Easter

...

Yes! I survived!

This will not be a long entry since I had no sleep to speak of last night, and I'm dying here... I'd love to be in bed by 11. We'll see. If I am, it will be a record.

These last few days have been so busy. Friday, as I noted, was miserable. Sometimes when I butt heads with the kids all day I think, I could solve this just by softening up a little. And often I do, just for the sake of the peace. But not that time. There are times when the level of disrespect and disregard just gets to me, and I was thoroughly tired of it. I'm not sure it made any lasting impression, but I had to make a stand. There will be many more such days, I'm sure. Watching The Sopranos tonight, AJ was being such a jerk to both Carmela and Tony, and I thought -- well, they've been making excuses for him his whole life, why should they expect any different? (I do know these are fictional characters, btw -- ) At any rate, I am resolved not to let my own kids grow into their teens thinking they can treat their parents with such a lack of respect. I made them turn off about 6 television programs today on the grounds of general stupidity, meanness, and - again - disrespect.

Saturday was running-around day: 9AM basketball and cheer. DS1 is so clueless on the court, his mind is off in the clouds somewhere. He has good ball handling skills during drills but he never gets the ball during the game because he is not engaged. Then there's DD in her tiny cheerleading outfit, with her squad. She struggled, having missed practice this week. She was practically in tears on the way home, "I couldn't do anything." She's so tiny, and so tall, it really does take more learning to control those long limbs, and she didn't practice. So I told her we would practice more this week, and I took some video of the cheers so we could watch them and learn them better. It was a bit of a comeuppance for her; she's never tried anything that was hard for her before, and not succeeded to her own satisfaction. I hope it motivates her to try harder. I tried very hard to help keep her from being demoralized.

So, after that, I left the kids with DH and headed out and made it to confession (last minute Lizzy), then got some new Easter clothes for the kids, then headed up to Trader Joe's for more groceries. I was psyched to find a boneless turkey breast to have for dinner today, it saved me another trip to yet another grocery store.

Came home, had lunch. Took the kids to Mesa SW Museum, then to Sam's Club for a cookie snack and more groceries. Then home, cooked dinner, boiled eggs for the kids to decorate, decorated eggs with the kids, finally got them to bed. Did laundry so their new clothes wouldn't bother their sensitive skin, rounded up all the Easter basket stuff; DH hid the (plastic) eggs.

Ended up going to bed around 1:30, Ambien-less. Mistake, mistake, mistake. I should've taken a quarter or SOMETHING! I didn't sleep at all. Not helping at all, DH has a cold and was restless and coughing a lot of the night, so every time I sort of nodded off, I woke up again. Finally about 5:45 I got up and got dressed and dragged my sorry butt off to church. I wasn't planning on going so early (6:30 service) but I figured I might as well, since I wasn't sleeping.

I am such a hurting puppy. But it was an OK day. Lots of time on the phone with brothers and sisters and Mom. And lots of time in the kitchen, about 2 and a half solid hours: put the turkey in the oven at about 4, but dinner made it onto the table at about 6:30. I made: mashed turnips, roasted carrots, pureed cauliflower, stuffing (Orowheat's LC bread, yum), cucumber salad, and gravy to go along with the roast turkey, which came out terrific. I did all the dishes as I went along, too, so there wasn't too much for DH to clean up afterwards. And I was super-organized and just put all the veggies right into the containers their leftovers would go in, since I planned for the leftovers from the beginning... no serving dishes to wash! The Domestic Divas out there will be scandalized, eh? Hee. It helped. When there's only 2 adults to do all the work on a dinner like that, every little bit helps.

DH had a big nap this morning, but then took the kids out to play ball and shoot hoops after lunch. That gave me a nice break before I had to start on dinner. He has a nasty cough, I hope it doesn't settle in his lungs like it often does. He has been yelling alot at his basketball games, being coach and all. Some of those kids (6 & 7 year olds) can really play!

I think the kids liked their Easter. They got a bunch of different kinds of chocolate. Not one of them started on their bunnies. I think they're going to eat the smaller chocolates first. Oh, they got books and some new music CDs (Ralph's World, previously ref'd), and the Ralph's World DVD, which DD and DS2 really enjoyed watching today -- DS1 watched only out of the corner of his eye and would not admit he liked it! I was cracking up. The music is very fun, but I'm sure he was feeling "too grown up" for that baby stuff... sigh.

I lost 2 hours of my life which I will never get back trying to get the new Bionicle PC game which DS1 got to work on either one of our creaky old computers, before I realized we don't have a fast enough processor (600 MHz Pentium 3) in either computer -- they're both around 400-500 MHz P2s. Of course this desktop is more than 5 years old now, and the lap top is pushing 4. Yes, it is getting to be time for a new computer, now that you mention it! But, we will keep the old ones around because they are good for playing the old games that won't work on the new machine, I'm sure... but I spent sooo much time today installing DirectX 9, then updating video drivers, after, of course, webcrawling to find the right versions for the 2 different pieces of hardware...what a PITA.

The supreme lack of gratitude on the part of my children is another thing that has been irritating me lately. DS1 was really grumpy about the game "not working yet" when I dedicated a good chunk of my day to it. I had to point that out to him -- Hello? You think this is how I wanted to spend my day?!?! He got it. Same with DD and the Easter dresses I bought her yesterday -- I found two, one that was very fancy with a tulle overskirt (she looked really sweet in it), but it was too big, and another more casual one that was still quite pretty -- but she argued with me, she wanted to wear the fancy dress right now, so I just said, forget it, it's too big, I'm taking it back to the store... Not even so much as a "thanks, Mom." Plus she whined at the museum, and at Sam's Club. The whining! It has to stop.

OK, 10 past 11, and I'm turning into a pumpkin. Appointment with the gastroenterologist tomorrow, have to go look up those tests that Max wants me to get done, and figure out what the heck it is I want to say to him! Going and saying, "There's something screwed up going on here," isn't going to cut it.