What Pre-Divorce Looks Like at Casa de McClain

You all know I've been torturing Bryon with my new, "I think I'm going to pass on the meat tonight, dear" lately. He's been supportive with a side of sausage for himself. I give him credit. Well, since we had the half marathon last weekend, we didn't get to the commissary, which means we are scrambling for dinner every night, instead of having our trusty two weeks of meal/menu planned out. I make us sick with our organization. Anyway, with me in charge, guess what happened? Guess! You'll never guess. Yes, that's right, I went to the hippie grocery store, vegetarian recipes in hand and got us some yummy, delicious treats that I will surely enjoy. I also got this.

It was actually an accident. I meant to just get a smaller tub of regular sour cream. I texted Bryon when I got home and told him what I got, pre-warning him that in addition to eating meatless Mexican lasagna, he'd be having Tofutti sour cream (what the hell is that?), and his response was, "Love you, sounds good," followed by, "sheltering in place, at FPCON ex Delta." In other words, you could tell me that we are pregnant with an alien spawn and I'm not listening to you. So, I'm eager to see his reaction to said new product. Alas, it was an easy mistake. At these hippie-dippy stores, they put all the organic, and crazy tofu (yum) stuff right next to the real stuff, and it's easy to grab the wrong thing. If you aren't careful, you could accidentally grab a Malawi orphan, as they are right next to the salsa.

Maybe he won't be mad or even like it, if Collin signs a Valentine for him too? What do you think?

Or gives him a ride on the big wheel? I let him take it to the park the other day. Monday to be exact. That was the worst three blocks of my life. Sheer hell. Mommy had to walk bent over, helping him push, because he flat out refuses to pedal, and know what? Mommy's sore leg muscles that just ran 13.1 miles the day before at what was, to her, rocket speed, did NOT want to walk bent over, for three blocks, pushing a 36 pound child. Good thing I love him.

Eh, who knows? Maybe the stuff that claims to be "better than Sour Cream" really will be and I won't need to stay with one of you tonight.

On This Day

Those of you regulars may know that today is an anniversary of sorts (six years now). So, it can't go by without a bit of marking and a bit of soapboxing. Take a moment today, a lot of moments if you can, to remind anyone, everyone that you care about that you do; not for your sake, but because you just never know how much they understand and feel your love and how much they truly need to feel it. It may sound grim but on a dark day in someone's life and in moments of sadness that are so bleak we may not ever understand it, those reminders are what could mean the difference. It's something we can never go back and say when we wish we had. Never, ever underestimate how much you'll wish you had told someone you loved them and wonder if it is those words that might've made the difference before receiving a phone call that they are gone.

So, David here's a list of things I wish I'd said, because I'm sure you stalk my blog and me in your afterlife (yeah, atheists can believe in afterlife if they so choose):

1. I care about you. I love you. I was here. A thousand times. I was here. Here. Here. Right here. Noon. 3 a.m., I was here.

2. I am thankful everyday that the last thing I said to you was, "I'm proud of you;" but sad that I didn't hug you harder and that I didn't say, "and, I love you."

3. I am sorry that I pushed you down on Halloween and forsake your life for my own at that haunted forest thing when the chainsaw guys were after us. When you screamed about you having thought I broke your leg, I should've come back for you. Sorry about that. I'm glad your leg wasn't broken. It wasn't even a flesh wound.

4. I'm sorry that I tricked you into eating that almond that I threw behind your file cabinet after having sucked all the chocolate coating off. That was really gross and also really funny.

5. I'm sorry that I was too prudish in my youth to find it hilarious when you threw a double-ended black dildo at my head. Where did you get that thing? At least my boyfriend thought it was funny.

6. I'm sorry that when you were too drunk to show up on time for my birthday, instead of realizing what was really going on, I was angry at you for three weeks.

7. I'm sorry that when you called me for help one morning, too drunk and sick to help you into the office that I didn't take you to the hospital, to rehab again, something. Instead I listened to your begging and took you to work.

8. I'm sorry that I didn't know better.

9. I'm sorry that once, I bought you Jaeger.

10. I'm sorry that I made fun of your friends. They are good people, even if they had stupid names like Taffi and Bambi (I'm sure they aren't doomed to adult industry jobs, really). I've never met truer and sweeter people, even if it was at a funeral.

11. I'm sorry I didn't learn more from you and I didn't teach you better.

12. I'm sorry I didn't call you every month, week, day, hour after I left for Alabama, then California.

13. I'm sorry that you didn't know the words to AC/DC "Dirty Deeds" and that every time it comes on, I pass on that some idiot I once knew thought it was "dirty deed and the thunder chief," because honestly, how can I not make fun of that forever? That should live on in infamy.

14. I'm sorry that no one but me seems to visit your grave.

15. I'm sorry that I argued with you for months about who sang "Mr. Roboto." Not sure why we didn't just look it up instead of waiting for it to come on that Internet radio thingie. I defer, you were right. And yes, everyone should know that it was, in fact Styx. I'm an idiot.

16. I'm sorry I am such a bad shot with rubber band flicking and that you got hit in the eye way more times than anyone deserved.

17. I'm sorry I cried the time you told me I had fat thighs but other than that, I was pretty skinny. But come on dude, what were you thinking?

18. I'm sorry that half of my thoughts of you now are sad. It's hard to push the balance the other way most of the time.

19. I'm sorry that no one gets how hilarious all of our inside jokes are. I mean, "just calm down, baby" and "stop cow, stop!" That's good stuff. Makes me laugh even now.

20. I'm sorry you are gone. Not a day goes by where I don't think of you and what you could be doing now. I miss you. And in case you forgot from #1, I love you. You were and are my friend and you are gone.

Oh yeah, and thanks for measuring the perfect sample size "M" for the cashmere company we worked for all those years together so that we have so many terrible pictures of you in ridiculously awful colored, yet oh so comfy sweaters, some of which you'd never be caught out in public in, but one of which you were buried in. And thanks for taking your GQ job so seriously that it was funny, despite the fact you knew they were going to cut your head off in all the factory spec shots and only needed your chest. Nerd.

What a (half) Marathon Weekend Looks Like

First, you decide that instead of resting completely and sleeping in (yeah right with an almost three year old, but at least sleeping until "normal" time), you will get up an hour early to take your car in to get the noise it's been making for six months fixed. Heck, maybe the fourth time will be the charm. For such an occasion, you will not shower and you will barely dress yourself. You will not bother to dress your child who will be rolled out of bed and be given a PopTart in the car. Upon arrival home, you will chase him around the house unmercifully tickling him until he falls down in giggles and painful adorableness.

Then, when he learns that instead of additional sugar fuel (PopTarts) he will be given an adequate breakfast, you will be given this reaction. I fear that my decision was right, despite his reaction since they had a popcorn machine at the Nissan dealership and the gate guard gave him a cookie on the way into housing. So, if the boy is going to cry hunger, he's full of it and if he wants food, he's going to get at least something nourishing before 8 a.m. after that bunch of crap.

He got over it. The tickle bonding worked.

Don't you think?

Anyway, after you spend your morning losing 50% of your functioning vehicles and 100% of the vehicles that you can drive if you are Rachel because your husband insists on driving an manual transmission (didn't we invent automatic transmission vehicles in the stone age?), then you wait for Granny and Granddad to show up so you can drive all the way to Huntington Beach to pick up a piece of paper you plan to pin to your shirt at the crack of down the following day so you can find yourself in agony shortly thereafter. Since that eats up a heck of a lot of time and you are thus exhausted already and ready to rest for tomorrow, you let your kid watch a movie. Want to guess what it was? That's right folks, it was, "Cinderella." Kidding. Watching Star Wars without his light saber is like going number two without toilet paper. Just.Not.Done.

Moving us to marathon morning. Since it's about a forty minute drive and the parking lots fill up by 6:30, guess what time we left? Yeah. The race starts at 7:25. Um, yeah. It was about a two-ish mile walk to the start line. Sounds like a good warm up, right? It was NOT a fun cool down. Anyway, I will say that we shaved over a minute per mile off of our expected finish time because we rock. We came in 4699th out of 20K runners at 2:10:56. Hooray for us. This is my favorite picture. Thanks Donna for watching Collin so Bryon didn't have to push the jogging stroller 13.1 miles. Thanks for coming to the race. Thanks for waving your arms like a lunatic so I'd see my son and be able to push that last little bit when I thought I was dying. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. And thanks for the picture of your arm to remind me of it. Oh, and there we are. And there is my face screaming at my son. And here is me noticing that when I run, my legs are weirdly muscular. I didn't know that they looked like that. And there's Bryon literally saying, "Hi mom!"

Here's us torturing our child. Fun, huh? He looks thrilled to be there. I think it must be all the pride he has for us at this moment. It's bursting forth and he can't contain it all. That must be it. It has nothing to do with wanting to get down and play.

Here's us not torturing our child but more importantly, me not torturing you. Want to know what's cropped OUT of this picture? Two very shirtless dudes in what I have deemed way too short running shorts; one of them of the American flag print variety. Ah, the things you see on race day. One girl dressed as a banana and I saw a number of tutus, not a single one on what you would call a petite woman. If you are going to call attention to yourself in something like a tutu, I mean, really? Jumbo tutu? I'm just sayin.

And, my second favorite picture is my dear, sensitive child telling me that I am not, in fact, a superhero and I should remove my cape. Try explaining to your child that you have lost so much sweat in the last two hours that your body has lost the ability to regulate your temperature and that you are literally soaking wet and the cool ocean breeze is chilling you down to your very core and that you are not shivering for his entertainment. Perhaps, since has inherited what I have decided is, in fact, a superhero-like ability to sweat, from me, he will understand this problem in due time. I mean, I sweat folks, seriously sweat when I run. You could ring out my clothes at the half-mile mark.

Eh, he got bored of me anyway. Look, barriers!

Ahhh, showered. Ahhh, the couch. Ahhh, a shirt that I stupidly grabbed the wrong size of and now I essentially paid $90 for a shirt that is too big and can't take back. What was I thinking? A small? Ahhh, do I ever have to get up again?

A Good Morning

Since three mornings a week, the gist is:

*"Collin, if you don't eventually finish your breakfast, I'm going to just have to feed it to the dog" (this, after thirty minutes of him singing to his eggs and breaking his Nutrigrain bar into microscopic pieces to be arranged into neat little rows on his plate)

*"Collin, where are you?" Said, in the sweetest tone possible through gritted teeth because by the ninetieth time, the game is a little old. (in hopes if finding him to dress him/brush his teeth/put his shoes on/smack him around a little (joking of course)/put him in the car/etc/...of course upon his playing "get me" during the morning routine)

*"Collin, open your mouth just a leeeeetle wider please. The toothbrush just does not fit in that way. And wait! WAIT! Don't spit yet! Oh sh-!" (remembering that Mommy is working on not swearing)

*And, "Get IN the car! I don't care that there is a rock over there! IN the car. IN! IN! IN!" Followed closely by my throwing whatever rock/leaf/poisonous berry he found on the thirty minute Odyssey between the front door and the car.

Anyway, I love Friday morning because there is nothing holding us back, baby. As much as I love, love, love having him in preschool and I love his preschool, getting a kid anywhere at a scheduled time on a regular basis can be a challenge (For me too! Have I mentioned how much I abhor packing lunches? Thus, I pack them at the last possible second, like on the way to the car?) and I love the lazy morning on Friday. It makes for some silliness.

Collin caught up on his National Geographic Kids magazine this morning. There is nothing funnier than seeing a kid "read" a magazine, especially when it's his. He calls it his 'pecial magdazine. He makes me read it to him cover to cover the minute it comes. Thanks Granny. Really. He loves it and it's fun to have that time with him, even if it means we don't get dinner that night because EVERYTHING must be dropped to read it, like NOW! He simply does not care if that means we can't prepare a meal. "Order pizza," he says. I'm still trying to figure out where and when that kid got so stinking smart. And, whether or not that is a good thing.

On a lazy morning, I like to make sure I can make the most of things by ensuring I can be appropriately lazy all day: thus slow cooker meal so I don't have to make dinner later. Sure, the four loads of laundry and two doctor appointments don't count as "work," right? Oh, and the vacuuming and dusting, nah. It's still lazy, right? As to not waste the celery about to go bad, I went by the age old rule of slow cooker meals: everything in the fridge will taste good in there so long as it cooks for seven hours. And since my child loves anything with peanut butter on it, I thought I may try to pass another veggie by him and give it a cute name. I called it a crunchy river. He was not fooled.

Vacuuming went something like this:

Me: Collin stay out of the den.

Collin: Why (his new favorite word..anyone else with a preschooler find this annoying?)

Me: Because I said so. I just made the bed, I'm going to vacuum the dog hair off of it and I don't want you in there. (I'm not telling him Granny is coming because I would find him less excitable if I feed him speed.

Collin: Okay.

This is where I found him.

Me: I thought I told you to stay out of here. Are you being a good listener.

Collin: I'm not in here.

Me: Sure looks like you are

Collin: I'm not. You can't see me because I'm hiding.

Me: Says nothing and takes a picture because his logic is too cute not to document.

Once that chore was accomplished, apparently he decided that being in the proximity of a bed gave him bed-head. He wanted to fix his own hair. He got out the squirt bottle and his little brush and went to town. You may ask yourself why his brush is pink. Or, considering it's Collin, you may not. Regardless, it's pink because surprisingly, or perhaps not, the selection of small (read: purse) brushes is fairly limited in color and perhaps most people expect them to be purchased by women and we couldn't find anything but pink in this instance. He was doomed in this case. You may not be shocked to learn that he loves it. He also loved squirting himself in the face.

Me, I love catching him making these goofball grins doing it and noticing that he only squirted one side of his head, over and over and over again.

And, I love walking into a room where he's doing something quiet and discovering that, no the room isn't on fire or destroyed, but that he's doing something totally adorable like this. Nine times out of ten, I luck out this way because I have a pretty good kid but this is pretty funny. My son, the hairdresser.

Oh, and I did eventually dress him, not to fear. I had a doctor appointment to look at my potentially stress fractured ankle at 11, so he was dressed by 10:30. That's not too lazy, right? And true to military doc fashion, he made a snap diagnosis with no testing and barely asking to take my sock off and determined that he thinks I may have arthritis because apparently I'm "old." Yes folks, old. He deciced to qualify the statement with, "but atheletes like you can get arthritic at this age, so it's not uncommon." Grrr. We'll see. X-ray ordered and may push to see a sports guy. Not to worry though, got the Vitamin M. I think we, as military spouses should count how many bottles of that we have stockpiled.

Hurry Up and Pin-On

Daddy needs top pin-on because we need the raise. Not for the crazy preschool tuition but because now I'm pretty sure Collin needs therapy.

I left him alone for all of the time it took to brush my teeth. Well, and to read a novel, get my hair done and take a long hot soak with Calgon. Kidding. I just brushed my teeth. This is clearly the thanks I got. Not only did he choose to raid my closet but he decided to show everyone that before I joined the Air Force, left the Air Force and then, in short order, became a parent, I was once, a hooker. (hard to tell with the Blackberry camera, but I will go ahead and tell you that the spikes on those heels are yes, red patent leather). And, since he wants to do everything Mommy does, he desires nothing more than do follow in my footsteps, including the being a girl bit, clearly. Looks like he needs a little practice walking in heels. I flat out refused to help. He was mad.

Thanks, son. Therapy is awaiting when we can fit it into the budget. You'll just have to wait for the pay raise. No, wait. Damn it! I want a china cabinet! I've sacrificed enough! Wear heels for all I care.

Daddy's a Major Pain

Yes folks that's right, Daddy got on the promotion list....AND the schools list. For those of you who couldn't figure it out from my (non) cryptic post last night. I'm not good at keeping secrets, in case you couldn't guess and so I've avoided talking to anyone I knew, as much as possible for the last two weeks. (BUNCO was rough with you last week Jen..R-O-U-G-H!!). And, now that the release is officially public as of 7 am, I can tell you all.

So, we will alas, sadly, likely be out of here early for school. Sob, sniff, sob. But, isn't it my job to be happy for the big guy? I am. I'm proud. He should be proud that I did NOT attempt to make some sort of oak leaf cluster on his cake last night. The smiley face was pretty rough as it was.

This, I assume, officially makes Daddy an official Major Pain. That joke will not get old. At least until he pins on.

Oh, and since Bryon neglects to inform his family of anything, consider yourself informed. :) I did try to make him call you all last night.

Tune in Tomorrow

Since the McClain family (this portion of it anyway) chooses to celebrate all happy occasions with Funfetti, you may be asking yourself, "what the hey?" Well, I can't say. I've been bursting at the seems for awhile now. Damn you, Bryon for telling me, what seems like forever ago! Yeah, I'm not good at keeping secrets. But, I kept this one.

Anyway, Collin and I made a cake. No, I can't blame him for "helping" me decorate this poo-imitation. I can't be talented at everything now can I?

But, the theme is "we're happy" for something (two somethings, actually). Hooray! And, we're happy for others too, which I've also had to keep my trap shut about. I'd say, hey X, etc wanna come over for some cake but that would sort of blow my cover wouldn't it?

Collin is just happy he gets to have cake when Daddy gets home. Tomorrow, I'm happy that I get to open my mouth.

In other news, I've properly scolded Bryon for improperly stocking the cupboard with chocolate funfetti frosting. I mean, really! Come on, man! That just looks terrible.

And now, Bryon will probably thrash me for this :)