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No Bugs Bunny, keeps me sane

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Bed time routines are a bloody nightmare, am I right???

I am not a morning person, by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve never been one. The Husband, on the other hand, loses all cognitive ability after eight p.m. This was always a problem when we were younger and childless because he would clock out when I reached my energy peak, as you can imagine, this made many things difficult, not the least of which was sex. Over the years we’ve managed to find the middle ground on most things (the ones where both of us have to be active and present at least) and we’ve divided up the things that occur at our respective “best” times of day. Basically, I’m not expected to function rationally in the morning, so he takes over the child-readying operations while I’m in charge of anything that happens in the evening. It works out great for us. He gets up early, has a nice relaxed breakfast with his newspaper and no one talking and or needing anything from him, he makes everyone juice, he comes upstairs and wakes me and the kids, and takes care of all the wrangling, washing, brushing, and feeding that is necessary to get to preschoolers out of the house. While I only have to concentrate the two neurons that are actually active and awake in my brain on getting just myself washed, dressed, and fed in the absolute peace and quiet necessary to avoid my head exploding first thing in the morning.

Of course after dinner, I’m in charge of the reading of bedtime stories, brushing of teeth, and yelling like a deranged person to get the same two preschoolers into their damn beds and staying there. I’m also in charge of the repeated serving of water to quench the torturous thirst that presents itself whenever I try to leave the room. I imagine The Husband is sitting in bed, relaxed, and laughing at me the entire time.

Hands down, I think, bedtime is worst than the morning routine. I’ve done the morning routine, while barely functional, and it just doesn’t elicit the same levels of stress and murderous rage that the bedtime routine brings on. Every night, it’s one more book, they have to pee (again), they have to tell me something “super, super, important” right as I’m walking out the door, they lose their luvvies, they need me to tuck them in again and again, and they are so thirsty, so parched, that nothing less than at the very least three separate drinks of water will satisfy them. It takes half an hour to get them to settle down (after they’ve been washed and effectively put into bed for the first time), at the end of which I mostly just want to kill them. It’s very frustrating, mainly because without their constant interruptions and requests our bedtime routine is actually quite sweet. Once they’re in bed, I do a little bad dream banishing magic, I sing them a song, and then we say “good night, I love you miles and miles, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite”, except that the Girl for some reason didn’t get the bed bugs part, so she would say something unintelligible, which later turned out to be “no bugs bunny”. I have no idea why, I mean, she likes Bugs, Loony Tunes was her favorite show for a while there, and yet every night it’s “sleep tight, no bugs bunny”. So of course, all of us started saying it that way, because, honestly, who could resist, but I feel kind of bad for Bugs, banished from our bedtime routine, for no apparent reason.

So bedtime makes me crazy, except for that moment when two little voices yell “no bugs bunny, mama” at my retreating back as I hightail it out of their room for the fifteenth, and hopefully final, time.

R.I.P party girl

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Hi! It’s been awhile… We’ve had a few holidays here, April 25th (freedom from fascism day) then May 1st (labor day) which basically means long weekends, short weeks, and lots of time off from school… basically no blogging time for mom. Plus the weather has been positively dismal, rainy and gross.

Aren’t I a big round ball of sunshine? Glad I haven’t been bringing you down on this blog with my optimism?

 

 

Anyhoo… we’re just back from a weekend in Milan now, where we had our newest niece’s christening (I am so over packing and unpacking every other day, btw).  And since we had the entire weekend at our disposal, along with free babysitting by grandma, we took this chance to see some of our old friends from our younger, party heydays. We all met at my in-laws’ house Saturday afternoon with kids to celebrate the first rain free Saturday in two months by letting the kids romp around the soggy grass (incidentally, my MIL is a saint, she had 40 people at her house for the baptism on Sunday and yet she let four sets – each composed of two adults and 2 kids under 6 – of our friends come take over her yard), the kids played really well, even though they hadn’t seen each other since last summer. The in-laws have a gigantic property (for Italy), so they got to run around and get muddy and we got some chatting and catching up done and the weather was just perfectly perfect and then that night various and sundry grandparents / babysitters allowed us to go out and enjoy a drinks laden dinner in absolute child-free peace and quiet.

 

Whilst in the middle of the very complicated problem of decided where to spend our first night in the big city in what seems like forever, I got to thinking about when, way back when, we left Milan for the rural haven (or hell, depending on my mood) in which we now reside. I was barely 30, skinny, no children, with lots of money to spend on entertainment and shoes and nary a care in the world (or rather, none of the earth-shattering, life-changing variety) and now I’m about 15 pounds heavier, more wrinkled and most of my money somehow gets sucked into the black hole that is child rearing (I need to stop blaming the children, all of my money is being sucked into the death star of a black hole that is the house renovation). I’m not complaining about this, I’m perfectly happy with where my life is right now (barring the added weight of course), but what got me thinking was that when I go back to Milan, in my head, I’m still that girl that left the city eight years ago.

I was thinking about what to do, of our old clubs and favorite bars, and suddenly I realized that I probably would no longer be let in. I’m too old, I no longer project the right image, I’ve got the mommy aura about me… (and honestly, I no longer own the right mixture of slutty and classy clothes and impossibly high heels, I would probably fall off of now). And that is all fine, I don’t really need or want to be that girl anymore, but when I left here I didn’t realize I was leaving her behind.

So basically, what I’m saying is, we need to be more present, in my opinion, more present in the present (if you’ll allow me the awkward phrasing) because we lose it without even realizing it. But that disconnect between what goes on in my brain and the actual reality is always a bit disconcerting, like my brain still thinks I’m 25 and skinny, but my clothes, unfortunately, wholeheartedly disagree with me, so it’s always a bit of a surprise when I look in the mirror. Or the fact that I’m often shocked at having to make adult decisions, like, shouldn’t someone more grown up than me be here to tell me what to do? And then I realize that someone more grown up than me is geriatric and, quite likely, enjoying the freedom of their retirement, and doesn’t give a crap what I do anymore. How and when did adulthood sneak up on me? And where did the party girl go? Cause she was undeniably stupider than me, yet infinitely more fun. (Also, much, much, better dressed).

On death and dying

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This has been a strange week, what with the Boston Marathon and West, Texas, and I know I should probably be writing about that, but something else happened and it’s what stayed at the forefront of my mind.

On Wednesday, I had to go sign some documents with The Husband for the never-ending saga that is the house reno, and since we were done early we managed to get a rare, quick, lunch together. We were chatting about his brother’s baby’s christening that’s in a few weeks, planning travel (it’s in Milan) and dinner out with our friends and whatnot, and I remarked on the fact that I thought his brother would have asked him to be the baby’s godfather, whereas they decided to ask the other uncle and our niece. And The Husband’s matter of fact answer was that they made the better choice since his life expectancy wasn’t very good, and then he went right back to eating his sandwich.

I was kind of shocked and speechless by his answer. I was also surprised to be shocked and speechless. I know his life expectancy isn’t very good. He signed dozens of documents when he was undergoing treatment that stated that he understood the risks of chemo, and radiation therapy, and the transplant and blah, blah, blah. He’s been on some heavy duty drugs for the three years now. We know. But, since he’s always seemed so removed from his illness, he always seemed to do everything the doctors told him, but without ever truly thinking about it, he seemed to ignore the illness and his recovery in a sense, I always thought he avoided thinking about all the negative implications.

It shocked me because I had never really thought about the fact that he lives his life with the uncertainty of seeing his children grow up, with the thought that at some point, some possibly not too distant point in the future, he’ll leave me a widow and our children orphaned.

It shocked me to imagine that he doesn’t think he’s going to be around very long.

How do you live like that?

The leukemia is in remission, he should be relieved, he should be looking forward and thinking about his future, instead with every handful of pills he takes every day, twice a day, he thinks that his life expectancy isn’t very good.

I realize I’m not saying anything new, we were aware of this, but I never really thought about it, about how it impacted him (ridiculous, since he’s the one it’s impacting daily). It just made me really sad for him, to think that this is how he lives his life, with Damocles’ sword overhead. So with tragedy and death all around us these days, this is what I’ve been thinking about, the uncertainty of life and the gift each day that we have really is.

Who put this hot potato in my lap??

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This weekend the Husband took the kids to Milan to visit his family. The kiddos love spending time with their Nonni (grandparents) and I get a relaxing weekend at home… alone… pure bliss! Though, I do miss them lots (between cocktails and visits to the spa and hanging out with my friends with nary a child in sight…) Also, my Husband’s family gets to do whatever they want, feed them candy, take them on adventures, without my disapproving, party pooper presence. So it works out all around.

Friday night I had “the girls” over for dinner, mostly because I needed to practice my Margarita making skills – on a side note, it took me thirty minutes in front of the liquor aisle at the supermarket to locate the tequila, there were 25 different types of rum and more different grappas than I could count but only one, lonely, half-hidden, bottle of insanely expensive tequila, which I thought was pretty weird… Anyway… one of my girlfriends wanted to hone her cosmopolitan making skills as one of her 40 things to learn before 40 bucket list, so much alcohol was consumed. Surprisingly, everyone was eager to taste test our creations. We had a lovely meal, followed by drunken dancing, and then we sobered up with a hilarious movie before bidding each other good night at the ungodly hour of 2am. All this happened while wearing drawstring pants, not a stitch of make-up and with nary a high heel in sight, basically, the perfect evening!

This is the second child and Husband free weekend I’ve had this year, and I’ve got to say that every couple of months or so it really is a lifesaver (or, less dramatically, sanity saver).

 

The Husband came home Sunday night and asked me to consider having his 16 year-old niece come to live with us. I know, kind of an intense subject matter for a Sunday night post relaxing weekend.

His niece, is a really sweet, slightly troubled, girl. We had actually considered this two years ago when she started high school, but decided we couldn’t accept the responsibility of a fourteen year old (the Husband had just had the second transplant and the Girl was one and a half). And now the situation presents itself once again, and I’m unsure what to do.

Our niece, let’s call her R for simplicity’s sake, has just been suspended from school for two weeks, she’s probably going to fail the year, she got recently put in a body cast for a pretty severe scoliosis that nobody noticed, and is generally left mostly to her own devices. I’m not making any judgments on her parents and their parenting, they had an ugly divorce, and other varied and sundry family drama, and since I’ve never gone through that and don’t have teenagers I can’t say one way or the other where the blame lies (if blame can even be assigned in a situation as this one). What I do know, is that we could give her a stable family environment. What I don’t know is whether I’m capable of handling a teenager, cause if it’s your own teenager you’ve raised her year by year yourself and you sort of ease into it, we would be leaping from preschoolers to at teenager with no intermediate preparation whatsoever.

I wouldn’t want to screw up the situation more than it already is, but on the other hand, we love her and want to help her, and maybe being in a new environment, having to make new friends, away from all the drama that inevitably falls on her doorstep every day, could be beneficial.

Right now we’re trying to think of all the possible scenarios, and we’re trying to figure out if we’re up to it and how it would affect her, us, and our children, then we’re going to sit down and talk to her parents (separately, but hopefully also together) and to her. In the meantime, I wonder, does anyone have any advice?

You say potato, I say…well… mind your own damn business!

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It turns out that, according to some, I’m a bit of an army general whereas according to others, I’m a bit of a pansy ass. It baffles the mind.

My in-laws were here for a few days at Easter and they kept remarking on how “good” the children were and how they do things that “other children don’t have to do” and I’m such a “good mother”, the subtext of which was clearly how the children are poor, over-burdened, little soldiers, and I’m a slave driver. (And when I say subtext I mean my father-in-law literally saying the words under his breath). All this because my kids help “set the table” (I put that in quotes because while the five-year old kind of knows where the utensils and stuff go on the table the three-year old dumps everything in the middle and just spreads stuff around randomly), and unset the table (what’s the opposite of “set the table”? we used to jokingly say dress and undress the table when we were kids, which regularly prompted my brother’s catch phrase “but mom we haven’t been properly introduced” to which much hilarity ensued… or not, anyway…),  and vacuum under the table with the dust-buster, and clear up their toys, and change their own clothes, and generally try to help out around the house. All stuff we did when growing up (despite the fact that my mom generally had between one and three maids in the house at any given time). I don’t feel like a slave driver, it’s just stuff they should learn how to do (also, if they don’t do it, I have to). I realize I’m the opposite of the typical Italian mother, who still irons her kids clothes when their twenty-five and in graduate school and living away from home, but I think that if though they may not consider these things normal they should at the very least be proud of their grandkids for being able and willing to do this stuff. Whereas, I’m sure, there are conversations going on in Milan between my MIL and her friends that go somewhere along the lines of “can you believe she makes her children set the table? What kind of lazy ass mother is she?!” Ah, the joys of cultural differences.

Speaking of cultural differences, on the other side of the Atlantic, in the sweltering heat of Houston, my Mother thinks I have forgotten the meaning of the word discipline, because my kids want my attention right now even when I’m speaking to another adult, because they jump on the couch, because I, *gasp*, allow them to take all the living room throw pillows and blankets, dump them on the floor, and then keep score to see who can jump farther from the couch to the pillow pile. My children whine and complain when I send them to brush their teeth, they dare protest when it’s time for bed, they have (occasionally) thrown a tantrum in a public place… Her favorite refrain is “your children’s behavior is a reflection of you as a mother, you have to take pride in them”, like I should only be proud of them when they’re well-behaved, or rather, I should take pride in myself when they’re well-behaved. Or something along those lines.

I try to walk the middle of the road… I do that a lot, lately. We had plenty of help around the house, but my mom made sure we learned how to do everything for ourselves, we learned to cook, and clean the house, and do laundry, and iron, and sew buttons… but our house wasn’t a lot of fun, there was a lot of tip-toeing around and not bothering the adults. Whereas my in-laws, as well as most Italians, like to complain (or pride themselves on) how many sacrifices they make for their children, how they’re still at home when they’re thirty-five, how no one wants to get married, because, let’s be honest, why should they? They live rent free in their parents house, with a free maid (their mother) and all the freedom in the world. How today’s youth is so entitled… but who made them that way?

And how on earth did I become the bad guy in this in the eyes of two completely opposing camps?? Walking the middle ground is hard, neither camp is happy, and I get a lot of crap from both of them. But I’m sticking to my guns, because I strongly believe in discipline, but I also very much believe in fun, and the two aren’t mutually exclusive. My kids need to learn how to do practical things, it’s part of my job to teach them, they need to be well-mannered, and learn patience (gradually), they need to be respectful, and independent, and responsible, but they also need to have fun and make messes, and do stupid things, because how else will they learn? I didn’t have a bad childhood by any stretch of the imagination, but I also didn’t have a lot of fun, or rather, there was always a limit to the fun we could have, we couldn’t make too much noise, too much mess, and when we did scoldings and guilt would ensue. There was lots of guilt and a fair amount of fear and I don’t think fear equals respect. I want my kids to respect me, to know when and where there are limits but also when and where it’s ok to cut loose, and I absolutely, positively, don’t want them to fear me or my reactions. So to some I am too strict, and to others I am too lenient, I just hope I manage to straddle the “just right” position at least half the time.
Do you have family members judging/questioning your parenting, and if so, how do you deal??

Joining Shell today for Pour your heart out.

The Hot to Trot Monday Listicle

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Hello friends, and happy Monday!

This week I’m going to be bad and not follow Stasha’s Listicle prompt, sorry Stasha! But I’m hoping once you see my list you won’t mind, or care at all, in fact….

Because, you see, I’ve been watching altogether too much tv lately and I’ve noticed a decided decline in my cognitive ability… in fact, I seem to have developed a schoolgirl crush on Ian Somerholder.

This is Ian Somerholder:

ian somerhalder 3

Or rather I’ve developed a schoolgirl crush on Damon Salvatore, the character he plays in the Vampire Diaries.

sexysomerhalder1.21

I’ll let that sink in for a second. And for those of you new here I’m a “respectable” 37 year-old wife and mother, the reason behind my watching the Vampire Diaries is beyond even me. I blame the novelty of Netflix, and the abysmalness of Italian television programming (and quite possibly the fact that too much television kills brain cells.)

In the last six months since my mother revealed to me the secret of streaming American shows abroad I’ve watched more shows than I will admit to and developed a series of truly improbable crushes. The last of which is Ian Somerholder, because though a tragic douche in Lost, in the Vampire Diaries he’s terribly sexy (and he knows it, if the number of gratuitously shirtless scenes in the show are any indication).

ian-somerhalder abs2

in case you’re wondering, I’m not opposed to the gratuitously shirtless scenes in the show.

I’ve also managed to crush on Kris Holden-Reid from Lost Girl (has anyone even heard of this show??):

a bit too leonine and blonde for my taste, but he does have the requisite blue eyes and sculpted torso.

a bit too leonine and blonde for my taste, but he does have the requisite blue eyes and sculpted torso.

Matt Bomer from White Collar

matt bomer bw 2

though he’s undeniably hot, his costar Tim DeKay is sexier in my opinion, there’s something almost feminine about Matt Bomer, delicate features or something that makes me want to look at him but absolutely not sleep with him (which is fortunate as I’m positive he would absolutely not want to sleep with me. So we can just be friends, Matt, ok, just walk around shirtless every once in awhile and I’m happy):

matt-bomer-shirtless2

Jonathan Rhys Meyers from the Tudors, which, incidentally, is a really good show.

jonathan rhys meyers2

There’s something about him that makes him seem a bit psychotic or serial killer-ish, which made him perfect to play Henry the eighth – who was not renown for being especially stable – but he doesn’t fill me with confidence as to my safety around him, which is, of course, not a problem, as I can’t imagine us ever running in the same circles. Also, he’s probably a perfectly nice guy.

maybe it's the sword...

maybe it’s the sword…

And my longest standing crush:

ryan-gosling-2

Yes, I’m predictable, Ryan Gosling, but how could I keep him out of this list, I mean, just look at those abs!

ryan gosling abs 2

Is it sad, I wonder, to occasionally sit at traffic lights and daydream about these total hotties falling madly, passionately in love with me? (with their shirts open, of course) Or does it mean that they’re just doing a really, really good job at whatever they’re doing?

Anyway, there you have it, five of my most recent crushes for this week’s Listicle, I feel like I’m providing a public service today by helping you start your week out right with a little eye candy!

p.s. While diligently and meticulously scouring the net for half-naked pictures of the above-mentioned (and, though arduous and tedious work, I did It just for you), I found out that Bradley Cooper has a pretty hot bod. Who knew?!

bradley-cooper-no-shirt-hot-fit1-269x300

If wishes were horses…

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It’s a beautiful day today, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the breeze is still cool but there’s hope of warmer weather in the air. And I’ve been totally jacked up since yesterday, my trainer even asked me if I was on amphetamines yesterday morning since he’d never seen me so chipper so early (or ever, in fact). The answer is no, in case you’re wondering, I wasn’t, I was probably just high on the unexpected, unseasonable, sunshine.

But of course, as life has taught me repeatedly lately, to every high there is a low… something about keeping balance in the universe… although, if you ask me, there’s altogether too much low in the universe and definitely not enough high.

Anyway… the Husband is ill again. Nothing serious. He’s just got a relatively high temperature and is nauseous, which could be nothing or it could be plenty, but that’s not my point. I’m just so monumentally sick and tired of him getting sick. Of course he’s not capital S sick, but still, every few weeks, or months when we’re really lucky, he gets sick again. He lies in bed all day, he doesn’t eat, he needs to be taken care of, and sometimes he gets better on his own and other times he spends 10 days in the hospital like we did in Houston, racking up a bill that would have bought us a new house (thank god we still have insurance). He’s not big on complaining, mind you, and we’re married so there’s the whole in sickness/health thing, also I love him, but still, I would like to go back to a life where we could travel and not worry about whether there was a decent hospital nearby.

Ever since I moved to this site from Moomser I promised myself it wouldn’t be about the leukemia and all the crap that ensued, I didn’t want to rehash all that, but trying to keep that part of my life from this blog has resulted in my not having an awful lot to post about. I’m so tired of living with the consequences of his illness, but I’m going to have to make peace with it, because this is what our lives are about, still, three years in. Three years isn’t all that long, but believe me, it feels like a lifetime, a lifetime of worry, and fear, and misery, and meds, and hospitals, lots and lots of hospitals.

I know it’ll get better, at the depressingly slow, slower than a snail’s pace we’ve been moving in, I just wish I had something to take my mind off it, something light, and fun, and easy, to distract me. Then again, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride…

Monday Listicles – The Spring 2013 Edition

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I’ve written this before, Spring is a schizophrenic season, it can be gloriously warm, insects a-buzzing, flowers a-blooming, allergies abounding, and from one minute to the next the clouds roll in, the rain starts pouring, and all is dreary and bleak. I’m more of a Fall kind of girl, with the Fall I know where I’ve been and I know where I’m headed, in the Spring I get all confused.

So Stasha’s Listicle selection for this week inspired mixed feelings and mixed results, I’m not really sure where I’m at, so I’m giving her 10 things spring a slight spin:

10 things Spring, an ode to opposites.

1. Sunshine vs. Rain

2. Blooming Flowers vs. Allergy Attack

3. Longer Days vs. Stupid time change

4. Pre-Summer diet vs. Hoards of Easter Chocolate

5. Frilly dresses vs. Winter White Legs

6. Easter vs. Kids home from school (not sure which one is good and which is bad…)

7. Bicycling on Balmy Days vs. Fruitflies Flying up my nose whilst cycling in the sun.

8. Starting my Vegetable Garden! vs. Tending to my Vegetable Garden

9. Going out in just clothes vs. Going out in clothes plus a down jacket, hat, scarf, gloves (mismatched cause one is always lost), or just directly in a ski suit cause it’s that cold out, and once you’ve spent half an hour sweating while getting everyone dressed, one of the kids has to pee.

10. Playing Outside for Hours vs. ….

there is absolutely no vs. for this one!

Have a Happy Monday!

(p.s. just to prove how insane the weather is this morning at 8 it was 2°C (37.4°F) and rainy/snow slushing, at noon it got a bit warmer and started hailing, it is now 3pm and the sun is shining and it’s about 18°C (64°F). Now, I ask you, in these conditions, what is a girl to wear??)

Spring, Dinosaurs, and the Unrelenting Vise of the Female Menstrual Cycle.

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So Spring has sprung. I’m ambivalent about spring, I love it and hate it, I love the sunny, warm, winter is over, burn the down-jacket, want to spend time outside on the lovely blossomy flowered fields days like today but I hate, hate, hate, the chilly, wet, dreary, windy days that show up every other day. Spring is a schizophrenic season. I never know what to wear!

I ditched the house today in favor of coffee with a friend. I felt bad about it, I even cancelled an appointment last minute (an appointment that I actually had completely forgotten about), I just couldn’t bear the thought of talking about anything construction related. It’s beautiful out, I needed a break. So I had coffee with a friend (after the gym, so I wouldn’t feel too bad about it) and then we went shopping for kids’ clothes. Shopping for my children is surprisingly satisfying, for roughly the same amount of money that I would spend on a single pair of (very nice) shoes for myself I bought each of them several really cute, springy, outfits.

Tomorrow we’re taking the kids to see the Walking with Dinosaurs show. It looks amazing, though I’m really worried that it’ll be too scary for them and the Husband and I will have to take turns standing outside with them… considering how much the tickets cost I’m seriously praying they’ll love it or I’m going to get an earful.

There’s no spring break here, so next week the kids are off for a very long Easter weekend, basically from Thursday to Tuesday (included), and since I just realized this I have organized not one thing to keep us entertained and not-homicidal. Also, my babysitter whom I love, whom the kids love, and who could almost always help me out in a pinch (like when the kids are sick she comes over in the morning even for just an hour so I can get out of the house and not go completely stir crazy) has managed to get her dream job (as a preschool teacher… to each his own!) so her available hours are now very limited. And I’m very sad. Obviously I was “completely delighted” and “so happy for her” when she told me, and then I spend the evening staring forlornly at my wine glass. The Husband went so far as to ask if she would be good as an assistant, so he could hire her mornings and I could get her afternoons… but she’s found her “dream job”… dammit!

Anyway, back to Easter, one of my sisters has an apartment in Berlin, which she rents out to tourists and in a kismet-y turn of events the apartment is free and some friends of ours are going to Berlin for Easter weekend so I figured we could go as well… if only I could find a way to get there without having to take out a loan (flights to Berlin are more expensive than one would imagine) or drive for 15 hours…

I’m in the middle of one of the most painful periods I’ve had since I “became a young lady” back in the late eighties. The Husband yesterday was found muttering something along the lines of he doesn’t understand how women don’t admit they’re pms-ing while they’re pms-ing and only apologize for it later and what the hell good does that do… or something along those lines. What he doesn’t understand is that the feeling of having one’s uterus in an unrelenting vise, while feeling faint, headachy, and just generally disgusting, is not conducive to accepting male wisecracks of any sort, in fact my gut (ha, ha) reaction is to slam his balls repeatedly with a bat or other such object.

Lastly, I want a new car. And though I realize that buying a new car (and by new car, I actually mean used car) when in the middle of the longest, most expensive, god-awful house renovation of all time is probably not my most genial idea, still, I want a new car. I now have a Prius, I love it, I’m happy with it, but I need a bigger car.  We just don’t have much choice as far as “mom cars” are concerned, here in Italy. I like the Renault Espace, it’s a seven-seater, it’s big enough but still park-able. Now if only I didn’t have to rob a bank to buy it…

 

Ok, I’m done with the weekly ramblings. I apologize for my overly enthusiastic use of quotation marks in this post, and though I should also apologize for the excessive use of alliteration, I won’t, cause there’s little  I love more than alliterating when I write.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

Monday Listicle – The oh my husband is so wonderful Edition

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Hello friends, happy Monday! It’s Listicle time! This week’s topic is courtesy of yours truly, thank you Stasha for picking my suggestion! I’ve been meaning to dedicate a post to the Husband for some time now, but something always gets in the way (namely my erratic posting habits), so guilt-ridden after my Valentine’s day fiasco I suggested ten ways my partner’s awesome, because, of course, he is (I picked him, didn’t I?) and I would do well to remember that! It works out ever so perfectly because tomorrow is father’s day here, in Italy it is always celebrated on St Joseph day, March 19th, which is one of the many holidays I routinely forget about as it is the “wrong” month (as far as I’m concerned!).

Anyway, repenting my many sins in the spirit of lent (even though I’m not catholic), I give you, ten ways The Husband is awesome:

1. He’s married to me, I’m awesome, ergo he is awesome by association.

2.  He gives me regular foot massages or back rubs (and not always with an ulterior motive)

3. He’s a wonderful father

4. He’s the friendliest guy I know

5. He’s also the nicest guy I know, an example: when he was in the hospital in Houston one day he was being taken to get a test done and the girl pushing his bed was training, so it was her and two other women (and me, he looked like he had some sort of weird entourage…), anyway she had probably just started because she was not very good… in fact, she kept banging him into corners and it took forever to get in and out of the elevators… standard fare for a beginner, but she was obviously getting flustered as he was obviously very uncomfortable, anyway all of a sudden he turns to her, touches her hand, and says, don’t worry, you are a good driver this has been a fun ride. In any situation when he could possibly have the option of complaining, or being an asshole, or being stern, he’ll always choose to be nice. I really hope my kids take after him.

6. He’s thoughtful.  A few months ago I had a movie night with the girls and last minute we had nowhere to do it cause all our husbands and kids were home, so he set us up in his office, he took time out of his day to organize a big screen tv and comfy chairs and everything I would need to connect my ipad so we could watch the movie. He even left us drinks… and he doesn’t have a lot of time to take out of his day.

7. He can fix or rewire anything in the house. He’ll bitch while he’s doing it, and I need to be around to hand him tools and stuff, but he does it, and he does a damn good job of it too.

8. He’s an optimist (most of the time). When I met him he was the poster boy for positive thinking, he gave my dad (the most optimistic person I had known till I met the Husband) a run for his money. Obviously, the leukemia changed this about him, not the first time around, the first time he was Mr Positivity, there was always a doctor or a nurse in his room just to have a chat, that’s how pleasant he was to be around. Of course, when the leukemia came back that changed his attitude a lot, he was a lot sicker, he was out of strength (mentally and physically), he had probably reached his limit, so he turned into a very negative, pessimistic version of himself. But you can’t fight nature, and I see some of the light coming back…

9. He likes to dance. He’s not always … er… Fred Astaire… but he’s always up for going dancing, so can’t really complain, now can I!

10. He’ll always cut the chicken or raw meat up for me to cook when it grosses me out. And he cooked it when I was pregnant and couldn’t look, smell or eat meat of any kind unless it was properly camouflaged in the form of a very loaded burger or sandwich.

11. He sends me flowers. He sends his mother flowers. He always tries to make me happy. (and it mostly works) – I added this one because #1 doesn’t really count…

12. he is a wonderful lover ;P

Well, rereading this, he is pretty awesome… and now I have something to go read when he does something that makes me want to rip his head off (which is likely to be daily).

(#12 appeared after I wrote the list and left it for him to read… though I have no evidence, I believe I have a pretty good idea as to who could possibly have added it.)