You know you need a vacation when you wish you are too contagious for work.

Dude, I’m so tired.  This isn’t just the “*yawn* I’m going to turn in early tonight,” sort of tired.  This is the “If one more person leaves me a STUPID voicemail message about how I said I’d do X, Y, or Z I’m going to run through this building pulling fire alarms to make everyone evacuate!” tired.  I really need to use my vacation time.  I mean, that’s what it’s for after all - to recharge and come back to work refreshed.  Unfortunately, being a public servant, requesting blocks of time off that are longer than two weekdays involves making sacrifices at a government altar (that looks mysteriously like my supervisor’s desk).

I have one of those jobs where if you take a day off people wonder if they should have flowers sent to your home because surely either you or your child has to have SARS, Meningitis, or cramps (my agency is something like 95% female-staffed), although several of us have been known to be at work hunched over, slowly lurking through the halls going “ughhhhhhhhhh” because there are cases due and overdue cases screw up your salary evaluation.

To make matters worse Rosco’s daycare center is turning from borderline-ghetto to ghetto-cum-bourgeoisie.  That is not to offend anyone who actually lives in a ghetto, but seriously, it is.  That place is like a wall with holes and cracks in it that someone paints over without spackling and sanding first.  They’re trying to improve, but the sad fact of the matter is that there’s no where to go but up and they know it.  We’ve been holding out this long because we seriously had no clue we’d be waitlisted for over a year for the five-star church daycare that topped our list.  Now that we have a timeframe for selling this house (as soon as the caulk on the bathroom countertop dries) it’ll be even harder to shift him unless we can find him a slot near where we work (that is if it’s still relevant because I haven’t been fired for pulling fire alarms).

I was stalking the iTunes podcast directory this past weekend and I found a very interesting, very insightful seminar produced by Oprah (somewhere Scott is retching) called “Take Control of Your Career and Your Life” with Marcus Buckingham.  It’s an 8-part series where this British dude tells a bunch of Oprahphiles how to improve their relationships with their work.  He hit on a few of my hot buttons, specifically: I’m so good at doing some things that I really hate doing - so much so that people want to give me more of it to do.  I need to learn how to say “No” so that my job is likeable enough for me to feel like I’m not wasting away under fluorescent light all day.  I recommend you download the series if you feel like you’re “stuck.” It’s free and pretty insightful.

Snarked Tiffany at 07:25 PM
(2) Comments •

Wow.  Okay.

Dude, I’m so pissed.

“So, what’s new?” you ask?

Well, this time I’m NOT pissed about Rosco’s daycare.  It’s something totally unrelated to childrearing.  This time?  It’s my hair.

Several months ago...I want to say it was around February or so...I went to my coworker’s hairstylist.  As my hair is on the dry side I knew there was going to be a lot of damage to trim out and went in expecting a massive haircut.  Nope, she gave me a little trim and relaxed the hell out of my hair.  For a few weeks afterwards my hair fell out in clumps.  I thought nothing of it because as I rule I don’t comb my hair, so I just assumed it was the bits that I should have lost prior to the relaxer coming out at once.

A couple of weeks ago my coworker (whose stylist I went to) observed, “Ooh, your hair is breaking off!  You need to stop washing it everyday.”

I gritted my teeth and kept my mouth shut.  My hair has been wash-and-go almost every day for about ten years now.  My hair doesn’t break off like that.

Tonight I put a relaxer in.  It’s something I’d normally do every 3-4 months to break up the forming dreadlocks and make it a little easier to pull back into a ponytail.  I was a little concerned when I noticed my hair didn’t have it’s usual largeness and thought maybe the humidity was shrinking it a bit.  Nope.  Tell me why I have less hair now than I had six months ago?  Normally, my hair GROWS between relaxers.  Before I saw hairstylist chick it came down to my shoulderblades.  Now it’s at the nape of my neck and I can barely get it up into a decent ponytail.

I am so pissed that I could spit nails right now.

Before I saw this most recent stylist it had been about five years since I let a “professional” touch my head.  Guess what - it’s going to be at least another five years now before I go again.

I hate that some people take a one-size-fits-all approach to haircare.  Damn it, I have special needs hair!  Fucking shit.  I guess some people don’t know how to handle super-spirals.  Might as well buzz the whole mess off now seeing as how it looks like Barbie hair that someone’s kid brother has gotten into with a pair of blunt scissors.

Snarked Tiffany at 08:24 PM
(5) Comments •

It’s not as bad as I remember.

I applied for a passport card a couple of Fridays ago and had my little i.d. photograph taken on-site (the site being the downtown post office).  The spare came in the mail today with my birth certificate:

Honestly, I didn’t really care what the picture looked like as long as it resembled me enough that nobody would give me any guff.  When the clerk let me preview the picture I remember thinking “Ew,” but didn’t care enough to have it retaken.  I thought I was making a “wait - wait, I’m not ready face” but that was probably just the glare from the screen.

Unfortunately, my ”My Little Pony” haircut (i.e. the two distinct layers force you to have one longer top ponytail and another one at the nape of your neck that’s too short to go into the bigger ponytail) is still growing out and my hair looks stringy and will be immortalized in this image for the next decade or so.  (People who know me personally have probably seen my BIG hair at some point - you know, the Patty & Selma hair.)

At least there aren’t any noticeable zits.

Snarked Tiffany at 08:00 AM
(2) Comments •

Things people could probably intuit from our trash:

(if they were weird enough to sort through it)
1 - Someone has sensitive skin.
2 - Someone is very picky about their soda and never buys any other brand.
3 - We have a kid (lots of milk cartons).
4 - Someone is cheap thrifty (expired coupon scraps go in the bin).
5 - We try to recycle things that are probably not even recyclable (don’t know about that detergent box - I’ll probably find it in the ditch tomorrow)

Snarked Tiffany at 07:30 AM
(1) Comments •

Mini-mommy-freakout

Want to know a sure-fire way to freak me the hell out?  Put little black specks on my kid’s scalp.

This evening I was rubbing Rosco’s hair back out of his eyes while he was smashing cold, unfrosted cupcake into his face and I noticed some dry black flecks scattered across his hairline.  I thought, “Hmm, maybe he rubbed his lunch into his hair,” but as I parted more and more sections of hair I found it EVERYWHERE.

I panicked, thinking “Lice.  LICE!” and took him back to his changing pad where I could put the lamp on his head.  I changed his diaper, feigning calmness, while I let Rosco play with the sticker from the wipes package and then set him on his feet so that I could examine his head more closely.  Of course, he wanted to play with the lamp, so I had to keep twirling him in circles to disorient him enough to make him stop touching it.

I picked at his scalp with my fingers and learned, to my relief, that it was not lice, but a head full of sand.  Super-damn-super daycare sand.  There were also pieces of plant combed in.

So, Rosco got an impromptu shampoo tonight (oh my god there’s so much dirt in the tub) and I went all hypochondriac.  Yay.

Snarked Tiffany at 07:27 PM
(4) Comments •

Dejected Momma

Today I had an appointment to donate blood at American Red Cross.  It’s an endeavor I’ve been trying to accomplish since college at least, however I either didn’t meet the weight requirement or I was pregnant/nursing, recently pierced/tattooed, etc.  I was stoked when I went to the doctor last week and stepped on the scale to see that I was a couple of pounds over the required weight (give or take a sandal).

I went to the center after dropping Scott and Rosco off at the house and went through all the preliminary screening stuff ("Have you slept with any prostitutes lately?"), had my iron level checked (frightened the tech with my ice-cold hands), and signed on all the requisite lines.

By the time I hopped up into the chair I was shaking like a leaf.  I’m not afraid of having a little blood drawn.  Needles don’t bother me.  I was terrified I was going to pass out.  I was at the very bottom of the weight threshold and knew that I should have snacked a little beforehand.

My nerves weren’t soothed any by the fact that the technician had a hard time finding a pokeable vein because a) I apparently have tiny veins and b) there are tendons in my arm that are too close to the best place to poke.

Once the needle (which is the diameter of a car tire, by the way) was inserted they did manage to get a hard and fast flow.  For all of three minutes.  To make a long story short, basically I didn’t fill the bag because I stopped bleeding.  The vein had sort of closed itself off and my bloodflow was redirected to another nearby vein.  So...they got about 3/4 of a bag and it took FORFUCKINGEVER.  There were other people there who started after me who were done in like five minutes with no problem.  It didn’t help that they kept telling me that I was sooooo tiny and drawing all that attention to me.  It also didn’t help that the tech was sooooo certain that I was going to just faceplant the moment I stood up.

I felt like a failure heading towards the canteen for my little cup of soda and snack cake.  If a donation doesn’t meet a certain volume requirement they can’t even use it.

Dude, I want my blood back.

Maybe I’ll try again in a couple of months (assuming I don’t decide to crash diet before then), but first I’ll need to get over the embarrassment of not even being able to bleed when a huge needle is swimming around under my skin.  In fact, even when the needle was pulled out that huge hole didn’t bleed.  Wow.  I must be a vampire or something.

Snarked Tiffany at 09:27 PM
(6) Comments •

A few things I’m loving right now (in no particular order):

1) Jello Singles in vanilla.  Mmm, cold pudding really hits the spot.

2) Beyond the Zone’s Noodle Head conditioner and shampoo (the spray?  not so much).  I’ve been using them for about two weeks and my matted clumps of hair have relaxed.  Mind you, my hair still looks like crap because of the multiple layers I’m growing out, but at least it looks less like a sheep’s furry ass.

3) Being able to type this post from bed using a laptop that’s not connected to a life support system (did I introduce you to the Apple I adopted?  Her name is MacKenzie.)

4) Homemade iced coffee (8 cups strong coffee + 1 can sweetened condensed milk + ice)

5) Flex Fridays: I work 5 weekdays one week, then four the next week, and have every other Friday off.  This is a reward for being able to do casework in my sleep.

6) Weekend playdates.  Homebody that I am, Lord, sometimes I have to get this child out of the house before he drives me batty.

7) Coworkers who say crazy things.  [For example: At work we have special forms to request information we need to work up cases.  They’re called “pending forms” for short.  My office neighbor and I were trick or treating the hallways one day looking for chocolate between interviews and happened to stop by the program manager’s office.  Her candy stash was something like 2 sticks of gum and some ratty starlight mints.  I made a suitably snarky face, but my bold coworker told our boss’s boss “This is the second time we’ve been in here that you haven’t had good candy.  Do I need to send you home with a pending form to remind you to bring some chocolate in?” It was funny because it was so off-the-cuff.  I did one of those silent laughs where at the moment it’s so funny that you can’t get enough air through your diaphragm to make noise.]

8) LL Bean clothes, especially this skirt.

9) TLC’s Take Home Nanny

10) Barenaked Ladies’ new kid’s CD Snacktime.

Snarked Tiffany at 09:37 PM

That’s just weird.

So, I went to my yearly physical today.  This is generally an “event” for me because of my endometriosis, and it takes me a few weeks to get psyched up for it.

Anyway, I went today, spent a couple of minutes in the car smearing on Chap-Stik and putting some hand lotion on (my cuticles are soooo raggedy) and then drag myself to the entryway with about ten minutes to spare.

Two middle-aged dudes were standing outside the office on the curb.  I did my customary “I’m nodding and acknowledging you so that you don’t try to talk to me” gesture that I perfected in college (this is a must when walking down Franklin Street).

Wasn’t good enough.  One of the dudes stopped his conversation and said, “Hey, miss, has anyone ever told you that you’re beautiful?”

I responded, “Well, not today, but it’s nice to hear, thanks!” I sped up a little.

“Well, you are,” he said.

“Okay, great!” I said, although I was really thinking “Cut the bullshit.”

I dove into that office so fast I could have broke the door hinges off.

That’s just weird.  Who hangs around the entryway of a OBGYN’s office and talks to women on the way in?  I’m nauseous at the thought.  Fortunately they were gone when I was leaving and I didn’t have to find an alternate exit.

Snarked Tiffany at 07:21 PM

Riddle me this…

Why is my waistband so tight at the end of the day?  It’s not like I’ve had time to eat or anything healthful like that.

Snarked Tiffany at 06:36 PM

I love Momma.  No I don’t.  Yes, I do.  *Hug hug.* No! *smack momma*

Sometimes when you ask Rosco do things he’ll kindly acquiesce.  For example, at daycare pick-up he may run up to me and show me a puzzle piece he’s been manipulating.  I’ll say “That’s great!  Can you put that back?” And he will.

Other times when you ask Rosco to do things he’ll give you the “You have shit for brains” expression that indicates that he a) doesn’t know the vocabulary you’re using, or b) doesn’t really care what you want.

This manic flip-flopping is almost certainly a trademark of toddlerdom, and we’ve come to expect unpredictability from Rosco.  Right now he’s in his crib talking to himself.  He had a fairly long wind-down to bed tonight because as of lately he’s been throwing long, shrieking tantrums with zero provocation. 

Tonight’s tantrum was spurred by his removal from the kitchen step-stool (he was “washing” the dishes) and subsequent escort into his bedroom.

I tried to give him his bedtime paci and he threw it back into the crib shouting “NIGHT NIGHT!” (meaning that it’s FOR night-night).  I tried to give him his snuggle blankie and he tossed that back into the crib as well.  When I tried to take off his shorts he tried desperately to pull them back up.  I tried to change his diaper and he spasmed around trying to throw me off as if I were a bullrider trying to hold on for dear life.

By the time we got his diaper fastened on and his paci of choice shoved into his mouth his spirit was broken just enough for him to decide he really did want his blankie after all.  He then allowed me to pull his pajamas on.  I gave him 77 billion kisses and a hug and handed him off to Scott for a story.  Usually by seven o’clock Rosco is ready to put head to sheets.  He’ll lay there fondling his blanket and blinking at you and will just nod off on his back.  This evening he jumped back up and wailed for a while (probably two-three minutes) before he gave up and decided to talk himself to sleep.

I wish I knew what he was saying.  Whatever it was sounded like the toddlerese equivalent of “We’ll see who’s boss tomorrow.”

[On an unrelated note, Rosco has a new bite-mark on his arm.  Didn’t they say that they were going to handle that kid?]

Snarked Tiffany at 07:08 PM