MMOB or not?

My mom had a major freak out tonight in front of my nephews. Major as in screaming, cursing, and breaking shit.

This is going to be long.

Ok, so my mom has always been, well to put it nicely, a little off. She claims that she has been battling depression her entire life. Well, she won't go see a shrink and the pills our gullible doc prescribes her really don't seem to ever work. As soon as she decides that the pills aren't working, she takes herself off of them. Doesn't go back to the doc so he can wean her off of them or anything, like a normal person would.

She also does this thing where whenever she feels like she isn't the center of attention all of a sudden she is deathly ill. The best was one Christmas when I was a kid, she decided that she was sick and went to the ER. She convinced some poor ER doc to admit her overnight for observation and missed Christmas. Sadly that is one of the few Christmas' I actually remember.

Anyway, sometime over the weekend, she decided that her current meds weren't working and took herself off them. On Tuesday, my dad had to go see a specialist about his shoulder in the city 3 hours away. My mom was supposed to go with him but ended up staying home so my baby sister didn't have to pay a sitter to watch my nephews. She HATES it whenever my dad does anything without her and makes life miserable for for anyone who crosses her path for a couple of days afterwards. So I expected her to act all bent out of shape when I called that afternoon to find out what the specialist said but I underestimated how bent out of shape she really was.

I called the house and my oldest little sister answered the phone. I asked to talk to my mom. She gave the phone to my mom and this was the conversation:
Mom: Who is this?
Me: Who do you think it is, it's me. How did Dads appointment go?
Mom: I don't know. Ask him yourself.
And she hands him the phone. I talk to him for a minute and then go back to working.

After work, I picked up the boys and they wanted to go over and see my nephews. I saw my mom standing at the front window when we were walking across the sidewalk. By the time I got the boys inside, she had ran off to her room. I go into the living room where everybody else is and the first thing they tell me is that mom is "sick" again. Ok, well, whatever. We said hi to my nephews, I tell my dad about how the cat caught his very first mouse and we leave.

So now it is Tuesday. The boys wanted to stop by to see my nephews again so we did. My dad was standing at the stove cooking dinner and as I walked by, he told me that I probably shouldn't stay long. I asked if everything was ok and he told me to go talk to my sister.

According to my sister, my baby sister dropped off the boys before she went to work. My mom must have been shitty to her yesterday too because she had a "talk" with her. My baby sister left and my mom comes roaring into the kitchen, screaming and cussing (my mom isn't a curser) about something. I have no idea what that something was, my grandma butted herself into the conversation before I could find out. This is when I find out that my mom had decided to take herself off her meds. Anyway my mom started grabbing the kitchen chairs and hitting them on the ground. She broke 6 out of the 8 chairs and ran back into her room. My sister said it was chaos.

That whole meltdown happened in front of my nephews. Now, the baby is barely 4 months old but Ollie is 2 1/2. He doesn't need to see that shit. I know I would have flipped my lid if my boys had seen something like that from my mother. My oldest little sister is 24 and was scared. I can't imagine how scary that nonsense would have been for a 2 year old.

It makes me sick to my stomach that I didn't pack up those boys and bring them home with me. But the only thing I was thinking about was getting my own boys out of that house before something else happened. If we are ever in that situation again, I will be bringing ALL the boys over to my house.

So now I need advice. Do I talk to my baby sister about finding a different daycare situation ASAP or do I keep my nose out of it and hope that she does the right thing?

Do I try to talk to my dad about maybe forcing my mom to get some real help (an intervention or maybe even committing her temporarily) or do I keep my opinion to myself and hope somebody figures it out?

Camping Anxiety

I have been swagging for "Tips on Camping With A Toddler" and came across the funniest thing.

"Camping with children is one of the true joys in family life."

Ha! Who do they think they are kidding?

Monk Man is already all stressed out about our trip. He had himself soooo worked up yesterday. I couldn't help but laugh at him. He was worried about where he was going to poop.

You should have seen the look on his face when he figured it all out. It was a pretty interesting (funny) conversation. "Wha wha wahddya mean, there's no potties?" came first, followed by "I have to find a tree?" and "what if somebody sees me?" He finished with "Oh that's just gross, I just won't poop".

LoL

On the bright side of things, I am half-way packed up and ready to go! It is all sitting in re-usable Safeway bags I got for free and in Rubbermaid boxes, half in the kitchen and the other half in the living room. It is all so unorganized right now it is driving me batty. But the kids keep getting into it and moving the stuff around so there isn't any use in trying to keep it organized.

Camping?

We are going camping next weekend.

Before we had kids, we went camping a couple of times. But we had a (very tiny) camp trailer. That is long gone. The first time Hubbs got laid off a few years ago, we sold it and all our stuff to pay some bills. Even with the camp trailer I still thought I was "roughing it".

This time, we are really going to be roughing it, in a tent.

Did I mention we are taking are taking both boys and both dogs?

Ugh. What am I getting myself into?

At the very least, this trip should provide some cute pictures for their scrapbooks. If I don't stress myself to death about it first. And yes, I already have a few lists going so I don't forget anything. I started that the minute after Hubbs suggested going.

Hours Slashed

So last Tuesday, work cut my hours by half. Instead of going in at 9, they don't want me until noon.

I am really hating it. My routine is still all screwed up.

The actual shop closes at 3 now, instead of 5 and the office stays open.

The guys have been bitching that there was nothing to do, they are bored, blah blah blah. Now they are bitching because they have to go home. I swear, some men are worse than children.

Hubbs is still laid off and collecting unemployment but that won't last for much longer, only a few more months. On the bright side, we haven't burned through our savings as fast as I thought we would. In fact, we haven't taken much out of it at all, maybe $800 at the most.

We have started talking about moving again. I am actually okay with it this time.

Don't get me wrong, I HATE moving. We have been in this home since we got married. We have accumulated a lot of stuff in almost 6 years.

But my mom is driving me crazy. Work is looking bleak. It looks like it will be around 2 years or so before Hubbs gets back to work locally.

Moving seems like a pretty good option right now. As long as we can find a place that Hubbs can hold a year round job at. Wyoming is looking the most promising but I would rather live somewhere warm. Driving in the snow is not my forte.

We still have so much to figure out.

My boss has no idea that I might leave. Hubbs wants me to wait on telling them until we are sure we can find a place he can hold a job at. I hate having to act like everything is normal though.

The kids are squawking about something. I will post more later......

Crazy Street People

We live in a town with a lot of transients. They get drunk and wander the streets until the police pick them up and take them to jail or the detox center. The other day, one of them decided to try and sleep it off in one of our customer's cars. The car was parked in front of the shop, the guy opened the door and climbed right in. One of the shop guys saw it and had to physically throw the guy out of the car. Dumbass.

I have had to chase these street people off my own property. They are stubborn! I found one passed out in our camp trailer once. I had gone out the back gate to clean the camp trailer for a camping trip that weekend and noticed the door wide open. I saw him passed out under the table. I had to call the cops on that one because there was no way I was going to try and get him out from under there.

Another one even had the nerve to steal a garden hose out of my neighbor's truck (which I saw because I was outside playing with Monk Man in the sprinkler) and then try to sell it to me for $10. I took the hose from him and threw it over the neighbor's fence. The only reason this one left was because I threatened to turn my dogs loose on him.

I used to feel sorry for them but after some of the crap I have dealt with from them, I don't feel sorry for them anymore.

The worst was when I worked at the gas station. They would come in, try to buy alcohol, I would deny them and they would get nasty. I have been cussed out, spit at, swung at, followed out to my car, and had things thrown at me.

More on the peanut product recall

I stumbled across this article on msn.com.

This part of it REALLY pisses me off:
Last month, when the FDA traced the outbreak of salmonella illness to the Blakely plant, FDA inspectors descended on the factory and catalogued a range of unsanitary conditions, including dead roaches, mold on the ceiling and walls in the cooler where finished products were stored, and rainwater leaking from skylights into the production room. Inspectors found four strains of salmonella and noted deficiencies in the plant's design and construction that invite contamination.

Umm, really? What the hell is going on (or not going on) in that plant that things could be THAT gross? Way to do your jobs.

Sad. Very sad.

The spinach recall/contamination, I could deal with. My kids don't even like spinach.
The tomatoes, I could deal with. I grow my own.
The jalapenos, I could deal with. Honestly, I didn't even know about it until this morning.
But peanut butter, peanut butter crackers, dog treats, ice cream, and everything else that has peanut products in it that I don't realize, not so easy to deal with. We can hardly keep peanut butter in the house. Well, we used to have that problem.

Almost everything I can think of has some kind of peanut product in it. It makes me think twice about what I feed my kids.
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The conspiracy theorist in me is thinking that maybe this could be a ploy for us to throw out all of that stuff, wait a few weeks, the FDA will declare it safe again, then we would have to go out and buy new. Stimulating the economy.

BUT the rational part of my brain has squashed that theory. There has been enough proof (well, enough for me) to show that it isn't a conspiracy.

Life

is really kicking my ass right now.

I feel like everything is going by so quickly. There isn't enough time in the day to get anything done. Everything is piling up around me and I can't get caught up.

I need to start focusing on 1 thing at a time again, instead of trying to tackle a ton of things all at once.

Ahhhh. That felt good to get off my chest.