Hope4Peyton

I just want to say that way back in 2007 when I posted here that we were moving, I didn’t expect to still be saying it in 2009.

We decided to have Peter move up there while we waited for the kids to finish school.

Then we decided that since we were so close we would wait for Peyton’s treatment to finish.

Then there was the port surgery.

Then we put an offer in on the house of our dreams.

And it fell through.

And now? Fifteen months after Peter moved up there, the kids and I are still living in Florida, waiting for the move.

It makes me want to bang my head on the floor and scream from frustration.

There was definitely a time there where the hesitation was all mine, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to move.  There came the moment when I asked Peter if he’d just look for another job. I finally came to acceptance that this is the direction our lives are taking. Embraced it.

Now?  I want to move. I want to go. I want to be gone from this house and driving northward with my children and all our helter-skelter possessions.  I want to be unpacking the umpteenth box and putting all our old stuff into new places.  I want to go to sleep at night under our new roof, knowing that tomorrow we’ll all be together.

And the day after that.

And the one after that.

And the one after that?

Yeah, that one too.

I’m tired of holding all this together down here.  My stuff, the kids’s stuff, Peter’s stuff that overflows into my stuff.

We are talking about putting an offer in on another house.

And my heart just feels so bruised from disappointment that I’m scared to get my hopes up that it’ll finally happen.

I only know if the spring comes and goes and I’m still here, holding the pieces of our family together, the floor tiles and I have a scheduled meeting.

There will be screaming. Possibly some wailing and pulling of hair.

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Alright, friends, this is the LAST day to enter to win the IPod Touch contest…ends tonight at midnight.  GET on it!

Now that my mother has had a complete nervous breakdown, I should explain myself, right?

This chick is going to be my roomate for the upcoming BlogHer convention and I can’t wait because she is FLAT-out THE funniest read I’ve ever come across.  She is that person that I have to make sure I’ve gone to the bathroom before pulling up her blog.  If you have a funny story to tell make sure you read her first because maybe you’ll be lucky and the humorous haze she leaves you in will make your writing funnier by contact…but do it fast, it wears off.

So, I hereby bestow this February ROFL award to my friend Brittany of the BarefootFoodie for THIS post. One of many that are totally worth it…but the fact that she texted me and said, “I HAVE to post this don’t I?” and I threatened to steal that tiny human she’s incubating in her gorgeous belly if she didn’t POST-IT-RIGHT-THIS-SECOND really says it all. She’s brutally honest and pregnant = lethal combination. *I will warn you that her last award was “Best Use of a Curse Word”, there ya go.*

The ROFL Awards are happily brought to you by Oh, The Joys and Chicky Chicky Baby…go there and check out the other award-winners.  They’re sure to cause you to get fired when you can’t control your muffled laughter at your desk where you weren’t supposed to be reading blogs when you’re on the clock ANYWAY!

Also, know that the invite to participate in the ROFL awards is an open thing, so get thee henceforth and find the funny and share it with the world by contacting Oh, The Joys or Chicky Chicky Baby and they’ll email you when award time comes up.

I got a bunch of emails yesterday asking, “WHY are you up at 2AM every night? GO to bed, already!”

Sort of outraged and all accuse-y like.  Like I don’t like sleep. I DO!  Oh boy, do I.  I love sleep.  Like a fat kid loves cake.  mmmm, cake.

So, here are the reasons I’m up all dang night:

• Peyton’s quit using Pull-ups and I’d either have to wake up to her crawling in bed with me full of urine stank or just stay up and get her up for that one last potty run of the night (which I’m always thankful I do because she does that six minute long Austin Powers’ style pee).
• My body’s never quite gotten over the sleep-deprivation of the past 4 years.  After the stroke, I was always tired and napped like a newborn and it got better, but then keeping Peyton’s hours during treatment just totally whacked me out.  Now I seem to want to sleep for short spurts and nap instead of straight nights of sleep.  Wondering if that’ll ever straighten out.
• I think I’m part vampire because I can get so much more done if the sun’s not up.  FOR real!  If I can get over the 2-3PM slump, I get all jazzy around 8 and then I can just multitask like no one’s business.  Right now, as I’m writing this at 12:59 AM, I’m on Twitter, I’m stirring my secret-lab brew, building a Facebook page for a site AND chugging out load after load of laundry.
• I have always been a night owl, I used to think the world was out of balance if I didn’t see the sunrise before I went to bed. However, that was before I had kids and those little stinkers get up at 7 AM like clockwork, weekends not withstanding.
• I have all these new buddies on the west coast, which means if I want to chat with them I have to stay up til they finish dinner.  Yeah, I’m blaming it on you, Heather!
• I have this weird insomnia thing since Peter’s been gone.  I can’t get in bed and just pass out unless I’m dead exhausted. Otherwise I toss and turn and end up falling asleep at 2AM anyways.  And if anyone comments on how sweet it is that I can’t sleep without my husband, know that I nearly put my foot in his kidneys this last trip home because HE’S gotten used to sleeping in the middle of the bed. So, I can’t sleep with him HERE either.
• All the BEST infomercials are on after 1 AM…not kidding!

I will give a one year subscription to Picnik Premium (the best online photo-editing software) to the person who knows why this will go down in history as my favorite commercial OF.ALL.TIME. If more than one of you gets the REASON, I’ll have a random pull on Friday. *snort* It’s not hard to figure out.

I sure hope you woke up this morning and thought, “It’d be fabulous to go to Anissa’s site and just read a bunch of mad rambling and pointless babble.”

Cause, for one, it gives me warm fuzzies to think I’d be your first thought in the morning. Those grandeur delusions, I’m telling ya, they run rampant around here!

Secondly, that’s all I got for you.

After talking all glowy and rosy about the new writing, editing and ninja-ish jobs, I had to sit down and actually start DOING them.  Plus, there’s that whole secret-lab concoction brewing.  Did I mention that I’m organizing a Twitter party for a special company? I’m figuring out how to throw a blog baby shower for the world’s funniest blogger before…oh, say, the baby storms into my living room wondering where all her stuff is. Crossing my fingers for the chance to speak at BlogHer with these two awesome ladies (did you vote for us yet?).  Drowning in a flood of emails from companies who’ve all suddenly decided they want to work with me THIS freaking week.

As I am still pulling the single-mom routine on a daily basis, the added load is a bit staggering to take.

BUT, you’ll be glad to know that I’ve purchased a white board to help me stay on track by listing all the things I have yet to complete.

Seriously? I’m scared of that white board, ya’ll.

It would totally petrify me except my kids tried to make the white board a happier place by giving me this:

Henry, the Happy Blogging Hamster

Please be patient with me as I find my balance.

And I thought I’d let you know that my first post went up over at Deep South Moms today. Whee!

We have a lot of talks up in this house.

Lately it’s felt like a lot of them have revolved around Nathaniel, eleven years old and on the cusp.  Cusp of what?  Oh, things I’m sure I don’t want to think about: middle school, puberty, the edge of my sanity.

Lots of fun stuff!

I, completely and shamelessly, threw Pete under the bus on the puberty talk…to which end no talk was given, but a stick of deodorant was purchased.  Wheeew! And I thought that one might be hard. Good on ya, Dad. *snickers remembering the look on Pete’s face when I told him it was time for THE talk*

My kids know what I do on the computer, they know that I have all this blog stuff I do.  They’ll ask me if I’m Twittering or if I’m texting.  They understand what I do better than, say, their grandmothers do.  They’re kids of the tech generation, they GET that mom has a website…and that they’re the main subject. I show them all the time and I don’t allow them to read the heavy stuff, but I do tell them when I post about something they said or did that was funny.

In fact, they’ll ask, “Are you going to blog about this, mom?”

But after posting about homework and punishment woes, I thought it might actually be time to have another important talk with the boy-child.

Bloggers will be arguing it til the end of time: what is mine to tell and what is encroaching on my kids’ privacy?

I never want my kids to look back and be embarrassed or feel ashamed by the things that I wrote about them.  I want them to know I respected them as people, as my most prized treasures, and treated them as such online.  I sometimes struggle with using their real names online, photos of them that anyone could identify and whether they’ll be understanding or miffed further down the road.

I sat down with Nathaniel and told him that I’d posted about him getting in trouble and about taking away his DS.  He didn’t even bat an eyelash.

“I sort of expected that you would.”

Whaaa?

“Well, you blog about all the important stuff that happens to us and that was a pretty big deal for me.”

So, I just threw it out there.  I asked him if he was ok with me posting about him, writing about him on a website that any of his friends could find, his teachers could be reading, strangers he’ll never meet know he got busted and busted HARD.

“Yeah.  I like it when you write about me.  It makes me feel like I’m famous or something.”

Delusions of grandeur.  We haz ’em.

We talked about him having the right to tell me at any time that he wants me to stop writing about him or if there’s something he feels is off limits.  I swore on my mommy card that I would never post about his ACTUAL puberty (although, holy bob on a biscuit do I just KNOW there’s going to be a wealth of laughs just waiting to happen) and that I’d never post anything to deliberately embarrass him.

His father? No such oath was sworn.  So, he’s fair game, right?

Then my son made my heart sing.

“I think you do a good job with your blog thing, mom, people read it and I’m proud of you.”

blog + my son is proud of me = SUCCESS!

If I never get another comment, if every blog job I have dries up tomorrow and I never write another word, THIS was all I needed.

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Ok, maybe just this one embarrassing photo, just to get it out of my system and then NO more.

He was only 4, he’ll forgive me, right?