Discus Throwing: Muffin Tins, Laptops, Tablets, and Dasha

 

Words are few tonight and honestly sort of spilling out in a quite unorganized manner. I have a log of blog topics that I jot down as they come to mind but none of them seem appetizing tonight. So, I'll fall back on "snippet" blogging. Here's a glimpse of what has rattled around in my brain over the last few days...

 

Saturday night - Eric dropped the kids off and told me that he'd be taking Dasha's cell phone back to TX with him. She'd had it less than 48 hours and had already blown it big time with the rules. She repeated the rules and acknowledged her understanding. However, when she continued to break every one of the blasted rules, her response always started with, "But I wanted to..." Ugh. Maybe, just maybe, she can earn it back for her birthday next month.

 

Christmas Eve - We went to Mom's and had dinner and then opened up gifts. It just wasn't the same without my sister here. There was no bickering. There were no Scrabble games which ended in blood shed. It was sort of boring.

 

My sister did call and tell me that she was sending money to get Annie the one gift that I'd deemed outrageous but she kept asking for - Baby Butterscotch. It's a darn stuffed animatronic horse that makes a neighing sound that sounds more like a fart and shakes its head up and down as if it's having a seizure. When Annie talked with Santa, she told him she wanted Baby Butterscotch and Princess and the Popstar Barbie. I sort of hoped that she'd forget about the blasted carrot eating varmit since Santa had prepared her items back in July before the advent of Butterscotch. Oh well. My sister got wind of the situation and decided that her gift to Annie would be in the name of Santa and arrive on Christmas morning in the form of an outrageously priced Baby Butterscotch. Um, did I mention that finding Butterscotch anywhere in the metro area was nothing shy of a Christmas miracle? Gotta love my sister.

 

Since Santa left all of the kids' gifts in wrapped condition, there wasn't too much drama in that department sans the "eco" dollhouse which was four feet tall and assembled from three sheets of cardboard. Grant actually ended up being the elf to assemble that beast! I spent Christmas Eve night holed up in my bed watching reruns of Criminal Minds. Yee haw.

 

Christmas morning - Kids all slept until 7:00 a.m. which was very surprising. However, once Annie was awake, she deemed it necessary to rouse the remaining troops, as well. Everyone charged downstairs to see what the jolly old man had left. Grant handed out the gifts and sort of stood back and watched while the girls destroyed their piles of gifts. Dasha ripped through every piece of paper on the packages and then threw it to the side without any real thought about what was around her. Annie opened her gifts like the Muppet Animal. However, she piled her scraps into a neat little heap. Then, there was Grant. When he finally started opening his gifts, it was so slow that it was painful to watch. I'm pretty sure that I could have reused 90% of the wrapping paper from his gifts because he didn't rip it but neatly untaped the ends and slid the items out. I've got to admit. Dasha's method was a bit over the top but Grant's tactic was like watching a geriatric person with ADD trying to unwrap their medication.

 

Once the gifts were all unwrapped, the girls ran off to play with their new toys. Dasha got a tablet (no, NOT an iPad) that needed charging so I plugged it in at the bar in the kitchen and told her to leave it alone. (Duh. What was I thinking)? Grant got a new laptop but immediately started pointing out the flaws in the dumb thing. Yes. It was refurbished but it was better than what he had. I'd checked the statistics with Eric and he'd agreed that it was a good fit for what Grant used it for - video chatting, iTunes, Netflix, and school work. Ungrateful is putting it nicely. At one point, I thought about using the darn laptop as a discus and hurling it through the back door and onto the cement patio. His attitude was nearly the undoing of the teaspoon of Christmas cheer that I had left over. (Can I mention that as I'm typing this entry, he is currently huffing and puffing that he can't figure out how to get his music from his old iTunes account onto his new one)? The boy is about to find out what it feels like to go back to the Stone Age with CDs and paper and pencil.

 

As I stewed over the laptop situation, Lucy called and said that she and Desi were ready to be picked up and chauffeured to my aunt's house where we were going to have Christmas dinner. Can I just say that having those two characters trapped in the van with my own three convicts was not putting any more Christmas cheer back in me? I jumped in the shower and then rushed the kids to get dressed so we could get to our destination about a week early! Ugh. Maybe I'm exaggerating. Maybe. When Mom came bolting out of the front door, she had bags of gifts to take. Ok. No biggie. Then, she started bringing out all of the food to take. Don't put this there. Don't let that turn over. Make sure you don't squish that one - it has the rolls. Be careful. You wouldn't want that to spill in your van. Once again, for the second time that day, my mind started imagining what it would be like to use those darn muffin tins as discuses. In my imagination, I decided that muffin tins wouldn't be too aerodynamically sound and that the round Pyrex dish would make the best UFO. I'm not sure why my mind kept going back to the ancient Greek games and everything looked like a discus. Maybe I need some meds.

 

When we finally arrived at my aunt's house, we were the first ones there. Shocker. Lucy and Desi piled out of the van. Oh, wait. The funniest part of the whole journey was that my uncle is actually my Dad's physician and he didn't want him to ask questions about his black eye or fractured elbow. I kept telling Dad to just tell him that Mom socked him in the eye but he wanted something more elaborate. Um, just a note here... if you are aging and trying to make up a good story (lie) about something, the fewer details, the easier it is to keep your story straight. Once again, simply telling people that mom elbowed Dad in the eye while he was asleep because he was snoring would have worked. And, might I add, this would be very plausible, too.

 

Anyway, dinner was uneventful. Even the Dirty Santa game was uneventful. No one picked a dirty fight to steal someone's prized gift. The worst battle was over an "As Seen on TV" tortilla maker and things didn't even get too heated then. Oh well. I guess some people go on meds to keep their lives mellow and calm but, I'll admit that I do like a little more flair to my holiday excitement. (Maybe someone should spike the tea next year and see if that gets things stirred up a bit).

 

Christmas evening was to follow in the new tradition of dining at IHOP for dinner. Lucy and Desi wanted to go, too. Look, I'm not trying to be ungrateful. Someone recently reminded me just how lucky I am to even have family to be in my business. I get it. However, when Mom and Dad are present, I am the little girl and they are the protective parents. I've tried everything I know to break out of this mold with them and it just doesn't work. Since I've been "on my own," their protective measures have increased ten-fold. Oh well. We dined at the illustrious IHOP.

 

Then, we went home and everyone went to their rooms to collapse after a long day - or so I thought. Dasha decided to sneak back downstairs and play with her new tablet. She is very adept with technology and it's almost like it's a drug to her. She managed to sign in to the Android system, set a password for the screen, and then another password for the operating system. Mind you, I was fast asleep by this time and was clueless about her midnight rendezvous with the technology monster.

 

Post-Christmas morning - I went to unplug the tablet and sign into the wi-fi so Dasha could Skype with Eric. Surprise. Hmmmm.... When I turned the thing on, it kept asking for a password. I looked all through the instructions and couldn't find information about a preset password. Now, the thing was refurbished so I thought maybe I'd gotten a tablet that hadn't been properly erased. Maybe? Nope. When Dasha came downstairs, she gave an Oscar worthy performance. She acted clueless about the passwords. However, when she offered to "help" me figure it out, she tapped in a four-digit code and then whole thing miraculously hummed to life. Seriously? Once again, I was dreaming of how well that tablet would fly through the air like a discus - right through the kitchen window and into the backyard. Meds. I must get meds to fix this infatuation with throwing objects. Anyway, when I eyed Dasha, guilt was written across her face, dripping from her shoulders, and basically oozing all over her. I started asking her questions. (New tactic - you're not supposed to ask kids with Executive Function Disorder "why" questions so you have to beat around the bush - step on the bush - crawl under the bush - and basically sit in the bush and wait until the truth accidentally spills out). Dasha finally admitted to having played with the tablet during the night and setting the pass codes. How in the world does she have the mental capacity to do stuff like this and plot and plan but can't remember to go to the bathroom before it's too late? I don't get it. What I did get, though, was the tablet. It's now tucked into my nightstand. I'm not sure when or if she'll get it back. When I asked her if she was sad about losing two of her favorite Christmas gifts, she simply said, "Not really. I didn't get used to having them, anyway." Wow. (Truth? I pictured her as a discus. I haven't trained enough to heave her butt like that, though). Her reality simply baffles me.

 

Oh, and the bit excitement of the day was a friend's husband coming to fix the garage door. He reinforced the back of the door with aluminum strips and now I can resume parking in the garage. While I'm really not good at accepting help, he saved me about $800 and was a blessing to a need that I had absolutely no way to meet.

 

Post-post Christmas - Time for a jail break. I love my children but staying trapped in the house with them all day makes me long for stronger meds. My students gave me a gift-card tree filled with lots of cards to different places. I knew that there were several theater cards. I checked the local AMC theater thinking that the cards were for there. Wreck it Ralph was playing and that looked like something that we could all watch together as one big happy family. However, as we were headed to the theater, I told Grant to pull the cards out and he informed me that the cards were for Regal theater instead. Dang. I started fumbling with my phone trying to find what movies were playing at Regal. I had a smile plastered on my face, three clean and semi-happy children strapped into the van, and I was determined that we weren't going home. As I fumbled for a Plan B, I heard Grant say in a clear prepubescent tone, "Siri, what movies are at Regal theater?" Are you kidding me? The darn phone answered him. (He got a new iPhone 5 from his dad and it obviously has powers such as water walking). Wow. The phone rattled off the available movies and the only thing there that was half-way appropriate was Monsters Inc. We decided that we'd give it a try. We (I) also had some fun with Siri on the remainder of the drive. I asked it where I could bury dead bodies and it found six dumps in the local area. Not kidding. Then, I might have said, "You're dumb," and it replied, "Now, now." It's like a miniature version of Rosy from The Jetsons. I wonder if it could cook and clean, too. Maybe I'll sneak into Grant's room tonight and nab the phone and see what other powers it has. On second thought, I'll send in a professional. I'll get Dasha to sneak in and get it.

 

Anyway, the movie was ok. Annie spent the majority of the movie with her head in my arm pit. If she wakes up during the night tonight screaming about Sully, Mike, or Randal coming to get her, I'm going to need one of those memory zappers from Men in Black. Anyone seen those on Craigslist?

 

But, despite the bumps in the road this week, I've gotten lots of school stuff accomplished and written out some goals for myself (and the kids and finances) for next year. There's so much that I want to do but I simply don't know how. It's so easy so sit back and use my limited finances and limited resources as an excuse to do nothing and not plan but that's not going to get me anywhere.

 

For now, I'm going to snuggle into my bed and enjoy whatever sleep I get before Annie wakes and wants to come inject her toes into my spleen.

 

Good night, all.