Barnmaven

Santa does all his best shopping on Black Friday

My Black Friday shopping trip was absolutely perfect fodder for a blog post.   Unfortunately, its taken me three days to recover enough from the experience to write about it coherently.

I have never been a Black Friday shopper.  I believe the internet was invented for the sole purpose of relieving me of the need to ever set foot in the mall during Christmas Season.  Its not that I don't love Christmas, quite the opposite.  It is my favorite holiday.  I absolutely LOOOOOVE Christmas.  Its the time of year when everyone's house looks warm and inviting, when being "home" means hot coca and big fuzzy slippers and flannel PJ's, a fire in the hearth and soup on the stove.  It means pretty lights everywhere and Christmas Trees, OH CHRISTMAS TREES!  Being a parent has made Christmas even more meaningful.  I can't get enough of watching my kids' faces light up when they open a pretty package and a toy they really, really wanted is found inside.  I love going to church and singin my favorite Christmas hymns,  I love the Christmas music on the radio and the specials on TV.  In short, I am a Christmas Nutcase. I freely and openly admit it.  Mock me if you must, I can take it.

Every year we get three or four copies of the Toys R Us Christmas catalog in the mail.  The kids go through it for several days in a row, tell me they want everything in it.  But there's always those one or two toys they just keep going back to, and I know that those are the toys they want.  

Child A went even one better this year, all by herself she composed a letter to Santa, which I found on the end table after she'd gone to bed one evening.  So I have my kids' Christmas lists.  Aeryn wants a Polly Pocket Roller Coaster and a Barbie Camper and a real live puppy.  So we know what she's NOT getting.  Little Man wants a Rocky the Robot Truck, a Transformer's Airplane and Legos.  And anything Lightning McQueen.  And then Child A gave me the final toy clue one day at the store when she saw a big plastic zip up container full of Little Pet Shop animals and accessories.  Her eyes went wide, her mouth made a great big oval shape, and all she could say, a little breathlessly, was "Oooooooooohhhhhhhh....."  So noted by Santa.

For some crazy reason I decided I'd have a better chance of getting everything I wanted inside of my budget limitations if I shopped Black Friday. I don't know what exactly convinced me this would be the case, but I did start comparing ads, and then noted that Walmart (lets talk about the whole support/don't support Walmart argument later, I'm broke most of the time and they save me big on Groceries when I need it) had some pretty good prices on some of the toys I was looking for.  So I asked the J if he would switch his Friday night for my Thursday, and made plans to be up and at Walmart by 5 AM so I could take advantage of REALLY BIG SAVINGS.   In retrospect, this would have made sense if I'd been buying a big screen TV or a new PC or a Blu-Ray DVD player.  In reality, I was buying a couple hundred dollars worth of toys.  Regardless of reality, I had myself convinced that Black Friday shopping was THE WAY TO GO.

Morning after Thanksgiving arrives.  Alarm goes off, I wake, dress, make coffee to go, etc, and climb into the car, leaving my garage in the rainy black night. 

The first clue that this was a huge mistake should have been that the closest spot I could get to park was about seventeen bazillion miles from the store.  I AM NOT KIDDING YOU.  I parked my car on Pluto to go shopping at Walmart.  There were young overweight women in fuzzy boots and pajamas RUNNING through the parking lot to the doors.  Because, you know, they might SELL OUT of everything by 5:01.    Well, maybe they were running because it was raining.  But that really detracts from my outright dramatization so we'll just not go there. 

Clue number two:  There are five shopping carts left outside the store.  FIVE.  The other eleventy thousand are inside the store WITH ALL THE CRAZY PEOPLE.   Of whom I am now one.  I grab the only shopping cart not soaking wet from the rain, the automatic doors whisper open and I step inside.  Into complete and utter chaos.

Have you ever dropped something on an anthill?  Like a rock?  Or a lit match?  Just to watch the ants go crazy?  Walmart on Black Friday, from my somewhat perverted recollection, is somewhat like a huge anthill whereupon some giant person has just dropped a kerosene torch.  The minute you walk through the front doors, the frenzy is ON.  Available aisle space has been reduced to half by pallets piled high with things like televisions, DVD players, pajamas, crisco, winter coats, gun safes, fishing poles, stuffed toys and perfume.  The excessively large crowd mills about with no discernible lack of direction, but with rank determination.  Don't mess with these people, they are SERIOUS.  Don't even THINK about cutting in front of the guy in the overalls with the mullet, he'll TAKE YOU DOWN, MAN.  And the store employees?  The only fate I can think of that might be worse than spending it in the fires of hell would be to be eternally assigned to make sure the 48+ flat panel TV's do not go at a rate faster than ONE PER CUSTOMER.  Sorry, ma'am, you may NOT have two. 

Now, there are lots of extra employees on hand on this Black Friday.  As near as I can determine, the purpose of the excess employees that retailers like Walmart hire to work on these kind of holiday shopping days (if they're not responsible for making sure no one gets two televisions) is to stand in the entrance to the side aisle and make certain that none of the shoppers escapes the Running-of-the-Bulls that happens in the aisle as everyone rushes to the section with the really cheap big screen TV's.  And I am convinced of this because no matter how many times I said "Excuse me, could I get past you so I can get to the toy section without being trampled by the enormous crowd of people that are trying to run me over to get to that television there?" not a SINGLE ONE of the Walmart employees planted in the side aisle would make eye contact with me, much less MOVE THEIR ENORMOUS ASS OUT OF THE WAY.  So, stuck in the milling crowd of people, I inched my way to the toy section (in the middle back of the store) one painful centimeter at a time.  I say painful because I have at least six visible bruises from being bumped into by other people's shopping carts.

FINALLY I made it to the toy section without having been stabbed in the heart by the woman who thought I was out to get to the big pallet of TV's before her, or having torn any other shopper limb from limb, even when I thought they deserved it because they were block the WHOLE aisle with their cart looking at sponge-bob pajamas and didn't think they should move a little bit so I could get past.  Jerks.  Whatever.  I made it to the toy section.  And you know what?  THEY DIDN'T EVEN HAVE THE BARBIE CAMPER.  OR ROCKY THE ROBOT.  Nope.  I found everything else I wanted, including the sponge-bob pajamas I took from that other woman's shopping cart, loaded it up, and then threaded my way through the lingerie section to about halfway to the front of the store - because that's where the lines for the cash registers ENDED.  Oh dear god. 

I sat there for what seemed like forever, listening the the lady on the intercom paging for a store manager to come to the electronics section.  And for a store manager to come to the personal care section.  And for a store manager to come to the hardware section.  And for the store manager to come to the electronics section again.  I bet the crazy TV lady was going after someone else she thought was going to get her TV.  After some endless time in the non-moving line, the coffee finally engaged and I woke up enough to notice that there were a few lines that were shorter in the middle of the store.  The self-check out!!  Yay for self-checkout!  I "excuse me"'d and shoved and bumped and bullied my way over a few aisles and made it up to the shorter line at the self checkout.  The people right in front of me only had some towels and the hippy couple in front of them with the dredlocks and the tie-dye shirts looked to only have a few measly electronics (wait, are hippies ALLOWED to have electronics?  Can you even WEAR tie-dye if you use electronics?  Or is that amish people?).  I was so excited.  I was going to be out of the store soon!  I was ALMOST NEXT!

The hippy people checked out their items and things were going really well, or so I thought, until the little green light above the register started flashing red.  And everyone sort of stood there a while, wondering what to do next, when finally a weasly little Walmart guy with a big clip-on key ring and funky Gene-Wilder hair came up and looked at the machine.  He started pushing buttons on the screen.  And pushed some more.  And frowned.  And pushed some more.  Then he got another Wal-mart person, maybe his supervisor.  And SHE pushed some buttons.  And some more buttons.  And then they both stood there and talked about maybe how HE pushed the wrong buttons or she was a crappy supervisor or maybe they were wondering why hippys even NEED electronics.  About ten thousand hours later, they finally had some sort of A-HA moment, pushed some more onscreen buttons and the hippy people got to take their new electronics home.  And I WAS NEXT!  

I wish there were some big climactic event that took place so I could finish off this blog with a bang, but really, being NEXT was pretty much the most exciting thing.  And then the other people were done, it was my turn, I checked out and went home and crawled back into bed.  The end.

If I could just get out the door

Mornings are so hectic.  When I'm able to carpool, we have to be out the door at 6:30 in the morning in order to get everyone dropped off in time.  I don't mind getting up at 4:30 (or 4, if I'm working out at home), I don't mind stumbling out to the barn in the pitch black to feed horses and let the chickens out, I don't mind waiting in the cold air while the dogs do business.  I don't' mind making breakfast and listening to the sound of Sponge-bob Square pants in the background.  (While certainly not what anyone over the age of 10 really wants to hear at 5 am, its not as bad as listening to Dora, who makes me want to shove an icepick through my eyeball.  Thank God my children don't like Dora anymore.)  What I DO mind is being screamed at simply because I've asked my children to get out of bed.  Or screamed at because I had the effrontery to ask them what they want for breakfast.  Or listening to them scream at each other because one got the stool at the breakfast bar closest to the TV because the other one was even slower getting out of bed (and its really, really hard to be slower than the first one, who got up at the rate of a snail mired in sludge).  It gets minutely better once one of them has had her medication, but the other one, who gets no medication, is impossible.  I have watched this kid throw on his clothes in five seconds flat if there is something he wants to do outside in a hurry.  But on school days, he miraculously "forgets" how to get dressed.  "I need help!" he cries, sitting on the floor and wailing.  And of course no matter what pants I've grabbed out of the drawer, he HATES them.  They don't fit right, they don't feel right, they make him mad.

The newest strategy is to take away two of his Hot Wheels every day that he doesn't dress himself.  He can have two back on any day that he does.  So far we've got 10 hot wheels in Car Jail and none have been returned to him.  At this rate I'll own them all by Christmas.  Kid better start putting on his own damn clothes or his room's gonna be empty.

So, one way or another he's dressed.  Then its time to go, and if I ask one of the kids to put the dogs away for me, the one that is not asks screams in indignation unless I ask them to help as well, or give them something else to do, like turn off the TV.  Then they race for the door and scream at each other because one of them got to the doorknob LAST and it was UNFAIR.  Then they argue over who has to shut the door behind them, because neither wants to.  And on it goes, until one of them is dropped off at school.  Rapturous peace and quiet ensues until I drop off the second one, who unless his best buddy has arrived before him, clings to me and sobs as if he is dying.  "I want one more hug Mommy!  JUST ONE MORE HUG!  ONE MORE!!!"  This after about 5 hugs and kisses.  If his buddy M is there?  I don't exist.  (My eyes just rolled involuntarily when I typed that). 

Finally, they are both dropped off.  I either get to meet my carpool and sleep all the way to work, or I get to drive myself in and listen to...

NOTHING.

Silence is truly a blessed thing.

By the time I get to work in the morning I feel like I've lived through a tornado.  Probably LOOK like it too.  Work is where I go to rest and to not hear screaming.  If I sound like I'm complaining, its probably because I am.  I love and adore my children, could not imagine life without them and would throw myself in front of a speeding train to save them, but nowhere is it written that a mother can't bitch and moan every once in a while about just how demonic her otherwise adorable children can be.

That smell...

Poop warning!

There's nothing quite like walking in the door after a long day at work and getting that whiff when you walk in the door of "Uh-oh, which dog was it?"  My poor pooches, they all have to stay crated while I'm gone at work.  I always make sure they do their business in the yard before I crate them, but sometimes we have the random accident.  As much as I hate cleaning it up, I always feel bad for the dog who did it.  My bullmastiff, the unfortunate perpetrator-slash-victim, has been eating birdseed under the bird feeder the last few days, which I suspect is the culprit for her tummy troubles. 

I envy people who have dogs that can be let to roam the house when no one is around.  Its been years since I had that kind of dog, and since I will probably never buy a puppy again thanks to years working in dog rescue, I'm probably doomed to crated dogs forever.  Dogs end up in rescues for a reason, and its usually that they are either (a) agressive or (b) destructive.  Occasionally we'd see the puppy with no issues whose family just couldn't handle it once they realized how much time and expense came along with that cute little doggie they were bringing home from the pet store or breeder.  Mostly, though, it was issues. 

Our first foster dog is still with me.  Hercules is going on 9 now, and going gray to boot.  He was a foster for all of about five minutes.  We brought him into the house, I sat down to try and post an update on the rescue webpage about him and all he did was bump my left elbow incessantly, making it impossible to type.  He's the wise old man of the house, the trustworthy one...with everything except being left alone.  Herc came into rescue due to severe separation anxiety.  His former owners couldn't stand a destroyed house and crate any more and sent him off to the rescue group.  Sadly, the one thing they didn't try was to get another dog.  Herc's anxiety is pretty much nonexistent so long as he isn't left truly alone.   If there's at least another dog around, he's just fine.   He loves to sleep on the kids' beds at night, and he's the best dog to temperament test fosters with.  He's just wise. 

Seniors were always my favorite fosters.  Often, they were only relinquished because they were old, which still makes me sad.  Our first senior was Tanq, an 11 year-old sweetheart of a dog.  The guy who'd had him all his life had to go overseas for a business venture, and his wife couldn't stand the dog.  Since she was pregnant with her second child, that was her excuse to take the dog to the local animal shelter.   Fortunately they advised her how poorly boxers do in shelters and convinced her to call the rescue group.  We had Tanq for several months, since seniors are so hard to find placements for.  He was honestly one of the best dogs I've ever had the pleasure to know.  Sure, he was gray-haired, his breath stank and he had dog-farts that competed for top prize, but he was a pleasure to be around.  Like most senior fosters, he was simply grateful for a soft place to sleep, a couple of good meals every day and some attention.  He loved the kids, and would follow them everywhere.  Tanq got adopted by a family in upstate NY who doted on him until he died of old age, several months later.  I miss that old guy.  After Tanq, we pretty much specialized in fostering seniors. 

I'm grateful for the years in rescue.  A poopy crate doesn't faze me anymore.  I remember one foster, Diamond, who had come into rescue starving.  We knew to limit the amount of food he would get, but he was our first starving foster.  The first day he was alone for a few hours he practially exploded in the crate, poor boy.  We were able to put him in a different foster home with a SAHM, and he gradually came back to health and found a good placement.  But that mess...I was cleaning it up for days.  DAYS.  Just when I thought I had the last segment of wall/carpet/baseboard/desk sanitized I'd sniff up another spot that needed attention.  Diamond stayed with us in essence LONG after he moved on to greener pastures, LOL.

I have to end this posting as I have a boxer on my left and a bullmastiff on my right who are bumping my elbows with their heads, insisting that giving them some love is far more important than writing a blog post right now.  And you know, I suspect they are right.

Gratuitous cuteness post

 

I love how much my kittens love each other.  Truth, they're not really "kittens" any more, but I still think of them that way.  They're about 6 months old now.  Tucker is twice the size of Juliet, but somehow she always ends up being the nap pillow.  That would be him on top in the picture.

Tucker really is a pretty well-behaved cat.  He's laid back, he enjoys his naps and he likes his comfort.  Juliet, in contrast, is perhaps the most active cat I've ever had.  She's into everything and I mean EVERYTHING.  One of her favorite places to search for toys is in the basket in my bathroom where I keep hairbrushes, clips and ponytail holders.  If the bathroom door is open for longer than about 10 seconds I guarantee you she is up on the counter, scooping out ponytail holders to play with.  She loves the sink and the faucet, more so when I turn the water on.  Cupboards left ajar are irresistable, and the kids room are open season for endless hours of fun with their toys.  She's a natural hunter; I have no doubt were she an outside cat there wouldn't be a bird or small rodent left alive wtihin MILES.  When she does settle down, though, she's all MY cat.  When she wants a nap, if I'm here and seated, she's on my lap.  She sleeps on my legs at night and loves to be carried around. 

The Halloween pics are finally downloaded

I don't know why I drag my feet so at getting pictures off my camera, but I do.  Finally, a week later, the pictures are on the hard drive and ready for viewing.

Halloween is an interesting holiday for my kids.  Child A loves to find the outfit with the shortest skirt or neatest accessories, and she'll pick it out in about five minutes.  Little Man is the challenge.  For starters, he is terrified of scary halloween monsters.  The big Halloween stores with the scary costumes and big blow up spiders out front?  We can't even go NEAR those or he will freak out.  We talked about looking for a costume in one of them this year and he told me he thought he would be OK, but when we got halfway across the parking lot he got scared and wanted to leave, so we did.  We did check out the costume aisle at the department store, but he just could not choose one, and after a half hour or more, I gave up.  He decided that he wanted to be an airplane, and I was pretty sure that we were not going to be able to find an airplane costume either in a store or online - and if we could that it wouldn't be in our budget.  Our pretty nonexistent budget.  So I made him an airplane costume.  Or rather, I should say I McGYVER'ed one out of cardboard, duct tape, pipe cleaners and red paint.

Here it is under construction:

And in its finished state:

 

For good measure, here is Child A in her cowgirl costume:

(Does anyone else take issue with how short they m ake the tops on the girls costumes?  This costume was HER SIZE, there was no reason to think the shirt was going to come up around her ribcage.  For crying out loud, she wanted to be a COWGIRL not a Dallas Cowboy's Cheerleader! )

J came over and we all went to a local store-sponsored event, then to my parents for more candy, then back to the house where dad took them around the neighborhood.  The biggest downside is that we had a windy halloween, so the little guy didn't keep his costume on very long.  It was big enough that a gust of wind would just about knock him over. I stayed at the house to hand out candy to any trick-or-treaters who came by - which was a complete waste of time since we got none. I took a mountain of candy to work on the next day.  I am grateful that my kids' dad and I are able to be polite and friendly with one another.  We made a decision together when we decided to separate that we would make sure the kids came first, and I think we have done a great job of that.  It has made what is at best a difficult transition easier on our children.  I know we have done a lot of things wrong over the years, but I can tell you that both of my kids know that mom and dad both love them very much.

On a lighter note, the best part of making my son's costume was the memories it brought back of halloween celebrations when I was a kid.  One year my mom made my brother a robot costume out of carboard boxes, a round carboard Baskin & Robbins ice cream container, aluminum foil and silver paint.  Our neighbors had a big party every year, the kids would bob for apples - the adults would bob for olives in their martinis.  The big kids would take the little ones trick or treating around the neighborhood, and if we were really lucky the Lawler's would be drunk when we rang their doorbell.  If they were, they usually gave out money instead of candy.  Remind me someday to tell the story about the time my dad cold-cocked a drunk Bob Lawler over the backyard fence, its too much of a digression here)

Remember when costumes didn't come in stores?  I had so much fun making that damn airplane that I think I might just  make it a tradition.

Reasons

 

Its been a really shitty week. I'm burnt out on life right now, and I am having a hard time digging my ass out of this depression (no thanks to YOU prescription coverage company, yes, I 'm talking to YOU assholes).  But rather than continue sitting here dipping my feet in the dark slimy pool of misery, no matter how tempting that might be, I'm going to focus my mind on all of the positive things in my life at this moment.  And because I love you, dear reader, I'm going to share all of those things with you.  Aren't you glad you checked in today?

• Its Friday, and I don't have to do this "work" thing again until Monday
• Its also payday, so I can stave off disaster for another two weeks or until this paycheck runs dry
• Katee Sackhoff is making a guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory on November 23rd.  Rumor has it this is the first of several guest appearances.  I also hear she's joining the cast of 24 but I've never watched that show and I'm not startin' now.
• It might rain all weekend.  I know, some of you think that's bad, and true, it will mean no horseback riding.  But I've got a full truckload of firewood stacked up next to the house and a new book from the library as well as Disc 3 of Season 4.5 of Battlestar Galactica, so being stuck inside while it rains and the kids are at their dad's for the night wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.  Would it, now?
• Tomorrow night is Little Man's night with me (we switch kids every Saturday night so everyone gets some one-on-one time).  We might go see a movie.
• To date, I still haven't shown up on People of Walmart 

Not a grand list, to be sure, but hell, I feel better just having thought of all those things.

Go have a nice weekend, y'all. 

Bastard Nostalgia

I miss the days of bastardy.

I found Bastard Nation in 1992.  I had just found Usenet.  I'm not sure whether I'm surprised that the first search word I typed into the Usenet Newsgroups search box was "adoption."  That fateful, desperate reaching out toward the cloudy mystery of my birth led me to alt.adoption.  When I say I cut my internet teeth on alt.adoption, I'm not shittin' you.  Alt.adoption was a crazy landscape littered with the corpses of the weak, the teary adoptees, the oh-so-sensitive adoptive mothers and the fragile birthmothers.  You either grew a full-set of flame-proof underwear or you got sizzled.   From the cacophony of alt.adoption rose the strong and vibrant voice of Bastard Nation.  Well, along with a crazy few others. 

I'd never attended an adoption support group, never done much beyond reach out to the agency which handled my adoption at six weeks of age to get yet more useless non-identifying information about my birthmother.  But tangled in the mess of wires and connections that hold my brain and body together, adoption was always there.  I just wanted to KNOW.  I concocted endless fantasy Mothers, waited breathlessly for them to come and rescue me -- from what, I have no idea, its not as if my life has ever been that horrible or difficult.  But it was always there. 

And alt.adoption...not for the weak.  Sifted through the tear-stained kleenex boxes of those who would have been better off seeking real-life therapy rather than seeking help for their adoption angst on the internet, a few voices rose loud and clear.  They didn't talk about wounds and pain, struggle and abandonment except in the most passing of terms.  What they did talk about was empowering and uplifting.  They talked about the rights of adoptees to have the most basic information about themselves.  They identified the enemy, the people who would perpetually infantilize us, who give lip service to "protecting" the selfsame birthmothers from whom they used any pretext to obtain children, the people who were reaping endless profits on the backs of babies, birthmoms and barren couples.  They outlined a plan to take back what was rightfully ours.  We claimed our bastardy as our own and made it the platform on which we stood, made it IN YOUR FACE.

Those were heady days, of activism, of gut-wrenching conviction, of in-your-face rabble rousing.  The Bastards organized pickets and protests.  We changed laws in Oregon, in Alabama, in New Hampshire.  We educated the public and lawmakers.  We founded an organization to help the dying find their birthfamily before it was too late.  We argued, we debated, we hammered out a strategy and we implemented.  It was one of the best times of my life.

In the years between I found and lost my birthmother, found my siblings, met the father of my children, move cross-country and became a mother.  A lot of big moments - and yet some of the biggest of all were Bastard Moments. 

Somewhere along the way, we petered out, we lost momentum.  Some of us moved on, some of us had life crises, I had babies and 'retired' from being a day-to-day activist.  I couldn't have kids, work full time, organize conferences, hold support groups and run a nonprofit all at the same time.  God, I miss it, though. Those were some damn fine times.  Best of my life.

Check 'em out, though:  Bastard Nation

That's what I used to do before I became a respectable citizen. 

Random Tuesday Musings

I'm listening to Christmas music today.  And no, you're not allowed to make fun of me for that!  Well, actually you are allowed, I just don't want to hear it.  Christmas is my favorite holiday, bar NONE.  Now that Halloween is over and the Christmas stuff is showing up on the store shelves, I'm exercising my prerogative to fill my office with the beauty of a sweet cello/piano version of "What Child is This?"    I am blissed out.

We officially hit freezing the last couple of nights.  I've got to find $59.99 to buy a heater pad for the chicken's water pretty darn soon.  Payday is Friday, so I can probably get it then.  I might need a new stock tank heater too, my old one is pretty beat up.  Zenon thinks its a toy; he pulls it out of the tank and unplugs it from the extension cord.  Then he drops it on the ground and stands on it so the wire cage is all bent out of shape. Frankly I'm surprised the damn thing still works.  Zeenie is also a master of gate latches and doors.  Once he figures out how to open something you have to find a different way to latch it or he'll go through it every ten minutes.  Its cute...but some days also extremely annoying.  I got to take him for a ride this weekend.  Mom called me Sunday as I was headed to the grocery store and asked what I had going on.  I laid out the game plan of food shopping and housework.  She told me I could wait and do my housework in the dark, it was a nice day and she wanted to come over and hang with the kids so I could go horseback riding.

Did I mention my mom is DA BOMB???  It was such a nice ride.  And I still got all my housecleaning done.