We have Boomerang!

Hot dawg!

I'm so delighted that I'm hopping around and grinning like an idiot.

See how little it takes to make me happy? I guess maybe that says something about how small my world is, but whatever.

We have Boomerang!

(***doing happy dance***)

Screw delighted. I'm thrilled! Thrilled, I tell you!

All right, before you TV haters get your shorts in a wad, let me tell you that filling a child's days with fun yet creative activities is a lovely idea in theory. In truth, there's a lot of hours in the day to fill -- day after day after day after day -- plus chores to do and meals to cook, so unless you've been a stay-at-home parent who has managed to fill a child's days with fun yet creative activities all day every day, just shut the hell up.

Anyway, Britt doesn't sit in front of the TV all day. She plays, or we play, and occasionally she sits down to watch a favorite show, or I'll pop in a video if I need her to settle down for a nap or so I can get something done.

We have Boomerang! Finally!

The reason this makes me so happy is that Britt is an Old School kid. Her favorite TV shows are Tom & Jerry and Mickey Mouse cartoons, and she loves Scooby-Doo. But she's never seen a Porky Pig cartoon or the Flintstones or Huckleberry Hound or Josie & the Pussycats, because no other channels we get show them, and I'm pretty sure they're going to be right up her alley.

Anyway, I'd better run because I can't sit in front of the computer while she's awake and it sounds like she's wreaking havoc out there.

Plus, Yogi Bear's on! Woo-hoo!

She's Gone

Bob came down yesterday, loaded up Britt and took her back to Kansas with him.



Oh, my sweet doll -- this is the first time she's been away from us in two years and I miss her so much. I keep listening for her and turning to look at her or talk to her, but she's not there and then I go, Oh, yeah...

But she'll be back on Monday, so there's just two more days to get through without her.

In the meantime, I'm keeping myself busy by fiddling around with iTunes, adding and deleting songs and setting up folders for different kinds of music. It's finally shaping up so's I can set it on shuffle and listen without wanting to hit the skip button on every other song.

Currently playing:

1. Golden Slumbers, The Beatles
2. The Rodeo Song, Garry Lee & the Showdown (lyrics here; I know you've heard it before)
3. Crippled Heart Blues, Lana Martino-Smith
4. Just Like a Woman, Bob Dylan
5. Too Much Time on My Hands, Styx (exactly!)
6. Just an Old-Fashioned Love Song, Three Dog Night
7. Limelight, Rush
8. A Hard Day's Night, The Beatles
9. I Saw Her Again, The Mamas & the Papas
10. Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Pink Floyd

It's better than it was, anyway.

So, since we're having a kidless weekend, Mikey took me out to dinner -- like on a real date -- and then we went to Dillard's to spend my Christmas gift certificate (my in-laws never know what to get me). I tried on 14 shirts and found only two that fit, and got a couple of pairs of jeans.

And now I'm about to say something I never thought I'd say in this lifetime:

My boobs are too big.

That's mostly why all those shirts didn't fit.

I had to buy a bigger bra last year and didn't think I was getting the push-up version, but it sure acts like one; now I've got cleavage up to my chin. Just two years ago, before I gained all this weight, my boobies were rattling around in too-big B cups, and now I feel like Chestica Simpson (though not quite as stupid, or as blonde. Or as young. Or as skinny). I think it's time to go up another size.

Also, I'm thinking about chopping my hair off.

Crayon in the dryer! Oh, noooooo!

Mikey tried to help me yesterday by running a load of laundry. I didn't know this until mid-way through the cycle when I walked through the utility room and heard the washer running. I may have been a bit shrill when I asked if he had spot-treated any of Britt's clothes because I've been fighting hard to keep at least some of them stain-free. Of course, he had not.

Nor had he checked any pockets because, while transferring the clothes to the dryer, I found half a dozen crayons in the bottom of the washer. Trying to avert disaster, I took every single item out of the dryer and shook it, but didn't find any more crayons. So, I turned the dryer on on and let it do its thing.

Big mistake.



Of course, the crayon was BROWN, so it looks like poop stains.

(***sigh***)

This is not cool. Not cool at all.

Good News/Bad News

I'll get the good news out of the way first, since it's relatively frivolous: I got my car back! Mikey found somebody to get Bridgie's car drivable, which cost way less than we were afraid it would, so me and Britt are ready to ramble again. Woo-hoo!

Now the bad news: My cousin's son (Aunt Fay's grandson) was killed in a wreck Thursday morning. He was 36 years old and left a wife and two or three kids.

Also, Mom had a "suspicious" mammogram so she's going in for a test Monday. She didn't know what kind, just "a test."

So, pray.

I'm a Moveable Feast

I'm sitting here with my trusty tube of RhuliGel (except they don't call it RhuliGel anymore) because we've had a mosquito in the house and it's been eating me alive. Britt has a few bites, too, but I'm covered with big red itchy welts. Ten, at last count. I must be extra tasty or something, I dunno.

Anyway, I finally managed to kill the little bastard tonight after chasing it around for three days.

And guess what?

There's another mosquito dive-bombing me right this minute.

Make that eleven bites. I just found a fresh one on my elbow.

Would somebody please bring me a can of Deep Woods Off? Like, stat? Because I have no car, you know, so I can't go get it myself.

Back to Britt

I've been obsessing over music lately, which is odd since I really don't have a big jones for music. It's probably just a way of distracting myself from the fact that Britt and I are housebound again -- all day every day. Day after day after day after day...

Anyway, I'll shut up about music for a little bit and get back to the real reason y'all come here.



We haven't been up to much, obviously, besides a lot of reading.



There was an attempt at playing in the sprinkler,



but the water was too cold.

Other than that, we just color and play with toys and dance to music videos and watch TV. It finally quit raining nearly every damn day and the mud's dried up, so now we can go out and play in the backyard with Pepper. Which is at least different from playing in the house but, really, big woop, ya know?

Sounds boring, huh? Yeah, well, boring suddenly doesn't seem so bad after the excitement we had yesterday:

We were sitting on the couch reading a book when Britt climbed down to grab a toy or harass the cat or something, I don't even remember what. When she tried to climb back up on the couch, she slipped and crashed into the corner of the book propped on my lap. Then she collapsed on the floor screaming, with her hands clamped over her eye.

And my heart stopped.

You know how moms will say, "Don't do that, you might put your (or somebody else's) eye out"? Well, when my mom said it, it wasn't theoretical. It really did happen in our family; my brother was blinded in one eye in a childhood accident. So that's what flashed through my head while I tried to comfort her and assess the damage.

The corner of the book had caught her just beneath her lower lashes. If it had been a quarter inch higher, it would have poked her directly in the eyeball, which could have meant scratches, a damaged cornea, or worse.

(***shudder***)

Anyway, the area was a little puffy last night, but it's not even black and blue today like I thought it would be.

It really freaked me out that something like this could happen. I mean, how dangerous can it be to read a book? And it's not like I wasn't watching her; I was right there! I was shaking all the rest of the day, knowing how close we had come to real disaster.

So, yeah, some kinds of excitement I can do without.

In other news, Sherri was in deep shit recently when the city sewer system backed up and flooded her house. You can see pictures of the damage on her Flickr page. She and Chris are staying at Cathy's (which is kind of like putting three wild cats in a bag, heh) until they find a new place to live.

ReShuffled

Whee! I got $65 worth of iTunes gift cards for Mother's Day and I've already spent it all, expanding my collection of tuneage by almost 13%.

I haven't listened to the radio in years and have no idea who's who these days, so I went with old favorites. Mostly '60s pop (because my sisters were teenagers back then and if the radio wasn't rattling the windows, the record player was), '70s guitar rock (because that's when I was a teenager), and early '80s MTV stuff (when it was nothing but 24/7 videos).

Now I can delete some of the crap I didn't like that much but uploaded anyway just so I'd have something to listen to.

And so, as my shuffle lineup becomes slightly less schizoid, it becomes slightly more dorky:

1. If I Fell, Beatles
2. Der Kommissar, After the Fire
3. You Did Not Have a Home, Rich Mullins
4. Nights in White Satin, Moody Blues
5. The Rain Song, Led Zeppelin
6. Party Train, Gap Band
7. Suite for Flute & Strings (Badinerie), JS Bach
8. Love Shack, B52s
9. Life in the Fast Lane, Eagles
10. Midnight Rider, Allman Brothers

Happy Mother's Day

To a girl



who grew up



to marry a handsome fella



and raise a passel of kids



who turned out pretty all right.



Well, mostly all right. I mean, none of us are on death row or nuthin'.



(My sisters are going to kill me for this.)

We made her a grandma



(Sherri's gonna kill me for this one.)

and they made her a great-grandma.

(Sorry, I don't have a picture of the great-grandkids all together. There's a bunch of 'em.)

But then, she was always great -- loving wife, devoted mom, and the most indulgent grandma ever.

Have a happy, Ma. I love you!

Help!

Look at me, I'm Sandra D
Lousy with virginity...

Yes, it's true. I'm a music-downloading virgin. I'm as nervous as a tender young maiden preparing for her wedding night.

I admit, it looks pretty straightforward: You pay your money, find a song, click the download button, and voila! But, I have questions.

My iMac came with an account ready to go at iTunes, but they charge 99 cents a song, which adds up pretty fast. No volume discounts, no specials, no nothing.

I've been googling to see what alternatives are out there, but I found way too much to make sense of. So I'm wondering:

Where do you download music from, and how much does it cost?

Have you had problems with any downloading sites? Are there certain ones I should avoid?

Do they make you install any kind of extra software?

If I try one of the free download sites, is the DoJ gonna show up at my door with a warrant?

Is there anything else I should know?

At the Zoo

I borrowed my car from Bridgie so we could go to Britt's class today, where we learned about lions and tigers (but not bears, oh my).

She made a cat puppet,



and then we rambled around the zoo for a while.

The highlight of our day was visiting the lorikeet enclosure. After we got in, I found out that you could get food for the lorikeets before you come in, and the lorikeets will have nothing to do with you if you have no food to offer:



Britt futilely chased after them for about 30 minutes, and then some nice person gave her their cup of food:



And, within seconds, she had a new best friend:

BrittSpeak

I was trying to read a book to Britt when she put her hands over my mouth and said, "Stop talking now! Mouth off!"

I try not to cuss -- because Little Miss Big Ears copies everything I do -- so I say things like "God bless America!" or "Merciful heavens!" or "Good God almighty!" a lot. So now, Britt's running around saying "My God mighty!" all the time.

Whenever she doesn't want something, she'll say, "No! I can't have it!" When I ask if she wants something to eat, sometimes she'll say, "No, I can't hungry yet."

She likes to whisper "secrets." She'll come up and whisper gibberish in my ear and I'll whisper gibberish in her ear, and she'll just laugh and laugh.

My roses are blooming now, and she knows what flowers are but she was puzzled by the buds, so I explained to her that they're baby flowers. So now she pets them very gently, saying "Awww, baby roses! So cute!"

Bubbly Girl

Britt loves bubbles. Bubble baths, bubbles in the kitchen sink when I'm washing dishes, or blowing bubbles from a bottle of liquid soap -- it doesn't matter. She loves them all.

Bubble baths are no issue, but I can hardly wash dishes in peace with her underfoot, begging for handfuls of suds to scatter around the house. And she makes an awful mess with the bottled bubble solution since she always wants to be the one holding it, and that's why it always stays hidden away with the Play-Dough and the Floam, only to be brought out as a special treat.

And now, Britt has her very own bubble machine.

It looks like it was blowing her hair back here, but it wasn't:



Well, it did blow her hair back in that sense. She was absolutely delighted with it, and danced about with joy:



And then she just sat and stared at it in awed wonder:



It's a lot easier to deal with than the bottled stuff, as long as she's not trying to carry it around with her, because it does spill. But it was just the ticket -- she loves it.

My Boys

The two men in my life, pickin' and grinnin' out on the back porch:



Bob got his shiny new guitar for Christmas.



Mikey's teaching him how to play it:

Mother's Day is May 13

If anyone I gave birth to needs some gift-giving ideas, one of these would be like the most appreciated gift ever.

Or one of these, if you're really that broke.