As far as excitement goes in my life, I think I shot my wad before I got married. I wasted a big chunk of my young adulthood on a loser named Tom who's personality lived in the bottom of a Jack Daniel's bottle...or rolled tightly, and rather unattractively, in rice paper. I spent my Sundays laying newspaper on the floor of the bathroom for his drunken friends who couldn't care less that their aim was less than exemplary. I emptied ashtrays and put out fires. Tom passed out with a cigarette in his hand once. It caught the chair on fire. His friends, ever vigilant, poured a can of beer on it, and kept partying. It was like watching a bunch of 3 year olds. 3 year olds who ate my food, stole my clothes, ran up my electricity bills, took my parking spot, and slept with my boyfriend.

So I left. Since I wasted so much of my life with him, I decided to do things that I had never done before. I made a list. I went to France. I kept all my money in a coffee can...in $100 dollar bills. My strategy was that a crisp 100 dollar bill was harder for me to break than a $20. It worked. I was working at $4.00 an hour at the time so it took awhile to add up. But when the opportunity arose to go to Paris I blew off the coffee grounds and bought my ticket. That was June 1991. I was 28. That was my first time on a big plane. My first time out of the country. The first time that I felt alive. It was awesome.

I did it again May 1992. London. Then again in 1995. Greece and Italy. I was 32. That was the first time I had been on a large boat (which broke down in the middle of the Adriatic Sea), and the first time I saw dolphins.

It's 9 years later and I haven't been off the east coast since. I met my husband the week after I got back from Florence, got married March 1997, gave birth to my alpha-omega dd January 2000.
Now my life consists of finding things for my 4 year old to do, making sure dh has clean underwear, and trying to time my arrival at the preschool so I don't have 39 cars in front of me. There are two lanes but the minivan driving, soccer moms always line up in the inside lane like lemmings. The only things that excite me now are getting deals at Kroger when they double dollar coupons or triple 50¢. I leave my screaming brain in the car and just shop.
I haunt Mama-Drama, living vicariously through the members, watching their pregnancies progress, sharing the excitement of the last days until birth, watching their children grow, and my heart breaks for them when someone has a miscarriage or they lose a loved one. They are a fantastic group of women who live beyond their children, beyond the stereotypical mom mould. And they are funny as hell. Someone is always able to lift my spirits. As great as it is though, it always feels like I'm outside looking in. That's my fault though.

You want me to pay $14 an hour for you to watch my kid do somersaults? Puhleeze.

Dh said it best... I'm getting close to bottoming out on the roller coaster. I'm not a happy camper right now. I spent the day with dd again. Picked her up at preschool, went to the gym for an hour where she got to play outside and in the maze, then we went to the "gymnastic school" to check it out, then we ate out at BK (gak) so she could play in their maze and then went to the library. Got home just a minute before dh.
Got in the house and discovered that the contractor didn't show up AGAIN. I'm losing my patience. Dh called him at 3:00 to find out why he's blowing us off (we paid him already...that's why) and he hasn't returned his call yet. I stuck sticky notes all over the place in the room where they split the trim and glued it back together with caulk. I can't stain over that shit. The contractor told me just to paint over it but I'll be damned if I'm going to paint over stain grade trim that we paid for just because they suck at finish carpentry.
Mom and Dad visited Sunday and Monday. Dh and Dad put in the french doors. I need to lay down underlayment and then tile before he can finish the threshold though. I can't lay tile until the carpenter fixes the trim and the grunt finishes the spackling....so they don't walk on my floor while the mastic and/or grout is setting. There will definitely be some $ coming off what we owe them since we didn't get a professional to do the spackling. According to the contractor the grunt gets $10/hr but we are supposedly paying for a pro who would be making much more.
Man, I hate dealing with these people.
Looks like we may be going to Mom & Dad's place this weekend since dh has a highschool reunion thing going on next weekend. I don't want to really because I don't want to have to deal with my brother and his wife. But I need to take Dad's sliding glass doors down and then pick up Chigliak, the twin bed, a dresser and my aquarium stuff so I can set up the 20 gallon tank for dd's ever changing goldfish. That's going to go in the new room too, if it ever gets finished. Shall I hold my breath?