Saturday, Janurary 23rd, 2010 6:50 AM
What's The Problem Now?
Over the past week I've felt as if my own life, and the direction I want it to go in, has taken a more positive turn...which in every sense of the word. "positive" is a scary, unfamiliar word for me when it comes to the terms of my own real, personal life. It's almost as if my family draws itself to negativity, so they can nit-pick at each other, argue with each other and belittle one another, almost as if they're addicted to it. But, with that being said, this past week almost randomly turned for the better, for everyone in my family and some of my friends too, which I'm not used to either. Trust me. I don't surround myself with negative influences; people just tend to "give up" around here as if it's the only thing left to do here in this dying town.
I guess everything took a positive light when I reluctantly offered to babysit my two twin nephews, Jordan and Hayden, while my sister and her boyfriend went shopping for another one of my nephews, Braiden, birthday. I'll downright admit right here that I am terrible with kids, of all ages; babies, infants, 5 year olds, 10 year olds and so on. Hell, I can barely stand 18 year olds now that I think of it. But, my sister promised I would do fine and that she would be back within an hour or two and that the babies were already napping, had clean diapers and if they got fussy, give them "tummy time" -to which I have no idea why she called it that- I said "just hurry back" and she left. Jordan and Hayden are 8 months old and beginning to Teeth(?), which she must have forgot telling me about. Jordan woke up almost the second she left and began crying. Which was just stressful because I had no idea what to do and only having a "common sense" basic terms of knowledge when it comes to baby care, I popped a binky in his mouth and he was literally quiet the rest of the time. Of course he was awake so I took him out to the living room to swing in his swing (that was battery operated but had dead batteries) and he was fine for the rest of the day. Hayden slept for a while but woke up and began to cry, assuming he wanted a binky too, I tried to place one in his mouth but to no avail. So I went to the next best thing, the bottle, to which he grabbed and never let go of.
Eventually, they both neither wanted their binky or bottle and just wouldn't stop crying. At all. I was stressed to the max! I thought I was going to snap under the pressure but then, I remembered the stupid term "tummy time" - consisting of a think blanket spread out on the floor and various toys on it, surrounding them as they wiggled around drooling and playing with them. Probably the cutest and funniest thing I saw all day. They continued "tummy time" until my sister got home.
Yesterday, my mom and I sat down and actually, for once, figured out bills. After a year of funeral fees and bill collectors, my mom came out in the clear and we sat down to figure out how we're going to do our "smart spending". It also helps that we're on level payments and our highest bill is only 100 dollars. Which came around to 400 dollars in total bills to be paid, leaving us with around 700 dollars for grocery/whatever/emergency money. My sister getting foods stamps monthly, decided to help us figure out a grocery list on "how she shops", "smart shopping" my mom said. I swear, she'd add "smart" to any make it sound inspirational or a half-assed 12 step program to a better life. Which, she must have taken because she's not on WoW anymore, she's not a hermit crab, she's cleaning, she has old friends over, she's spending more time with her grand kids and not moping around because the death of her dad which was a year ago. She got through it her own way and I'm actually shocked for the out come of it. The mom I wanted, the mom I needed. Just..it was too late.
After that, my sister asked it I could watch the babies again, to which I automatically said yes to. I loved being around them, with my sister not getting rid of the pit-bull that would attack me given any chance, always inside the house to where I can't come up and see them, it was good to finally see them.
All in all, actually and finally getting to see my nephews was probably the happiest I had been in a few months. They're just so..full of life, so...carefree and happy.
Everything's going good and, in the words of Hurley "We need to have...fun, you know, fun. Or we're just going to go crazy waiting for the next bad thing to happen".