It's Not Unusual

So this horrible pun was posted on one of my boards:

"Doc, I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home.'"

"That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome."

"Is it common"?"

"Well, It's Not Unusual."


Which caused me to get this stuck in my head:

Freyja's Personal Dialect

While showing Freyja the video Karrie posted of Max drinking hot tea, here is the conversation we had:

Freyja: Hey, a boy! Whas him nayme?
Me: that's Max!
Freyja: Mak? I go dah park wid Mak, ok?
Me: You can't, he lives too far away.
Freyja: Ok, we go in dah caaah intead.
Me: It's a fourteen hour drive, honey.
Freyja: OOOOOOOOOH we go uppa kye in uh airpane when we win da lotto? Mumma you go uppa kye sooner?

she still can't do "sk" "x" and "th" sounds, and "l" within words.
anything with a dipthong she sounds like a down-home Alabama girl
and she says "car" like she's from Boston - caaaaah.

In addition, "uppa kye" is "up in the sky", "sooner" is "later" - she won't say later, I think she thinks if she says "sooner" it will be as she says and happen "sooner". Also, whenever she asks for anything pricey or outrageous we tell her "ok, use your Baby Magick and win us the lotto, then you can have it".

She also remembers anything we ever said to her and works it into conversations constantly. I'm not going uppa kye until late Feburary, but she talks about it all the time. I fear the teenage years.

Miscellany

So our electric bill and gas bill got paid on time and in full this month. I know for most of you that's not an uncommon occurence, but it is here because we're poor and we have a long commute with a car that is NOT gas-efficient - often we have to wait, or only pay a portion because we need to get to and from work. It also means that I can enroll in the budget plan for both electric and gas - making my payments easier to manage and schedule. Whee! Even coming up on the holidays, I can afford to pay my utilities in full. This is awesome. I feel a little more grown up now.

Our DSL that I ordered two weeks ago has been activated, but it's not working. We've been without internet at home (except for stolen wireless from a neighbor who doesn't make his network secure and continues to pay his stupid tax which we can only access through our back bedroom window anyway) since mid-august when we got rid of Charter because they kept raising their rates - then we couldn't afford it for months - and now we have DSL. The only problem is there's faulty wiring somewhere. We only have two phone jacks and neither of them are giving me a reliable signal. I was all ready to hop online and do some serious holiday shopping last night once I got it set up, but NOOOOOOO. So now Verizon has to come out, check their wiring to wherever they check it to, and then if that doens't work, I have to bribe my dad to come out and check the wiring under the trailer.

Deal of the day - KMart has basic 800 pc Lego and 120 pc Duplo sets on sale, today only, for half price, $12.97 or somesuch. Since Duplos were the main thing I wanted to get for Freyja this year (after my mom stole my damn thunder and bought her the Fisher Price Little People Castle), that was a STEAL.

sick

The past two weekends, I've been sick. This irritates me, as weekends are supposed to be my down time, relaxing time, not be at work and stressed out time. Last weekend it was a tummy bug, and this weekend it was the achey, shaky, sky high fever and sore throat bit. I felt like somebody beat me with a baseball bat! The aches, shakes, and fever are gone now, but the sore throat lingers on. Will I be lucky enough to have it be strep so I can get an antibiotic and feel better in a couple of days? Or will it be viral, and I'll have to wait it out? Oooh! Stay tuned for the next episode of "Why Do I Still Have My Tonsils".

Giftmas

I'd like to just do donations to a charity for my cousins and such.

I brought up the idea to a couple people who thought it was stupid. Yet I haven't gotten any lists or suggestions from the people whose names I have. Wouldn't you rather $15 get donated to a great cause rather than spent on junk you don't really want, which is always what happens to me? I almost always get crap I don't want and won't use. I'd much rather that $15 went to Planned Parenthood or the Make A Wish foundation, or something like that.

Maybe I'm the only wannabe philanthropist in my family.

WTF

My husband is such the asshole. That is all.

So What's this AmeriCorps thing, anyway?

Since I don't have anything else to post about today (except that you should GET OUT AND VOTE!), and I got a comment from a former AmeriCorps member who found me via NaBloPoMo randomizer (stellar job I'm doing of that, huh?), I figured I'd just tell you all what I do while I'm at my service site.

So. I serve in the Michigan Primary Care Association's AmeriCorps HealthCorps. What does that mean? It means that I'm enrolled in a State level program, versus a National level program. The Michigan Community Service Commission (The Commission) admininsters to my program a grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service (The Corporation). For National Level programs, the grant is adminstered directly to the program from the Corporation. Confused yet? Unless you decide to enlist, I wouldn't worry about it. There are many, many different AmeriCorps programs under three different headings. The first is the program I'm in - where I'm placed in my community to serve the underserved. The second is AmeriCorps NCCC (enn triple cee)(National Civilian Conservation Corps). They are stationed at five regional campuses, in dorms away from their original communities. They are often the first people mobilized after disasters like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. The third is AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) - VISTAs are similar to what I do, but they do behind the scenes stuff that I'm not allowed to do, like fundraising, grant development, voter registration, etc.

Members typically serve in one of these areas: enviromental/conservation, health care, housing, education, youth development, and disaster preparedness.

My service site is a FQHC, or federally qualified health center, in SW Lower Michigan. We serve medicaid, medicare, uninsured, and under-insured patients with family-practice style care. We do obstetrics. We have a dental clinic as well. As for what I do, well, I do a little bit of everything, from attending outreach events where we have a table and telling folks about our services, to inreach activities like getting kids in for immunizations and women in for well care, to serving as a DONA-trained birth doula (I'm special, not everybody is a birth doula) to moms with little or no support. I have to serve 1700 hours over 10-12 months. I do get paid, and while the Corporation thinks it's enough to live on, if I were single and trying to hack it on my own I'd be screwed. As programs renew their grants, they are able to pay more. I did get more of an increase in my living stipend this year (my second term) than I expected.

It's better than standing all day and working in retail. I've met some neat people and I love getting away for a couple days every 3 months for training sessions. It's a lot of sitting at my desk and reading charts, but I know how to use so many programs now that I could get a job at any doctor's office. I hope to doula for a living once I'm done with my second term.

Any questions, feel free to ask. This is just a basic overview.

St. John's Wort

I finally bought some SJW on Friday, since Meijer had all their vitamins/minerals buy one, get one of equal or lesser value free. Made sure to take it all weekend (1 tablet, 3 times a day). Got up when my alarm went off this morning, and I was alert and awake - ready to face the day. Granted, it may all be psychosomatic at this point, but I'll take what I can get. I already feel a little better, and no weird side effects thus far. Hooray!

Buzzkill

Had a rare night out last night. Freyja stayed with Grandma, since Grandma is on vacation this week, and Kerwin and I went out for dinner and a couple of drinks at Old Boys' Brewhouse once he was done with class and I was finished with an evening outreach event. The food was great, the beer was even better - and better still was the fact that I either flirted the right way with the waiter, or the bartender wasn't paying attention and made them twice - we got free "refills" on our respective microbrews. Oktoberfest for Kerwin, and Golden Sour for me. Very tasty!

We're driving home, I've had two pints and I'm just nicely buzzed. Kerwin getting laid is a gaurantee, with no further work on his part if he doesn't kill my buzz. So what does he do? Starts ranting about political bullshit. To understand, you have to know that this is his very favorite pastime. He's a Political Science - Public Administration major. I don't mean to imply that I'm woefully ignorant about political intrigue. When sober and having nothing better to do in the car I'll happily go back and forth with him - but not when my belly is full and my head is just slightly light. And he knows better.

I glared at him. "You're killing my buzz," I stated. "Were you NOT interested in sex?"

He shut up. For two minutes. And then started again. Not on political intrigue this time, but on the (supposed) fact that when I wear makeup, I act bitchier than normal (For the record, I was wearing makeup because of the outreach event so I looked "professional"). I let it lie. I didn't rise to the bait. I just glared at him until he got the hint that he should probably just shut the hell up and try to grope me.

When we got home, I made him empty clean dishes and load the dirty ones as his pre-nooky penance. I still stand by my 1.5 rating - but I hate that he pushes my buttons so much!

Does anybody even like DOTS?

What.The.Fuck.

Seriously. What compels people to sit and pick through the bowl of candy on their lap, which is full of nice chocolate things that are definately OK for a two year old to eat, only to plop a tiny-ass tootsie roll and a little box of Dots/Jujyfruits into the eversmiling pumpkin bucket? My kid can't eat those things! Nobody even LIKES Dots. I understand that Dots are cheap, my fellow trailer park dwellers - but nobody likes them. Stop buying them. Buy a $3 bag of DumDums instead - EVERYBODY likes DumDums.

After picking through Freyja's pumpkin bucket, over half of it was stuff she can't have - tootsie rolls, dots, bubble gum. Hardly any MnM's, Kit Kats, Reese's Cups and definately NO Take 5's. Why bother giving out crappy candy that nobody will eat?

It must be schadenfreude - and although I am a major propoent of that phenomenon, I think it's cruel to apply it to cute little 2 year old witches out for a chocolate haul.

"It Sucks to be Me"

I was first introduced to Avenue Q though a You-Tube video posted on a board I frequent. This video, set to the song "The Internet is for Porn" piqued my interest, but I didn't give it any more thought for a couple of months. Then, I got an invitiation to participate on a Snapple message board and give Snapple ideas, and in return, get amazon.com gift certificates. Well, hell. I'm opinionated, I like free books and CD's. The fact that I haven't had a Snapple in about ten years didn't seem to matter to them. Not complaining, though.

So the video got mentioned to me again by a completely different source. I was looking for something to spend my amazon money on, so I went looking for the Original Cast Recording and was delighted to find it was only $9.99 (well, plus shipping, because I didn't want to order anything else that day).

I've been listening to it pretty non-stop on the iPod - well, in-between playing Circle Round and Raffi, on the big stereo at home which are Freyja's current favorites. I don't know about anybody else, but listening to songs like "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist", "If You Were Gay", and "You Can be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Making Love)" while toiling away at my service site sure gives me a giggle. I just have to remember to not sing out loud...

Amazing Weekend

I think the title says it all. This was a great, if busy, weekend. I worked an outreach event on Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon, we took Freyja to Trick or Treat at my Grandma's nursing home. She was a cute little witch! On Saturday evening, Kerwin helped our friends Ron and Lori fix their brakes. Well, he helped Ron. Lori and I stayed inside, ate Red Lentil Soup, and wrangled our respective spawn. We played a few hands of cutthroat cribbage spiked with tequila after the kids went to bed and that was a lot of fun. I'd been thinking for a long time that DH and I needed couple friends.

Sunday, Freyja and I just lolled around the house during the day, and in the evening we had our Samhain ritual with Pagan Familes and Friends of West Michigan (and saw Ron, Lori, and the kids again).

Life is okay, considering it's getting to be winter. I'm still struggling with SAD and wishing I knew how to better cope with it.

Potty Progressing

I have to brag, even though I know that I really have nothing to do with it.

Last week's post about pottying ( http://amerimama.blogspot.com/2006/10/potty-training-woes.html ) came a moment too soon, it would seem.

We're on day 9 of 1 accident per day or less. There's poop, there's pee, there's waking up from naps dry, there's waking up in the middle of the night to have Daddy turn on the light in the bathroom so she can pee.

Even better? Everything ELSE she's learned over the past 6 weeks has finally integrated into her brain. Where last week we had "A, B, C, E, you, E" we now have the full alphabet song, in tune. She now identifies colors correctly and counts to seven with no mistakes. She started using her words again and stopped pushing, hitting, and biting her little friends at daycare.

The clincher came last night. "Scuse you, Mumma. I want-a get my pa-no (piano - little toy keyboard) out from unna da coush." She doesn't get that she needs to say "scuse ME" instead, but shoot - how grown up was that?

Clouds (looked at them from both sides, now)

Fall is here. The trees are pretty, the air is nippy, and it rains. Constantly.

I've been putting off making a doctor's appointment to restart my anti-depressants for the winter. I have SAD, and it gets pretty bad. I can't afford the good drugs, and generic Prozac doesn't really help me. It's harder and harder to get up out of bed, do my work, do anything. My temper is shorter and shorter.

I have insurance, but it's reimbursement-only. I can't be out the $96.34 for Zoloft, every month, for the 4-6 weeks it takes for reimbursement to come. I may be happy, but I'll be in the dark and freezing, because the other bills won't get paid.

Yet, I want to feel like getting out of bed and going to work.

This sucks.

My Messy Desk

I wish I had my digicam.

My desk here at work is hideous. There's a little clear space in the middle for the laptop, and stacks and stacks of crap on the other sides. I have, at current count, seven projects on the go right now - and I'm one of those "out of sight, out of mind" people - if it goes into the drawer, I forget about it.

To the left, I have the current Provider Incentive Program lists for the biggest of the insurance companies I work with. On top of those, there's a stack of No-Call, No-Shows that I need to go through and pull out all missed prenatals and well child checks under 1 year, check and see if any of those patients are Maternal and Infant Support Services clients and email resulting names/pt numbers over to MSS/ISS. On top of that is an interoffice mailer with brochures for an upcoming health fair that I need to distrubute.

On the other side is a stack of flyers that need to be put in staff mailboxes, two interoffice mailers that have supplies for the other clinic in them, several notebooks, doula project phamplets and posters, Reach out and Read materials, and Provider Incentive Program postcards.

On the shelf I have more postcards, more health observance foo, and a stack of bookmarks. Add all that to the fact that I also have a basket which holds my tape dispenser, stapler, paper clips, and other supply stuff plus a box of kleenex and a phone.

I guess I should quit procrastinating and tackle some of this mess.

I know, that's crazy talk.

The Wonderful World of WIC

I had to take Freyja yesterday for her WIC recertification appointment.

Did you know that child size servings aren't the same as adult size servings? I think I did, but I forgot while filling out the paperwork for how much she eats in one day. I used adult servings. So first, I was told that she doesn't eat nearly enough. Was I withholding food from her as punishment? Did I feed her when she was hungry, or force her to wait until mealtimes? She's so small - was I underfeeding her?

My eyes must have bugged out of my head, because the girl eats constantly. The ever-so-saccharine-sweet nutritionist pulled out a chart for child serving sizes and I laughed. "Oh, you mean servings like those. She gets those and more. I rarely restrict her intake of healthy foods, especially at mealtimes."

Then I was told that I was lucky that she was so well proportioned for her size, since I don't show any restraint in the foods she eats. What?! Make up your damn mind! You'd think I was shoving cookies and ice cream down her gullet - this is the child who opens up my fridge and sneaks GRAPES from the crisper.

I grabbed the paperwork and pointed out that we don't feed her chips, cookies, soda, fruity flavored corn syrup drinks, donuts or whatever on a regular basis. That I am VERY careful that the vast majority of her diet is whole, fresh food.

I don't think she believed me. I'm really doubtful that that underhanded blow to my confidence was worth 4 gallons of milk, a couple boxes of cereal, a bag of navy beans, a little juice, a couple cartons of eggs, and a little cheese a month. I'm sad, because I've never had a bad experience at WIC before. I usually extol the virtues of our local program. Guess I won't do that anymore.

Nerves of Jello

Never would have guessed it, huh? I know Genie wouldn't - apparently I scare the hell out of her. I have nerves of jello. Nerves of steel is something reserved for people braver than me. In about ten minutes, I have to go into a room full of doctors and I have to stand there and talk for five minutes about the Doula program and another project (the aforementioned satisfaction surveys) I'm spearheading.

I'm shaking in my shoes. It's not that these people have about 150 years of tertiary and quaternary (is that even a word?) education combined, it's not that they have better grammar, speaking skills, are nicer, or are better composed than me (I have better grammar than at least half of them). It's that I'm basically a bug on the windshield and if they don't like the idea of the doula program, it doesn't go anywhere. Five minutes to sell myself, and I've never been good at sales.

I hope I can keep myself under control and not speak too fast.

The Girls Are Back!

Isn't it nice to get new bras that fit properly and are supportive?

My Name Is, My Name Is, My Name Is....

Shamlessly stolen from Eden, who in turn got it from WriterGirl

1. SPY NAME: (middle name + current street):Lynn Blue Oak (lame)
2. MOVIE STAR NAME: (grandfather/mother + your favorite candy):Betty Brickle
3. GAMER TAG: (favorite color + favorite animal):Blue Giraffe
4. SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name + birthplace):Lynn Muskegon (again, lame)
5. PORN STAR NAME: (first pet + street you grew up on):Speck Covey
6. SUPERHERO NAME: (THE, favorite color, car your dad drives):The Blue Caravan
7. ACTION HERO NAME: (name of character in last film you watched, last food you ate):(Captain) Jack Sparrow Croissanwich

Potty Training Woes

me: "Okay, potty time!"

spawn: "NONONONONO ENN-OHH MUMMA I NOT GO POTTY EID-ER!!!!!!!"

me: *sigh* "SorryyoufeelthatwaygetyourbehindinthereandgopottyNOW"

spawn: "I CAN'T I TOO TIRED!"

me: *snort* "Then you can take a nap after you go."

spawn: "Noooooooo. *whine* I caaaaaaaaaaan't"

me: *picks spawn up and carts her to the bathroom. helps her undress*

spawn "Nooo!" *scream* *pees* "Yay Freyja! I go potty!" *claps for herself*

me: "Don't you dare clap for yourself, demon child, after I had to cart you in here."

Ver-ba-tim. All weekend. She was doing so well, and now THIS. She was taking HERSELF to the potty, and now this. She's had no trauma, no new things happen, none of those things that The Experts claim can set back potty training.

I think she's lazy. Like her mother. Super lazy. Too busy playing to pee (I don't have that problem, I'm just saying that's how her laziness manifests at her age) or to be bothered to pee.

She's still younger than The Experts reccomend to begin potty training, but we started six weeks ago. I was expecting to see SOME progress by now.