Ever get the feeling you are being watched?

75 googly eyes don’t go as far as I thought they would.

You know that really gooby, nauseating in love/engaged couple?  You know the couple who are always making eyes at each other, giggling and tickling and just making you want to vomit in their presence?  You’re familiar right?  Perhaps you’ve been that couple yourself, or gasp, you are that couple right now.

Well, that couple lives at my very house.  And it is nauseating, and annoying and weird.

They’re 4 and 6 and they are brother and sister.

Yes, Sugar and Engineer are in love, my friends.  They are constantly tickling and giggling at the table and they want to be with each other ALL THE TIME, regardless of whether or not the interactions are pleasant ones.  They constantly hug and smack each other’s bums.  Charming is in denial about it– thinks it’s ridiculous, but he was not in on the following conversation:

We had been discussing the story of the widow’s mite, and Engineer had many questions as to what a widow was.  He just had to wrap his little six year old brain around the concept.  I told him a widow was someone with no husband because her husband had died.

Eng: So does Aunty Jessica have a husband?

Me: No…

Eng: So is she a widow?

Me: No.  Grandma Chris is a widow because her husband died.

Eng: Oh.  So when I grow up and get married, and Sugar grows up and gets married… and I die…

Me: Mmm hmmm

Eng: Then SUGAR will be a widow!

Me: No, your wife will be a widow. 

Eng: Why?

Me: Because you’ll be married to your wife.  You can’t marry your sister.

Eng: (dismissive) No, no, no, no.  Wait, why?

And there you have it.  They are in love and intend to marry.  But seeing as he hasn’t yet passed through the valley of hating girls and being sicked out by them, I’m not too worried.  I think he’ll figure it out in the next 15 years or so.

In the meantime, I’ll just have to learn to deal with the goo-goo eyes.

Yeah, it’s bad we all know.  But guess what?

Shut up.

Seriously, it’s not helping.  I watched the news tonight and everything was blah blah BAD ECONOMY  blah blah the ECONOMY  blah bloo ha ha ECONOMY SUCKS.

I am so totally convinced that talking about it makes it worse.  All it does is 1.)make people depressed, 2.) scare people into NOT spending money, thus 3.) making the economy bite even more.

To me, the word news would imply NEW information.  This is old stuff, stop talking about it, move on to something NEW.

And here’s another thing, the news reported that the Metro Bus rates were going up because of… you guessed it… the economy.  I am actually not convinced that this is the case because gas prices are lower than they have been, and bus ridership is probably not down.  (Maybe it is, I don’t really know.)  But I’ve never understood the mentality of, "we’re not selling enough because money for everyone is tight, so rather than enticing new customers let’s gouge the loyal customers we have by making them pay more so we have more money."  Can anyone else see the flawed logic here?

Are you picking up what I am laying down?

I now propose an OFFICIAL BAN ON THIS BLOG.  No talking about the economy.  Unless you want to talk about how magical and happy it is.

P.S.  I have a new favorite quote, it’s from the Horton Hears a Who movie: "In my world everyone is a pony who eats rainbows and poop butterflies."  You are allowed to say those kind of lovely things about the economy in this place. 

Do you ever make assumptions about people before you’ve met them?

Charming asked me the other day if we could have his friend (we’ll call him Bus Friend for our purposes) and his fiancee over for dinner.  I said fine, nonchalantly picked a date, rescheduled later due to flooding and we ended up holding the dinner last night.

In my mind, I was a little hesitant to play hostess for a couple of reasons, the first being that the only people that ever come to our house are under four feet tall and don’t really care if my house is covered in toys, or dirt or chocolate chips.   I was slightly worried that this kidless engaged couple would see my house and be kind of judgmental about the mess.  I was mostly nervous about meeting Bus Friend’s Fiancee though because not only does she not eat meat…

She is vegan.

Which is cool.  I totally respect people who have the strength to stick to their principles.  And I was told not to worry because Bus Friend’s fiancee was bringing her own dishes so we wouldn’ have to stress.  So no worries, right? But worry I did.  Was she going to watch me eat my meat and animal products and cringe?  Would she walk past the first two uniquely clean rooms in my house and feel the need to go home and wash? Would this?  Would that? What if?  Should I?  Shouldn’t I?

And so it went until Saturday when I cleaned as much of my house as I had time for.  I made a "vegan as possible" salad and served french dips.  (Meaty I know).  I was pretty sure it would be fine, but I didn’t know what to expect.

And so Bus Friend and his fiancee came to dinner.  We had a good time.  No, we had a great time.  I learned a little bit about Bus Friend’s Fiancee’s decision to be vegan and she was very cool about us not being vegan.  Bus Friend’s fiancee brought some really tasty vegan food, she helped in the kitchen and brought some really fun games to play (including my new favorite game ever).

And she saw my dirty house and didn’t cringe.  In fact, as I apologized to her about the state of my living space, she said something that was so totally awesome I almost cried– she said my house was "full of life."

Bus Friend’s fiancee, I now dub you "Cool Girl" and you are my new BFF.

Best night of the week ever.  I love making new friends.   

I sort of like being proven wrong sometimes. 

According to Sugar, you need to grow up.

We’re at the Target the other day, walking past the baby aisle and my four year old says to me, ‘Mom, I’d like to have another little baby at our house." 

To which I replied, "Well, what do you think has to happen to get a little baby at our house?" 

"You need to grow up."

Looking at it now, she was probably talking about herself, but it sounded a lot like, "Mom, you need to grow up.  Get real.  Just do it.  Get a hold of yourself and procreate."

And that’s all. 

UPDATE:  Engineer today told me he was going to wish really hard that Heavenly Father sends another kid to our family.

I grew up in the pacific northwest and EVERY year we bought a real-fresh-dead Christmas Tree. Charming grew up mostly in Florida where if they had real trees they cost like a million dollars or something so he always had a fake tree. The first Christmas that Charming and I were married, we were poor students with little storage space. I didn’t want to buy a tree stand and a tree, so we decided on a $20 fake from Wal-mart.

We’ve been using that tree for the past seven years.

This year, on a whim, I bought us a real tree. I was so anxious I bought it like December 5th or something. It dried up completely two days later, and we had a fire hazard in our house for the next four+ weeks. But there were some definite things I enjoyed about it, as well as the er.. drawbacks.

So for your education, my post Christmas analysis of buying a real tree versus pulling the fake one out of the garage.

Category 1: The deadness factor Perhaps this category should be more appropriately dubbed, the fire hazard factor, as both real and fake trees are in a sense already dead. Real tree scores in this category for fresh smell, but loses points in the fact that it "dies more" over time. Fake tree gets the plus in the unchangedness of it’s lack of living.

Category 2: Maintenance and Convenience

When you put the fake tree up, you pull it out of the garage, decorate it and that is the end until you take it down. Score for the tree in a box. real trees must be shopped for (both a plus and a minus depending on your sense of Christmas adventure).  Real trees need to be watered (until they stop drinking) and they shed much pine needles which need to be vacuumed. I would give this a minus two points except that I actually like vacuuming and the pine needle vacuuming created a fresh smell. Minus 1 point for the watering.

Category 3: Variations

With a real tree, you get something different every year. Plus one. Fake trees are the same year in and year out. Minus one.

Category 4: The Easter Bunny Factor I once heard that in Norway they leave their Christmas tree out until Easter as symbolism of the birth and resurection. Since I have Norwegian ancestry, I have always felt rather justified in leaving my tree out until March or even April. (I kid you not). But since real trees become a fire hazard so quickly, I took ours down just after new years. This can be a plus or a minus depending on how long you like to celebrate Christmas for. I actually think though that the real tree scores in this category.

Category 5: Authenticity I think real trees create more warm and fuzzy feelings of tradition and chestnuts. Fake trees have a metal pole running up the middle– that just doesn’t tug at my heart strings. And since every analysis needs a chart:

 Well the results reveal that the fake tree is better than the real tree by a one point advantage.  These are just the facts folks, I am not biased.  Because honestly, I think I might go real again next year.  Piney smell gets like 10 points in my book.  And the vacuuming….

So maybe it’s because we were snowed in for so long, and now we’ve been on perpetual vacation time, but I haven’t been real thrilled with my stay at home mom status lately.  And yes I am using the term "stay at home" because that’s what we’ve been doing.

Bleh.

So I did a search last night to find solutions and I came across this:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070615053228AAx6kb6 

Basically a woman was asking for answers– she was unhappy as a stay at home mom, money was tight and she wanted her own identity.  She posted on yahoo answers– not the most useful, but clearly she had no regular support system.  I was shocked at what people were saying to her.  They were basically telling her to buck up and deal with it, that it wasn’t a dilemma and that her identity was her mothering.  One woman even told her to "Grow up" and that she felt entitled to say that because she too was a stay at home mom.

To which I reply, clearly the woman telling her to grow up is also unhappy as a stay at home mom.

Because a happy, healthy stay at home mom would show sympathy.  She would be kind and offer useful suggestions. I don’t believe that that women never had the same feelings.  Clearly she did and someone else gave her that lovely advice.

It’s not an easy terrain to navigate through, this mothering business.  Whether you stay home or not, there will always be opinions and feelings pulling you in all directions.  We need to support each other and not be critical and snooty.

Pfft.

Well, I guess it’s time for me to grow up and deal with my reality. 

(Seriously, how does that fix anything?)