Tuesday, October 28, 2008

IM-apalooza

So, my typical day consists of being woken up at 6 a.m. by Mia, who wants to know if it is morning yet, then we fight over what to eat for breakfast until someone is sent to their room. Then I work. For those of you not familiar with me, I do medical transcription so by work, I mean I type like a little typing robot. I wear my little ear phones and play dictation tapes as I type so fast that my fingers are a blur...for 20 minutes at a time,just long enough to finish typing up one patients adventures with STD's, until Mia is yelling at me because there is a commercial on the TV, or she wants me to come see the sculpture she just created out of couch cushions, or sometimes I think she just yells to see if I am paying attention. Anyway, this goes on all day.

ME: type type type type.

MIA: MOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!! I need you!!!!!

ME: (sighing I take off my headphones and run down stairs) What, sweetheart?

MIA: Birds eat worms.

ME: Yup, thanks for telling me. (I turn to head back up stairs)

MIA: MOOOOMMMMM!!! WAIT!!!!!!

ME: Yes?

MIA: Um, let's make cookies.

At this point I give up on work for a while and do a few activities with the poor lonely kid.

If I had a nanny to whisk away my daughter when I was too busy, my job would take an hour and a half, tops. I type really fast, the last time I tested I was up to 80 words a minute. But, with our current method of working it takes about 4 hours typically. Not that I'm complaining, the whole point of being a work at home mom was so that I could raise my own child, but sometimes it feels like the TV is raising my child, and doing a pretty good job of it. She can name all the planets in order, which is something I definitely didn't teach her so I give the credit to Blue's Clues. And Yo Gabba Gabba (a show that may have been created by Satan) taught her that it isn't cool to bite your friends, so hey, thanks demonic children's programing!

Oh, but my point in writing this little entry is to let you all know that my computer is on all day, and I am usually sitting in front of it for a few hours. My sister, Wendy, has figured this out and IM's me on and off all day. It's awesome. I only get to see her a few times a year, but I can usually tell you exactly what she is wearing and why, when she has to do the laundry, what she is making for dinner, and what crazy shenanigans her teenage boys are getting into, and when she has to go to the bathroom. Or sometimes when Mia refuses to listen to me about something I have her call her Aunt Wendy on the computer so Wendy can tell her to do it, because Mia thinks Aunt Wendy is the coolest person ever. Because of this I can pretend that I actually have a social life, because I talk to her all day, and sometimes my dad and brother chime in too. Family togetherness through technology. I could do a commercial for yahoo messenger.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Long time gone

Man, it's been a while hasn't it? I haven't gone anywhere or been busy or anything, I log into this site every day, stare at the blank "new post" page for a few minutes, sigh, and then click over to snopes.com instead of doing anything constructive. Yes, I have been suffering from writer's block. It's hard to imagine that I have run out of things to rant about, but here we are.

Here's a little writing exercise I remember from my Snow College days. My teacher was an overenthusiastic old dude with claw like hands and a weird penchant for ignoring all punctuation rules because he thought that meant you were creative (I don't remember his name but my roommate Alicia used to do a really creepy impression of him). But, the one useful thing I remember: When you hit a writing wall, change your format. So today's post will be written in list form, as an ode to my friend Tiffany, the queen of lists.

Things that are really bugging me right now:

1. I planted bulbs yesterday but I couldn't remember which end was suppose to point up so only half of them are going to grow.

2. I can't really grow anything so probably none of them are going to grow.

3. I have an obnoxious zit on my nose.

4. Mia wants to wear her snow man pajamas to school today.

5. I have to go to Charlie's work party which is being held at my favorite restaurant, but I will have to deal with "teacher talk" while I am eating.

6. Oprah.

7. Mia hasn't eaten anything that could be construed as real food in six days.

8. Charlie is in the middle of "State Cup", the final soccer tournament of the year so I have only seen him in passing for the last two and a half weeks.

9. Yo Gabba Gabba. Honestly, it's like they go out of their way to be distubing on that show.

10. I love my clinique free gift with purchase I got last week, but I'm not so crazy about my actual purchase.

Alright, that is it as far as complaints for this morning. Thank you for bearing with me during this little exercise. I hope to be back to my witty self soon.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Germany needs an intervention...

So, a couple of weeks ago I went to Oktoberfest up in Snowbird. It's taken me this long to properly wrap my head around the whole concept in order to write about it. Attending Oktoberfest every year is apparently a Hanosek family tradition that I had escaped in the past, but this year there was no getting out of it. I tried to imagine why someone would attend who doesn't drink or own a pair of leiderhosen, but I gave up and just went. Plus Charlie told me there was lots of German chocolate cake, so hey, I was in.

We left out home on a crisp autumn afternoon, and Charlie warned me that I would have to eat Bratwurst and saurkraut before I could have chocolate cake. Then he wouldn't turn the car around...sadist. So we arrived. Mia was excited when she learned that we got to take a shuttle bus from where we finally parked our car up to the party. I was still excited about the chocolate cake. Charlie was just excited to be ummm...out. We wandered through the booths and hoards of beer swigging, leiderhosen clad partiers until Charlie's mom and brother's showed up to teach us the proper way to "oktoberfest".

Apparently you have to sit right next to the speakers when the polka bands are playing. If you don't have accordian music bleeding out your ears for the next week you didn't do it properly. Secondly you have to dance with whatever crazy old german lady wanders past your table and grabs your arm. I escaped this fate by claiming that my daughter needed me to do something (the music was loud, I'm not sure she was even speaking english to me). But a brother in law or two got caught in the old ladies german frenzy, and like a good mother, my mother in law laughed and got pictures of them. It warmed my heart.

Then the bratwurst showed up. Gross. I took a bite, and then I smelled the saurkraut and ran to find the crazy old polka lady to put me out of my misery. I hid behind a crowd of drunk college guys until everyone had eaten and then showed up magically in time for desert. The cake was totally worth it.

Now, cake aside, this isn't an activity I would recommend to many people. Especially if you are the sober type. I'm sure it is much more enjoyable when you are drunk, kind of like walking the strip in Vegas. Or maybe if you have a secret yearning to wear a german wench dress or leiderhosen and a Von Trapp hat. I guess there aren't too many outlets for that crowd.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

The hills are alive

Do you ever find yourself promising yourself that you will do something? I do it constantly. Just this morning I swore I would actually tackle the ironing piling up in my closet. I have had an almost violent aversion to ironing since working in a dry cleaners as a teenager. It was just so steamy and hot, and not in a good way. It was also burny. And sometimes people yelled at me. Including my brother in law, because I lost his shirt, but that is not my point. My point is that my ironing is still sitting in a pile on my closet floor, increasing it's wrinkle intensity as I type.

I also find myself promising me that I will no longer burst into song at random moments, especially in public. But, gosh darn it, what are you suppose to do when you are at the bank and you are standing in line with your little check book and the cashier gives you the strangest look (it's a Judd's song,for those of you with a slightly more narrow musical universe. Therefore, you must sing the above line with as much of a twang as possible). Now, these outbursts don't cause much alarm around my house, Charlie doesn't even look up from whatever he is doing when I burst into a musical number complete with choreography, and Mia just tries to sing louder than me. However, when you do this at the grocery store or library you mostly get frightened looks from old ladies who assume that you are high on crack. So, that is another personal resolution, stop freaking out old ladies with my uncanny ability to find a song for every situation.

The other thing I vow to stop doing every night is preparing too much food for dinner. I blame this on my mother. As a child I grew up helping her make dinner for seven people (or nine if the missionaries are coming over). Now there are just three people in my home and one of them will only eat things that a) contain cheese, b) are pink, or c) a cookie. So, I end up with a huge storage container of whatever the main dish was stuck in the back of the fridge every night until I run out of plastic containers and realize that some of my leftovers have been sitting in the dark recesses of my fridge for a month. So I clean out my fridge, making gagging sounds the whole time. Also, the storage containers are usually too scary for me to deal with so I just throw them away and buy new ones. This has to stop, I vow every night to make it stop. Yet somehow, the next evening I end up with enough food to feed seven hungry adults, again.

So, if any of you are in my neighborhood 'round about six o'clock, stop on by for dinner, I probably have plenty to go around. Also, there will probably be a floor show including me singing about whatever the side dish is and Mia singing her abc's at the top of her lungs. Good times.