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Showing posts from February, 2008

Is it just me or . . .

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I have one of those saved searches on eBay, so once daily I receive an email letting me know of new listings of size 3T girls' clothing. I don't buy a lot of stuff on eBay, but occasionally I'll pick up a Gymboree outfit (or something along those lines) for the kid. The daily email contains thumbnails of 12 or so new listings. Now, please tell me who dresses their child like this? I cropped out this poor child's head so that she can preserve whatever is left of her dignity, but rest assured that there was a truly heinous headband perched on top of her skull. More painful still are the pageant outfits that seem to creep into these listings. I will freely admit that I don't understand the pageant world at all. But holy cow, some of these outfits are so skimpy that even the average streetwalker would find them "too revealing." The thought of putting an off-the-shoulder dress on my 2 1/2-year-old child . . . heavens to murgatroid! I am not trying to keep my d

Hello, Dah-ling

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So it seems I am sick - again. I woke up with another nasty cold yesterday (why do we say "nasty" cold? As if perhaps there are some delightful colds out there?) My neck agreed to hold my head up during regular business hours yesterday and then went off duty sometime before dinner. Seriously, my skull weighs more than a cinder block right now. Because my darling husband cares deeply about my health and well-being, he said, "Hey, you're really sick. Why don't you go lie down and I'll take care of everything?" But as Wayne Campbell once said: "Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt." Instead, he watched me: Prepare dinner Clean up after dinner and do all the dishes Feed the dogs Put away two loads of laundry Bathe our child and get her ready for bed Clean the tub Change a poopy diaper So anyway, yeah, there was no invitation to take 'er easy. I just thought I'd start off with a little joke, see? I oughta take this act ON THE ROAD! Th

The Zen of Popcorn

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For reasons that escape me now, I decided that today was the day that we'd take the kid to a movie at the theater. Her attention span, while still abysmal under most circumstances, has gradually increased. So, I figured maybe the time had come. We decided to take her to the budget theater so that if we had to bail out, we'd only be out twenty bucks or so. The movie we selected was "The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep." Things started out well enough, but we began to notice that as the volume of popcorn available for consumption decreased, her level of discontent increased. Like so: I don't know if we'll be brave enough to try another movie anytime soon, but all in all I thought the outing went pretty well. We had to hold down A's seat because otherwise the seat bottom flew upward and next thing she knew her kneecaps were smashed against her forehead. I had a little flashback while we were waiting for the movie to start. When my middle sister and I were kid

Irrational

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Merriam Webster defines the word "irrational" as follows: Main Entry: 1ir·ra·tio·nal Pronunciation: \i-ˈra-sh(É™-)nÉ™l, ËŒi(r)-\ Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Latin irrationalis, from in- + rationalis rational Date: 14th century : not rational: as a (1): not endowed with reason or understanding (2): lacking usual or normal mental clarity or coherence b: not governed by or according to reason cGreek & Latin prosody (1)of a syllable : having a quantity other than that required by the meter (2)of a foot : containing such a syllable d (1): being an irrational number (2): having a numerical value that is an irrational number — ir·ra·tio·nal·i·ty \-ËŒra-shÉ™-ˈna-lÉ™-tÄ“\ noun — ir·ra·tio·nal·ly \-ˈra-sh(É™-)nÉ™-lÄ“\ adverb I define the word "irrational" like this: my kid. Is it something with the 33-month-old mind? Does the "logic" part of the brain not get activated until later or something? Here's an example. A has an extra blanket on her b

Hey, don't walk on by . . .

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My foster girl, Mandy (AKA Mandolin or Mandarin) just cannot catch a break. She has been in rescue for months and no one has even come to meet her. I was telling some of the other volunteers that maybe one of them could disguise their voice and inquire about Mandy by phone. No doubt I would be elated, if only momentarily! (Speaking of prank calls, my husband works in the finance field and his job title used to be "Trading Desk Specialist," where he dealt in stock trades. However, if you called him and disguised your voice and told him that you had a very nice desk that you wanted to trade, he did not find it amusing AT ALL.) I have received three inquiries on Mandolin. The first applicant set up a meeting and then canceled, saying that he was going to have an emergency the next day. Emergencies in my life always show up unscheduled and unbidden, but mine is not to wonder why. Then I was contacted by another applicant who seemed to have a genuine interest in Mandy. This family

Make a Wish

The visit with my mom is going well. We haven't done anything too exciting - we've done a little bit of shopping and whatnot. We got a snowstorm on Sunday, so we did not even attempt to leave the house. Normally a snowstorm would not keep me and my mom from shopping, but there was at least an inch of pure ice underneath the snow. On Friday, A and I were at the airport waiting for my mom's flight to arrive. To keep the kid occupied, I handed her pennies from my wallet so that she could toss them into a water fountain. I told her to be sure she made a wish first. So she would blow on each penny and then toss it into the water. Finally I asked, "What did you wish for?" Without missing a beat she looked at me and said, "Neminems!" When I told my mom about it, she said that's what she would have wished for, too. Speaking of wishes, we finally celebrated my birthday on Saturday night. P got me a Grasshopper Pie from Baskin Robbins. Just between you and me,

She Ain't Heavy, She's My Meemaw

This morning, the 6:18 tantrum went off on schedule. Seriously, you can set your watch by it. In my efforts to be upbeat and cheery to combat A's foul mood, I reminded her that my mom is coming today. "You get to go to daycare this morning and then I'll pick you up after lunch. Then we'll pick up Meemaw at the airport." At this point the kid had not opened her eyes (even though I had her half dressed), but said, "I can't pick her up. Her's too heavy." Now is that a classic toddler one-liner or what? You'll have to forgive her grammatical misstep - she was not fully coherent. The next tantrum that followed involved Froot Loops (and my failure to give her some - I had already made her a waffle and some veggie sausage). The next tantrum errupted when she got mad that Gideon was standing too close to her chair. The third (fourth?) and final tantrum (before she and her father left the house, anyway) involved the selection of toys she could take to

Party like a rock star on my birthday

So yeah, it's my birthday. For starters, I got to bring baked goods to work. They post a monthly list of birthdays so it's hard to avoid. "Hey, happy birthday! What did you bring?" I just love celebrating my birthday by giving stuff to other people. We are also getting hammered with snow today, so I'm pretty psyched about that, too. As an added bonus, I get to drag the kid to the grocery store after work today. I mean to tell you, you haven't lived until you've pushed a heavy grocery cart through the snow and unloaded it into your mom-mobile. And don't forget that the grocery cart contains a cranky two-year-old who wants to eat the Scooby-Doo push-up pops NOW. Oh, and that same two-year-old insists that it is NOT your birthday and that all of the nice cards you've received are, in fact, for her. My mom is arriving tomorrow. She comes out every year to celebrate my birthday. However, my kid flies into an apoplectic rage if I even dare to suggest tha

I'm mad to you!

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I'm in a mood. I woke up this morning and realized that I am sick. Again. How does my child do such an exceptional job at passing these bugs to me? It's not like I eat the Kleenex after I wipe her nose or something. And I'm PMSing. So I spent most of the day feeling :::this::: close to snapping. I told the kid she couldn't have any candy so of course she went crying to her father. "Mother said I can't have any candy!" So what did he say to her? The right answer, of course, would be: "Nope, your mom already said no." His answer, of course, was: "Sure, let's have some Bottlecaps." I decided to stab him to death in his sleep let it go just this once, but suffice it to say I was irritated. I felt like my daughter when she yells, "I'M MAD TO YOU!" But enough of that. We had a nice weekend, even though the temperature plummeted over 30 degrees and is well below zero today. This is the kind of cold that makes your eyeballs h

The dream police, they live inside of my head

The dream police, they live inside of my head. The dream police, they come to me in my bed. The dream police, they're coming to arrest me. I've had strange dreams for the past two nights. Dream #1: Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood from Fountains of Wayne were hanging out at my house. I love Fountains of Wayne so this should have been quite the thrill for me. However, I was dying and found their visit to be a bit of an inconvenience. I don't know why/how I was dying, because in the dream I kept saying, "Oh no, I feel fine, but I'm definitely dying." Adam and Chris, who seem like they would be sensitive chaps in real life, were not sympathetic to my plight. They kept handing me their camera and posing in various spots around my house. I am not much of a photographer but tried to oblige. But when I would pick up their camera and look through it, I could never find them in the frame. Instead, I would see this weird distorted image as if I were looking at a f

Made by Meemaw

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My daughter has her own designer, who is always making stuff for her. Jackie O had Oleg Cassini and my kid has . . . Meemaw. The craziest thing happened yesterday. For several weeks my mom worked on a nightgown and a bedskirt for the kid. Finally, both projects were finished and ready to be shipped. She handed them off to my dad for shipping. My dad does a lot of shipping, as he sells a lot of junk on eBay. My mom calls him "Bob, down on the loading dock." (Bob is not his name) In theory, though, he knows what he is doing when it comes to mailing stuff. But then . . . he lost the box. He had no recollection of what had happened to it. A couple of theories were developed over time: 1) he drove off with the box on the roof of the car or 2) he left the car door unlocked and someone stole it. My pop felt awful and my mom tried her best not to make him feel worse. After several days had passed, she trudged over to the fabric store to start both projects over. I told her that A was

Sabotage!

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The rescue participated in a huge pet expo today. The expo was held a couple hours away from where I live, but I decided to take Mandy, my foster dog, in hopes that someone would want to adopt her. I felt that if someone could just meet her in person, they would see for themselves how sweet she is. Last night she and I spent the night at my friend Kathy's house so that we could make it to the expo in a timely manner this morning. Kathy lets me stay at her house whenever I want, and friends like that are hard to come by. She is semi-retired (she works just enough to pay her greens fees in the summer) and has three daughters (and a bunch of Boxers, a standard requirement if you wanna hang with moi). I sleep in the room once occupied by her youngest daughter, who is the same age as me. The room has been kept just as it was when Sarah lived there, so it's kind of a throwback to see Depeche Mode and OMD posters on the wall (and if you know who OMD was/were, you are old, too). So any