There are a few things that are absolutely GRATING ON MY FUCKING NERVES right now. Would you like to hear about them? [Too Bad.] Oh, good! Here we go.
The first thing is that every single morning for the past, oh, week or so, my son has been waking up at 4 in the morning, weeping and wailing, without stopping until I go in there, armed with a bottle, medicine and [my revenge] some saline nose spray and the nose frida. Even the time change did not disrupt his schedule and he seemed totally oblivious that the 4:00 was really 3:00. He just skipped right over that adjustment and kept on rocking the 4am wake up. As soon as the door opens and I present myself, grumbly and pissed off, the crying magically ceases and he says, 'Mama. Mama.' And then my irritation leaves and the dull resignation-slash-warm-sappiness-AKA-he's-only-little-for-a-little-while-feeling sets in and I hug him up and change his diaper and give him medicine and chuckle at how much he HATES the nose frida. I sit on that fucking exercise ball and give him a bottle and he is SO DROWSY. Then I go to put him in the crib and he twists his little bendy ass around so that he goes in STANDING UP.
Standing.
At 4:30am.
What the fuck is up with that, I ask you?
Anyhow, usually the crying part is over then and either he's up talking and laughing to himself or he is pretty quiet and falls back to sleep. I am, as you could probably guess, completely awake by that time and so, you know. I wake up grouchy and irritable and ill-prepared to handle the rigors of my days. And when I say rigors, I mean my daughter.
Which brings me to the second thing: she is making me nuts. Nuts! With the (intensified and inexplicable) baby-talking! And the (renewed after a long, lovely absence) Crazy-Ass Temper Fits! And the (brand new) Ignoring Me-Slash-Selective Mutism! Where she refuses to answer the simplest question! At all! I don't have to provide you with an illustration of how all three of these behaviors combine to create the MOST ANNOYING SITUATIONS IN HISTORY, do I? I didn't think so. You can trust that they DO. Every day, multiple times a day.
I am threadbare and due mostly to the sleep deprivation, my patience is thiiiiiiin. I find that I have an annoyed edge to my voice whenever I'm talking to my daughter and today it started at 7:03am, when she refused to say good-morning or give me our customary Morning Hug and insistently said the baby word, 'Powwnnyyyy,' over and over, to indicate, I suppose, that she wanted me to find her lost pony.
Can you hear that clicking? It's my MARBLES. I'm losing them one by one.
Anyway.
If it wasn't for my promise to myself that I was going to post more regularly, I'd be suffering in silence [and you wouldn't have had to suffer through this post.]
Before I go back to drinking coffee and breathing deeply before tackling the giant job of unloading the diswasher, I'll tell you the story behind the title of this post.
After my mom died, The Little Sister and I went back to my hometown to have Thanksgiving with my dad and my grandfather. We were making all the family favorites in our own way, really, and worked our aaaaasses off. We included my grandmother's mac and cheese. My sister, however, omitted the grated raw onion on top, since none of us liked it anyway. The crunchy texture just didn't suit us. This was our first-ever time making a Thanksgiving dinner. And we were without my mom. It was tough.
If you've never read about my grand-dad, this might not make too much sense but you have to know that he's sort of...er...difficult. Kind of obsessive and nit-picky and before and during dinner he made a series of remarks and comments that I'm SURE he thought were benign but were actually most annoying.
So.
After dinner, my grandfather was telling The Little Sister how good everything was. Then he said, 'Do you like onions in things?' And my sister was all, 'Huh?' And he said, 'Do you like onions in things?' And my sister was all, 'Uh. Yeah, sure.' And he said, 'You know what's good? For the Macaroni and Cheese, you take an onion and you just grraaaaate that onion right on top.'
And I had to suppress my deep, deep, laughter when my sister leaned in and muttered, 'You mean like how you're grrrraaaatting my nerves right now?'
