Week One Down... 2 1/2 More To Go.

Technically, it's another two weeks. But us parents count in the weekends as well. Not just Monday through Friday.

It all started at about 1:00 on Wednesday, December 22nd. It will not end until January 18th of the new year.

What is that, you ask? Winter-freaking-Break! Three (by their counting standards) weeks of hellish holiday bliss.

The counties surrounding our city will all go back next week. I think on Wednesday. Or is it Tuesday? Oh who knows! All I know is that we WON'T be included.

Thanks to the lovely budget cuts, in part due to the fact that there was a severe deficit in the 2009-2010 school year (thanks to "accounting officials" that apparently cannot add or subtract) this school year had to take a budgeting hit. This meant going on to a "College Schedule" and having the same break times as the secondary level schools.

Also, city schools have an extra twenty minutes added to their school day. We still go five days a week though. And also, there are only two "teacher workdays" penciled in for the entire school year.

So, you can imagine how much fun this first week has gone. Especially with all of the holiday hullabaloo.

Sure! The kids were (for the most part) complete gems when Christmas came and gone. Plus I booted my oldest daughter over to her father's on Christmas day afternoon.

We had "split" the day this year, seeing as he was a no call/no show last year (though it was HIS Christmas to have her). I may be a bitch in his eyes, but he apparently is like a kid in that respect. All is good and well as long as HE gets what HE wants. And for the record, I OFFERED TO SPLIT with him.

We also are now almost completely done piecing the house back together post-Christmas. Yes, even BOTH trees are down. But the two younger kids are giving me more gray hairs. Like I need anymore, right?

There are times that I just want to bang those two's heads together and tell them to shut it up. All they do is fuss at one another, pick on one another, Bryce is constantly trying to "parent" Skyler (which I have been trying VERY hard for the last like year to break), and they are just generally grating one another's nerves.

All of that makes MY nerves quiver. Add in that the oldest will come back home (more than likely) with a shitty attitude and the need to be bitchy to her siblings, and it's going to once again be a five-ring circus.

In the end, I will be SOOOOOOO happy when school lets back in and I can once again see them get on the bus (or walk, as the older two do on the 'warmer' days).

Hell, on their first day back, the following is what I plan on posting on my FaceBook (via Status Shuffle)...

"It's the most wonderful time of the year ... ahhh ... The sound of the school bus pulling away with all the little inmates screaming!"

I love my kids. It doesn't mean that I always have to like living with them. So once school starts up again, I think that my stress level will finally go back to normal levels. But until then, it's going to take lots of coffee and wine to calm these nerves.

Memoir Monday w/Travis...The Parent Edition.

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Kids. They bring joy to your life. They let you live on, even after you are gone, being that you are a part of them. They give you unconditional love.

But they can be your worst nightmare as well. Attitudes, lying to your face, getting in to the junk food at all hours, waking you up at an ungodly hour of the morning to watch Saturday Morning Cartoons..Oh wait! That was me. My bad. Sorry, Dad.

My life BEFORE kids was much calmer. Sure I dealt with some real assholes in my time, being I have worked retail for most of my adult life (until the last kiddie came along). But having kids and dealing with them 24/7 makes you realize that dealing with the assholes of retail-society pales NOTHING in comparison, then having to deal with your own kids.

Back before my brood, I was able to stay up until four-AM, sleep in until noon, eat and cook whenever I wanted to. I would get drunk with my friends.

I even remember back in the day, out-drinking a MALE buddy with Jose Cuervo shots. Seven of them to be precise. He puked over the banister railing of the apartment complex I lived in. My poor neighbors. Talk about a surprise present.

Myself? Let's just say I got off easy. No! Not THAT kind of "got off". Get your minds out the ditch, would ya?? I meant that I had basically NO hangover, what-so-EVER! Just a slight belly ache. Otherwise, no pounding, blinding headache. No barfing on the bathroom floor, because I missed the toilet in a blinding haze of post-party rapture. Just a need for a couple Alkaseltzers, and I was good to go.

These days, I rarely get to go anywhere without AT LEAST one to two of three kids in tow. I don't get "mommy time" even while I sit my ass on the toilet! Plus, if I drink, it's ONE beer. And that is AFTER the kids are asleep. My hair now has more gray in it than a bird has feathers. My sanity is only now somewhat in tact...It doesn't help that the creatures I call my children are still on Summer Vacation.

But that changes in THREE WEEKS! Yes, I am actually counting down the weeks. And that last week, I'm gonna be counting down the days, as to remind the kiddies that I will regain my sanity the moment that I shove them under...er, I mean shove them ON TO the school bus.

Ah! What a life!! Both pre-kid, and today. I wouldn't trade them for anything. But I do miss my old, pre-kid life of pure independence.

Hair, sleeping, and timing. It's all relevant.

How many times have you said to yourself that you are mad at YOU, because you had that rare chance to sleep in? Try having that conversation with yourself every stinking weekend!

Yep. Try as I may, I can never really (for the most part) sleep past 6:30 in the morning. Why?

Because (now) three out of seven days a week (used to be five out of seven), I was used to having my husband get up at 5:30 every work day to be on the clock at six. Hence, I would go back off to Dreamland, only to wake an hour later (okay, forty-five minutes...geez!).

Now his hours have changed and I'm scared to think that between his new, wacky schedule, and the kids that THINK that they run the roost, that I may end up pulling my (now even more gray) hair out. Now it's three days a week, be there at six. One day a week, at FOUR IN THE MORNING! And one day a week, it's the 1:30 to ten at night shift.

Speaking of grays. I have harbored new ill-willed feelings towards my hair. Folks, I am only thirty-three Yes! Thirty-three. And already, I have the hair color of a fifty-something. And these stupid, gray strands have finally brought upon me, the death match battle where my coloring it is concerned.

Now even the promise of 100% resistant gray coverage via my bottle of Nice N' Easy (**No commercializing, profiting, advertising is intended**) in  one of their Red shades is doing the trick, anymore.

Sadly, my once gray-free hair (before a second marriage and three kids) is being savagely over-ran with those gray "old-people-maker" warriors. And they are, I'm sorry to announce, winning the fight.

But!!!...Yes, there is a 'but' in this whole mess (besides my own butt)...I will not give up the fight for luxurious, gray-free, red (of some shade or another), multi-highlighted (three shade highlight formula coloring) hair. I will (one day) prevail and take a part of my youth back.

Other that all of that, it's been a pretty good week. And I hope that I have given you a few good chuckles to end out your week. Especially if this one has not been the kindest to you.

Until next time... Oh and if you are in to the Paranormal, ghosts, and hauntings, please feel free to also visit me at my NEW blog page, http://paranormel.blogspot.com/. So far, there is only one entry. But, soon  to be two, being that after this post is entered, I shall be writing in ParanorMel.

Have a great weekend, everyone!