The past few days have been blissfully uneventful. Its still too early to freak out about Christmas presents. We don’t even have our tree up yet. Its a nice little calm before the storm.

I’ve been searching the past week to find a seasonal waitress job to pick up some extra cash. So far, I haven’t had a ton of luck. Now, I need to try my next tactic: eagerly bug the people I want to work for to hire me. This usually works because most restuarant folk are way to busy to ponder who they want to hire for hours upon hours.

Other than that, I’m looking forward to a slow weekend of being to broke to hire a babysitter and being forced (not that its entirely a bad thing) to stay at home this weekend.

The next weekends will not be so peaceful.

I have not mastered this.

When work is slow I freak out.

I worry that I’m a total waste of space and a slacker. I feel this big need to move around boxes or do physical labor to prove I’m a good work horse.

The temp for the receptionist just took over the one job I had for myself today. She was bored to tears too. Now I need to find something else to make me look impressive or at least like I’m working.

I think I’ve read the entire Internet. Or at least all the spots that won’t tag me with Spy ware.

Someone in corporate America is paying premium dollars for me to sit hear and drink coffee. I wonder if I should dust or something….

Click on the link above to play this game, that actually helps feed people. I read about it on Snopes.com. Plus, its fun.

Thanksgiving recipe for migraine: 

Two toddlers (15 months and 17 months)

One huge, non-baby-proofed house filled with antiques and nick-knacks.

One fussy, great aunt who has never had children

One great uncle who likes to use the term “wet back” to describe people of Mexican heritage. (The same heritage as one great nephew.)

Four days of cold, wet, grey Chicago weather.

Two high chairs in a formal dining room setting.

Two huge packed jets with no leg room.

Four boring toys

Three books

One ear ache

Two blow out diapers in transit

Mix until stir crazy, bake in an over-heated house. Add family tension and years of fermented dislike.

Enjoy!

I have never been so thankful to be back home as I was on Sunday. Even though we spent all day Monday with a son with a touch of stomach flu and a bad ear infection. Being home was so worth it. I guess that’s where the phrase “There is no place like home for the holidays.” What you don’t realize is that it refers to your own home, not the place you were raised.

On the plus side, the turkey was wonderful and I drank a ton of damn, fine coffee.

My son is one of the few kids in his daycare class who cries when we drop him off. The teachers say it’s only for two minutes, but it stresses me out. It’s hard for me to imagine that he has a fun time at daycare when all I see when I leave is him running for the door and all I hear is his cries as I turn the corner.

Because they won’t put a web cam in the room that I can check every hour, I decided to do a little experiment to see if he really did stop crying. I left the classroom and then went to use the teacher’s lavatory. I figured if it was true, then he’d be playing nicely when I was through.

On the wall near the toilet was a story. You may have heard this before, but I have not.

A speaker asked the crowd, “How much does a glass of water weight?”
The crowd gave various responses.
“It doesn’t matter how much the glass of water weights,” she said. “What matters is how long you hold it.”
“If I hold a glass for an hour my arm will cramp. If I hold it for a day, I might end up in the hospital.”

She went on to compare a glass of water to stress. We need to put it down every once in a while or it gets harder and harder to hold. (Hopefully, the teachers put their stress down when they went to the bathroom!)

It also had some funny sayings such as “Some days you’re the pigeon, some days you’re the statue.” And my favorite on the sign was “If you lend someone $20 and you never see them again, it was probably a good deal.” Ha!

It was a nice reminder to me to release the stress of the season. I haven’t exactly figured out why, but the holidays seem to heighten all your senses, included the sense of stress. So as the story said, “My friend, when you go home, put down your stress. You can pick it up again later, but remember to put it down from time to time.”

When I left the bathroom, I peeked in the classroom. There was my son, tear-free and toddling around with his buddies.

And that’s where I put that stress down…and I left.

Hope you have a great holiday!

A fun fact about turkey consumption from the current National Geographic listing the top turkey eaters in the world. 

Pounds eaten, per capita, annually:
   
  1.  Israel            34.6
  2.  Slovakia      31.3
  3.  USA            16.1
  4.  France        13.7
  5.  Hungary      12.8
  6.  Grenada      12.1
  7.  Dominca      11.2
  7.  Ireland          11.2
  7.  Samoa        11.2

Oddly, most of my relatives end up eating crow on Thanksgiving. Must be the combination of Turkey and beer.

This weekend we had lunch with my husband’s family. Part of the dinner conversation always turns to politics. This time it started with a tawdry tale my father-in-law had read about Rudy Giulliani that made him seem like a mafia leader.

Then it got into public health care (which I’m for, to a degree) and the dwindling middle class.
“Eventually, this country will become a society of haves and have-nots,” my father-in-law bluntly stated.

“That’s not a good place to be in,” I said. “It leads to very bad things, like Military governments and The French Revolution. We need to be willing to give more of our money to programs to keep that from happening.”

“What do you suggest?” he said.

“Well, this may be a pipe dream, but a Capitalist country with more aspects of socialism,” I offered.

“You’re right, that is a pipe dream,” he said.

This is why I don’t debate.

Wal-Mart is offering health care services. It’s a cross between seeing a family doctor and urgent care. It’s is geared to provide a market for those people without health care. I’m torn. Is this a good idea? Should Sam Walton’s posse be filling the need for health care or should our country be subsidizing health care insurance for those who need it? The biggest contradiction in this is that Wal-Mart provides not-so-great health care benefits to their own employees.

I guess I’m not a believer in the mighty power of Capitalism. I don’t think that supply and demand, alone will solve all this countries woes. But to some, that’s just a pipe dream.

“Bmmp bum a bum bmmp.”

My husband looks at me with a sideways glance.

“I’m doing a beat box thing for Zach,” I say. “He likes it.”

“Bmmm boom boom bzzzt.”

Husband arches eyebrows.

“I didn’t say I was good.”

Last night a friend of ours, who we haven’t seen in three years came over to visit with his young son.

Seven years ago we were very close friends with him, and co-workers. He actually, set me up with my husband. He and his wife were at our wedding, and during a career low I was working as a coffee kiosk manager at the hospital in which his son was born. We held his son hours after his birth.

For the past three years we’ve lived pretty darn close to his family, but life just kind of got in the way of things and we lost the frequent contact we use to have with him.

A few weeks ago, my husband heard that he and his wife (who have been together over ten years) we splitting up. She moved out, abruptly, didn’t want to see a councilor, left and filed for divorce. His world was left in crumbles. Only a year ago, they were trying for a second child.

A divorce is like the most tragic of deaths in some ways. It rips apart life emotionally, financially, and once through it, I’m sure you’re never the same again.

Our friend was smart and went to see a councilor despite his wife’s refusal to join him. I can’t praise that enough.

It was wonderful to see him and his son. It felt, as it does with most old friends, as if no time had passed. But I still felt a sadness, the way you may feel when you hear of an acquaintances death. A marriage, over time, becomes so much more than a relationship between two people.

Our friend is going to move away for awhile and get his financial bearings in order, but his wife, still in the area, expressed through him, her interest in remaining friends with us. I thought that was very big of her, and a positive step toward the changes that must unfold once the debris of the divorce is swept away.

It makes me realize how dependent on am on my husband and thankful for his willingness to keep trying at this crazy thing we call our marriage, and our life.