Clean Sweep

I am a genuine holder on-er of crap. It makes me crazy. I can't stand to have empty space in my apartment, but I also can't stand clutter. There is no good balance.

I woke up today and wandered aimlessly around my living room (all 100 square feet of it) trying to decide what to do with my day. Kylie is with Chuck (who will not answer his phone, which means that he is probably not home with her...as usual). If it weren't for that, I would be tempted to turn my cell phone off entirely. I don't care about work emergencies; I want to be left alone for just one day. The rest of the world can go to hell. I am exhausted.

It's raining, so I can't really take the dog to the park like I planned. I think some fresh air and exercise would be good for both of us. I don't mind playing around in the rain with Sebastian, but the thoughts of wet dog smell and muddy pawprints in my car stress me out. So instead, I decided to clean.

I have been packing up my Christmas decorations. They are EVERYWHERE. When Christmas is over, I want them to vanish. As soon as 11:59 pm strikes on Christmas day, I am out of the Christmas spirit. There are pine needles all over my floor from the tree that I now can't figure out how to get rid of. I turned the lights on today just for fun. After all, it took me three days to figure out how to string them together so that they would work; may as well enjoy them.

While packing, here is what I threw away:

1. The wooden snowman door hanger with the broken arm. I have put it out as-is for the past three years, and every year I vow to fix him. And every year, I pack up his sad broken self and remind myself that I once again failed to accomplish something that should be seemingly simple. Enough.

2. The super ugly elf candleholders that mom gave me a couple of years ago. She told me that they were super ugly, and that someone had given them to her. I thought they were cool. I was wrong. They really are super ugly.

3. Kylie's broken butterfly umbrella. Not a Christmas decoration, but I found it in the closet and didn't want to throw it out because we got it at the zoo. Am I really holding on to that crap?

4. The bag of black licorice wheels that I bought for my grandma. We are apparently the only people in my family that like black licorice. I was planning to send it to her with the Christmas cards that are still sitting on my counter. They are addressed, but not mailed. Oh, and the pictures of Kylie and Santa and there, too. I haven't even cut them apart yet. Sigh.

5. The foam and plastic baseball bat that Chuck bought for Kylie and then promptly sent over to my house. So nice of him.

So far, that's it. I am on a roll, however. I have the entire day, so I might as well be productive. My therapist told me that I have horrible anxiety, so being home alone makes me want to pull out my hair. I just wander around and think of all the things that I could be doing, but I just can't make myself do anything. It is the most frustrating thing ever.

Maybe now that I have organized, I will have room to spread out the yoga mat that I bought myself for Christmas. I have heard it is good to help you relax. I'm not sure what that feels like...

The Creepy Ones

My mantra should be, "Oh weird ones, come to me." I attract them like flies.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from a really hot guy on myspace. Like anyone, I get random emails from people that I don't know on here. The subject line is always something like, "Hi Cutie." Usually, I completely ignore them. For whatever odd reason, I emailed this guy back. I think I was bored. Or just crazy. {Please note, for the record, this is not the cowboy guy . He was not creepy.}

Over the course of a few days, we emailed back and forth, nothing really major. I'm not big on online dating, so that wasn't really what I was going for. But this guy was from the city that I used to live in, and as I have considered moving back a time or two, it gave us something to talk about. Before long, he sent me his phone number.

There are times in our lives that we all do incredibly stupid things, and in one of my moments, I sent the guy a text message. Big mistake. I believe that texting is the beginning of all things that are evil. Now he had my phone number. A few days later, I was sending a text message to one of my girlfriends when my phone rang. I apparently have any-key answer, because right in the middle of typing an "m," I answered the phone. It was him. Dammit. I had that split second decision of hanging up and pretending like I didn't answer, or being an adult and actually talking. I decided to be an adult.

The phone call was awkward at best. What do you say to a total stranger? And in case you don't know, I HATE talking on the phone. The conversation was pretty strained. Here's how it went:

Him: When are we going to go out?
Me: Um, I dunno.
Him: Where do you want to go?
Me: Well, I'm not really sure where anything is near your house.
Him: How 'bout a cheeseburger? There's this great grill by my house.
Me: I'm a vegetarian, remember?
Him: Oh yeah, but you have never had a cheeseburger like this one.
Me: I don't want a cheeseburger.
Him: Just try it. You'll like it.
Me: I have HAD cheeseburgers before. I don't want them anymore.
Him: I will drive to your house right now and pick you up if you will try this cheeseburger.

Was I speaking English? I'm pretty sure that I was. And nothing grinds me more than someone who wants to try to convince me to do something that I clearly do not want to do. I didn't want a damn cheeseburger!

I finally got off the phone. I ended it with, "We'll get together soon..." Kind of a blowoff without sounding like a blowoff. Kylie had been sick all night, and I really needed to focus on spooning her full of more children's tylenol and helping her blow her nose. Ten minutes later, I get a text. "You have a sexy voice." Um, ok. I didn't respond. Fifteen minutes after that, I received another text. "I like you." Again, I didn't respond. Ten minutes later, the third text. "Stuck up." First of all, this dude does not know me well enough to know that I am, in fact, incredibly stuck up. Not only was I irritated about the cheeseburger thing, but now he was pissy because I wasn't responding to his incessant text messaging.

A few minutes later, he changed his myspace status to, "Derrick can't do anything right." Could this boy need any more coddling? I blew it (and him) off.

The next day at work, I told everyone about the cheeseburger incident, and we all laughed about it. Maybe his ears were burning, because a few minutes later, I received a text that said, "What happens if we fall for each other?" WEIRD! Again, I ignored it. I did decide to reply the next day via email. I said something along the lines of, "Oh, ha ha...that's kinda premature. We'll worry about that later." I dunno, something generic, even though my gut was telling me to cut my ties and run in the other direction.

He replied via text message. I'm pretty sure that most email provides a "reply" button, but he was more keen on replying with a text message. Guess he wanted to communicate instantly. I was at work. It was two days before Christmas. The text said something to the extent of, "Have a good day at work. You shouldn't be too busy." Once again, I could feel something (frustration?) grating at my nerves. Has this boy ever SEEN a shopping mall two days before Christmas?! At this point, I was so beyond irritated. It got to the extent that I didn't even want to look at my text messages. I shot one back to him that asked him to please email me instead of texting me because I was going to be so far over my (1000 texts/month) limit. His reply was, "Sorry. I will never bother you again." Geez louise. Talk about over dramatic.

The next day, I was removed from his friends list. I am apparently being punished.

When I told Danielle about the texting incident, she warned me about upsetting the creepy ones. She told me I will find him sitting outside of my house now.

I am going to close my blinds.

Why I Hate Kindergarten

Kindergarten is really stressing me out.

I have eagerly waited for kindergarten for the past five years. I could not wait for Kylie to start. ABC's, counting, field trips; you name it, I was ready for it. I pictured myself as the mom who was always there helping out with class parties, book fairs, and car pools. Unfortunately, I am not that mom. Instead, I feel like a total loser.

Last night was Kylie's first big program as a kindergartener. The school had scheduled the annual Christmas program, and Kylie had been singing, "Up on the Housetop" for a week straight. (In my opinion, "Up on the Housetop" is a really hard Christmas song for a five year old. I know that I am wrong, because Kylie mastered it, but I can't remember anything past, "quick, quick, quick.")

My first annoyance was that the school gave us a week's notice for this big event. My schedule stresses me out more than anything else in the world. I feel like I am always making apologies to one person or another for needing to adjust something. Luckily, there weren't really any issues this time around, but there easily could have been major complications. It was pure luck that I had scheduled myself to work Saturday night instead of Friday night. I am sure that this event was planned far more in advance than a week and half ago. How about giving us busy parents the heads up?

My second annoyance was that the program was held at a school other than Kylie's. The reasoning for this probably centers around parking issues, as the elementary school has exactly four parking spaces in its lot. This wouldn't have really been such a huge freakin' deal if I knew where this other school was. I didn't anticipate it being a major issue, as mapquest exists for moments like this. Enter beginning location, enter ending location, voila...directions to the school. Just like magic. Except that mapquest sucks, and instead of giving me directions to Kannapolis Middle School, it produced directions to Kannapolis Intermediate School. As we drove by the dark parking lot, I began to panic. Kylie was supposed to be at the school between 6 and 6:15. It was 6:18. I called directory assistance. Directory assistance could not locate Kannapolis Middle School. I was trying hard not to cry. We were going to miss it. I just knew it.

Chuck finally remembered that he had a friend whose child attends Kannapolis Middle School, so he called her to get directions. (Why he didn't do this earlier, I will never know, especially since I delegated the responsibility of locating the school to him that morning. However, it is not his fault that mapquest is operated by monkeys.) Directions in hand, we raced the correct school. We arrived at 6:31 and ran through the hallways of a school that we had never been inside of, trying desperately to find the gymnasium filled with people. When we finally got there, the kindergarteners were onstage, finishing their song. My heart dropped like a leaded weight. There was my sweet little baby, standing beside me in the red polka dot dress that I bought just for the occasion because she was so nervous about standing in front of all of those people. And there in front of us were all of her friends, singing without her. We turned around and went home. I had no desire to listen to other people's kids sing.

I really wanted to be at that concert. I am tired of dropping the ball.

I cried all the way home last night. I cried in the drive-thru at McDonald's while I paid for the happy meal that was meant to remind Kylie that I love her more than anything, even if I am incapable of getting her to Christmas concerts. (I had even purchased new batteries for my digital camera so that I could take a video of it.) I tried unsuccessfully to stop crying long enough to rent a Pixar movie at Hollywood Video. The nicest guy in the world pitied me, waived part of my late fees, and gave me a free lollipop.

I hate kindergarten.