The saga of the Spiderman pants

I have a sewing machine. I BEGGED for one for Mother's Day a few years ago. I got it. I have sewn probably a dozen and a half things since that fine Mother's Day. One year, I even made the kids' Hween costumes. Dorothy was it, actually. The rest was either store-bought or fenagled to make the rest of the crew.

Said sewing machine has also given me a lot of heartache over the years. On more than once occasion, I have cussed it out, saving only the best of expletives to hurl at its plastic housing unit, cursing out the masterminds behind the Singer name.

When I was growing up, my Mother put my sister and I both in 4H. Good little program, actually. Being six years younger than my sister served itself well except in the 4H project department. My Mother, who took her time teaching my sister how to make things like skirts with zippers and blouses with ruffles and darts, did not take that time to teach me. I was given my 4H book, a hamster, and a glass aqarium. So while my sister was learning how to make lovely garments, I was changing the cedar chips out of my hamter's cage, watering and feeding him, and watching him roll down the stairs of my house in his plastic exercise ball.

So you can well imagine that my sewing skills rank right up there with Martha Stewart's dog. I could not understand why my thread was continuously breaking. I could not understand what that loud "thunk" was when I was sewing something. But the Findlay Sewing Center knew exactly what it was, said it wasn't really an operator error issue, but said to my husband "but tell her to stop playing with the tension so much." Well, THAT I can blame on my Mother for not properly instructing me about sewing machines.

Fast forward to yesterday when I decided to make Evan a pair of Spiderman pajama pants. I whipped them out in under an hour. I was pretty proud of myself. Evan was very proud of the pants. He wore them last night to dinner with Nana and PawPaw. Then to bed. Then to school. With his non-matching, very busy Spiderman camp shirt. He was the talk of the preschool, I am sure.

Jack

We have a saying around here ... Back up, Jackson. Used whenever one of the kids tries to get out the door when they shouldn't. Used whenever one of the kids HAS to be the first one in the house (that would be my 7 YO... she is notorious for leaving people for dead on the stoop just so she can "win the race").

Jackass has also been muttered in this house. It shouldn't be, but it is. By the grownups, of course. Until last week.

Telling my 5 YO to get out of the kitchen, I exclaim .. get out of my kitchen, Jack! To which he responded "ass."

This is the same child who, standing in the kitchen in his official Cat in the Hat costume, was saying "dirty hoe."

Oh yeah.... another thing I have done today

disciplined my 5 YO. He has this HORRID knack of throwing a fit whenever anything of his is being used by someone else, namely his 2 1/2 YO sister. I told him that this was the dawning of a new era, that every time he threw a fit, cried, did whatever, he was going to stand in the corner for a few minutes.

So the first time he threw a fit, it was 8 this morning. I really didn't want to deal with it, so I warned him. Yeah... I know. Follow through. Whatever.

The second fit he threw, I put him in the corner, where he stood and wailed. I told him no more crying or he would be in the corner longer.

He gets out of his own personal version of hades, and leaves the kitchen. The 2 1/2 YO goes over to the corner where brother was standing, looks at it, trying to decide what REALLY was that interesting in that corner, babbled something like "whatever" and walked away.

What really is the point of the check this box?

to remember me on Blogger when, every freaking time I sign in, I have to re-enter my password. Dude. I'm lazy. I need to have all of my usernames and passwords remembered. It takes more effort for me to have to input that in EVERY single time.

Oh well.

Well here I am, on a Tuesday afternoon. I *could* work. My husband came home early from work (like, um, 5 hours early!) and I have had EVERY opportunity to work and get it done for the day. Am I? Hell no. However, I have:

• gone to Wally World to get some groceries
• mailed out four packages via priority mail, so you know, that calls for me to have at least three different windows open at once ... one for usps, the other for my email, and the other for other reasons (other addresses, I think ... I think I only said three because that sounds SO much larger than two, and so much more important! like I am the goddess of multi-tasking to have THREE windows open at once!)
• eaten lunch ... hey, that is really important. See my profile.
• opened the door to tell my son to stop opening and shutting the screen door while he is outside with the Daddy who got off work early
• I think gone to Wally World gets two entries in the list of things I have done. Going to Wally World, in and of itself, is a task. Buying groceries with a 5 YO who is running from one side of the aisle to the next, saying "I'm going over here, now I'm going over here, now I'm going over here", and a 2 1/2 YO who has the reach of an octupus, who believes that it is her God-given right to inspect EVERYthing that is placed in the cart, reaching for selections of her own, is a task all by itself.

Things I *should* do today:

• vote
• vote
• vote
• hey... if I go vote, that means I have to get in my car and drive somewhere, thereby putting work off more... hmmm... there's a plan.
• oh yeah... and summarize these two cases sitting in my queue, waiting to be done. Yeah... voting sounds like more fun.

Getting my van keys...

I am THIIIISSS close

To finishing work for the week, giving me ONE day off. I suck. If there was money in procrastinating, I wouldn't be sitting in an 1100 sf house, driving a leased minivan, and ... oh hell... i don't want to depress myself anymore.

Well thanks a whole helluvalot!!!

Wake up this morning to see my children's pumpkins lovingly smashed in the street. Asshole teenagers. Thanks so much. Thanks for making my kids cry. Thanks for teaching them an early lesson in vandalism, and taking what it isn't yours. Thank you for making my husband go out at 7 am to clean up your *work* and leaving me to explain why it happened. Thanks a whole helluvalot.

I wrote a letter to the editor, publically thanking them. I ended it, telling them to put themselves to work and remove the leaves from my yard the next time. THAT would be appreciated. Now we will probably find all of our leaves out in the street. And then I will call them on THAT one, submitting a picture!

Hey I know ... I was a teen once. I did some STUPID things, but that was never one of them. I won't admit the stupid things I did, because they will probably look worse than a smashed pumpkin. But darn it ... my kids, man. And the pumpkins. They didn't deserve that. They were young. Sure, they were dying, but they were still young.

Work, damn you!

Someone needs to kick me the butt! Hard! I don't have the gumption to summarize this case sitting here ... my work is boring. I would rather be sleeping. Or knitting. Or watching tv. Anything else but summarizing this boooooooooorrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnggggggggg case. And I KNOW I NEED to be working since we are going out of town tomorrow afternoon with the kids. I knew at the beginning of the week that I needed to haul arse on work this week so I could just go and relax and not worry about having to work when we came home on Saturday afternoon.

I know this is my first entry, and if there is anyone out there who is REALLY interested in my life, I will divulge where I work and what I do later. But not now. I would rather sit here and bit** about how much work I have in front of me, how much I don't want to do it, and how much I would rather be doing something else.

I sit here and think... what else can I possibly do to keep away from this computer. What else could possibly be out there ... so I surf. I look at Ebay. I bid on cloth diaper lots. I lose. I sit there for 2-3 minutes, trying to decide if I am going to re-bid, or just let the nice person who outbid me have them. I mean, seriously, do I need anymore cloth diapers? No. I don't.

So I move on ... move on to the next site. I check out a blog or two, and then I click on the little red X quickly when I hear my husband's footsteps as he walks back to our room. I have to give the appearance of working, you know? If I don't, then I am just sitting back here, surfing. What he doesn't know won't hurt him, right?

I have different forums that I post on. So I spend some time there. Then I decide that I need to stock my little Internet store on Friday, November 11. At 10:00 am. First it was 4:00. Then I decided it should be in the morning. So 10 it is. So then I decide that I need to knit some more for the store. I knit up a waistband that then turns into a pair of pants that I am sending to a fellow WAHM (work at home mom) who is making a cloth diaper to match the pants. So I have to start another waistband for the medium soaker that I decided was originally going to be that waistband.

So there I go, procrastinating on the soaker that I need to stock.

So do you want to know what a soaker is? and what my store is? www.knitwitzbaby.com .