Yay and Nay

Guess what guys?! I WON SOMETHING!!!!!

WHOOO!!

Okay, I seriously have the worst streak of luck when it comes to winning stuff. There will be a blog give away, and only like 5 comments and I will still not win. Boo. But its finally happened for me and I couldn't be happier!! WEeee!

Melanie J. over at Write Stuff, wrote a book. YES. I know! She wrote a book AND its been published. And since I am on a conquest to read 50 books this year, it is just perfect that I won her book! Pretty awesome right?!

So happy. *long, deep sigh*

You know what I am NOT happy about though? Something completely unrelated to what I started with of course!

The last two times my mother-in-law's babysat my kids, she's swatted my baby. My BABY.

The first time, he was getting into one of her cupboards over and over and over, so after awhile she swatted his hand.

The last time, he kept going up the stairs and apparently that deserves a spanking on the bottom.

AND apparently my mother-in-law thinks its quite funny. Like its the cutest little thing to watch his lip quiver and cry because she HIT him.

What would you do? My relationship with her is already strained (more on my end than hers), I don't really need another reason not to like her. I WANT to like her, believe me I do. And sometimes I actually really do. And I'd like to keep it that way, but not at the expense of a little 11 month old who I care much more about. (edit: Kristina asked if my husband could talk to her, which is what I would normally do, but he's out of town. And she's supposed to babysit TOMORROW. So yeah. Poo.)

At least I have a book to throw at her if things don't get better...is it a hard back Melanie?

(Did you see that?! Did you see how I totally came back around to the beginning to wrap that up. Awesome.)

The Longest Night of My Life

I was scared. I laid in bed shivering and trying to calm my nerves. It was dark and only a few lights could be seen in my bedroom, except the clock which brightly revealed the time: 1 am.

I had finished reading my book a bit after midnight and knew it was playing games inside my head. The book was suspenseful, reminiscent of The Hunger Games. In fact, VERY similar to The Hunger Games, except even more gruesome and even more detailed. I was trying to calm my nerves and go to sleep, but sleep would not come.

I kept thinking: go check the back door. I was putting off getting up because I knew, I knew, I had locked it earlier that day. But since sleep was still not coming, and the thought would not leave, I slowly crept out of bed. And slowly walked down the stairs, watching for shadows moving, trying to keep calm and not let my imagination run away with me. I crept through the living room, looking at the shadows and reassuring myself as to what they were. Okay, there's the couch. There's the flowers for my birthday. There's the kitchen table. I made my way toward the sliding glass door, moved the hanging blinds out of the way and looked down at the lock. It was where it should be to indicate that the door was indeed locked. I pulled at the door just to be sure and gasped as it slid open!

You see, sometimes when you lock the door, if it isn't pushed all the way tight the lock doesn't catch and although it looks like its locked, you can still open the door. And that is precisely what had happened.

I slid the door shut tight this time, locked it and pulled to make sure it really had caught. It had and I quickly made my way back upstairs, trying to keep the scary thoughts at bay. It didn't work. By the time I was back in bed, I was shaking and having trouble breathing. What if someone had been in the house?! What if they were in there right now?! What if they wanted to kill me and my little sweet family?! I tried to reassure myself, No, if they wanted to hurt me they could've done it downstairs when I was alone. You would have felt a terrible feeling before going downstairs if something was wrong. But I feel terrible now! But thats because you've worked yourself up. On and on and on I battled with myself.

I stayed awake listening for any sign of an intruder. I would slowly start to dose off, and then wake with a gasp at the slightest sound, terrified and alert again. I dosed and jumped back awake all night long.

Of course nothing happened because I'm here writing this down for you right now, but I have to say I am thankful for whatever thought that wouldn't let me sleep, to go down and check that door. Even if it meant a night of fitful sleeping, because I would feel a lot worse if I hadn't and someone HAD tried to come in our house later that night and was able to. *shiver*

And that is how I know I will make it to my next birthday.

(It was my birthday yesterday, what a way to end the day huh?!)

(My stomach's all clenched just writing this. That is the last scary book I'm reading for a long time!)

Yes, yes, I'm Talking about Being Tired Again. It Keeps Happening.

I'm tired. I know I say that a lot, but thats only because IT'S SO TRUE. I'm really really REALLY tired.

For a couple reasons: first up, I've been reading a lot, and even though I promise myself I will stop reading at a decent hour, I always end up...indecent. I mean, I've been staying up until midnight like the last three nights, reading. I know its stupid, but by golly, it is the ONLY time its quiet around here and I want some freaking peace.

The midnight thing wouldn't be such a big deal if once I finally went to bed I could actually sleep, but noooooo. There's the second problem: I have children. This causes me much more of a problem than just lack of sleep, but we're only talking about this one for today. Every once in awhile my two year old wakes up and screams, or has a bad dream or whatever; so every few nights he wakes me up and I have to go in and figure out how to get him back to sleep OR I get to change all his sheets because he peed the bed OR I get to lay in bed and hear him scream for me if my husband tries to go in there so I end up getting up anyway. Then I also have a baby. A baby who will NOT take a pacifier. Who when you try to give him a pacifier gets very ANGRY. Who thinks that his MOMMY should be his pacifier. I HATE THIS. He sleeps alright the first half of the night (you know the half that I wasted reading) but the second half he wakes up all night and screams and wants me to feed him, but he wants to just keep going and going and it doesn't matter how long I've nursed him, he will SCREAM a lot once I cut him off. And then he'll be back at it an hour later. It makes me not like him very much.

Sometimes my husband snores, or pulls the blankets off me or talks in his sleep.

Also, we have stupid loud neighbors.

Combine all these things together and you get my nights: Nights where I am woken up approximately 53 times and I'm ready to kill someone--or myself--at any given moment. Its so lovely.

I am so at my wits end I'm ready to do something desperate, I don't know what that would be, just SOMETHING...thats desperate. Because I'm feeling desperate. And tired. And like someone punched me in the forehead and between the eyes. And I don't want to hear the comments that say this will never get better, because I can handle getting up every once in awhile, I can handle listening for teenagers to get home, I can handle my husband talking in his sleep (this one I quite enjoy actually). What I can't handle is screaming baby in my ear, seventeen times in four hours. Maybe I just need some ear plugs...what do you think?

Cleaning is Stupid

Hey, its me again. Blaaaaaah.

As I was cleaning today I was wondering a few things, mostly:

"What is the point of doing this?!?!?!"

I mean to do the same thing every single day over and over, just pick up messes. Its so dumb. And I don't wanna do it!! Wah wah waaah! *foot stomping*

I also thought that the best time to clean is about the half hour or hour before my husband gets home. Because not only then does it look like I got SOMETHING done, if I did it earlier in the day you wouldn't even know it because it would be a mess again by the time he got home.

Why are kids so disgusting? The things I find sometimes makes me want to hurl they are so mind boggling. I don't remember being so gross when I was a kid.

Yesterday my 11 month old got into one of my cupboards (thats supposed to be "child locked") and SHATTERED three glass pyrex baking bowls. They were stacked inside each other and when he pulled them off the shelf and they landed on the floor--BOOM. Glass everywhere.

I need some sunshine (or happy pills, whatever works) to get me out of this funk. I have zero energy, I am so dead tired. Maybe when spring FINALLY shows up, I'll feel like blogging again. I hope so.

And about the hair cutting. I still don't know. I want to stick it out but I SO don't. Good thing I'm indecisive, because while I wait my hair keeps growing. So at least something is moving forward around here. Or downward. Whatever.

EMERGENCY! I mean, not really, but still.

AGH guys. AGH!

I WANT TO CUT MY HAIR!!!

I am so frustrated right now. I know this is the sort of thing people crave in a blog post: my hair and whether I should cut it or not, but its whats on my mind so...sorry.

The plan was to grow it out. I really wanted to grow my hair out LOOOONG, like Kyle from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills:



Her hair is gorgeous and long and luscious. I haven't had long hair for a few years and thought it was time to change things up. Plus I've always loved styling hair (done so many prom hair-do's I couldn't tell you the number), and I love doing fun stuff in my own hair so it would be fun for it to be long and actually fix it all "fancy".

[I don't really have any pictures to show you of me with long hair, EDIT: ah my sister sent me some:]




But I LOVE my short hair. I just love it. LOVE IT. LOOOOVE it.

I miss it. I saw a picture of me last year with short hair and I wanted to take a pair of scissors to my head right then.

I want to do this:


Or maybe something like this:


And you know what? I want the blonde. I WANT IT.

[Here's a couple of me with short hair:]

I'm trying to figure out if I should stay strong and grow it out. Get a cute "middle length" cut for now to hold me over (I'm afraid to get near a stylist for fear of shouting "just shave it all off!!"), maybe color it for a change, or should I just cut it short?

So tell me dear friends, what should I do? It is very much appreciated.

Gloooooooomy

Oh my I just do not have the energy to blog, or exercise, or do laundry, or mother...

I am so tired all the time for some reason and on top of that my motivation level has been...meh.

I think its this weather.

We had snow here last week. It never snows here and I actually really loved it for the most part. It was the best kind of snow, where it stays on the ground but the roads weren't bad. Perfect! But its been super gray and oh so COLD and now that the snow is gone we've had really stormy, windy weather. Also very gray again.

I think it makes me tired and depressed when its gray for weeks at a time. The sun just peaked out and I was like "HAAAALLELUJAAAAH!!!" and angels were singing and a single tear formed in the corner of my eye while I twirled slowly around in a circle but then the sun went back behind a cloud and I feel sad again.

I need spring to get here ASAP.

Hows the weather in your part of the woods? (And if you say sunny and 80, I will kill myself.)