(I was going to title this blog entry “Funk” but then a certain song popped into my head and I wanted to make sure you were hearing the same thing I was.)

So…there’s a lot of stressers in my life right now. Stressers? Stressors? Stressars? Firefox has no suggestions and I’m too lazy to see whether or not I just made up a word. STRESSERS. It’s a word for now, okay?

There’s my Mom who is still in the hospital in Knoxville post-surgery. They removed the malignant tumor but had to take more than just a bit of her colon as it had grown outside the colon and into her bladder and reproductive organs. No biggie…just a longer recovery. But we still haven’t gotten the pathology back from the biopsies and tumor so we’re still waiting on any future treatment information. Waiting for pathology reports is the most annoying thing about medical situations because they always hold that vital information that will change the outlook of your immediate future. YET THEY TAKE FOREVER. Don’t let the medical dramas fool you, there is no magic room down the hall that allows you to immediately look at test results. Just like there’s probably no real CSI unit that can get DNA results back in four minutes.

There’s LilGirl, our alpha bitch in the family who has always had some cataracts in her eyes but now has one eyeball that is swollen because they think the cataract has caused glaucoma. She has to be taken to Birmingham today to see a specialist. MrZ has one day off between switching jobs (Look! Another stresser!) and he’ll be using it taking her on a road trip. She’s an old dog so I’m not sure what the options will be for her but she’s been going blind for awhile and is very pitiful now that she’s in pain. Last night she was scratching at the wall in the hallway trying to get into our bedroom. SO SAD.

Then there’s my damn allergies. While Knoxville definitely makes them worse, they are not easy to deal with here at home. Alavert does me okay for most of the day but, like last night, it seems to wear off a bit while I sleep. Damn you and your 18-hour effectiveness! I was up since about midnight sneezing. I’d show you the pile of tissues I accumulated by the couch but that might be gross. My eyes do better with eyedrops but I still have huge bags under them partnered with dark circles. My nose skin is raw and my throat is constantly tickled. Allergies and allergy medicines keep me in a fog anyway, add lack of sleep to all of that and I’m bound to be a huge MESS today.

In case you were wondering…those three paragraphs were me trying to gain a bit of sympathy from the interwebs because I am in SUCH A FUNK. I’m just down and grumpy and sad and tired and angry and frustrated and every other negative emotion you can think of. I’m trying my best to force some sun into my outlook as that has been part of my attempt handling my own anxiety: THINK POSITIVE. I feel like I’m doing better with that mentality, it kept me sane at the dealership yesterday when I was stuck with AndyZ for 2.5 hours. I actually handled that situation well considering a few months ago I would have lost it the second I realized they had NO changing table in the bathroom. (This place is BRAND NEW and NO ONE thought of that?) So…I did okay yesterday during a high-stress period of time. But in general? I’m just having trouble ditching the funk. I have met so many people who fight way grander stressers than mine with positive outlooks, and I would love to be like them someday. But obviously – by the gray cloud in my heart today? I’m not there yet.

So…I’m going to include a cute little video MrZ took of AndyZ the other night doing his version of a Jumping Jack. Every time I watch this I smile. I hope you do to.

Many moons ago I took this picture:

That’s a picture of half of my walk-in closet collapsed to the ground. It was taken relatively soon after we bought our house and not much later…various other pieces started collapsing as well. Up until last month we had no more hanger space than the average NON-walk-in closet because so many of the other pieces had fallen off the wall or were simply too wobbly to use. This is why the closet renovation is a must before we sell the house. It’s currently useless.

One good thing it offered, however, was a room to get ready in when the other person was still sleeping. I don’t think I realized how much we used it for that until we no longer had it. We currently have everything from the closet spread across our bedroom and MrZ has the closet taped and covered in plastic for painting. Most mornings I get up first so I just try to grab what I need and get ready in the bathroom by the kitchen. MrZ tried a different technique this morning. He simply turned on the light in the bedroom at 4am while he gathered his things to go swimming. Since this is a very rude gesture when someone is still sleeping (4am!), he decided the best road to take to keep from waking me was to make me think he was trying to murder me in my sleep.

Well…I’m sure that’s not what he was thinking. But let me tell you: When I felt him place a pillow over my face? While I was in the unable-to-process-events-logically state of awareness? I totally had an adrenaline rush and the sudden horrific thought that, Oh no! He’s had enough me wearing my houseshoes all day! He’s trying to kill me! And that was officially the worst way I’ve every woken up from sleep in my entire life.

Also…this is how a very kind gesture can be interpreted as a homicidal one. In case you were ever wondering.

So, instead of doing the snarky My Family Sucks At Basic Household Chores type of entry, I’m going to do something a little less mean towards my husband. You know…just in case.

Blog Entry Option #2: Cute Video Of My Kids Getting Hopped Up On Cake Poppers

All About The Cake Poppers from zoot on Vimeo.

My kids were eating some cake poppers I made and I decided to interview them about it. I promise the smile my son gives you at the end of the video makes it all worth it.

I don’t have a lot of concrete memories of my childhood. Maybe it’s because I don’t have a lot of photos to solidify the memories, I’m not sure. But one of the most vivid memories I have is sitting in a line in the library at my school when I was probably in Junior High…and doing Criss-Cross Applesauce with my friends. I think every girl had similar routines they did, but it seems like they vary across regions. Either way, it was a combination of a nursery rhyme, and a back rub, all in one. I remember really wishing I could sit in front of one girl in particular in that line because she always had the BEST nails, but if I remember correctly everyone wanted to sit in front of her…so I think maybe we had to take turns or something. Either way, it’s quite a vivid memory in my mind.

I’ve used the same little song/backrub routine on my kids as just another game we play together. All of them love(d) it, of course. Who wouldn’t? It feels great! But AndyZ? Who I just introduced to it recently? Is totally addicted. I said something the other day about Ross from friends and he looked at me and said, “Mo’ Applesauce!” and came and sat down on my lap. If he hears anything even remotely sounding like “Applesauce” he freaks out. I decided to get LilZ to video it the other night. Please ignore the clutter in the background. Our bedroom is the last room in the house to get redone and is therefore the “Storage Room” for all sorts of crap.

Mo’ Applesauce! from zoot on Vimeo.

(Yes…AndyZ is Wesley. Most of you already knew that, we’re not totally secretive about names. I’m switching to his real name for this post (mostly) as the people we met in NYC knew him as Wesley, so calling him AndyZ felt weird. And I like to be confusing.)

Let me start by saying this: Sometimes it’s hard to entertain a child in public. I know this is not shocking news, by any means, but I just wanted to put it out there. Restaurants, shopping trips, dinner parties at friend’s houses – these things all have the potential to end in disaster if you have a child in that fateful age bracket that encloses [Old Enough To Move And Destroy] and [Too Young To Understand Orders]. So, take a child in that age bracket, send him along with his Mom out of state for gatherings with other adults and it takes good planning and preparation and probably will STILL end in disaster.

So…now you can see how amazing it is that I can honestly say my overnight trip to New York was excellent. I was bracing myself for the worst case scenario but ended with one of the best trips I could have expected. I was invited by Huggies in association with their product Little Movers diappers and charity auction diapers and it was SO MUCH FUN. It was well organized and there was nothing at all pushy or distasteful. From dinner Friday in a restaurant that allowed us to let our kids practically take over an entire section (they were having a dance party, if you must know. Wesley is quite a dancer) to the hotel with crib already in place – it was a trip geared for the parents but prepared for the kids. Perfect in every way. I don’t get invited to these things often (if ever) but I hear a lot about bad experiences from other bloggers and I just want to say from the approach (the original email mentioned videos I had posted and other indicators they had read several entries from my blog) to the event itself – it was a wonderful experience.

The other bloggers participating were Torrie, Metalia, Bill, Mrs. Priss, and Nikki and as awesome as the bloggers were (GREAT!) their kids were the best part. I’ve never hung out with bloggers AND their kids before and let me tell you…that is the way to go! It’s such a relaxing environment to visit with someone because you can really be yourself when you are in Mom Mode. And also? It helps with your son is charmer. He even flirted with Angie Harmon who is a big supporter of the involved charity KaBOOM which helps build parks and play structures around the country. I think Wesley’s goal was to score a trip home with someone else for a change, and if that person happened to be a celebrity with three daughters? More awesome for him.

All in all? He was more perfect than I would have ever dared hope.

Except, of course, for the excessive pooping. I think he heard we were invited by Huggies and thought he’d honor them by dirtying as many diapers in as magnificent as a fashion as humanly possible. It was either that, or the 94lbs of guacamole he ate at dinner the night before the event.

I didn’t take hardly any pictures and just a few videos. It’s very hard to handle any sort of equipment when you’re chasing around a kid determined to explore every dangerous spot he can find. Some people managed it…Metalia got a great one of me and Wes here. And Torrie took one of Angie Harmon taking a call on Wes’s phone here.

Here are two videos I took. The first features a few other blogger babies in the ball pit at the Huggies play area. Pardon the transition as I actually put him in the ball pit…I’m not a videographer by any means so it may induce sudden onset of motion sickness.

Ball Pit from zoot on Vimeo.

And this one shows the bridge in the same play area that someone LOVED because he kept falling down on it. I have a funnier video of him busting and me laughing my ass off, but – you know – I’m trying to give the illusion of being a responsible parent. So you’ll get this one instead.

Bridge from zoot on Vimeo.

And as usual with videos I shoot…I apologize for the accent.

I don’t have much time as my kids need to be fed and watered…but I wanted to share this video out so those of you who don’t do twitter or flickr can see it. NikkiZ brought home real cinnamon yesterday and was so proud of it. They’ve been learning about skin the last few weeks and this week it’s morphed into lessons about bark and wood. (BTW – she has the best preschool teacher I’ve ever known. EVER.) Somehow this prompted handing out cinnamon sticks…THE MOST EXCITING THING EVER. I tried to video her excitement but the second she was on camera the pressure was too great. Before the camera was out? She was saying over and over, “It’s real cimmon and you can LOOK it…only LOOOK it (which I later realized meant “lick”) – but DO NOT BITE IT. It is made from WOOD. And BARK. And it is MINE!” But when I turned on the camera? I had to drag the information out of her. But the best part? Is the end when I finally give AndyZ (who is fussing the whole time I’m trying to talk to his sister) some camera time. He hams it up quite well for a moment to end the video with a very cute farewell.