My dad calls them The Oblivious and The Rude

Here's what I don't get: how can so many people in one place at one time a)be so oblivious or b)be so rude that I can't get my grocery shopping done?
The other day MrDartt and I went on two separate shopping trips. He and Big Boy went to the Home Depot and I took Little Boy to the grocery store.
It was my job to get food to feed the dads for Memorial Day.
I have to say that when I first approached the grocery store, a very nice man helped me detangle two shopping carts since my hands were full and I couldn't get them apart one-handed. So that was very nice. He was one polite person out of 853 I ran into inside the grocery store.
First, I went to produce to get salsa makings. My first mistake. I encountered two women in their 40s to 60s, shopping together. One was wearing one of those leather cowboy hats. I don't know if they were friends, sisters, a couple, what, but each had her own cart. They were examining the tomatoes. A box of 4 tomatoes was on sale for $1.50 or something. Good price, but these two women were standing there, blocking the entire walkway between the tomatoes and the next bin, and blocking the entire tomato display so no one else (including me) could get to the tomatoes. Remember these two women.
So then, I went to walk along the back of the store, to get to the next aisle. A man was standing at the deli counter and another customer was standing exactly next to him, so no one, including me, could get between them to walk from produce to the next aisle. So I excused myself and one of them moved. In the next aisle, I walked about halfway down, and two women were examining the canned fish. Their carts were side by side in the aisle so no one, including me, could walk past them to get through the aisle. As luck would have it, I, too, needed canned fish. MrDartt wanted it for a make-his-own pizza. But I couldn't even look at the canned fish.
Things went on like this. I wanted to go to the meat section to look at the ribs (baby back ribs: buy one get two free!). Sure enough, at the meat section I ran into the two women with the two carts and one cowboy hat. Blocking another aisle! They were standing between the cheese display and the rib display so once again, no one else could look at either display or walk past. Seriously.
Then I went to the dog food aisle and there were no big bags of dog food. Just not even there. A grandmother stopped to talk to Little Boy and tell me all about her own childbirth expriences and about her own grandchildren. That was okay until another lady came down the aisle and couldn't get past. I moved my cart so she could get through but she couldn't get past the grandmother's cart. I was embarrassed. The grandmother just ignored her so I said, "I think this woman is trying to get by." She just kept talking to Little Boy! Believe me, he's 8 months old. He's not much of a conversationalist.
Grandmother told me the big bags of dog food are at the front of the store, in front of the cash registers. So I went to the front of the store, and a cashier yelled at me, "You have to put your basket on THIS side!"
"Just getting dog food," I muttered.
Then, when I went to go through the line, the cashier grabbed the basket before I had a chance to grab Little Boy and sometime between that time and the time I finished paying, he'd spit out his pacifier and lost it.
When I finally got to the car I realized I forgot mushrooms but I drove to a different store to get them.
Is it like this everywhere? Or did I just get to the store at a bad time on a bad day with bad people?

Challenges from Big Boy

Big Boy notices everything.
He notices when I change the color of my toenail polish. He notices when I'm wearing my heart pajama bottoms and a blue tank top rather than the heart pajama bottoms and the proper heart pajama top. He notices when I put my hair up (and it's driven him to tantrums). He notices if I switch purses. He notices if I've put on mascara.
So I should not have been surprised this morning when we were watching Dora and he said, "Mommy, Dora is brown. Why Dora's brown, Mommy?"
But I WAS surprised!
I said, "Well, some people just have darker skin and some people have lighter skin."
He said, "We have lighter skin, Mommy. I wish I was brown like Dora."
"Well," I said, "You just have lighter skin and that's okay."
He said, "She has brown eyes. I wish I had brown eyes like Dora. You have green eyes, Mommy. I have blue eyes. I wish I had brown eyes like Dora."
"Well," I said, "Your eyes can see and that's important. It doesn't matter what color they are."
WHAT DO YOU SAY?
I'm finding, increasingly, that motherhood is requiring me to think a lot faster than I anticipated, and to question what I say more frequently.
I want to give Big Boy straight answers, but I don't want to say too much so he doesn't understand. But geez, he sure comes up with some challenging ones!

Defensive Driving School

This morning I had to attend defensive driving school.
I received a photo radar ticket when I was driving in Stupid Town, on Main Thoroughfare Road. I was traveling at 38 miles per hour in a 25-mph zone. I was late for my haircut. I always warn MrDartt when he's driving on Main Thoroughfare Road that there's ALWAYS a photo radar van on that road, so don't speed. So of course I was late for my haircut and I was passing someone who was going probably 30 miles per hour (the horror!). Right when I passed this other driver, FLASH! I knew I'd been got.
So anyway, I had to go to defensive driving school this morning. I had to be there at 8:10, and the class started at 8:30. First, MrDartt let me sleep in, and woke me up at 6:45 to feed Little Boy. At 7:05 or so I showered, dressed, drank coffee, all that good morning stuff. Then I cut up an apple to take with me and filled a bag with trail mix. MrDartt made me oatmeal, which I planned to eat in the car ("I don't like it when you eat oatmeal in the car," MrDartt said, as I was preparing to leave for defensive driving school).
As I'm about to run out of the house, MrDartt asks if I have my phone. Nope, it's in the hanging fruit basket with the squash (where Big Boy can't reach it).
Because I'd forgotten the address (which I'd written down somewhere), I'd looked up "State Defensive Driving School" in the phone book but didn't find it. I thought I'd be able to find it, because the guy who signed me up had told me there'd be a sandwich sign out there.
So I'm driving and I think, "I'd better count my money, to make sure that I have the cash" (it costs $175 and you have to pay cash or money order). Nope, I'm $15 short. So I'm going to have to stop at the ATM.
By now, it's already 8:05. So I go to the ATM and get $20 more, and then I head over to the street where the school is. Only, I can't find it. I'm driving back and forth along the road, not finding the school. So then I realized, maybe it's called "Stupid Town Defensive Driving School," so I call MrDartt and ask him to look it up in the phone book. He can't find it.
So I call information. I give the operator my city and state. I get disconnected. I try again, and they connect my call. I get disconnected.
I call the number directly. Straight to voicemail. MrDartt calls back and has found the address on his fancy phone. I found it. No sandwich sign. No cars. There's a sign on the double doors directing me to use the side door. I'm thinking maybe there's another parking area in front.
On the side door, there's a little handwritten sign that says, "Out of office. Call xxx-xxxx." So I call that number (it's the same one I'd called a few minutes before). Straight to voicemail, with a message that this guy can't get messages.
Then I realize, maybe defensive driving school is supposed to be next weekend.
But I can't find the paper where I wrote everything down.

RIP Ruby and the Barf

Warning: This post might gross you out.

I am pretty sure our bulimic cat, Ruby, is dead.

She has been missing for some time now, and since she's very dramatic about her food intake, that can only mean one thing: she's not coming back.

More than anything, I feel guilt that I am not very sad that she is not coming back. She was a nice enough cat, but she did not bring anything into my life except annoyance. Of course, I hope that she laid herself down and had a nice peaceful death and that she did not get eaten by a coyote (although spring has sprung here and that is semi-likely). I hope she did not have any fear or pain.

But she was so annoying! She meowed constantly, and then would climb in your lap and nurse on your shirt while kneading your tummy. She would arch up to be pet, but only wanted to be scratched on the neck. And if you did that too long, she'd shake her head and get slobber everywhere. And then there was the whole thing I mentioned before, in the Introductions post, that she did, where she'd cry and cry for food, then swallow it whole, then run somewhere and barf it up. So you'd always be walking along with bare feet in the dark when you found the barf. Even now, we find barf in weird places, all dried up.

So I don't think I'll miss her. It's one less mouth to feed, one less poop to scoop in the litter box (even though MrDartt mostly does that dirty work), and one less being's barf to clean up.

I feel terrible about times I kicked her off the carpet and onto the wood floor as she was getting ready to barf, sending her skidding across the hall, leaving a trail of barf on the floor.

Don't worry, I took her to the vet for this throwing up thing, and they said there was nothing wrong with her -- probably anxiety related. In a cat.

I noticed recently that she was getting skinny but I thought it's just because it's getting hot and she liked to be outside. I thought it could be age -- I've had her at least six years and don't know how old she was when I got her.

Isn't it horrible that I don't think I'll miss her, and that the only real reason I'm sad is because I feel bad for her that I don't think I'll miss her?

Rest In Peace, Ruby.

Hopefully cats don't barf in cat heaven.

Phones and Availability

When it was time for us to renew our mobile phone plans, MrDartt really wanted a "cool" phone. So he got a touch-screen phone that does all kinds of cool stuff. It surfs the Internet and has all kinds of other cool applications. When he got that phone, I also got a "cool" phone. It gives me my e-mail and lets me e-mail people back. We use it as the modem for our computer at home. It has a calendar (which I don't know how to use) and can store music (which I don't know how to do). It has a camera (which I always use by accident) and a voice-activiated dialing system (which turns itself on and then makes itself dial).
Anyway, my point (yes, I have one!) is that sometimes I feel addicted to my phone. I love to check my e-mail if I'm expecting something special, like when my friend just had a baby and she e-mailed baby pictures -- I could see them immediately on my phone and didn't have to wait until I got home and could see them on my computer.
But on the other hand, sometimes I feel kind of trapped by it. Because I know that if I ever respond to people's e-mails by phone, there's a little tagline at the bottom of my outgoing message that says something like, "Sent from my Alltel Blackberry." So THEN, people know that I have the capability to read and respond to e-mail from anywhere, and then they expect instant answers. But sometimes I'm playing with the kids or feeding the kids dinner or reading or something and I just don't want to check my e-mail or respond to anyone. And it takes me so long to type on the darn thing, it takes much longer to compose a message!
I suppose this is just an illustration of the benefits and drawbacks of technology -- yes, it's awesome to be able to look at baby pictures immediately, or to see that I do, in fact, have a new writing assignment from my editor. But sometimes it's not so awesome that people expect me to read and respond to their e-mails within a millisecond.
When it comes time to get new phones, I will see which side wins. Will I get a fancy phone with e-mail capability? Probably. But will I still wish for a regular old phone, whose capability stops at talking to other people? Probably.

Watching TV

Sometimes I wish we had DVR. Last night, I wanted to watch "Glee." It was the premier, and it started at 8 p.m. here. But I had a lot of work to do, and I didn't want to work and watch TV at the same time. My deadline for completing this particular assignment was today, so I coudln't put it off, either. If we had DVR, obviously, I could have recorded "Glee" on DVR. But we do not. Both of our VCRs are broken, so we have to hook our little teeny tiny TV/VCR combo up to the TV in our bedroom and record stuff that way.
I rarely record. And aside from financial reasons, that's a reason we don't have DVR. I feel like, if you don't have time to watch it, you don't have time to watch it. So if you can't find time to watch it when it comes on, when are you going to find time to watch it? MrDartt says that you can always watch it on the weekends or something, when there's nothing else on. But when do we have time to watch TV on the weekends? I'll tell you: we don't. At night, we watch rented movies we get from Netflix. And MrDartt goes through movie withdrawals if we don't watch movies. So if we replaced our movie-watching with DVR watching, then maybe we'd have time to watch recorded stuff.
I really want to watch "Glee." So now, since I recorded it with our mini TV/VCR combo, I have to find an hour to watch it. My problem is that I don't watch TV during the day, unless both boys are sleeping. But at this point, if both boys are sleeping, I'm working. And after they go to bed, I'm working. And then I have to go to sleep early because they get up early and if I don't go to sleep early I feel terrible all the next day. So when, oh when, will I find time to watch "Glee"? It's killing me! I want to watch it so bad. And now I have it recorded so I HAVE to watch it.
I almost wish I hadn't recorded it.
I think having DVR might kill me.
So maybe I'm glad we don't have it.
Hard to say.

Change

Isn't it interesting how much we change over time?
Of course, you change physically (I have a wrinkly forehead now, whereas I did not before, for example). But you change so much more, mentally.
For example, I found this little notebook in which a friend and I used to write notes back and forth to each other in high school. We talked about failed vocabulary tests (that was before we starting making "decorative" cheat sheets that we put in the front covers of those see-through binders -- sorry, Mrs. Giroux).
And we called our English class "Math, Art, History, English" class, until our teacher started making us guess what Latin roots meant -- then we called it, "Math, Art, History, English, Estimation" class.
Anyway, I was flipping through the little notebook and laughing at the funny things that concerned us in 11th grade.
"I'm getting used to the feeling of loneliness," my friend wrote after a boy she liked didn't like her back. Now, of course, she's happily married with two little munchkins. She has a ton of friends and a supportive family. She's not lonely these days.
And instead of discussing math and vocab tests and the whims of teenage boys, we discuss childrearing, discipline, quilting, and the whims of our adult husbands.
At dinner with three girlfriends over the weekend, one of them told us she went to visit some friends and saw their beautiful kitchen with beautiful pots and pans hanging from the ceiling, and she thought, "Oh, the things I could do in this kitchen." One of the friends reminded her that several years back, she'd been in the same kitchen and said something about never cooking. Now she cooks dinner for her family every night and was saying what a treat it would be for her husband to cook more.
I wonder if, 15 years from now, we'll look back on our current lives and think how silly our thoughts and concerns were. We'll just have to see. Makes me think maybe I shouldn't take stuff too seriously (not that it's okay for Big Boy to whack me in the face at playgroup, but not to get upset when I pack it up and head out early because he whacked me in the face -- after all, he hopefully will not be doing that 15 years from now. And if he is, he'll be in jail so it won't be my problem).
Just so you know, we finally called our English class "Old English Math Art History Religion Science" class. Poor Mrs. Giroux.
But who cares? I know a few Latin roots, even though I don't have the cheat sheets any more. And aren't Latin roots helpful in real life?