Also…mom and dad…not sure if I told you this story…brace yourselves.

This all happened one day back in Jr. High…I’m guessing grade 8, but I really can’t recall.  I’m old.  Forgive me.

Anyhow – the science teacher was teaching us all about open and closed circuits and I was rather fascinated.  (By the way – did you know that my kid in grade 5 has learned this stuff?  What were we doing back in grade 5…hand writing, I think).  I was so fascinated by the whole open circuit thing that I went home and read up on it.  I read the text, I re-read my notes.  I may or may not have even rewrote my notes. (hey, I am a geek…give me a break!)

So I began to think of all the circuits in the house…and contemplate on how I could experiment with these circuits.  Suddenly, I had an idea….you could call it my “light bulb moment.”  Since electricity travels in circuits, I was going to stick my finger into the socket of my bedside lamp, hold the bulb in my other hand, flick the switch, and watch the bulb light up.

I know, the brilliance in my plan was astounding.  Also – can you tell that I was a latchkey kid? (that was quite normal back in the day — uh…being a latchkey kid…not electrocuting yourself to death)

The big moment came…I carefully sat myself on the edge of my bed…stuck my finger into that lamp, carefully – oh so carefully – placed the tip of my finger on the metal end of the bulb…took a deep breath and flicked the switch.

Image courtesy of http://www.easyvectors.com

The next thing I knew, my mother was calling me for dinner…I think she came into my room and said something like “What? Taking a nap? Get up and eat supper before it gets cold!”

I didn’t mention a word of my experiment to anyone.  Not a soul.  I survived…that’s about all I can say, and looking back now – it’s a bloody miracle that I did!

I do still wish I could remember if the bulb lit up though.

So we waited for bedding to go on sale.  When Mr. D spotted the sale (he’s the shopper, not me) we went to pick some new ones.  I don’t know why he needed me – he’s got much better taste than I do and…well, he cares about this stuff.  Me…I just sleep on it.

So we wandered around the store for hours.  Literally…3 1/2 hours of looking at sheets.  I was fed up, tired, not wanting to be there…and I turned around and saw them…a set of 3 sheets…white, taupe and chocolate brown (the colors of our room).  My interest was piqued.  I walked over – the price had been slashed from $179 to $90 then to $59.  How can you go wrong with 3 complete sheet sets for $60??

I pestered him into buying them.  He was looking at something else (a much more expensive set, and it was only 1 set).  I talked him out of it.  All I could see was that it was 3 sets for $60.  That’s $20 each set…you can’t even get twin sets for that cheap!  I whined and pouted and bullied my way into getting them…and I won.

Then we got home…I washed and folded them…put 2 sets into my linen cupboard and the third…I got ready to put onto my bed…and that’s when I realized it.

I had made a huge mistake.

This set was crap.  The material is rather polyester feeling, but that I could live with.  The lace trim on the pillow cases was cheesy, but I could overlook that.  It was the fitted sheet…there was a problem.

Back in the day when mattresses weren’t these mahoosive things with giant pillow tops on them, this set would have been fine.  But my mattress is big and fluffy and pillowy.  These sheets don’t fit.  I can pull it properly over 3 of the 4 corners…but that last one…it’s barely able to make it.

Once I’m able to magically pull that last corner on…that sheet is tight…there is not a wrinkle or a crease.  You can almost see it vibrate due to the tension.  Then you sit on it and it nearly pops off.  Every single morning, I have to pull those barely reaching corners back down so that the sheet doesn’t just spring into itself and form a ball in the middle of the bed.

I hate these sheets.  I don’t want to admit it to Mr. D, but I will happily tell all of you.

I. HATE. THESE. SHEETS.

thump, thump, thump…moving of stepstool to sink. Water turns on…brushing of teeth.

All normal, right?  Not quite.  Next I hear this:

“thu thu thu….thu thu thu….thu thu thu….”

*squelch*

“…thu thu thu…thu thu thu…thu….”

*spit*

Repeat that about 5 times.

Then he hops out of the bathroom and announces, “I’m DONE!” 

In all my life – I have never heard anyone say “Thu, thu, thu” as they brushed.  How does one even do that??  Whatever…his teeth are clean.  One day, I’m sure of it, this kid is going to be a world famous comedian…and you all will have the pleasure of saying that you know his life story.

Um….where am I supposed to put it?  I love my kid, but I kinda want to hide this behind a large, heavy book.

Kids arrived, snack was eaten, dancing was done…then:
Me: What’s the weather outside today guys?

Them:  It’s raining.  Yeah, drops got on my nose today!  I wore my rubber boots!

Me: Yeah, it’s raining! Did you know that rain helps to make things grow?  I wonder, if we go on a walk in the rain…what kinds of things will we see?

Them: Worms! Flowers!  Maybe some leaves on the tress?  Baby birds!

Me: Okay! Let’s get ready to go outside and see if we can find all that stuff.

~*~*~*~ 20 minutes later (hey, you get 4 kids splash-panted/rubber booted/rain jacketed up) ~*~*~*~

I open the door…we take 3 steps outside in the rain – and….it promptly turns to snow.  What the heck, I think…we can still look for spring stuff…

Suddenly, the falling snow turns into mini ice daggers that cut at your face and dig into your eyes.

My 4 kids, who moments before were happily sloshing along are suddenly crying and begging to go back inside.

So now – we’re going to have the kind of day where we sip hot chocolates, read books and snuggle under blankets.

Today it’s a little bit of everything.  He and his buddy built a puzzle…totally normal.  Then they decide to perform long-jumps over top of the puzzle … a little odd, but whatever.

Then, Adam decides that they have to yell something as they jump over it.  His buddy chooses things like “One, two, three, Jump!”  but not Adam…nope, my Adam chooses to shout,

“Baklava Cheese Sticks!”

Do I change him?  Do I shut him down and turn off that creativity in order to stop the stares of the people in the park or sometimes, visitors in my own home?  Two words:  HELL NO.

What would we be without people who think outside the box?  A sad, hopeless, dull society, that’s what.  Do I think that my Adam has the ingenuity and charm to change the world?  Yes, I do.  I’m not so sure he’ll do it, but he sure as heck has the potential for it.

I just hope that his teachers nourish this spark.  I have a feeling though, that they’ll be trying to snuff it out.

After a while, they just wanted to eat what they were making…so I was left to roll, fill and bake the remaining ingredients.

When I finally finished that, I see my older two kids watching tv…while Adam is sitting next to the wall by my entry way…with a his brother’s trash can in front of him.  Worried he might be feeling sick (yeah, we use trash cans as puke catchers) – I said “Hey hun, what are you doing?”

“nothin’ mom…just eating this gum I found inside Isaac’s garbage.”

Yeah, I might be a crunchy mommy.  I’m all about medicine being a last resort, breastfeeding (extended when possible), natural birth (I have an advantage here of extremely short labors) and co-sleeping.

It’s that last one that’s been getting to me.

Now – co-sleeping evolved naturally for me.  I discovered that it was fantastically easy to breastfeed and sleep at the same time.  It was a win-win situation.

However, Adam is now 4 and hasn’t breastfed in a long, long time.  Yet 6 out of 7 nights, he’s in my bed.  We went for a long stretch there where he was in his own bed…and then a bought of nightmares brought him back to ours.

Here’s my problem.  He’s so much bigger now.  I don’t know if you guys know this, but when a kid sleeps in your bed, they manage to take up 98% of the mattress.  Every time.  I don’t know how it’s possible, but it’s true.

So, my nights are spent picking him up and carrying him back into his bed (or — “being pushed” over on to Mr. Delusional’s side and then “being sound asleep” while he gets up and carries Adam back to bed).  If for some reason, usually laziness, we don’t do this, I’m stuck in one position all night long.  This doesn’t seem like an issue until you wake up in the morning stiff and sore.  Not to mention, grumpy due to the fact that even though you were in bed for the last 8 or 9 hours, you didn’t get much sleep.  The face slaps, the toe digs, the knee and elbow jabs – or my personal favorite – the headbutt to the face – none of these things are very conducive to a good night’s sleep.

Well, folks, I’m tired.  Physically and mentally – I’m just so tired.  So tonight, I grabbed my sweet, angelic child and went to put him back into his bed.  He whined, he whimpered and I practically weeped, “Adam, mommy’s back is so sore, you need to sleep in your own bed.”

Well, apparently that was the wrong thing to say.  He wailed like I’d beaten him.  He flipped and flopped and freaked right out.  In exasperation, I just got up and left him…crawled back into my own bed and tried to ignore it.  That didn’t go so well.  Mr. D however, got up and soothed him…got him some water…I heard them talking softly and I drifted off to sleep again.  Then..Mr. D made the mistake of coming back to bed.

Wails.

This woke up the other kids.

One had to pee, the other needed water…and Adam cried.

I tried to reason with him, “You can sleep on a mat on mommy’s floor right here beside her bed. That’s cool, isn’t it?”

And he screamed bloody murder.

So – I did what any mother in my position would do…I got mad.  I shouted. I threw my own little hissy fit.  I tossed blankets and pillows and broke down shouting, “what’s wrong with this bed?  Nothing! Nothing’s wrong with this bed!  Why can’t you sleep in this bed??”

In the end – it’s 3 am.  The children are all sleeping peacefully (yes, Adam in my bed…because dudes, this is about picking your battles and tonight, I lost big time).  I can’t sleep now.  I’m ashamed by my own behavior.  I’m sad that my little guy is having such a hard time.  I’m mad that I don’t get enough sleep and that the lack of sleep turns me into a grumpy old woman…I’m just so…defeated.

Image credit: http://www.freephotosbank.com/11578.html

True story, friends.

This happened way back in the day when I was still living in Saudi Arabia.  One of our neighbours got a Rooster.  I’m not sure why.  It’s not like I lived in the middle of nowhere.  I wasn’t in a farming area…nope – we lived in the suburbs of a city called Al-Khobar, I really liked it there: the ocean, the many, many westerners who worked for Saudi Aramco, and oh my gosh, the food.  So fantastic.

Anyhow – some of the people there were a little….eccentric.  We had neighbors who had ducks.  Yes…Ducks.  They brought out a little kiddie pool and the ducks would waddle on out and swim in the pool.  Really, no lies!  There were neighbors who had goats…a common animal for people to have.  Not a lot of dogs or cats though.  Hmmm.

Anyhow – One of our neighbors, for some reason got a Rooster.  Maybe they had a whole flock of chicken, I don’t know, but I did hear that rooster.  He was a little bit demented.  Crowing at all hours of the day….and night.

So add to this menagerie, my strange and special husband.  Mr. Delusional is a rather serious and quiet man.  I love that about him.  Sure, he’ll crack jokes, but he’s more of an observer than a participant.

One night we’d gone to bed.  The ducks had stopped splashing in their pool, the goats had settled into their beds…but that damn rooster…nope – he was still up.  We’d layed in bed for a bit, chatting…and had reached that sort of half-awake/half-asleep state.  And that rooster crowed.

This rooster was not normal.  He didn’t have a loud and proud “cockadoodle”  No…he sounded like he’d spent the majority of his life smoking.  He sounded like he was 90 years old, crawling up to the top of his little Rooster House and crowing his pathetic “Cock-a-doodle-doo”

And peeps, it woke up Mr. D.  He sat up, looked around the room in a haze then turned to me, leaned in until he was nearly touching my face and said, “SHHHHHHH!”

I giggled at his sleep-induced craziness.

The Rooster crowed again. “Cock-a *hack*doodle*hack-Doooooooo*hack*oooo”

And Mr. D did it again, this time his eyes wide open as he looked at me, “SHHHHH!  You’re waking me up!”

And I laughed and laughed and laughed.

He finally woke up all the way…asking me what was so funny, and I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t tell the story.  When I’d finally calmed down enough to talk him through it, he didn’t find it nearly as funny as I did.

So there you have it friends…I was once mistaken for a Rooster.  True Story.

For a highschool drop out – that’s a BIG DEAL.

But…I want to quit.  I’m so close to the end and it’s all that I can do to get my butt in gear and get everything done.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed on my facebook page – but…well, I complain about school a lot lately.  I haven’t liked much of this last year of school – which deals with all of the behind the scenes aspects of childcare; the legalities, the regulations, and don’t let me forget about that horrid class about non-profits. *shudder*

I’m all about the kids.  I love my job.  I get paid to play with lego, to finger paint, and to make snowmen.  Today I was a ninja.  Oh, not just any old ninja, I was a ninja master.  Really, this is the best job in the world.

So the first years of schooling was fantastic.  The courses were all about ways to introduce learning through play.  It was totally my thing.  This diploma year was…well…it sucked.

This is the reason that I was so incredibly thrilled when I learned that the course that I’m in right now was going to take me back to the kids.  Not some boring legal document where I have to memorize the ratios and numbers and ages and stages and room sizes for daycare centers (not a place I ever, ever, ever plan on working in).  No, I was going to be doing Creative Planning with children.  Music, Movement, Drama…I had such high hopes.

And…they were shattered.

I’m sorry, Mrs. Instructor (who I think reads my blogs, but I’m not positive).  I love you.  I think you are a great instructor.  (She really is, I’m not kissing up).  But man – this class – it’s so…blah.  It’s all this obvious stuff that anyone with 1/2 a brain can figure out.  I don’t feel challenged here.  I don’t feel like I’m even learning anything.  For most people that would be a non-complaint…an easy pass.  But man…it sure as hell makes my assignments a horrendous undertaking.  I just can’t do it.  I don’t know why…I just feel like I’m caged and limited and prevented from going to the places I know that I could go but can’t because I’m stuck on this stupid leash of limitations in the assignment outline.

*sigh*

I really pushed it with my last assignment.  Like – really, really pushed it.  I decided to go a little on the safer side this time but I didn’t enjoy this.  I didn’t grow.  I didn’t get anything.

I don’t think it’s the course though.  I think it’s me.  I’m just done.  Kind of like when you’re pregnant…and you enjoy all of the bits of it, the swelling tummy, the kicks, that motherly “feeling” but then you get into the 8th month and you’re like “Dude, I’m done…hurry up and come out ’cause mommy’s tired of this.”

Yeah.  That’s how I feel about school now.  Just done.