had my fill of crazy just yet. I'm sure I'll have LOTS to talk about with that. Wish me luck. :D

I also wrapped up the final weeks of my oldest playing baseball. Baseball. Ha. What a riot. That in itself is like a full time job and is probably one of the contributing factors of my extended absence (you moms out there with kids in sports know what I'm talkin' 'bout). They're wrapping up playoffs at the moment, and I CANNOT WAIT until they're done. V is kickin' arse with his pitching, and was selected for All Stars. I was super excited when I first found out.....but then there was a clap of thunder. And the team manager told us at the meeting that they'll be playing 20 games in a 16 day time period. !!!!!!! Oh Lord. And then, the cherry on top was when dh told me that he got his vacation days screwed up and is starting his vacation after the All Star games end, instead of when they start. So guess who gets to drag 4 kids by herself to all those fabulous games?! Uh-huh. Yours truly......

Fun times.

It's not all entirely lost though. I marched my little behind over to Sam's Club a few weeks ago and bought the Intex metal frame pool they have there for $299. It comes with the pool (obviously...) a ground cloth, a pool cover, a skimmer, filter, net and vacuum (which I hear sucks). I was all pumped up to put it together myself, since I'm the epitome of hard headedness and like to bang my head against the wall. Mostly though, I knew that if dh saw it in the box, he would make me take it back because he doesn't want to "ruin the grass". Well, I got news folks: the grass is already ruined for the stunt I pulled last year with the Intex pool. HAhahaha. Hipchicagomom=1. Dh=zip.

So I whipped this thing out of the box after I had about 3 cans of Coke, and got to work. It wasn't that difficult to put together and I was moving right along all by myself. See, not so bad, right?



Until it started to rain. But I told you that I'm hard headed, and actually stayed out there until it was done. In all complete honesty, my kids were waiting with baited breath for this blessed pool (they even thought they were going in it that day, as soon as I was done even though it was like 65 degrees out. LOL) and I couldn't let them down. I am outnumbered after all..... It took me about 2 hours to do it myself. WaLa...



The hardest part was not having a third hand when I had to put the frame together. It didn't even occur to me to level the ground out beforehand because as I said, last year we had an Intex pool (with the blowup rim) and it did just fine. But when I filled that sucker up....and by that time it was too late unless I emptied the damn thing and started over.....it occurred to me that my yard is seriously not level. It's off by about a full 2 inches on one side compared to the other. And the bars are like...how do I put this....leaning towards one side as a result. Eeeek! But it doesn't look too bad. It looks alright. If not, then I suppose we'll find out very soon when it becomes our very own little hipchicagomom-made tsunami in the backyard. *gulp*

Joining the 21st Century

Go me. I'm finally joining the rest of my generation and caved and bought an mp3 player. But it's not an iPod. They're ridiculously overpriced and mostly I'm a star trek geek and need to be different. I also read an embarrassing amount of reviews on anything before I commit to buying it (seriously, I review for weeks and weeks) and decided on a Sony Walkman because they have the least amount of negative reviews and also because *drumroll* it has an FM radio built into it! Wahoo! So when I get sick and tired of listening to 8GB of music, I can turn the radio on (and subsequently get aggravated that I can't find anything good on the radio to listen to either). But I'm also excited about the fact that you can just rag/drop the music into the player w/out having to concede to iTunes.

But I do love it so much already and I just got it this afternoon. Really. It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

Date Night

So dh and I FINALLY got to go out! WoooHooo! We dropped the kids off at my MIL's house on Fri night and hightailed it outta there to go to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant.

At first I didn't want to go because it was warm out and I'm running out of nice things to wear. I think it's mostly because I'm just bored with what I have.....which is all of like, 3 nice tops and 3 pairs of black pants (yes, I NEED to go shopping, but anyway....)

Also, I didn't want to go at first because I was in a bad mood, and I didn't want to waste our once-every-6-months opportunity for a dinner date that way. Oh well. Dh wasn't about to let me waste an opportunity so off we went!

Now, let me mention a few things for the reading audience who don't know me personally. Dh and I have been working very hard to get out of debt for a while now. And when I say debt, I mean like, nasty, all consuming credit card debt. And that's mostly because we weren't managing our money in a repsonsible manner. So basically, we haven't had money the past few years to keep up with the Joneses. Like, at all. The silver lining though, is that we were recently able to pay off ALL of our credit card debt as well as my car loan and medical bills. Yeah! No more debt except for the mortgage.

So moving right along.....we get to the restaurant (which was in a really nice area) and one of the first things we noticed was that almost every car in the parking lot was either a BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, or a Maserati. All of them were black btw. Every. Single. One. Hey whatever. Our worth is not based on the car we drive. So what if we're slummin' it in our silver Toyota Sienna. We're consumer-debt free! We also couldn't find a parking spot, because it was a Friday night. So we had to swing past the Appalacians and park by a Ford at the far end of the lot, ie, the ghetto.

We get inside and despite the fact that we had reservations for 7:30, we STILL needed to wait a full hour to get a table. I completely forgot though, that people who have money to fling around like to take their time eating their dinner. A lot of time. So much so, that we pretty much had no choice but to go to the bar to fortify ourselves with bottled beer and mixed drinks while we waited. And waited we did. Every now and then, Dh would get all antsy and ask me to look at my phone to check the time. He didn't want to look at his phone, because he has this seriously OLD, ancient cellphone and was embarrassed to take it out of his pocket (we can afford to get him a snazzy, updated phone but he's just been plain lazy...it had nothing to do with finances. Until this moment.....). I told him not to be embarrassed despite his back-to-the-future phone and to not forget that while we may be poor in pocket, we are rich in lurrrv. And I'd marry him all over again even if he were rich when we got married. And to get off his ass and check the effin' phone and ask the hostess how much longer we had to wait because I was getting so daggum hungry that in about 2 minutes I was going to leave and go to Subway......

Whilst we were waiting, I noticed that the woman standing next to me was wearing a Chanel bag valued at what appeared to be approx $3k. Now let me say that this was the very first time in my little life where I saw a Chanel bag up close and personal. See, where I live, a designer handbag is considered a knockoff version of Coach from Chinatown. Or better yet, the trunk of some dudes car. Another woman was wearing a pair of Prada sunnies that were worth way more than my dinner was going to cost. OH WAIT! I forgot to mention, Dh and I were there with a gift card. A gift card! LOL! Not that gift cards are bad, because they're not and we totally love them. We just felt really out of place there for some reason. And the whole gift card thing kind of added to that. You see, we've been to this restaurant in the past, but it was in a different neighborhood. You know, on the other side of the tracks......

So we're standing there, and the woman with the Chanel bag comes stomping up to the bar and demands that the bartender give her a new scotch on the rocks because the one she had was "no good". It was also half gone. Dh and I looked at each other and our eyes lit up with glee as we anticipated a bar brawl....south-side style where someone takes a beer bottle and bashes it over the other persons head. And then the cops show up, throw us all in the paddywagon and we all end up locked up in the can for the night. There would be Frank Sinatra playing in the background, and it would be like a scene from Casino where Joe Pesci starts throwing around the f-bomb and hitting people with the phone.....@.@

At least it would have added some excitement and taken our minds off of how hungry we were....

But anyhow. We did finally end up sitting down and shoving some food down our throats. I don't know about you, but if I wait to long to eat I end up feeling not so great when I finally do manage to get my hands on some food. It was really good though, and we did have a nice conversation unrelated to finances. It was just nice to get away by ourselves without the kids pawing at us. Hopefully we'll be able to do it again real soon! :D

Friday Five

1. What is the longest you’ve gone between haircuts? 6 Months? Ugh
   
2. What is the shortest hour of the day? For me, it's between 9-10pm because that's when I get time to myself. And it always goes by too fast.
   
3. What is the longest line you’ve ever stood in? When we took the kids to see Santa at the mall in 2005. We waited 2 freaking hours because there were people in front of us at first, then Santa needed to go potty and a lunch break....
   
4. Who’s your shortest adult friend? Probably Christine.
   
5. Who among your current friends have you known the longest? Christine.

Friday Five questions are from http://www.friday5.org/