Cover Me

The other day I was listening to a playlist I have which has songs by different women. One particular song came on that I really enjoy and I was thinking about how much I like her version more than the original or other versions of the song. It was Drove all night sung by Cyndi Lauper. I believe Roy Orbison did the original and Celine Dion has done a cover of this song as well but it's Ms. Lauper's that I enjoy the most.

Then I was thinking about other covers which I like more than the original. Here are few:

• Ball of Confusion, preferred version by Love and Rockets
• Take a Chance on Me, preferred version by Erasure
• Hurt, preferred version by Johnny Cash
• Girl, You'll be a Woman Soon, preferred version by Urge Overkill

Then I was thinking of the covers I hate:

• Blue Monday, hated version by Orgy
• Pretty Woman, hated version by Van Halen

So over to you, which covers do you love or hate?

Random thoughts from a tired mama

Tired. So very, very tired. So tired that while driving to go pick up Monkey from daycare I wished my vehicle had a feature whereby I could close my eyes to "rest" at red lights and this mechanism would let me know when the light turned green. That would be cool, wouldn't it? Okay, maybe not. Probably dangerous. Moving on ...

Wrestling my child into his car seat everytime we go anywhere ... so very exhausting, frustrating ... worried the neighbors or random shoppers will think I'm abusing him since he screams bloody murder every single time for the past two days. Up until then, he would fight it randomly. Not anymore. Every. Single. Time. Total of three times today.

Monkey's teething again. This time it's the upper right molar. Got up at FIVE AM. Doesn't he know mommy's been busy every night working? Oh right ...

My simplify plan? Yeah ... well, I've shot myself in the foot there. Working at work. Check. Working from home? Check. "What?!" you say. "Didn't you say you didn't want to do this?" you say. Well, I sorta volunteered for a thing ... off the books. Supposedly getting an upgrade for some software I have on my laptop in exchange (might have gotten myself into a sticky situation there). Then there's the other project I begged to be on because it involves a high profile client. What was I thinking? Oh yeah, and of course I'm going on vacation soon so everyone wants to make sure they get their stuff before I leave.

I've had some brilliant post ideas in the past few days. Can I remember them? No. Why? Lack of sleep? Perhaps. Constantly forgetting to take my thyroid medicine? Perhaps. That's a vicious circle. Forget the pill. Less memory function. Forget another pill. Even less memory function. And really dry hands. Forget to put lotion on before bed. You get the picture.

Since I can't write even a coherent blog post I'm not going to attempt to work tonight even though I should. Waah. Waah. Waah. :P

Going to get some little chocolate donuts and go to bed. Breakfast of champions ... afterall it's Olympic season.

Riot Act

It's been a couple days since I've had a pissy post, so here we go. I've been read the proverbial Riot Act three times in the past two days. The one today though ... for some reason it really got my blood boiling. Maybe it all just built up. I dunno.

This morning I made an appointment for lil' Monkey to go see the doctor because he had a nasty fall this past weekend. Yesterday and this morning, he kept rubbing the side of his head so my paranoid brain is thinking, "Great, brain bleed." The appointment to the see the doctor was for 4:15 this afternoon. This turned out to be a good thing since I had to finish upgrading my client's system which I had been working on ALL weekend long.

Just before I was supposed to leave work, around 3:15, I launched ONE MORE THING (bad idea. bad, bad idea.) and of course, it broke several pages and I needed to fix it before leaving. So I ended up leaving at 3:40 and didn't get to the sitter's to pick Monkey up until 4:05. We were going to be late, there was no avoiding it.

Apology planned in my head, I went into the doctor's office and before I could even finish writing Monkey's name in the roster, the reception says, "Is this --monkey's name--?" Before I could say, "Yes," she interrupted, "Well, you're late. 10 minutes late."

"Yes, I realize this," I said.

"Well, we can't afford for patients to be late because it puts the doctors off schedule," was her response. First of all, it's 4:25, how many more patients are coming in at this point? It seemed to me her argument was flawed and was just arguing for the sake of arguing.

Normally, I would have backed down and agreed or uttered some other weak answer. But for whatever reason, today was not such a day.

"It's not like I MEANT to be late!" I snapped.

She backed down. But I was still fuming inside. I wanted to say, "Yes. As a matter of fact, I f*%king did it on purpose! We've been sitting in the parking lot just lollygagging around just to piss you off!"

Even as Monkey and I sat in the examination room, I was still thinking about it in my head. It really shouldn't have gotten to me so much but it did.

Monkey is fine although he gave the nurses and the doctor the riot act. He just was not a happy camper about the whole visit, even the weighing on the scale where he normally does well. So I guess we're even.

P.S. I should have added that we were told via phone the night the fall happened that we should just keep an eye on him. He was acting fine other than the rubbing and DH thought I should make an appointment just to ease our minds, especially mine.

Recycling Bin: Glimpse into our lives

As DH and I were putting out our recycling last night, I realized that the contents of it has changed drastically over the years. When we first moved into our home, we were young and did a lot of entertaining. We'd have a couple or two over for dinner at least every other week, if not every week. We'd drink wine or beer, cook nice meals and more importantly, DH and I were avid Mountain Dew drinkers. Back then, we'd have plenty of time to sleep off any kind of hangover or sugar/caffeine rush incurred from the night before. Our bin then contained a number of beer bottles, a wine bottle or two, a couple of cans from vegetables or other food products and LOTS of soda cans.

About a year after moving into our home, I decided that I was giving up the MD and most caffeine products. And succeeded, that is until my first trimester. I know you're not supposed to drink a lot of caffeine while pregnant but I started back up with a soda a day just so I could make it through a work day. During my first trimester, a lot things changed. Many of our friends were either pregnant as well or had children of their own just prior, therefore, the entertaining stopped. Even if they weren't going through those life changes, we probably wouldn't have invited many people over because as any mother knows, that first trimester is very tiring. I was in bed by 9:00 p.m., sometimes, 8:00 p.m. and dinners consisted of take-out, order-in or our now favorite Fend for Yourself. Fend for Yourself usually meant PB&J or soup for me. Therefore, our bin was filled with soda cans once more and soup cans as well and of course, no beer or wine bottles.

Only recently have DH and I finally given up soda again ... well, he has. We no longer buy any for the house but I will still have one with fast food. We still don't entertain. I'm still too exhausted at the end of each day to think of fixing a creative meal and we still do a lot of take-out, order-in and Fend for Yourself. Occasionally, we'll indulge in some beer or I'll have a glass of wine. But since I'm breastfeeding and we both need our wits about us in case lil' Monkey awakes at night, we don't indulge too heavily.

This morning when the recycling truck came they found a bin consisting of a taco dinner box, cereal boxes, juice bottles (juice has replaced soda -- they aren't for the Monkey), Vitamin Water bottles, fruit cups and two beer bottles. I wonder if the men on the truck examine the contents of the boxes they empty and put together stories in their head of what's happening in the household it belongs to?

Funny Quote: Michael Kors disses dress

"... looks like toilet paper in a windstorm!" -- Michael Kors, Project Runway (about a designer's dress, pictured to the right -- which IMO, really did look like toilet paper in a windstorm and I'm not sure why the designer isn't "out".)

P.S. I haven't done one of these in a while ... and I'm officially changing the title from "Funny Quote of the Week" to "Funny Quote". Why? Because apparently I can't commit to anything permanent on this blog. My sincere apologies although I have a feeling now that Project Runway is back on, I will have many more of these.

Beach Nightmares

I never thought I'd ever put those two words together. I love the beach. Especially in the morning when you first wake up and can look out onto the waves. That's just lovely and a really nice way to begin your day.

However, I had a nightmare about the beach. We're going away soon ... yes, to the beach, how'd you guess? Anyway, I had a dream that lil' Monkey runs off into the water like a mad man and is instantly swept away by a wave. I haven't had it again since but the image of it keeps playing in my head. Then today I was talking to my company's CFO and he was describing how he basically played goalie between his daughter and the ocean. Sounds like fun. He did advise that one of those little life vests will give me better piece of mind. But Monkey doesn't seem old enough for the ones I've found on the web so far.

I'm hoping I won't be such a nervous wreck while on vacation this year that I won't ever want to go to the beach again (although I'm pretty sure DH wouldn't mind that at all since he hates being away from the game home for any length of time). So if any of you have tips on taking a toddler to the beach which might reduce either stress or paranoia, I'd love to hear them.

P.S. If any of you have tips on getting your toddler to keep his sunglasses on, that would be helpful, too! I bought him the kind with the strap but he still takes them off!

Squealing, Screaming and Screeching, Oh My!

Lil' Monkey has somehow, somewhere learned how to be VERY vocal in the past two weeks and not while using words. This seems to happen mostly in the car. A nice confined area where the boisterous nature of his vocalizations can reverberate. Sometimes he does it when he's upset, but mostly I think he's doing it as a learning process of what his voice can do. That or out of boredom.

Sometimes he'll give me a "warning scream". It's a breathy little noise, almost like he's about to lose his voice. "ah." Then the onslaught comes, "AHHH! AHHHHH! AAAAAAAAH!"

The squealing just comes out of the blue. "AAAIIEEEEEE!" His daycare provider says he kinda sounds like a little girl. At first I was a little offended by this comment, but it's true, he kinda does.

The screeching I'm finding hard to handle. It makes your heart stop and not in a good way. "EEEEEEEEE!" The shrill nature of it makes me tense up everytime he does it.

For the screaming and the squealing, I'll sometimes join in and imitate him. We then have a vocal tennis match, volleying our primordial noises back and forth in the car.

I've been reading The Happiest Toddler on the Block and the premise of that book is that toddlers are really just little Neanderthals trying to fit in millions of years of evolution into 3 years of growth. It makes a lot of sense and I while I haven't yet looked up what Dr. Karp has to say about this new "skill" my lil' Monkey has developed, I'm sure he'll somehow relate it to our caveman ancestry.

So here's to you my little Neanderthal, my lil' Monkey, "AAAAAAAHHH!"