Britt's House o' Beauty is now open

We went shopping today and Britt came home with an all-plastic, non-messy faux makeup kit, complete with a little battery-operated blow dryer.

She likes to sit on the counter and watch when I do my face, although the eyelash curler makes her anxious (Are you all right? Is it okay?), and sometimes we paint our nails together, so she knew what to do with most of it.

The blow dryer and the perfume atomizer, however, completely stumped her. I haven't used either one since before she was born, so she had no idea what they were for. Once I showed her, though, she was totally on board.

So I got my face and hair done several times today, although that pointy plastic eye shadow applicator so close to my eyeballs made me a little anxious. Mikey got a makeover this evening, too, and even got his nails done.

*****
The other day, I gave Britt an empty cardboard box to play with, and she played with it so thoroughly that it split down one corner. The next morning she inspected the damage and said, mournfully, "My spaceship. It's broken."

Today, she dumped the contents of one of her toy boxes and made herself a "nest" in it:



She's an awful cute little chick, ain't she?

Potty Update

Britt's doing great on the peeing part. We have no problems at all there.

But it's been almost three weeks and she still won't poop in the potty. And now she pulls off her panties and puts on a Poo-Wup all by herself when she's ready to take a dump.

I guess it's time to move on to Plan E, or Plan F, maybe. I've lost track.

I've hidden the Poo-Wups in the office closet so she can't get to them, and tomorrow will be our first totally Poo-Wup-free day. And I'm dreading it. Oh, how I'm dreading it. Cleaning up poopy panties is so, so much worse than poop in a Poo-Wup. Especially if it's mushy, because it's almost impossible to get them down over her legs without smearing stuff everywhere.

(***shudder***)

She won't be happy about it, either, because she loves her new Poo-Wups. Mikey screwed up and got the boy's version, which are decorated with a Cars motif. She's absolutely delighted with them, and constantly points out her "pwetty twucks" so they can be properly admired.

Urine trouble now

Heh, get it? Urine trouble now?

Okay, never mind.

We took Britt back to the doctor yesterday for a follow-up on her UTI, and it was no fun at all.

She tripped over an uneven sidewalk seam outside the building and skinned her knee and elbow, so she was already upset before she even figured out where we were going. And it went downhill from there.

Mikey always goes with us us to the doctor's office because Britt gets totally freaked out and it's hard to handle her when she's thrashing and flailing and screaming. This time, though, he got held up at work so I had to get through the first half of the visit by myself -- including the first attempt at getting another urine sample.

We got to the bathroom just as a woman was exiting and she had very obviously just taken a dump, so you can imagine how fun it was to sit on the floor with my arm in the toilet holding a cup for Britt to pee in. We gave up when somebody else came banging on the door about 15 minutes later.

After Mikey finally got there, we tried again and eventually got the sample, which was a huge relief because the alternative was catheterizing her and I did not want to put her through that. And the sample tested clear, so the infection is gone.

More good news: No more diapers! Britt is totally toilet-trained as far as peeing goes (we're still working on the pooping part). She hasn't had any accidents in several days, even when we've been away from home. She wears panties during the day and a pull-up at night because, even though she usually wakes up dry, I don't want to risk a big stinky wet spot in the middle of my bed. When her habits are more firmly established we'll get rid of the pull-ups, too.

Also, she doesn't pee every 20 minutes any more, now that her UTI is gone.

In hindsight, I should have figured something was wrong with the peeing every 20 minutes but, gah, you know, it's been 25 years since I've been intimately acquainted with the peeing habits of small children and I don't remember anything about it. Except that their bladders are very small.

At the zoo

Britt learned about farm animals in her zoo class this morning.

They turned us loose after visiting the few farm animals on the premises, and we decided to go see the lorikeets again. But we came across this mist-dispensing thingy first, and I didn't think I was ever gonna get Britt away from it.



It did feel pretty good on such a hot day.

When we finally made it over to the lorikeet enclosure we paid two bucks for a little cup of nectar, and Britt had no trouble making new friends.



In fact, they just loved her.



Or her ponytail holders, at least.



Before we left the enclosure, Britt learned a little bit about the birds and the bees when a particularly uninhibited couple made the beast with four wings right in front of her.



In the gutter, no less.

And the zoo used to be such a nice place to take the kids.

Feeling Better

Yesterday, on the way to the doctor's office, Britt looked like this:



Today, she looked like this:



And neither of her two doses of medicine came back up today, so I'm feeling better too.

Britt's sick

Poor baby had a fever and was lethargic so we took her to the doctor today.

The doctor wanted a urine sample, so I spent 20 minutes sitting on the bathroom floor in the doctor's office with my arm in the toilet, holding a cup for Britt to pee in. She finally did, though most of it went all over my hand.

We got her home and gave her the first dose of medicine for her urinary tract infection, and she slept all afternoon. She woke up feeling much better, and was her normal live-wire self all evening.

Then it was time for her bedtime dose. She hates taking medicine, so it's a two-person operation and we practically have to sit on her to get it in her mouth; it's traumatic for all of us. This time it was worse than usual, because she cried so hard that she threw up. And then I had to decide if enough stayed down or if I needed to give her another dose and risk her puking again.

And we get to do this twice a day for ten days.

She just woke up needing to pee, and we discovered that her fever is back so we tried to give her some Tylenol. She didn't want any, so she started crying and threw that up, too.

Gah, this child's gag reflex! It defeats me every time.

I promise to give it a rest after this

because I'm sure you're just thrilled to bits to read every little detail of Britt's potty training.

Like I was thrilled to bits at 5:45 this morning when she woke us up demanding a dry Poo-Wup (that's what she calls Pull-Ups). And then again at 7:30 when she woke us up because she needed to go pee.

But, just in case you're wondering, there was still no pooping in the potty over the weekend; except for that, she's doing very well.

Just a little while ago, she peed on the toilet and when she was done I went back to eating my lunch. About two minutes later she needed to go again, so I sat her up there and tapped my foot while she did her thing. And then I went back to my lunch. And then she needed to go again!

(***sigh***)

This time I left her sitting there while I finished my lunch, and when I went back to check on her she said, "I did it!"

"Did what, Sweetie? Oh... Oh, you pooped! Oh, good girl!"

We have poop, people! In the potty! Voluntary poop in the potty!

I'll say no more, lest I jinx it.

Friday Shuffle

Day Three of potty training followed the trend of Days One and Two: peeing every 20 minutes, two accidents, absolute refusal to poop in the toilet.

Britt can pull her own pants down now, and sometimes she can pull them back up (and sometimes they get all twisted in back and she can't get them over her plump little booty), so I need to find some kind of platform that won't tip over so she get herself up on the toilet, because this every-20-minutes crap is wearing me out.

Anyway, today's shuffle:

1. The Letter, The Box Tops
2. One Toke Over the Line, Brewer & Shipley
3. Long As I Can See the Light, Creedence Clearwater Revival
4. Mighty Tight Woman, Bonnie Raitt
5. Give It Time, Eric Lindell
6. I've Been Loving You Too Long, Marc Broussard
7. Respect Yourself, The Staple Singers
8. Come On in My Kitchen, Keb' Mo'
9. Zombie Me, No More Kings
10. A Whiter Shade of Pale, Procol Harum

I've mentioned that Britt likes to sing, right? Well, she knows the tunes to "Old MacDonald" and "Frère Jacques" but she doesn't know the words, so she makes up her own. It amazes me how well she can carry a tune (because I couldn't carry a tune if it had handles on it), plus it's just cute as can be. I need to get it on video.

She does know the words to "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," or most of them anyway. Her version goes like this:

Twinka twinka litta star
How I love you what you are...

Potty Training Attempt #17

I decided to get serious about potty training. Again.

So, yesterday morning, we got started.

Britt's potty chair had been banished to the garage because the only interest she had in it was using it as a step stool to reach things I'd put up out of her reach. I brought it in and polished it up and plunked it down in the middle of the living room, and told Britt that I wanted her to start peeing and pooping in it.

She said no. And then she crossed her arms and went "Hmph!"

I took her wet overnight diaper off and decided to leave her bare-assed. I told her that if she needed to pee or poop, she just needed to sit on the potty and do it.

She wasn't going for the potty chair or for the butt-naked thing; she laid on the couch bleating like a dying calf. And occasionally hollering, "Diaper! Diaper!"

Already my plan was going off the rails, not even 15 minutes into it. We compromised on a pair of big-girl panties if she would tell me when she needed to potty. And...

It worked! Well, she still won't have anything to do with her potty chair, but I put the potty seat on the toilet and she tells me she needs to go and I pull her panties down and set her up there and she goes. About every 20 minutes.

But she flat-out refused to poop in the toilet. No, no way, not happening. I was afraid of losing the little bit of progress we'd made (because we've been this far before), so I put a diaper on her and let her poop, then put her back in panties. And she only peed in her pants twice yesterday.

Whew! So far, so good.

Today it was more of the every-20-minutes peeing, and this morning she pooped in the toilet! She had a couple of accidents today and she did her afternoon poop in her panties (which is way worse than cleaning up poop in a diaper), but we're heading in the right direction.

I knew her poop schedule already, but I had no idea she was peeing so often. I'm thinking maybe I should cut down on her fluid intake, because she's obviously a well-hydrated child. And she can't pull down her own pants or hoist herself up on the toilet yet, so less peeing would be great for me.

Also, the wiping thing. Her arms are too short to reach her poony from the back and her legs are too fat for her to reach between them from the front, so we'll have to work on that.

But Britt's into it, so that's half the battle right there. This afternoon the cat came in to use his litter box while we were sitting in the bathroom. We listened to him pee, then Britt started clapping and went "Yay! Good!" just like I do with her.

Out and About

I didn't get Britt signed up in time for art classes in June, July and August, and they're all full, so we're minus one out-of-the-house activity for the summer.

This sucks, because there aren't that many activities around town for two-year-olds. Once she turns three, there'll be about half a jillion things we can go do, but we're fighting cabin fever here at the ranch right now.

So I took her to Omniplex yesterday. Most of the exhibits were way over her head, and I knew they would be, but I was desperate. And Britt had a great time anyway.

You see this here wooden tower thingy?



(Britt's not actually in the picture. Stupid frickin' shutter delay.)

It supposedly houses the tallest spiral slide in the country, and Britt climbed up and went down the slide several times. She didn't find much to interest her in the tree house, but she did like climbing the rope net.



She loved the seesaw



but hated the Hall of Mirrors. She has a tendency to run ahead of me, and she kept crashing into the walls.



Which was pretty funny, actually. I wish I'd had my video camera with me.

She had fun at the water table



and with the "antique" phones.



Also, there was a face-painting station



where she gave herself a little blue Hitler mustache.



Then we had lunch and visited the gardens, where Britt chased a rabbit and found some "kine cones."



And then we went to the planetarium show, which was boooooring.

And then we came home to find that it had rained like a mofo while we were gone, and the kitchen and half the garage had flooded, so -- yay.

My First (and Probably Last) Meme

I'm not crazy about memes because they can be so deadly dull, but the "Six (or Seven or Eight) Odd/Strange/Unusual Things About Me" meme is usually more entertaining than most.

Nobody tagged me or nuthin', but I made a list anyway. You'll notice I was a bit of a wild child in my youth, but I swear I've been a fine, upstanding citizen for the past twenty years or so. For the most part.

**********
1. I was once bitten in a bar fight. And it wasn't even my fight!

When I was 22, a date took me to a small-town knife-and-gun bar, where he promptly got into a fight with an old nemesis; the fight was broken up and then a cat (Don't ask; I never figured it out myself.) walked across the floor and my date picked it up and threw it at the other guy and the fight was on again. I was standing against the bar when the two rolled across the floor and crashed into me; the next thing I knew the other guy had his teeth buried in the tender flesh of my inner left wrist and I frantically pounded on his head until he let go. Then the cops came and sent everyone home.

Needless to say, it was my last date with that guy.

I never went to the doctor; I had no insurance and couldn't afford to. Luckily, the wound didn't get infected, but a long ridge of skin had been pinched up and never flattened out; it eventually turned black and fell off.

Wanna see the scar?



When my kids asked about it, I told them a dog had bitten me. Which was true enough, I suppose.

**********
2. I was later involved several bar fights that were mine.

**********
3. The statute of limitations has run out on this one, so I guess it's safe to tell:

About 20 years ago, I owned a 1970 3/4-ton Chevy truck that had a three-speed on the column and no power steering. It was a big, clunky fucker to drive and I was built like Nicole Ritchie back then, but my 1980 Buick Regal had died a painful death and I was able to buy this truck dirt cheap.

Anyway, I drove my friend Donna to town in it (probably to buy some weed, I don't remember) and, when we got there, I pulled over on the wrong side of the street to park against the curb. And my brakes went out. And I crashed into the front end of a car parked on the correct side of the street.

Those of you who knew Donna probably remember that loud braying jackass laugh, right? Well, she kept doing that. While repeatedly demonstrating how funny my "skinny ol' spaghetti leg" looked when my foot was flailing away at the useless brake pedal.

I had a hard time finding humor in the situation right then, myself.

So we got out of the truck to look at the damage and to face whoever come running, because surely someone had heard the crash. We couldn't see any actual houses because there were tall hedges in front of them, and we didn't know which one the car belonged to anyway, so we spent about five minutes milling around on the sidewalk, wondering what to do and making false starts toward one house or another (we may have smoked a little weed already, I don't remember). And Donna was still laughing her ass off.

But nobody ever showed up, so we finally climbed back into the truck and split.

**********
4. I'm not a social person at all. I tried to be when I was younger, because I thought being social was normal and I desperately wanted to be normal.

Eventually, I got over that.

I haven't managed to stay in touch with anyone from my childhood, from school, from work, from anywhere. The only people I have regular contact with are related to me either by blood or by marriage. And I'm cool with that, because I enjoy solitude and I'm very selfish with my time.

**********
5. I went to nursing school when the kids were babies, but a miscarriage and a divorce led to my dropping out just before finishing the first year. But not before I got to witness an autopsy!

A man being treated for congestive heart failure died at the VA hospital in Muskogee. Two hours later, he was on the autopsy table in the hospital basement, where I watched his chest and abdominal cavity being dissected.

The sight of it didn't bother me as much as I thought it would, since they kept his face and genitals covered and it kind of de-personalized him. But the smell! Like fresh meat. Ugh.

Anyway, it turned out the guy didn't have congestive heart failure after all. His heart was fine, but his kidneys were covered in huge abcesses.

During another clinical rotation, I took care of a man in the last stages of cirrhosis who'd had a penectomy some years earlier. Which I didn't find out until I went to give him a sponge bath, so it was a bit of a shock.

**********
6. The first concert I ever went to was in 1983, featuring David Allan Coe at the Sand Springs rodeo grounds. The event was advertised as having family-style seating, bring your lawn chairs and ice chests, etc, so I decided it would be all right to take the kids, who were both pre-schoolers at the time.

I got there and spread out a quilt for the kids to play on and then, while I kicked back and waited for the concert to start, I started looking around the rest of the audience. And grew increasingly nervous. Because every other person in the rodeo arena was a biker. Or a biker chick. It was a virtual sea of black leather.

This was not my usual crowd. Not at all. And there I was with my two little babies. I may have even been wearing a polo shirt. In the middle of Big Bad Bikerdom. Yikes! Would we make it out alive?

Well, as it turned out, the bikers couldn't have been more friendly. My cute little kids were a real ice-breaker and we all wound up having a great time.

**********
7. I used to have a big ugly brown mole in the middle of my chest and I totally hated it, but I couldn't afford to go to a doctor and have it removed.

So, when I was 21 and stupid, I took care of it myself -- using ice cubes, a sharp knife, a pair of scissors, lots of cotton balls and a fifth of Canadian Mist.

The procedure was a complete success, but I'll leave the details to your imagination.

**********
Well, that's all I can think of. That I'm willing to admit to, anyway.

(***wink***)

I'm not tagging anybody since nobody tagged me but, Sherri, if you ever do this you have to tell the "hole in the flannel shirt" story. And if my brother had a blog, I'd make him tell about accidentally shooting that chick with a blow-dart. That was about the funniest shit I ever heard.

Trouble in Paradise

Mikey slept on the couch last night.

No, no, it's not what you're thinking. It's the cat.

Last Monday night, he pissed on our bed. It didn't occur to me that he'd do it again, but he did it again on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I didn't remember to shut the door in time and he did it again.

Well, you don't have to tell me more than three times, so after that the bedroom door stayed shut.

Until Sunday night, when we came home from a cookout/pool party at the in-laws'. I changed clothes in the bedroom, but was so bleary-eyed, stumbling-around tired that I forgot to close the door behind me when I went to crash on the couch in the living room.

And guess what the little bastard did?

Yep, this time he even got the pillows.

Even after sheet-changing and mattress-scrubbing and pillow-switching, Mikey claimed that the stench woke him up several times during the night. So, last night he slept on the couch.

We can't live like this. The cat has got to go.

This is your last chance, y'all. Does anybody want a cat? Because I'm gonna start looking into shelters today.

Overbooked

Britt loves books.

No, it's more than that. She's in love with books. She caresses them, coos to them, hugs them lovingly to her chest, and carries them with her wherever she goes. They are her most treasured possessions.

She's no longer content to sit quietly and let us read to her. Nay, she must read them herself. Not that she can read, but she either knows the stories well enough or can piece them together from the pictures that she gives a pretty convincing narrative as she pages through them.

Still, we're not completely off the hook. She'll shove a book at me or Mikey, demanding "Read!' and so we'll start reading to her, but she'll also begin reading another book out loud, and Lord help us if we quit reading because she's not paying attention, because she is. "Read! Read!" she shouts, as if we are letting her down terribly by not valiantly waging our end of some bizarre book-reading duel.

And she has a lot of books, so this can go on for hours.

Yeah, it's very cute and all, for a few months. Finally, in an attempt to hold on to sanity, I stashed her books in our third bedroom (the one room that's still off-limits to her because it houses my computer and Mikey's musical equipment, plus that's where I hide the toys I can no longer bear to deal with, like Play-Dough, until Mikey lets her play in there while he surfs on the computer, and she finds them) and allowed her to have only three books at a time. She wasn't happy about it, but it worked for a while. There were much shorter book-reading sessions and much longer toy-playing sessions.

And all was right with Grammy's world again.

Then Mikey, who can deny Britt nothing, lifted her over the safety gate one day and let her play in the office while he surfed on the computer. She took the opportunity to free her beloved books from captivity by dumping them over the safety gate into the hallway. I was not amused:

There's a reason why that gate is there.
Uh, yeah, that's what you keep telling me.
But you aren't the one here with The Books all day.

So he went and bought an 18-gallon plastic bin with a snap-on lid to hold The Books. This was a moderate success at first, due to the out-of-sight out-of-mind factor, but eventually Britt would stand at the bin wailing piteously because she couldn't get the lid off.

So, eventually, the lid came off and stayed off. And The Books came out and, lo, they were everywhere -- on the furniture, under the furniture, all over the floor, piled in front of the door, stacked in our tiny utility room, etc, etc. In the time it took for me to throw a load of clothes in the washer, Britt would have the sofa and love seat completely covered in books from end to end. I'd go around picking them up and putting them back in the bin five, six, seven times a day.

Once again, Grammy's sanity wavered.

And so, one night while she slept, I put the bin of books in her bedroom (the one room of the house where she never wants to go) and shut the door. And, unless you've had an obsessive toddler on your hands, you can never understand how much I hated lying to her but it was oh so very necessary.

Where are The Books? Well, gosh, Punkins, I just don't know!

That lasted less than a week. Tonight, for the first time ever, Britt learned how to open a bedroom door. And she found The Books and, lo, they are everywhere.

(***whimper***)

Bugged

As I've mentioned before, Britt isn't into bugs at all.

Well, this is unfortunate, since it seems to be a banner year for bugdom around here. We've had numerous roly-polies, spiders, ants, flies, and an assortment of beetles (not roaches, thank God) in the house lately, as well as a flock swarm whole lot of fruit flies, which is odd since we haven't had any fresh produce in the house in two weeks (bad Grammy!), except for a couple of onions on the counter. Do fruit flies do onions? Or maybe they're just gnats, I dunno.

Our recent episode with mosquitoes in the house seems to have magnified Britt's anti-bugness to the point that she runs screaming to the couch where she huddles, snuffling and hyperventilating, until Grammy removes the offending creature.

It's even worse when it's a fly/fruit fly/gnat because, by the time Britt shrieks and runs for cover, she's pointing at an invisible menace as the thing has flown to less turbulent areas of the house. So I have to sit and hold her, giving what comfort I can, while she gravely informs me, "Skeedos. Eat us."

(***sigh***)

I think it's gonna be a long summer.

In other news, Ginger Baker accidentally got shut up in our bedroom this evening and he pissed on the bed. On Mikey's side of the bed. Mikey, who loves this cat even less than I do.

I scrubbed the spot with upholstery cleaner but it still stinks and there's not much I can do about the pee that seeped down into the padding, is there? Maybe it's finally time to invest in my first-ever bottle of Febreze.

(***sigh***)

Out & About

We went to the Crossroads Kids Club on Tuesday. Britt was totally fascinated by the emcee. Can't you tell?



Her number didn't get called this time, so she didn't win a prize, but she did get up the nerve to go give Sammy D Salamander a hug. I didn't think she would so I didn't get the camera out in time to get a picture, though.

Then she played her little heart out on the playground



and she rode the big carousel and the mini-carousel



and then we had lunch and then we went and got in our oven-hot car and went home.

I hate strapping her into the car when it's so hot. I'm so afraid her tender skin will touch hot metal and sizzle up like a pork rind, but there's no place in the middle of a mall parking lot to put her while I run the air conditioner to get the car cooled down so, hell, what can you do?

Our other big outing for the week was to her zoo class. This month was all about ladybugs and...

Well, Grammy plumbed screwed up. Either because

1. I'm an idiot, or
2. the Alzheimer's is coming to get me.

Take your pick. Somehow I thought the class started at 11:00 (even though we've been going at 10:00 all year) and we got there an hour late, so she missed everything but the ladybug release at the butterfly garden:



Britt doesn't do bugs, so she stood back and watched the whole thing in disgust. I finally went and got a handful to show her that they wouldn't hurt, but she ran away shrieking. Then I tried letting just one crawl over my hand, but she just looked at me like, "Have your lost your flippin' mind, woman?"

The trip wasn't a total loss, though, since the cost of the class includes free admission to the zoo. We watched the geese on the pond for awhile



and then we went to Aquaticus and watched the Fin & Feathers show.



Well, Britt watched it; I watched her, since she wouldn't sit still and was all over the place.



Then we went downstairs to see the fish exhibits



and then it was time for a play-break



and a carousel ride or two.



She's always so cute on the carousel; while it's going around she waves to the crowd like a beauty queen on a parade float.

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.