First and foremost – I finished the race! It wasn’t entirely perfect as I was battling a nasty shin splint from the day before at the Magic Kingdom. I ran the first 8 miles no problem and then walked about 25% of miles 9-12 and then ran most of the last mile. I’m proud of myself considering my training was HORRIBLE. I’ll give your more details later. But for now…here’s a cell phone picture from the finish.

We haven’t gone through all of our pictures since we’re still here but I wanted to show you all a few so far. I have a lot to say about the race, my Dad and this trip. But for now? Adorable pictures.

I was going to do a thought provoking post about the fact that we’re heading down to Florida tonight for the run I’m doing in memory of my Dad. We’re making half of the trip tonight after LilZ gets out of rehearsal and then the second half in the morning. We approached MrZ’s parents a few months ago about leaving AndyZ here with them since A) He is too young to remember any of it and B) He HATES the car so an 11-hour car ride could kill us all. They agreed so we’ll be leaving him behind for almost a week. While it will be sad not to have him with us, I think the trip will go better for everyone else without having to worry about diaper changes, naptimes, and car-induced demonic behavior.

The reason I can’t do anything too thought provoking about what this run means to my grief over missing Dad is because the child we’re leaving for a week? Decided he wanted to cram in as much time with me as possible by waking up at 2am. FOR THE DAY. It is now 4:17am and I’ve officially given up trying to get him back to sleep. I tried several things including finally getting him to sleep in my arms on the couch for the second time (the first time ended when I tried to put him in his crib) and opting to just put the couches together to make him a temporary crib. He slept there for about 20 minutes. And then he woke up. Again. So I’m not fighting it anymore and am embracing the situation by going ahead and brewing that pot of coffee I normally don’t start on until after 5am. I think waking up at 2am for the day justifies two pots of coffee, don’t you think?

Maybe I’ll do something thought-provoking tomorrow. In the meantime – enjoy this picture of my child before he became the devil.

Yesterday was an insane day. We had an appointment at NikkiZ’s dentist for him to look at her abscess at 9am. She loves the dentist so, not a big deal. At least not for her. I had AndyZ with me and he decided to challenge himself by pushing every button he could find and trying to grab sterile dental tools from any surface he saw them on. Oh – he also tried to climb in the X-Ray machine. Because what we really need is some sort of You Break It – You Buy It policy to kick in with something expensive like that.

The dentist took an X-Ray of NikkiZ and decided the tooth needed to be removed. IMMEDIATELY. Since we’re leaving for Florida on Thursday he made an appointment for us at a pediatric dentist at 10:30am. That gave me an hour to try to find someone to watch AndyZ. Luckily, it was a slow day for MrZ at work so he said he’d just come home for the day. He stayed with AndyZ while I took NikkiZ into her appointment. She did great. The only time she was difficult was when they tried to get her to drink the Demerol. She hates medicine. It was just a little bit and it didn’t taste bad, but she still freaked out. She ended up spitting it out into her glass of water, so we just waited for her to finish that. I told the hygienist, “She doesn’t eat cake either. She’s strange.” I mean…WHO TURNS DOWN DEMEROL?

She got really chatty the longer she wore Mr. Nose (he of the laughing gas persuasion) and kept trying to talk to the dentist while he was jabbing needles in her gums. “I CANT FEEL IT AT ALL!” she was saying. And she was talking about Dora (which is what was on the TV above her head) and the awesome games they had in the lobby. She talked the ENTIRE TIME we were there. She kept saying, “Is the tooth out yet?” It’s like she didn’t even know it was supposed to hurt so she wasn’t even scared one bit. Best Tooth Pulling Experience EVER. And I could totally understand why her normal dentist sent us to a pediatric dentist for the procedure. They have everything set up to make things good for the kids. AND for the parents. It was AWESOME.

The experience did stress me out a bit, however. And then I had to get home, try to finish some housework since we’re LEAVING FOR FLORIDA IN TWO DAYS. And then I had to go to a costume work session at LilZ’s high school from 3:30-6:00pm. MrZ and I have been going to as many volunteer sessions as we can since this production is SO HUGE. They’re actually flying one of the characters. On a harness. They don’t mess around at this theater program, that’s for sure. But it’s almost entirely run/supported by parents. And there are some amazingly talented parents in the group. MrZ has been helping with set builds and I’ve been helping with painting and sewing. Except that I don’t sew – so I am actually gluing and cutting. But I’m doing it WELL.

MrZ’s session started at 6pm so he brought the kids with him and I took them home with me. I came home, gave them baths and put AndyZ to bed while NikkiZ was supposed to be getting out and drying herself off. When I came in the bathroom, however, there were bath toys all along the edge of the tub alongside wet washcloths. She knows not to do this because it gets water everywhere. And I still was so behind on my day for chores that I simply lost it. I yelled, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” And of course, that scared the crap out of her as she didn’t even know I was there. She immediately started crying which actually made me angrier (Please tell me you do that too? Get angrier when they cry?) so I continued, “Young Lady! You know better! Look at this huge mess! You need to dry all of that up and get dressed RIGHT NOW!” All with my voice raised.

Now…I’ve yelled louder and meaner before. I’ve discussed my yelling here and here. It’s my least favorite parenting quality. I honestly think I’m a damn good Mom 90% of the time. And then the .05% of the time when I’m yelling? I kinda hate myself. BUT – that time was NOT a bad yelling time for me. Seriously. Last night was just more of a shock session. But it scared her because I snuck up on her. I left the bathroom – took a few deep breaths – and came back. She was crying and said to me (While sobbing), “I don’t like it when you yell at me.”

Heart. Broken.

I was still angry about the mess but I also knew I had scared the crap out of her when I yelled so I decided to start over. I helped her get dressed and we snuggled for a bit while I talked about why I yell. I told her I would try not to yell because I didn’t like it when my Daddy yelled at me when I was little. We basically commiserated on the sucktitude of yelling parents. Even though I was one of those parents. Which is the ultimate crux of parenting when you find yourself doing the exact same thing you hated that your own parents did.

All in all? The day kinda sucked. But that’s OK. She and I had a good evening together. The Tooth Fairy came while she was sleeping. I tried to talk her into leaving the tooth somewhere other than under her pillow so the Tooth Fairy wouldn’t wake up her brother…but she was having NOTHING of it. She went through quite an ordeal, she was going to get the perfect Tooth Fairy moment out of it, dammit! I’m going to do my best to catch up on my To Do list today before we hit the road tomorrow night. I’m starting over today. I’m not going to stress out about yesterday or about my misstep in parenting. Because – like I very honestly admitted – I know I’m a good Mom. I focus on my failures a lot on this blog because I think about them a lot and am trying to always be a better person. BUT – I do honestly feel like I’m a good Mom. I could be better – but I’m not going to focus on my mistake from last night. I’m going to just continue being a good Mom who tries to be better every day. And since today is a new day…different from the sucky Mom yesterday? I’m already doing great.

The last tooth-filled smile you’ll see for awhile! Enjoy it!

Step back, Mom. Let the superhero take charge.

I am a little sensitive regarding my intelligence, or other people’s opinions of my intelligence. I’m quickest to gripe at my husband if he does anything that requires me to say, “You know I’m not an idiot, right?” I hate it when someone either A) Tells me something that everyone would be capable of figuring out themselves or B) Tells me something I didn’t know but uses a tone implying I should have known it. The first one I hate because I’m not an idiot and don’t like being treated like one. The second I hate because I don’t want to feel like an idiot because someone is talking down to me. Being talked down to – even though it’s often warranted – is the thing that will get my blood boiling the fastest. Because it’s the thing I’m probably the most insecure about.

I’m not naturally smart, by any means. I always had to work hard for my good grades, and was still one of those students that could study for days for a test, ace it, and then forget it all the next day. MrZ could glance over his notes once, ace it, and remember it forever. This pissed me off our entire college career together. I have two degrees but am not well-read when it comes to literature or nonfictions. I prefer my Young Adult Wizards and Vampires…thank you very much. I often read blog posts about book clubs and feel a little insecure because the only time I ever went to a book club and felt okay about it was because the person who was holding it loaned me the Vampire book I was currently reading. I felt a little better about that. But most of the time? Eh. So, while I’m defensive about my intelligence, I don’t really every put forth efforts to make myself actually be more intelligent.

However, my Dad took grades and school very seriously. While I still stand by my Dad being the most amazing Dad I could have ever asked for – he did have a temper. And that temper showed it’s ugly face the most often when Dad was frustrated with either (A) My grades or (B) Me doing something REALLY dumb. Like locking my keys in my car. For the 15th time. The few (and sometimes many…as I was often doing stupid crap as a kid) times he’d lose his temper and scream at me – seemed to always involve me either doing poorly on something in school (WHICH WAS RARE) or me doing something airheaded (WHICH WAS OFTEN) so the screams from him would sometimes involve insults to my intelligence.

Needless to say? This is probably what has made me so defensive about my intelligence.

So – of course – the process of closing his estate has made me feel like a complete moron. First of all: I’ve made a bunch of mistakes. Some of the mistakes I’ve made were because I misinterpreted things. Others because I just didn’t know. And others because I assumed other people (like my lawyer) were responsible for those things. However, it seems like most of my mistakes were made because everyone outside the process: Lawyers, Auctioneers, CPAs, Title Companies – they all assume I know things I don’t. And that’s the part that PISSES ME OFF. I mean – why do I feel like all along this process that things are intuitive when THEY ARE NOT. Either I really am an idiot or other people have learned these things along the way when I haven’t. But how would I have learned them? Is it because most people are older when they go through this stuff so they have experience? My Dad has been dead almost a year now and he had the easiest estate on the planet…yet still! We can’t close things out because I was under the impression that this one waiver required an inventory that couldn’t be done until the house was sold. So, I worked on it all last week. Now? I find out they can’t give the estate the money for that house UNTIL THEY HAVE THAT WAIVER. And they asked for the form like I should have known all a long that they needed it. I didn’t even know what that form WAS until 2 weeks ago. BAH! They asked for a second form too which – THANK GOD – I actually have. But I didn’t know I needed that either – so it’s lucky I have it. I have no idea how I was supposed to know I needed this stuff. I feel like I’m not reading stacks of paperwork thoroughly enough – or that I missed some class in high school that everyone else had where you learn things about Probate. The thing is? It’s different in every state. So even if I had taken some sort of class like that – it wouldn’t do me any good because this is all crap from the state of TENNESSEE.

(Can you hear my frustration through the monitor? If not – maybe I should use more capital letters. That seems to make me feel better.)

I just find it a very Full Circle kind of thing that the estate belonging to the person who is probably responsible for making me defensive about my intelligence – is making me feel like a GIANT dumbass.

I didn’t like the tone the last entry left on my blog so I thought I’d add another to brighten things up around here. I remember the days when I used to blog twice in a day…regularly. Hard to believe it’s an anomaly now!

We decided to take NikkiZ to a 200m track this weekend to show her how long her race will be in Disneyworld this weekend. She’s doing the 200m on Saturday, MrZ is doing the 5K that day too. Then my half-maratahon is on Sunday. She did fine running the distance, she even did it quite quickly. We’re a bit worried about how she’ll handle everyone else running with her (The race is for kids age 4-6) because even with just MrZ and I she couldn’t stop turning around to look at us back at the starting point. And our biggest concern about that? Her busting her face and then getting trampled by a bunch of 5-year olds. Either way – she’s excited and she just looks adorable in her running gear. That’s all that really matters, right?