Chaos Theory

Archive for the ‘Me’ Category

I felt like complete crap today so now that it’s a little after 10 pm I should probably just go to bed. However, since it’s not a gastro I still have an appetite and I’m hungry (see yesterday’s post - and by the way I did make the biscuits today). I also feel like having a steaming hot cup of green tea first, especially since I just got chilled by taking the dog out for her last pee. THEN it will be bed time.

I am coughing like nobody’s business, pretty much the same way that Breanna was (and still is, but with less frequency), but I have the addition of aching legs. I was so tired and icky today that I was dreading this evening’s PPO meeting. I wanted to go but in the end I emailed in to say I was sick; it turned out there was a parent-teacher night at the high school that was going to result in two people not being there and three people besides myself were also sick. They just postponed the whole thing to next week. Thank God.

I ended up just taking a hot bath to try to get rid of the aches a bit (it worked for about half an hour), I laid on the couch to watch Criminal Minds (holy hell, I will be glued to the TV for next week’s episode let me assure you!), and now I’m going to have my tea and some Tylenol and try to get some sleep.

It’s nothing major, just a nasty cough, but I’m looking forward to having it go away, especially since Breanna’s birthday (FOUR) is on Friday.

I covered my mouth with my elbow whenever I coughed but just to be sure, go wash your hands after reading this. I’d hate to contaminate you!

I’ve heard that a lot of people who are trying to lose weight have had a lot of success by simply not eating anything after 8 pm. This is inconceivable to me because I get so hungry at night that it’s not even funny. I’m a big fan of chips as a snack but I’m also happy with cheese and crackers or making a cup of tea to drink with some cookies.

Tonight there is NOTHING in this place for me to eat. Well, obviously that’s not completely true. It’s not like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard or anything. What I really mean is that there’s nothing here that is the least bit appealing to me.

I did have a waffle because it was something sweet to have with my green tea (which I drank to try to tame this damn explosive cough - alas, it has not worked). It was completely unsatisfying though. I do have some dark chocolate but strangely enough I’m not in the mood for chocolate tonight.

What I really want is some of my grandmother’s baking powder biscuits which I haven’t made in, oh, at least a year now. I’m craving them so badly right now but it’s almost 11 pm. It’s not exactly the time to be baking something up, you know?

I think I’ll have to make them tomorrow (and put some cheddar cheese on the grocery list because a nice slice of cheese on each half of the biscuits is delicious). Still, that doesn’t help me right now. I guess I’ll have to go root through the pantry and the fridge to find a little something or other to help me out.

What do you like to snack on at night?

Due to my night owl nature combined with having young kids, I am frequently more tired than I would like to be. I always mean well and do try to get to bed at a decent hour, but it’s hard because my second wind kicks in. More than any other day, though, I hate to be tired on a Monday. It just feels so wrong and depressing to start the week off exhausted.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t get to bed until about 12:15 am which was already starting things off on the wrong foot since that meant I had all of six hours before my alarm would go off. Yikes. On top of that, I woke up at 4:15 this morning by Breanna hacking and coughing. I did sort of doze on and off but I woke up every time she coughed again (luckily for her, she didn’t seem to really wake up, although she is a bit groggy this morning) and I also had trouble getting back into a deep sleep because in the back of my head I knew I didn’t really have that much time before I’d need to get up.

So I’m running on a little more than four hours of disrupted sleep which is bad enough in and of itself. However, I also got a call from the school; the grade one and two classes are attending a play about the environment today and I had asked if they needed me to chaperone. It seemed they were fine but Hayley’s teacher called me back to say that the other grade two class is missing a parent and they wondered if I could come after all. Of course I said yes because it makes me feel better to be there while Hayley’s being shuttled about. I was considering lying down for an hour or two but I’d rather go help out.

On top of that, when we get back home I’ll have to slam through whatever’s left in my work load and eat supper at a decent hour because I have a Governing Board meeting back at the school this evening. Judging by the amount of topics listed on the agenda I’m betting it’s going to be a long one and I’ll consider myself lucky if it’s wrapped up by 9 pm. I can’t complain too much though, because one of the other mothers going on the field trip is on the board and even Hayley’s teacher is on the board, so we’ll all be tired tonight!

I think that by the time I get home for the last time tonight, take the dog out for her last pee, get myself a cup of green tea and a treat from the Halloween bag, I’ll be more than ready to crash and crash HARD in bed. Here’s hoping I get a good solid sleep throughout the night so that I feel more awake than I do right now.

Hoo boy, it’s going to be a long day.

Today is my last day to say that I’m 34 years old. I’m not disappointed, 34 is an awkward-sounding number, I think that 35 is much nicer. I’m looking forward to 35 to be honest. I have lots of things in mind to make happen during this next year of my life.

Tomorrow will be spent hanging out with the crazy people who share my home, the one who looks for Heffalumps in the tall grass at the park:

The one who swings way too damn high (without any pushing from anyone anymore, she does it all herself) and scares the crap out of me:

And the crazy guy who helped bring them into the world:

I completed over half the work that I need to do on my actual birthday so that I don’t have to work too much. I’m going to relax, try to pretend the forecast isn’t full of RAIN, make a chocolate cake, and enjoy starting another year of my life.

Sounds pretty good to me!

George has been teasing me lately. I’ve been so concentrated on what’s been going on in Iran ever since the farce of an election that I talk about it regularly, I frequently have at least three relevant tabs open in my browser to news coverage, and I’ve gotten a little overly passionate about it. He likes to bug me by saying that if the RCMP shows up because I’ve incited riots he’s going to step aside while they escort me out the door and he’ll tell them to take my “soap box” of a laptop with them - “It’s all in there, guys, thanks!”

(He’s kidding. I think.)

Anyway. But yes, when I blog here about my life it’s easy to get all caught up with me, me, me, and the people around me. I do have certain causes that get me riled up though so just for something different, here you go.

In the past couple of years I have read many books - some fiction with historical fact, others memoirs - about the Middle East. I have become so interested in the Middle East, particularly WOMEN in the Middle East. It’s to the point where, honestly, if I could change the past without changing the important things of the present (meaning George, Hayley, and Breanna) I would go back in time and tell my aimless younger self to get a double major in Middle Eastern Studies and Women’s Studies and DO SOMETHING dammit.

As an offshoot of this interest of mine, I have been all over the Iran election and the subsequent Iran protests. While I am disgusted by the deaths that have occurred with the regime shooting into crowds (not to mention all the arrests that we will never know in full detail, such as the students who were arrested from their own dorms in the University of Tehran), I am all but breathless with the awe of seeing so many Iranians take to the streets to protest and to stand up and say, “HEY! This is not what we want and you can’t keep silencing us!”

Whether Ahmadinejad manages to hold on to his false win or not, history is happening right now and Iran will never be the same country that it was this time a month ago.

(Yes, that is indeed a “support Iran” image link over in the upper left corner of my site.)

The photos in this article are incredible.

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Championing human rights in oppressed countries isn’t my only interest thought. I’ve also been fascinated by the work that the UNHCR does for years now. They made a great choice when they made Angelina Jolie their Goodwill Ambassador because it was through her that I learned about the organization in the first place. I’m so passionate about the UNHCR that I raised funds for them twice now during the (almost) yearly Blogathon. The last time I did it, I was already writing for PittWatch and told my readers there about what I was doing. I ended up raising about $2000 to help refugees.

Right now I’m reading Angelina Jolie’s: Notes from My Travels which is not a formal book really, it’s actually her journal notes during her first missions with the UNHCR when she went to Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Cambodia, and Ecuador. Because of that, the writing is occasionally scattered, but not necessarily in a bad way - just that, because she was writing a few sentences here and there throughout her day what you get instead of flowery prose is raw emotion and blunt honesty about what the refugees are facing day after day after day. It’s a stunning read. I’m only about 45 pages in, but I only started it last night. I don’t think it will take me long to finish because it’s just fascinating.

Tomorrow (June 20th) is World Refugee Day. The UNHCR has organized an amazing live stream that you can watch from your computer. The stream comes through from various refugee camps around the world where you can look in and see what life in a camp is like. What’s amazing to me about what I’ve seen is the same thing that Angelina said in interviews yesterday with Anderson Cooper (here) and Ann Curry (here), that there are people there who have gone through hardships that we can barely even imagine but they smile, they laugh, and they have an incredible spirit. It’s so inspiring. Please do check out the live stream over here today and tomorrow.

Okay. Enough of my “soap box laptop”! Here, enjoy a totally un-related and non-political picture of Hayley with a dandelion almost as big as her head.

Whew.