Children are a great comfort in your old age – and they help you reach it faster, too.

Last Thursday we found out that Cassidy and her friend, Laura, had been going to a corner store in the morning and buying candy and other assorted junk food. I’m not sure if you all remember the time almost a year ago where she dissappeared for about 20 minutes and I almost had a nervous breakdown right as the cops found her? Well ever since then I’ve tried to balance her freedom with some simple rules. Mainly, you have to tell me where you’re going BEFORE you go. And here’s the thing, I told her had she ASKED me to go to the store in the morning, I’d have more than likely said to go ahead and go AS LONG AS she wasn’t late to school.

The main problem I had with her little escapade was that she has to walk in the OPPOSITE direction as school to get to the store and if for some reason something had happened, I’d never have even CONSIDERED telling anybody to look down that direction because WHY WOULD SHE BE THERE?!

Here, graphical representation:

I tweeted that she was “seriously grounded” and I meant it. Two weeks in the room and no electronics. Harsh, I know and by Sunday I was missing her like crazy and when Mali DM’d me on twitter and was all PUMPKIN PATCH! I told her WE ARE SO THERE! And I let Cassidy go with me. At the time, I didn’t think it was that big a deal but, believe me, it was discussed at length afterward and I know that I shouldn’t have done that. I’m the softy. I’m always the one that caves and lets her do stuff like go have fun while she’s supposed to be grounded. This is really one of the few things that Ben and I argue about. My being a push over which results in him having to stand up and be “the bad guy”. It’s not fair to him at all so after that I promised to try and be better about being more strict so he could focus on being less “sole bad guy” and more “funny fun dude who likes to have fun”.

Ben and I mutually agreed Wednesday that she could be on ‘probation’ for the remainder of her grounding but that if EVEN ONE TIME she lied or was dishonest that the grounding would pick up at that point and she’d have to finish out her last week of grounding. I even pointed out to her at one point that if that happened, her gounding would overlap Halloween and wouldn’t that TOTALLY SUCK?

Tonight would have been the final night of probation. TONIGHT.

TONIGHT! So when we had just gotten done taking pictures of her in her Princess Leia costume earlier this evening and I got a call from her teacher telling me that Cassidy was late to school today, and this was the SECOND time she’d been late, I thought that CERTAINLY SHE WASN’T AT THAT DAMN STORE.

I called her downstairs and asked her what time she got to school today.

Cassidy: *deer in headlights look* I was late because I got up late and left late.
Me: You called me at 7:32 to tell me you were leaving.
Cassidy: I didn’t tell you what time it was.
Me: My phone keeps track of the time you call me. You called me at 7:32 and Ms. Walker said you got to school at 8:16.
Cassidy: Oh.
Me: I am going to give you one chance to tell me the truth and it would be your best bet to be honest with me RIGHT NOW because I will send that costume back in a second of you aren’t.
Cassidy: Laura had money and she wanted to go to the store so we went and were late.

*motherfuckingsigh*

After more probing it wasn’t LAURA that had money, it was Cassidy and it wasn’t LAURA that wanted to go to the store, it was Cassidy. As a matter of fact, she had decided BEFORE she left the house and BEFORE she left me a message saying she was leaving that she had decided to go to the store.

So this time I know the punishment has to be severe. Grounded, no electronics for a week. That means no school carnival tomorrow, no trick-or-treating and no birthday party for Carrielee (BFF and aunt extraordinaire) on Sunday. The last being the one that seemed to effect her the most.

And it. Is. Killing. Me. I KNOW that this has to be done. I KNOW that if I don’t enforce this we’ll be back here in a month. I KNOW it has to be really hard on her to get the point across and it’s KILLING ME. I look so forward to Halloween and getting to take her out. We’ve never missed a single birthday of Carrielee’s. I feel like a horrible person for doing this to her and I KNOW I shouldn’t.

And at the core of it all: I don’t want her to grow up resenting me the way I resent my mother.

I’m taking these things away from her and I don’t want her to hate me for it but I know that, as a tween, hating me is just going to have to be a part of life for awhile. But I’m just so scared.

An aside to Ben because I want to say this publicly: Thank you SO MUCH for your love and support and for helping me to become a better parent. For talking me through things, for a gentle touch to let me know it’s going to be okay, for the space I need sometimes to work through these things in my head or hammer them out on a keyboard, and for the strength I know it takes to help me learn and grow in this daily roller coaster of parenthood. And most importantly, for being the best father any kid could ever have. I love you.

LOST: MY SANITY

If found, please return at once. I’ll be easy to find because I’ll be here blogging every single day for the next 30 days (starting November 1st) since I’ve decided to participate in NaBloPoMo. I figured that since I’m kind of on the edge these days between partial sanity and a full blown case of The Crazy I’d just go ahead and take that final leap into the deep end.

EVERy SINGLE DAY, NOVEMBER!! ARE YOU READY?!

I assume by around day 4 I’ll be regretting making the commitment and my posts will have deteriorated into nonsensical rambling clearly made by a delusional nutcase.

So, you know, it’ll be pretty much normal around her but with more posts.

Are you guys and girls participating? If so, comment and let me know. On November 1st when the theme changes I want to have a section to highlight and link to other NaBloPoMo-ers.

BOO!

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Halloween? The silly immature 10 year old in me still thinks it’s awesome that once a year I get to play dress up. HEEHEE

HALLOWEEN 2008: NON SKANKY KINDA EMO-ISH GOTHY WITCH GIRL I’m just kinda throwing this stuff together. The wig, some badass huge false lashes, some little spiders to put in my hair and probably a black shirt or dress and shoes.

HALLOWEEN 2006: SKANKY DEVIL It took three days to wash that crap out of my hair but but it was pretty badass. Also, I still love those tacky red lashes.

HALLOWEEN 2007: SKANKY WITCH! I think I’ll wear that hat again! LOVE IT.

Hello, my name is Anna and I’m a serial series watcher.

I get REALLY HOOKED on a show, usually after it’s already either 1) well into the the season, or a 2nd or 3rd, etc., or 2) it’s already off the air. So what I do is find a way to watch them online. For a long time this meant having to download them using not so very legal means. Just about a month ago I deleted all six seasons of Sex and The City of my desktop’s hard drive. Right after the end of the last season I suddenly realized it was THE BEST SHOW EVER and then downloaded all six seasons and watched them in order and cried like a baby at the end. I still haven’t gone to see the movie because I’m worried about the emotional damage it might do.

And I don’t know if you remember that time that both Ben and I got somewhat COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY OBSESSED with 24 after it had been on the air for three seasons already? And we watched three seasons in a few weeks by watching it every single night and I actually blogged about possibly needing methadone and counseling when it was over.

Then last February we decided we should check out this LOST show that everybody keeps yammering about and: INSTANTLY HOOKED. We watched the first two seasons on DVD from Netflix when Season three had already started so we DVR’d the third season then watched them when we were done with one and two. Then we died from embarrassment and shame.

Then, dear internet, then about two weeks ago I finally took the time to take a look at Hulu and it was like I hit the mother load. Bones, Fringe, Nip/Tuck… all shows I never really took the time to watch before and now I’ve caught up on all of them… while at work. heh

But the best, BEST, OMGBEST!!!! They have all 14 original episodes of Firefly in the correct order. *swoon* I had never really gotten the chance to watch the show properly and after seeing Serenity (LOVE that movie and it still gets the most play on my iPhone) then watching some of the shows out of order, it was really confusing. But not anymore! I watched all 14 episodes in TWO DAYS, then started watching them AGAIN today because: HEART

I can’t believe this show was taken off the air. Given the massive fan base of the TV show, then the movie, it’s just a SHAME. After I finished the season I did more reading about it and Joss Whedon originally planned for it to be a seven year series and my poor broken heart aches to know what WOULD have happened. How long would it have taken them to realize River’s full potential? When were Mal and Inara FINALLY going to stop being stubborn and just DO IT ALREADY? What was the real deal with Shepherd Book and why DOES he know so much about crime and it’s major players? These are questions that I’ll never get answered! NEVER! How am I supposed to go on with no resolution!? No ENDING!? No Mal and Inara DOING IT?!

Anyway, in case you’re, like, into that kinda stuff, you can follow all my obsessing via my hulu feed. But I warn you, if you intend to be the least bit productive, DO NOT CHECK IT OUT AT WORK.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

OKAY! There’s a link over there to the right at the top of the right sidebar to register and a little blurb about why registering is, like, totally the cool thing to do. Like, all the kids are doin’ it ya know.

“The post” will be up tomorrow. I’ve been working on it. Working on it while I was supposed to be working, actually! I just, in some cases like this, need some time to let things stew, let them simmer down a bit and properly blend so I can go back and backspace where needed. Mainly the sentences where 15.5 out of 17 words are some variation of the word FUCK. Because, I dunno, I think that sometimes my original point gets a little lost when that happens.

Thanks to all of you who have, or will in the future, registered. I know that the last thing most people want is ANOTHER FREAKING PLACE TO ENTER A PASSWORD but I really appreciate the effort.

I’ve been working on the site quite a bit in the last few weeks. Things you probably don’t see or notice because a lot of it is back end stuff or else updates to pages that are LONG overdue. And actually, one of these days I might get that ‘about’ page done. Maybe. I’ve missed getting my hands dirty (SEE: breaking and then having to fix a lot of shit) in code so it’s been kind of therapeutic.

Going along with that theme, getting my hands dirty again, I’ve picked up my camera and been able to look through the lens and really FEEL like taking shots. And Photoshop! Oh how I’ve loved and missed manipulating images and making them much prettier than they really were ever meant to be.

Also, I like pie.

I think that’s it for now…

Yep.

“In examinations, the foolish ask questions the wise cannot answer.”

ASK! ME! ANYTHING!

I want to interact with you all. I’ve been trying to be better about returning comments (if I haven’t, totally call me out on it because SHAME ON ME), and blogging more and reading more and the last few days I’ve been kinda BLAH and I need something to help take my mind off of it.

So, ask me anything, I’ll answer in the next blog post (and I’ll plug you along with the question) and be as honest as I can without legally incriminating myself in some way. ANYTHING. YOU. WANT.

GO!