Come on. I have a blog named “Taste Like Crazy”. How can I NOT be “lacking in seriousness; characterized by levity” about it?

And, if I wanted to be completely honest, I’d say that “levity” is a coping mechanism and we all have them. Mine is making light of serious situations and hoping for the best. Hoping no one takes me too seriously. Hoping no one digs too deep because they might find the truth.

That truth is mental illness scares the shit out of me.

If you can’t trust your own mind, who/what can you trust?

Imagine, if you will, a reality where your brain tells you something is real and you KNOW your brain is lying.

Your brain says life isn’t worth living. What’s the point anyway? You aren’t worth the space you take up. You are no good…literally NO. Good. You’re a burden. You are a waste. What the hell is wrong with you? You will never be good enough. You will never be happy. You are better off dead. Just end it. End it now. Do it. What’s wrong with you? You can’t do anything right can you? You can’t even do this right.

What an amazing failure.

But here’s the thing your brain ISN’T telling you – your miswired brain. You ARE worth it. I know the tale it’s telling you; it’s lying. You don’t believe me. It’s hard to NOT listen to what it’s telling you.

My Constant Reader, your brain is not being straight with you. I am. Listen to ME. Ignore what it is saying. Please?

Just for a minute, ignore what it’s saying. Ignore all of the words it’s whispering into your ear as you’re reading this. Ignore it!

Please? I’m begging you.

I need you to ignore it. I need you to keep fighting. I need you to live.

And since you’ve listened to that secret inside voice for so long…it’s become such a close friend…you want to ignore what I’m saying. You know I’m lying. How in the hell could I care? How could I know what YOU’RE going through?! No one has gone through as much pain as you. NO ONE.

Constant Reader, I know. Believe me with all you have. I know.

It’s at this very moment you have to make a choice. Right now. You either choose to fight and fight like hell or, you choose to lose.

Let’s be blunt.

You give up. You give in. You succumb. You chose to die.

That damn voice, right at this moment, is telling you to do it. Just do IT! DO IT ALREADY!!!

You know what I tell that voice?

FUCK YOU!!!

If you accomplish nothing else today, you WILL live. Do you hear me? You will fight and you will hate it and it will be hard and you will hate fighting but you will do it because that is the ONLY option.

Do you hear me?

Am I drowning out your secret voice because I’m trying with all I’m made of. I’m trying.

You WILL fight because you have to. Not because of someone else. Not because of some obligation. You will fight because damn it, YOU ARE WORTH FIGHTING FOR.

There.

Did I silence that voice for a second? Did you pick up what I’m putting down? Do you finally understand what I’m trying to get through to you?

The secret, and make sure the voice doesn’t hear this, the secret is that it’s not about all of those other people. The secret is it’s about you and you’re worth fighting for.

Trust me on this.

Image/Flickr

How’s that for an opening line?

I knew from the first time I met him [actually before I met him] that he most likely wasn’t going to be a good “fit” for me; he was almost 30 minutes late for our initial appointment. Not exactly a wonderful first impression. I think I’ve already written about how I was underwhelmed by the guy but I was committed to going to a second appointment to see how things went.

Things didn’t go any better.

I have a rather interesting and long personal history that I always have to get out of the way when I meet a new “mental health professional” so that first appointment is always a bit boring and routine but it’s necessary and I get that.

And while I definitely wasn’t expecting [or wanting] him to be astounded by my past, some sort of reaction other than “If you would like to schedule another appointment, I think I have something two weeks from now.” would have been nice. He basically was the stereotypical psychologist you see on television except he never asked “How does that make you feel?”

And to clarify, I don’t want a shrink who asks me those famous six words…OK…if it make sense in the conversation then sure but I prefer someone who actually carries on a conversation with me and helps me to draw my own conclusions and solutions for a given situation.

The whole reason I see a shrink is because I’m not able to solve an issue on my own. Duh.

Considering I’ve been up and active since 6am, I’m going to assume I’m going through some sort of manic thing right now BUT, I’m cool with that. I’ve even started to wonder if maybe the cyclothymic diagnosis was the wrong diagnosis and maybe this is how “normal” people feel on a daily basis.

At any rate, I’ve been trying to hire a new shrink since 8am and talked with one of the rudest receptionist people I’ve ever had the displeasure to talk with.

Not only did she pretty much bark all of her words, she also told me the office didn’t take our insurance and promptly gave the number of another doctor [in another practice] who she was SURE took our insurance. That was the only time she was pleasant – gleeful, in fact.

Since I was looking at literally 20 different providers in her office on my insurance company’s website of “providers in network”, I called the insurance company and they confirmed what I suspected: the woman at that office was a heinous bitch.

OK.

So the insurance lady DIDN’T say the office lady was a bitch [I added that part] but she did imply the woman was full of crap.

I called the office back [luckily getting another worker] and the new lady called their business office and was told that [wait for it] our insurance WAS accepted in their office and once she confirmed coverage, she would call me back to schedule an appointment.

And now, as I’m typing this, I know I’m probably screwing myself and somehow our insurance won’t be accepted. No reason to worry about it at this particular moment.

That’s my day thus far.

I was a very productive girl yesterday and made myself a calendar with all the posts I have to do for EveryJoe.com for this month so I don’t forget and today the plan is to file our amended taxes for 2008 and if I get my 1099 then I’ll file our 2009 taxes. I figure I better get them done while I’m still in a good mood.

On THAT subject, if you for some reason find you need to call the IRS to get a question answered, don’t be afraid. That’s right, folks. Don’t be afraid.

I had to call last night [Did you know they're open until 10pm!?] to get some kind of number for our amendment and the guy was the MOST HELPFUL customer service person I have ever encountered. EVAH. He even gave me information I didn’t ask for because he knew I didn’t know I needed it. He was THAT NICE.

I have a plan of attack for the day and this day better not mess with me or I’ll make it call that mean woman.

Image/Flickr

While the rush to the deadline sucks, the day after and the relief of having it done is usually more than enough payoff.

Today the goal of the day is to finally get back to writing on this book and at some point finish doing the amendment for our 2008 taxes. [Sorry, Cara. Didn't mean to leave you off of last year's taxes. Nothing personal. Promise.]

The satellite guy is supposed to show up between 1 and 6pm to fix our possessed satellite which, OF COURSE, didn’t change channels at all this entire weekend.

Not once.

I was just about to call Direct TV and tell them to cancel the service call but Special Agent Oso changed to MSNBC and we can’t be having that.

Saturday, while it was spitting snow and sleet, I bundled up the kids and we headed to Target. They were missing Tucker [who was in Memphis at Drill] and we all needed a change of scenery. Since Cara has become virtually obsessed with the concept of Valentine’s Day, I got her some crayons, construction paper and some scissors so she could make her dad a “surprise”.

A surprise she told him all about before he had left on Friday. Cara’s not so great at keeping secrets.

I’m tying up loose email ends right now and made Cara some “paper dolls”. Ollie’s asleep on the couch next to me and I need more coffee.

Thus far, it’s been a somewhat productive day.

AND, I finally got a couple of shots of Cara where she isn’t doing her weird gritted teeth smile thing.

Yay, for me.

The only thing that mildly sucks is that I’m sick, Ollie’s still sick and Cara still has a runny noise.

Cara and I tried to guilt Tucker into staying home from work and taking care of us but he was strong and went to work; it’s like he’s here though since he’s emailed me a million times.

That’s my extremely uneventful day. I hope yours is equally boring. Minus the snot.

Images/Flicker and Amy Tucker

Direct TV started acting up a couple of days ago.

Cara and Ollie would be watching some cartoon [and very much enjoying said cartoon, might I add] and the next thing I know, Cara is hollering about the channel changing. It was just changing to a black screen with music. Annoying but I could change it back by hitting “previous channel” twice.

What’s weird is that if I hit “info” the channel hadn’t actually changed but what was being shown on the channel had changed.

Then, today, Sesame Street started changing from Sesame Street to some Montel Williams infomercial. What. The. Hell?

After the fifth time of this happening [and it happened on other channels as well] I finally called Tucker and told him he needed to call Direct TV and get this crap straightened out since I was completely over hearing Cara gripe every time the channel changed.

OK. Cool. He was taking care of it.

BUT, and there’s always a but, for some reason when we first got Direct TV, the account had to be put in  my name and that meant Tucker couldn’t call and get help with tech issues until he and the rep called me and got my permission.

That’s old and annoying news but does pertain to one of today’s problems.

When Tucker called Direct TV and told them what was happening, they told him channels don’t change on their own and Tucker suspected the customer service person thought he was crazy. They also told him that they could only give him limited account information which is complete bullshit since I gave him total access MONTHS ago.

It’s gotten so bad that I’ve taught Cara how to hit “previous channel” twice so she can continue watching Max and Ruby. A tech is supposed to come out and check the box but they don’t know when that’ll be. ARG!

The other piece of technology that’s conspiring against me is my email. My email’s supposed to be my friend!!!

I have another appointment with my shrink and wanted Tucker to print some stuff off for me. It was a simple email containing 3 links and an attached Word document. I sent that thing to him THREE times and I think he finally got it. Maybe. I guess I’ll find out when he gets home.

And the coffee pot! If there is one piece of technology in this ENTIRE house that should be my bosom buddy, it is the coffee pot. Right now, I’m thinking about taking a cleaver to the damn thing.

I filled it up, had it all ready to go, pushed the bright red button so it would gift me with beautiful, hot coffee in a matter of minutes and the damn thing didn’t make me any coffee! I guess that’s what I get for not standing in front of it and micromanaging the whole process but I figured it was a big boy and could handle all that on its own. BLARG!

I did eventually get some coffee…after I unplugged the coffee pot, slapped it around a bit and then plugged it back in. I’m drinking that coffee right now and it tastes like satisfaction with a delightful bouquet of that’ll-teach-ya.

Image/Flickr

And I do read – sometimes obsessively – but I don’t read the things I think writers probably read.

For instance, I wonder how many “real” writers have read the Sookie Stackhouse series [That's an affiliate link and it's only books 1-8. Don't forget about book 9. Book 10 comes out in May.] five times? How many “real” writers have revisited YA Fiction from their past and read it with as much fervor as they read it when they were 13? How many of them read both Bridget Jones’s Diary books and laughed their asses off?

I ask these questions because Tucker and I were watching some more Vlog Brothers videos and there was a tribute to Kurt Vonnegut.

I have a confession to make. I’ve never read Kurt Vonnegut. Ever. The passage that was read on Vlog Brothers was the first of Vonnegut’s stuff I had ever heard/read.

I know there are some of you out there who are thinking about revoking my writer’s card right now. But you know what? You can’t! The IRS won’t let you. They say I’m a writer and who am I to argue with a government agency that could audit me and make my life a living hell?

A couple of posts ago [or maybe it was on Twitter] I said I would tell everyone what I’m reading right now and I want to make good on that promise but I know some of you constant readers will turn up your cute little noses at it. However, a promise is a promise.

Every night, for the past four nights, I’ve been reading The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published [Another affiliate link and yes, that's the title. Short, huh?]. Before you too harshly judge me, included in the “archives” are authors such as Ambrose Bierce, Poe, F. G. Loring, Goethe, Stoker [Duh!], Stephen King, Tanith Lee, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Ray Bradbury. I’m leaving out a butt ton of authors because, seriously, go find this book at your local book store and you’ll get an idea of just how fucking HUGE this book is.

The cool thing about this book is it starts “pre-Dracula” and heads on toward modern times with all the changes frozen on the page. So far, and I’m not out of pre-Dracula, it’s a great read and since almost everything I write seems to have a bit of supernatural thrown in, I figure I could do worse for reading material.

Now, all of that having been said, I’m curious what YOU think a writer should read or should have read before they consider themselves a writer.

This is along the lines of  What Books Do You Remember? except it’s not necessarily about childhood books and the books can come from any time in your life.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is one I already have on my list and I’ll be interested to see how many I’ve already read out of the ones you suggest. Also, don’t think the books you suggest have to be covered with dust and older than dirt. If a new novel has spoken to you, suggest it; I’m always on the lookout for awesome contemporary fiction.

So, Constant Reader, what books do YOU think a writer must read before he can call himself a writer?

Leave your amazing book lists and comments in the section below. ▼

Image/Flicker

This is not what I consider the start to a good day.

Thus far, I’ve made two omelets, gotten three cups of milk, wiped two butts and broken up five fights.

At this very moment, I’m sitting in the floor with my laptop in my…well…lap with my coffee next to me since it’s much easier to dive at a child when I’m on the floor instead of the couch. Also, the laptop has less distance to fall.

Actually, it’s pretty evident Cara is feeling better and the Motrin has finally done its job. I base this on the fact that she’s resumed talking and whining but not whining about the TV being too bright. Now she’s whining, “What am I going to do? What’s my job? Can I work your laptop? Please? Please? Please? Please? Please? Please? Please? Please? Please?”

And now, as I type this, she’s sitting on my back…and bouncing…and Ollie is smacking me in the face with a clean diaper. I think he’s trying to tell me something.

And now, I’m sitting back up, on the floor, with the laptop on my legs and I’m watching Ollie run circles around me whilst holding multiple diapers and screeching with delight. How the HELL am I supposed to change his diaper when he’s running? Everyone knows the first rule of diaper changing is the diaper changie [I just made up a word.] has to be still.

Duh.

This happened shortly afterward.

Image/Flickr

Also, in case you heard about the tornado in Huntsville, we’re fine [obviously] but I DID catch a rockin picture of the precursor to that tornado.

Check this out:

It sounded like a train! OK. Not really.

Part of my job over at EveryJoe.com is to go through emails various gaming companies send me that might on any given day include crappy pitches about crappy games your grandma wouldn’t play [you know...if your grandma was a gamer], high res assets [pictures] of video games and sometimes, PR companies send me videos I can download and then wonder what the hell I’m going to do with them.

Today, I got an email about a new [it came out in Dec. 09] Legend of Zelda game where the guys who made Wallace & Gromit made three Legend of Zelda shorts. I watched the videos, searched YouTube and found that no one had uploaded these videos. Huzzah! I would be the first. And you know, the videos are kind of funny and they’re quirky and I just generally liked them.

This coming from the girl [woman?] who never played Zelda. I know. I know! I call myself a “gamer” and shit but I’ve never played any of the Zelda games. Shoot me. OK. Don’t really shoot me. I just wasn’t into Zelda and really, when Zelda was REALLY popular, I’m not even sure that I was even that into video games.

At any rate, while I was uploading these videos, I started going through my old stuff on YouTube and I found some stuff of Cara when she was Ollie’s age [actually younger than Ollie]. Back when we still had Beck – who I miss like I would miss a limb – and back when things seemed much more simple.

I guess the point of tonight’s post is to show you the Zelda videos and to show you the couple of videos of Cara when she was tiny and adorable. Also, I submitted The Note to a short story contest and about puked when I received the email confirmation that the contest received my submission.

You know what I’m talking about, right? That feeling where you’d swear your stomach had dropped down to your stomach? Kind of like the feeling when you realize that you forgot to pay a very important bill…except times about 20. The thing is, I KNOW that story is good and it’s actually the first I’ve ever written where I was all like, “THAT is some good shit”. But still…what if they don’t like it?

What if they laugh?

That’s not a funny story. Laughter would be AT me and definitely not WITH me. The BAD kind of laughter. At any rate, here are the videos. The first three are the Nintendo/Zelda videos and the other two are of Cara.

Those were the days, y’all. How was your day?

Image/Flickr

This is the post I write because I am procrastinating.

This is the post I write because even though I know I’m procrastinating, I’m embracing that part of me, as I often do.

So, needless to say [though I will] this post is all of that stuff mentioned above with a huge helping of stream of consciousness…cause that’s how I roll. And yes, I DID just say that. I predict a resurgence of that phrase.

I started this post at 14:10…well, that’s the time I saved this as a draft. Anywho, it’s now just after 21:30 and NOW I actually have something to write about. Before it was just going to be a lot of rambling. Which you could probably tell from the first three lines.

Yeah. Important stuff. And no, it’s not about that thing I said I wasn’t going to mention since I don’t want to jinx myself and I’ll be damned if I didn’t just kinda mention it again. But thank YOU for not asking me what I was talking about. Except for that one email asking me. I’ll just act like that one never happened.

We’re reaching that point in the month when all of the “good” stuff has been cooked and we really need to go to the grocery store since our grocery cache has been reduced to random pasta, a bag of shredded cheese and random stuff like flour, butter, bread, milk and the random onion.

Since I don’t do well with “scrounging” [as Tucker calls it] which involves digging through the cabinets and eating mayonnaise sandwiches or something equally revolting, I decided that I was going to make macaroni and cheese for dinner.

From scratch.

You see, I’ve never actually made macaroni and cheese. Like with real cheese and milk and involving an oven. I grew up on Kraft Shells and Cheese and that’s what I’ve always thrown together.

The only problem was that I didn’t have elbow macaroni; I never buy the stuff since I never use it. Five different variations on spaghetti? Check. Enough egg noodles to fill a dump truck? You betcha. But, alas, no elbow macaroni. Worry not, constant reader. I used egg noodles.

I made my own cheese sauce – 2Tb butter, 2Tb flour – cook those for a minute or two – pour in a cup of milk. Add 1/2 a tsp of salt, 1/4 tsp of black pepper and then 1/2 a cup of shredded cheese. Stir until it all melts and you have a smooth sauce instead of a lump of cheese. It’s yummy. Try it.

I cooked the egg noodles, poured the cheese sauce over it and the sprinkled bread crumbs on it. And you know? Despite the fact that Cara refused to touch the stuff, it actually wasn’t too bad. Fuck knows it was better than a damn mayonnaise sandwich.

The other thing I did instead of working was watch Vlog Brothers with Tucker.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of watching this vlog [video blog] then you gotta get crackin since you’ve missed a lot of videos.

For the past three nights, Tucker and I have retired to our bedroom after we’ve put the kids to bed and have watched a ton of these three to four minute gems. The first night I made popcorn to go with the videos and we started at the very beginning and I was completely smitten by the premise of the whole deal: two brothers who live many states apart, would give up any kind of textual communication and would only correspond via video.

Now, they didn’t stick COMPLETELY to this since we just watched a video where they were talking to each other on their cell phones, but textual communication is punished with a punishment and one of the early punishments involved one of the brothers - John Green [the author] – waxing his chin after a week’s worth of growth. That episode is classic and funny as hell. It’s at the very beginning. Go find it. You’ll laugh. The thumbnail is of him obviously in a bathroom with black tile behind him.

Since I’m a nice person, I found the video for you so you won’t have to go searching for it.

The other brother – Hank Green – is a self professed “eco geek” and is a bit spastic yet somehow has managed to worm his way into my cold, cold heart and I laugh at just about every one of his videos.

The unspoken rule that Tucker and I have is that we only watch the videos together…at least, that’s MY rule and Tucker, when you read this, you better not be watching any of those videos without me or I’ll cut ya!

Since our day usually goes something like this: Tucker goes to work early and I deal with the kids all day. He comes home from work and picks up the apartment while I finish dinner. We all eat dinner together and then I go outside to work while he bathes the kids. He puts Ollie to bed while I put Cara to bed and then we either watch a bit of TV together or I go back outside to work some more.

Once I really thought about it, I realized that we hardly see each other. These hour or so bits of time spent on the bed watching YouTube videos are pretty freakin nice. Kind of like “movie night” in nice, small, digestible bits.

I really thought I had a third thing to talk about but apparently I didn’t. And I definitely didn’t intend to spend 500 words or something talking about Vlog Brothers but one of Hank’s videos did help me to FINALLY understand how electrons fill their electron shells which is saying a hell of a lot since that’s after having a fantabulous Chemistry teacher in high school who used to be a chemist for DuPont and then two years of college level Chemistry.

So that was my day. How was your day?

And in case you were wondering, no, I haven’t finished my work yet.

Image/Flickr

First time someone called me ma’am – AND MEANT IT – the first time my mom came to visit for an entire weekend and we didn’t fight and actually had a great time, the first time someone read something of mine and understood the characters.

So. Let’s start from the top and go from there.

While Mom was here, Tucker and I went to Barnes and Noble so I could get some work done. Since Darwin the Laptop needs his battery replaced, it is crucial that I sit right next to a power outlet and remain connected to the wall until I’m ready to leave. Since it was Sunday at 3pm, the book store was beyond packed and it seemed as if every person had decided to sit at a table that had a power outlet within power cord’s reach.

I eventually found a bench over in the knitting section of the magazine area and settled myself in next to a couple of nicely dressed chicks.

I am a horrible judge of age so let’s just say these chicks were somewhere between 16 and 26. I’m not playing around here. They could have been anywhere in that range. Their makeup was tasteful. Their clothes were fashionable but not “old” or “young”. I kept listening to them as I tried to figure out how old they were. They were working on some sort of video project for a class but that class could have just as easily been a high school class as a college class.

I got my work done and since Darwin’s cord was plugged in between the chicks, I was just about to ask them to unplug the cord when the girl closest to me turned and said, “OH! I’m sorry, ma’am. Did you need me to unplug your computer for you?”

That was hella nice of her to realize I was ready to go and to offer to unplug Darwin before I had even gotten a chance to ask but where the fuck did the “ma’am” thing come from?! I mean, REALLY? Ma’am?!

*sigh*

Of course, instead of just thanking her, I asked her, “You didn’t really just call me ma’am, did you?” And I laughed this nervous “too cool for school” laugh and mentally crossed my fingers [well, mental fingers...cause my brain has appendages and stuff] that I looked young and cool, that I had misheard her and that the chick would laugh.

None of that happened.

A look somewhere between awkward uncomfortableness and out-and-out fear crossed the chick’s face and she kind of mumbled, “Excuse me?”

Since she was mumbling and she obviously wasn’t going to say she had just been joking, I mumbled a “Thank you” and turned my back to her so she couldn’t guess the moment when I would crawl under the bench we were sitting on.

For the rest of the freakin day, I chewed that over and here it is two days later and I’m still talking about it.

I’m sure a large part of my preoccupation with the whole incident is I still have this unrealistic expectation that younger people will think I’m “cool” and possibly interesting and if you really want to get down to it, a lot of the reason for my fixation is I don’t want to accept that I have officially moved out of being one of their peers and have moved into that dark grey area between being the cool older sister and being the extremely uncool and not-to-be-trusted mother.

I don’t feel like the mother. I feel like I’m still in my early twenties. Granted, I do have two young kids and I’m not saying I want to shirk my responsibilities and go out partying but I do want my cake and I want to eat that damn cake too [whatever the hell that means].

I KNOW I am not the only woman who feels like this. You should comment and share how you dealt with this inevitable suckitude.

—

Like I said at the very top, Mom came for a quick visit this weekend and we had a great time.

We didn’t fight, I made a fantabulous dinner which Mom loved – and that’s damn cool since Mom is a fabulous cook and tends to set that bar rather high. Sunday night Mom, Tucker and I stayed up until 1 am talking about nothing in particular and that rocked.

If you compare this past weekend’s visit with visits in the past, this one gets a gold star. With glitter. And maybe even some LED lights with sound effects.

While Mom was here, I mentioned something that probably won’t ever happen and I’m not going to really mention it here because I don’t want to jinx myself and no I’m not teasing you I’m just being paranoid and cautious and above all I’m being superstitious.

ANYWAY.

Mom hadn’t read the two things that might be involved in the aforementioned thing that I didn’t really mention, so I sat her down at our dining room table, showed her how to move the page up and down on the laptop monitor and left her to it.

Those two pieces led to her reading both The Note and the Johann stories and Mom was actually excited. She called Johann “interesting” and then started discussing which character was “the bad guy”. The reason this is such a big deal to me is because my mom doesn’t read.

I mean OBVIOUSLY she CAN read but she chooses not to. If she told me that she had read 10 books in her entire life for pure pleasure, I would probably call her a liar and then bet the number was closer to five.

If she called something I wrote “interesting” then I consider that a big ass vocal pat on my back.

If Mom was interested enough in a couple of my characters to start dissecting them then maybe I’ll steal dinner’s sparkly gold star and put it on my t-shirt.

Then again, Mom might be a bit biased.

Image/Flickr

On a whim, I made an appointment with a new psychologist and had my first appointment last night. I’m not sure what my first impression of him is. Of course, before I made the appointment, I did some research on the guy and he’s ex-Army, has a degree in forensic psychology and the whole time I was talking to him, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was listening to me and calculating the likelihood I would commit some sort of crime.

And he looks a bit like Sigmund Freud so in addition to me worrying about him deciding what crime I’m going to commit, I kept having this urge to ask him if he felt like Sigmund Freud probably did when he first started out listening to Jewish house wives who were unhappy with their lives.

I told Tucker about that urge and Tucker rolled his eyes so I’m going to assume it’s safe to assume that it’s probably for the best that I didn’t ask the shrink that since even though it was hilarious in MY head, I’m the only one who finds it funny. [Just like in my head that sentence made complete sense.]

The thing I hate about going a new doctor of any kind is the fact that you have to basically spend the entire first meeting rehashing your entire history.

YOU know everything there is to know but the new guy has no clue. So you go back over everything one last time and hope that you won’t have to do it ever again. And it’s not that it’s particularly emotionally painful or anything. Just the facts, ma’am. But it is a pain in the ass to recite it again.

Almost makes me want to type it all up, save it to a CD and then just hand over the CD when I first meet a new doc.

I have another appointment in two weeks and he mentioned that he might have me take a personality test. I absolutely HATE those things.

All of the questions are asked at least three times, three different ways and the whole time I’m taking one, I worry if I’m answering the questions the same way every time. Makes me want to scan back over the test to double check myself.

Surely I’m not the only person who does that.

Right?

Night before last, Tucker and I decided that we would start “The Ferber Method” with Oliver. And I just have to say here that I really hate using that phrase – The Ferber Method – since it has such a negative connotation associated with it.

The Progressive Waiting Approach is what Ferber has named it and it’s a perfect description since it describes the process to a T. If you’ve never read Ferber’s book, Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems, I suggest you do before you make any broad generalizations with regards to it. Googling the method doesn’t give you all the information that you need to make an informed decision.

We used this with Cara when she was younger than Ollie and after probably the second night, I got the first decent night’s sleep that I had gotten in over a year. With Cara, her issue was that she would not go to sleep without being nursed and once she was asleep, it was practically impossible to put her down in her crib. The SECOND she felt the crib sheet, she was up and screaming and the whole cycle started over.

With Oliver, he falls asleep in like five minutes with Tucker walking him. Tucker puts him in Ollie’s crib and dude stays asleep for about four hours. Then, like clockwork, Oliver’s up at midnight screaming and demanding to be taken into our bed.

Since he was so easy to put to sleep, we had just been going with the above mentioned routine since we didn’t mind it too badly and Ollie was always so damn happy about the situation and I’m sure there was a small part of us that just didn’t want to fuck with the whole thing.

But, much like me making my shrink appointment, on a whim, I decided that I was going to find Dr. Ferber’s book and Ollie was going to sleep in his crib without coming to our bed in the middle of the night.

And the first night kind of blew.

He was pissed. Of course he didn’t get why Tucker was telling him it was time to go to sleep. And, of course he didn’t particularly care for being told that he had to go to bed and that Tucker wasn’t going to walk him around until he fell to sleep and then get snuck into bed.

There were no tears with this screaming. It was pure rage and the funny thing about it was that I was kind of shocked. I mean, Ollie has always been a pretty easy going kid and I guess one reason he has always been so easy going is because he hasn’t ever been forced to do something that he really didn’t want to do.

We went by the chart in the book just like we did with Cara.

The first “wait” is three minutes. You put child to bed, tell them to shut the hell up [I kid!] and then you leave the room. After three minutes, you go back in and make sure that child has not removed any important body parts, you reassure them that you haven’t magically disappeared and then you leave the room again.

This time, you wait for five minutes before you go back in. Rinse and repeat.

The third “wait” is ten minutes and every time after that is ten minutes.

Basically, you keep going back in their room every ten minutes if they’re still hollaring and you let them know you’re still there, they aren’t dying and that it’s a really good idea to go to sleep.

I don’t remember exactly but I think Ollie was out by the fourth wait. And that’s a big deal since that was the first time he had ever gone to sleep on his own. No walking. No nursing. Just him and his blue bear.

He woke up at 1am and was pissed and wet so I changed his diaper and started back over with the waits. This time, he wasn’t quite so willing to go to sleep.

If I was standing next to his crib, he would lay down on his pillow and close his eyes but the SECOND I left the room he was up and bitching again. I’m pretty sure it took about two hours for him to finally go to sleep. Mind you, that wasn’t two hours of constant screaming. That was twenty minutes here, followed by about ten minutes of quiet there and then he’d start up again.

To make sure I didn’t fall asleep and miss when I was supposed to go and check on him, I set my handy dandy kitchen timer to ten minutes.

Last night was MUCH better.

He was asleep within eight minutes of being put to bed and you would think that I would have been sawing some logs but I wasn’t.

You see, not only did I “train” him to wake up and nurse at midnight by continuing it way past when it was really necessary, he trained me by always waking up. My brain’s used to being up till about midnight since it knew it was pretty pointless to shut off when it would be required to start back up in just a few hours.

Last night I was in bed by 10 or so but couldn’t settle myself down to sleep. I tossed and turned and finally ended up reading a couple of stories out of this sci-fi anthology I have.

Of course, Ollie woke up at midnight, I changed him, kissed his little head and plopped him back in his bed. And you know, by six minutes, his ass was asleep. He didn’t wake up until 5:30 this morning.

Hopefully tonight he won’t wake at all in the middle of the night and hopefully I can train myself that normal people are asleep at midnight.

The title of this comes from something I tweeted yesterday about fixing my laptop being like taking one step forward and two steps back since I finally got everything cleaned off my hard drive but then lost internet capabilities due to deleted drivers. I won’t bore you with the gory details but just know that it’s all a huge pain in my ass and that you should feel sorry for me.

Also, when I got up this morning and started checking my work email and sending replies, I got this from ATT: Temporary Mail Block. If you don’t want to go to the link, basically it says that my email account has been sending out spam [which I knew nothing about] and ATT has blocked me from sending anymore email for the time being.

See?

One step forward and two steps back.

*Edited to add: I was nominated for this thing Babble’s doing – Top 50 Mommy Bloggers – and since I am both a mommy AND a blogger and well…I’m already nominated, I figure you should vote for me. Cause you like me and stuff. Click this link and then look for my blog name. I think I’m like 116 or something right now.*

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