Another Oprah moment...

Usually I'm one of those people who try and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. But between the stresses of this move and adjusting to staying at home full time, and and and... I've let my antidepressant prescription run out.

I know I should take better care of myself, I know. But I'm also a classic depressive in the sense that I'm horribly neglectful when it comes to taking my medicine. I feel better for a while, and then it just falls by the wayside. Being unmedicated and depressed is exactly like riding a rollercoaster. You get a nice high before a sickening, nauseating plunge. So a trip to the clinic on base is in order. Until then, feel sorry for my hubby! Crying women are a Marine's kryptonite.

Sometimes being a mom makes it so, SO hard to put yourself first. I spend day after day putting the Kid and the Hubby on the top of my to-do list. Most of the time the things that I need (need, not want!) fall through the cracks. I feel especially guilty when I have to buy new clothes, underwear, or (God forbid) shoes. It's not like I'm buying designer labels, it's Walmart or Tarjay for goodness sakes! All I can see as I walk through the store is how much food such and such a thing could buy me, how the Kid or the Hubby really needs this thing or that.

So if I can't even stomach buying clothes for myself, it's easy to reason away the need to take the time for a doctor's appointment. I just have to keep repeating my mantra "If you love your child you will take care of her mother, if you love your child you will take care of her mother..."

Jacqueline and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

DISCLAIMER: I sooo plagarized the title of this blog! Sorry Alexander!

Friday was one of THOSE days.

You know those days? The days when absolutely nothing goes right? Yea, it was one of them.

I don't think it was just one thing in particular that was keeping me down, it was everything. The Kid refused her nap (not while there are still coloring book pages left unscribbled on, duh mom), picked at her food (which was apparently not what she ordered), and whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiined ALL DAY. I was having a bad hair day, PMS was raging, my laundry basket overfloweth; the sniffles that I can't seem to shake were in full swing and I ran out of Diet Pepsi. If Mommy runs out of Diet Pepsi, the Terror Alert in my house immediately raises to orange.

My husband got home and I just had to get out of the house. Against all reason, we headed to Walmart. It made sense in my head at the time, I swear! I had to pick up more art supplies for the Kid and besides, I was heeding the siren call of the Golden Arches that is tucked into a quiet corner of our local Wally-World. Against all odds my child mostly held it together, even though by the very end of the trip she was a sobbing heap of toddler mush.

The crowning point of the evening is when I realized that the Hubby had decided to wear his slippers to the store. I put on eyeliner for this?

(the Hubby loves his slippers)

The Hubby very reluctantly posed for this picture. He says that he's "a victim" of my "creativity."

Welcome to captivity baby!

I have a date with my hubby!!!!!

I have a date!!  HAPPY DANCE, HAPPY DANCE!!!  I have a date!! HAPPY DANCE, HAPPY DANCE!!!

I HAVE A DATE!!! HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY DANCE!!!!!!
 

So by now you may have gathered that I have a date :)  Hubby convinced, begged, and bribed asked a friend of ours to watch the Kid this Saturday so we could go on a date.  A real, actual date.  One where I have clean, freshly blowdried hair.  And makeup.  And I plan to wear a beeeeyoutiful vintage silk scarf top I bought from Etsy.  I bought it two months ago and haven't gotten the chance to wear it yet because, well, peanut butter and silk just don't mix.

 

(By the way, I am in love with Etsy.  Check out the silk scarf top lady's shop http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5016169)

 

We've only been on one date since August.  Which has been driving both me and the Hubby crazy!!  We need alone time dangit!!!!  We're only in this podunk little town for a few months while Hubby has training, then onto the next permanent duty station, so we won't have time to set up the kind of support system we had in North Carolina.  We had lots of friends and opportunities to swap kids and date nights, which was looooovely.

 

The date is set, I have my outfit picked out, and we're eating dinner at Outback.  Now I just have to figure out what movie to see!!!  I really want to see "W." (Oliver Stone rocks my socks!) but Hubby is pushing for Max Payne.  I may relent, because Mark Wahlberg is a hottie.  Decisions, decisions!

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

I was on active duty in the Marine Corps.  And I got deployed to Iraq in 2005.

Yes it was hotter that I could have ever imagined (135 degrees!) and yes we got shot at (Mortars. They suck.)

But the place was also beautiful, in it's own alien way:

(Iraq sunset, 2008. Picture courtesy of the Hubby.)

Sometimes we even managed to squeeze in a little downtime in a kiddie wading pool.

Which didn't make up for the 135 degree heat, but you take what you can get in a pinch.

If it's dark outside, you should still be in bed. Really.

For the past week my sweet girl has woken up at the crack of freakin dawn. The still-dark kind of crack. This comes after several months (MONTHS!) of teasing me with 8 am wake ups. Sigh. Thank you kid, for enabling my diet Pepsi addiction. Mommy really needs to get a new coffee machine, lest her teeth rot completely from the citric acid.

Okay kid. You're lucky you're cute. That earns you a couple more months of free rent. Count yourself lucky.

Damn you, Magnus Scheving! (or, why Sportacus is slowly taking over my life)

So here I am trying to be a good mommy to my two year old daughter. I try and do right by her, and by my family. I stay at home full time sacrificing what little sanity I have left after spending 5 years in the Marine Corps for the good of my family. We have a routine, a set bedtime, romps at the park. The kid eats veggies that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. I have a pretty damn good life! Sweet, sassy kid, handsome hubby.

And then the TV shows creep in, via this insidious little channel called "Noggin." I know ya'll know what I'm talking about. This thing runs shows aimed at preschoolers, virtually commercial free, 24 hours a day. The network's byline is "It's like preschool on T.V.". Yea, right. Be honest, it's a virtual babysitter and it works!

In order to minimize the damage, we have set shows that we watch and- barring emergencies- that's it. And one of those shows happens to be LazyTown. My daughter is obsessed with LazyTown, and everyone who lives there. LazyTown is the brainchild of one Icelandic athletic hero, Magnus Scheving. His goal in creating the show was to eliminate childhood obesity in Iceland by promoting activity and veggies. And he's done a pretty damn good job! While driving us mommies slowly crazy with puppets. Lots and lots of puppets.


So now I'm stuck watching LazyTown while I attempt to read the news. But thanks to the techno (yes, techno) beat of the LazyTown songs burning into my brain I can't concentrate. So I google Magnus Scheving/Sportacus and come up with:





Yep, that's him. Sportacus himself in all his begoggled, mustachioed, blue elf hatted glory. So he flips and dances his way around LazyTown with all his puppets and his human friend Stephanie (who is eight, wears all pink, and is infallibly cheerful). They all dodge the bad guy, Robbie Rotten, brush their teeth and eat veggies. All while the damn techno gets STUCK in my head and my daughter dances joyfully in her jammies. I need to unstick my brain, so again to the google:




Handsome huh? Unfortunately, it's not good enough to dislodge the techno that is now munching on my few remaining brain cells.
Fast forward to bedtime aka babywrangling. And the other day one of those "aha" moments hit me (except my "aha" moment isn't like the one in Oprah's magazine, sorry!). I tell my daughter "Sportacus brushes his teeth! So we need to brush yours now, just like Sportacus!" And here's the kicker, it freakin WORKS!!! She grabs her little Dora toothbrush (oh, we will fall down the Dora rabbit hole later, I promise you) and brushes away. Hmm. I believe I'm onto something! "Honey, you need to get into bed so you can be strong just like Sportacus!"

"Okay Mommy! In bed like Stephanie!"

Oh. My. God.

And the magic has yet to run out. Cross your fingers for me.