Madness of Time

Life has gotten crazy.

 

 

CRAZY!

Crazy busy, crazy stories, crazy people and crazy times. Sound fun? Not really.

 

I’ll start with the biggest time consumer of them all…. baseball.

Mr T and I are highly involved in the boy’s baseball seasons and have been every year. This year, it’s not only our boy’s teams that are consuming our time. Mr T is helping to coach 12′s team and is also a division rep for the Tball and rookie divisions. On top of our own boy’s practices and meetings, he has to handle all the crap that comes from those two divisions and has to make an appearance at some of their practices and games. Being on the board sucks ass.

To add insult to injury, we are both submitting the uniform orders for the entire league. I’m over it.

17 plays on a senior division team, 12 plays on a majors division team, but was also drafted to play for a team that represents our entire league in competition play.

2 boys, 3 teams = 7 days of baseball.Ugh.

So while our entire week, all 7 days, have been completely consumed by little league baseball, some board members don’t do their jobs. This ends up creating more work for everyone else, primarily us. Example? Tonight 12 has practice. Practices have been running about 3 hours lately. While I would love to be watching him play, I will be helping Mr T pick up the league’s uniform orders and spending HOURS going through EVERY FUCKING BOX to make sure the order is right.

Can you say HELL date night? 

I have to say that I genuinely am sick and tired of lazy people who like their name to be listed as a board member but lack the actual concern for our boys to step up and do something for someone other than themselves.

Phew!

So now that I’m done with that rant, I’ll fill you in on the rest of what’s adding to my inner crazy at the moment. 17 had a week of High School Proficiency testing that caused an uproar in our scheduling. 13 will be a Freshman in high school next year and had to pick her electives yesterday. I totally had a mental freak when I realized how old I am she is getting. Not only that, but she is starting to grow and has outgrown the shoes, socks and jeans we just bought her. OVER IT!  

I think it’s best if all of my kids stop growing and stay as they are right now….. grocery bills, electric bills, baseball, no free time…..Ok….nevermind. I’m buying them all luggage for Christmas.

AND

last but certainly not least…..

13 and I are taking a cake decorating class with my mother-in-law on Sunday afternoons. My mother-in-law needed something to do to get her out of the house but doesn’t like doing things on her own so she asked if we would go with her. I agreed to do this class for a few reasons, but most of all I thought it would give us some time to ourselves. I have spent more time with my mother-in-law in the past couple of months than I have since we met and I enjoy spending time with her so it’s been a lot of fun. Even though the “quality time” has been nice, there are some other parts that aren’t so nice.

Let me explain…

While I understand that there are some people out there who have no clue how to put icing on a cake, I am not one of them. I made 13′s birthday cake last June which fed a million and a half little hoodlums.

See? Not too shabby, right? I have learned a dew little tricks that i didn’t know before that would have saved me a shit ton of time. For that I am grateful.

We started this class thinking it was going to be all butterflies and unicorns that SHIT butterflies but, not so much. Did you know they assign homework? IT’S TRUE! So in the two minutes I have free (in between taking a fucking piss and pressing the brew button for my coffee), I have had to somehow manage to find the time to bake cakes, make icing from scratch, tint icing and pre-bag them. The cost of this class is now averaging about $100 a week just in supplies and I’ve had to reorganize my kitchen and get rid of a bunch of shit (stuff I didn’t use anyways) to make room for the cake turntables, cake boards, cake lifters, cake cutter, icing colors, icing bags, my ginormous decorator’s tip assortment, icing spatulas and TONS of other shit that I never knew existed.

While I bitch about the lack of time I have, I now have another monster taking over….. and this week? Cupcakes! This last Sunday we came home with our very first completely decorated cake that we finished in class. 13 and I tag teamed this cake. So, what is it?

Double layer Gluten Free (of course) chocolate cake with butterscotch filling and chocolate buttercream icing.

The entire cake was almost gone is less than 24 hours. I had 3 pieces all by myself.  I am blaming it all on the kids. I’ve decided that this class is probably bad for my their health. 

There are many other things that are pulling me in a million directions, so I will try my best to not disappear into this madness of time consumption.

Have a great week!

Spoon of Sugar (23)

……. picking up from “Turning Red (22)” in the posts on My Journey Here

My dad came home from work late that night. Karen was already in bed and I hoped she was sleeping. I layed in bed awake until I heard the side door of the house shut and the sound of my dad’s shoes across the tile of our kitchen. I had layed awake waiting for him to come home but I never thought about what I was going to say. 

I waited until it sounded as if my dad had settled in the living room and then slowly creeped to my bedroom door. I peered out and down the hall to make sure the coast was clear. From the shadows it appeared like my dad was eating at the kitchen counter. Maybe I needed a drink of water.

I made my way to the kitchen where I found my dad eating leftover spaghetti and meatballs. 

He jumped. “You scared me. What are you doing up?”

“I’m thirsty”

He made a face as I reached for a cup. “You okay? Something wrong?”

“My bible is missing.”

“You’re what?” He pretended not to hear me and I instantly knew he was already aware.

“My bible. The one that my mom sent me. It’s missing. I’ve looked everywhere.”

“Oh. And you’re sure you didn’t take it somewhere?” he asked me without any sense of concern.

“It was on my bookshelf. I’ve only taken it off a few times and I put it right back.”

“Well, if you’ve only taken it out a few times, it obviously isn’t that important,” he said with some sarcasm.

I sat my cup in the sink and said, “it IS important”.

I started to walk away and he said, “you know, you really need to keep better track of your stuff”.

As I walked back down the hall to my room I said, “funny. That’s what Karen said too”.

“What was that?” he asked.

I didn’t respond. He heard me. I said it loud enough to make sure that he did. I realized that night that the only one who cared about how I felt or what I needed was me. I obviously needed to be more careful with things that I felt were important. Nothing was safe here. I couldn’t trust anyone.

The next morning I woke up to my alarm going off with faint sounds of arguing coming from the kitchen. This was odd, I was usually alone. My dad and Karen had obviously been arguing for quite some time. Karen still hadn’t gotten ready for the day and my dad was already late for work. He stormed out of the side door and backed his car out of the driveway just as I made my way to the kitchen for some cereal. I sat in silence eating as Karen hurried through the house. As I rinsed my bowl the hiccups began. 

Hiccups.

Who knew that the spasms of one’s diaphragm could set off such a series of unfortunate events?

These weren’t just any ole hiccups. These were the kind of painful hiccups that cause you to convulse, the ones that make you lose your breath and beg for mercy. I’d had these before once, when I had gotten really upset. It was horrible. I couldn’t go to school like this. I couldn’t even breathe. The agony made me do something I’d later regret. I asked Karen for help.

She didn’t know of anything that could cure hiccups, but she shared something her mom use to do. A spoonful of sugar not only helps the medicine go down, but it also helps to ease the pain of hiccups. At least that’s what Karen claimed. She got the heavy sugar canister off the top of the refrigerator and set it on the kitchen counter. I got out a tablespoon and swallowed the sugar. I sat in agony for what seemed like forever, but then the hiccups started to fade. Whether the sugar helped or not didn’t matter, I thought it did. What happened if they came back while I was in school? Karen already had the answer to that. She took a tablespoon of sugar and poured it into a baggy for me. She slid the baggy of sugar into the outside pocket of my backpack. If the hiccups came back while I was at school, I’d be set.

 

School was rather uneventful for most of the morning and by the time we were working on math I had completely forgotten all about my horrible hiccups. But just before the bell rang for recess, they started up again. My hiccups were so loud that the boy sitting next to me looked over and giggled. The bell rang, I reached down in my backpack, grabbed my baggy of sugar and headed out of the classroom door.

With the baggy in hand I headed down the hall. A few of my friends stopped me to ask if I wanted to play basketball. I told them I would but I had to stop in the bathroom first. They shot me some strange looks and ran off. When I got in the bathroom I unloaded the entire baggy of sugar into my mouth, made sure I didn’t have any on my face and shoved the baggy into my pocket. I got a drink from the water fountain and waited for my hiccups to subside, but by the time that happened recess was over.

About halfway through History my teacher’s telephone rang. She sat there talking for a few moments and kept looking in my direction. It was making me uncomfortable. Not only was she looking at me, but the other kids in my class had noticed it too. After hanging up she motioned to me. I walked to her desk and she told me I was needed in the principal’s office. She handed me a hall pass and sent me on my way. As I passed by my desk she said “you might want to take your stuff with you”. That was never a good sign and everyone knew it. The whole class stared at me as I grabbed my things and made my way out of the classroom.

I walked into the front office and handed my hall pass to the school secretary. She told me to take a seat and that my parent’s were on their way.

They are? What for?

The door to the principal’s office was cracked open and I could see a sliver of her sitting at her desk. She looked upset. She finished up a phone conversation and glanced over to see me sitting outside her door. She got up and walked over.

She shut her door.