Times I've lost my mind today 343,069

Times my sons left Converse shoe came untied: 5

Times my employee screwed up today: 7

Times my phone at work rang today: 48,359

Times the phone rang right when my ass cheeks hit the toilet2:

Times I had to go to the bathroom: 5

Times I went to the bathroom: 2

Times my son climbed my chair, jumped off the back over my head and fell on the floor: 3

Times my son ran away from me because I wanted to change his diaper: 3

Times I thought my sanity had been pushed as far as it could go: 78

Times I thought about hanging up on the customer who said rude things to me: 5

Today at work was awful. My day started with an emergency no heat oil call. I asked the guy 43 times if he was sure they had oil in their tank. He informed me that they did because the oil people had just been there tuesday. I called the guy to tell him I was going to his house and was informed I couldn't come for another two hours. Finally get there and find out that indeed there was not oil in the tank and again they had sucked sludge up into the shiny new furnace we installed. Customer called oil company and found out that they could not confirm or deny if they had taken oil to his house because their resident rocket scientist wasn't there and couldn't figure out how to input his name into the computer. It then took an employee 48 minutes to get from Northwest Reno to Southwest Reno. Let me inform you, it does not take more then 15 minutes to get ANYWHERE IN RENO!!!! Then somehow it took the dumbshit another hour to get back to work at the end of the day. I hate dumbshit employees!

Cheetoed

Cheetoed (v) [cheeeee toed] 1. The act of smearing orange Cheeto fingers all over your mother

Clarification aka Spanking part deux

Ooookay so seems like I struck some sort of emotional cord with yesterdays blog. I decided I owe you all some sort of explanation for ya'll. Let me start off by telling you all that I have serious issues with this for no apparent reason. You know those religious people who go chasing after you at super markets asking if you have found God? That is me! Only instead of following you about religion I'm following you to make sure you don't spank your kid. Have you ever been somewhere public and you see some kid start screeming and all the sudden the parent drags them outside? Okay well I'm that person who goes running outside after you to make sure you don't start beating your kid. NO! It is none of my business but I really don't give a shit. I realize that parents spank but for some reason I'm just always terrified some parent is going to whip of their belt and go to town on their child. You bet your ass if I ever see or hear you did this I'm going to be on the phone with child services, the police and the president before you can even fasten your belt back on.

I might be a little extra sensitive this month about it since I recently found out that an ex friend of my husband decided to beat his son with a belt 20 + times because he ran around at nap time. This kid won't sleep and is now terrified of everyone and he is only about 4 years old. The part that worries me the most is that this guy had never even laid a hand on the boy and one day just snapped. I want to crawl in a little hole and bawl my eyes out thinking of that little one right now.

You see for the 3 years I actually went to school, (okay like 2.5 if you count the time I really showed up) I studied everything to do with kids. I was going to go into social work or MFT with a minor in special ed or something. No matter what all I know is I wanted to save kids.

My uncle has somewhere like 8 kids (really I stopped counting around 6ish) and for at least two years out of each kids life they have lived with me and my mom. Some of the living conditions these kids went through were awful. I'm talking living with a mom who hadn't done dishes in so long there was maggots in their sink. We called social services so many times and never was anything done about it because there was bologna and bread in the house and the kids were still alive.

After seeing what the world allows kids to live through I guess I wanted to go on some sort of mission to save all children. You see when Brandon was born I was very clear to my husband that if he ever spanked our kid that would be grounds for a divorce. No questions asked I would be out. Soooo being the clever little shit he is he asked me if smacking his hand was also divorce worthy. I pondered and pondered and thought that I still could not do that to my son. In my own twisted mind I consider that child abuse. Then I tried to imagine seeing my husband smack his hand and I almost killed him on the spot just from imagining it. So my husband got stuck with time out. That is as far as I will let him go and I have to be perfectly honest I don't even like that. In fact I"m pretty sure that I think letting a child cry might be child abuse.

Yeah go ahead I can hear the snickers from over here. I know what you are saying. I've heard it before.

HER KID IS GOING TO WALK ALL OVER HER!!!! SNICKER SNICKER SNARKY SNARKY

You know what my response to that is? SOOOOOOOOOO WHAT!!!!

I didn't receive very many punishments my whole life. And for the most part I turned out just fine. You know so many parents say "well I was spanked as a child and I understood not to screw up again" Yes but you never know if your mom hadn't spanked you, if she had just taken you aside and explained what you did wrong if you wouldn't have learned just as well? HMMM

I have this friend Alli who doesn't ever spank. She has what I consider to be two of the most well behaved kids on the planet. I also for the most part think she is a parenting genius. If we are somewhere and her son does something wrong she pulls him aside and explains what he did wrong. She will say something like, you can't run around like this because there are a lot of people here and we don't know them and it is rude for you to interrupt their day but if you want to run around if you can just be good for an hour then I promise when we get to where we are going I will let you run around extra hard for being so good. And sure as shit it works like a charm. Instead of using all kinds of awful punishments or weird ideas for getting her daughter to stop doing something she has started saying if you do it again you have to eat a peppermint candy. Emma hates peppermint so by doing that Alli is allowing her to make the decision on her own and should Emma choose to mess up again at least she isn't getting hurt. Also when her kids wouldn't nap Alli put a child lock on their door from their side one time. She put em in and said take a nap. They were so upset with the lock that from now on when she says take a nap they will go in there and do it on their own rather then having the choice taken away from them.

I guess seeing her raise two amazing kids with out laying a hand on them made me see that there really is no need for spanking. So you see Emery I know that Ezzie Probably really wasn't affected at all by the tap on the ass. In all honesty he probably forgot about it 24.3 seconds later. And of course he's your kid so its totally not my space to tell you how to parent, sometimes I just like to dribble off my way and make it the highway you know. But seriously if I had been there, I'm pretty sure you would have gotten the death stare, if I didn't start bawling first and grab Ezzie and run away with him.

And Kim, its sounds to me like you have already made your decision about spanking. Don't let the fact that your child is older let you think it is now okay to spank them. Instead try thinking that since he is older he will be able to understand you better when you discuss with him in a big boy way why he was doing something wrong, and then give him the power to make an adult decision about it. Sometimes you can give kids the power to make adult decisions and that makes them feel grown up and makes them want to behave well.

Sometimes I think that when you spank a kid it takes the power away from them rather then informing them and then letting them have the power. You know when you go to work now and you make a mistake your boss comes in and tells you why you made a mistake and how to fix it. Imagine how we would feel if the boss just fired us on the spot. We then lose the power to make a better more informed decision.

Right now I'm watching Brandon jump up and down and dance to the I like to move it song on Madagascar and I'm asking myself how on earth could anyone want to spank him. So when I get mad at him I try and remember moments like this so I don't do something I might regret later. When your so mad at your kid you feel like hitting them maybe just stop and think of why you are so mad. Are you mad because everything else around you is hectic (i.e. being in an airport, because I know any trip to an air port is enough for me to want to beat up everyone I come in contact with) and other things are going wrong and at that moment spanking your kid seems like the only way you can get out your frustrations? Because I bet if you stop and think about it, and ask yourself, am I really mad or do I really seriously want to hit my kid right now. I bet you would realize you don't actually want to implement the spanking. Thats just my theory. I guess I just know that any time I've ever been mad enough to raise my voice at Brandon, I've stopped and looked around me and realized, I just had a bad day at work, and there are toys every where and my husband was being a butt head and I realize that what ever Brandon did wouldn't even seem all that bad on any other normal good day. So I guess I just need to take my own advice and learn to separate my own frustrations with my bad day from my son. Hopefully by doing this I can be a better mom.

Also put yourself in your kids shoes. (Sorry Em I'm totally going to use you as an example feel free to publicly flog me for being such an ass today) Ever single time I went to an airport as a kid two things happened, I felt super grown up annnnd I thought HOLY SHIT LOOK AT ALL THIS SPACE I MUST RUN AROUND IN IT NOW. Taking me to an airport was like asking me to run around like a nutso. Also the airport to him probably seemed no different then when you take him to the mall in the morning and let him run around there. Sometimes I think its hard for kids to separate right and wrong places for that kind of stuff. So maybe next time you are on your way to the airport you should talk to Ezzie right before you go in and explain that this place is not like the mall or the park and he has to behave like a super big boy and then when you get off the plain you will take him to Momars and he can totally run around like crazy. Annnd for every 10 minutes he is good then he can have an extra ten minutes to run around at Momars. This is just my way of thinking. Again it might not be right for you but I thought I would throw it out there anyway. Again sorry for using you and the bug as an example but you two are just whats on my mind right now. No matter what I still think you are a wonderful, great, amazing person and I still look up to you!

Okay I'm rambling again. I just wanted to clear some stuff up. Basically for me I'm just a huge giant softy and can't imagine my son feeling any kind of hurt. So yeah I'm probably screwed in the future, but you know I can't help thinking that no matter what happens my son will still grow up to be sorta normal with or with out a spanking.