The 2nd Annual Celebration of Britt

was a smashing success, with plenty of food, family and loot. And cake!

Dinner was interrupted by the Horned SpongeMonster (a.k.a. Cousin Abby); Britt responded by flipping her off:



Always happy to be the center of attention:



She's been to enough of her cousins' birthday parties by now to know the drill, so she blew out the candle right on cue:



Yay! Cake!



And then she showed her daddy how to use her new laptop:



Yep, Britt has a laptop now and I don't. That is just wrong.

There were only two things that didn't go as planned. When we ordered our 1/2 sheet cake, the stupid cake people didn't bother to mention that the SpongeBob decorations were sized for a 1/4 sheet cake, so I was pissed when I went to pick it up. It looked ridiculous (see cake photo above), but it was too late to do anything about it.

And then, after all the other gifts were opened, we brought out the grand finale: Britt's new super-duper deluxe play kitchen! And guess what?

When we opened the box, the accessories were missing. So were the decorative stickers. And the frickin' cabinet doors! Gaaah! Mikey took it back to the store last night and got a refund because they didn't have another one in stock. We'll try to find a replacement for it sometime this week.

Anyway, I'm glad it's over and that I was able to rest today because tomorrow is Britt's two-year checkup. She raises hell every time we go the doctor's office because those people stick needles in her legs, so I'm not looking forward to it. Not at all.

Britt's turning 2

on Saturday. Everyone's been invited (everyone local, that is), the cake's been ordered, gifts have been bought, and frantic housecleaning and de-cluttering have commenced.

Geez, I'll be glad when this is over.

I picked out a perfectly lovely cake: three layers cleverly disguised as gaily wrapped gifts and a fourth layer that's actually a plastic purple gift box that opens into a picture frame. Also, a disposable camera was included in the deal. Woo-hoo!

And then guess what?

I couldn't have it. They didn't have the picture frame or the disposable camera to go with it. I should've ordered it anyway without the extra doodads (at a lower price, of course), but that only occurred to me as I was typing this.

Geez, I think so fast on my feet.

So we're having a SpongeBob cake.

(**yawn**)

Anyway, we did manage to locate a perfectly lovely and hideously expensive play kitchen to replace the one Britt outgrew. Also, a couple of new Baby Einstein videos so we can give the daily round of Baby da Vinci, Boobah and Laurie Berkner a rest. And we may get even more stuff for her, because she's just so darn cute.

I've been flailing around in a panic trying to figure out where to hide all my clutter. Every surface higher than Britt can reach (unless she's using her old play kitchen for a stepstool) is covered with things I don't want her to get hold of and I can't figure out where to put it all so that my house will look somewhat tidy.

Also, the bathroom still needs a thorough scrubbing. Mikey and I are in a Mexican standoff over who gets to tackle that one.

Geez, I'll be glad when this is over.

Diggin' in my drawers

Britt is almost 33 inches tall now.

Which means she's tall enough to open drawers, reach in and grab their contents, and strew them about the house.

(Surely you've figured out by now that I don't mean my underpants.)

So now I get to go around several times a day gathering up potholders, oven mitts, dishrags, dish towels, bibs, and her tiny little socks and bathing suits.

I still keep the bathroom door shut because we haven't started potty-training yet, so the two drawers in there are still safe for the moment.

Yesterday I caught her playing in the spice drawer, but luckily she hadn't unscrewed any lids yet. That would've been fun.

I suppose I could try some of those baby-proof drawer latches, but I already tried the baby-proof cabinet door latches (which were expensive as hell) and after installing them, one broke the very first time I used it, which made me very unhappy and I said a lot of bad words.

Also, countertops! I had to move her little toy kitchen out to the garage because she's outgrown it already and the only time she was using it was when she'd tump it over and use it for a stepstool for easy access to whatever's on the kitchen counter. It didn't faze her much, though; now she just pushes a kitchen chair over to the counter and has a go at whatever she wants.

(**whimper**)

Help me.

Britt Speaks

Remember when Brittany met her little friend Grant at the park last week? Well, Grant's dad was surprised that Britt speaks in full sentences already. He and his wife did the baby sign language thing with Grant and they speak to him in English and Spanish, wanting him to grow up bilingual, I guess, but he's two and a half and still doesn't talk much. I think the kid probably has too many ways to say what's on his mind and can't figure out which one to use.

Anyway, it surprised me that anyone would be surprised at Britt's speaking ability. I can remember worrying that she was never going to speak English, but I guess that's not a problem anymore.

She'll say short sentences like "Where Poppa at?" and "I get it" (except when she says "I get it" she really means "You get it" because she just stands there holding her hands out toward whatever it is she wants), and a few days ago she looked out the window and correctly told us "It rainin."

She can say "hug" and "kiss" but she hasn't said "I love you" yet.

On TB (TV) she likes to watch BobBob (Spongebob), the Woogies (Wiggles), Tubbies (TeleTubbies), and Booze Cooze (**snicker**) (Blues Clues).

She eats with a foke, she likes to swing when she goes to the poke, at night it gets doke, and this is a hote.

She likes to fix my hay (in proper OkieSpeak, "hair" has two syllables and she's only mastered the first one so far).

You know how she used to say "eeg" instead of "egg"? Well, now she says "aig" like a proper Okie should.

She likes cuwrin in her coloring books, and she likes to carry her cuwrs in a buckup so she can dump them out here, there and everywhere. I get to go around and pick them up about fourteen times a day.

She knows most of her body parts; most recently she learned about her nack and her albow.

She's showing a sense of humor already: she'll reach out her arm and holler "Howp! Howp!" and I "rescue" her by pulling her over to me and she'll just laugh and laugh. She also likes to fake us out with little baby snores, pretending to be asleep, and then she'll start giggling.

She knows when we're driving past the park or the library and she'll yell out "Poke!" or "Booksth!" (she also has a slight lisp).

She's still having trouble pronouncing Ls and Rs so she calls herself Bitney. I'm hoping she'll try Aunt Bridgie's name before she masters them, because wouldn't it be hilarious to hear hear say Aunt Bitchie?

Bedtime Story

Mikey's started putting Britt to bed at night; she won't let me do it anymore because she likes him better. But I'm A-okay with that since it means I'm finally free from the dreaded Chair.

He'll lay down with her on our bed (yes, she sleeps in our bed because after all the sleep issues we've been through we discovered that we don't have the up-and-down-all-night-long thing if she's in our bed, plus she doesn't take an afternoon nap at all anymore and the only quiet time I get is when she's asleep, so she sleeps in our bed and yes I know that's bad and shut up about it already) until they both fall asleep.

The first few times I let him sleep because, hey, he works hard, he's tired, he needs the rest, right? Then he growled at me for not waking him up because he lost his whole evening, needed to write checks, was supposed to do something, whatever, whatever, so in the future I should make sure he gets up after she's asleep.

So I try. I do try. I go in there at 15-minute intervals and shake him until his eyes open and I tell him what time it is and he'll say, "I'm getting up," or "Gimme a few more minutes," or some such thing and after doing this five or six times a night it feels pretty ridiculous so I give it up and go back to playing on the computer until it's time for me to go to bed.

Other nights, like tonight, he actually does wake up and get out of bed. And then you know what he does?

He crashes on the couch.

Illin'

We've been so sick over here. The flu, I think. It was so bad that I missed two whole days of computer time. Yeah, I heard you gasp in shock. Two whole days.

Mikey came down with it first: snotting, sneezing, hacking and choking, then he spent a night huddled in a fleece blanket breaking a fever.

I got it next; my worst day was Friday, when I drifted in and out of consciousness all day. I did manage to stagger around long enough to fix Britt breakfast and lunch, and to dig out my heavy winter sweatpants and a long-sleeved sweater because I was freezing my ass off. I woke up a few times to find Britt throwing crayons in my face or using my pain-racked body as a trampoline:

ooooh, sweetie... grammy's so sick... I can't... zzzzzzzzzz...

Gawd, the pain was way worse than the snotting and hacking part. I felt like I'd been sledgehammered all over. I was curled up in a fetal position at one point and when I tried to draw my knees up closer to my chest I got a whanger of a charleyhorse, which was like the freakin' cherry on top.

Mikey didn't miss a single day of work, so if he felt as bad as I did and still managed to stay upright all week, he's a superhero.

Britt had a snotty nose for a couple of days and then... nothing! Her nose cleared up and there was no fever, no coughing, no malaise, no nothing.

Seriously, she's only been sick three times in her life, she's never had an ear infection, she never has fevers or poop issues, she hardly ever has a snotty nose, and she's never had eye boogers. Not once, ever.

This kind of blows me away, because I already raised two kids and they had plenty of all the above. Even pneumonia at one point. We always had a bottle of pink amoxicillin in the fridge, sometimes one for each kid.

I don't know what to think about our little miracle baby, except that her immune system must be fucking stellar.

Vomitus Horribilis, Part 2

Sherri asked if I've checked with Britt's pediatrician about her vomiting thing and, yes, as a matter of fact, I have. The pediatrician advised me to try to "bring her down" before Britt gets to the vomiting stage, but that's easier said than done since she can start spewing within thirty seconds of bursting into tears.

Lesley suggested acid reflux, but I don't think Britt has it. I've been studying up on it the past few days, but the symptoms just don't seem to fit. I don't see anything in what I've been reading that makes me go, "Yep, that's her." Besides, I don't think she started doing this until she was a little older -- in the first episode I can remember, she was standing up in her crib.

She did it again last night at bedtime. A thunderstorm rolled in just after the three of us crawled into bed together, so Mikey went to put the dog in the garage so he could open the side gate. As soon as he left the room, she started howling with rage (because Poppa is her very favorite person in the whole world and once he gets home from work he must not be allowed to leave her orbit) and puked all over herself, the bed, and me. I was so frustrated that I burst into tears my own damn self.

Then she did it again in her highchair tonight, because we had the utter gall to insist that we eat dinner before going to the library.

See, that's part of what pisses me off about it. I'm not ready to say that she's doing it to manipulate us, but it feels so damned manipulative because it usually happens when we fail to bend to her will.

(The other part that pisses me off is having to clean up the mess, because it's pretty freakin' gross, y'all.)

So, anyway, then Mikey surprised both of us with a trip to the park before we went to the library (way to go, babe -- reward negative behavior, oh yeah). And guess what happened at the park?

Britt picked up her first boyfriend. His name is Grant, and he's two and a half.

It was the first time I saw her really interested in playing with another kid. Usually, other kids try to play with her while she wanders around doing her own thing.

Also, they hugged each other!

Oh, my.

Vomitus Horribilis

There's only one thing Britt does that drives me absolutely batshit crazy: when she gets really really upset, she vomits.

I don't mean a little spit-up. I mean she spews. The child has range. It goes everywhere.

(**sigh**)

This last time, it was only 30 minutes after I got her to sleep for the night and that damned Emergency Broadcast System or whatever it is started blaring on the TV and it was so frickin' loud it made me jump. Britt woke up screaming, so I went and laid down with her and she cried and cried and started gagging and I was all "No, no, no, noooooo..." and thar she blew. She was covered with it and so was I and so was the bed. She even managed to spray the carpet at the foot of the bed.

A few weeks before that, she spewed all over herself, me, the couch, the living room carpet, the kitchen floor, the kitchen cabinets and Mikey. It was a stunning performance, lemme tell ya.

She did it a couple of times in the tub when she was going through her bath-phobia phase (which has passed, thank God!), she barfed all over her safety gate once (which was a bitch to clean), and she did it a couple of times when she was still in her crib so that I had to run the bumper pads and all through the washer.

I'm guessing she has a hair-trigger gag reflex because sometimes she'll gag a little when she laughs really hard, too. I've never known of a baby vomiting like she does, though, so I don't really know what to make of it. It's kind of like The Exorcist, except her puke's not green. And her head doesn't spin. Mine sure does, though.

Family News

I called Mom tonight to wish her a happy birthday, and this is what Bad News Betty (heh! just kidding, Ma!) had to say:

Nine-year-old Madison has been diagnosed with diabetes, and is handling the shots like a trooper, along with learning a whole new way of eating. I didn't think of it until after I got off the phone, but wasn't her daddy a diabetic too? And that's why he was so sickly, because he wouldn't get with the program?

Also, this unfortunate lady, who was driving along minding her own business in the wrong place at the wrong time, was Mom's cousin's widow.

My dog ate the Internet

Woke up Saturday morning, fixed Britt her breakfast, snuck in here to check the news, and discovered that my Internet service was deader than shit. I had a feeling, so I went outside and checked the cable and, sure enough, Pepper had chewed halfway through it. Most of my cable TV channels were still working, but still -- that bitch!

Oh, hell, I thought, it's gonna be a looong weekend. I am so addicted to my Internet.

And then I thought, okay, this is a good time to catch up on all those boring little tasks that I never get around to, like:

* transferring photos off my big stack of disks and onto my hard drive so I can edit them and see which ones I want to get printed. My poor old dinosaur digital uses floppy disks instead of a memory card (and this is my second digital camera; I wore the first one out during our eBay days). I have to do a lot of color-correcting and if I try to save images back to the floppy, sometimes it screws up and damages my pictures beyond repair.

* scanning vintage family pictures from the photo albums Mom loaned me so I can get my own copies made.

* writing up some posts for my blog on WordPad so they'll be ready to go as soon as I'm back online.

Well, I did write one blog post -- this one. I played about a dozen games of Free Cell but got bored, so mostly I fiddled around with the relationship calculator on my Family Tree program. And that's pretty much it.

And my beshitted computer keeps locking up! It does that every once in a while, maybe once or twice a month, but now it's started doing it like every thirty minutes. Gaaah! I used to be a whiz at keeping my old Compaq Presario (equipped with Windows 95A -- aaargh!) wheezing along, but this computer's been so trouble-free (until now) that I've forgotten all my little tricks. I tried everything I could think of to get it going again without rebooting, but nothing worked. It better just frickin' quit it, dammit.

Man, I wish I had a shiny new laptop. With Wi-Fi. And without a single MicroSoft product installed on it.

Anyway, the cable guy's come and gone already, and I'm back in business. Woo-hoo!

He drives me crazy

ooh ooh
like no one else
ooh ooh...

Mikey and I are planning a trip to Chicago sometime in the next few months. Driving, of course, since he won't get on a plane. We also need to go to Orlando to visit his 81-year-old grandpa -- before it's, you know, too late.

So I fiddled around with a trip planner and figured that it's a twelve-hour drive to Chicago. It'll be rough with Britt strapped into her carseat, but doable if we split it over two days.

Orlando, however, is 19 hours. That would be three days driving -- and three more days driving back.

Also, just for kicks, I looked up Newport since we want to go back there next year for a second honeymoon. That's a 25-hour drive, at least eight days in the car getting there and back.

After reporting my findings, the discussion went something like this:

So, how are we gonna get to Orlando?

We're not flying.

It's only $311 per ticket!

No. I value my life too much.

Later:

So, if you value your life too much to get on a plane to Orlando, how are we getting to Newport next year?

We'll have to take a two-week vacation, I guess.

(**crickets**)

How 'bout I take a plane and meet you there?

The Honeymooners

Last year I told you about our first date, which was 13 years ago yesterday. Nine years ago yesterday, we got the wedding over with and were flying off the next day to Newport, RI, for the most wonderful, most romantical, most magical, most fantabulous honeymoon ever.

We stayed on the top floor of the Inn at Shadow Lawn, which is supposedly haunted; the window on the left was our room and the window in the middle was our huge bathroom:



The building was gray when we stayed there; looking at their website I see that it's been repainted and is now called the Agincourt Inn. I also see that they've redecorated our room, which used to look like this:



And now it looks like this. The chandelier and the bedside lamps are the same but everything else is new.

Anyway, before we left, Bridgie packed up to go wherever she stayed that week and took every pair of shoes with her except my high heels for work and a pair of wooden-soled clogs, so I clomped around Newport for the first two days in those stupid clogs and they damn near killed me. My poor feet were swollen, lacerated and bleeding! On the third day we finally detoured to a shoe store and bought me some tennis shoes, which turned out to be only slightly more comfortable. Here's a picture of me and those friggin' clogs at Rosecliff; you'll notice they're in my hand and not on my feet:



But it didn't matter. We had a great time traipsing all over town and, when we couldn't hike any further, we'd call a cab to come and rescue us. We managed to visit all the mansions on the Preservation Society tour, plus Belcourt Castle and Astor's Beechwood. Here's Mikey at The Breakers, acting like he owned the place:



And then, on our last full day there, we somehow got the bright idea to rent bicycles. We did fine, at first, until we passed the point of no return, and then it was pure hell. Starting downtown, we pedaled to the end of Belleview Avenue and then followed the road that circled the southwest side of the island, and back to downtown to turn in our bikes. I figured it up afterward; I think it was about fourteen miles.

On the south side of the island we found a public beach, so we stopped to wade. Well, I stopped to wade; Mikey still has Jaws-phobia so he watched me wade. I got out about knee-deep and looked down to see jellyfish swirling all around my legs. I was back on the shore in a split-second, hopping around the dead jellyfish all over the sand. I dunno how I didn't get stung.

At the far southwest corner of the island was Brenton Point, where the sea hurled itself against jagged rocks and sprayed way up in the air. It was a spectacular sight but I didn't get any pictures because, by that point, I was too busy pedaling grimly along while praying for a flat tire so we could legitimately call someone to come and rescue us.

No such luck, though, so we pressed on until we reached Hammersmith Farm, Jackie O's childhood summer home, so we toured that and then we pedaled back into town and turned in our bikes and we will never, ever do that again.

In spite of the parts that didn't go quite right, there's isn't anything about that trip I would change. It was perfect in every way. Sometimes, when life gets us down, we'll look at each other, sigh and say, "Oh, God, I wish we were in Newport."

Last night, we celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary with a bottle of Louis Jadot Beaujolais-Villages and our photo album from that trip, and agreed that our tenth wedding anniversary sounded like the perfect time to go back for a second honeymoon.

If I can get Mikey on a plane, that is. You know how he is about that.

Britt Gets Bugged

I had a couple of cute videos that were too long for YouTube, so I'm trying out DropShots.

In this one, we found an empty locust shell (or cicada, if you must):


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Ready For Her Close-Up

This is usually what happens when I get out the camera: Britt quits doing whatever cute thing she was doing and tries to get behind the camera so she can look at the view screen and see pictures of herself. I finally flipped the view screen around on this one so she could see herself while I was filming her:


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Sarah's parents called

wanting to see Britt -- for the first time in six months -- so we went over there on Sunday. And guess what they had?

A copy of the police report.

According to the report, the call was received as a road rage incident and a patrol car was dispatched. The officer caught up with the two cars (not three) and saw the brown Cadillac swerve towards Sarah's car four times before he switched on his lights and siren.

When he was arresting the two people in the Caddy (a man and a woman), they told him that the chick in the passenger seat of Sarah's car had pointed a gun at them. When he went to Sarah's car to ask about the gun, he saw a pipe on the driver's side floorboard in plain view, so he searched the car and found syringes in the glove compartment, empty packets with meth residue and $800 cash in Sarah's purse and a gun under the passenger's seat, so he arrested both of them, too.

After he got Sarah and Patty to the police station, he checked the back seat of his car and found the package containing 29.82 grams of meth stuffed down behind the seat. The two people in the Caddy had 13 grams of meth on them; the guy is reputed to have been involved in several drive-by shootings in the city and the woman had just received a suspended sentence for possession of meth the day before all this happened.

The police report further stated that the reason the man and the woman in the Caddy were chasing Sarah is because Sarah had slept with the woman's boyfriend.

Anyway, I'm done with it. I'm done with her. I will not allow her to visit Britt again unless a judge tells me I have to.

The end.

The Good-Bye Girl

Britt watches a neighbor get into her car and drive away:

Sisters Thursday

Remember our Sisters Weekends? Those annual no-husbands-no-kids-allowed estrogen fests, communing over food and jigsaw puzzles? It's been way too many years since we've had one but, you know, life gets in the way and all that.

So Debbie called Tuesday night and said that she'd rented a hotel room near me and the four of us were expected to begin converging there Wednesday for a much-needed weekend of sisterhood.

And Britt was not invited.

I was a little perturbed that I wasn't included in the planning for this because it was very short notice and I have no babysitter and no car right now and if I had been included in the planning I maybe could've made some babysitting arrangements or rescheduled the thing to a more convenient date. Also, I could've told her that the hotel she'd chosen was nowhere near me, but anyway...

I didn't make it over there Wednesday night, but Thursday morning I was up at the butt-crack of dawn to go condo shopping with them -- and, yes, Britt was invited if that's what it took to get me on board. So we scoured the northwest part of the city all morning and into the early afternoon for a condo that suited Cathy, then went to lunch, adjourned for naps, and reconvened after Mikey got home from work so he could watch Britt for me.

It was the first time the four of us had been alone together in way too many years. We went out to dinner, had a few drinks, laughed a lot, and went back to the hotel, where Debbie introduced me to Sudoku (she said I'd get hooked on it, but I already have a pointless time-wasting addiction -- my Family Tree habit). Mikey called to see when I was coming home and put Britt on the phone to lay the guilt on thick, so I stayed an hour longer than I'd intended to out of pure stubbornness.

We were supposed to go condo-shopping again Friday morning, but Cathy wasn't up to it. I was relieved to hear it, because I wasn't either. I heard nothing further until 4:00, when my sisters showed up on my doorstep without warning. They had tried to warn me, but I hadn't answered my phone, which I later found stuffed behind the sofa cushions.

It was embarrassing to be caught in my jammies at 4:00 in the afternoon -- though I usually wear jammies 24/7, I do put clothes on if I know somebody's going to be looking at me. Also, I hadn't done any chores in two days and Britt had dumped out a bag of Chex Mix on the end table while I was passed out on the couch recovering from the night before. I'd cleared the stuff off the table but I hadn't gotten around to picking up the overspill from the floor yet. So, anyway, they didn't see me or my house at our best.

They invited us out for an early dinner, because they wanted to eat and go to bed early since everybody was worn out. I had to pass, since Britt and I had just finished a late lunch due to the aforementioned passed-out-on-the-couch thing. After that I never heard another peep from them, so I guess the Sisters Weekend kind of petered out -- not from lack of interest but from lack of energy.

Gawd, what a bunch of geezers we are.

The Sarah Saga (Cont'd)

I cannot give you a coherent narrative of what happened because Sarah didn't give us one. Her story was manic, disjointed and rambling.

Mikey spent most of the visit in the front yard trimming the weeping mulberry trees because he can't stand to be around her, but when he'd come in to cool off and get a drink, I'd flee to the garage for a smoke because I can't stand to be around her either. So we each got a version of the story and, after she left, we compared notes and found that a few critical pieces of info were missing.

Anyway, here's what we got, as best as I can tell it:

Remember Shane? Kayla's daddy? The guy Sarah was arrested with the first time, when they borrowed somebody's truck and drove it down to Mexico and sold it? The guy who kept showing up on Bob and Sarah's doorstep no matter where they moved? The guy who "kidnapped" and "raped" Sarah after she married Bob? Well, it's all his fault.

When Sarah was here in April, she'd told us that she and Shane had got back together, but he'd "beat the shit" out of her and was no longer in the picture. Which is strange because his most recent arrest record shows a domestic assault & battery charge on June 10. Anyway, she says he's pissed that she filed charges against him so he set this whole thing up as revenge. Which is strange, because she's the one who called the cops on herself.

So she and her co-arrestee, Patty, were in Sarah's car, being chased by two men (one she knew slightly; the other she didn't know at all) in separate cars and they were throwing beer bottles at her car. So she called the cops. Then she and Patty were taken to the police station in the back of a police car and after they get out, a cop reached in and found 29 grams of meth stuffed down Patty's side of the seat. Patty immediately pointed the finger at Sarah, saying, "It's hers."

Sarah and Patty were both charged with drug trafficking, and she also said something about paraphernalia charges that were dropped. The two men who were chasing them were arrested as well, but I don't know their names so I don't know what they're charged with.

And there was a third woman involved somehow, because Sarah complained that this woman had only spent one hour in jail and was released. She is apparently Shane's new hide and they are now on the run together.

Sarah, on the other hand, spent several weeks in jail and swears up and down that she kept her mouth shut, but now she's been labeled a snitch and people are trying to kill her. She can't go to her condo anymore so she's living with the old guy out at Blanchard again. But she says Shane is the one who's a snitch and she knows that "for a fact" because she's been to the DEA office with him. And now she's had a gun held to her head and somebody drove up alongside her car and pointed a gun at her (I'm not clear on whether this was two separate incidents or just one), so she's scared shitless because Shane's connected with the Mexican Mafia in south OKC.

She says the other three (Patty and the two guys who were chasing them) all go to court on the same date, but her court date is a week later, so she's convinced that they all plan to plea bargain in exchange for testimony against her. She, however, was planning to beat them to the punch by going to the DA Monday (the next day) and spilling her guts so she could disappear into the witness protection program and take her kids with her. Because she doesn't belong in prison, you see.

Umm... I think that's it. Does it make as much sense to you as it did to me? None at all? Yeah, me neither. My eyeballs are still spinning in my head.

The Sarah Saga

will have to be continued later. Maybe tomorrow.

Britt's sleep issues have kept me alternately rocking her and trying to tiptoe out of her room without waking her for the past two hours, and now I'm not in the mood to talk about Sarah, or about anything else for that matter.

Sorry to keep you in suspense, but it can't be helped.

P.S. Finally got Britt to sleep for the night at 2:52 AM.

Lord, Lord

Sarah called again wanting to see Brittany, so Mikey and I talked it over and agreed that she could visit between 3:00 and 6:00 this afternoon. She showed up almost two hours late, as usual.

I'm still so geeked out from the visit that I can hardly put a sentence together, so I'll have to tell you the whole story after I've slept on it. I did get a detailed description of her "tracks," complete with the number of blown-out veins (and I was all "yay, dogies"), but she's been clean for a WHOLE WEEK now and she's finally SEEN THE LIGHT! Woo-hoo!

I guess facing 25-to-life for drug trafficking would be quite an eye-opener.

So hard to believe our beloved Britt came out of the belly of that...THAT.

I will leave you with this teaser: The dumb shit called the police on herself.