I blame children's programming for giving them ideas

On the way to preschool Friday morning Noelle was chattering away as usual when she threw out, "Mommy, let's talk about talents."  This was not unusual as there had been a Yo Gabba Gabba episode she recently saw that was about talents where talent equals things that you like to do and are good at so she has been spending quite a bit of time lately thinking about talents.

"Okay Noelle, let's talk about talents.  What are your talents?"

"Well, I like to sing and dance and play music so those are my talents."

Note:  she has not yet been enrolled in any sort of lessons/classes due to cost time parental laziness so we don't really know if she has a 'talent' in any of these areas but they fill the 'likes to do' requirement as stated by DJ Lance Rock so we just go with it.

"You certainly like to dance and are a good dancer."

"Yes, and I'm going to have a rock band.  Chase will play the guitar."

"Who will play the drums?"

"Nico will play the drums."  Nico is her boyfriend as evidenced by the kiss she received leaving school the other day.  She is FOUR but I gotta give the kid props, his technique was solid.  (She also pronounced his good-bye kiss today WET.  I almost peed myself laughing at that one.)

"Okay, so who's on the bass guitar?"

"Jimmy.  And Brenden will play the keyboard.  And Peyton will will play the tambourine."  Someone was on the accordion but I forget who.  I think that the tuba was also involved at some point but by this time my sides hurt from suppressing laughter at the mental image.

"What's the name of your band?"

"Um, 'Singing'.  And I'm the singer and Ms. Lisa and Ms. Amanda are singers too."

"Do you have any back-up singers?"

"Yeah, that will be Emily and Sydney and Caroline."

Almost the entire class is part of the band now.

"How about the rest of the class?  Will they be your dancers?"

"Um, yeah, they'll be the dancers and we'll have a band and all my friends will sing and dance and play instruments at my school and we're gonna ROCK!"

There you have it, be on the lookout for the mighty ROCK band 'Singing' in about 10 years.  Remember, you heard it here first.

Can you hear me now?

I'll just put this out there right now:  I have awful hearing.  It's legendary in my family.  When my mom took me to get my hearing tested somewhere between the ages of 12 and 14 (I'm guessing because I failed a school hearing test or something - one of the few things I failed.  That and cutting with scissors in kindergarten but that's because I'm left-handed and there were no left-handed scissors in the classroom then but I digress), the audiologist took a look at the results and remarked to mom that I must really struggle in school as I was missing A LOT.  "Um, no, actually, she does quite well.  Honor roll and all that."  A discussion around hearing aides commenced which I quickly nixed because hello!  Why don't roll me in dog poop everyday before sending me to school?  I wasn't enough of a dork and an outcast before, let's add big giant-ass hearing aides to it.  (Plus my orthodontist wanted me to wear my head-gear to school as well but luckily mom put the kibosh on that before I could go medieval on him.)  It would have been as Chris Knight described it in Real Genius as being guaranteed that a boy would never talk to me.  OHMIGOD, just get to the point already!

Right, the point.  So I have terrible hearing but have developed coping mechanisms and techniques to deal with it because I never knew that there was a problem.  It was just what was.  So when I didn't understand something, instead of calling attention to it (and myself), I'd just read ahead in the text book. Or the reading book.  Or whatever it was in front of me and 'learn' that way.  I'd not respond when people were talking to me if I was reading because it was no secret that I love to read and they would simply assume that I was so totally engrossed in the book that I had tuned them out.  Which I did as the voices were just a buzzing background noise, easy to ignore once you master the trick.  Once I was made aware of the deficiency graphically described as a cookie with a big bite taken out of the bottom of it, I tried to pay more attention but man, it was exhausting.  So...I just didn't. 

As I got older, I played it for laughs.  One Thanksgiving in particular my youngest sister got a phone call from her then-boyfriend now-husband and walked out of the room to talk to him in 'private'.  As she walked away, she must have said "...Mike..." which my superior auditory capabilities interpreted as 'Muffin' so I simply assumed that it was her special pet name for him.  So of course being the big sister, I tormented her with this when she came back downstairs.  "You call him Muffin?  Aw, so cute!"  She looked at me like I had grown another head and was like, no you idiot, I called him 'Mike'.  But the damage was done and for Christmas that year he got boxes of muffin mix from the fam.  My best friend even got me the Miracle Ear information package off an infomercial and THEY CALLED ME TO FOLLOW UP!  She was cracking up laughing as I was telling the very earnest young man just where he could stuff his miracle ear.

So every time we get together now, my mom will say, not at subtly, 'you are going to get your hearing checked soon, right?'  To which I typically respond, yes, when it's a problem.  I can function, I don't hear everything but I have enough coping strategies that I'm not incapacitated by it.  Well, yesterday everything changed.  I went to a new primary care doctor and as part of the medical history, she asked about my vision and hearing.  They are both terrible so I told her.  Well, at the end of the visit she decided to do a baseline hearing test to see how *bad* it was.  The instrument was like the othoscope used to look in the ears but it played a series of tones and you simply raise your hand when you hear something.  I heard...2 tones in the left ear and 3-4 in the right.  I'm not sure about the last one on the right ear as it started ringing (tinnitus.  Sexy!) then an actual tone played so I don't know if I got credit for that one or not.  The technician told me that wow, it was really bad and gave the results to the doctor who basically said, yeah, this is really really bad. 

This was delivered with the nervous smile and overly cheerful voice folks use when they are delivering bad news but don't want you to worry too much but like I said, I knew it was awful.  So she wrote me a referral for an audiologist so we could determine if it was severe enough to warrant external auditory amplifiers...oh hell, hearing aides.  I told this to my best friend who basically asked if that meant I was 'legally deaf'.  Once I stopped laughing about it, I told her I was pretty sure that no such designation existed.  Okay, it is (past) time and I have no high school boys or cliques to impress so why not?  It will go nicely with all of my grey hair.  And it will be an interesting experience to not 'read' movies.  I'll let you know how it all turns out.

And, of course, in another entry in the Preschoolers Say the Darnedest Things category, driving home yesterday, the sun had finally (!) come out what with the wind pushing the clouds away.  Noelle from the backseat chirps, ''Mommy, where are the clouds?"  "The wind blew them away baby."  Wait a beat.  "Mommy, where are the clouds?"  Me (thinking that she couldn't hear me over the radio) "The wind blew them away baby."  Not half a second later I hear "Mommy, where are the clouds?"  By this time I'm getting annoyed knowing she heard me the first two times and replied "Noelle, I just told you twice, the wind blew them away!"  She laughs and says, "I'm sorry Mommy, you'll have to speak up.  I couldn't hear you."  Which is what I say to her at least 3 times a week.

Well played, universe.  Well played.

Not quite ready for primetime

You know who tells the best jokes in the world?  Preschoolers. 

Noelle:  Knock, knock

Me:  Who's there?

Noelle:  Noelle

Me:  Noelle who?

Noelle:  Noelle you glad mumble mumble something banana hahahahaha!

****************************************

Noelle:  Knock, knock

Me:  Who's there?

Noelle:  Diego

Me:  Diego who?

Noelle:  Diego you glad mumble say banana hahahahahahaha!

*****************************************

Noelle:  Knock knock

Me:  Who's there?

Noelle:  Bag

Me:  Bag who?

(Can you guess the end?  Go on, guess.  Bet you'll never get it.)

Noelle:  Bag you glad mumblesnortgah banana hahahahahaha!

And to think I was concerned at one point that she would never start talking.

(Knock knock jokes.  OMG someone pass me a fork to stick in my ears.  But to preschoolers, they are like crack dipped in speed wrapped in a lollipop.)

Also:  send help.  And new jokes.

Voices from the Backseat

The following conversations took place this morning on the way to preschool. 

Noelle:  Mommy, where are the horses?  (This asked as we were driving through horse country.)

Me:  I don't know baby, maybe they're in the stables...no, look! (Pointing) They're waaaay over there by the trees.

Noelle:  Why are they by the trees?

Me:  Probably so they don't get rained on.

Noelle:  I don't like rain.  It makes the snow go away and then I can't make snow angels.

Me:  This...is true.  Very true baby.

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Noelle:  Mommy, I want a baby sister.

Me:  You want a baby sister?

Noelle:  Two of them.

Me:  You want...

Noelle (continuing as if I hadn't spoken):  And a baby brother.

Me:  Um, you have a baby brother.

Noelle:  I want a baby sister NOW!

Me (trying not to laugh):  Um, it doesn't work that way sweetie.  It takes a long time to make a baby and Mommy and Daddy aren't quite ready for another one yet.

Noelle:  Oh.  (Pause)  My friends are going to love my new book!

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All before 8 am on a Wednesday.  So with that, how was your morning?

Is it Mondays? Or do I really hate my job that much?

Gawd, I know.  I'm beating the dead horse.  Repeatedly.  Even I'm annoyed by my carping but holy hell am I not happy.  I work weekends to try to get ahead in my work, maybe take some of the stress off and come Monday morning (hah - almost typed 'moron'.  Freudian slip perhaps?) I'm faced with 5 voicemails and 17 emails all needing this that or the other released/extended/rejected.  Seriously?  I JUST walked in the door.  I realize that some of you start your workday at 0-dark-thirty but us working moms are constrained by that little thing known as 'daycare' and 'not wanting to wake the children up hours before first light'. 

Then my manager comes to me this morning (whilst fighting with our operating system) and asks why I didn't have any safety observations done last week.  You were here all week, right?  Um no.  No I was not.  I was having surgery last Monday and Tuesday and I left you a voicemail about it AS OUR HR DEPARTMENT HAS INSTRUCTED US TO DO.  Well, can you send me an email instead?  I can't remember voicemails.  Lord, please give me the strength to not take the Mallet of Excellence upside this woman's head.  Then our main operating system went down and has stayed down thereby ensuring that I will be spending a chunk of my weekend here AGAIN catching up.  Plus our scheduling department just went live on some new system which I'm sure won't add any extra work to my load at all because now they have the power to do I don't know what but it can't be good.  I can feel my blood pressure rising and remaining elevated as the events of last week threw the daily inanity into stark relief that this just doesn't matter.  I'm totally blaming the stress for what happened to me.  It's not going to get any better - this place is broken and fixated on the wrong things.  I have no power here, no voice so the only thing left for me to do is to get the hell out.  Which I'm trying to do but have that little thing known as 'responsibility' engaging me in an epic staring contest.  And I wear contacts so of course I need to blink. 

I really want to stop bitching about work.  It's a necessary evil and my family is worth it.  I would like to stop feeling flat and deflated at the end of every day, rushing through dinner and time with the kids to desperately find a bit of myself again before facing it on the morrow.  I'm gonna try to get back to telling the kid stories, they are much more fun and oh!  the pictures!  but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to need to find some balance before I can get back to what I want to write about.

I did do a lot of cooking this weekend so my house smells like meat.  Yummy, yummy roasted meat.  All hail the crockpot and cream of chicken soup!  Seriously,  I think that I used four cans in two meals.  And on that nonsequiter, I'm out.  Until tomorrow when I'm sure I'll more things to complain about. You can't wait, I know it.

Really? More snow? Gah.

As this will come as a surprise to absolutely no one, the east coast got slammed with snow.  Again.  And this time Baltimore took it on the chin.  After being out Monday and Tuesday having surgery, leaving early yesterday to pick Noelle up from daycare as they closed early, I'm stuck at home today as I can't get out of my neighborhood.  Dyl tried to get my car to the top of the street so I could get to work but he got stuck and very nearly wedged my car (and himself) firmly across the the top of the street thereby almost earning us the hatred of everyone on our road.  So now I'm forced to wait for the plow to be able to get out. 

Why should I be upset about this unexpected snow day?  Well, my company is open, others in my department made it in, I was out for 2  days already and I have this bizarre need to be there to support the plant even though I want nothing more than to just say 'eff it'.  This is what having a strong work ethic gets you:  a ridiculous amount of guilt over not being able to work.  How is this healthy?  It isn't.  It can't be.  For Pete's sake, we flavor food, we don't cure cancer.  And yet, I care.  I stress about it.  I'm beyond devastated that this was the first time in 13 years at this company that I have ever called out sick.  How stupid is that? 

So one bitter product development/sensory professional is available for hire who also cooks but tends to prefer brownies to cupcakes.

Knock, knock, um, hi.

Wow, this is awkward.  So I like disappeared for a couple of months.  Okay, it was more like 5 months.  This I am not proud of.  I had lots to say and stories to tell and felt like I was getting the hang of this thing when...life happened.  I've made no secret that I hate my job, it's a dead end, a soul-sucking venture to which I must submit myself every day for the good of my family.  I applied for 5 jobs within my company over the summer and early autumn and was rejected for each one.  Each declination a little bit more of me died, feeling that I would be trapped in this dead-end place forever.  I still feel that way though I'm working on a plan to get the hell out.  Then I had good, scary, and exciting news to share and that was just ripped away, literally and figuratively.  Suffice it to say that this has not been a good 6 months.  But damn it, I'm going to do my best to turn this year around.

So I don't know if anyone is still out there or is even interested but I'm slowly coming back. 

And I'll finish Noah's birth story.  I promise.  I just can't do it yet.