mother nature is a bitch

today was an embarrassing pms kind of day. and to make it all worse, it actually started yesterday. that doesn't exactly make sense, but in my hormonally imbalanced mind it seems like it does, so i'm sticking with it. don't disagree with me!

brooke's birthday is monday. this is our off party year, so she was just allowed to invite one friend for a sleepover & a movie. the friend she chose moved out of town today so we had to do the sleepover on thursday. i worked thursday, so i had to make the cake that brooke requested wednesday night. i don't like cooking or baking. i'm all for short cuts, but this year brooke wanted me to make her cake myself. she wanted to go to the store w/ me & pick out all the ingredients & toppings & have a girly baking day. i couldn't talk her out of it, so that's what we did. wednesday. because she wanted cake w/ her friend on thursday. here's the cake we made together & brooke proudly displaying it for the camera. not so pretty, i know.

chris' parents were coming in for a visit on friday for some family birthday festivities. i planned to plug that candle back in, relight it & sing happy birthday again. yes, i know it was 1/4 gone, but it made sense to me. chris apparently thought that was ghetto. so he came home friday afternoon w/ a fresh hannah montana birthday cake & a new candle.

i was not happy. my feelings were hurt. i just knew that meant he thought my cake looked like shit. he thought that he & his family were too good for my awful cake. i thought he was insulting brooke by disrespecting her wishes for a homemade birthday cake. i cried. too much. and i looked meanly at chris' back. when chris went upstairs i quietly called brooke into the kitchen & told her to say goodbye to her pink cake because i was going to throw it out into the trash can so the grandparents would never know about my ugly, embarrassing cake. she hugged me & cried & told me not to listen to daddy and she loved mine & she didn't even want that pretty hannah montana cake anyway, she would only eat mine. and maybe just a small piece of the new one so she didn't upset daddy either.

that's when i realized how badly i was overreacting. how i was unfairly pulling her into my crazy & putting her in the middle between myself & chris & the slight that i imagined was all up in the middle of the room. i was making her birthday cake into a sore subject & stealing her happy. that wasn't very nice of me. so then i apologized to her & cried some more & told her that the cake daddy bought was way better anyway & we both knew it was definitely prettier. sigh.

today my crazy continued. it was sneakier though at the beginning. it started over the possible purchase of a vacuum cleaner at sams. chris & i disagreed, but we both had valid points. i won, but i felt guilty & nervous. then i wandered off w/ just brooke & left chris w/ his parents. i went to the women's clothing area & i tried on a cute puffy vest. there are no dressing rooms or mirrors, but i could zip it & still bend forward, so i figured it must look good. then i was headed off to find the rest of my group & show them my cute new vest selection when brooke crawled under a huge table thing & got herself stuck. i was in the process of digging her out w/ the assistance of a store employee when the rest of my clan showed up & then that was awkward. cuz i really didn't forbid her to climb under there. actually, she asked if she could as she was headed in & i said "ok, just once though. meetcha on the other side!" (i was feeling generous because of my cute new vest, ya see.)

once the child was adequately rescued & reprimanded, my family members noticed my vest. they asked if it came in a bigger size. i showed them how it didn't need to, see, cuz i could zip it & bend over. and it was so cute! chris thought i maybe should skip it cuz i didn't need it. i assured him that i did need it. he then mentioned gently that it maybe looked a little too small. which i interpreted to mean that i look like a fat ass woman & shouldn't be permitted to show my fat face in public because i'm a blobby blot on humanity. the vest went straight back onto the death trap of a table & i marched off to lick my blubbering wounds w/ brooke tight on my heels. chris followed us from a distance as i pretended to be looking at stuff that i wasn't really seeing. we don't exactly need any onsies these days or boys teenie bopper sized skater t's.

i finally stopped because i couldn't figure out what to do next. chris caught up. i told him i was mad about the vacuum. and how he called me fat. and, and, and... here come the tears. how freakin annoying! his parents approached us about the time my sprinkler system kicked in. they quickly veered away & i noticed the fatty vest in my mother-in-law's cart. because she's so nice & really means well & will take my side if i look upset. i finally mentioned to chris that maybe i might be just a smidge pms'y. i hate admitting that. it feels like it's a weakness. but the only other option is admitting to insanity & i guess in the long run that's worse. once it was out in the open, i really cried. in the middle of sams on a busy saturday afternoon while my family tried not to look on. brooke held my hand & stood behind me (probably glad that i was drawing attention away from her after the table crawling business).

eventually we started moving again & i had to confess to my MIL that we weren't actually fighting & i really wasn't mad & i seriously didn't need the vest. and then i cried some more while leaning my head against a large cardboard carton of socks. i hate it when my crazy shows in public.

and on that note, does anyone want some cake?