Bits of Tid

1.  I'm getting sick.  I can feel it.  You don't wanna know the details, but you trust me, dudes, it's getting there.  Both the little dudes got it, and here it effing comes.  Straight outta Compton, yo.

2.  The Big Man gave me this little GEM today: "Good thing we have washing machines and don't have to wash our clothes in the creek the way they used to have to........like back when you were a kid."  How old does he think I am, anyway?  Ancient is the answer to that inquiry.  Between this and the Little Man telling me a few days ago to take a shower because I smell like a foot, I'm pretty sure the little dudes have decided that I'm a fish from biblical times.

3.  Also, I was thinking about middle school the other day, because I am awesome, and I recalled my clothing choices.  They weren't good.  I refused to wear jeans until I was about a sophomore in high school.  Here is the reason.  The texture of the denim hurt my legs.  This was the early 90s we're talking about, here.  Jeans were super tight, and then to add insult to injury, you had to do something called "tight roll" them at the bottom.  Adding more tight to the tightiest tight that ever tighted.  As such, when you sit down in jeans, your jeans rub on your knees, and I just could not handle the sensation.  Therefore, I had sweatsuits.  Matching ones.  Fuscia, black and teal.  Elastic around the wrists and ankles.  I dressed in what the modern fashion world calls "a column of color in a monochrome palate."  My middle school classmates called it "ugly ass clothes on an ugly ass girl".  One girl in particular, let's call her Michelle, because that was her name, berated me for my clothing choices on a daily basis.  Her favorite line was, "oooooh, Karen, where did you possibly get such different clothes?  Must be some new place at the mall.  They look soooo expensive."  Sarcasm and hangers-on dripping from her very being.  Every day, my answer was honest.  "My mom got them at K-mart."  This was always followed by tons of laughter.  Some sort of sick routine.  I remember always thinking, "This is so weird.  Why does Michelle care what I am wearing?  How does my sweatsuit affect her in any way?"  I didn't much comprehend that making fun of people can make someone else feel good about themselves.

My clothes were pretty easy to pick out for my mom, I think.  I'd wear pretty much anything, as long as it wasn't jeans.  Anything neon green was totally go.  Also, my granny got me this hideous...thing at Once Upon a Child when I was around second grade or so.  It was a 2-piece matching set, green with purple polka dots.  The pants were capri length, with ruffles around the bottoms.  Cute for a 7-year-old, yeah.  It was the top, dudes, the TOP.  The top was a bra, basically.  It was a strip of fabric about 6 inches wide with OFF-THE-SHOULDER ruffles for straps.  WHY did they even create such an article of clothing in a size 6X?  Also, THANKS, GRANNY!  I wore that thing a couple of times, or I should say I whore that thing.  Christ.

Once in the 6th grade, I was taking a home ec class and learning "sewing", so my friend and I got into my mom's fabric chest in her sewing room and decided to make a shirt for me out of this red fabric with black ducks on it.  What we did was fold it in half, and then I laid down on the fabric, and my friend got the scissors and traced my torso in fabric.  We then sewed the fabric into a "shirt".  I showed my mother, and she was LIVID.  As she should have been.  I'd not asked permission from her to use a fabric that had special meaning to her and was meant for a special project in honor of a friend of hers that had passed.  I had cut it up into a "shirt".  As such, my mother let me wear this thing to school.  I was so proud of it.  It took 20 minutes to put it on because, well, when you just trace yourself, you don't really leave much room to sew seams; therefore, the shirt is about 6 sizes too small.  I was trying to impress my home ec teacher with my superior shirt-sewing skills.  What I ended up with was a lot of name calling, a dress code violation because the shirt showed my midriff, and cut off circulation in both of my arms.  The "shirt" had to be cut off of me when I got home.

I started wearing jeans around sophomore year since JNCO came out, and those suckers were ENORMOUS.  No rubbing on the knees.  Do y'all remember these things?  They had ones called "mammoth" and the cuffs were a whopping FIFTY inches around.  My brother and I had a pair.  We both fit in one leg of them.  I wish I could say that was the only time there were multiple people that fit into my pants.  Read that how you'd like.

As such...I overcompensate now.  A LOT.  I'm obsessed with fashion.  I watch all of the collections and mark my favorites that I'll buy to wear nowhere if we win the lottery.  I'm the girlfriend you see in the grocery with a screaming 4-year-old and a cart full of Pop-Tarts in bulk and a 55-gallon drum of apple juice sporting 5-inch heels and a tailored leather jacket, accessorized to the nines.

Seriously, though, if we win the lottery, I'll be at the grocery in a Versace ball gown.

This one.  At the Meijer.  I'd buy a matching coupon binder, since my pink one would clash.  At the self checkout with my 12 cans of Pillsbury crescent rolls, 55 cups of Yoplait and 26 packages of string cheese.

Sometimes...

Sometimes I wish I'd never been diagnosed.  If I hadn't been diagnosed, I wouldn't have had to go through "training".  If I hadn't gone through training, I wouldn't know how mean people really are (or were) to me.  I could go on in my blissful little world oblivious to the cruelty.

I've had a hard couple of weeks.  Sleepless nights full of nightmares, my past running over and over through my head, only with a new perspective.  One where friends I thought I had weren't really friends at all, and people I thought were pretty awful anyway are nearly inhuman now that I know what they were doing.

It's pretty obvious to anyone that spends time with me on a regular basis that I'm "different".  It's not hugely significant or anything, but my behavior is odd at times.  My affect is flat most of the time, unless I am excited or passionate about a topic, and then I become nearly childlike.  My manner of speaking or delivery is different at times, enough that strangers have noticed.  I rock a little when I'm nervous, and I self-stim by rubbing my hands on my jeans between my knees to calm down.  My brain processes things differently; therefore, I think in ways that neurotypical people do not, which leads me to ask questions that seem logical to me, but completely odd to others (particularly in group settings, this can be embarrassing).  As such, I find it impossible to believe that in my entire 30 years before my diagnosis, NO ONE KNEW ANYTHING WAS WRONG.

This thought invades my brain often.  WHY didn't anyone do anything?  WHY didn't anyone at school tell my parents about my behavior?

Thinking about my past, I've come to the cruel realization that some people didn't do anything about it because it was better for THEM if I was different.  It furthered their agenda if I didn't fully understand what I was getting into.  I was easily taken advantage of.  So easy, in fact, that once one person figured it out, he passed it on to his friends who could then take further advantage of me, and my idiot, naive, ridiculous ADULT self couldn't even tell the damn difference.  Some groups went so far as to figure out something wasn't quite right with me, take advantage of me for their own economic furtherance, and then add insult to injury by asking me to do things that seemed logical to me but were completely ridiculous to gain amusement from my disability.

With all of these realizations comes a very painful conclusion.  My disability wasn't all that well hidden.  It was just hidden from ME.

You wanna piece of me?

I'm Mrs. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

What?

Fulfilling? Quite.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm pretty idealistic.  A daydreamer, if you will.  (Dreeeeeeam weeeaver...sorry).  When I was first able to move in with Eric and the kids become a SAHM after being in the workforce for 16 years, I  thought "Whew! Now I'll get to do all of those things I didn't have time to do because I was at work!"

Um. No.  None of those things are getting done.  In fact, less of the things I wanted to get done are getting done.  I am taking five classes this semester instead of my usual four.  "Sure," I thought, "this will be a snap with all of this extra time!"  How is it that I now have LESS time to do things than I did before?  The answer is, of course, that the little dudes are MORE than a full-time job.  Before I would work my 40 hours, go to school, and if I needed time to do my homework, I'd just tell Eric I couldn't come over today to visit.  I was still there a few days a week, but now I live here.  My day with the kids starts promptly at 7:30 in the morning, and it does not end until 12.5 hours later, if I'm lucky and they go to bed at 8 without a fight or without being so loud for an hour after bedtime that we have to go in there and remove toys.  Eric gets home between 4:30 and 5, and boy, does that help, but I still don't have any time to get my work done!  If I leave the house, I feel guilty that Eric is there doing it alone after working all day; if I DON'T leave the house, I get no homework done!  I can go in our room and try to work, but it goes a little like this:

*trying to read and absorb what I'm reading* SHRIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKK!!!! AAAAAAAAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!!!  I AM GOING TO GET YOU!!! STOP LOOKING AT ME!! SHRIIIIEEEEEEK!  KAREEEEEEN, DAAAAAAAADDDY, HE IS NOT LETTING ME HAVE THE BAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLL!!!!  and again, if I may emphasize little man's favorite noise, SHRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKK!!!!  I cannot believe a boy can get his voice that high.  I'm going to enter him into a Mariah Carey impersonator contest.  I almost want them to hit puberty so that their voices deepen and I never have to hear SHRIIIIIIIEEEEEK again.

That is really not true.  I have been a MESS lately because they are growing up.  I miss Big Man during the day when he is at school badly.  Little Man will be in kindergarten in a few months.  It is devastating.  They turn 5 and 7 in 3 short months; 5,7 and 3 can go to Hades.  They are no longer allowed in my number line.  DOWN WITH THE FIRST THREE ODD PRIME NUMBERS!!!

I did get to go see Big Man at school today, and it was one of the most fulfilling experiences I've ever had.  One of my little "daydreams" was that I'd have all sorts of time to go to PTA meetings and be involved in school and go on field trips all of the time.  They don't let little brothers on field trips, and the one PTA meeting I went to was AWFUL.  The women with 4th graders that had been there for a few years completely dominated and had no respect for the opinions of any new parents.  Many wonderful solutions to the many problems the PTA proposed were given by new members, and all of them were shot down or blatantly ignored.  I felt that I was in a room full of children instead of adults.

Anyway, today Big Man's teacher allowed parents to come in during their Writer's Workshop so that the kids could share stories they had written and techniques they had used to write them, and little brothers were allowed!  Little Man and I were very excited to go see Big Man during the day, even though he had nothing to read.  He's had a nasty flu and has been out of school for a while, so he wasn't there to write a story.  However, he did share with me a book that he did not write, which was awesome.  Also, I got to meet two other little kids who shared their stories with me since their parents couldn't come.  They were darling.  One of them was a very shy little boy who wrote a story about baby ducks and kept writing "Quack! Quack!"  He then showed me all of the sound words in another book.  The other little girl wrote a story about chicks (they hatched them in class), and she had a book full of sound words, too.  Big Man showed me the use of ellipses in a book and dashes and what they meant.  Then the little girl told me, "When my little brother eats, he poops a LOT!!"  She also told me all about wrestling and her little brother, who likes to fight when he watches wrestling.  This is when Little Man piped up, in a crowded room of parents and children that had just gotten silenced by the teacher, "Me and my brother fight, and I punch him in the face!!" as though it was his proudest moment.

Awesome.  He acted like he'd never get disciplined for that, too.  Aside from that, I really enjoyed myself, even though I know more about someone's little brother's bowel movements.  I was quite surprised at the behavior of some of the other parents.  Two of them were texting throughout the entire exercise, and one of them even made a phone call while the kids were sharing.  I found it exceptionally rude.  *Judge, judge, judge*.  Eh, I'll think they're rude, and they'll think I allow my kids to punch one another in the face without prejudice.  We're even.

Jesus Will Babysit Me

The Little Man never wants to go anywhere.  Every time I tell him we have to go somewhere, he whines, "I'm tiiiiiiired."  I have NO idea where he heard that.  It is certainly not from me.  I am perfect effing super mom.  I function without sleep.  Always.  And everything gets done, too.  Perfectly.  With no sleep.  And no tiredness.  Ever.

All right, fine.  He heard it from me.  He uses it in the correct context, too.  Whenever he doesn't wanna do something, he's tired.  He just wants to relax for ONE.FLIPPING.SECOND!  Child, you are 4.  You sleep 11 hours a night, plus you get a 1- to 2-hour nap during the day.  Do not tell me you are too tired to go on a bike ride or to the grocery store or to the library or to take the recycling.  I GOTTA GET OUTTA THE HOUSE, KID!

So, he's taken to counting down the days until he is allowed to stay home alone.  Age 4 is not that time.  Neither is age 5, as he will find out in a little less than 4 months.  As it is, here is our conversation from Friday morning:

Me:  Little Man, I am preparing you.  After lunch, we are going to the big, giant, awesome library downtown.  There are escalators. (You see what I did there?)
Little Man:  I am not going to the library with you.  I am staying here.
Me:  You are not old enough to stay here by yourself.
Little Man:  Jesus will babysit me.
Me: *dumbfounded*
Little Man:  He knows everything.
Me: *vacant stare*
Little Man:  And you don't.

Even fun stuff, he doesn't want to go.  Dudes!  How can you bribe a kid to get his shoes on post haste so that they can FINALLY go play at the park because it has been a frozen tundra out there for 3 months, and we finally got one warm, sunny (albeit muddy as all get out) day, if they DON'T WANT TO PLAY IN THE PARK?!?!? OMGWTF,T?!?!? He did enjoy the escalators at the library, though, and I did get him to the park where he caked 4 inches of mud onto his school shoes.  There was a 3-year-old girl there, and he ran right up to her and began playing cheerfully.  I wish I could do that sometimes.  I chatted with her dad for a little bit, but he was a bit of a douche, so I stopped.  I had the distinct feeling that he was attempting to make me feel stupid by talking world politics.  He kept talking about his military background or something and then ordering his wife around as she hovered over her little girl.  Probably so that my ruffian didn't knock the little thing over.  He was acting a bit rambunctious, but he wasn't hurting anyone, so I let him play in the mud and jump in puddles and scream his fool head off.  I mean, we were OUTSIDE.  At a PARK.  (I let him do this inside at the Old McDonald's Playplace, too.  It's a kid place.  Deal.) I knew the little girl wasn't in danger, though.  Little Man is extremely careful with children younger than him.  He has a protective instinct.  As it is, I wasn't watching him all that closely, as long as he was in earshot.  I read a book instead.  Or, I tried to read a book.  Military Magoo kept trying to chat me up about potty training or some crap.  "What are you reading?" he says.  "Biography of Hosni Mubarak," I say.  I think "Nothing, right now, assbag, because you are TALKING.TO.ME. I would LIKE to be reading quietly while my kid goes on a rampage and fake shoots every tree in the park with his finger canon. POW! POW! Mubarak was a POW!!!! former fighter pilot POW! who moved up in the YOU'RE DEAD, EVIL TREE! ranks very quickly."

Before my "social training" that thought woulda popped out of my mouth.  It has before.  I hate when people ask what I'm reading.  Because if I'm talking to them, I'm not reading, which is what I would rather be doing.  I can't just stop in the middle of a chapter.  I have to get to a good stopping point.  Which reminds me of elementary/middle school.  I am a very, very fast reader.  When I was younger, I was flying through 2 or 3 preteen novels a day (Sweet Valley FTW).  I would bring one to school with me every day, and I would put it in my lap and put my head down and read it during school.  I figured, I'm good on grades, so I clearly know this stuff, and I want to read, so why not.  I do what I want!  Anyway, teachers, they don't like that.  Well, NOW I know it is disrespectful, but then, I had no idea.  As it was, they would often call on me to answer questions, or just to get me to lift my head, but I couldn't answer.  I knew they were calling on me, but I HAD to get to a good stopping point first.  Many times they would keep saying, "Karen, Karen...hello? Karen!" and I would raise my head up and shout, "I AM READING! I WILL GET TO YOU WHEN I AM FINISHED!"  I remember doing this to a LOT of teachers.  To my knowledge, not a single one of them ever called my parents to let them know of my erratic behavior.  Hmmm.  I'll take "items that fit into the bigger picture" for 1000, Alex.


Oh! Gear switch.  The Big Man hatched chicks in his first grade class.  He has been looking forward to this all year.  They wrote a little journal, and he drew pictures of himself taking care of the eggs.  This is where the cute part of the story ends.  If you don't want to read about horrific acts of death and destruction, skip to the next paragraph.

Ha! I tricked you! This IS the death and destruction paragraph! MMMWWWUUUAHAHAHA!!  Ok, it's not that bad.  Big Man's teacher knew that some of the chicks may hatch on the weekend, so she had set up a video camera to watch the chicks so that if the kids missed the hatching on a Saturday or Sunday, they could come back to school on Monday and watch the hatching.  The problem is, snowstorm of the century hit when the chicks were supposed to hatch, and the kids were off school for the whole week.  In fact, no one could get into the school.  Big Man came home from school on his first day back and exclaims, "Karen, ooooohmigosh, only one chick lived!"  His first grade teacher now has footage of 8 chicks hatching pretty much stillborn and 3 freezing/starving to death.  Big Man is still excited about the boy who lived, though.  He got to hold it.

In funnier news, Little Man said that he is excited that he gets to go to Big Man's school when he gets to be 5 and in kindergarten, because at Big Man's school, he can check out chicks.

I realize that I have loads more stories about Little Man than Big Man, and that makes me sad.  I have a Facebook friend who is a SAHM like me to a little one, and she also has an older kiddo in school.  Before I was a SAHM, I would be all judgy mcjudgison at her all of the time for going on and on and on about the baby and never mentioning the older kid.  Now I realize why.  I am with this little dude alone for 10 hours out of every day, just me and him interacting, or not even interacting, just listening to him being a goober on his own.  Sure, we're busy during the day getting junk done, but there is no one else to distract me from him or him from me.  Once the Big Man gets home from school, it's snack, stop hitting your brother, homework, leave your brother alone while he does his homework, dinner, dear lord, child, PLEASE eat!, calm down time, bedtime routine, FOR THE 30TH TIME, BRUSH YOUR TEETH! bedtime.  And I only get every other weekend with him, too.  Now I realize why I bawled and bawled and bawled the first day we dropped him off at kindergarten.

Lovenade

So, we've had to cut our wedding budget back a little bit due to unforeseen circumstances.  Namely, no one wants to buy our house, and I don't know WHY.  We did so much hard work on it for months and months of painting and magic erasering crayon art off of the walls and recarpeting and finding more crayon to erase magically, and...we can't even get a showing!  Not a single showing in the almost 3 weeks it's been on the market.

Anyway, that, my friends, is not the point of this blog.  This blog is about Lovenade.  Couples at weddings, they have cocktail hour for their guests after the ceremony while they take pictures and such, and a lot of couples create a signature cocktail that is circulated for the guests.  Well, we aren't having alcohol at our wedding.  It is crazy expensive, and only 25% of our guests even imbibe the stuff.  So, I was flipping through The Knot, and they had signature cocktail recipes and the whatnot (whatKnot haha), and one of them looked a bit like lemonade, so I says to Eric, I says, "WAKE UP!!!!! IT IS 2 A.M. AND I HAVE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT! WE SHOULD MAKE A SIGNATURE LEMONADE AT THE WEDDING!"  It didn't exactly go that way.  Anyway, the end result is that we would like to have a signature lemonade to be circulated at the wedding, some strawberry mango concoction, etc.  We'll call it Lovenade.

Except that kinda sounds like a free love concert in the 70s....

Help! I'm stuck in a pair of Spanx!

So, yesterday I went shopping for my wedding lingerie.  Not the fun, cheesy, 80s, "come to mama" lingerie that you get to wear on your wedding night, oh no.  I went shopping for those torture devices that you wear underneath your wedding gown.  The ones that shove all of your imperfections into God knows where and makes you look less than human.  Goodbye, flaws; hello, Spanx!  Anyway, I tried on a girdle at Meijer.  Who in the hell invented these things?  Even Wikipedia doesn't know.  Eff off, girdle.  Well, I know where all of the bits go that the girdle squishes.  It goes above and below the girdle!  If you ever want to look like a pound of sausage stuffed into a 1/2 pound casing, this is the way to go.

Have you ever tried something on in the shop and actually laughed out loud in a crowded dressing room?  Yeah.  That was me last night.  Laughing HYSTERICALLY.  I put this girdle on, and then put some dress I found over it to check out the "smoothing effects" of said girdle.  If "smooth" means "creating lumps beneath the breasts and stomach where there were none before," then this thing was successful.

On to Target, where they have some Spanx.  Unlike girdles, I KNOW who invented Spanx.  It was one Sara Blakely.  I now know with whom to express my disbelief.  I found this....thing.  It's like a onesie for an adult.  It goes all of the way up to the boobs and then down to the mid-thighs like shorts.  It was a medium, but looked like about a size 18 months.  Anyway, I put this thing on.  Kind of.  I think I did it right.  Anyway, smoothing, yes.  Breathing, no.  Also, I couldn't get it off.  Seriously, dudes.  I'm in the Target dressing room, all "HAAAALP!! I'M STUCK IN A PAIR OF SPANX!"  Other ladies and young girls are laughing at me.  The Target employee, instead of helping me, called more Target employees to come witness the hilarity.  As it is, I got stuck in the Spanx, and I had to wiggle myself out of them, and no one wants to deal with that on their wedding day.

Oh! Class is beginning!!!!

Jeeeeeeeeeez, Louise!

I wonder where that phrase came from.  The Little Man has taken to saying it all of the time, and I'm muttering it to myself right now as I sit in the lovely Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, taking a break from massive homework overload and getting angry at people on the Internet.

Why am I angry, you ask?  Check out this little gem on my local MomsLikeMe site.

"My 14yr old daughter has always been one to speak her mind but now is getting her in trouble at home because she being disrespectful to us.  She blames me for pety things that arent even my fault like me forgetting to remind her that she wants a bag of chips at store because she forgot.I useually take her to school a little early so if her friends want to buy her breakfast she has time to do that,but now husband is laid off and says I cant do that anymore because we have to watch our gas since I work .....she got mad.This morning I was going to take her to school and get gas in car but when I felt how cold it was I didnt want to stand outside to pump gas so my husband took her to school and got gas in car.....well she sent me atext and said since I did not take her  that her day is ruined.I will admit, she is spoiled rotten,the last born,but is it just me.....just her,or could she have a type of autism?Why I ask this is because there is autism on both sides of family." (sic)


Spoiled, ungrateful, parent-made brat.  So, "could she have autism?" is clearly the correct direction to go.  Is this REALLY what people think autistic humans act like?  REALLY?!  I'm flabbergasted. 


I am going to have to look at something really cute to curtail the upset.  Luckily, at this hotel, in about half an hour, I can go down into the lobby, and they will unroll a red carpet that leads from a large fountain in the lobby to the elevators.  Then they will ring a bell, and a bunch of awesome ducks that live in the fountain will line up, walk down that red carpet, and climb into the elevator to go upstairs for lunch and a nap.  Super cute.

GIMME THOSE COUPONS!!!! McGyver style.

Listen, recycling Dumpster.  I SEE those coupons in there, and I WILL have them!

So, I had to take the paper recycling today, and I threw it in there, and lo and behold, there are two new SmartSource booklets sitting right on top of someone's discarded Indy Star.  Well, I want them.  So, I open the top door and reach in to grab them, and I'm about an inch too short.  So, I stand on my tippy toes and make myself REAL long.  I still can't reach them.  I WANT THOSE!!  So, I have to go into McGyver mode.  If I can open the Dumpster door all of the way, then I can just hike myself up and lean over and grab them.  Sounds pretty easy.  Except I'm not tall enough to open the door all of the way.  I tried with all of my might to throw that lid open, and it just came down every time.  Once I missed catching it, and it hit me in the noodle.  That was enough trying for me.  I just need to be a little bit taller!  So, I went looking for something to stand on.  My recycling basket is a thin wicker basket that I would have fallen through.  There were several cardboard boxes that looked full of stuff in the bin, but I couldn't reach those, either.  I had nothing sturdy or tall in my trunk, so standing on something was out.  Then I thought, maybe I have some tweezers in my purse.  All this time, this dude delivering Pepsi to the Kroger is in his truck, munching away on his sandwich and laughing hysterically at me.  THANKS, BUDDY!  COULD YOU GIVE US A HAND AND MAYBE JUST HOLD THE LID OPEN OR SOMETHIN?!  Anyway, I didn't have any tweezers.  Then, I decided if I could just prop the lid open high enough not to whack my noggin or my back on it, then I could hike myself up and grab them with a quickness.  So I propped the lid up with my recycling basket and went for it.

I whacked both my noggin AND my back on the lid, knocking my recycling basket off the edge, and closing myself halfway in the bin, with my legs and butt dangling out.  I am STILL about 1 cm from being able to reach the coupons, and now the Pepsi guy probably has his delicious cola beverage flying out of his nose from laughter.  Yet, he still does not offer to help.

So, I decided to make some homemade extendo-arms and grab the coupons that way.  I propped the lid back up with my basket, grabbed a book and my ice scraper from the car, leaned in there and grabbed the first coupon booklet with my extensions.  SUCCESS! COUPON BOOKLET #1 IS MINE! MWWWWUUUUUAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!!  VICTORY!  So I leaned back in to grab the second booklet and get out of there with my dignity intact (aaaahahahaha).  As it is, I dropped my ice scraper in the Dumpster, and when it hit the coupon booklet, they all slid down out of reach again, especially since my left Go-Go-Gadget arm had just fallen in.  All hope was lost, dudes.  And now I NEED that ice scraper.  IT'S WINTER IN INDIANA!  I had to call in reinforcements.  Eric was on his way home from church, and I asked him to stop by the Kroger recycling bins, please.  I needed assistance.  I'd explain when he got there.

Eric showed up...all 6' many inches of him.  He reached right in there and got my ice scraper AND the other coupon booklet, no problem.  I explained the situation.  He says he'll still marry me anyway.

Random stuff, school, couponing, funny stuff the kids say

I don't have too much on my mind tonight, just some little randoms.

First, when we were at the doctor's office today, Little Man and I were playing with some plastic dinosaurs while we waited for the nurse.  I was saying "run, dinosaur!!!" to his dino, and he looked at me in all seriousness and goes, "Karen.  No.  *sigh*  These are FAKE dinosaurs."  You know, with the "duh, idiot" look on his face.  All y'all parents know the one.

He and the Big Man have also been watching Eric play Halo on the Xbox, and so now they take their Omagles and make guns out of them and play "the shooting game".  They are all the time in there yelling "Slayer!" and "GAAAAME over".  Hilarious.  I don't really like them playing gun games, though.  I don't like the implied violence.  Mostly, though, I hate the "pppsth, pppsssth" sounds they make the guns have.  It sounds too much like spitting and makes me want to vomit up my ralphy chunks and other slang terms for vomiting.

Little Man and I have had a really great couple of days together since the Big Man went back to school.  He got a new little girlfriend at school, and he's been showing off for her with good behavior.  I was the last parent to pick him up on Tuesday, and she wouldn't let her mom leave until I got there so that they could walk out together.  They were comparing the temporary tattoos they had gotten today and giggling.  Little Man's little dimples as he shyly says, "byyyyyyye, Annika" was so cute.  He's been super duper helpful, too, vacuuming the floor and listening.  I haven't had to put him in time out in a few days, with the exception of a small one Tuesday morning that he came right down from because he did what I asked right away.  It's been so nice.  I've found when he isn't listening that I've been calmer, as well, and when I don't flip out, he's less likely to go into full meltdown mode and earn his famous, screaming for 90 minutes time outs.  We've done a lot of watching Handy Manny and playing outside in the cold for 5 minutes so that we can get good and freezing and enjoy 30 minutes of hot chocolate time to warm up.  It's just been so wonderful.

Also, my school starts Tuesday.  I've got all of my textbooks, and I'm ready to go and totally excited.  Three of my five classes have silly-buses posted already, so I've already started on quite a bit of reading.  Taking a small break from it now, actually.  At the moment, I'm reading something that isn't required called "The Political Science Student Writer's Manual".  I just finished "Writing a Research Paper in Political Science," and I think I'm going to be well prepared for the papers I'm about to start writing.  This semester marks my very first 300-level PolySci class, and my first honest-to-goodness research project on Middle Eastern Politics.  I am infinitely excited about this.  I also have an Intro to International Relations class, which is a 200-level PolySci core class.  It has parts of a full research project, but not a full one like I expected, so it is a bit of a relief to know that I'm only putting one foot in the water instead of jumping in head first and trying to do two large projects in one semester.  My three online classes are Personal Health, which is a gimme class with not many assignments but a large amount of reading, Intro to Human Geography, which is rather interesting, as I've already read the first couple of units.  I like learning about my consumption and carbon footprint.  And my third class is a prereq for my Master's in Library Science, and I am SO EXCITED TO BE A SENIOR!!  It's a simple computer technology class specifically for libraries.  Technically called Computer-Based Information Tools.  I think I get to learn how to use library databases and the like.  Very helpful in conjunction with a research-based class like Middle Eastern Politics.  It's gonna be a wonderful semester, even though I no longer have my 4.0.

Speaking of that.  I had to regroup and find a new goal.  My new goal is to not drop below a 3.8, and the reasoning is simple.  In order to be accepted into the master's program for library sciences at IU, you have to have a high GRE score, UNLESS, you have a higher than 3.8 GPA.  If you've gotta 3.8, you don't have to take the GRE, and that seems like a reasonable goal.  A 4.0 in political science at a major university is, actually, a rather unreasonable goal, though it's a bit of an embarrassment that a Children's Lit class took me out of the running.  Well, I took myself out.  I got too ambitious with a paper that I knew I only had a week to write, and I turned in something that I knew was crap.  A 3.8 GPA is definitely more reasonable.  Plus, if I don't have to take the GRE, I save money, and we all know I love saving money!

Speaking of, COUPONS!  I've been inundated with questions about my couponing from here, IndyMoms and FB.  I'm thinking about getting together at an IHOP or something one day and having a workshop and asking Alisha Ferguson to help me, since she's the reason I coupon and use Swagbucks now, and she has loads more experience than me.  Maybe sit down and have a little Q&A session and do some practice shopping.  Hit up a place with free WiFi and bring a bunch of laptops and make a little game out of deal finding.  That may help me make some more friends, too, and if I'm talking about stuff I know a little bit about, then maybe my Asperger's won't get too much in the way.  It's when I have to do small talk that's the problem and I become inappropriate.  Most of the women that would go know about my Aspie status anyway, and they'd probably cut me some slack.  I don't mean to offend people or hurt their feelings.

As for the folks that can't meet up with us because they're too far away, I could put some couponing hints here in my blog or on FB for y'all.  The first step is to get a hefty stash of coupons and pick one store to begin using them in.  Subscribe to the largest Sunday paper in your city, and check out the coupons every Sunday.  If they are for good stuff you will use, then head out to Dollar Tree and pick up a few more papers.  Make sure to check that the coupons are in the papers before you buy them.  I clip everything, and not just the stuff I'm gonna use.  I clip it for trading purposes, though I haven't done a successful online trade, yet.  Once you have a good stash of coupons built up, you are good to go.  They will need to be organized however you wanna do it.  I have a binder, and they are all alphabetized by brand name in plastic baseball card sheets.  My binder has pockets in the front and back.  I put coupons I'm going to use for a specific trip in the front and coupons that are too large to fit in my baseball sheets in the back.  Some people use zipper pouches and tab them for category.  I may switch to that method soon.  I can't remember all of the brand names for some products.  You can get more coupons by dumpster diving, too, if you aren't scared of the looks.  For pete's sake, though, have some dignity.  Wear gloves or something.  And go into the recycling dumpster, not the nasty food dumpster.  Mondays and Tuesdays I've found are the best days for this.  People throw their Sunday papers in there, coupons and all.  Also, you can write directly to the manufacturer's of your favorite brands and tell them how much you dig their stuff, and they will send you free coupons.  There are online trades at places like We Use Coupons, and you can trade coupons you don't want for coupons you do.  You can also buy coupons on eBay or use clipping services.  There's a list of them on the same website.  There's also a really great coupon database there that you can search.  If the product has a coupon out, it will be on the list, and it will tell you where to get it.  Lots of coupons can be printed right off the net.  If you need a bunch of printable coupons, go to the library to print them so you don't waste a ton of ink and because most of them only allow you to print 2 from your computer, but the library has a bunch of different computers that you can get two each off of.

Anyway, that's my first coupon tip.  Get loads and loads of coupons.

I'm gonna try my first New Year's Resolution trip at Meijer tomorrow morning after dropping the Little Man off at school.  If all goes well, I'll be getting a month's supply of food for our family of 4 for around $52.  I didn't add the tax up because here in Indy, some food has tax and some doesn't, so I have no clue what is gonna be taxed.  I also hit up a Kmart sale today and got 26 lbs of meat for $26, and I got a little bit of the month's stockpile during the trip from Hell that I last wrote about for $32.  All in all, that should come up to around $110 to feed a family of four for an entire month.  That's a nice chunk of savings from the $400 we used to spend.  Hopefully it works out, and I won't have to shop again until February.