*UPDATE*: I am not even kidding that I received this email from my husband in response to this post:

You’re still not taking this as seriously as you should. No worries, I will prepare our family and let you enjoy the benefit of survival.

And then, this morning I receive this email at work:

                             Disaster Preparedness

 

                                1200-1300 

 

                    Director of the Naval Postgraduate School’s

                     Center for Homeland Defense and Security

 

                             ALL are INVITED. 

 

  Along with the presentation, there will be a table with preparedness materials for staff.

 

 

Holy crap. Between these conversations and the article today on CNN that high heels are bad for your feet, I am pretty sure we are going to be dealing with flesh eating zombies soon. And not the friendly kind.

The following conversation occured this morning while I was innocently blow drying my hair:

Husband (wanders in, coffee in hand): We need to have a disaster plan.

Me: um, okay? What’s up?

Husband: Well we need to be prepared as a family in the event of a disaster, you know a solar flare or nuclear fall out situation.

Me: ? Are you serious right now? You know I haven’t had any coffee yet, right? New rule, no talking about nuclear ANYTHING before I’ve had coffee.

Husband: I was just thinking that we need a plan, you know for food, water and the like. We don’t want to have to go to the store and face the anarchy that will be going on.

Me: ANARCHY? First amendment to rule, no talking about anarchy before coffee either. What have you been reading this morning? I thought you were upstairs doing your Bible study???? Were you reading Revelations or something? You know that after reading the Left Behind series I fully believe we will be raptured before all the bad stuff goes down – I mean LaHaye said so.

Husband (ignoring me completely): Well, we have the gun we just need food and a water filtration system. And a meeting point. Maybe the Big Sur Mountains?

Me: I am thinking of nothing but the movie Red Dawn. I can almost see myself hiding in the mountains with a can of beans, fighting the Soviet Army.

Husband: You aren’t taking me seriously. I’m going upstairs.

Me: WOLVERINES!

If you are a male, particularly a male family member of mine, no need to read further – this post is for the ladies only, do you feel me girls? Amen!

Okay so for roughly 22 years now, I have a certain predictable event happen every month. You would think that by now, I would know the signs, be able to ward off unsuspecting town folk from the tyrant queen storming around the castle for the week. However, every month inevitably I find myself in tears, in a rage or inside of a bag of potato chips wondering “what is wrong with me? should I see someone for this?”

Then POOF, two days later a certain Aunt Flow shows up and I’m all “oh yeah, PMS!” What? How do I not know the signs by know?

Two decades of experience with this hormonal matter should tell me that when any of the following happen, it is time to check a calendar and lock myself in my bedroom for the near term:

- the intense desire to put frosting on any/all immobile objects

- the sudden belief that ANYONE driving in front of me is missing a temporal lobe

- the brilliant idea to part my hair on the other side (just for kicks) and then cry uncontrollably at monster that suddenly appeared in the mirror

- crazy ideas about new outfit pairings in my closet ( you know what I’m saying here….its the “hey what if I put this plaid jacket with these green pants that never really fit right when I bought them” scenario ) only to once again be reduced to tears when the monster in the mirror mocks me

- random explosions of emotion at my husband for not spending enough time with me  that alternate evenly with angry “why don’t you just LEAVE ME ALONE FOR ONCE” statements

Any and all of these signs are harbingers of every girls monthly dilemma, it isn’t rocket science. So why does it catch me off guard every month? Will I ever learn? Maybe I should laminate the list above and put it on the refrigerator as a reminder, an intervention if you will.

I think that would be a great idea…up and until I am actually engaged in PMS and then I would read it, and promptly proclaim that the fridge just called me “fat.”

What’s a girl to do?

*UPDATE: Husband requested I change the title of this post, said it gives him bad mental images. I say…mission accomplished!

*UPDATE #2: New title – “Stop or I’ll Frost You”

*UPDATE #3: Did someone say frosting? That reminds me……

Last night I participated in a live “facebook” viewing of the Bachelorettte. People, it just doesn’t get more 21st century than what went on in my living room last night (and living rooms around the state). We all came together, with a common love: ridiculous amazing reality television. We were a rag-tag team of ne’er do wells and made our dream of finding someone to watch the Bacherlorette with a reality. Sure our husbands were rolling their eyes and wondering what in the world we were laughing at but we didn’t care! It takes a village my friends to truly experience reality television in the best form.

It all started with a comment about how psycho Frank is. What happened after that was FB history. I don’t know about you my friends but I went to bed with a smile on my face even though Ali is a shmuck for keeping Frank. In case you missed it, I present to you our awesome Facebook moment (names have been blacked out to protect the innocent and comments were cut off at #22 because I didn’t have room for more):

I found my glasses! My Dad got a job! Monday is almost over! YEAH!!!!!

I have been so down lately I decided I must report tout suite  on the good news. (NOTE TO SELF: must celebrate awesome french bilingual-ness) There is GOOD NEWS in the world today! I know that most of what I have been complaining about falls squarely into what people refer to as  ”white people problems” and they are more just annoyances. But tonight, oh tonight, the hubby is getting home early (BEFORE 7PM!) and we are barbecuing and the sun is out and my children are healthy and I JUST MIGHT BREAK INTO SONG!

I will stop now before this starts to sound less like a positive diatribe and more like a psychotic “break”. Which it most certainly is not because my mental illness diagnosis is not even remotely at the level of “severe.” I promise.  Wait a minute, that is MORE GOOD NEWS! Not entirely crazy, just partially, HOORAH for ME!

It has become a joke at our house that I don’t got to bed at night. I lay down for a series of short “naps.” I am not sure what is in the water but my kids are not big fans of sleeping all night. There is one awakening after another involving, breast milk (infant), potty( 3 year old) and bad dreams (6 year old). I am basically tag teamed by three boys every night, which isn’t as awesome as it sounds…..

Kevin, God love him, tries his best to help out and on some occasions is victorious. Mostly however, the little creatures want “Mommy” and are willing to scream until I stutter “okay, okay, I’m up, I’m up.” I wander up the stairs and to the bedroom of the needy child and attempt to quiet him before he wakes up any combination of his brothers. Elijah is really the one that gets me, he wakes up at least 4 times on most nights. It is not always to eat, sometimes it is to blow raspberries into the monitor so loud that I eventually wake up and plug his little motor boating mouth with a binky.

What I don’t understand is the waking up to eat. I mean for goodness sake he is 8 months old.  He eats solid foods and drinks bottles all day long. Both Joshua and Isaac were sleeping 10-12 hours a night at this point. Little Eli never makes it more than 3 without needing something. He is still exclusively breast fed and part of me wonders if this is the “problem.” The other two boys had some combination of breast milk and formula by this point and it makes me think that is why they were better sleepers. Eli’s tummy is far too sensitive for formula thus far so I don’t really have a choice – it is either wake up to nurse him or wake up and comfort him while he screams like a wild turkey because the formula is peeling the lining off of his intestinal tract. The funny thing is – when he was 3 months old, I actually used to be concerned that he slept too much. Silly, silly mama. He would sleep 10 hours at a time and I brought my stupid, stupid concern to the pediatrician. I was afraid something was wrong with him. Oh, the irony. Less than a month later, the game of “wake up every few minutes and see if we can make mommy a crazy person” began with a vengeance.

I don’t know what advice you experienced Mama’s have for me. I am so very tired and I have tried just putting Eli in bed with us – he still wakes up. Granted I don’t have to huff up stairs to go get  him when he does but I also don’t sleep as well with him right next to me. I am committed to nursing him until he is 1, but there has to be a better way. We both need more rest. I am not all that into the cry-it-out phenom, not sure that it is really best but maybe I need to consider it. All I know is that something has got to change because there isn’t enough coffee on the planet to keep me awake during the day and my night naps just aren’t cutting it.