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Wednesday, October 01, 2003

irritations and joys

In the "life's little irritations" category for today:

• Paying $43 for checks. Really, it's disgusting that it can cost that much for four boxes of freaking checks. You'd think they were printed on Van Gogh canvases or something. And I am a total sucker for every one of their shifty-eyed merchandising schemes also -- first I fall for the really cheap initial offering, and then I stay with that company rather than go for another cheap initial offering because it is SO much easier, since they have all my information already. And when I get all the way through checkout and on the last page they reveal that their handling cost is $9.00, I balk at first but then cave because I've come so far. And I spend 45 minutes dallying and trying to decide whether to go with the old comfortable patriotic-themed checks or to branch out into something new. sigh.
  
• Going to my favorite restaurant, with my parents and my two children, and waiting an hour and a half for our food. We were the first people in the restaurant when they opened for dinner, and yet half a dozen tables had paid and left by the time we finally got our food. We were so full from appetizers that I asked the waitress to go ahead and package our food to go, since an hour and a half is about the outside limit of a 4-year-old's (*sob*, that's the first time I've had to type that, no more 3-year-old) good-restaurant-behavior anyway.
  
• Being so totally uncomfortable from eating appetizers, salad, and soup that I could hardly sit down. Stepping on the scale and seeing that I had apparently gained seven pounds since getting up this morning. What the heck is up with that, I know I didn't eat that much. It makes me think I can't believe anything that scale says. And trust is a very important element in the relationship between a woman and her bathroom scale. I feel so - so betrayed.
  

To balance that, here are some parts of today that made life bliss.

• Singing "Happy Birthday" about a dozen times.
  
• Realizing that this girl's whole life for the past four days has basically been one long birthday celebration, and that it's not over yet.
  
• Speaking on the phone three times to my absent-but-adored husband, instead of the usual one stolen-time-at-11-pm fire overtime phone call.
  
• Feeling that teenagerish heart-leaping feeling when I hear the voice of the man I've been married to for almost ten years (can you tell I'm trying to make the best of a bad situation here?)
  
• Contemplating all day, and especially around 9:00 at night, what I was doing four years ago at that moment. My daughter's surgical birth was not a happy incident at its face value, but it was a momentous day even if it wasn't a lot of fun. And I never realized until my children began having birthdays, how much a birthday means to the person's mother. Now I always give my mom a special hug on my birthday as well.
  
• That startling moment of satisfaction when I step onto the porch or into the living room and see how clean it is (see, raving optimist that I am, I can even find something to be glad about in my FIL's panic-inducing visit)
  
• C's horse obsession. It is such fun watching my little mini-me enjoy the same things I did at her age.
  

And now it's time for me to carry my sleeping 4-year-old to her bed, and go read a chapter of The Silver Chair to LT (and my dad via audiocassette) before collapsing in sleep. :)

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