Alabaster Mom

Dear TSA, Listen, I know you are just doing your job, trying to keep us all safe while we fly the friendly skies ("friendly" being a relative term). I appreciate your efforts, I really do. But I have to tell you - you've gone overboard. On Tuesday, April 27th, my daughter and I were scheduled to depart from Reagan National Airport. We had been on vacation and were returning home. First, we stood in line at security where a TSA employee spent ten solid minutes studying a passenger's passport before finally calling a supervisor. Then they both studied it for a while. I don't know what the problem was, but eventually they pulled the passenger aside and proceeded to screen others who were waiting in line. After showing proof of ID and boarding passes, my daughter and I moved to the screening area. We dutifully took off our shoes and laid them in the plastic bins, and then I shoved our carry-ons and my purse onto the belt. Then we each passed through the metal detecto...

The kid and I are having a great time. We celebrated her birthday (10 days early) on Friday night. The Spongebob Squarepants decor and cake just added that certain je ne sais quois to the festivities. Our family is somewhat spread out across the country, so it was fun to be able to celebrate her birthday with everyone (grandparents, great-grandmother, cousins, and aunt). She got two Zhu-Zhu pets from my parents, a Belle doll with sparkling horse, a Spongebob coloring book, $10, a Spongebob purse, and, because my sister apparently hates me and has always hated me: some Moon Sand (the messiest toy of all time; I know moms who burst into tears if you utter "moon" and "sand" in the same sentence). A and my nephew keep asking to play with the Moon Sand, and I just keep pretending I didn't hear them. On Saturday afternoon, we took the three kids to see "Oceans" at the movie theater. It was pretty good, but probably no more remarkable than the BBC Plane...

The kid and I arrived in the nation's capital as scheduled Wednesday night. It was fairly late by the time we boarded a shuttle and arrived at the rental car facility (although I should note that we were there at the time I had listed on the reservation). Our reservation was with Thrifty. I guess Dollar and Thrifty are the same company, because one lone employee was covering both rental counters. There was one guy ahead of me, so I waited in line while A ran laps around our luggage cart. Off to my left, I noticed a man all in black. He had also been on the shuttle bus with us. He was speaking loudly on his cell phone. "Yeah, is this Thrifty? I'm at your rental counter and the man won't rent me a car. I gave him my reservation and he will not rent to me. So now I'm in DC with no car." He then repeated the same thing a few more times, pacing as he talked. I don't know what transpired before I got there, but I started to get a bit nervous that mayb...

Last night I had a dream that the kid and I were at a U2 concert. After the show was over, Bono personally invited my daughter back stage to meet the band. Not me, my four-year-old child. My conscious brain has already absorbed the fact that A is cooler than I am, but now my sub-conscious mind is aware of it as well. Awesome. In other news, dandelion season is here again. The kid has actually asked me to stop in the middle of a busy road so that she could pick dandelions growing on the median (don't worry, I didn't go for it). I know a day will come when she'll realize that dandelions are essentially a weed and stop bringing them into the house in mass quantities every Spring. Sure, it's very sweet that she keeps picking them for me, but I don't want to be too sentimental about it here. She brings them in with virtually no stem but expects me to put them in water and cherish them for all time. When I do put them in water, they die quickly and I can tell from her dis...

Most people adore puppies. What's not to love, right? The sweet, soft fur. The playful exuberance. The chubby little sausage body. Squeeeee Rescue volunteers, by and large, reach "maximum puppy" by the end of their first year on the job, however. For those of us who open our homes to dogs that don't belong to us, we are accustomed to chewed chair legs, ruined carpets, and hacking coughs that keep us up all night. We do it for the love of the dog, but that doesn't mean we're masochists. Adult dogs are exponentially easier than puppies. Puppies, with their razor teeth, unpredictable bladders, and poor decision-making skills . . . the cuteness wears off pretty fast. Therefore, when our rescue's event coordinator posts a message to our fostering Yahoogroup asking, "Who can take a puppy?" what she gets in response is a bunch of volunteers looking at their shoes or gazing skyward and whistling some nameless tune. We pretend to be distracted by a s...

You wouldn't believe what comes out of this kid, though. After making it through much of the winter without catching a cold, I was hit pretty hard by a virus on Monday. Getting a cold would not be noteworthy except for the fact that I have asthma. Even a run-of-the-mill cold hits my immune system like a freight train (a wheezy, snot-filled train). As luck would have it, I had already made an appointment to see my asthma/allergy doctor this week. My asthma medications (maintenance inhaler plus rescue inhaler) had run out so I needed to go in for a check-up in order to receive new prescriptions. I picked up the kid from school on Tuesday and, since the law frowns on leaving small children home alone, I had to take her to the doctor's appointment with me. As you may recall, I have a profound dislike for these appointments. The whole scene just irritates me to no end. Yes, they measured my height again. Why why why why? Is there even the remotest possibility that I will hav...

I have to confess that I'm saddled with a bit o' melancholy lately. My friend Kevin died one year ago today. When I booked my upcoming trip to DC, I momentarily had the thought that I needed to let Kevin know I'll be in town. How I wish I could meet him for one last "girls' night out." I did have a better-than-average weekend, despite the sad anniversary. On Saturday morning, P and I took the kid to a children's festival (or "festibul," if you prefer her pronunciation). This is an annual event, and we've taken her every year. The first year, she was just eleven months old and couldn't walk yet. Each year, she's able to do more and more of the activities. I suppose we only have so many years left before she announces that this particular festibul is "for babies," so we'll persist in taking her until then. One fact that has remained constant for the five years we've attended: she doesn't listen. She runs...

We're on a "quoting Ned Flanders" kick at work. We have a new client with a similar name. Clearly, we take our amusement where we can get it. As you've probably gathered if you've read my blog for a bit, I tend to be a planner. I have weekends planned out from now through Christmas. I know what I am wearing tomorrow and I know what my daughter is wearing tomorrow. I know what I will have for lunch not just tomorrow, but well into next week. Spontaneous I ain't. That is why it was a bit of a shock, even to myself, that I decided on Tuesday that I will fly to DC on the 21st and bought the tickets about five minutes after that. Of course, I am taking my daughter along. We will be there a week before her birthday, so my sister and I quickly decided that we will have a little celebration and invite various family members. I could not wait to pick the kid up from school and tell her the good news. It was raining, so I loaded her into the van before laying it on...

Can I get a pass this week? I just cannot bring myself to step on the scale this morning. Some Easter-related bingeyness (that's a word, right?) I'll work harder this week. I'm starting to wonder if all the years of dieting have actually killed off my metabolism for good. Because I feel inclined to give you some sort of gift after you took the trouble to pop in and check the status of my bodily expansion, I give you "Percussion Gun" by White Rabbits.

We had an enjoyable weekend, but there were moments that put us pretty close to the edge. There was the great Cadbury Mini-Egg spill of 2010, the near-overdose on Reese's peanut butter bunnies, and an afternoon of "stop crying and dye your eggs" drama. Too much candy makes A a reckless (and ill-tempered) girl. I took the kid to an Easter egg hunt at our local wildlife sanctuary yesterday. I must say, it was extremely well organized. Participants had to be pre-registered and they capped attendance at 100. They did the math and figured out that each kid could find seven eggs. We started out in a small auditorium where we did craft projects while waiting for the hunt to get underway. There was a man in a chipmunk costume, and we were instructed to follow him out of the building and around the corner to a small unpaved road where the eggs were hidden (and by "hidden" I mean "laying in plain sight everywhere.") He walked to the far end of the woods...

There's skinny and then there's skeletal The week simultaneously flew by and dragged on at an excruciating pace. I had every intention of posting a blog entry earlier in the week but as my mother always said, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." It's a good thing I don't believe in hell, eh? So to bring you up to speed . . . this week I've been fretting away about my new foster dog, Tucker. He was in my house for less than 24 hours before I had to hospitalize him. He has severe colitis of some type and has not had a solid poop since the day of his birth (he's 18 months old). I can deal with some diarrhea; it's the blood I'm less fond of. Tucker is very, very thin (because, as you can imagine, everything just passes through him and it's hard to absorb nutrients that way). I was less worried about my carpet than I was about his health, of course. I just want him to get well so that I can find him a forever home. My veterinarian ...