Merry Fuckin' Christmas (Grrrrrr, Spit!)

I survived. We survived. Whatever. It's over and thank God for that.

Christmas has never been my favorite time of the year. Well, at least not since I was a poverty-stricken young single mom. I'm not poverty-stricken anymore, or young or single, either, but I can still take it or leave it. This year I would've preferred to leave it.

The past few months I've been dealing with the worst bout of depression I've experienced in six years. If you've noticed that my natural wit and charm have been missing from this blog lately, it's because they're buried beneath the ton of lead that's parked in my chest.

I know why I'm depressed. I just can't get the reasons why I'm depressed fixed so I can be happy again, and I'm really pissed off about that.

So I had a miserable Christmas and I pretty much made sure everybody else did, too. I'm not proud of my behavior, but during my worst hissy fits I was detached from my body, watching from the sidelines, and just as shocked and horrified as everybody else.

A big part of my depression is the Bob/Brittany thing. It's an awkward situation and no matter how it ends up, whether Britt stays here with me or goes to live with her dad, somebody is going to hurt. I just don't want Britt to be hurt, no matter what happens.

Another big part is that I haven't had a car since, um, June, maybe? I don't remember. Too damn long is all I know. Bridget's car broke down and she borrowed mine so I've been waiting all this time for either:

• Bridget to get enough money together to get her car fixed,
• Bob to come here and fix Bridget's car, or
• Mikey to get Bridget's car fixed somewhere, anywhere, I don't care where
  

so I can have my car back.

Y'all know I'm a dedicated homebody and when I do have my car, I haven't been known to go anywhere very often. But that was my choice. Now I don't have any choice, and I feel like a prisoner in my own home.

I used to avidly study schedules for kid's activities all over the metro area, waiting for Britt to be old enough to go out and do things with. Now that she's old enough, we can't do anything. No story time at the library, no Gymboree, no dance lessons or music lessons or art lessons. No Crossroads Kids Club once a month.

Instead, we're stuck here at the house every single day, with the same old books and toys and videos and TV shows and she's bored and I'm bored and I feel like our time together is coming to an end and this is not how I wanted our time together to be.

And then suddenly Christmas came bearing down on me like a runaway freight train and I couldn't get any shopping done because I don't have a fucking car and it's Mikey's busiest time of the year and he couldn't get off work in time for me to use his car to go out and get anything done before everything closed for the night and then suddenly it was the week before Christmas.

Mikey and I both were totally dog sick for three days this past week and could barely stand upright (Britt had a runny nose and cough for like one day) and then on Thursday, or maybe Friday (I can't remember; I never know what day it is), Bridgie let me borrow my own car and babysat Britt so I could finally go get some shopping done. But I didn't get it all done, because there was too much to do and I still felt sick and weak.

I knew Bob was coming in for the weekend but I never heard from him and, like I said, I never know what day it is, so when he and his girlfriend showed up at my door completely unannounced, I went completely apeshit. I was not ready, I had no warning, I needed more time and, by the way, it's so rude not to call first! Even Sherri knows to call first before she comes over!

Anyway, I don't remember what I said or did, except that I burst into tears and ran to the garage to hide out. And I cried most of the weekend. And I wasn't very nice to anybody. I felt used up, exhausted and sick. And bleak. I never did finish my shopping. I simply declared that I was done and left Mikey to do what he could to make sure everybody was taken care of and that was that.

So I'm sorry, Bob (and Mary) and Bridgie and Mikey, that I was such a bitch and that it wasn't a happy and peaceful Christmas. If I had it to do over again... Well, if I had to do it over again I'd just shoot myself and be done with it. But I wish it had been different.

Gawd, I hate Christmas.

New Year's Eve can't come soon enough, though, 'cuz Mommy's ready to go on a bender.

Home from the Holidays

We went to Tahlequah Sunday for my family's Christmas gathering, which is an arduous journey but well worth it because it's the only time of the year I get to see everybody together (except for Sherri & Chris, who can only drive that far if there's hunting or fishing involved). We had a good visit, ate a lot and did the Dirty Santa thing.

While we were there, Brittany attended her first-ever tea party (with cousins Madison and Piper),



and discovered that she loves jumping on a trampoline almost as much as riding a pony:



Then we came home and crashed; Britt and I didn't wake up today until Bridgie came over for lunch. And then I had a frazzling day because I had too many chores to catch up on, because Britt wouldn't take a nap so I could catch a break, and because of one other reason that is just Too Much Information but it startled the hell out of me, so when Mikey called to say he was on his way home from work, I may have whimpered a little. So he brought me a bouquet of beautiful coral-pink roses to cheer me up.

It worked.

And now I need to Google pre-menopausal symptoms to see if I can figure out why that TMI thing happened.

"Pree Yights!"

We've noticed several vehicles circling around the cul-de-sac and pausing in front of our house lately. We wondered what was up with that, until we drove Britt around to look at all the pretty lights and it finally occurred to us that they must be spectators looking at our Christmas lights.

Mikey went shopping again, so now there's a fence of snowflake-shaped yard lights in front of Santa and the Iceman, and a big star on the front of the house. And he's still not done yet:



(The light bulb in the Iceman's head keeps burning out, which is pretty annoying. Also, the red and green candy canes look like they're marching straight across the yard in this picture, which is odd because they line the curved walkway up to the front door.)

We still have a bunch of snowflake lights (that match the yard lights) to hang in the trees, and the trees and the fence by the garage will also be wrapped with lights. I think next year Mikey's planning to put stuff on the roof as well.

So, anyway, that's our Clark Griswold Christmas so far. It's hard to look at it and not smile, but I'd be feeling a lot more Christmas spirit if I had any of my Christmas shopping done, but I don't, and that's a whole 'nother post.

I think I'm going to

change the name of my blog.

I always meant to, because I never really liked "Little Sis." I used to call Britt that sometimes when she was so tiny, and I'm a little sis too, so when I had to come up with a name for this blog, it was the only thing I could think of that wasn't already taken.

I never call Britt "Little Sis" anymore.

I call her Big Sugar, Sugar Booger, Sugar Pie, Sugar Fuzz, Fuzzy Sugar, Sweet Baby Love, Britty-Boo, Pretty Britty, Doll Baby, Pooty-Poo, Stinkbait, Silly Putty, Punkin Poopers, and the Sweetest Little Girl in the World. And that's all in one day.

(I never call her Baby Girl, though; Bridgie will always be my Baby Girl.)

I don't know what I'll change the title to yet but, after Christmas is over, I'll be changing my colors back to frosty blues. So, if you came here and saw different colors and a different title, would you think you came to the wrong place?

The Countess

I told you that Britt is counting, right? First, it was just reciting the numbers, then she started counting things, like crayons and books.

Now she can identify written numbers. Her little laptop has a bunch of different number and letter games on it, and she's a whiz at the one where she has to push the right number when prompted. She's starting to get pretty good at the letter version of the same game. We yay and clap for her or, if we get distracted, she'll yay and clap for herself and say, "Bitney smaht girl!"

I have no idea whether a kid her age should be able to do that much already, but I'm impressed anyway.

When she sees someone dancing and singing, like the Wiggles or Hi-5, she tries to copy the movements and sing along, but she usually only manages to shout out the last word of each line, so "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" goes something like this:

........................ star!
........................ are!
........................ high!
........................ sky!

So I borrowed this from the library the other day. She's watched it four or five times already and her singing has improved quite a bit. Today she was even singing into a little microphone-shaped booklight that she found somewhere.

It's all just cuter than shit, but we try not to giggle about it in front of her because she might develop a complex or something and get all self-conscious, like me.

I took a nap

and dreamed that Britt got into Mikey's shaving cream and slathered it all over her head, and then she took a razor and shaved big swaths of hair off the top, leaving long pink strips of baldness. I cried and cried when I saw it.

And then I woke up and saw this:



It's not nearly as bad as the shaving thing would've been; she only got into my makeup bag, so I had to laugh. And grab the camera.

Thanks given

Went to my in-laws' house for Thanksgiving dinner.

During the blessing, Mikey thanked God that the Democrats won the House and the Senate, which caused a ripple around the table.

The nieces and nephews ate in the kitchen, except for little Karlee who sat on my mother-in-law's lap two seats to my right in the dining room. Karlee is allergic to beef, pork, wheat, eggs, dairy products, and a half dozen other foods. There isn't much she can eat, so her mother fed her spaghetti before they arrived (aren't there wheat and eggs in pasta?) and Karlee vomited it all over my mother-in-law, the table and the empty chair between us. Yay.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the kids set off the Low-Rider Santa 126 times during dinner. After dinner, I waited until no one was looking and I hid it.

That night, Mikey started pulling all the Christmas stuff out of the attic and got lights strung across the front of the house. While we were standing out in the street admiring his handiwork, Mikey told me he's gonna be Clark Griswold this year, and then he went shopping. So now, among other things, we have lighted candy canes lining the flower beds on both sides of the front door, along with an air-blown Santa and a snowman, both eight feet tall, where the weeping mulberries used to be. Britt insists on calling the snowman the Iceman.

Did you catch that? The weeping mulberries are finally gone! Woo-hoo! Clark finally chainsawed them down yesterday.

Anyway, he's not done yet. The rest of the trees still need to be strung with lights and Clark will probably go shopping again, but we're already the most festive house on the block. I tried to take some pictures last night but they were too dark, so y'all will just have to come over and see. Britt is thrilled.

And now the question that plagued me last year has arisen yet again: To tree or not to tree? We, or really I, finally decided to skip it last year, but Clark says of course we're putting up a tree this year. Two, in fact! Our regular one and the antique aluminum tree that Grandma Sarah gave us. Oh, yay!

I've had a bad case of the blues lately, but Clark's infectious enthusiasm is actually making me feel slightly less Scroogish than usual. So now I must go select some html color codes so I can dress my blog in Christmas colors.

Checking in

Sorry for the dearth of posts lately, but I just haven't been in a computer mood. Instead of spending all my free time reading stuff online, I've been reading... books! Actual real live books!

Imagine that.

Bob and his girlfriend came down to see Britt and spent Sunday and Monday nights with us.

Britt can count to ten already!

Bridgie just got a big raise at work.

I'm supposed to be boiling eggs right now, but I don't feel like it. I shouldn't complain, though, because Mike's mom and sister are being all Martha Stewart about Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow and all I have to do is deviled eggs and a cheese and cracker tray.

I haven't had Thanksgiving dinner with my own family since 1994.

I hear Britt terrorizing the cat again, so I'd better scram.

Suddenly, a menagerie

Mikey volunteered us to dog-sit Toby, Grandma Sarah's dog, while she's in Chicago for her annual two-month visit with Uncle Max and family. He is cute, and he's a sweet-natured little dog:



Unfortunately, he's a flatulent dog. Also a pisser, an upchucker, and a barker. The horrid stank of his farts burned all the hairs out of my nose, and he was peeing on the outside of the kitty litter box, leaving nasty yellow puddles on the bathroom floor. He vomited on my carpets at least once a day. And when I'd exile him to the backyard for his sins, he'd stand at the door and bark non-stop for hours and hours and hours.

I stood it for eight days. The final straw came last Saturday night when we were kicked back for the evening and Toby yakked up a big stinking steaming pile right in front of the TV. I looked over at Mikey and said, "Toby's got to go." Mikey took him over to his parents' house the next day. So that ordeal is over.

Okay, wait -- back up. What was that about a kitty litter box? Since when do we have a cat?

Well, it happened like this: A week ago Saturday, the doorbell rang. It was Cathy. With a cat. The cat Phil brought her. The cat she was supposed to bring over a month or so ago to see if we wanted it, but I hadn't heard a peep from her since then so I thought maybe she decided to keep it.

She brought the cat, cat food, a litter box, a box of kitty litter, and many boxes of kitty box liners. I said, "So is this is a trial run or a forever deal?" She kind of slumped and said, "I guess it's a trial run."

He's a pretty kitty, snow white with pale ginger ears and tail and ice blue eyes. He's tiny, too. I forgot to ask how old he is.





So now we have a cat. We named him Ginger Baker, and Britt loves him. To death, if I don't keep a sharp eye on her.

Little Angel

Sis went trick-or-treating for the first time last night and she loved her costume -- except for the halo, which she refused to wear:



I took loads of pictures, but she was in a contrary mood so I didn't get many good ones. She even hid behind a chair, yelling, "No! No pictures!":



I had no idea she was so popular here in the cul-de-sac; several of our neighbors had little Care Bears and dolls on hand to give her. After making the rounds, she shared the wealth with her Poppa,



and with me:



I got lots of video of her actual trick-or-treating experiences, but I can't post any of it here since my computer no longer recognizes my camera.

Dear Auntie

Remember when I thought it would be hilarious to hear Britt start calling her Aunt Bridgie by name? Due to her pronunciation issues, I was so sure it would come out "Aunt Bitchie".

Well, it didn't. Aunt Bridgie was dubbed "BeeGee" shortly after I wrote that post. And I was so disappointed.

So Aunt Bridgie came over for lunch yesterday and, when she was headed out the door to go back to work, Britt ran after her for a hug and a kiss, calling, "Bitchie! Bitchie!"

Bridge shot me a look. I tried but failed to conceal my glee.

Dudes, I am so pissed!

Have you ever seen "Boohbah"? It's like Teletubbies on acid. Trust me on this.

Anyway, Britt loves Boohbah, but it only comes on at 5:00 in the morning and we are sawing some serious logs at that hour, so the only time she's ever seen it is on the one Boohbah DVD we own. It features the "Squeaky Socks" episode, the "Painting the Fence" episode, and I can't tell you what the third episode is because by that point I'm drooling and my eyes have rolled back into my head. We've watched that DVD over and over and over again so many times that if I have to live through "Squeaky Socks" one more time I will gut myself. I mean it.

So this morning I popped awake from some stupid dream I was having where I was at somebody's wedding and I bent over and my glasses fell off and went to pieces all over the floor and I was freaking out because I had to find someplace to get them fixed before I had to drive to work on Monday morning. I don't know why it didn't occur to me in my dream that I could just put my contacts on to drive to work, if I had a job to drive to on Monday morning, which I don't. Or why I didn't have contacts on in the first place, since I don't wear my glasses in public. But that's all beside the point.

The point is, I popped awake this morning and looked at the clock, and it was 5:00! Straight up! Awesome! I could record a fresh episode of Boohbah for Britt! So I ran to the living room, turned on the TV, popped a tape into the VCR, changed the channel to Sprout TV, and...

Teletubbies? WTF?

I pulled up the TV guide and there was no Boohbah. Just a solid hour of Teletubbies. So I tried PBS. No Boohbah there, either. Apparently there is no Boohbah at 5:00 on Saturday mornings. So I said a lot of bad words (a lot) and went back to bed. And tried to go back to sleep.

But now I'm screwed because I'm wide awake and I didn't get nearly enough sleep and if I sit still too long this afternoon I will nod off and Britt will be unbridled in her toy-strewing and getting-into-things-ness and I will have a hell of a mess to straighten up when I wake up.

Seriously though, with my luck, if Boohbah had been on this morning it would've been the "Squeaky Socks" episode. I just know it. And I wouldn't be here to tell you about it because I would have gutted myself already.

Bored

I haven't touched the computer in three days! And my internet service wasn't even out! Shocking, I know, but I'm burned out on it right now. Can you believe that?

I'm also burned out on our little hand-held Texas Hold'em poker game, which has been my keep-me-busy activity during smoke breaks in the garage lately (though I've won several tournaments on it, at $180,000 a pop. Woo-hoo! Pay me!)

After thoroughly scouring the house for any books or magazines I haven't already read or could stand to read again (I'm not big on reruns), the only thing I turned up was Stephen King's Rose Madder. After finishing that, I made an impulsive trip to my local library and picked up Cell and Black House. I made the mistake of not leaving Cell out in the garage and so I finished it in less than eight hours, and Black House only took two days. So now I'm bookless again and, since the library closes early on Fridays and Saturdays and doesn't open at all on Sundays, I can't get any more books until Monday night, and I'm feeling kind of antsy about that.

Speaking of feeling antsy, I saw a huge spider out in the garage last night. It must have been at least two inches across, like a baby tarantula or something. Anyway, I only got it halfway stepped on before it scuttled off under Mikey's weight bench and into the assorted clutter on the other side. I know it must be hurt, and it's probably pissed, too. I know it's watching me when I go out there now, plotting vengeance while marshaling the spidey forces. Mikey's gonna come out there looking for me one day soon and all he'll find will be a big ol' white cocoon-looking thing.

So, if you don't hear from me no more, you'll know what happened.

Sunday in the Country

We took Britt to Chester's Party Barn out at Piedmont yesterday. It was a gorgeous day -- not too hot and not too cold. She had a blast, and we had a lot of fun just watching her have fun.

She fed the goats,







and got to see peacocks, chickens, rabbits, geese, ducks, pigs, sheep, horses and cows. And then she rode a pony:



Rocking in the saddle, she'd holler, "Geeyup! Geeyup, horsie!"



Mikey stayed close by her side, keeping her safe.



When the ride was over she pitched a fit until we bought her another ride. And another, and another... She rode four or five times, and finally had to be carried away flailing and wailing.

And then she picked out some pumpkins for us to take home:



We skipped the hayride and the three-acre maze and the big hay slide, but we'll definitely be back next year.

The Night Giggler

I've caught Britt laughing in her sleep three times this week.

I'd love to know what's she's dreaming about.

Trying to get organ-ized

Does anybody remember the little electric organ Mom dumped on us when we moved into this house? I know Bridget does.

Anyway, it occurred to me that Britt might enjoy playing it, or playing with it, whatever. Actually, it occurred to me that banging away on it might distract her from, you know, coloring. And the noise? What-everrr! As long as it gives me a break from coloring.

So this afternoon, I unearthed it from its parking space in the garage, cleared a trail, and dragged it into the house, where Britt promptly crowed, "Panno!" She'd never seen the thing before and I hadn't opened the lid yet so she could see the keyboard, so I was mighty impressed that she knew it was a piano. Well, an organ, but close enough.

I washed it down and tumped it over, only to discover that the entire base of it was hollow. And filled with little white balls of spider eggs.

(***shudder***)

Which should've been my first clue that I ought to drag it right back out to the garage.

So I cleaned it out and dragged it through the dining room toy room, after clearing yet another path, and parked it in front of the window. I plugged it in, turned it on, and...

Nothing. Not a whimper, not a wheeze. Just nothing.

I dragged it around and tried it in six different electrical outlets just to make sure, and then I dragged it back out to the garage, where it has frozen in the winter and baked in the summer for the past six years. And has also, apparently, served as an incubator for generations of little baby spiders.

(***shudder***)

Anyway, Cathy's supposed to be giving us her old piano. Also a cat, which she's bringing over tomorrow, but the piano has to wait for coordination between truck-borrowing and storage unit visiting. I'm thinking about taking down the aquarium to make room for it. Does anybody want any fish?

Arrrrgh, plumbing issues again

The garbage disposal quit working this week. It spins but doesn't grind. Also, the stuff in it that doesn't get ground is making it drain verrrrry slowly, leaving a thin film of nasty all over the sink, especially after the dishwasher drainage backs up into it. I've been using this as an excuse not to cook or wash dishes, but the situation is getting on my nerves already.

Also, the water pressure problem in the shower was not fixed by fixing the leaky pipe after all. I only got one good shower and then it was back to its old tricks.

When it rains it pours, doesn't it? Except out of my shower head, of course.

Two and counting

Two weeks after her second birthday, when me and Sis were sitting out on the front porch, she pulled some flowers off the monkey grass (which she called "grapes") and put them in my hand one at a time. And she went, "Two, three, fo, nine, ten!" And my jaw dropped.

Since then, she's been counting quite a bit. She skips numbers, but she never gets them out of order. I've been trying to get it on video, but she doesn't perform on command so I've had no luck with that so far.

Mostly, we color. A lot. Every day. Yesterday, Britt graciously took time out from her busy coloring schedule to pose for a few pictures. Did I mention that we color? A lot? Every day?





(She'd been playing with the squirt bottle I use to fix her hair; that's why her shirt was all wet.)

We finally got some Pull-Ups for her but she won't have anything to do with them, and we're kind of stalled on the potty-training front. I think I need to start keeping a big bag of M&Ms on hand for bribes.

The Donut Bandit

Britt and her Poppa went grocery shopping for me this evening and, as usual, they brought home 29 different kinds of junk food.

Shortly afterward, there was a break-in on the premises. I caught the perp red-handed, ripping open a box of donuts:



The perp showed no fear of authority,



nor any trace of remorse:



Once order was restored, the perp was sentenced to a diaper change and bedtime without the possibility of parole.

Now we're cookin'

Britt loves her new play kitchen; she enjoys cooking a whole lot more than I do. Also, the ponytail? Looks adorable on her:



Here she demonstrates what Grammy looks like every day at 6:00pm while pondering the eternal question: "Oh, jeez, what am I gonna cook tonight?"
She even nailed the whimpering part:

Stuffed

You know those big long cushions on the back of our couch, er, sofa (Mikey says for that price you call it a sofa), and how squashed and lumpy they've gotten?

Well, they aren't any more. Mikey bought two 10-pound boxes of pillow-stuffing stuff and he re-stuffed them last night. Except -- you know how he tends to overdo things?

Yeah, he did. He stuffed them good.

Now I'm afraid to flop down on the couch, er, sofa like I normally do, because I might crack my skull on a cushion.

Fixed

Our plumbing problems have been resolved. Yay!

I thought I felt a chill wind from Sherri's direction (or she might've just been gone to Arkansas), so I re-read my last post and saw that I didn't clearly say what I meant to say. I didn't mean that Chris wasn't willing or able to fix my kitchen faucet, it's just that he didn't happen to have a new one on him at the time and I wasn't able to go get one unless I wanted to pull a Britney Spears and haul the baby off to Home Depot without a carseat. He did plan to come back the next day after Mikey had a chance to bring one home, but it became a moot point after the bathroom leak was discovered, and that's when we called a plumber.

Happily, the bathroom leak repair also seems to have fixed the water pressure problem in the shower. I just wish I'd had the video camera ready when the jackhammering started. Britt was standing in the entry hall peeking around the corner to see what was going on, and I warned her that it was fixin' to get pretty loud in there, louder than the vacuum cleaner (which she hates), but she didn't believe me.

On second thought, it probably wouldn't have done much good to try to film her. All I would've gotten is a blur. It was the fastest I'd ever seen that child move, and that's saying something.

Oh, wait -- it gets better...

Sherri took pity on me after reading my tale of plumbing woe yesterday, and sent Chris over to see what he could do. Which turned out to be not much. We need a new faucet.

As an afterthought, I had him listen to the wall next to the bathtub faucet to see if it sounded like there was a leak in there. There was. We called a plumber.

The plumber and his helper came and looked and said they'll have to jackhammer the concrete slab so they can reach the leak. They'll be back tomorrow.

So now we have a shiny new faucet ready to be installed, a coat closet floor that's about to be jackhammered up, and two strangers who will be in my house most of the day tomorrow. Woo-hoo!

(Driving Me) Plumb Nuts

Gawd, I wish we had a plumber in the family! Because now I'm gonna have to call one, and that means having a stranger in the house, and you know how I am about that.

The sprayer on my kitchen sink quit working a while back, but I could live without that. I used to use it all the time and I missed having it, but I could live without it.

The other day, I turned the faucet on and no water came out. WTF? Every other faucet in the house worked -- I checked -- but there was no water coming from my kitchen faucet. I stood there, scratched my head, twisted the knobs, and finally picked up the sprayer and squeezed it. And, suddenly, water came pouring out of the faucet. Well, all righty then. Problem solved!

Or so I thought.

Last night, Mikey tried to wash his hands and there was no water. I tried squeezing the sprayer again, but it didn't work this time. Well, the sprayer works, but the faucet doesn't.

Now I'm almost halfway through a day with no water coming from my kitchen faucet and I never before realized how often I use it. I wash my hands every time I change a diaper, and I rinse them every time they get sticky, which is all the time with Britt around. I rinse dirty dishes and I wash down Britt's highchair tray.

So now I have to do all those things using the sprayer, which hadn't been working for at least a year but is now magically restored. And it's a damned pain in the ass, lemme tell you.

Anyway, I guess it's a blockage of some sort. A chunk of mineral deposits that got knocked loose, or something.

Oh, and have I mentioned the shower thing? That's been going on for a few months. You turn on the shower in the main bathroom and hop in and then something in the pipe (**shifts**) and the water pressure cuts down to about half of what it was.

Another mineral deposit, I suppose.

And we still can't use the shower in the master bath because the shower pan leaks.

(**sigh**)

My beloved husband, though wonderful in many ways, is completely useless in situations like this. A handyman he is not. If I didn't have Britt underfoot, I might take a wrench to that stinkin' faucet myself just to see if I could clear the pipe.

I might yet. I dunno.

Britt pee-peed in the potty!

When we woke up this morning I changed Britt's diaper as usual, but it was dry! This has never happened before.

I was worried about her kidneys, so I said a little prayer.

After breakfast she started talking about pee-pee, so I asked if she wanted to pee-pee in the potty. She ran down the hall to the bathroom and I took her diaper off (finally wet, thank God) and she sat on her potty. And she peed!

I yayed and clapped and asked if she needed to poop, and we sat there for a while but nothing else happened. Finally, I wiped her little poony and when I turned around to put the paper in the toilet, she grabbed her little green boat and put it in the "water" in her potty. So then we had a talk about what does and doesn't go in the potty.

We don't have any pull-ups so she got to wear her first pair of big-girl panties. I brought her potty into the living room so she'd have easy access to it, and we called Poppa to tell him the good news, and then we colored for awhile and "ate" lots of food from her new super-deluxe play kitchen (Mikey found a replacement for the incomplete one she got for her birthday) and then, about an hour later, she pooped in her new big-girl panties. I'd been watching for that, but her face doesn't usually show it when she's pooping, so she caught me by surprise.

Well, you know, it's been almost 25 years since I've had to deal with poop in big-girl panties, so it was pretty awkward trying to get them off her without getting it everywhere but I finally managed it. I put a fresh diaper on her so I could relax for a little bit (because it's hard work being vigilant), and then I went to put the wipes in the trash before going to the bathroom to empty the poopy panties into the toilet, and the poop fell out of the panties onto my kitchen floor.

(**sigh**)

Anyway, it's a start. I'm happy.

There's a bruise on my head

Britt pegged me just above the right eyebrow with her little red car yesterday.

There may be some brain damage as well; I poured tea instead of milk on my Lucky Charms this morning.

Bouncing Baby Britt

Mikey went with us to Britt's two-year checkup on Monday, and it helped a lot. She always pitches a fit when we go because she's gotten so many shots there, and it's hard to handle her by myself when she's thrashing and flailing and screaming her little lungs out.

She measured 33 1/4 inches tall and weighs 30 pounds, 4 ounces. The good news is that she's jumped up to the 25% percentile in height, which was a relief; it's always been the 10th percentile before, so she's finally catching up a little. The bad news is that her weight is in the 95th percentile. She's two pounds overweight.

Oops!

She lost a lot of baby fat last year after she started walking and then she reached the picky eater stage, so I worried about her getting enough to eat. The doctor told me to put a variety of foods in front of her at mealtime, and that's what I've been doing. It just hadn't really registered with me that her picky eater stage had already passed.

I guess me and Mikey aren't the only ones who've been eatin' like show dogs around here.

He's real!

Little Brandon Martin, our own family's version of the mythical Suri Cruise, really does exist! I've seen the pictures, and he's a cutie:



For more pictures of Brandon and the rest of the Washington contingent, see Lesley's Flickr page.

I walked into the kitchen today

and caught Britt standing in a chair pushed up against the counter, helping herself to big gobs of frosting off her leftover birthday cake. So I grabbed the video camera and got some really cute footage of the little dickens.

Alas, when I went to upload the video so I could show it to you, my imaging software wouldn't work. I tried this and that and every other damn thing I could think of to get it to work, and I'm stumped. The only thing that's different from the last time I used it is that Bridget uploaded her Kodak software on my computer this weekend.

Thanks a lot, Bridge!

Luckily, I also snapped a few still photos of Britt in her frosting-induced ecstasy:



Mmmmmm!



I wish I knew WTF is wrong with my imaging software. Maybe the driver got messed up? Maybe I should uninstall and reinstall the software? Do I even know where the hell that disc is?

(**sigh**)

It's times like this that I miss having techie friends.

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.

Doggone it

We had a bad thunderstorm last weekend, so my dog spent the night in the garage. We also opened the side gate because it sits too low to the ground for water to move quickly under it, which makes the water back up and seep under the side door of the garage.

I let Pepper out of the garage the next morning. A little while later I went out back to fill her food and water bowls, but when she didn't come running like she always does, I said "Oh, shit." I walked around the corner of the house and, sure enough, the gate was standing wide open.

My dog was gone.

I paused a moment to reflect on how I felt about this. And, honestly? I hate to admit it, but it didn't bother me much. Not much at all.

And then I threw some jeans on, grabbed the leash and a picture of Pepper, parked Britt on my hip and headed out to look for her. The neighbors across the street were having a garage sale, so I started there. Yes, they had seen her; she was in my next-door neighbor's backyard, so I went and fetched her and took her home.

So I still have a dog. Dammit.

Seriously, y'all, I have tried. I've tried and tried and I'm still trying, but I just don't feel the love with this dog. I pet her and scratch her and talk to her every time I go outside, and I brush her just about every day, but I'm just not bonding with her. This is not the dog I wanted.

I first started wanting a dog when Kitty was still alive and before Britt was born. My kids had left home and my arms were empty and Kitty wasn't much of a cuddler. So I spent hours and hours looking at pictures of dogs at local shelters, but they were always too big. I wanted a little dog, an armful of love, like the miniature dachshund I grew up with.

Mikey nixed the dachshund idea. Also chihuahuas, anything with bulging eyes or a pug face and any dog from a shelter. He told me to decide on my top three picks and he'd see what he could do. So I did. I studied on it and finally told him that I wanted a silky terrier, a Westie, or a cairn terrier.

We tried for a silky, but they're pretty rare around here and every time we tried to get one they were already sold out. That Christmas, we were over at his parents' house for the family gift exchange when his brother came through the door with a tiny Bichon puppy. I said, "Oh, is that for me?" and everybody laughed. No, it was for my brother-in-law's kids. Later, I cried. Mikey said, "Oh, did you want a puppy?"

He finally told me that if I really wanted a dog, then I should just go get me one, but I could tell he wasn't on board with it and adopting a pet is such a huge commitment that I couldn't bring myself to do it without his support.

And then Britt came and my arms were no longer empty, so the whole issue went on the back burner until this winter, when Britt became mobile and we thought it would be nice for her to have another living being to interact with. Plus, I still really wanted a dog. A little dog.

So I started looking at the shelters again but, still, the dogs there were always bigger than what I wanted, plus they didn't want to adopt dogs out to families with very small children. So I looked at breed rescue sites. Same thing. No families with toddlers allowed.

So I studied the breeds available in the classifieds and circled likely candidates. And showed them to Mikey. And nothing happened, except that he started talking to his customers about dogs and then coming home with reasons why I couldn't have this one or that one. Finally, he told me that I couldn't have any kind of terrier at all because somebody told him they were "nippy" and if a dog ever bit Britt he'd probably hurt it.

By this point, I wanted to scream and claw my face. Instead, I found a website that rated breeds according to their compatability with children, cross-referenced it against what was available in the classifieds, and that's how we got our keeshond. I told myself this was a compromise dog but now I realize that this was a desperation dog. It was a dog and I could have it.

But it isn't the dog I wanted.

She is a beautiful dog and it's true that she has never snapped or growled at Britt, but sometimes she gets too excited and knocks her down or scratches her. She has completely destroyed my beautiful garden and she chews on every damn thing she can get her teeth on, including me. I can't hardly pet her without her latching onto my hand or my arm, and she has nipped the tender inner part of my thigh while trying to chew on my pants and also my boob when she tried to chew on my shirt. And she bit a button off a brand-new pair of capri pants, and ate it.

I read and printed lots of stuff about how to train her but, you know what? Training a dog takes lots of time and diligence, and all my time and diligence is devoted to Britt right now. She is a smart dog and I think she would be a great pet for someone who knew how to handle her, but that someone is not me.

Mikey, of course, has had almost nothing to do with her; he never goes in the backyard. He did today, though, and when he came in he told me that the condition of our yard and patio made him feel very depressed. He's ready to put her up for sale.

I think I am, too.

Busted II

I e-mailed Britt's guardian ad-litem the other day, asking if she could find out what was going on and get back with me.

She said it was indeed "our" Sarah who got busted, and that old guy she was living with in Blanchard last year was the one who bailed her out of jail. That's all she told me, though, which was annoying. I want details, dammit!

UPDATE 4:40pm: I just checked the messages on my phone, like I do once a month or so, and found out that Sarah called on June 13 wanting to see Britt.

The guardian ad-litem said it's up to me whether or not we let Sarah visit Britt, which I'm hesitant to do under the circumstances. Since she's a drug trafficker and all, you know.

On the other hand, I could get her over here and pump her for info.

Hmmm...

When Britt's pigtails fall out

she looks like a papillon:

Busted

Bridgie called to tell me she'd found something interesting on the OSCN website: Sarah was arrested last month for trafficking in illegal drugs. I pulled it up myself and looked at it; the birthdate is correct, so I'm sure it's her. Click on the link and you'll know as much about it as I do.

I called Bob; he thought it was pretty funny.

Mikey's been worried that Sarah would finally manage to clean herself up and try to regain custody of Brittany. I didn't have that much faith in her, but it's still a relief to know that she won't be taking Britt away any time soon.

I wonder if I could go downtown and get a copy of the arrest report? I am the legal guardian of her child, so I think I have a right to know what's going on. I'd hate to make the trip for nothing, though. Do you think they'd give me a copy?

A quick update

Britt's been having sleeping issues this past week or so. I finally got her to sleep at midnight-something tonight, which seriously cuts into my free time. Since I don't have a lot of free time on a good day, I haven't been blogging much lately.

I guess y'all heard that Roy's in the hospital with kidney failure. Cathy's been stuck up there without a car, so I went and took her out to lunch today. She's doing fine and Roy seems to be doing better.

I do have some exciting news to report -- Britt's hair is finally long enough to put in pigtails. Behold the cuteness:

Sleeping Beauty II

This time I caught her before she rolled off the bed:

School's out

and so one of my favorite new-to-me blogs is slowing down for the summer, dang it. And I was just about to add it to my blogroll, too.

It's the oddly fascinating Vegan Lunch Box, wherein a mom posts a daily photo, description and rating of the lunches she packs for her son each school day:



I'm not a vegan, but I would totally eat this stuff. Well, I would -- as long as somebody else did the shopping and the cooking for me.

Damn

I thought my meno was pausing.

I guess not.

Damn.

Greg's Wedding

Made the trip home to Tahlequah this weekend to see my youngest nephew get hitched. Here he is, enjoying his last few moments of freedom:



Amber was a lovely bride:



The kiss:



And it's a done deal:



We went over to Debbie's afterward, where Britt got to swim in the pool. She even got to ride in a kayak with Kelly Beth and Emily, with Eddie catapulting it from one end of the pool and Bob catching at the other:



And she went hot-tubbing with her Daddy; by this point her super-absorbent diaper was bigger than Bob's head:



Don't ask me what's up with Bob's facial hair. Could be he's Amish now, I dunno.

Missy is a lesbian

I forgot to tell Bridgie today when she finally came to get her dog that Missy has been humping my dog. Also, my leg.

Oh, yeah, Bridge -- remember when you came over for dinner Thursday and I couldn't find my little stainless steel saucepan? And I looked in all the cabinets, and I looked in the dishwasher two or three times and I even looked in the refrigerator and the freezer? And then I sat on the floor and looked through the pots & pans cabinet again? And it was nowhere to be found?

I hunted for it a few more times over the weekend, thinking it might magically reappear somewhere.

It did.

I finally unloaded the dishwasher on Tuesday and there it was.

Last night

I was in the garage smoking when Mikey popped his head out and told me he was going to mail the mail. Then he left.

A few minutes later, I was ready to go back in the house and -- guess what?

Yep. The door was locked.

I was locked in the garage with the baby monitor and an extremely tedious book and Brittany was asleep in her room -- alone.

I don't like being locked out of my house. I tend to freak out, just a little.

So Mikey came home and found me sitting here in front of the computer.

You locked me out.

What?

You locked me out.

How'd I do that?

Well, I guess you turned that little thingy on the knob when you shut the door.

How'd you get in?

I got in.

How?

I got in. You need to fix the door jamb.

Oh, great.

Oh, great? Oh, great? Like I'm the one who caused the problem?

I couldn't stay mad for long, though. He brought me a Blue Bell Texas Size Double Fudge Bar. Only 240 calories and 11 grams of fat. Diet, schmiet -- it's heaven on a stick.