Diary of a Metal Mommy

Okay, maybe turning 40 isn’t so bad. Especially when your girlfriends help you celebrate by taking you to NEW YORK CITY! Just got back yesterday morning (bright and *yawn* early, I might add) from a most amazing, fabulous, could-never-explain-how-wonderful trip ever. I’m going to be lazy and let Stephanie cover all of the details, if you care to read them…but let me just say that staying in Dot and John’s apartment on Park Avenue, eating out at amazing restaurants where we were treated like celebrities, shopping at Bergdorf Goodman and other little places where people were a blast, experiencing the distinguished Metropolitan Museum of Art, strolling through glorious Central Park, and most of all just hanging with two of the most wonderful, generous, amazing and downright hilariously fun women in the entire world…well, what CAN I say?! It was the trip of a lifetime. Even with a gimpy back, and with that, let me add Patient and Kind to the long list of adjectives that describe my good friends.

So, come August when it really WILL be my 40th birthday and I’m doing things like getting my first mammogram and starting a year-long stint of f-ing on-call jury duty, I’ll have this incredible experience to remember. Thanks Coreman, Thanks Dot and John, thanks New York City, and thanks to you, my glorious friends. Here’s to 40!

Whew. What a day. We (meaning the kiddos and I) have been driving around all day..Groceries, hair trim for me (ahhhhh!) at Curl Up and Dye, and a back crack at Davis Chiropractic, where I haven’t been in…years?! Craziness. I came back ready to put my feet up and relax at the homestead for a bit–until I listened to my answering machine. There was a message from someone at FM107, letting me know that Kim and I have moved up to the finals in the Undiscovered Divas contest! EEEEEK! This means a one hour live audition on the air, and I already have the date–Wednesday July 26th, from 6:00-7:00 PM. We’re already on the schedule! We meet at the station for an orientation mid-July, and when she mentioned learning about FCC regulations, and how to operate the mics and headphones, my heart just leapt. OMG, are we really going to do this?! So anyone out there that can tune into FM107 on that date and at that time, please do! I have no idea how and when you can vote for us, I suppose I’ll find that out at the orientation. But I will definitely be shamelessly soliciting votes to move onto the grand prize…our own radio show for 8 weeks in August/September!

So who can relax with that kind of news?!

There he is! Wooo!!! Oh, it was such a relief to have my car delivered to me once again yesterday–for good! Unfortunately I couldn’t go anywhere in it, however…both kids were sick and my back was ready to go out on me. Not a good day.

Vivian woke up feeling sick and soon had things coming out of both ends. Ug. (you all know how I feel about that!) Then I noticed Sullivan felt warm, and he ended up having strep throat. I’m sure all of the stress of this made my back achey, so the three of us were quite the household. Luckily today both kids are feeling better. Getting Sullivan to take his 10 day medication sure won’t be fun, tho. Just like Vivian did, he will actually gag and throw up medicine, he hates it so much. This time I got chewable pills and thought to crush them up and put them in pudding. (before we’d done the liquid in the pudding) I figured the pills wouldn’t effect the taste so much, but I didn’t count on the texture thing. How could I forget how fastidious my son is about things like that? grief. It took a long time of begging, threatening no TV or computer, and finally the threat of one big mongo penicillin shot to finally get him to eat it. And we only have 9 more days, or 18 more doses to go….sigh…

So today, I was finally able to get into Phat Thunder and take him for a ride. I took him out to the Scion dealership to have them tell me what some of the crazy things are on it. I love my little car! It’s so zippy and fun to drive. They were out of the Scion keychains, tho, and I was bummed. I’ve gotta get me one of those eventually.

Then I drove back to Kim’s house to get her acquainted with Phat T. She hopped right in in her jammies and we headed over to Steph’s. She too hopped in in her jammies and we drove around a bit. Ha! Feeling pretty bad-ass we were, in our jammies. So now everyone knows each other.

Today, just a relaxing Saturday, not doing much of anything but having the kids recover from their illnesses. What a way to start the summer! Of course it’s doesn’t feel like summer, it’s COLD out there!

What a day. The weather was perfect, and I brought Sullivan to our friend Vicky’s house to play for most of the day. I used to bring Sullivan to Vicky’s on a more regular basis, back when Cory was working for the Wild photographing their games. There were many a day when Cory would go straight from work to the game, and quite frankly when Sullivan was a toddler it was nice to have some time off once in a while! Vicky is like a grandma to both he and Vivian, so it’s good to keep her in their lives. We’ll have a few ‘Vicky Days’ this summer, and both kids are happy about that! And Mom, too!

On my day off I hit the gym–haven’t been there enough these days, I’m sad to say–then Target (of course) and then over to Vivian’s school on her last day. Last day of school! My daughter is now a 5th grader, my son a Kindergartner. whew. It was so fun being in Vivian’s classroom, watching the kids get their yearbooks and having each other sign them. Get this–I was sitting by Ms. Ristau and after having her sign the books many of the kids wanted me to as well! So cute! I signed them “Vivian’s Mom”. I left early to go get Sullivan feeling a bit melancholy. Sad because I know Vivian is very sad to see her 4th grade year come to an end, she has absolutely adored her teacher. (and I have, too!) Sad because I can’t believe another school year has really come and gone already. And thinking about my own faded youth–I have to say I wouldn’t want to be school-aged again and go through all of that hard stuff, but of course there is a sadness at the loss of those carefree days, for sure. Believe you me, when a person is almost 40, they think about that kind of stuff.

And today, I still wait. I wait for my Scion once again. Oh, what a saga. It took longer than I wanted for them to replace that muffler of hate, because of course they had to order new brackets to fit. Ok. But after the car was delivered to me–yes, I said Delivered To Me (nice!)–I realized that the side view mirrors control was not working. The mirrors also had these fancy lights on them that weren’t doing a damn thing. The next day I took it BACK in the dealership. To make a long story short, they looked, couldn’t fix, gave me a loaner car, and I left my baby there once again. Turns out the mirrors are some aftermarket thing that never worked at all. I just don’t get that. Why would someone bother to trick their car all up and then the bling doesn’t even work?! Crazy. Now Toyota is putting brand new mirrors on for me, heh heh. The problem with all of this is that I want the car yesterday. It’s taking WAY too long. I know in the grand scheme of things it’s no big deal and in fact the dealership is really taking care of me in a big way–I’m getting all of these brand new parts put in, and they’ve never batted an eye. Gotta give Park Jeep props for that. But every time I see a Scion drive by me I just want to weep.

Meanwhile, of all the vehicles they could give me to drive, they loaned me a Pontiac Grand Prix. (or as Stephanie would say, a Grand Pricks) If you’ve listened to the podcast at all, you’ll know that this is funny. I couldn’t believe it! It’s not a bad car as far as little sporty cars go, but I generally hate little sporty cars. They aren’t for short people. They are way too long and my foot barely reaches the pedal. I have to have the seat up so damn close that I can barely wedge myself in and out from behind the steering wheel. And to top it all off, the damn gas light came on tonight–I gotta fill the thing with gas! Please. Pat said I should make them pay for taking so long with my Scion by putting some serious miles on the thing, driving up to Redwing and getting the kids some moccasins. Not a bad thought. But then I’d have to put a full tank of gas in it–no can do.

So last night I take the Pricks and drive over to Kim’s to pick her up and head over to Stephanie’s for a remote podcast. We decided to make an entrance and blasted some 80’s Foreigner as we pulled up into the drive. Kim and I posed with some beer on top of the car for Stephanie to witness as she came out the door. Oh, the hijinx! Then we proceeded to have our first podcast on Stephanie’s lovely deck overlooking the pool. Yes, I said FIRST podcast, unfortunately. Stupid me forgot to turn on the mic. And that was with only drinking one He’Brew! Sigh. So we then moved into the porch, (or the lanai, as I kept having to call it–since we WILL be the Golden Girls someday…) did #2, and it came out quite well. (the podcast, that is! Oh you, keep your minds out of the gutter!) Home at midnight, whew! I’m sleepy today!

But check this out! Remember how I mentioned in my previous entry about Kim and I auditioning for the FM107 Undiscovered Divas contest? Well, here’s proof! An actual photo on their site of Kim and I cracking up Ian and Margery! Nice! I was all bummed that I didn’t remember my camera, turns out I didn’t need one. Would you look at that.

So! Things have been quite busy and exhausting. I’m ready to get in Phat Thunder, (the name of my new car that the Hijinx ladies unanimously agreed with) take a nice little drive around town,and put my feet up for a while. Summer is officially here!

The Scion saga continues. When last I talked about my new Scion xB, I told you that my baby was still at the dealer getting it’s vroom-vroom muffler swapped out for a quiet, respectable one. After a terrible wait, being the anxious I-Want-It-Yesterday person that I am, they actually delivered my car to me. Yup, drove it straight into my driveway from Burnsville, even through rush-hour traffic. How do I rate?! I was so excited and happy to have my Scion at last! I got right in, and the first inaugural drive was to where else? McDonalds. I was sad to notice, however, that the rear view mirror control wasn’t working. To make a long story short, I took the car back in to the dealer, they took it to Toyota, and now Toyota won’t touch them because they are an after-market add on. (they are fancy bling-bling rear-view mirrors with lights on the sides…but who cares about bling when it doesn’t work?!) grief. So now they are back at the original dealership, their tech guy is looking at them to see what he can do.

I feel like an idiot for not checking all of the buttons of levers before I left the lot. Let’s this be a lesson to all that read this! What a GIRL thing to do! Duh. But, I’m sure they feel even worse for having them not be working. I would think a dealership would put their cars through a check of all these types of things before they put them on the lot. I will say tho, these guys at Park Jeep have totally stepped up to the plate and I would recommend them in an instant. They’ve basically told me whether it’s under warranty or not, it will be taken care of. They gave me a Grand Prix to drive in the meantime. (or Grand Pricks, as Stephanie would say….if you’ve been listening to Feminine Hijinx, you would understand the joke…!) So even tho this has been a royal pain in the ass, I know things will get taken care of.

But as my poor husband will tell you, I don’t deal with this sort of thing well. I don’t sleep, I rattle on and on about it, worrying and complaining. I just want my car back in my driveway, end of story. I feel like a girl sitting by the phone, endlessly waiting for her date to call. I can’t stand it!

I’d love to be able to pick Kim up in the new Scion tonight, on my way to Stephanie’s house for a remote podcast on her porch. At least I have that to look forward to. No matter what irritations the day brings, I have my peeps to laugh with tonight! Woo! It’s been a while, too.