The Rules

There are rules to life.  If you don’t follow the rules, you will get burned.  Or scorned.  Or something, but it won’t be good because you must follow the rules.  {FYI - This post has nothing to do with current events and has been sitting around in semi-draft form for a while and I just caught 92 consecutive free seconds to hit post.}

 

Rule:  When you know what you are doing is stupid/dangerous, stop doing it.  I have broken that rule.  Twice.  And both times, my baby wound up on the floor.

 

Rule: The slow traffic keeps to the right.  If you have trouble with this concept, I will lay it out for you.  The right lane goes 55, the center-right lane does 62, the center-left lane goes 70, and the leftmost lane does Oh-My-God-They-Are-So-Going-To-Get-Pulled-Over.  If you want to do 57 mph, you should just get off of my highway, because I do not have a lane for you.  57 would be going along in the right lane, come up on someone, decide to pass, move to the left and pass at two miles per hour, a car comes up behind them at 62, wants to continue traveling 62, need to get left to pass, and the next thing you know, people are changing lanes all over the place and why won’t you all just leave me alone traveling 70 in the center-left lane?  What is wrong with you?  55 or 62, pick one!

 

Rule: I can nurse or I can *not* nurse but there is no middle.  Once I stop pumping, my supply drops off so dramatically that the babies usually give up because the effort is not worth it.  However, there is another rule:

 

Rule: Trip must be allowed to nurse to sleep.  This is a rulE with a capital E.  I have left him at bedtime twice during his almost 13-months of life and both times when I returned, a grandparent was holding him and unable to put him down.  Then he was nursed and put down without difficulty.  A couple of weeks ago, I handed Mr. Long-Suffering a bottle and a baby at bedtime.  This was a mistake as the rule is that Trip must be allowed to nurse to sleep.  So, now we have some weird combination thing going on where I nurse at 5:45 pm to celebrate returning from work (“Reunited and it feels so good”), give a bottle on-and-off from 7 to 8:20 pm, and then nurse Trip to sleep (ceremonially) at 8:30. 

 

Rule: Your blog, your update schedule.  You will not see a post wherein I explain that I’m not abandoning the blog or that I am creatively tapped out.  What I am is busy.  Very busy.  So busy in fact that when someone told me that she was certain I could find 30 minutes a day to exercise if I made it a priority, I agreed and said that I did, in fact, have 30 minutes a day.  I have 7:28 to 7:30 am, 5:55 to 6:01 pm, 8:03 to 8:07 pm, and the minutes from 9:45 until 9:52 when the laundry needs to come out, and so on.  I have a lot of free time during the day, but I have no, ZERO blocks of free time.  When I was running, I used to put the kids down and go out at 8:30 pm.  I was usually home by 9:15.  Now I use that time to make lunches, check homework, clean and refill bottles.  The last time I was running consistently, I was not making lunches and no one was on the bottle.  I am starting to think that my almost 8-year old is old enough to make his own lunch.  I know I was making my own lunch at that age (but my parents are from the benign neglect school of parenting and I am in the Helicopter Flight School).

 

Rule: Big business is not managed to make you (me) feel good about yourself.  It is there to make money, and you are merely an asset.  Further to that, I had an interesting exchange with my BFF:

Soooo, I just had my performance appraisal for 2012.  Most demotivating meeting in a long time.  I got a 3 (on a 1-5 point scale where 5 is good).  That’s Fully Meets Expectations.  During this meeting where I was rated average, I was also praised repeatedly for the 7 miracles (only one of which was turning water into wine) I performed in 2012…which is one per month worked since I was out on leave for 5 months.  And then I was told that I was a 3, because we expect miracles from you and our expectations for you are so high.  (And normally, people who are in a new job are rated a 2 because they are learning and not yet up to speed and here they debated back and forth whether to give me the 3 or the 4 and settled on the 3 because I did what they expected!)

Now, that’s demotivating.  But hey, I was praised for my miraculous works.  That’s something.  BFF, having the most awesome sense of humor, sent me the following I hope it shows up because it's the most-perfect Dilbert for the occasion):   http://search.dilbert.com/search?p=R&srid=S3-USESD02&lbc=dilbert&w=Alice%20Performance%20Review&url=http%3a%2f%2fdilbert.com%2fstrips%2fcomic%2f1996-10-13%2f&rk=13&uid=426697452&sid=2&ts=custom&rsc=JzkwqlNBrWFhu6Pf

 

 

Rule: All politics is local.   Real estate may all be about location, location, location, but it’s really all about the School District.  To that end, we have a levy coming up and I have a yard sign.  I am not anticipating any vandalism or theft to or of my sign as the only people opposing the levy are the elderly and they are not known for egging houses with pro-schools yard signs.  Election Day is May 7^th.

 

Rule:  Bad things happen to good people.  Good things happen to bad people.  You only need to worry about yourself.