Weird Moment at the Y

I’ve been doing the Body Pump at the Y & it’s a great class.  I wasn’t sure I’d like it, but it’s been really good.  Unfortunately for you Rural City Y-goers, you’ll probably never be offered the opportunity because they’d have to fork over money for equipment & after the ‘can we get some shower curtains in the locker room request’ I learned they don’t do that kind of thing.  Anyway, if you come to visit on a Friday to Metropolis, I’ll sneak you in

Most of the class goers are average women & the occasional man who was forced to come by his significant other.  And then there’s the female meat head.  With a truly tragic boob job.  The only pair I’ve seen in real life larger than hers were mine about 4 days after Gavin was born.  Youch!  That’s a painful memory.

Anyway, we were finishing up with some plank side lifts & as the class was moving into plank, Meat Head asked the instructor, “Can you see my boobs?”  Uh, Hello!  We can see them from space!  The instructor got this look on her face that was priceless & quickly moved on.

You meet all kinds at the Y.

This afternoon I have the unparalleled pleasure of taking Gavin to get his polio shot.  Somehow Family Practice missed it when I took him in for his Kindergarten shots & now the school nurse has been after me to get Gavin shot before the big audit which is now Monday.  If only she knew how much Gavin & I both hate Kindergarten shots…

I’m pretty ticked at FP at the moment.  Not only for forgetting to give Gavin his required Kindergarten shots, but because they want to charge me $10/person to transfer our medical records.  I knew they wanted to charge me for a copy, but I didn’t realize they were going to charge for any copies made.  It doesn’t matter if you are transferring out because you think the doctors suck or because you moved out of state – You must pay the ransom.  I know $10 isn’t that much; it’s the principle of the thing.  My experience with our other doctors was for them to not charge for transferring records & I checked around & the majority of the offices I called do not have a charge for getting a copy of your records, it seems only the practices that are trying to make it difficult for you to switch or the really petty offices employ that tactic.  I’ll let you decide which type of office is FP…

K~

Feeling Supported

Thanks for all your kind comments & calls after my last post.  I’ve been feeling a lot more settled so it surprised me at how upset I was at his teachers rather innocent comment.  It’s good to have a place to vent.

It’s also wonderful to have supportive people around you.  Which I have in spades.

I do think I am nearing the end of my Grief – Moving Edition.  Or at least, I’m finally working my way towards acceptance.  I’d love to move back to Rural City, but if I do, I know I’ll actually miss some of the things here, & I don’t mean Target.  We’ve found a wonderful church, and it has actually been a bonus to be closer to MN.  I was able to make it back for a funeral that was important to me & had we been in RC, it would have been a lot more difficult.  Last weekend all the grandparents & some of our sister’s met us in Minneapolis for a Twins game & a day in the Cities.  All that would have been a lot harder had we been in RC.

I won’t go too much into the things I don’t like about Metropolis as I’m trying to stay positive, but you RC people will never know how good you have it if I don’t tell you.

The major grocery chain is Hy-Vee.  I loved my RC Hy-Vee.  If you wanted something not in stock, they’d try to get it for you.  When I make Pho I need the beef cut very thin & most of the meat guys know exactly what I’m talking about because they made a point of remembering.

The Hy-Vee’s here are awful.  The race car shopping carts don’t fit in the check out lanes.  You have to walk the entire store because they put the dairy all along the back wall.  When you walk in the store, you have to battle the check out lines & then you actually enter the store by the liquor.  Now, I sometimes feel like a drink after fighting to get into the store while shopping with my 3 lovely errand runners, but I much prefer entering the store through the calm of the produce section.  So RC people, consider yourselves lucky – your Hy-Vee is ‘old style’ & the new design of Hy-Vee SUCKS!

Wow, that wasn’t supposed to be a huge rant, but seriously, I spend a lot of time at the grocery store & I have yet to find one I like.

In other supportive news, after 12 years, we have bid farewell to our bed & bought one that does not have a ridge in the middle, butt sink holes, & snapped springs.  The simple pleasures of a comfortable nights sleep…

Make sure you Harry Potter fans check back tomorrow for a truly magical post.

K~

Metropolis vs Rural City

This morning Gavin’s teacher stopped to talk to me about volunteer stuff & I mentioned it was hard to do things in the classroom because the school doesn’t allow younger siblings to come.  She suggested doing a sitter swap with another mom & I mentioned we’d moved here not long ago & friends were at a minimum.  We talked about the move & Mrs Teacher assumed I must be ecstatic to be out of Rural City because Metropolis has a Target & restaurants (her daughter went to the University in Rural City so she knows about the lack of shopping & eating opportunities in RC).

I’m so sick of that attitude.  Yes a Target is nice & there are many more restaurants than Rural City & if my life revolved around stuff  & eating out, I’d be very happy.  However, my life is not about stuff, it’s about people & all the shopping in Metropolis isn’t going to make me any happier than hanging out with my mom friends, or carpooling with our neighbors, or softball nights with church friends, or doing a sitter swap with any number of friends so I could volunteer at the boys school even though that’s not necessary because the RC school didn’t mind having siblings in the classroom.

I had been feeling okay about the move too.  Now I’m all sad again & wishing I could make a few calls & meet some friends at the Old Dairy for a grilled cinnamon roll & a chat while the kids play.

*sigh*

K~

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Cartoon Crisis

Dear Nickjr Programming Dept.

Do you have preschoolers?  I think you must not.  Otherwise you wouldn’t be so cavalier with the programming changes.  My kids favorite show is Backyardigans only it’s been hard to catch it this year.  Someday’s it’s on at 8.  Someday’s at 9.  Other’s not at all.  I’ll send you video of the wailing & gnashing of teeth that occurs when Backyardigans has been replaced by Spongebob when the program guide clearly says it’s going to be  Chichen-Itza Pizza.  You can thank me after your hearing returns.

I have very few goals for an average day. One is to make sure my kids are fed.  I prefer them to be dressed by lunchtime.  But the ultimate goal is a shower for me.  Guess when I used to do that?  During Backyardigans!  Only now you say the show is on at 7:30am.  With any luck, only 1 of the 4 of us is out of bed by then.

Can you please think of the preschoolers?  Can you please think of their poor smelly parents?  All the kids want is predictability.  They want to know that at 9am, their show will be on.  They only get 30 minutes of TV during the day & their choice is always Backyardigans.  All I want is an uninterrupted half hour to spend cleansing myself & getting myself ready for the day.  See?  Nickjr you should have it made in my house, only you keep messing with the programming.

We’ll be back in the Fall.  Although the kids are really enjoying Clifford, so maybe we won’t…

K~

Lazy Strikes Again

Only one more week of dealing with Lazy the Adoption Attorney from Hell.

S/He was up to the usual tricks again this week.  Lazy had contacted our social worker to get a form signed & notarized only neglected to send our social worker the form.  I ended up having to call Lazy & request they send the form again.  Lazy said it’d be done right away.  Well, I knew better.  Our social worker asked for a confirmation call when Lazy faxed the form & at the end of the next business day, she finally had the form.  ARGHHH!!!!!  How hard is it to have your secretary fax a form?  With incompetence like that, I’d be very surprised if Lazy is a busy attorney.  I detest the check we’ll write next week for the pleasure of using Lazy’s ’services’.

Okay, I need to stop with the whining & complaining.

I have bypassed watching the Plus 8 lose their two parent home due to reality tv fame in order to indulge in I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! Only, I can’t watch it.  It’s HORRIBLE.  I’m all for a little mindless TV, but this is just awful.  I cannot subject myself to it.  I’d rather clean the cat box, mop the floor, even clean the toilets than watch this show.  It is that bad.  I tried, I really did, but after 5 minutes, I was DONE.

Hmmm.  That wasn’t quite the non-complaining portion I was hoping it’d be.

I’ll try again tomorrow.

K~

The Neighborhood

I like our neighborhood.

For the most part.

You didn’t really think you were going to get a move update without some whining did you?

I like the proximity to Target, the Movie Store, & the school.  I like how the neighborhood was designed to cut down shortcut traffic.  I like that even though it’s a cookie cutter neighborhood it doesn’t really feel like one because while there are maybe a dozen house styles, no two look exactly alike.

I don’t know if it’s because our house had high turnover in the last 2 years, but it has taken almost 2 months for the neighbors to introduce themselves.  We met the one on the left right away because their daughter is in Ethan’s class.  The neighbor’s on the right we met this weekend after we made a point of doing an introduction.  The people across the street seem nice & there’s a couple down the street that belong to the church we’ve been attending that are very friendly.

But then it gets weird.

The people 2 houses down are the trash police.  Last week I put our cans out a day early because we were leaving town & I was told we can’t do that.  She was trying to be nice about it, but couldn’t quite keep the sneer out of her voice.  I should have known though.  Trash Day was the day our moving truck arrived so our cans had to be on our neighbors yard & at 5pm we had a knock on our door asking if we could get our cans.  Trash is a big thing around here I guess.

What’s even odder is the moms walking to school.  I’ve met a few that are pleasant & a little chatty.  But then there’s the one that is a sidewalk warrior.  She will do anything, anything, to avoid saying ‘hello’.  She will walk up the sidewalk at a nice pace with her stroller & two dogs & then as soon as she’s on the same block as me, she will take off like she’s going on a run.  Only she’s usually wearing flip flops.  There’s no ‘excuse me’ or ‘on the left!’.  Nope, she just blows by like there’s a stroller convention she must attend NOW.  I find it bizarre behaviour.  Then there’s the mom that lives up the street that has started acting like ‘hi’ is painful. Maybe she’s jealous of the new van?

Jason & I have heard from many people that CSS is a friendly community.  Our question is where did they move from that CSS is considered friendly? Do you remember the Seinfeld episode where George buys the toilet book from Brentano’s & Kramer & Newman bought a rickshaw?  We’re feeling a little like the flagged book from Brentano’s  “We’re trying to help the homeless here – it’s bad enough we have some nut out there trying to strap ‘em to a rickshaw…  You get your toilet book out of here & I won’t jump over this counter & punch you in the brain!”

As a disclaimer, the previous paragraph is why Jason doesn’t blog.  All his idea & I thought I’d humor him

Our realtor had mentioned the subdivision had an upity reputation but I thought other areas we looked at seemed more like ‘Upity’ candidates.

No worries.  We’ll beat them down with our crabgrass, dandelions, bikes on the lawn, & sidewalk chalk drawings on the driveway.

A friend would be nice though…

K~

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Dog For Sale

She’s a great dog.  She almost never whines to go potty at 3:15am only to circle, circle, circle, circle, circle, circle, circle, circle, for 10 minutes (I wish that was an exaggeration, but every minute I wasn’t sleeping ticked by loudly) before being distracted by a tree or a leaf or the grass & laying down & forgetting that she woke me up at 3am so she could take a dump.  She almost never does that.

She almost never comes back in the house, lets me get cozied up in bed before remembering that she really did need to go number 2.  She almost never starts whining again, this time at 3:30am, only to circle, circle, circle, circle, circle, circle, circle, circle & FINALLY find the perfect spot of lawn to befoul, the spot right on the path Ethan will use this morning as he races across the yard to catch his carpool.  She almost never does that.

Wonderful dog!

Cheap.

K~

Kristen is

Annoyed.

Oh wait, this isn’t Facebook.

We were supposed to get an offer today.  Only now it’s supposedly coming tomorrow.  It might have been nice for us to know that without having to call our Realtor & ask where our offer is, but then, that’s just me.

As it stands, we’ll hopefully see an offer on Wed.  I hold no hope that it will be anything but ‘creative‘.

So as a reminder to home buyers in Rural City, our real estate market has not made the news.  Do not expect me to give my house away because you’ve heard that’s what’s happening in LA, Tampa, or Chicago.

K~