Maiden, Mother, Crone talk

As I've mentioned here, Aaron and I have been going to a weekly Pagan discussion group dubbed "Tea and Talks". This past Tuesday, there was much talk of the three phases in a woman's life, The Maiden, Mother and Crone. There are two women in the group who really should be in the Maiden phase, still, but somehow got their way into the Mother phase prematurely, and it's sucking a lot of life out of them.

While listening to this, I realized that I got into the start of the Mother phase much earlier than it seems. It was pretty obvious when I decided to marry a man who already had two children. However, I was sort of my brother's mom in high school already, because of my parents' work schedules. Thankfully, my bro and I have always been close because of this.

In those days, I remember being told on a regular basis that I would make a good mother someday. The thing is, I was already on my way. I was the one people would go to for advice, if they dared getting caught talking to me at school. I was the one making sure my brother had his homework done and helped with the dishes on occasion. Even my senior year of high school, I had a boyfriend who was two years younger than me. At that stage in the game, it was a big difference. It just seemed to be there so early.

Now, it's so apparent that I'm in fully mommy mode. But I realized that I'm still not willing to give up a part of the Maiden life. I think I got a little hosed out of the Maiden life that I should have had. I think I feel a bit ashamed of that. I'm not proud of it, at least. I mean, I'm married with a kid, the whole Mother thing is what I'm supposed to be doing, right?

That said, a new issue has come up in the household. Aaron's parents has been encouraging him to go back to school for a Pharmacy Technician, which would take about a year. Yesterday he attended a seminar to get more info. At first, I felt very weird about it, and couldn't pinpoint why. Last night, I figured it out; I'm jealous because I've had plans to go back to school for years, but wanted to wait until Autumn was in pre-school so figureing out her care would be less of a problem. It seemed to be the right plan. And now this thing comes up out of the blue and Aaron gets to jump ahead of me?

Well, the negativity has subsided. Aaron and I talked it out last night and we both came out of it very positively. However, his mom is not quite seeing it this way. She called him tonight while I was at work. He tried to explain how I was feeling, but then also tried to explain that we've settled on the idea that this is a good thing. The last time I was talking about this whole thing in front of Aaron's parents, I was still very leary, and that's all his mom knows. In a nutshell, Aaron tried to defend how I was feeling and logically explain where we now stand, and she wouldn't hear it. So to the point that she kept talking no matter how hard he tried to stop her.

I just keep getting the feeling that Aaron's parents, his mom at least, are starting to see me as another Samantha-Aaron's ex wife. In a nutshell, he was a doormat in that marriage and was borderline verbally abused. Yes, I have the "leader" personality in this marriage, he and I will agree to this. But Aaron is allowed a say in what goes on under this roof. He is allowed to make his own decisions. If anything, I'm the one who is always saying "I'm thinking about doing ____, what do you think?" I'm very frustrated that they don't seem to see the difference between a leader and a pushover. And I've been the pushover before, and it's been pointed out to me on many occasions.

I really don't want there to be a rift between Aaron's family and this home. There was one during his first marriage, and it's not fair to let that happen again. By and large, I love his family. They've been super supportive through every bit of crap we've been through. And they're fun to boot. I just hope this is resolved peacefully.

Goin' back to high school

Yeah, so I botched the "blog every day in April" plan. Arrest me.

Last night I went to go see Oostburg HS's production of Midsummer Night's Dream - the school I graduated from doing a show I was in my junior year. I must say I was very impressed with the talent, especially for a high school production. Although it was weird going back and seeing that the school finally did some remodeling. Much of the parts of the school were there when my dad attended, and you could tell. Because heaven knows the basketball team couldn't go THREE YEARS in a row with the same uniforms!

In other news, Autumn got a minor ear infection. We caught it pretty early, so we dealt with a fever for one day, a poor appetite for two days, and that's about it. She's a tough cookie, we all knew she'd take it in stride. And we know how fortunate we are in that she's 15 months old and just now getting her first one. It's nice to know we're doing something right. :)

We had the boys over this weekend, in fact they and Aaron just left to get dropped off at church. It's been tough dealing with them lately-particularly Michael. Firstly, it's pretty apparent that Michael's gaining weight again, and not in the "normal growing boy" way. It's also pretty apparent that he's getting lazier, and quite frankly, more selfish. We just got report cards, and this behavior is affecting his school work. I know, kids his age want the world to revolve around them, I get it. But Michael simply doesn't seem to understand that there are other people in the room with him, and they're not going to be focused on him 24/7.

Both of the boys have taken on this need to be Autumn's shadow in everything she does, to the point where they're tattling on her with every little thing she does, and most of the time she's not doing anything of any concern. On the other side of the coin, when we need them to keep an eye on her, the TV becomes the primary focus. It's just a very frustrating situation. I love those boys, but there days when it's hard to like them.

That's all for now. I've gotta get ready for work.

Uneventful

Worked both jobs today. Nothing to write home about on either end.

In between, Autumn and I ran a bunch of errands together. She was a total rock star, as usual. Her illness is getting much better, and she's sleeping like a rock (yay!) Some of the errands included getting the paperwork for Midsummer Fest copied. It's actually feeling real now, which is weird.

Tomorrow Autumn and I have swim class. Then the three of us are heading out of town again. Hopefully we'll be meeting up with my sister in Oshkosh for a few minutes, as I still owe her a t-shirt that she ordered during last year's Earthfest. Oy.

Off to bed in a few. I'm soo looking forward to tomorrow :)

A surprise visit to the parents...

We originally didn't have any Easter plans today. Then my mom called around 11am to let us know that she was cooking a ham and my brother was coming over any minute. So we quickly changed out of our PJs to head out to Gibbsville. It was a wonderful visit, including a family tradition of what is called "egg ticking". Basically, each person gets an Easter egg, and we take turns trying to crack the other person's egg with our own. You get two cracks on your egg before you're out. Last one standing wins. My mom's family has been doing this for as long as I can remember. The first year Aaron was included in this tradition, he won...a can of peaches. (we always come up with cheezy prizes). That can sat several years in our pantry until it finally started leaking.

I had to work tonight, and it was way busier than anyone had expected. I came out with much more money than I had planned, so I'll take it.

Registration for Midsummer Fest is now open. I've finalized all my paperwork and will be getting copies put together tomorrow. The whole thing is finally starting to sink in. Thank gods I've got a great team on my side.

Time for bed, in a few...

Losing my voice... thankfully I can still type

Today was a good day. Long and exhausting, but good.

Like I mentioned yesterday, I had a meeting in Milwaukee for work. I drove down with three other women, and long story short, we had an absolute blast. I would have been exhausted, as I only got 4 hours of sleep (Autumn woke up with a messy and painful diaper), but it was so beautifully sunny out, it kept spirits up.

We then made it to the Earthfest fundraiser at EBCO, which I really enjoyed. Aaron and Autumn got a bit bored early on. The people who would have eventually showed up that Aaron knew were not there, and I was chatting with my sister and a close friend. Autumn was in need of a nap, so I sent the two home while I hung out at the event.

Aaron and Autumn picked me up to head to his parents' house to celebrate his birthday. It was a very enjoyable time. We had Kevins world-famous in the Covey home spaghetti. It was just a very nice time. We really haven't had a lot of time spent with his family.

Some other bs happened later in the night, but it's minor, I'm over it, and I don't want to end on a down note.

I'm hoping that my sister might stop by for a bit tonight, as I invited her over, and she's crashing at a friend's house that only lives a few blocks away. It's getting a bit late, and I haven't heard from her, so I'm guessing that's not going to happen, but that's OK. I got some wonderful time in with her today.

I'm friggin' tired. I'm also technically sick, although I don't feel it unless I try talking. I don't have to work until 5 tomorrow night, since the Hut doesn't open till 4 for Easter. We don't have any plans for Easter, with my mom working and such, but that's ok. Sometimes doing nothing is the best way to spend a holiday, even if it's a holiday I don't really practice. Meh, I'll take a day "mostly" off to spend with my family. It's all good.

Bloggedy blog blog

Had to work tonight. No biggie. I made some decent money, so that's cool. I didn't have to stay till 3 again. Still cool. Tomorrow I have to drive down to Milwaukee with a couple co-workers for a mandatory meeting. Not cool, but meh.

The rest of the day was so-so. I hit Zumba class, while Autumn hung out in day care. She's definitely a lot more vulnerable about the fact that I'm leaving. Up until about two weeks ago, it never really bothered her. It's so heartbreaking, but she's gotta learn I guess.

I managed a nap in the middle of the day. I don't know if it really helped, but it felt good. I do kinda feel band because I took the majority of my nap while Autumn was awake, and Aaron was trying to get laundry done. The poor girl has been dealing with some tummy troubles, and as a result, has some horrible diaper rash. We've been doing what we can to calm it down, but to no avail today. She's so heartbreaking when you have to wipe her bottom, and she cries out because it's hurting her. I hope it's better tomorrow.

Tomorrow's gonna be nuts. I have the meeting in the morning. Then from 2-10 will be an Earthfest fundraiser in town. At 4 we're meeting up at Aaron's parents' place for his birthday, which was Tuesday. I definitely want to make it to the fundraiser, as many people I know and don't see often will be there, and by proxy, they haven't seen Autumn in ages. We'll se how it goes.

I was feeling pretty productive today. I talked with a friend who, in short, could produce a whole setup for the children's stage at Earthfest. It would pretty much wrap up the better part of the work that I needed to do for the Kids Korner. Yay!

I got some other needed things done today as well. Woot.

I then headed to work as a server, and we got fairly busy. I made a fair amount of money in the process. I wasn't planning on going out after work, money situations being what they are, but I broke that plan and went out with mom.

Due to a brief situation in between, I got into a bit of a funk. I'm not going into it, because I haven't gotten out of it. I gotta go to bed now.

Just a quickie before midnight

Not a lot to post about today. We were thinking about getting out of town today. I was looking up various metaphysical shops in the Milwauke or Oshkosh area. There was one in Oshkosh that peaked my interest. We were going to just go there, but something told me to try calling the place. (We found the year-old listing on Witchvox, a popular Pagan website.) The phone number had been disconnected. I looked up the shop name on yellowpages.com, and the name of the place was not listed there.

On top of things, just as we were going to head out, Autumn got very upset and inconsolable. This is not normal for her. We figured she was very tired, and it would have been time for her to take a nap typically. The two strange things happening at once just told me today was not the day to make a road trip.

Autumn napped for 3 hours. She still has cold symptoms, so lots of rest is the best thing we can give her at this point. Aaron and I had fun having a nice lunch and playing Wii while she slept. We got out of the house and did a little shopping in town for some needed things, plus a few extra things that will be used for Earthfest and Midsummer Fest. Autumn was a total rock star for all of it.

I worked tonight. Nothing major to write about except for the fact that we had a lot of later orders, which got us out a lot later than we would have liked. It happens, no biggie.

OK, so this wasn't as quick as I'd thought. Meh.

An excess of exes

I just got off the phone with Samantha, Aaron's ex wife. I'm not thrilled with this fact, but I probably got further in the conversation than Aaron would have, so there it is.

Darren is in Boy Scouts. Full-fledged Boy Scouts, as he has just recently "graduated" from Cub Scouts. Now, the fact of the matter is that he is going to have a lot of events for scouts in the months/years to come, many of which are on Saturdays, when the boys are either visiting with Aaron and myself or Aaron's parents. Of course, we totally support the boys' involvement with scouts. However, it's very difficult when the few days we get with the boys are already planned for us.

Basically, my work schedule is not very accommodating. I work every Friday nite, ending anywhere from 1 to 3am. (Mercifully 3am is a rare thing, even though it was the case last week.) Darren has an event the next weekend they are here at 8am. Long story short, Samantha thinks Aaron should pack up all three of the kids just to bring Darren to this if I want to sleep. I'm just going to get up and take a nap later in the day. My call to her tonight was to let her know that we'd make the schedule work, but it would be nice to have a "plan B" available, since my job schedule could easily change and I need the van to do so. Her response was basically, whenever she needs to get only one kid somewhere, she hauls the other around no matter what. Supposedly she understands the difficulty of adding a toddler to the mix. Oddly enough, Aaron's parents were the primary caretakers of the boys when Michael was Autumn's age. We're at an impasse, which happens often. At least she let me finish all of my sentences. Aaron didn't even get that during the first conversation with her.

And in other news, Midsummer Fest plans continue. I didn't really make any great strides, other than that I got to talk to a couple people at our Pagan discussion group tonight.

I really spent a lot of time on the Wii today, and playing with Autumn. Today was Aaron's birthday, and I made chicken parmesan for his birthday meal.

Autumn's tummy troubles and coughing continued today, but both are definitely getting better. You wouldn't know that she's sick at all by the way she acts. She's still her smiling, hugging self.

I'm really hoping I can purge myself of this phone conversation. The rest of my day totally rocked, and I want to focus more on that. That's tough when American Idol is playing in the background! (sarcasm, sarcasm...sort of.)

Plugging Away

Today I had off of work most of the day, say for an hour and a half first thing in the morning with a Home Instead client. I have off again tomorrow, and it's an odd feeling, I must say.

Midsummer Fest plans are chugging along. I've gotten the Myspace put together, I've put up and event listing on Witchvox (probably the most popular Pagan website in the world). I've also joined a few Yahoo groups and posted some plugs in them all. I've already received a few wonderful responses from group memebers. It's been a productive day, but I'm not thrilled about spending so much time in front of the computer. I can't wait until this part is pretty much wrapped up and I can get to the actual planning that involves sitting and talking with physical people.

Aaron and I watched the Princess Bride, so I guess I got away from the computer for a little while tonight. Autumn and I went shopping for a bit today, as well. She's still a bit under the weather, but she won't tell you that. Slowly, she's getting better, thankfully. Tomorrow we're hitting swimming class at the Y. I so love doing that with Autumn.

Lately, Autumn has taken to giving out hugs like candy on Halloween. It's heart-melting for anyone with a heart. She is so full of love, I can't even begin to describe it fully. I'm so proud to be her mommy.

Well, I'm done on the computer for tonight, and this time I mean it! :)

God supports terrorists, in theory.

Today was a little messed up at work. OK, it was borderline chaotic. What's interesting is that the customers who were crabby, were REALLY crabby, and those that were nice, were super-nice. I'm not going to go into any stories about the various d-bag customers, though. Just your garden variety complaints and stupidity.

However, I saw something interesting on one delivery. There was one gas station in town that I drove past where cars were lining up out onto the road to pump gas. At first I couldn't figure out why. Then I saw a woman, close to my age, standing on the corner holding a sign that read "35 cents off per gallon/ Sharing God's <3 (heart/love?)" Now, most normal people would have seen this and thought, "Aww, what a nice service to the community." Nope, not me. My first thought was, "Your God's love is helping support terrorists in the Middle East, Jackass!" (Yeah, I know it's way more complicated than that. I am a liberal, after all.) Talk amongst yourselves.

I'm a bit pooped out, again. I hauled ass at work today, but it's all good. With all the weirdness, the extra effort was very needed, and I feel good about what I got done. Now I'm going to watch the top 20 80's One-Hit-Wonders. Huzzah.

Pooped

Autumn is still sick today. Her wheezing from the other day has gone away, but I think she's got tummy troubles and she's still got a nasty cough. I slept for crap last night. After getting home at 3am, Autumn decided it was time to be up at 6. Aaron got up with her, but he hadn't slept much either. She didn't have napping on her agenda for most of the morning, despite all the tiredness signs she gave us. Once we finally got past the napping issue, the rest of the day went pretty well.

We have the boys this weekend, and we stayed in. Yeah, it was nice out, but let's face it, we're broke. We played the Wii a lot together, colored eggs, then had a nice sit-down supper together. My brother joined us for supper, then we played the Wii some more. Aaron apologized to the boys about being cooped up in the house all day, and Darren gave the best response we could have asked for; He was just happy that we got to spend so much time together. Man, I love that kid.

I'm very much hoping Autumn sleeps well tonight. She's already woken up once, about an hour and a half after being laid down. I'd like to think it will be an early night, but it's pushing 10:30 already. I don't see it happening. I almost went out for karaoke tonight, but I'm glad I didn't.

It's back to work tomorrow, with a potential snowstorm heading our way. (Or at least that's the last I heard...yesterday). Whatever we get, I hope it gets people to stay home and order delivered pizza. Oh, and I hope they're somehow encouraged to tip their driver, too.

Until tomorrow.

Blech.

I just got home from work. It's 3:00 am, but for me, it's still Friday night, so I think it still counts. I've been up since 6:00am, so that totally blows. Didn't have the greatest night, but I really don't feel like talking about it. I feel like getting into my pj's and heading to bed. I'm gonna do that now.

Beefy and the Beefettes

So I may or may not be completely of a sound mind right now. You know, beer and stuff.

Tonight I had to work. Decent customers, so-so co-workers. Whatever.

The good part of the night was the karaoke-induced drinking, or perhaps the drinking-induced karaoke that ensued afterwards.

WHY IS SETH ROGAN EVERYWHERE???? Apparently he's on Jimmy Fallon tonight, but I digress. (Well, not litterally ON, but whatever.)

So there's this guy at karaoke who calls himself "Beefy", and he did the song 'Enormous Penis' by DaVinci's Notebook. There were two gals that I know from bowling doing, shall we say, back-up dancing with the song. Hence the title Beefy and the Beefettes. It's the biggest laugh I've gotten all night (and the title was my mom's creation. Bless her.)

I had to take Autumn to the walk-in clinic today. She started coughing a lot this morning, and it sounded just awful. I'd never heard this type of cough from her before, so I figured better safe than sorry. Thankfully, it's just some swollen vocal cords, and we've got some medicine that she only has to take today and tomorrow. No biggie, she's good with taking medicine. And she's still in very goods spirits.

Thats in tonight. As Aaron told me to type: K-Boom C Ya ZZZZZZZ 8====D (don't ask.)

Captain's Blog, Star date April Foolishness 20000969

So, I'm cutting this down to the wire, for getting my first blog of April in. Meh.

Autumn's been under the weather, but it sounds like a throat thing she had a couple weeks ago, so we're not too worried. We're just keeping her in the house and cranking out the fluids for her.

Today I had to work, which I was totally dreading. The manager I had to close with just had her grandmother and dog pass away in the past couple days. Now, typically, I'd be totally sympathetic and gentle about all of this. However, this woman seems to thrive on drama - whether it really is there or not - and frankly, grandma has been of ill health for years now. In fact, there was a bit of a joke going around that grandma has actually been dead since the 80's. On the contrary, she was in good spirits last night. It was the total opposite of what I was expecting. Neat.

That's all for now. Until tomorrow...