Category: Jenny is neurotic

This is a tale, a cautionary tale. In most instances  (for example in my wildly popular series Jenny’s Life Klass), I am more than happy – perhaps even a bit vehemently so – to tell you to be like me.  But there’s one area of my life in which you should not do as I do.

It is the area called “the little things” {insert comment here from my mom or  my dad on how I am exactly like my dad}. It is the little things that cause me to lose my fishing mind.

Exhibit A:

One cozy afternoon last week I put Jonah down for a nap, and before I did, I took his shoes off and placed them on Joshua’s bed. Because who wants to sleep with their shoes on, amIrite? After Jonah awoke, the kids and I were going out to run an errand. I cannot even remember what the errand was (which will lend credence to the fact that I am a flipping maniac). I gave Jonah a snack in his high chair and then went up to retrieve the shoes.

On the bed, where I had taken off Jonah’s shoes, lay one shoe. Now no one had been in the room at all, except Jonah in his crib far away from the shoes, and me to get him out of said crib, so I knew no one had walked off with it. So, I looked all over the bed, under the bed, under Joshua’s clothes that were on the floor, etc., as any reasonable person would do.

No shoe.

I took the one shoe that had not abracadabra-ed itself out of existence, and went downstairs and placed it on the dining room table. So I would know where it was and not mistake it for it’s missing twin, of course. Then I asked Joshua, who at nine years old is certainly capable of seeing a shoe when there is a shoe to be seen, to take a look in his room and see if his dumb old mom missed something.

Joshua goes and returns sans shoe.

I went back up to the boys room and looked all the places I had already looked and all the places it couldn’t possibly be.

No shoe.

This is where I lost it. I came back downstairs raging about how we couldn’t go on our errand because I couldn’t find the stupid shoe, and how can a shoe just disappear, I PUT IT RIGHT THERE WITH THE OTHER ONE AND LEFT THE ROOM!! Joshua was trying to talk me down. Poor kid, he did not even know how impossible that was. “Maybe he can wear another pair of shoes.”

“HE DOESN’T HAVE ANOTHER PAIR OF SHOES!” Which is true. His old ones are too small now. In my head I am raging, “WHAT BUSINESS DID WE HAVE BUYING A TWO-YEAR-OLD A $40 PAIR OF SHOES?” And by “we” I meant “my husband” of course.

Joshua tried again. “Well, he can ride in a cart, he doesn’t need shoes.”

“WE ARE NOT GOING ANYHERE UNTIL I FIND THIS SHOE. I CANNOT DO ANYTHING UNTIL I FIND THE SHOE!  I CANNOT FUNCTION UNTIL I KNOW WHERE THE SHOE IS! THAT’S JUST THE WAY IT IS!”

Joshua gave up and ran for cover at this point. And I, I sent a bunch of ocean-life-related text messages to Emily and to my husband about how the shoe was ruining my entire life and HOW DID IT JUST DISAPPEAR and how I just CANNOT handle this kind of shark!!! And my blood pressure rose and veins popped out of my forehead and it was, truly, my finest hour.

Then I went back and looked one. more. time.

The fishing shoe was stuck between the bed and the wall.

How it traveled THAT FAR without a foot inside it is anyone’s guess, but it did.

And it nearly killed me.

And it’s entirely the shoe’s fault.

Right?

Spring in Ohio behaved remarkably like winter in Ohio through most of April. I was not a fan. But dropping the temperature every-other-day or sending cold fall-like rain (thereby really messing with Jonah’s “I get to play outside/it’s too cold to play outside” emotions) weren’t the only tricks Mother Nature had up her sleeve. By delaying the seasons, she tricked me into thinking time had also been delayed.

But the calendar marched on while my brain stayed back in March.

Therefore I now find myself with 80-degree temperatures and in a BLIND PANIC because SCHOOL IS ALMOST OVER and I’m completely unprepared.

I’m the mom who likes it better when her kids are in school. Judge me all you want. This is how I’m wired. I handle the pressures of life better when there is only one kid in my face from 7:30-3:30 on the weekdays. But the party is almost over! Sophie has only 7 school days left and Joshua has 11. (Why do kindergartners get out a week early? RIP OFF!) School ends May 31st – not even in June! And the last week is the week of Memorial Day and Joshua will only go 4 days that week. RIP OFF again!

Here I am, not ready for summer. Although I have had the whole school year to prepare. I don’t know what pool we’re joining, have planned zero activities, don’t have a schedule set up (I’ve got to get Joshua and Sophie on some sort of a schedule because too much free time = bickering with those two, or asking for food ALL DAY LONG.)

And I am afraid of the jelly-filled mess that my brain becomes when there are three kiddos under my feet all day. I haven’t worked from home through a summer yet, so there’s getting my job done to consider as well.

EEPERS!

Hold me, people. Summer’s coming, ready or not!

What are you doing to keep your school-agers busy this summer? I need some ideas so that we can all enjoy each other! (Don’t say “day camp”. I can’t afford it!)

So Bobby and I are going through that homeowner heaven-hell paradox known as “refinancing”. It’s heaven because we are shortening the length of our loan by 4 years at a reedonkulously low interest rate that will save us approximately 50 bajillion dollars (now all THREE kids can to college instead of us having to draw names for two lucky ones). It’s hell because OH MY GOSH AN APPRAISAL! WE HAD TO HAVE AN APPRAISAL! Translation: you better get rid of all the crap you’ve been hoarding for 11 years so there’s room for someone to walk through your house and tell you how much it’s worth.

We didn’t find out the date of our appraisal until six days before the blessed event, so we worked our butts off de-cluttering, hauling crap to the dump and Goodwill, and organizing the crap that had to stay. Then, Monday, we paid our 18-year-old friend and babysitter Krisha to clean the house from top to bottom for us. Because I came to the realization that you CANNOT clean your house from top to bottom with a two-year-old attached to your limbs. So it was either pay Krisha to babysit Jonah while I cleaned, or…pay Krisha to CLEAN while I played with my son at an alternate location. Let me think about it…hmmm…I’ll take option B.

So, after a week of de-cluttering and carpet cleaning by us and deep cleaning by Krisha, our house looked pretty awesome this morning when the appraiser came.

(Although what impressed her the most? Was the large shelving with hundreds of Bobby’s perfectly-folded t-shirts in our laundry area. She even asked if she could pick one up to “see how he does it”. Because my husband is like a t-shirt folding sensei and I will admit, it is pretty impressive. I hope it somehow adds to the value of our home.)

I should’ve taken pictures. Of course I did not.

Eight hours after the appraiser left, it looked like this:

I am SO GLAD this appraisal is over. I hope to build on Krisha’s great cleaning job and our de-cluttering and what not and do a better job keeping things clean this year. But for now, I am going to sit back and enjoy the rest of the lemon butter cream frosting I made tonight to go with my lemon gluten free cookies I made earlier (because Sophie said, “I want to bake something!”) and wash it back with the GIANT Mountain Dew my darling husband brought me when he got home from work.

Remember when I said I was gonna give up pop at New Year’s? Well it’s January 15th and this is only my SECOND one! I think that’s pretty good for someone who used to have two a day. And let me tell ya, I earned it. But tomorrow it’s back to being a good girl. (Which is why I HAD to eat the rest of that icing…eliminating temptation, right??)

Oh, and also, please join me in giving thanks to God that the appraiser didn’t want to look inside my bedroom closet. Seriously large bullets were dodged there!