Well, after that last post I feel compelled to post something a little less… ranty. Tragically I took literally zero pics all week so it’s just going to be more words SORRY I’M NOT SORRY.
I’m very excited for this four day weekend I have coming up. Symphony spends Easter with us every year (Thanksgiving she spends with her dad and we alternate Christmas and NYE), and in spite of my not having the gifts I ordered for the girls seven frigging week ago (OK I’M DONE NOW) and the fact it’s supposed to rain all weekend, I think it will be very fun. Because of the dogs we can’t actually have an Easter egg hunt or have candy hidden around the house, but the girls will get baskets. I think Gwen might even get a little candy this year! I don’t know yet if I’m going to be making Easter dinner; if Taylor works on Monday he’ll have to go to bed on Sunday afternoon. He MIGHT take it off, but who knows. I think I’ll focus all my energy on an Easter brunch instead.
One thing we ARE doing is going to Ikea to get NEW DRESSERS for the bedroom and I am super excited about it. I recently read an article, or rather, a slideshow because it was on Refinery29 and they deal exclusively in slideshows, about how to tell if you are a grown up based on your interior design or something. I actually met most of their arbitrary adult criteria, I mean I am a 37-year-old mother of two, but the slide on which I failed most spectacularly was MALMS. Sorry Malm haters of the world, but a small-ish, awkwardly shaped bedroom that contains a queen-sized bed, has a tiny closet, and is shared by two people means MALMS, MALMS EVERYWHERE. I have a whole wall of Malms, but the nine full-sized drawers in 2 half-sized drawer in my Malm wall AREN’T ENOUGH DRAWERS so I’m buying BIGGER Malms with MORE DRAWERS.
Also on the list are the pieces to make a long desk-slash-vanity for Sym’s room, a new entertainment stand, and FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND CHILDLOCKS FOR DRAWERS & CUPBOARDS. Gwen is like a whirlwind of destruction, we have to put locks on EVERYTHING. Someone recently suggested I “tell her no” where she starts tearing it up and like wow, what a brilliant idea, why hadn’t I ever thought of that? The thing is, I do tell her no, I redirect her, I do everything you do to stop a toddler from tearing everything up and then the second I turn my back to make dinner or answer the door or just go to the bathroom, IT’S WHIRLWINDING TIME. She’s tall, she’s strong, she’s sneaky and she’s into everything. I actually have a furniture wall barring her from the couch/tv part of the living room right now because the other day she pulled the center speaker far forward enough that she could turn it around and tear the wires out of the back of it. And last week she and her baby friends turned the receiver on and off so many times they managed to reset it to factory settings and Taylor had to reprogram the whole thing, and he changed how the Chromecast is set up and NOW I CAN’T TROLLCAST HIM ANYMORE. Ugh, thanks a lot baby. Anyway that’s why we’re getting a new entertainment center, we need one with doors all the way across and that I can force Taylor to put EVERY SINGLE MEDIA DEVICE INSIDE IT I MEAN SERIOUSLY.
I promised Sym that we would redecorate her room this year, and the new desk/vanity is just part of it. She wants to paint the walls white (currently they are green) and to accommodate the new, larger desk I’m cruelly forcing her to pack away all her Playmobils. She just has SO MUCH, and she really doesn’t play with it anymore so the hospital-turned-school and giant Victorian mansion are messy and dusty and end up with garbage and other, non-Playmobil toys piled on them.
Twelve is just such a weird and difficult age, like she’s still a kid and into toys, but she’s also on the cusp of becoming a teen and leaving all that behind. My hairstylist told me that when she was Sym’s age she just came home one day and her mom had given away all her Barbies, and she’s STILL mad about it. I don’t want to do anything like that, and anyway I want to save all her toys for Gwen, so my plan is to get some storage bins that will fit under her bed and keep the Playmobils in there, as well as other toys like My Little Ponies and Littlest Pet Shops.
What else? Well, I still have Graves’ disease, and it’s still a bummer. I had been feeling alright for months but in the past few weeks my insomnia has come back with a vengeance, and I’m so tired all the time now! Like not just lack-of-sleep tired, but also physically exhausted. It makes doing everything so hard, and I’ve really been slacking on stuff like housework and making dinners that don’t suck because I just caaaaaaan’t. It’s funny, Taylor told me the other day that the same way I fantasize about coming into a bunch of money and being able to pay off all his debts for him, he fantasizes about being able to cure all my ills. Through stuff like magic and voodoo though, since he’s not a doctor and anyway there isn’t really a CURE cure for Graves’ (outside of like… scorched earth-type surgeries or radioactive treatments).
ANOTHER THING about being sick which sucks is I recently discovered I’m not supposed to have grapefruit! Apparently it interferes with the absorption of Synthroid, which is a problem because my endo has me on a suppress-and-replace regimen, where I take an anti-thyroid medication to stop my out-of-control gland from spewing out hormones, and a synthetic hormone (Synthroid) to make up for what my thyroid isn’t producing. Apparently doing it this way is easier and keeps my hormone levels on an even keel, so I don’t need to adjust my doses all the time. Fine, whatever, but as soon as I read that I couldn’t have them ALL I WANTED WAS GRAPEFRUITS. I actually had a 5-pound bag of them in the fridge 🙁 I juiced them all and then I DON’T EVEN CARE, I DRANK ALL THAT JUICE. Oops. Anyway it’s done now, so I guess I’ll just live in a grapefruit-less world.
Oh and to make up for two giant wall-of-text posts in a row here’s some pics of Gwen & Dougal I literally just took right now. You’re welcome.
That dog has the patience of a saint.