The actual test is non-invasive, they hook a couple monitors up to my belly and I sit for 20 minutes so they can see both a resting heart rate and an active heart rate. So far, things have been normal and there has been no need for me to put additional anxiety on his small 6 pound frame. he

Throughout all the testing and triage visits, he seems to have maintained a normal heart rate and growth development. Besides sharing his room with my over sized organs, he seems to be fairly unaffected by all this commotion. Wait until he makes an appearance and the real family chaos is thrown down on him.

Cardin has attended these monitoring sessions with me and she brings along her doctor kit. While I’m hooked up to the machine, she performs all sorts of medical procedures on me; x-rays, injections, blood pressure readings. She is quickly becoming an expert in all things medicinally related to this pregnancy.

We can’t get her to understand the concept of blowing out of her nose, instead she just spits out of her mouth. The boogers hang around for some time and I’m convinced this squatting effect allows them to quadruple in size.

One night last week I offered to be Cardin’s personal booger digger and grab the sucker with a Q-tip so she could actually breath. Don’t get ideas, this isn’t a role I would take on for anyone but my own kid. This was unacceptable and we must have tried blowing her nose 50 times. As a side note, each time you blow her nose you must utilize a new Kleenix. Hopefully this fresh Kleenix need does not turn into another OCD habit. Needless to say the Kleenix box was looking mighty empty after our failed attempts to grab the giant booger.

A few nights later the case of the giant booger was solved when I was giving her a bath and washing her face.  Clearly the steam from her bath and me using a washcloth was enough to dislodge the culprit that had been plaguing her sleep for a few weeks. This thing could have gone in the Guinness book of world records.

She was able to sleep peacefully that night, without snoring like her father. Since then, the boogers seem to have regenerated themselves. These always look lovely, especially since she’s such a lady and wants to be dressed up all the time.

I will be 37 weeks and considered full term at the time of the amnio. Though it would be better to wait until 39 weeks to ensure lung maturity, the doctors are concerned with rupture of my spleen. It was recently measured at nearly 30 cm long. That’s just about a foot in length and it has become extremely sensitive to slightest pressure exerted by his growing body. A rupture of my spleen would be pretty catastrophic for both myself and Rory as I would bleed internally within minutes. Since I’m on heavy doses of narcotics, this also saves him 2 weeks of exposure to these drugs.

Listen Lady, I’m not fond of the idea of an amnio since there are some slight risks involved and ya know…..the whole idea of cramming a GIANT NEEDLE into my belly is not kosher. I’m forcing Brett to watch this procedure so he can get the gist of the pain. My doctor has ensured me this is the best recommendation for both Rory and myself.

There is a chance that his lungs will not be mature enough, in which case we’d have to wait another week. I’m not considering that a viable option at this point because I’m past the point of discomfort and I will extract him myself if need be. With any luck, we’ll be a family of four by May 11th and I’ll be celebrating Mothers Day by feasting on hospital food.

Since I wasn’t keen on the idea of inducing labor just to slap a temporary tattoo on his skin, I told Cardin that she could put the tattoo on mommy’s belly and that would suffice. She picked out a tattoo of Sebastain, the lobster from Little Mermaid, and slapped it right above my belly button. AWESOME.

This was all good until I began another regime of excruciating pain later that night and thought that we were going to need to head back up to the triage center. I was going have to explain to the nurses and doctors why I had a tattoo of a Disney character on my belly. I’m sure they have seen worse, but I can only imagine that they would not believe I was taking orders from a 3 year old. Luckily, I was able to cease the pain with the medication I have and since removed the offending tattoo.

In recent weeks, this has become Cardin’s favorite word. Her response to anything we tell her is, “why?”. Even once we’ve tried to fully explain the answer, she shoots back with another round of ”but why?”. This cycle of repetitive “why” asking continues until I shout something like…..

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WOMAN, BECAUSE I SAID SO!!

And there it is lady….now my mother’s voice is spewing out of my lips.

The first time you repeat words that your parents once used on you is a major milestone in parenting. The words unknowinglyy spill out of your mouth, hanging in the air, while you pause to truely contemplate the gravity of the situation; knowing that you have just broken the one promise you made when you first saw that pink plus sign. I will not turn into my parents. I imagine that as we age, the number of these catch phrases I utilize with Cardin & Rory will grow exponentially.

Don’t get me wrong lady, I’m happy that Cardin inquisitive, however, I’d prefer that we be discussing intellectual property if we’re going round for round in a battle of “but whys?” rather than discussing the need for mommy to flush the toilet after peeing.

One of the items that I had blocked out was the need for my platelet count to be over the 80 point mark. If my platelet count were to drop lower than this then I would not be qualified to receive an epidural for fear that my blood would not clot properly. As the doctor reviewed my recent blood work she noted that I was right on the cusp as my platelet level has been hovering right between the 80-90 range. Holy not cool batman!

This is not an atypical level for me, especially given my ginormous spleen, but is cause for concern, since I’ve no desire to deliver Rory while contending with contractions and the possibility of rupturing my cyst.

I know many people are strong proponents of natural birth and all, but this lady ain’t one of them. Bring on the drugs!! There are no awards given out to women who give birth without pain medication. Willingness to suffer through this pain while you are tired, scared, and irritable is not a sign of persistence and selflessness. In my opinion, it is a sign of questionable judgement. No doctor or nurse will think any worse of you for accepting medication to help relieve pain and ease the delivery.

When I got home from my last appointment, I did a google search to see what foods I could eat to increase help my platelet level. Some researchers mentioned leafy vegetables while others mentioned red fruit such as raspberries. Listen Lady, I sent Brett out on a mission for raspberries that day and in the past 2 weeks, I’ve likely consumed an entire orchard of raspberries. Ironically, my most recent round of blood work came back with the highest platelet levels for my entire pregnancy. Coincidence?

Sunday morning at 6:30 am she sauntered into our room, and instead of asking to see if the Easter Bunny came, like other normal children, she asked if it was time to put on her “pretty dress and dancing shoes”. Listen Lady, momma needs to waddle herself to the bathroom and pee first before we discuss any piece of clothing.

Luckily, we were able to distract her for about 30 minutes with an egg hunt and searching for her hidden Easter basket before we had to revisit the whole dress scenario. Since I could not convince her otherwise, she got dressed BEFORE breakfast. This is always a major risk as my child has a tendency to vomit by simply swallowing air.

We had reservations for brunch at noon, and Cardin spent the remainder of the day dancing on any hard surface so that she could hear her heels click.

On a side note, I’m a little sad that she actually calls him the Easter Bunny now. Last year, she would only refer to him as the Easty Bunny; which is, by far, a superior name.

Unlike with Santa, she seems to have no fear of the Easter Bunny. She jumped right up into his lap and smiled away for a picture. I don’t find the Easter Bunny as particularly disturbing as Santa Claus so I’m more on board with her visitation. Perhaps it’s the soft fur, fluffy tail, or the drugged out stare eminating from his eyes that lulls me into complacency.  

While sitting in his lap, Cardin proceeded to ask him, “where do you live?” Listen Lady, I can totally follow her logic. Santa lives in the North Pole and after Christmas, when all the decorations come down, he returns to his humble abode so he can start to make toys for next year. By the same conclusion, the Easter Bunny must go somewhere once all the Easter decorations come down. Where you livin’ at Bitches!!!!!

Since the person that portrays the Easter Bunny is not allowed to talk, ya know….for fear of giving away homeland secrets, Cardin received a blank stare directly followed by one of those AWKWARD SILENT MOMENTS.

The Easter Bunny quickly picked up a basket of small toys and thrust it at Cardin; hoping to avoid any further communication. This seemed to appease her; Cardin picked out a rubber ducky and went on her way to go ride the merry-go-round.

Well played Easter Bunny, well played.

When she doesn’t feel well she will typically ask for “medcine” and usually won’t back down; throwing a major hissy fit until she gets some. Since I’m not keen on drugging my kid unless she’s running a fever, we’ve come up with a “placebo” medicine. Take heed Internet, this is where I let you in on one of the tricks of parental manipulation. Don’t be flabbergasted Internet, I bet you $500 that your parents used bribery and manipulation on you too!

I fill a syringe with Kool-Aid and we pass this off as “medicine”. Listen Lady, it’s not my proudest moment as a parent, but it’s a win-win. Cardin is none the wiser and we aren’t answering calls from social services. She takes the placebo medicine and we go about our merry business without question. Who knows how long this trick will last, but for now we gratefully accept the calm it brings.

As a side, I need to make this disclaimer:

Dear 17 year old Cardin,

I credit Daddy with this burst of creative genius, as he originally had the idea to supplement grape Kool-aid for baby Tylenol in order to save us a major meltdown and inevitable puke session. Mommy would never be so stealthy.

ps. Santa didn’t really sign all those Christmas presents

Love,

Momma

Listen Lady, I gave her death ray eyes. I used my quiet, yet stern, mothering voice to protest her actions….ya know…the one where your lips barely move, your teeth stay clamped together, and you look like a ventriloquist trying to maintain order while keeping composure for the audience that has gathered around the spetacle you call your life.

Her response was simple and abundently clear to the whole waiting room, 
“NO! I’m itching my butt!”

AWESOME. I knew that through all that pink, princess girly crap my genetics made an impact somewhere.  What I was not anticipating was that they would seep out in the butt itching area of her life.

The remainder of the appointment went on without any further announcements from my kid.  The pain medication has been increased and we discussed some options for induction.  The doctor would like me to make it to 39 weeks before scheduling an induction to ensure the maturity of Rory’s lungs. Boys mature at a slower rate than girls (Holy Hell Batman, there is a shocker!!) and inducing before could lead to respitory complications

In the meantime, we let him cook longer, load me up on painkillers, and teach Cardin the art of inconspicuous butt itching.

With the unseasonably warm weather, Cardin was more than excited to put together the garage and play in her sandbox. She has no fear of the sand now and easily jumps right in, quite a change from when we first introduced her to it and she refused to put her hand in the box, let alone her body.

Last night, as we played in the garage, we heard a strange noise that seemed to be emanating from inside the toy box where we keep all the balls. It sounded similar to a firecracker going off; with the continuous popping noise. Cardin immediately wanted to investigate, but I felt that Brett should take one for the team.  Listen Lady, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye!

Luckily, there was no eye loss. Instead we found the remains of an old football that had split at the seams. The popping noise we heard was the seam slowly ripping away. The inside belly of the football had just recently been pumped and the expansion of air must have been far too much for the meager seams to handle.

Looks like we won’t be teaching Cardin how to play football anytime soon, but she did learn about physics. I’m pretty sure I’m going to try to extract the belly and make a hat out of the skin of the football.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gevBfxjLBIk

For those of you concerned: no animals or small children were harmed in the making of this video.

There were no soiree’s out of the country this year, in fact we spent his birthday at my doctor’s office getting me a prescription for strep throat. SUPER FUN! Nevertheless, I got him a fancy new Keurig and we were able to go out for a date over the weekend….once I was less of a snotty, coughing hot mess.

Prior to his birthday, I had acquired some new baking pans of different sizes. When Brett saw the pans, he informed me that he wanted a tiered birthday cake. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! Listen Lady, don’t taunt me with these requests because I will remember; even when they were made months in advance.

Not only did I dominate this tiered birthday cake request, I mixed the whole cake while in my stupor of sickness. Though my legal representatives have advised me to neither confirm or deny whether I sneezed directly into the cake mix.

Baking the cake was quite the process as each of the pans baked at different speeds/durations. There was a lot of maneuvering during the baking process to make sure that the batter was cooked through on all the pans.

Cardin assisted me in frosting the cake. Meaning she wielded a knife and I dodged a few sharp jabs. The tiered effect came out perfect, minus the fact that I had no way to actually cover the cake because it was so tall. Two years in a row and I’ve up’d the ante on his cake. How will he ever compete?

I was able to save enough batter to make Cardin her own miniature cake. When she sat down to eat it, she proceeded to pick all of the frosting off and leave the entire piece of cake fully intact. Literally, the cake was still a perfect circle and appeared as though it had just come out of the oven. It was a proud moment… she already knows that chocolate solves all problems.

Happy 31st Birthday Brett.

Most of it can be attributed to her adoration of all things princesses, scattered with a few Hello Kitty items. Or we can simply call it, gender stereotyping at it’s best. As her personality has grown, I’ve kept my attempts at stamping out the girly stuff to a minimum.

However, a few weeks back we ran into a distant cousin who had not seen Cardin in over a year. They inquired as to whether she’d be starting pre-school soon and whether or not we were going to sign her up for little tot dance classes in our area. I’ve bent to a lot of “girl” things. Her room is purple, she wears pink, and I let her paint her nails. The list goes on. I will not bend to dance classes though.

Go ahead Lady, call me a terrible mother. Tell me I’m suppressing her creativity and expression. I’m not letting her reach her full potential. I’ve heard it all, but I’m not changing my mind.

I’m sure there are many advantages of a dance class, but I’m also sure there are many disadvantages. Forget the time and monetary commitment that goes along with these classes, but the self-esteem and body image obsession and idolization purported with this craft is out of control. Her everyday encounters with TV, movies, and magazines are enough exposure to such stringent standards of our society.

Listen Lady, I get it, she’s only 3 and she’d be cute just standing on stage flopping around. Right now, she has no clue of the criticism, stereotypes, and ignorance that she will face as she grows. But what happens when she’s 10, 13, or 18? The same rules don’t apply.

Why would I purposefully matriculate her into a dance culture that takes society’s rules on beauty and perfection and multiplies them exponentially? Especially when we want to teach her to look beyond the differences in race, body size, religion, sexuality. I can’t protect her from all the ignorance and stereotyping that exists in our society. At some point she’ll need to conquer these herself. But, could I really consider myself a good parent if wasn’t trying to teach her differently?

I figured out Brett’s aversion to bones a few years back, after I had cooked some chicken breasts. One of the pieces he ate had a small bone that had not been removed by the butcher. While chewing, he discovered the bone. In a fit of disgust, he spit out the mouthful of food while simultaneously spewing out “OHHHHHH. BONE!!!!!”

It was though he had put a live rat in his mouth, but did not realize such until the thing started moving around on him. Dumbfounded, I stared at him and shook my head. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy and I have my own food quirks, but this is a prime example of how we keep the “assy” in “classy”. Thus began my boneless meat quest.

Typically, after plopping a piece of meat on Brett’s plate, he’ll inspect the entire piece, like the surgeon general dissecting it to his liking, before he begins any sort of food consumption.  Over the years, the aversion seems to have grown from just bones to all types of meat inaccuracies. We now include small pieces of fat that are on the edge of meat, veins that occasionally run through a chicken breast, or my all time favorite “it just looks weird” meat.

Really Lady? I don’t have energy for this.

To his credit, Brett will eat pretty much anything I cook, especially if I try out a new recipe or have a minor catastrophe in the kitchen. I just hope that neither Cardin or Rory acquire this detailed aversion to meat.

Listen Lady, she is obviously testing boundaries, patience, and the cause and effect relationship between gravity and soft fruit. Typically we put her in timeout after these occurrences and after a minute or two discuss why we don’t throw objects in the house. It seems that my rational approach to her temper is not yet working effectively.

I’m not overly surprised by her recent reactions. She’s at the perfect age to test us and try and declare some independence. Coincedently, this all began to occur right around the time that I began to focus more energy on preparing for Rory’s arrival and we began to transition her to rely more on Brett for her needs.  Unfortunately, it seems as those this is only the precursor to the monsoon of emotions that will be displayed once Rory is actually born.

Listen Lady, without a doubt, this is how it goes EVERY MONTH:
  1) The 16th of the month rolls around and I make my loan payment. 

  2) On the 17th of every month, I get a call from the bank that my payment has not been made and my account is delinquent.

  3) I rattle off that I made the payment yesterday, on the DUE DATE.

  4) The bank informs me that it takes 3 days to process the payment made online. Perhaps for next month, I’d like to make the payment 3 days earlier to avoid a delinquent state.

  5) I laugh and hang up.

Today is the 17th, yesterday I made my loan payment and as expected, the bank called me this morning running their mouth that my account was in a delinquent state. Chalk it up to pregnancy hormones, cabin fever, or pure agitation…but I went ballistic.

BALLS TO THE WALL APE SHIT, LADY.

I was all “I paid the bill on the due date, I should not be penalized because your system takes 3 days to process the payment”. The rep could provide no other solution than to make the payment early so my account wouldn’t be marked delinquent and I wouldn’t receive the monthly call. This wasn’t exactly satisfactory so I ended the call with an abrupt “I’m not paying 3 days in advance, so I’ll just expect these dumbass calls until the loan is paid off”.

I’ve decided that going forward, on the 17th, when I receive the phone call from the bank informing me of my delinquent state, I’m going to answer and shriek at the top of my lungs until I run out of breath.

I’m aware that this is not the mature route, but it is going to be a HELL of a lot more fun than listening to the same speech about delinquency.

Netflix is great, I’ve taken up reading again, and we play with Cardin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q-WgZPlneQ

When Cardin was an infant and we stayed home more, we used to entertain ourselves by balancing things on her head. I suppose we haven’t changed much. Rory is in for a hell of a time!

Therefore, I performed some extremely delicate surgery on the frames. I used twisty ties and kite string to fashion a support beam that would enclose the band and allow me to continue to wear the glasses. My fix wasn’t pretty and I walked around what appeared to be a giant white pirate patch attached to the side of my glasses, but it worked and for the few hours each night that I wear them, they suffice. The only downfall was that I couldn’t bend them to put them in any sort of carrying case. Minor design flaw.

Towards the end of 2011, our company began their open enrollment period for benefits. Normally, Brett carries our vision insurance through the school district because its a state run program and the prices are extremely better than what my private company can offer. However, my company switched vision providers and I knew that my kite string fix wasn’t going to last forever, so I signed up for additional vision coverage starting the first of the year.

I also knew, from previous experience, that when I went to the hospital to deliver Rory, I was not going to be allowed to wear my contacts. This is an actual regulation the hospital has for anyone who may need surgery, for example a c-section. Doctors don’t really want to contend with the possibility of side effects, such as swelling or inflammation, if a patient were to wear their contacts during anesthesia.

My choices were down to:

1) fork over the money and get a new pair of glasses
2) keep the mcgyver’d pair and have that documented forever in Rory’s first pictures

Any rational person would also be concerned with having all the doctors and nurses see you with these ridiculous looking glasses that have been patched beyond belief. Let me assure you lady, this will be the least of my concerns as 20 doctors gather to feel my spleen and watch me deliver a baby without managing to rupture an internal organ. It’s a skill.

We went over the weekend to one of the local vision centers so that I could get an updated eye test and order a new pair of glasses. The eye exam proceeded without incident until the doctor wanted to dilate my eyes. That is until he noticed my belly. Apparently, pregnant woman cannot get their eyes dilated because the dye may seep into the bloodstream. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t eat a lot of fish….I’m up on all these; dilating eyes….not so much.

After the test, I picked out a pair of Ray Ban frames and waited to have them measured and fitted for my eyes. I had expected a good three to four hundred dollar expense, but was pleasantly surprised when the price quote came back as a meager $57. Listen Lady, at first I was all “come again”. That price seemed unheard of for glasses and yet I was questioning it? The sales rep confirmed that the vision insurance company would cover the cost of the frames and lenses and the $57 was the co-payment I needed to make.

I hurled my credit card at her before she changed her mind and we picked up my new glasses. Hopefully these frames will last much longer with much less intervention. Bet you can’t guess which pair is the new one?

It comes as no surprise then, that ALL Cardin wants to wear lately are her t-shirts. Though, I gotta tell you kid, while you like the penguin shirt we bought at the zoo, its not nearly as cool as mommy’s “without me it’s just aweso” shirt. Just saying.

As her mother, I feel obligated to try and dress her more appropriately for the weather than I dress myself; meaning long sleeves and pants. We fight over her clothing most mornings and typically I give in and let her wear a t-shirt. Brett thinks I coddle her, but I think that she’s just trying to express herself with her t-shirt style and who am I to oppress that? 

Listen Lady, let the woman wear the blue penguin t-shirt and just call it a day. I suppose I succeed in the world of mommies as long as she doesn’t head out of the house in the nude? Besides, I’d rather save my energy, because I figure in about 10 years, a whole new round of fighting over clothes is going to start. And really….mommy & daddy ARE going to win those fights.

This is my newest shirt. If I have to explain the significance of this shirt to you then clearly you have lived under a rock for the past 10 years. Also, bustedtees.com is my favorite place to shop for t-shirts; I highly recommend.

Finally collected all the letters for Rory’s name to hang over his crib. Special thanks to my momma for hitting up the craft store each week with her coupon to get these while I’ve been laid up.

The nursery is painted yellow, so I picked this color for contrast. Cardin helped me with the first coat. She did surprisingly well considering this paint isn’t washable. She even painted the edges of the letters; although she painted the letters TO the actual newspaper. Minor details.

After a whole year of looking at this ghettoized TV stand, I finally threw in the towel and made the public decree that it was time to invest in a new one. This was a great idea, in theory. We spent a great deal of time looking online and checking out numerous furniture showrooms to find a stand that would 1) match the style of the living room 2) be fairly child friendly 3) not require that I cut out my left kidney to pay for it and 4) not be made of particle board.

Listen Lady, you would not believe how hard this was. Most of the TV stands being made now fit into 3 categories: dark wood, glass shelves, or particle board pieces of shit. Dark wood is out as I prefer a lighter, more natural tone. Add to that equation, two of my accident prone children running around and glass shelves are out of the question. And particle board….well…let’s be honest, you aren’t exactly paying for quality woodworking. 

As luck would have it, one of the local furniture showrooms was running a special over Superbowl weekend and we had acquired a 50% off coupon. We were able to find a 52 inch TV stand that met the requirements. After some major negotiation tactics, we haggled ourselves down to a really decent price. Brett measured the size of the TV stand and declared that it would fit in the back of his SUV so we were even able to avoid paying for a delivery charge.  

As we were pulling away from the furniture store, Brett casually mentioned that “even if I wasn’t pregnant, the new stand would be too heavy for me”.  OH CONTRAY BOY….I’VE GOT GUNS. Don’t doubt that I proceeded to give him a riveting muscular display right in the car.

Setup was fairly easy and we even have nice little drawers to store away movies and video games. The corners are rounded, which is a nice feature, since it will be one less boo-boo I need to kiss when Cardin or Rory crack their head on it. The best benefit though is that I no longer need to look at the ghetto TV stand; definitely worth every penny.

I’ve always been a planner and organizer; a trait I’ve collected from my parents. All through high school and college I used to carry around an agenda. It was my guide to life; aappointments, due dates, birthdays, power hours….everything was neatly organized by day. Listen Lady, life is no different now, except that my agenda resides in my phone and I’m able to keep a backup copy; which only exaggerates my need for order.

My need for organization spills over in a compulsion to create lists. All sorts of to do lists, shopping lists, cleaning lists. IT’S A DISEASE!!! With the way the pregnancy is going and the restriction of no driving, I’ve spent a LOT of time in the house recently; creating lists and organizing baby things for Rory’s arrival.

One of the items on my list to buy was a new diaper bag. The bag we used with Cardin is long gone and not because she is being potty trained now or because she vomits at a less frequent rate. Rather, it is because the bag became so over used and mangled with the amount of clothing, vomit bags, burp clothes, and extra wipes we needed to carry around just to make it through a 2 hour outing.

So, a few weeks ago I began my quest for a new diaper bag; one that will hopefully take less of a beating and not require so many washings to remove vomit stains. There are numerous styles of diaper bags and all sorts of price ranges, but let’s be honest folks, do you really see my carrying around a designer bag? Luckily, this narrowed our search immensely as I could weed out all the ugly crap that would not mesh with my t-shirt and jean attire.

After a few weeks of searching and reading reviews, we finally settled on a green messenger bag. The bag was slightly pricey than what I had originally intended to spend, but a found a coupon and had a $20 gift card to the baby store, so in the end I was pleased with the purchase.

From all the reviews, you can shove a whole lot o’shit into this bag and there is a convenvient front pocket that is perfect for slipping your cell phone or a flask into. No joke lady….one of the reviews said that a flask fits perfectly into the front zippered pocket. We shall see about that!

We made a quick detour to the peditrican’s office before going to the show and confirming the ear infection. They sent over a prescription to a 24 hour pharmacy, we loaded Cardin up on children’s tylenol, and we were on our way to skating bliss.

BUT….not before I packed a few essential items that I knew we would need. A towel, extra baby wipes, and a vomit bag. Without fail, during the second half of the show, Cardin started an uncontrollable coughing fit and left much of her dinner right at the arena. Luckily, the advanced training I’ve received in puke catching left me so confident, that I had stashed the vomit bag in the pocket of my hoodie for easy access. We’re talking Boy Scout motto to the millionth degree.

Listen Lady, this is what it has come down to; I now carry plastic bags around IN MY POCKET so as to catch puke. I went to college for pete’s sake. It was no Harvard or Yale, but we had our fair share of incidents and none of them ever required that I be so prepared as to carry around a plastic bag in my pocket.

The trend continued for the remainder of the weekend and we finally just started carrying a bucket from room to room. Cardin is finally starting to feel better now that she’s been on antibiotics for a few days and the fever is gone. Fingers crossed that no one else in the family gets her sickness

OK…..

If you insist.

She proceeded to take off her socks and check her toe jam. I’m not really sure where she developed this habit. She claims she learned it from me, but I don’t routinely stop my activities to just pick out some toe jam. I like to believe she isn’t mimicking me on this one, but I do have a pretty strong hatred for socks that have a seam right at the toes. WHY WOULD YOU SEW A SOCK IN THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE PLACE???? I will remove shoes numerous time just to position a sock correctly. Add it to my list of fetishes.

After she completed penance with her toes, she decided it was time to inspect mommy’s toes. She ripped off my socks and peeled my toes apart. Expect she didn’t stop pulling when she felt resistance, she’d just pull harder at that point.

Listen Lady, I thought my little toe had been pulled off at one point. Images started to swirl in my head of only having 9 toes. My balance is bad enough now, I fear the repercussions of what losing a toe may do.

So a week ago, I wrote about the whole potty training deal with Cardin. After you have a kid, you’d be completely astounded as to how comfortable you are dealing with their bodily functions. In fact, it borders on an obsession to know the number of times a day a diaper is changed or your kid asks to use the potty. Listen Lady, it becomes such a mundane fact that it can be discussed over dinner as casually as your day at the office. I suppose on some level, the ease of which bodily functions are discussed is advantageous to children; I just like talking about poop though.

Cardin has been doing fabulous with potty training, but like any kid, she’s had a couple minor infractions that we’ve lived through as we navigate these new waters. Understandably, this is a big change for her and she has struggled with actually pooping on the toilet. By struggled I mean she holds it for days at a time. This is completely unnatural for a child of her size and yet she continued to consume extreme quantities of food.   

This started almost immediately when we began potty training and in an attempt to help her, we bought apple prune juice. Alas, she proved resilient to our juice attempts. By the time we had gone 96 hours without any sign of poop, I called in the peditrican for backup. He suggested trying a laxative.

Cardin finally imploded that night.  I was milliseconds away from busting out in a special rendition of Salt n’ Pepa’s “Push It” when Cardin finally made landfall. Elated, she ran off to get her Hershey Kisses while I was left to deal with the atom bomb she just dropped.

I’m going to emphasize again that this kid weighs less than 30 pounds and had not pooped in 96 hours when this incident occurred. I was forced to plunge our toilet not once, but twice, in order to remove the backup. Listen Lady, by this time I was in a fit of uncontrolled laughter; tears were running down my face. It is incomprehensible to me that a THREE YEAR OLD could plug a toilet so badly that a hazmat team is needed and yet its one more thing to check off my bucket list.

You see Lady, as Brett was clearing off the driveway I started having sudden pain in my lower left abdomen. It was the most unrelenting, unnerving pain I’ve ever felt; and I’ve given birth people. Initially, I thought that baby Diego was laying awkwardly up against my gigantic spleen. I tried sitting, standing, laying, and I even proded my stomach a few times to see if he’d move, but the pain never ceased. I gave up and finally motioned for Brett to come back into the house so I could call the doctor.

It seemed, at the exact moment I called for him to come inside, utter chaos erupted. The pain grew more intense, Cardin started screaming as she was not ready to come in from playtime in the snow, and one of us was constantly on the phone trying to arrange care for Cardin and/or answering doctors questions.

My parents arrived to watch Cardin and the on call doctor instructed us to come to the hospital immediately and head straight for OB Triage.  Thing was…by this point, I was writhing in pain on the floor, unable to move without assistance, and ready to go for someone’s jugular if they did not manage to relieve the pain. Driving ourselves was clearly not an option, so we called an ambulance.

Brett floored the cars into the garage and managed to collect my purse and jacket before the ambulance arrived; though neither of us remembered a set of keys (an important fact for later). Since I’m pregnant, the EMT’s were unable to give me any sort of pain medication, though they did manage to shove an IV into my arm. The EMT who was riding with me happened to be male and since he could do little to alleviate my pain, he let me squeeze his hand and told me to “breath through the pain.” Listen Lady, to his credit, he did say “I’m a man, that’s all we know how to say so we don’t feel useless.”

I was taken up to OB Triage where the resident initially checked the pregnancy to make sure:
1) baby Diego had a heartbeat that wasn’t under stress 
2) that I wasn’t experiencing pre-term labor 
Since neither was the case, we moved on to an ultrasound. By this time, I had been given percocet to reduce the pain and that helped immensely; though I began to act like a loopy fool.  

The purpose of the ultrasound was really to see the gargantuan size of my spleen and measure a cyst on my left ovary that is a cause for concern. Cyst’s are a pretty common occurrence in women, and most are benign, but the size of this cyst makes it likely to either rupture or twist my ovary; cutting off blood supply. Neither of these options sounded especially rad; given that both would cause excruciating pain and likely lead to a very complicated surgery; wherin we’d be putting the baby at serious risk.

By some stroke of luck, the ultrasound showed that the cyst had not ruptured and if a torsion had been the source of the pain, it had self-corrected. Good news lady, blood is flowing normally to all your organs. The attending physician left us with the option to be admitted for observation in case the torsion reoccurred or to head home, with strong painkillers, and a resounding promise to come back immediately if I felt the same pain or experienced any signs of infection; fever, vommitting, etc.

I chose to be discharged and we left the hospital; weilding a prescription for percocet. There was one minor problem though, during the chaos to leave the house, we both forgot keys to get back in. EPIC FAIL. Luckily my parents have an extra key.

Since the whole triage incident I’m no longer allowed to lift anything remotely heavy, roll over without assistance, or drive. All of these acts may trigger another torsion and we clearly need to avoid the option of surgery. Since I’m on medication and cannot drive, I’m spending the next 5 months working from home; in seclusion. Obviously not the ideal situation, but it keeps me off Long Term Disability and will likely generate some crazy blog entries.

I’ve never been comfortable with forcing her into a developmental milestone before she’s ready and willing to do so independently. I’m sure many “experts” would disagree, but this is the approach we’ve taken with so many firsts for her. Ceasing a bottle, walking, putting her to bed, taking away the pacifier, and even with her speech; these were all stages she reached of her own volition when she was developmental ready.

I’m sure much of this comes from my background in psychology, but I’ve also learned, mostly through life lesson, that no matter how much you want someone to do something, they will not do so until they are ready and acknowledge the issue.

Alas, it seemed as though the inevitable potty training was never going to happen unless we pushed her to it. I purchased special training underwear, pull ups, and the bribe; Hershey kisses. Last weekend we made our first go at no diapers. At first she wasn’t keen on the idea of the training pants; mostly because they felt different than a diaper. However, she has done exceptionally well all week long and has even started to tell us she needs to use the potty.

Whether it is 7 am or 10 pm, she so gracefully reminds us each time that she gets a Hershey kiss. Fingers crossed the trend continues.

Listen Lady, it’s a good thing I just happened to look because apparently you need to register your kid 7 months in advance. In fact, the pre-school we’ve picked starts its registration process the last week of January. Is this college now? Will Cardin also need to provide a life essay and recommendations?

Needless to say, it was a bit of a shock to both Brett and myself that we needed to come to a decision about Cardin’s schooling in such a short time frame. Actually, it was more overwhelming to think that I’ll be old enough to have a kid in pre-school; damn you 30th birthday.

Since Cardin’s birthday is in November, she is right on the edge of the cutoff for sending your child to school. With her language delay and the fact that she has minimal social interaction with other children, we agreed that two years of pre-school would suit her best. This will impact her enrollment in Kindergarten and she won’t start elementary school until age 6. She’ll likely always be the oldest in her class, but we truly believe the extra time for her to mature and develop her language skills is best. Plus then she’s not flying off to college at the meager age of 17.  

Tomorrow we have a meeting scheduled to see the pre-school and meet with the teacher. And then it hit me Lady, we should probably ask the teacher/school some questions. It seemed only reasonable as we would be entrusting them to watch and educate our child.

But what the hell were we supposed to ask??

I’ve never conducted an interview of this caliber and questions pertaining to homework, textbooks, or a class syllabus seemed out of line; yet this is all I’ve known of education. Luckily, there is this thing called google and a quick search provided me a slew of more age appropriate questions for the teacher; ones that involved daily activities, safety, and discipline.

Cardin is coming with us tomorrow to meet the teacher and see the pre-school room. I imagine that my anxiety over leaving my baby on the first day of school, with complete strangers and kids she has never met, will only grow as tomorrow comes to a close.

In January of 2010, we switched our Internet provider. This locked us in for a 12 month period at a price of $30. We chugged happily along this way until January of 2011, when our bill suddenly jumped to $50. Uncool internet company. So….we played the game.

First, I called the Internet provider only to be told there were no promotions for current customers. Then I asked to speak to the manager and was again told there were no promotions for current customers. They weren’t exactly selling me for future business. My last tactic was to take the modem down and go to one of their local offices. I threatened to cancel my Internet service and low and behold…..they had a promotion running for current customers. FANCY THAT. What excellent customer service you receive once you become a bitch.

We chugged happily along this way until about a week ago, when we got the notice that the bill was again jumping up to $50. Listen Lady, I played the game again. First with the phone calls and then even threatening to cancel at the local office. Except this time, my game didn’t work. The agent was steadfast in her refusal to help me out. Now, my cable contract is set to expire in April of 2012, meaning the bill will sky rocket yet again. Listen Lady, there is no love from this company.

In my quest to defy and outwit this company, I began a search for other Internet providers in the area. Except, there are only 2 providers that service Rochester; our current provider and one more. We looked into the other provider, but after all the fees, rental rates, and taxes they were no cheaper. Basically, the Rochester area seems to be taking it up the arse when it comes to Internet service.

Our options seem to be this:

1) bend over and take it
2) cancel our current provider for 60 days and then resume service as a new customer so we can get the $30 price again.

This issue is further complicated by the Tivo & Netflix streaming we subscribe too. Both require an Internet connection and have been pre-paid for 2012. Canceling the Internet then screws us in regards to Tivo & Netflix. Canceling for that time period wouldn’t be the end of the world, but then again, I wouldn’t be able to work from home, the Listen Lady Blog could suffer a detrimental blow to postings, and how on earth would I keep up with the Kardashians??

Unfortunately, Cardin seems to be getting the short end of the stick here. We are not having a girl or a chicken as she requested and the name Diego has been veto’d off the list of possibilities. Although, I must admit, it’d be pretty sweet to hit up one of his future baseball games or graduation ceremonies and scream Go, Diego, Go!!!

When we picked Cardin’s name, we had some pretty specific criteria. We avoided popular, common names as neither of us were keen on her being lost in a sea of classmates with the same name. We also were looking for a name of Irish, Celtic, or Scottish decent. Though strong drinking genes isn’t a bad thing, that wasn’t the driving factor behind our decision. Since Brett is adopted, he’s really not 100% sure of his descendants, but knows he is partly Irish and Scottish; hence the reddish hue to his ever declining hair. And of course, yours truly has 50% Irish blood coursing through her body. It seemed a natural choice to honor that heritage that we share.

The same held true as we searched for a boy’s name.  After some debate, we finally settled on Rory Micah Ferdinand Mayer. Though there is some disagreement over the middle name as it stands. Listen Lady, Ferdinand would never have been my choice for a middle name, but it’s been carried down within Brett’s family and he’d like to continue that tradition. Trust me, I’m not alone in thinking that plaguing this baby with Ferdinand is a terrible fate. There are no famous Ferdinand’s that you could rattle off if you were to just happenstance across the name. Go ahead….try.  

I reluctantly agreed upon such as long as we could precede it with the name Micah. And here is my rationalization:

 1) When I need to use my mothering voice and whip out the dreaded middle name, I can just yell RORY MICAH and I’m not forced to taste the bitterness of Ferdinand.

 2) If in the future, Rory ever decides he dislikes it as much as I, he can simply refuse to acknowledge its presence.

Cardin seemed OK with the name change and does pretty well with the pronunciation. The next step will be to tell the family; especially my grandmother. If her response is anything similar to what happened when we told her Cardin’s name I’m sure there will be a blog post.

The beginning of the year saw a very significant birthday for Brett and while we didn’t get to celebrate Vegas style, gambling and hangovers were involved. Cardin fell in love with all things girl this year; especially princesses and we were lucky to be able to celebrate her third birthday with a trip to Disney World.

The spring months held some other milestones; Brett and I celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary. Five years seems impossible and yet what will I say when we hit 10 years?? My dad retired from Kodak after 33 years and we gave him a party to celebrate such a remarkable achievement.

We had a summer full of appliance repair and construction of a new swingset, complete with clubhouse. We took a very memorable weekend trip to Columbus, Ohio where Brett and I likely have pending arrest warrants for littering due to a contaminated car seat.

We moved Cardin into her big girl bedroom and even announced the addition of a new family member. We partied away at three weddings this summer and most notably, I don’t recover from alcohol consumption as quickly as my 21 year old self.

The fall held the birth of my nephew Liam and a visit to Hoboken so Aunt Christine could see this little guy. While Cardin is still in speech therapy, she’s made significant progress in a year; so much progress that we now play the quiet game. The Fall was rounded out with a trip to zooboo where Cardin taunted the animals dressed as a hamburger.

The winter months saw celebration of the holidays with family and friends. And while we were 9 cookies short of reaching our ultimate goal for cookie day, the tradition continues.

So what of 2012 you ask?

We’ll start with trying to get Cardin fully potty trained before I pop out baby Diego. We’ll likely attempt to finish the landscaping and Cardin will start Pre-School in the Fall. There is also the unfortunate event of my 30th birthday looming in 2012.

Whatever the event, I’ll be sure to keep screaming out LISTEN LADY and blogging about our ridiculousness. Wishing you all a Happy New Year, filled with only the best.

~The Listen Lady Crew

The other night, Brett “helped” me wrap Cardin’s presents after she had fallen asleep. I use the term “helped” loosely. I’m not going to mention that he managed to finish just two presents in the time I finished eight. I’ve actually never seen him wrap a present before and I’ve been enlightened to the difference in our level of OCD over wrapping.

He claims, like most men, that he’s not a good wrapper. This is untrue, in fact he’s an excellent wrapper. His downfall is found in the OCD he has. Unlike me, he could give a rat’s ass about the pile of clutter sitting on the computer desk or the layer of dust that has collected on the toilet tank. However, awkwardly wrapped presents will sound a fury in his brain.

Listen Lady, each cut must be perfectly straight and all the creases removed from the paper before taping. Any folds must be performed with laser like precision and the wrapping paper must adhere to the gift without any air pockets. Even the piece of tape must be a particular length. For the love of god just slap some tape down and call it a day. Once he has completed the wrapping, it’s at least a 2 minute process to adhere the gift tag marker in just the right location at just the right angle. If only I had this kind of time in my day.

I suppose our brains are wired to see certain details differently but hell….if he’s going to force me to watch him eat soggy bread, then I’m going to force him to view my quickly wrapped, albeit slightly deformed, presents.

We have an artifical tree in our basement, but I just can’t bring myself to put it up. Perhaps, in some unconscious way, I’m just refusing to replicate my childhood memories of artificial, plastic Christmas trees; especially white ones. I realize there are advantages to the artificial tree.  Easier setup, no need to freeze your butt off to acquire, and less likely to burn down your house.

Of course, artificial trees win out in terms of fiscal responsibility but where is the fun in going down to the basement to uncover a fake tree. There is something special about gathering your family and trekking out in search of the perfect tree. Tromping through a snow ridden field just so you can take that first slice through the trunk. Rigging the tree to the top of the family SUV in hopes that it won’t get ripped off on the drive home.

I’ve also made it a tradition to name our Christmas tree each year. Listen Lady, its a living object we took from nature, the least we should do is provide it a name. Some years we go for a more traditional name (Douglas) while other times we spring for a more ethnic flavor (Francisco or Sanchez). This year I decided I was going to let Cardin name the tree. After all, I do need to pass along this tradition.

At first she wanted to name the tree, baby Diego, but I nixed that idea since she has also dubbed the baby that. I thought it might get confusing; not for the baby, but for the tree. After some deep contemplative thought, she came back with the name ”Pig Tail”. Thus forth, the tree for 2011 was named pig tail. I commend her for her choice; the name is both unique and yet gender neutral.

Each year my extended family gathers together and we bake cut out cookies; hundreds of cut out cookies to be exact. Approximately 30 bodies cram into my mom’s kitchen each December and attempt to topple last year’s record breaking cookie day number.

The whole production is like a well oiled machine now; we hardly bump into each other as we fly through the kitchen. There are two designated bodies who are full time rollers & cutters. One person mans the oven and helps with frosting preparation. One body mans the tables where cookies are cooled and counted. We have a runner who fills the table with cookies to be frosted and returns those that are in a complete state. The remainder of us frost and sprinkle our hearts out.

In total, all the cookies are cut, baked, cooled, & frosted in about 6 hours. We outdid ourselves this year with new record of 991 cutout cookies. Although disappointment ensued that we were just 9 cookies short of a grand; our ultimate goal.

After a few hours of continuous frosting, your brain starts to take on a glaze like effect…so we get creative. We’ve created entire scenes of spongebob squarepants, various animals have been carved out of cookies, and one year we made the pope-mobile. Listen Lady, there is no end to the creativity. 

For the most part, the real concern is attempting to make the cookie appear as though someone hasn’t blown sprinkle chunks all over it. This year however, my cousin’s girlfriend joined in the cookie making festivities and showed us all up. She spent delicate minutes on each cookie; making each one a hand crafted piece of art. I particularly enjoy her angel, however, my green tree with a yellow blob on top is pretty kick ass too!

It’s a pretty awesome holiday tradition; one that hopefully continues to grow overtime as we introduce new frosters like Cardin. We laugh and talk, the time passing quickly; and each year I’m reminded of how lucky I am to have such a close knit family.

This year we told Cardin that Santa was going to come visit her on a firetruck and her immediate question was “will he get down?” The barrage of questions concerning his proximity to her body continued for a good day and a half. She was cool with this firetruck idea, as long as Kris Kringle kept his distance.

I’m not overly surprised at this fear of Santa. He creeps the shit out of me too. Listen Lady, who needs a belt that gigantic?? When we visit the mall I steer clear of the Santa house and I think Cardin has taken a liking to do the same.

I’m all for viewing the big jolly guy from a distance, but don’t get all up in my grill. Chances are you have bad breath and I’m not really into ingesting your fake white beard.

Just as a side note, this is not manipulation. It’s just called parenting benefits.

Being the ever faithful servant, she ran off to Brett and asked if she could open the envelope. He responded, “No, its for mommy.” Apparently this was the wrong thing to tell her because she proceeded to open the envelope, regardless of his answer, and came bouncing over to me, wielding the gift like a knife blade. It was for Mommy after all.

I laughed and told her that I couldn’t see the gift because it was for Christmas and she should go put it back in the envelope. She didn’t quite grasp my joke.

Brett said he has more packages arriving today…perhaps a little elf will open them all up for me.

For all intents, the thermos works great. It holds a decent amount of beverage, keeps it chilled for numerous hours, and doesn’t spill. However, there was one major problem during our trip. During takeoff and landing, the thermos becomes presurrized; much like the fluid in your ears.

I know this for a fact because prior to our flight, we had placed chocolate milk into the Thermos. After we had boarded the plane and taken off, Cardin asked for a drink. I grabbed the Thermos and pushed the button to pop the lid. At that exact instant a stream of chocolate milk shot all over my face and shirt.

Listen Lady, I’m not talking about a little trickle of milk either. The velocity at which the milk exited was so intense that I actually heard the thermos release a “ppppffffttttt” sound as the milk exploded in my face and the pressure released. 

I was taken by such surprise and shock that I was unsure of how to proceed. I turned to Brett, shook him awake, and waited for help as the milk dripped down my face. He looked at me in awe and disbelief before the fit of laughter started.

I spent the next 30 minutes of the flight, using baby wipes and a tide to go pen to try and clean my light blue shirt, which now had brown milk stains all over. I can just imagine what was going through the flight attendants head as she handed me peanuts.

To finish off the milk disaster, one of the “perks” of staying on Disney property is that your luggage is delivered to your hotel room from the Orlando airport; with no need for you to intervene. Awesome benefit, except that the luggage didn’t arrive that night until 10 pm and I had not packed an extra shirt in my carry on. EPIC FAIL.

So, I got to attend dinner with Chef Mickey that evening with my milk stained shirt; which was now starting to smell a bit spoiled. Hopefully the characters vision is so blurred behind those giant heads they didn’t notice the brown stains.

We had an awesome time at Disney and were able to make a slew of great memories. There was of course the chocolate milk incident, walking into podiums, and the giggles of laughter that erupted when we rode Dumbo. By far, the best part of the trip was watching Cardin’s expression as she met each of the characters and all the princesses. I would have given a lot of money to be able to hear the thoughts running through her head the second she saw Mickey for the first time. I like to imagine it was something along the lines of “holy shit…you’re not just a mouse that lives inside my TV.”

Snow White is by far her favorite princess and before we left, I booked a breakfast with the princesses during our Epcot visit. When I made the reservation I inquired as to which princesses are at the breakfast and was told that it’s on a rotating shift so there is no guarantee that a specific princess with be present. Listen Lady, I was sweating bullets as we waited to be seated. Had Snow White not been present I was imagining a mass temper tantrum that would only be quelled with a sedative.

Each of the princesses would float throughout the restaurant and stop at your table to say hello, sign autograph books, and take pictures. Luck was with us and Snow White was in fact in attendance at the breakfast. Snow White stopped at our table and Cardin meekly said hello and handed over her autograph book; unsure of how to have an exchange with Snow White as Cardin was still grappling with her real live presence.

Snow White and Cardin lined up for a picture and then…..nothing. At the exact moment I needed a picture, in fact the most vital picture of our whole trip, my camera froze. Luckily, I whipped out my iphone and was able to snap a picture of the two before Snow White departed.

We met the rest of the princesses in attendance at breakfast that morning and left with all their autographs.

I’m glad that we were fortunate enough to provide this moment to her; it is certaintly a part of her childhood I will never forget. Cardin was able to live the dream for a little while and it made our whole trip worthwhile.

As we were leaving the restaurant, Cardin asked if the princesses could come back to our hotel and go swimming with us. I smiled and was all “if mommy had enough money then probably, but for now, they have to stay here and see the rest of their friends.” 

Thanksgiving ranks second on my list of holidays and its placement will never move as long as we have the famous meatball soup.  You inquire what I’m referencing oh Internet? Let me lead you on the path of enlightenment. Meatball soup, also known as Italian Wedding soup, is our family tradition on Thanksgiving. Made from a chicken base stock with veggies, fried noodles, and tiny Italian meatballs it is unrivaled by any other dish. In fact it’s so time consuming to actually prepare and cook that we only have this soup twice a year.

We fight over who will have the last spoonful, and if we come for just desert, we always ask if there is leftover soup. Listen Lady, most people outside my family can’t understand the draw of the soup. They taste it and think it’s good, but they don’t fully appreciate the labor of love that goes into each homemade piece of pasta or each individually rolled meatball. They don’t quite understand that beyond its delicious flavor is years of Italian blood that has carved out the meaning of family; the true reason to celebrate and be thankful.  

Of course we’ll still have turkey and all the fixings, but everyone comes for the soup. After dinner we feast on a wide array of deserts. This year I’m making pilgram cookie hats. Here is what they cookies are supposed to look like. I’m guessing mine won’t look quite as lovely.

After I caught the majority of the puke in my hand (yep….you’ll do it too) I took Cardin to the bathroom to change her outfit. When I returned to the table some poor 16 year old sap was mopping up the remainder of the puke from the floor. I’m sure it made his shift very enjoyable.

We finished up our meal and then came back to hang out at our house. Wherein Cardin had been promised that she’d get a full manicure, compliments of my friend Michelle. We gathered the essentials and got Cardin situated so that she was fairly imobile.

Cardin selected a deep shade of purple and Michelle even drew flowers on both thumbs with a toothpick. It was getting pretty intense. Especially around the time that Michelle begin to manipulate my kid into a rowdy game of simon says by telling Cardin to “put your hand on your head” or “pat your head really fast”.

Inspired by her sudden creativity, Michelle asked Cardin whether mommy should also get a manicure. Normally I don’t wear any makeup or nail polish. I find it to be a waste of time and money. Not so for Cardin. She immediately piped in with an exaggerated “YEEEEEAAA”

I was given the prettiest set of polka dot nails any girl could ever dream of. Listen Lady, this is how deep my love is for my kid… I agreed to nail polish. AND DAYS LATER IT IS STILL ON MY FINGERS.

After we had finished our manicures, one of my nails wasn’t quite dry and I smudged one of the polka dots. Cardin now has to take role call of each one of my fingers, numerous times a day, and boisteriously points out the one nail that is messed up. The amount of OCD the child has already is unnerving.

We left, heartbroken, but managed to become closer after this defeat. The summer months went by and we struggled with the decision on whether to try for another baby. We wanted more children, but the anxiety and “what if” questions loomed.

Ultimately, the decision came down to one factor; Cardin needed a sibling. She needed someone to grow up with. She needed a cohort to be able to rely on and cause mischief with; not just for her childhood, but for her future too. There will come a day where Brett and I will no longer be here, and I need to know that Cardin will have someone else to share childhood memories with, to carry on family traditions, to call when she needs to be bailed out. I need to know that, if Brett or I were to get sick and unable to care for ourselves, Cardin is not alone in bearing the burden of health decisions that may need to be made for us. In the end, the decision was simple and while it did not resolve the anxiety we felt, it was the right choice for her future.

Soooo…we made a compromise. We would take Cardin to Disney World and afterwards, we’d try to have another baby. Brett wasn’t fully convinced on the trip, but I felt it was important. It would be our last big adventure as a family of three and we’d be able to experience the joy of Disney through Cardin’s eyes alone. Plus it would allow us to spend quality time with her before chaos erupted in our house.

This was the plan….funny thing….life never seems to go according to plan. After we had made reservations and paid for the trip to Disney, we discovered that I was pregnant again. Thanks Karma. Your reputation as a bitch precedes you.

We waited anxiously for weeks, going for handfuls of blood tests to monitor HCG levels, and attending four ultrasounds, but we’ve made it to nearly 13 weeks.

After about 9 weeks, we told Cardin that Mommy had a baby in her tummy. She’s seen pictures and come to the ultrasounds, but she still doesn’t fully grasp the concept; she likely won’t until my belly shows. When we asked her if she’d like a brother or a sister she responded with “a girl or a chicken”. I’m really hoping its not a chicken because I fear the pecking.

Each night I come home from work, we retreat to the bedroom and listen to the baby’s heartbeat on a doppler that I purchased while I was pregnant with Cardin. First it’s mommy’s turn and then Cardin gets a chance to listen to her belly; apparently she has a penguin residing there. One night I asked her what the baby’s name should be; anticipating that she’d come back with Snow White or Belle. Instead I was surprised, she dubbed the baby Diego. Thus forth, we have referred to the baby as Project Diego. I suppose this will suffice until Brett and I decide on a name.

After 20 minutes of discussion with her buddies, she called for me. From the other room I told her it was time for bed. This seemed to satisfy her, but another 30 minutes went by and she was still talking away. By this time Brett and I decided to head to bed, so I went in her room to check on her.

Listen Lady, I found her totally nude. NAKED. Sprawled out on her bed, having a full on conversation with her stuffed animals. Uncool kid.

I inquired about why she had disrobed and her only response was “I NEEED TO”. I informed her that jammies were required for sleeping and that she would freeze otherwise. Reluctantly, she let me redress her.

I got her settled into bed again, however, she’d only agree to lay down if I got her three specific stuffed animals….

         one’s that sing….

                  and not soft lullabies….

                           Christmas music…..

To be more precise, they are animated stuffed animals of Rudolph & Frosty the Snowman. She played them repeatedly for a good 15 minutes. All the while, Brett and I are trying to fall sleep, while “Rudolph the red nose reindeer, had a very shiny nose….” & “Frosty the snowman, was a very jolly soul…” played on repeat; simultaneously.

Since Brett was laying alongside the couch, Cardin got the idea to jump off the couch and onto Daddy’s back. Listen Lady, this idea was completely unassisted by her mother; I claim no responsibility for her actions. She repeatedly gave him one kidney shot after another and you can see Brett shutter with each jump.

I particuarly enjoy the cherry background music that is playing while she plays WWF with Brett.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87eb8peBUcA

It took an obscene amount of time to cut out their tiny features and not lope off any extremities in the process. Gluing the bust on was such a delicate process that it required tweezers, tiny sewing scissors, and a flashlight. I felt like an 82 year old man who was putting together a ship in a bottle. The crafting gene didn’t really get passed down to me, I’m more of the “slap a sticker on it and call it a day type”, so this was quite the feat.

Cardin was more than anxious to open her gifts and with every box that was opened, more pink princess items appeared. Every gift she opened contained some reference to princesses; whether it be clothes, toys, or dress up attire. Listen Lady, I was beyond jealous.

By far, her favorite items are the dress up Snow White outfit; which includes headband, dress, and light up shoes. Accented with a matching Snow White barbie doll. She has been inseperable to these items since the party and I practically have to pry the dress off each night just to bathe her.

 We completed the evening with princess cake and homemade ice cream. Complete with a number “3″ candle. After we sung her happy birthday and I gave a piece of cake to Cardin, she proceeded to only eat the whip cream frosting off the top. Excellent choice lady.

Her personality shows through more and more each day as she makes clear what she “neeeeeeeds” from us. She’s inquisitive and smart as a whip; often recalling more details than I. Her latest “thing” is that every person have a name and I should automatically know what it is. Even strangers or people we pass in the store need names. I’ve taken to making names up now.

She’s totally taken over picking out her clothes; socks and shoes must match her outfit precisely. She plays by herself and often can be heard discussing politics and religion with her dolls and stuffed animals. She reads to her animals every night and sings in the car. She loves going to the store to browse and is hot for crafts.    

She gets along well with other kids but is still very fearful of interacting with them, especially when they are bigger and louder than her; amazingly she has no problem yelling at Brett or I. She loves to hide, but doesn’t get the concept that she’s not supposed to announce her hiding spot.

Most notably she loves dresses, princesses, and anything sparkly in nature. Mani/Pedi’s are a strict part of her routine and she hates getting dirty. This is all unnatural to me. However, she adamently defends that blue is still her favorite color. Listen Lady, there is hope yet.

She’s turned into a pretty awesome little person and, though she can be frustrating, she also makes us laugh constantly.

We’ve had a couple of nice afternoons weather wise and my mom took her out one day to play for a few minutes. Cardin proceeded to get out the chalk and walk to each worm on the driveway and place a circle around it. As though she was marking out a minefield.

I’m not really sure the purpose of this mission. Perhaps it was just for greater visibility to places she should not walk. Perhaps she feels it is some sort of magic circle that, once the worm is enclosed in, will repel the foul creature from further malicious activity that threatens her feet. Either way, I’m certain her disgust will prevent her from being that kid that picks up the worm and swallows it.

In fact, her wake up call this time was much more blunt than usual. She stuck her face about 2 millimeters from mine and screamed “MOMMY” at the top of her lungs. I was so startled that I screamed “AHHHH” back at her. Which, I’m sure she did not enjoy for two reasons. A) it’s unpleasant to have someone scream in your face at any point. B) I had been sleeping so I’m sure my breath was pretty raunchy. 

I’m totally defending my reaction though; she nearly scared the piss out of me. You’d yell too lady. Not only did I scream, but I sorta jumped up onto all fours; in hindsight, this probably looked similar to a cats reaction when they are scared. Arched back and catching air.

I really have no clue as to why she woke up, perhaps she was dreaming. Listen Lady, I was so distraught after her abrupt wake up call that I couldn’t think straight to ask her what was wrong.  She laid with us for a little while before I brought her back to bed.

Just so you know Cardin, mommy loves you, but, I’m storing all these wake ups in my memory bank and I’m so getting even when you are a teenager.

I smiled and declined her invite telling her that Mommy and Daddy were going on a date. Ever the inquisitive child she asked what a date was. I explained that it meant we were going out to dinner; figuring I’d save the other logistics of what a date was until she was a little older. She pondered this for a minute and then looked at me and, in a very serious tone, said “I don’t like dating.”

From the other room came Brett’s booming voice with “GOOD. LET’S KEEP IT THAT WAY FOR A LONG TIME!”

All of Cardin’s toys went downstairs into the playroom and any of her outside toys, like her sandbox, got put up in the rafters. Brett hung her blue tricycle from the rafters as well and now every morning when we go to get into the car she’s all “I need my bicycle Momma. Tell Daddiee take it down.” Sure thing kid….he’ll get right on that in about 6 months time.

After we roll each section of carpet, we enclose it in a blue tarp so that the carpet does not get wet and dirty during the winter months. While Brett was laying out the plastic, I had gotten out a roll of twine that we use to keep the tarp from unraveling in this whole process. Within seconds Cardin had gotten a hold of the ball of twine and began to string it through the garage like a giant booby trap. Obstacle course anyone? She seemed pretty content with this and I figured, as long as the string isn’t around her neck then how bad could it get. I also let her juggle knives Internet.

Since some of the items we have in the garage are bigger and don’t have wheels we shift them only slightly while we roll the carpet up. At one point Brett moved his craftsman tool chest and found a shriveled up frog hiding underneath. With no sign of life, Brett retrieved him with a can of empty Campbell’s noodle princess themed soup. Listen Lady, when you shook the can, the frog actually clinked against the side and sounded as though he was fossilized. Frog legs anyone?

I spent the better part of 30 minutes ripping the guts and seeds out of two pumpkins we bought a couple weeks prio. To busy her while I gutted the thing, I gave Cardin the task of putting the seeds into a bowl so that I could wash and bake them. The first time she touched the seeds she shivered slightly and was all “These are slippery Momma!” Really kiddo?? Listen Lady, I’m fisting a pumpkin and you want to discuss slippery; throw your hand in here and lets then lets talk.

On a side note, baked Pumpkin seeds are one of my favorite things and the trick to great ones are mounds and mounds of salt. Not healthy…but delicious nonetheless. I justify this by the fact that I only get these delicious items once a year.  

Once I had gutted a full pumpkin, I gave Cardin a pen and told her to draw the face she’d like me to carve out. I instructed her that she’d need eyes, a nose, and a mouth. I’m convinced Cardin actually heard….”draw all over the pumpkin with wild abandon”. By the time she was done, she had managed to draw a a line down each crease in the pumpkin yet there were no discernible facial features.

I completed carving my pumpkin, which is supposed to be a spooky tree, but looks more like a creepy hand with six fingers. I picked what appeared to be a good spot on Cardin’s pumpkin and carved out some facial features to offset the serious maiming this pumpkin endured at the hands of a 2 year old loose with a pen.  

Here is one with the ham face posing (note that she is wrapped in a princess blanket).

Listen Lady, this is a double edged sword though because this countdown also means we are nearing my 29th birthday. We’ll actually be visiting Magic Kingdom on my 29th birthday, which means we are a mere 40 days away from the dreaded day.

Since we’re getting free dining with our trip, I’ve made a bunch of dinner reservations. While I was making reservations, I noted that there is a number you can call to order a specialized cake if you are celebrating while in the park. I nonchalantly mentioned this to Brett and provided him the phone number.

We hit up zooboo at the Senca Park Zoo over the weekend and did some trick or treating amongst the animals. Cardin could have cared less about the animals she just want the CANDY!

All the kids were dressed up and even some zoo characters. She took a picture with a giant lion, which is pretty impressive since I was having heart palpitations just looking at the creeper.

There are trick or treat stations setup throughout the zoo and as you hit each station you got a stamp. As we were heading between stations, Cardin decided she wanted to eat some of the candy she had collected. I satisfied her with a Hershey bar, but within a few minutes she was asking for more. She really hasn’t been exposed to a plethora of candy mostly because she gags on food like its her job, but I was feeling generous and risky.

Attempt #1 was with a crunch bar. I made sure to emphasize that there were crunchies in the chocolate. She took one bite, spit it out, and said “I don’t like it momma.”  Fail #1. 

Attempt #2 was with a box of nerds. She tossed back a couple and made a sour looking face. Then proceeded to tell me “I don’t like it momma.”  Fail #2.

Attempt #3 was with a pixie stick (not that I had much faith after the nerds). I poured a tiny pit of the powder onto her tongue and she wouldn’t even retract it back into her mouth. With her tongue hanging out she said “I don’t like it momma.” Fail #3.

We finally settled attempt #4 on sour smarties. Again…I wasn’t overly optimistic and as expected she spit out the smarty and said “I don’t like it momma.” Fail #4. 

By now Brett and I had consumed a portion of each of her pieces of candy and the glass wasn’t looking even a quarter full for the remaining pieces. Listen Lady, considering her track record with candy appreciation at the zoo, Halloween is looking awesome for Brett & I.

We finally distracted her with a trip to the playground. She ran around for 10 minutes going up and down the slide. At one point my delicate little flower got up to the top of the slide and there was a boy, dressed in a spider man costume, who was holding up the line. Cardin gave him one looked and yelled “GO”. Clearly she must be getting over her fear of bigger kids.

At the exit to the zoo, if you have collected all your stamps you got a small stuffed animal. Cardin picked the Heyna and hasn’t put the thing down since we left. We named him Henry the Heyna and as we left the zoo she talked to him the whole way in the car.

LISTEN LADY, THERE WAS NO BETTER IMAGE YOU COULD HAVE CHOOSEN??? High speed lenses and this is the image that is plastered on the website. I’m not even going to go into the placement of the cops hand…its too frightening.

She was hot to go straight to the tractor ride when we arrived, but I distracted her with some other activities while it came back from its last pull.  She hit up a straw maze and made it through with a lot of coaxing and sideline interference.

As soon as she was out of the straw maze she made a beeline for the giant sandbox and small playground.

Luckily the tractor had returned by this point so Cardin could stop going apeshit over its location and we could go for the first of many tractor rides.

Since it had rained for nearly a week before the grass that the tractor was being pulled over was pretty muddy and as we went over the pile Cardin screamed out “WHOA…POOP.” Listen Lady my child is obsessed with this body function and you think that would assist in the potty training area, but you’d be wrong.

After a few tractor rides we were able to depart this area and hit up the haunted house and the duck races. Cardin attempted the trike race  but her legs are a little too short for their trikes. It attempt to help her, I was pushing her along, but almost got plowed over by some older kids. LISTEN LADY, you kids need driving lessons before taking to the road….I’m a pedestrian. We ended our afternoon with a painting party. I’m pretty sure painting the pumpkin was tops on Cardin’s list. She managed to cover every square inch of the pumpkin. I was even required to lift up the pumpkin so she could do the underside.

We ended up having lunch at the farm. They had a section of picnic tables and up front was a small stage. Someone was playing children’s songs and after each song Cardin would look at me and say “What’s next momma?” At one point I responded “Lady Gaga’s Born this Way”. She took that under advisement and after several minutes told me “No Way!”

We were getting ready to leave and I was putting my sneakers on. Cardin was waiting, ever so patiently, at the gate so that we could all pile into the car. Apparently her patience waned as I turned around and discovered that she had figured out how to open the child proof lock on the gate. I stood there a little befuddled at first and I’m pretty sure my response was “WHOA BUDDY”. You see Internet, to open the childproof lock requires two hands and considerable strength. Listen Lady, most adults have a hard time figuring out how to open this lock. Apparently stealth eyes has biding her time to spring this new revelation on us.

This isn’t really that much of an issue during the day when we are awake as Cardin stomps around like an elephant and there isn’t much she can do without us hearing. The bigger concern is at night; now that she is sleeping in a regular bed and can freely get down and roam the house she has ample time to get over to the gate and open it before we can stop her.

We promptly made a trip to home depot to look for an alternative solution so that muscles cannot open the gate and fall down the stairs. We found another type of lock that is really intended for a cupboard or even fridge doors. Each side is tethered to a handle and then they meet in the middle to lock. This new lock is a doozy too, if she manages to open this then we are signing her up for mensa.

I installed the childproof lock onto the childproof gate and we now have double the fun in going downstairs or outside.

From the moment she gets up until she finally crashes, she is always citing that she NEEEEEEDS something. “I neeeeeed to watch TV” or “I neeeeeeed to play downstairs”. The best part is that when she is angry or upset she tells us “I neeeeed to yell momma”.  You neeeeed a chill pill woman.

This afternoon, when I called my mom to see how Cardin was, I heard the midget running around in the backgound like a wild boar. A few moments later I heard a crash and my mom go “Cardin what are you doing in my cupboard”.  Apparently my kid had decided to start shoving some of her toys in the kitchen cabinets containing fragile/breakable items and her only response was “I NEEEEEEED TO”.

Listen Lady, momma neeeeeeds a drink in order to deal with all your needs. Hopefully she outgrows this phase quickly.

Since Cardin is like the miniature version of Martha Stewart lately, this was perfect for her. She did nearly every craft that was available; decorating a pumpkin, sand art, coloring a wind chime. Here is a closeup of the sand art right after it was completed.

About 5 minutes after this picture was taken, the pumpkin experienced shaken baby syndrome first hand. Needless to say, it no longer looks as pristine.

After our “rafts” were finished we played a couple small games. She came away with these fancy skeleton sunglasses. I modeled them for Brett, he was not overly impressed. I however, think they’d be great bedroom attire.

Normally Cardin’s not keen on activities where we can’t also be involved, but she really surprised me this time around. She went down a giant slide and even rode a ferris wheel by herself. Hopefully this independence will assist when we are in Disney. Or it could totally bite us in the ass.

Kid wolfed down a giant pumpkin cookie too and her face was orange for the remainder of the day.

I picked up a new tote and found this on the cover:

Just in case you thought that this 18 gallon tote would be a good place to store your baby; ya know….like they are dry goods. My guess is that the company that molds these plastic totes is trying to cover their arse from a lawsuit because at some point, some genius thought that this tote would be an OK place for a baby to hang out it. Likely unsupervised; with knives and chainsaws. Listen Lady, sometimes my words don’t even do these things justice.

I’m disappointed there is no picture depicting that an animal cannot be placed inside said tote or an alien; this seems very discriminatory.

I have three theories on why this might occur:

1) overuse- Cardin was practically sleeping and bathing in the shoes so it is plausible that 48 hours of consistent use could drain the battery.

2) severe physical punishment- Cardin is, and will likely always be, very petite for her age. The kid is almost 3 and weighs less than 30 pounds soaking wet. This is great for picking her up and holding her, but she stomps around like a pregnant elephant. It is hypothetically possible that the extreme force with which she places her foot down could have dislodged a battery.

3) torment for parents- These sneaker companies are smart and they suck kids in with these flashy lights and promises of rock n’roll. But then the lights go out and meltdowns occur. Of course there is no way to change the battery because then I couldn’t go spend another $25 on shoes again.

I headed back to the store, receipt in hand, to exchange these shoes for another pair….perhaps ones that would last 3 days this time. At first I got intense feedback from the very robust store clerk that “the lights were a manufacturing default as they are inside the shoe.” Really? I thought that there was a magic fairy that was floating around my kid shining a flashlight on her heal every time she took a step. Perhaps a car hit the fairy??????

Listen Lady, it was time to lay down the iron fist of fury. I asked to speak to the manager and told her that I had only owned the shoes for a total of five days, which seemed equal to the average IQ I was dealing with currently. I was all “I’m exchanging these for another pair that works and you can send them back to the manufactor. Ok. Thanks”.  

Moral of the story: new princess light up shoes now reside on Cardin’s feet.

Originally, the plan was to head down to Disney in November of 2012 and to celebrate my 30th birthday while there. We’ve tweaked that slightly. In August of this year, Disney announced that they were extending their free dining option through March of 2012 and then we found that Southwest was running a special with their credit card. If you opened a card they’d give you a free round trip fare; all you had to pay was the annual fee of $69.

Listen Lady, there was a lot of extreme couponing going on, but we are Disney bound the last week of November where we shall ring in the final season of my twenties at the Magic Kingdom.  In all, we managed to buy 3 roundtrip airfares for $250 and get the free dining during our stay. Since Cardin will qualify to enter the park for free, we only had to pay for entry tickets for two adults. In all, we paid $1500 for the 3 of us to enjoy the week at Disney. After all….its where dreams come true.

Once our flights were booked, we told Cardin about our plans. We told her where we were staying and how there was a giant pirate ship in the pool and that we were going to have breakfast with the princesses.  I think I confused her when I mentioned those in succession as she asked me “princesses swim with me momma?” I couldn’t help buy stifle my laughter.

You can imagine that I was totally gungho to pass all of my finer feminine qualities onto Cardin when we found out we were having a girl. Listen Lady, I’ve failed miserably. The kid hates to be dirty, she loves anything sparkly or pink,  and enjoys wearing dresses (which is a complete oxymoron to me).

At this time I’d like to place blame for all this girlishness on to my mother. See Internet, my mom watches Cardin during the day so she takes her shopping, they play dress up, and have manicures. I’m convinced this is the girl my mother always wanted but never had. In fact yesterday they went shoe shopping and I was informed that Cardin tried on nearly every shoe in the store, whether they were her size or not. AND THIS IS WHAT SHE CAME HOME WITH. They even light up pink.

Princesses are her great love of life right now. We’re having a princess themed 3rd birthday party. And of course….when we go to Disney, we’re having breakfast with the princesses, but I’ll save that story for another time, right now I need to go watch some football and stop staring at all this pink.

For today we’ll turn to the story of Corky. While we were visiting my brother in Hoboken we went to frequent Benny Tudino’s Pizzeria. Don’t get me wrong folks, I like to go on road trips, but I’m not a city girl. I don’t like the atmosphere and the fast pace. I’d hate the fact that I’d have to route my life around traffic patterns and parking spots and stepping over the homeless. Not for me. AND ALL THE WALKING. HOLY HELL THE WALKING.

My brother’s most famous lines are “oh, its only a couple blocks” and by the time you reach your destination you want to cut your feet off. I’m just not cut out for the city folks. Anyways, we parked the car, most likely in some illegal fashion, and began our mighty trek to Benny’s; my mother was trotting along in front of me. This is an important fact to note and I will digress for one minute to explain.

You see Internet, I’ve learned from past experience that you don’t walk in FRONT of my mom, you walk BEHIND her. For good reason. About 6 or 7 years ago, my parents took my brother and I on what was our last family vacation; a Caribbean cruise. While we visited one of the islands, we were doing some leisurely shopping. I was strolling along the shopping corridor, my mother behind me, and I noticed a parfume parlor across the street. Since I was in the market for some cologne for my would be husband, I decided to venture across the street. My mother, who noticed my departure, turned to come along….except she missed the step down onto the street and tumbled forward, falling on top of me.

Were it not for my pure physical prowess and muscular strength, both of us would have face planted onto the gravel road. I was completely aghast at her. How could she have jumped me in such a way? I whipped around in disgust, shouting expletives at her inability to control her liquor. She has yet to live down this incidient. And henceforth we always walk behind my mom.

This very circumstance was proven to us that day that we walked to Benny Tudino’s. For it was not one minute after we began our trek that my mother almost tumbled to the ground in a fashion not unlike what was witnessed by our Caribbean peeps. Listen Lady, Hoboken is a pretty big area, and when we’re talking about surface area coverage…..phew….massive. My mom had managed to find the single, solitary wine cork that was laying on the sidewalk in Hoboken and step on it. The chances of this occurrence are uncanny.  Woman can’t manage to win the lotto, or have a kid without a twisted sense of humor like me, but she’ll find the cork that will be her downfall. Epic, mom.

I immedaitely phoned Brett. My mom’s new name is Corky. We have come up with hundreds of schemes for pranks. My calling in life isn’t to test software…..it’s to mess with my mom.

I’m not going to lie folks, I judge.This is why certain people work at gas stations and certain people graduate college. Many people are happy working at gas stations and I applaud their fine career aspirations, but I beg of you, do not subject us to this cruel punishment for we will make fun.

Don’t tell me you couldn’t have shouted to Johnny the stock boy and been all ‘Yo johnnnzzzz, how you spell Pre-Pay?” I would hope the two of your brains could work together to solve this puzzle.

Listen lady, I have a moral compass. I just choose not to use it.

The slice covers the expanse of two plates and usually overlaps even those plates. You can get a moutain of toppings and the slice runs you about $4.00. A homeless mans feast. From that day forth, Pizza was changed for me. Nothing could quite compare to Pizza as big as your face.

I took Cardin with me and since she doesn’t eat Pizza (she’s weird) I got her spaghetti. Luckily there was a bottle of grated Parmesan cheese on the table as we basically have to hide all of the spaghetti under a pile of cheese to get her to eat it.

About halfway through our meal, Benny came out and sat down at the table across from us and was talking to some employees. We paid him no heed until Cardin started to gag and choke because she was refusing to eat any more of her meal. Quick to action I pointed to Benny and was all “See that man? That is Benny. And if you throw up in his restaurant he will yell at you.” Immediately she shut it down; her eyes lingering on his figure, contemplating my threat.

I’m pretty sure I’ve damaged her psyche with Benny Tudino, but I do know that I did not have to clean up puke in his restaurant.

Give an extra hug to those most important to you; they encompass your entire makeup and challenge your strength for a better future. Remember where you were when you first heard the news and pass this on to future generations. It will be our stories of struggle and determination to succeed in the face of adversity passed on to younger generations that breaks the barriers of ignorance and intolerability in this world.

Above all, take time to remember those who lost their lives in this senseless act of violence and those who still fight for our freedom today. HOOAH BOYS!

According to Cardin, here are the most important things to know about the farm

1) ‘There is poop momma”

The farm has a small petting zoo with some goats that you can go in and pet. Of course, nature calls and the goats go about life. Cardin is sure to point this out to me and whoever else happens to be within 10 miles of her shrieking voice

2) “There is really big pig momma”

One of the first animals that is visible when walking up to the farm is a giant male pig. The thing is huge and he has fathered an obscene number of baby piglets. Man needs a vasectomy like no other.

3) “Horses bite momma”

There is one full size horse, a couple of miniature ponies, and two donkeys on the farm. I was going to teach her the correct terminology for donkey, but I figured she’d repeat it at some inappropriate time so I refrained. Since Cardin has no fear and will basically stick her face through the fence, my mom had to tell her to stay back as the horses will bite; this single thought has remained with her since then.

4) “I feed goats momma”

Besides pointing out the poop, her favorite thing to do is feed the goats. She loves to hold straw out and have them chomp away on it. She will happily shove it into their faces even if they don’t want it. She obviously has the Italian genes.

Overall it was a great trip to the farm. I can tell you with certainty lady that it seals the fact that I hate nature as my allergies were killing me the remainder of the day.

Listen Lady, I’m not really sure how or why it started; she has always referred to me as mommy. Certainly better than ‘Hey Whorebag’ or ‘Woman who I’ve deemed my slave’, but in the last week she’s changed and will now only call me “Momma”. It’s only a slight change, but I’ve grown so accustomed to the name “Mommy” that hearing anything else sounds wrong to my trained ear.

She is in love with asking  questions lately and being inquisitive. I hear at a constant rate “Whatcha doing Momma?” or “Whatcha got Momma?” as I make dinner or shuffle through the days mail. I can’t help but wonder if it’s a phase. Will “mommy” return or will we jump straight to “mom”?

I suppose that I’ll settle for any of the above as long as she steers clear of “Mum”. I’m not 100 years old, nor am I a flower, do not categorize me as either kid.

There was obvious concern about the quality of wood, pre-drilled holes, the need for all parts and accessories to be included with the kit. We read reviews on what others thought of the directions and organization of the parts. Listen Lady, not once did a parent reviewer mention the PAIN IN THE ASS-NESS of having to trim the grass around this monstrosity once it was actually setup. SOMEBODY COULD HAVE THROWN US A BONE.

You see lady you can’t actually use the mower to butt up to the swing set so you have to use a trimmer otherwise it looks like we have a hay field growing around the swing set.

 And this is where I’m convinced that the people who invented the swing set slept with the people who invented the trimmer and said “let’s screw with America’s middle class and be rich!!!”

Normally you’d think that you could just buy one of those gas powered weed whackers and take 2 minutes to speed around the edges of the WOODEN JIDHAST WEASEL. This is where you’d be wrong my friend. See those weed whackers use a plastic twine to cut rip the grass out and the force at which it is applied is so strong that it will actually destroy the soft wood of the swing set…..I know this from experience…..Brett is no longer allowed to be near the swing set with our weed whacker.

Instead you must purchase a hand trimmer and crawl around on your hands and knees to trim every molecule of grass that is within a one foot radius of the monstrosity. For added benefit of your neighbors you can always wear white knee socks with black shoes and flaunt your ass in the air as you silently curse yourself for encouraging physical activity and outdoor play.  

Time is critical in this story so I’m going to do a time series story Internet, thus allowing you to comprehend the full level of anxiety.

8:15 pm: Puddle one is discovered and wiped up. I think this is just a fluke.

8:22 pm: Puddle two is discovered. No more fluke. I’m not peeing on the floor so something must be leaking. I dig out underneath the kitchen sink and discover the trap is leaking.

8:25 pm: I call Brett over and he rolls his eyes at me like “WOMAN! WHAT OTHER APPLIANCE OR HOME REPAIR COULD WE POSSIBLY NEED TO DO NOW!”

8:28 pm: Brett retrieves his plumbers wrench. I go finish giving Cardin a bath.

8:34 pm: While bathing Cardin I hear plastic snap and then the following words come out of Brett’s mouth “CRAPPPPP”

8:37 pm: I’m all, “that sounded like an important piece in the plumbing process, Home Depot is only open until like 9, you better get moving.”

8:54 pm: My phone rings and Brett asks me if the trap seems U shaped or J shaped…………… Um………..right now it seems broken shaped. How about you buy both pieces and we’ll just return what we don’t need.

9:07 pm: Brett returns home with the associated equipment and begins plumbing repair.

9:16 pm: Brett gives the existing plumbing pipes an angioplasty. This would be the reason they tell you not to pour oil or meat fat down your drain. This is what he removed that was clogging the pipes and causing the backup. GROSS does not begin to cover it.

9:22 pm: Brett reattaches the new plumbing trap and we’re back in business. With fresh arteries to clog up again.

To really get the true bachelorette experience, I hit up Spencer gift shop before the party. For those of you that aren’t local, this store carries novelty & gag items galore. It also features some extremely edgy and might I add kinky items for those that are a little more risque. I hadn’t been in the store in a couple years but from my past experiences I knew they carried edible outerwear and I thought that it would be a great gift for the party.

While I was perusing the shelves I saw a whole bunch of bachelorette party items; bride to be sashes, penis straws, shot glasses. I found a whole section of bondage items which was a new experience since most were marked beginner. What’s advanced Lady?  I was unable to find the edible section however. I wandered the store for a good 20 minutes and came to the conclusion that there was only one thing to do; Listen Lady, I was going to have to buck up and ask the 16 year old working the counter about edible underwear.

It was not one of my finer moments in life, but she was all “Oh Yea…we have that in the birthday section”.  Birthday Section?????? She took me right over to the secluded corner in the store where the edible section was. Whether or not she believed my story about the candy necklace titty tassels I was purchasing being for a friend is her perogative I suppose.

Luckily, my 82 year old grandma decided its still in her best interest to plant a gigantic garden each summer while crawling around on her very arthritic knees weeding the whole thing. I profited a whole bucket full of tomato’s out of her garden and decided to make sauce to get us through the winter.

I’ve canned sauce pretty much my whole life. When I lived at my parents house, they’d pick one weekend in the summer and designate it as sauce weekend. They’d force my brother and I to help wash, chop, strain, and mix the sauce ALL DAY LONG. We’d end up making usually between 80-100 jars of sauce for the whole year. For those of you that are unaware….that’s a lot of fucking tomatoes.

For whatever reason, when I got married I decided to take up this tradition myself. Because clearly hating it for all those years when I was younger was not enough torture, I now had to lay it on my own children as well. As soon as Cardin is old enough to wield a knife she is in on the production.

Here is a little picture by picture sequence to guide you through the action:

STEP 1: first you have to chop all the tomatoes. Taking care to remove the stems and any rotten sections; which becomes a royal pain in the ass.

STEP 2: next you have to puree the chopped tomato’s in your blender. CAUTION: do not remove your hand from the top, it is likely that tomato gunk will splatter the ceiling causing many an obsenity.

STEP 3: once the tomato’s are a nice smooth puree, pour the mixture into a bowl, straining through a fine metal strainer to catch all the guts and skin.

STEP 4: stir until your arm wants to fall off so only the puree goes into the pot. At this point you should feel free to pull out your wine and go heavy hitters with it. You’re going to have to do this stirring shit a lot more. THIS IS THE MOST NECESSARY STEP. If you are going to leave out any step make sure it is not this one.

STEP 5: once you are done to just the guts in the strainer, scoop them out and put them aside. Feel free to make art.

STEP 6: repeat steps 1-5 (mostly #4 though) over and over until you have strained all the tomato’s and your arm feels as though its made of ceramic.

STEP 7: throw a whole bunch of seasoning into the pot. We don’t measure anything, we just dump. The more the merrier. Boil this shit for 3-4 hours.

STEP 8: while it is hot, transfer this to canning jars. CAUTION LADY: hot. can burn. Put a canning top on super tight. Turn the jar over, I’m told this helps to seal the jar. I’m not really sure if it’s true but it’s what my mom always did, and her mom, and her mom….so I suppose some Italian lady knew what they were doing.

STEP 9: voila. You have just made Italian sauce via Listen Lady

You see Internet, our basement is partially finished and Brett’s man cave has been relegated to one corner of the basement now. The basement was finished when we bought the house, and in all honesty, it was one of the biggest selling points as we saw major potential in a future playroom. Up until this point, the basement potential has yet to be realized as Cardin has really been to little to be left unattended. Well….without a visit from child protective services I suppose. However, in recent weeks I’ve been letting her off the leash more and more and luckily, she comes back each time we call her.

We moved 99% of the living room toys down to the basement Monday night and gated it off so Cardin can’t wander around and play with ninja’s litter or go touch the furnace. She loves the open area and runs around the support beam. When pole dancing starts we  may have a new issue on hand. It’s nice that she can have a whole room to destroy and I can have a living room to entertain people that doesn’t appear as if toys r us just vomited all over the floor.

In an effort to organize the basement, I was sitting on the floor combining bins of lego toys and I managed to dig out an old whiteboard eraser that went to Cardin’s easel; we had been in search of said eraser for month, figuring it had been consumed by the all encompassing mass of toys. I handed it to Cardin and she happily danced away with it. Unbeknownst to me, Cardin came running at me, full force, like an army brigade charging the gates of the next castle it was about to take down, and smacked me upside the head with the eraser. Leaving me in a cloud of dry erase dust, I was so shocked with the flutter of activity that I didn’t know how to respond and I sat there, a bewildered look on my face, unable to form words or reprimand.

Meanwhile, Brett had watched the whole battle scene play out and his only response was one of stifled laughter. He managed to sputter out, “Cardin, please don’t bash mommy in the head with erasers” only to crumble into another fit of laughter again. Thanks hon, for all that supportive parenting.

Listen Lady, at some point in the parenting regime I figured we’d have to tell our kids not to bite or throw balls inside the house; I did not bank on having to tell them that it is inappropriate to play WWF with erasers.

Let me tell you, after the redoing the bathroom window, the front landscape, fixing the fridge, and replacing the hot water tank, this lady was also blowing a gasket as we were WAY over our summer budget spending. There was no way I was calling a repair man for this job, we were fixing this dishwasher come hell or high water; I would show my own plumbers crack if needed.

Brett found a youtube video of how to replace the gasket and we made some calls to local repair shops in search of parts. Of course nobody had the gasket we needed in stock so we would need to order it. In speaking with the nice appliance people, they also informed me that more often than not the baffles need to be replaced as well. BAFFLED YET???? These pieces go on the side of the door and direct the water flow back into the dishwasher. PEACHY. How about I just use some caulk, would that work? No?

So I went onto the local big box store and ordered the appliance parts we needed. Except I had a momentary lapse in dumbness and I ordered two left handed baffles, because it seemed through the description and picture that they were interchangeable on either side of the dishwasher.  I paid 6 bucks in shipping and we waited a week for all these lovely parts to arrive happily at our door.

Fast forward to last week a when the parts finally arrived. Brett tires to put the baffles in and finds that they are, in fact, not interchangeable. AWESOME.  Not only did I get to pay for shipping once, I got to pay for shipping TWICE. Oh yes sir, and then I got to pay to ship the extra baffle back. I was overflowing with joy and happiness at my own stupidity at this point and banking on another week of hand washing dishes. Which was extra special since I felt like June Cleaver except I was also required to work 50 hours at my normal job.

Luckily the right handed baffle arrived much quicker than anticipated and Brett was able to get the dishwasher fixed and in working order this weekend. Cardin helped him the whole time. We are now able to run a load of dishes without the resulting swimming pool on our kitchen floor.

Perhaps the Karma gods felt that we were coming up to our 5 year anniversary in the house and they needed to shit on us all at once. In response Karma gods, I deem us fulfilled for a year of all appliance and house repair. Nothing else is allowed to crap out or die. I want to go on vacation and eat mickey bars. Capiche?

-really short commute
-its not necessary that I brush my teeth
-bras are completely optional

Negatives of working from home:

-Pinocchio playing incessantly in the background will drive anyone mad after 5 days.
-the house looks like a bomb exploded by about 10 am
-I hear “MOMMY, MOMMY, MOMMY, MOMMY. Come play wif me” 200 times a day

Cardin’s attention span isn’t exactly long so for her to entertain herself for an entire 8 or 9 hours while I work is quite the task. She’ll go through spans where she plays alone for awhile and then she’ll go through spans where she hovers over me like a moth to a flame. Listen lady, its not exactly easy to work with a wiggly 2 year old sitting on your lap, trying to touch every button on your laptop. The other day she managed to delete all the contents of my inbox.  

In order to entertain her, I built her a cave out of couch cushions. Trust me, it was no Taj Mahal and I’m positive the Egyptians did a better job with those pyramid things, but she was stoked beyond words that this little cave was all hers. Simple things in life, right? 

I dubbed it the cave of wonder because she actually fell asleep for me in there, which is unheard of. Normally when she is home with me she is like a pinball machine, bouncing from one end of the room to the other; refusing sleep as though she were on speed.

Thank you oh magical cave of wonder, I had silence for a good 2 hours. 

While I certaintly enjoy the short commute each day and the comfortable attire (I may or may not be wearing Monday’s underwear still) I don’t know if I could commit to working at home full time. I like the office interaction and the commitment it provides to staying motivated. There are sooooo many horizontal surfaces that I must avoid Lady.

In any regard, spending so much time at home has caused us to go a little stir crazy and Cardin found a use for some of her recent aquired balloons. I thought I’d snap a photo and share.

Listen Lady, when we’re legally able to share a drink together you can be the decider of whether or not someone holds your life jacket….until then, I get to decide.  And I will not be switching to hold your hair at that point. That’s what friends are for. I, of course, would know nothing of this. I read the bible during college; every night.

Later that night we stayed for fireworks….that was a mistake. We’d been prepping the shit out of her for days.

Mommy: we’re going to see fireworks soon!
Cardin: I no like ‘irewor’
Mommy: it’s ok. They aren’t scary. They are just a little loud. And if you don’t like it, just cover your ears, like this.

Wherein I demonstrated how to plug your ears. This was a mistake. You see lady, Cardin is not dumb, in fact she’s really smart and she took the whole “and if you don’t like it, just cover your ears” and ran with it.  I mean she didn’t just trot with this, she sprinted to the southern tip of Florida and back. Now she covers her ears for anything she doesn’t like; including things coming out of my mouth. Like direction or behavior modification (let’s not kid ourselves…that’s really punishment).

I really shot myself in the foot with the whole try and explain shit to your kids at a level they might understand thing.

While I was cleaning up the dishes the other night, Brett was playing with Cardin and she decided to put the duck mask on him. I snapped the quickest of pictures and I’m putting it up here for proper documentation. HE’LL HATE ME FOREVER FOR DOING THIS. Listen Lady, I don’t really care, it’s too good to not divulge to my loyal following and I think it’s cute that he puts aside his dignity to wear a duck mask every once and awhile. 

While I was looking through the racks, Cardin was tagging along behind me, chattering away to herself; finding it necessary to touch every article of clothing. I was watching her out of the corner of my eyes. I’m a mom so I’ve learned to be able to multi-task like this. Granted….only partially watching your child is probably not the best mothering trait, but I need to at least let the apron strings fray.

Cardin decided that she wanted to get inside the clothes rack and start a dance party. It was one of these 4 way displays, that allow a store to make optimal use of a small area. So, there she is, dancing in the middle of the rack and I call her name to tell her I’m moving on to the next section and she attempts to leave the small square where she is dancing. Except her foot gets stuck and she trips. In attempt to catch herself she puts her hands out and they land directly on the metal support posts and she is now pushing the whole rack over as she continues to fall.

WHAT’S THAT IN THE SKY. A BIRD? A PLANE? NO! IT’S LISTEN LADY TO THE RESCUE!!  In one bound, I leapt over a pit of alligators, scaled a 300 foot slippery wall, put out a forest fire, and managed to catch this twisted hunk of metal before Cardin was crushed by a rack of clothing.

I used my She-Ra strength to straighten the rack of death and pull Cardin from it’s grip. By this point she was screaming and crying about boo boos, everyone shopping in a 10 mile radius was aware of the events, and the workers in the store were acting as first responders to the situation. GET A GURNEY STAT!! I would have preferred to just crawl under the rug and not be noticed. Because we can’t ever go to the store and just have a normal shopping trip, we must always cause a spectacle.

Cardin walked away with no bruises and one minor scrap. Mommy wasn’t so lucky. I managed to tweak my back in my attempt to save Cardin from being crushed by metal, fabric, and hangers. Note to self…do not body build with clothes racks. Also, I did find a shirt.

Things finally calmed down enough last week that we were able to try out a new burger/wing joint that opened down the road from our house. We hit up Quaker Steak & Lube and it was pretty decent, nice enough that we’ll go back and give it business again. So here is the thing Internet, they are most well known for their wings, which is wonderful and dandy, but here is my small take on it.

This is western, NY….as in….Buffalo, NY. Where the chicken wing was born. We know how to do buffalo wings. You go down south or to the west coast and you won’t find true buffalo wings; you’ll find their take on buffalo wings. Opening another restaurant dedicated solely to chicken wings in this area really isn’t worthwhile since you can go to any pizza joint on the nearest corner and they can make you a dozen wings. So….were the wings good? Yes. But not any better than the normal pizza joint we typically order from.

Anyways, I digress. While we were out to dinner for her birthday, my mom got some lettuce with her meal that was supposed to be a garnish. Listen Lady, anytime my mom gets lettuce my mind rewinds about a decade to a dinner we shared in Pennsylvania. Prior to attending Fisher, I was a student at Penn State and during one of our college visits, we frequented a diner where my mom ordered a club sandwich.  

The waitress brought over our food and we began to partake in the meal. My mom had just taken a bite of her club sandwich and pulled the bread away from her face when the waitress came over to ask how the meal was. My mom, always kind and courteous, responded that her meal was very good.

Except for one minor detail….when she had pulled the sandwich away an entire head of lettuce detached and stuck to her mouth. It hung from her lip like a monkey swaying in the trees Lady!  The best part was that she had responded to the waitress with this giant piece of lettuce flapping from her gums. LIMP, LOOSE, AND ALWAYS TO THE LEFT. I can only imagine what this poor woman thought. I hope my dad gave her a good tip.

From that day forward my mom has been unable to live down this lettuce incident. There is also a small possibility that the piece of lettuce gets bigger each time the story is told. This is a dramatic recreation of the events. No animals were hurt in the making.

I went around the basement staircase only to find a puddle, the size of Rhode Island, underneath the hot water tank. Internet, this can’t possibly be normal behavior for a hot water tank. Luckily the water had not put the pilot light out so we still had hot water for the time being.

We called a plumber and he was able to come the next afternoon to take a look at the tank. Low and behold, the thing was shitting the brick; sorta like a three legged dog trying to limp down the stairs until it finally gives up and just tumbles head over heals down the remaining few steps.

He gave Brett an estimate of how much it would cost to replace the whole hot water tank; $640 and included my favorite portion of any contractors estimate “plus any extras that my be incurred while I’m doing the work.” Like what extras? You strike oil in my basement? You fall through my floor? I mean…..gimmie something to work with here.

I was a little rippled by the price, figuring most of the price we would be incurring would be labor. Turns out, I was wrong. The tank itself is $400 bucks. Listen Lady, it’s basically a big metal can that holds water and has a candle underneath. Nothing fancy here. I bet ya if the Amish can do this without electricity, we should be able to do it for less than $400 bucks.

For about 30 minutes Brett and I tossed around the idea of trying to install the hot water tank ourselves….how hard could it really be? Bob Villa does it. The Internet has pretty detailed instructions for everything now and most of the time you can find videos on YouTube that guide you through this type of shit. Then we found a list of crap we’d need to have available to install the tank. Let me just share the list with you lady:

• Vent Pipe Fittings
• Gate Valve
• Unions/Transition Unions
• PTFE Plumber’s Tape
• Hacksaw or Pipe Cutter
• Screwdrivers
• Garden Hose
• Soldering Torch
• 240-Volt Neon Test Light
• Hand Cleaner
• T&P Relief Valve
• Water Pipe Fittings
• Flex–Connectors: Water, Gas
• 1/2″ Flare Adapter
• Stick Pipe Dope
• Pipe Wrenches
• Adjustable Open-End Wrench
• Drill and 1/8″ Bit
• Sweat-Soldering Supplies
• Appliance Cart, Dolly or Hand Truck

My initial reaction was all “that’s a lot of shit”. I even re-read the list to verify we didn’t need to make a sacrificial lamb killing or anything of that nature first.

My guess is we could have bought all these tools for slightly less than the $240 that we would end up paying the professional plumber for the labor install, but in the end we’d probably not be saving ourselves a lot of money and surely not a lot of time. Plus there is that whole safety issue with using a soldering torch near gas lines that I just felt really unsure about.

We gave up on the do it yourself repair idea rather quickly and called the professional plumber back. He was able to come out and replace the hot water tank the next day. It took him a few hours and he ended up having to replace the flue as well (one of those additional items he ran into). However, we have hot water again, the puddle formerly known as Rhode Island has been sucked up from my basement floor, and we are hoping that this is the last of the appliances to bite the bullet for the remainder of the year.

While we were vacationing in Columbus we stayed at the Embassy Suites and were on the 3rd floor of the hotel, requiring us to take the elevator up to our room. This was Cardin’s first real experience with an elevator where she was actually walking on and off it herself and she was quite hesitant with the minor gap that exists between the door and floor.

The first few times she needed some major prompting even to cross the threshold of the elevator. Even after that, she would take an exaggerated step over the gap just to make sure that she didn’t fall down the small 2 inch gap. Being the ever mindful mother, I decided it was in her best interest if I really proliferated her anxiety of this gap. Each time we’d get on or off the elevator I’d be sure to be all “OK Cardin, Step Over”. Sure enough she’d take one giant leap for mankind over the gap. Listen Lady, there are few times where you get to intentionally screw with your kids, I was certaintly not missing such a harmless opportunity.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRM6rwM7DoM

I’m sure that someday, when she’s a 30 year old executive, working in some fancy downtime NYC law firm, dressed to the nines, she’ll be waiting to board an elevator and as the doors slide open it will be jammed packed with people. I imagine a cold sweat will start to bead on her brow as her anxiety rises and she hears my voice chim in the back of her head “OK Cardin, Step Over”. She’ll wonder “how will I mind the gap with so many bodies in the way?” I’m sure I’ve ruined her forever. I’m ok with it. That’s what therapy is for.

We have been fortunate that the appliances have lasted this long without any maintenance. That was bound to end at some point. If for no other reason that pure entertainment folks.

The fridge is a 60/40 split and the freezer door has a water dispenser on it. This is great, except for the fact that you can never fit anything large into either side. Fuck you 9×13 pan, I will make you fit.  About a month ago we noticed that the middle beam that splits the fridge and freezer was extremely hot to the touch. Like burn your skin hot. Clearly not something that should be ignored. We pulled the fridge away from the wall and hoovered the shit out of the back vent, clearing away as much dust as possible. That seemed to solve the problem so we went about our merry business.

Until Tuesday night. I had made dinner and went to have a glass of milk. Except the milk wasn’t as cold as it should of been. DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER. This was my first warning sign. I thought to myself….”self, this is strange, perhaps it is because it is so hot out and the air has been on and the appliances are being so overworked with the heat”. But really lady, that’s just a crock of shit. I still turned up the fridge so that it would get a little colder and figured I’d check it in the morning before I went to work. Because avoidance seemed like the best option at that time.

Fast forward to about 6:55 am Tuesday morning when I poured out a glass of what appeared to be a combination of milk and cottage cheese and I knew that Fridgemageddon had hit on the hottest week of the year. We are currently hitting temps of 98 degrees and I’m ready for a snow storm.  We chucked out half the fridge, salvaged what we could, and I called the first appliance repair place I found in the phone book.

I scheduled a repair technician to come around 2 pm the same day and since I had time I decided to clean the whole fridge; unable to do anything solo, including pee, Cardin was attached to my side as I was cleaning. I had cleaned off the door of the fridge with some paper towel and left the roll on the kitchen floor figuring I’d go back and use it again. I was washing the shelves off as Cardin wandered into the living room and started playing; assuming she was playing with her toys.

Remember when your parents always used to tell you they had eyes in the back of their head? Listen Lady, I don’t think mine have grown in yet because I didn’t see this shit coming.  When I went to check on her she had grabbed my lone roll of paper towel and unrolled the entire thing all over the living floor and much of it was on the cat; she was prancing all over it as though it was the yellow brick road and she was off to see the wizard. I was so dumbfounded that about the only thing I could do was look around for Toto.

About 2 pm the technican showed up and 6 screw’s later he had figured out that we had a bad heater and that the whole heating element was covered in an inch of ice which was not allowing the air to be pushed into the fridge and thus cool it down. He was in my house for less than 20 minutes and charged me $185 to fix my problem.  We had to let the fridge and freezer defrost for the remainder of the day before we could plug it back in, but it seems to have resolved our problem.

Certainly better than going out and having to buy a new fridge, but still, one of the major downfalls of being a homeowner.

The ice cream shop had the appearance of an old school 50′s diner with stools in the front and the metallic silver tiles that you could view your reflection in. Inevitably, Cardin pointed at the stool and wanted to “get up hereeeee”. I placed her on the stool and ordered two kiddie sized vanilla ice creams in bowls. One with rainbow sprinkles, the other with chocolate mini chips. You see Internet, I’m not stupid….cones fall on the ground all too often.

The ice cream shop girl scooped them both and handed me the bowl with the rainbow sprinkles first. Instantly, my ninja fast child ripped the bowl away from me with such speed that it winged off the counter, sprinkles flying everywhere, only to land ice cream side down on the floor of Marketplace Mall. FAIL. Listen Lady, this floor isn’t exactly a place I’d call super cleanly.

Upon impact the tears started because Cardin was convinced her ice cream had befallen such a horrific fate. I suppose we’ll need to work on toughening her skin to things like earthquakes and world hunger. I shuffled her along to a table, coaxing her with another ice cream bowl that did not contain mad cow disease or gonorrhea.

In the meantime we picked up the ice cream that was most likely now laced with disease, rat feces, and a hint of leftover holiday wrapping paper. There must be a 5 second rule right? I scrapped off the top of the ice cream, gave it a good ‘brush your shoulders off’ and proceeded to eat what was left in the bowl. Listen Lady I figure if I can drink tap water and eat food that has been handled in a restaurant then a little bit of Marketplace Mall isn’t going to hurt me.

On a side note, Cardin is really into playing with her baby doll lately. She decided to cut her doll’s finger nails yesterday. She went and got the nail clippers and came back and sat down right on top of the baby so she could get the best viewing angle.

Listen Lady, I’m not quite sure where she learned this technique from. It’s actually a bit concerning to me as I’m 99% confident I’ve never cut her nails this way. Maybe I fell on her a time or two?

As we were pulling out of the mall parking lot, stopped for a traffic light, Cardin said “Mommy…tell me something.”

I looked at her in the rearview and was all “Excuse me two year old?” Would you like to have a riveting discussion on politics? Religion? Listen Lady, I guess I’m really going to have to step up my game on topics of discussion lately because the ABC’s, numbers, disney pricnesses, and animals really aren’t making it anymore.

The window’s in the house are not the original, but they also are not brand-spanking new. A couple years ago we replaced the front picture window as the main living room was comparable to a sauna from the fact that there was no air circulation. It was never our intent to replace all the window’s in the house, but the bathroom has been something of a pitfall that we have been sinking money into for some time now.

Listen Lady, the bathroom seems to have a bit of a moisture issue, not unlike a chinese hooker on the streets of lyell ave. We tried to compensate for the extra moisture when we redid the bathroom by purchasing a really good exhaust fan and adding a shower surround instead of tiles with grout. We’ve gone so far as to use special drywall and have the ceiling scraped, re-plastered, and repainted in a semi-gloss to keep the moisture build-up to a minimum…clearly our efforts were futile. 

Today we sunk even more money into the mositure pit by installing a brand new slider window. The only advantage to the new window is that the casement of it is all plastic, this sucker will never rot away.  It has a lifetime warranty on breakage….go ahead Cardin, I dare you, and we can even transfer part of the warranty to new owners if and when we ever sell the house.

Listen Lady this image is pretty disturbing…can you imagine? Don’t kid yourself ladies with that whole size don’t matter shit. Actually it holds special value to me. You see, Bobby is like my brother from another mother and we have known each other since Elementary school; when we got to star in that fabulous rendition of Charlie and the chocolate factory. I was, of course, an Ooompa Loompa…this may be where my fear of clowns started.

We grew even closer in high school and I would often go to his house where we would eat spaghetti and meatballs and then sprawl on his kitchen floor. After we’d digested the delicious meal we’d save the world using extreme sega genesis skills. TMNT was our favorite and we’d go head to head with the evil Shredder. . Don’t hate, it was one of the coolest arcade games ever made. Bebop and Rocksteady were no match for us.

In fact, the night I married Brett, Bobby actually gave me our worn out copy of the TMNT game. He told me it was now time to start saving the world with Brett. It was a gift I will never forget or give up; one that holds very special meaning to me.

Bobby lives in L.A. now, making great things happen in the movie world. I miss him, but I know that no matter how far we live things like Turtle Dicks will always be reminders of our friendship.

I’ll let you in on a secret Internet, this move has been a long time coming and a part of her “babyhood” that I had long been holding out on. We could have moved her many months prior and this had all been in the master plan. Unfortunately, the master plan got swept away back in April when we lost baby #3. Perhaps it was selfish of me, but this only proliferated my need to keep Cardin in her crib longer and extend as much “babiness” out of my growing toddler as possible. Often difficult when she screams, “NO, LET ME DO IT” constantly.

Once the climbing started we had no choice but to ramp up production of the big girl room. We included Cardin in selecting the paint color and had previously let her help pick out the Minnie Mouse bedspread she wanted. I threw caution to the wind and I even let her help paint the room….with real, permanent paint. The kind that doesn’t just wash off LADY. There were specific rules, like no painting the floor or body parts, and she was not allowed to wear anything but an old t-shirt of mine. The anxiety level was high and there were many “oops”, but we got through the day.

Once the room was painted and the furniture in place she was like a sheep dog, herding Brett and I along to move all her toys and clothes. She quickly made herself right at home and had absolutely no problem laying out a minefield of toys in that room. I wonder if the novelty will wear off?

The first night was a little rough sleeping wise; it took some time to settle her down. It was strange not to see her sleeping sideways in her crib with her foot sticking out through one of the rails, surrounding by thirty-two buddies. What I do know is that Cardin will likely stay in this bed until she goes to college. COLLEGE. That seems so far off in the distance and yet the past 2.5 years seem to have flown by so quickly. I wonder how many times the room will change between now and then? How many posters will splash the walls? How many times the door will slam?  I wonder how many times I’ll say “Listen Lady, clean your room!” 

This trial has only strengthened my resolve for the fact that certain people should not be allowed to breed. I was unsurprised by the verdict yesterday as it was returned so quickly; and I did mention to a couple of co-workers, “watch, she’ll get out and want to have another baby now”.

AND BOOM. WHAT HAPPENS….THIS HEADLINE APPEARS TODAY ON ABC…”Casey Anthony Writes About Wanting More Babies”

LISTEN LADY, is there going to be a certain time length you wait before you report the next kid missing???? At least wait a couple days while the dust settles down from your trial before you go shooting your mouth off about needing a sperm donation. First OJ, now Casey. Hide Yo Wives, Hide Yo Kidz….what’s next people???

It is unacceptable to me that certain people have children. I’m required to pass tests to drive a car, graduate from high school, get into college, enter into the armed services, but any holly humdrum can spread eagle and spawn a genetic mutant of themselves without so much as a means to pay for food and nobody thinks twice about it.

Perhaps we should consider a parenting license. Simple questions really, like…should you kill your child? Should you report your child missing? Should you make up a random babysitter and lie to police about where your kid is? I suppose if you can answer these correctly than we can grant you a license.

On the right is 2010, Cardin is 1.5                 On the left is 2011, Cardin is 2.5

Unfortunately for Cardin, she’ll  never reach much above the 5 foot mark. It’s a common trait among the females in our family. At this rate she should expect to stop growing sometime within the next 6 years. Shrinking begins at age 75.

Listen Lady, just be grateful you have a full head of hair. The males pass along a gene that is far worse in fate….shiny tops.

We were also having a hell of a time trying to express to her that in order to take a picture you need to hold the camera up to your eye and look through the viewfinder….instead she’d hold the camera up to her forehead and then snap her shot. Listen Lady, that may work for cyclops, but it an’t going to fly in your future.

This cake is so special, so difficult to make, that we are only blessed with it’s presence three times a year. My mother is the only one who can make it to perfection. She originally got the recipe from my Dad’s mother and I credit my Irish heritage for this treasure. Yesterday was my Dad’s birthday so Cardin and Mimi spent the day baking in the kitchen.

Many people would compare it to a marshmallow type frosting. It’s similar, but not quite as thick as Fluff; it’s lighter and more airy than Fluff. Most of the extended family would pass on this cake and even my husband doesn’t get the big appeal. My dad, brother, and I….well we go all Lady Gaga crazy when this cake comes out. Listen Lady, there are certain rules with this cake.

1) this becomes breakfast food after a birthday party

2) corner pieces are reserved for us because they have more frosting

3) plates must be licked of excess frosting

4)  waste is unacceptable

We signed a contract and not a week later we got a piece of mail from  the window company stating that if you had been a previous customer, they were willing to offer up to an additional 10% off if you signed a contract to do work by the end of June. FML. I called up the sales guy and kindly reminded him that we were a previous customer and oh….remember when I asked if this was the best you could do on the price and you told me “ABSOLUTELY”. Turns out there was more wiggle room. I just needed to go in and sign an addendum to get that additional 8% to boost me to the full 30% off.

Before I left to sign the addendum, I thought it would be of utmost importance to determine a rough number for this additional percentage that should be deducted. Except for one minor detail. I don’t excel when it comes to math equations. And when I say I don’t excel, I really mean that my brain shuts down and I go into paraplegic shock when numbers are involved; hence the reason i WRITE a blog with LETTERS!!! I’ve never liked math, throughout school I sorta just satiated my teachers with long equations and lots of scribbling. Anything involving an equation was excellent because I could elaborate that by writing out all my work and making it look as though I really knew what I was doing; I was notorious for this in statistics. TRICKS OF THE TRADE MY FRIEND. Another tip…counting with your fingers. Don’t be ashamed, it’s a perfectly acceptable form of validation; especially when you have been up till 2 am and the can of Blue Light is half empty.

I digress Internet. Brett never misses an opportunity to point out my misgivings in math (thanks hon) so he was assisting me in determining the amount of money we could expect to receive off from the window company. As he was doing so he was using some convoluted math style that did not follow the rules of PEMDAS. Some of you may not know it as PEMDAS, but instead know it by “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally”. It is the order in which you solve an algebraic equation; that is, parenthesis, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction.

I was so kindly taught these strict algebraic rules by an oompa-loompa sized  man we referred to as Mr. Vogler who sported one hell of a mustache. The man sucked down 50 cups of coffee a day and drove off campus to smoke cigarettes like a chimney. I imagine that he was never “teacher of the year” and that many of his co-workers avoided him. The man could holler up a storm and he was militant in his use of PEMDAS.

When I pointed out to Brett that he was not using PEMDAS to figure out this problem he brushed me off as though it was irrelevant. LISTEN LADY, both your parents are MATH TEACHERS, they should have taught you the strict militant rule of PEMDAS. Division was occurring before multiplication, percent signs were being thrown about with wild abandon, ALL HELL WAS BREAKING LOOSE. We went on for a good 15 minutes over this lax use of PEMDAS; I was completely  discouraged by standards that Hilton was placing on their students if they are so easily throwing Aunt Sally out with the Sunday trash.

I don’t know how many times I read the instruction book and was baffled by their explanation of what to do next, screeching loudly, “Come Again?” All in all, we managed to put the thing together with only a few minor mishaps that needed correction and at the end we didn’t even have to say….”huh, wonder where this piece of wood was supposed to go?”

By the time we ended up getting the whole thing together, Cardin had been waiting so long that she went down the slide one time, looked at me and said “Inside now, Mommy?” It was very anti-climatic.

I think one of her favorite past times on the swing set is not actually swinging or going down the slide, but pointing out every single knot in the wood. And then she must confirm each one with me. Knot? Knot? Knot? Knot? Knot? Knot? The whole swing set is wood kid, each one is a knot. It leads me to believe that she’ll be very detail oriented or completed OCD like her momma.

Hope you enjoy it bug.

The weeds weren’t looking all that awesome lately, so we spent the weekend knee deep in mud as we tried to finish up the landscaping and planting actual shrubs and flowers. Ya know….pretty things that will likely attract bugs, incests, animals, and require an abundance of upkeep.

I had an idea of what I wanted to get a the local garden store and a rough estimate of how much it was going to cost. Everything I bought is a perennial, I steered clear of the annual plants, not touching those with a 10 foot pole. Who has time to plant things EVERY YEAR LADY.

Here are a couple pictures of the results. We haven’t put the stone down on the left portion of the house yet so that is still to come in the future.

More of a close up of our handi work

And finally I’d like to introduce you to Maurice. Maurice is our new Japanese Maple plant. Listen Lady, none of the other plants have names because they did not cost as much as my left kidney. He is special. He needs a name so that when I water him at night I can hold a conversation with him and he can feel loved. That way he won’t wither and die and I won’t feel the pain from flushing all the money down the crapper. I’ll discuss my day with him. He can be my eyes and ears of the neighborhood gossip circuit.

As I was taking some pictures Cardin was in the garage playing. She saw me outside taking pictures and wanted to come out so she pressed her hands and face to the glass door. Priceless kid.

I’m not particularly surprised Snow White was naked given Cardin’s age. Being 2 and a half she’s starting to understand her body and we’re getting on board with the whole potty training. She’s pretty good at taking off her own clothes and she manages to find the most inopportune time to strip.

This is pretty much in tune with my behavior as a kid as well. My Barbies were always naked, there clothes strewn about as though a tornado had blown through town. It was an indication of their free spirit and my hatred for small, tight fitting clothing. Where is your DAMN T-SHIRT COLLECTION BARBIE!!!!!!

As I was picking some things up Saturday night, I noticed that Cardin had left Snow White prominently displayed in her wagon. It had been a rough day for this poor doll. A lot of role-play and flexibility was involved. The poor thing looked tuckered out;l ike a lonely sorority girl gone awry after a night of hard partying. Rhinna’s S&M playing in the background, some dried up pizza crust laying on the floor, woke up not knowing whose floor she feel asleep on.

I fear there will be more days like this in your future Snow White. ]]> http://listenladyblog.com/2011/06/bare-bottoms-pizza-crust/feed/ 1 http://listenladyblog.com/2011/06/going-green/ http://listenladyblog.com/2011/06/going-green/#comments Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:03:52 +0000 Christine http://listenladyblog.com/?p=718 I ordered Brett’s father’s day gift and it arrived last night via FedEx. Props to my cousin who works for the carrier, I was rather impressed on the speed of your delivery service.  5-8 business days was 2 day shipping. SCORE. Next time I need to deliver a vital organ I know what carrier I’m choosing. 

Anyways, I opened the box just to check and make sure that the item I ordered was correct and not damaged. Cause that’s never happened to me before. Insert sarcastic tone here.

Since Brett is a snoop, and I refuse to tell him what I purchased…I won’t even tell you Internet….GASP….I had to get creative on on boobytrapping the box.  You will note that the way in which I have taped the box is done so that brett cannot open said item without me actually noting he has done so. I’ve also reinforced my tape with writing so that, just incase he breaks the seal he would have to then recreate my lovely chicken scrawls. Nearly impossible.

Cardin wanted to help me decorate the box so I let her get her crayons and go for it. You can see in the lower left hand corner there is almost an earthquake like effect with her artistic skills.  VERY MOVING.

I’m thinking that I might not even wrap his gift up. This may be wrapping enough. Happy Fathers Day!

First off, I hate shopping so to get me to the mall is a rare feat. I really am in need of an item if I go to the store. I’m more of an online shopper;all about the free shipping BITCHES. And then, to have to walk around to all these stores, without a purpose and just browse their selection of crappy watches is not unlike being a fat kid teethered to a treadmill in the middle of cheesecake factory; unable to eat any of the desserts. TORTURE. 

See Internet, most people would consdier me an upside-down watch wearer. That is, I wear my watch so the face of it is on the inside of my wrist. I don’t really know why I started this; I just think its more comfy. Because I wear my watch this way, the face of the watch naturally absorbs more wear from tabletops and desks, especially when I type on the computer. Ya know….when I blog or work….which is basically all the time. I’m proud to admit that I’ve actually worn holes in the watch face from so much use.

I’m digital all the way. I can tell time off a regular clock, but it takes me a good 2 minutes and by then the time has changed so really what good is it. I don’t like the cheap-o plastic bands. They break easily and let’s be honest folks, people sweat. OH YES, I JUST WENT THERE. Normal humans sweat and then it gets all nasty up under your watch band and nobody wants to deal with that.

A few years ago somebody decided to start slapping the velcro bands on watches. Apparently someone thinks this is stylish. Listen lady, it’s not. A) velcro is for children who cannot tie their shoes and B) for old men who have arthritis. NOBODY IN BETWEEN. PERIOD. Not to mention, the little velcro edges get caught on all sorts o’shit. Shirts, sweaters, small children. It’s better if we just remove velcro from the situation all together.

Which leaves just a basic canvas wrist band with a traditional buckle and small digital,  face. Apparently that is not made anymore…..except if you buy it off amazon. Which is where I should have started shopping in the first place and avoided the whole nightmare of the mall.

Once we got back we started going through the novel that is referred to as the instruction book. Holy hell people, I should have hired a contractor to put this together. Each board was referenced in the following manner. Attach A11 to B15 using Hex Bolt S7.

Except, none of the pieces were labeled.  Which means…oh that’s right, you guessed it Lady, we got to spend an entire day measuring each piece of wood and labeling it. And since the wood was still tacky from all that water sealant I slopped onto it, the tape didn’t even want to stick.

After we finally got all the boards measured and the hardware sorted out, we were able to begin construction. Unfortunately, things have been a little slow in the contractor area as we’ve been hampered by a 2 year old weilding a screwdriver; running at you full speed as though she were in a jousting match, screaming “LET ME DO THAT!” Brett has tended to move the family jewels out of the way of these forthcoming sharp objects.

We’ve been able to get together one of the slide platforms and the roof for the clubhouse. By far, my favorite part of the construction was putting together the weathervane for the top of the clubhouse roof.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ15LihWOjw

Maybe we’ll have it together by the end of the summer…

We took a mini vacation and drove to Columbus, Ohio for a weekend getaway. Cardin did awesome on the drive down and we were able to keep her busy with crafts, toys, movies, and songs. We did stop a couple times to stretch our legs and have some food.Once we checked in to the hotel and had gotten everything settled we decided to go out to dinner.

Our first choice restaurant was closed down so we settled for a Friendly’s. Figuring we’d use the ice cream as a bribe we got Cardin to eat the spaghetti we brought. Please note that we also had to dangle going in the hotel pool in front of her to get her to eat. As we were packing up to leave I leaned over to grab a bag and Cardin decided to belch right in my face. AWESOME. This became rather hysterical and caused quite the ruckus the remainder of the ride back to the hotel.

So much ruckus in fact, that Brett began to fake burp and get the whole car laughing. And since Cardin is two and mimics EVERYTHING Internet, you can kinda take a wild guess as to where this roller coaster is going. That is when it happened…the fake burp hit the sensitive gag reflex. Mount fucking Vesuvius in the car. I’ve got nothing but my hands or my mouth to catch it. What would you choose lady?

Cardin is covered. The car-seat is covered. The seat of the car is covered. Basically all I’ve got to work with is a box of baby wipes and some leaves.  MacGyver would succeed where I failed. AND THEN….if it wasn’t good enough yet….we have to prance through the hotel lobby with a puke covered child and a puke covered car-seat. We twirled, we pirouetted, we box-stepped the hell out of that lobby. Listen lady, you can’t buy memories like this.

Once we got up to the room I stripped Cardin down to her diaper by some luck there was a laundry room in the hotel that you could pay to use so I was able to at least wash the chunks off. Yummy. From there I attempted to clean the car-seat. My attempts at hand washing were futile. The puke had seeped in too far, I needed a power washer at this point.

I made an executive decision and decided my best source of water pressure was the shower head so I decided to shower the car-seat. No…I’m not kidding. I actually had to give the car-seat a shower. In desperate times, men will resort to desperate measures. All the while Cardin was running around in her diaper screaming, “POOL! MOMMY, POOL!”  Listen lady, I’m knee deep in your vomit…the pool can wait.

We managed to fit in a quick swim, hopeful that the amount of chlorine would kill off the smell of vomit. Afterward, I found a 24 hour grocery store and bought upholstery cleaner and febreze. I spent a good 30 minutes in the parking lot of the hotel scrubbing the seat of the car hoping that the smell would not permeate the car forever.

The next morning we had no choice but to put the car-seat back into the car and venture on our way to the zoo. It was 91 that day and the seat festered all day. In the sun. In the closed car. I think the car almost exploded. When we got back to the car we decided that it was time to throw in the towel and buy a new car-seat. We found the closet baby store and dropped $160 on the car-seat.

When we got back to the hotel, we switched out the old for the new, except there was one minor glitch still. We needed to dispose of the old seat still. The hotel wouldn’t take it and we couldn’t just leave it. So that night, we drove around…like hoodlums….looking for a dumpster that was not on a closed circuit TV.

Brett and I may be arrested one day. The newspaper headline will likely read something like this “NY couple arrested for abandoning vile car-seat; landfill refuses to accept such waste”.

It was one of my favorite times of the weeks and I miss having everyone in the house at once, 14 different conversations going on, being apart of at least 5. Yelling and hollering with glee. But we grew up and moved out, went off to college, got married, had kids, got jobs so understandably, not everyone can get there every week anymore. We try to make it as much as possible, but life gets in the way.

This weekend my cousin was in from Oregon whoever could make it to grandma’s house to visit piled in. It was nice to have us all together again. Laughing and talking. My grandma force feeding us….one of her finer qualities.

Cardin and Alivia even got to enjoy a spot of tea together. They really enjoy each other’s company. Alivia talks up a storm when she sees Cardin and Cardin wants to watch  and ‘help’ you do everything from feed to change Alivia’s diaper. When we leave, Cardin will ask about “liv-a” for a good solid hour”.

I know that I’m lucky to have been able to be surrounded by my cousins when we were growing up. So, I’m grateful they can grow up and play together. I’m sure they will make quite the duo once Alivia starts walking.

He is rather, a simple old man who rides a classic style, old-school bicycle around our neighborhood every summer. You can count on him to be out all hours of the morning and evening. We have seen him out riding on our way to work, when we return home, and during the dusk hours. The man can pedal like a monster. He must bike 20 miles a day.

Let me tell you Lady, he goes all out in his getup when he rides too. He wears a shimmering red, button down jacket usually with a pair of khakis pant. This dude is so serious he even puts a rubber band around his pant leg to keep it from catching in the chain on his bicycle. That’s like Lance Armstrong “lost a testicle to cancer” hardcore.  He wears the funniest hats and can often times be seen sporting a winter cap during the middle of a summer day.

Every time he would pass by the house Brett would look at me and in a strained voice go  “GEEEEEEZZZZER BIIIIIIKKKKKERRRR”  and each time I’d laugh; because I’m five.

Each spring we hold our breath in anticipation. Will Geezer Biker make another appearance this year? Our palms get a little sweaty as we wait out his shining moment. Beaming as he takes the corners of our neighborhood street with such magnificence; as though he was a prince riding his valiant stead.

Listen Lady…..there has been no Geezer Biker this year. No shimmering red jacket. No fancy winter caps to be sported. NO RUBBERBANDED PANT LEG, LADY. We don’t know what happened to Geezer Biker and we likely never will. His house is for sale. We haven’t seen him since his final ride last year.

Whatever happened to Mr. Geezer Biker, I wish him Adieu, and would like him to know that he brightened our days. Ride strong my friend.

At the time of her initial evaluation she was rated on two levels. 1) Receptive language, that is, her understanding of what we were telling and showing her and 2) Expressive language, her ability to verbally communicate this back to us. She scored at a 3-4 year old level for her receptive level, meaning that, what she was taking in was far above the average for her age. Clearly pointing to pictures of animals hundreds of times was working at some level. On the flip side, her expressive language was low and she was not performing at a level of where she should be for a child her age; as demonstrated by her caveman-like grunting. The gap between the expressive and receptive knowledge was too great.

It has been a long road, one where Brett and I had to learn to change our teaching behavior also, but Cardin is now speaking in full sentences and has completely removed all gestures and grunting from her communication skills. We no longer rely on any sign language and she has even begun to ask questions. Albeit we have so far avoided the death spiral of”WHY MOMMY?”

Her pronunciation is a little rough and she often utilizes the wrong pronoun, but that will grow with more experience. The majority of what she expresses can be understood by others and not just our learned ear.

She has even learned her ABC’s; she sings them best if you do them with her, otherwise they sound something like a drunken slur and you usually only catch “ABCTUVWXYZ”. I suppose those are the only important letters. She can count from 1-3 with no problem, though still doesn’t understand how to tell people she is going to be three because how do you have the coordination to hold up just three fingers. I bet Sarah Palin couldn’t do it either.

To think back at where we were a few months ago and see the progress and development that has occurred is astounding. To know that I helped carve out her language skills and she has yet to use one of mommy’s more derogatory, off-color remarks is amazing in itself. When she spits out a new sentence at me, I’m at first taken aback, unable to answer, as I process this whole formation of new words she has learned to string together…even if they happen to be ones that are directed at telling me off.

Each year I buy a hanging plant from our local garden store and this year I decided to go with a light purple petunia. I choose this for two reasons. One, I like the color and two, it can handle full sun. Last year I made the mistake of purchasing a hanging plant that requires part shade. Halfway through the season my hanging plant looked like a withered old man.

Cardin saw me taking pictures. She insisted on being in one and saying “CHEEEESE!”

I also planted some silver mounds in the front yard as I like how they shimmer. Most likely because it distracts my attention and I can go “ooooooo……shimmery”.

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that so much time has passed since we stood in front of each other on a very cold day and exchanged rings. I feel that we are such different people now, than we were five years ago. Not in a negative way, but that we’ve grown so much through our shared experiences.

In the past 5 years we’ve bought, remodeled, and landscaped our house; much of which we did ourselves. It was quite the learning experience; not only about home improvement, but about patience with your spouse. I’m proud to call it our home. I love our house, it’s warm and cozy, albeit a complete disaster of toys. We know each of the rooms nooks and crannies and where the mistakes are. We know the blood, sweat, and tears we put into that house and that makes it all the better.

We’ve been through layoffs, new jobs, promotions, overtime, and extra hours at the office. They have all paid off and we have been one of the lucky few who have kept our jobs through this downtrodden economy. In fact the extra work we put in has paid off in career advancements, extra money, and even vacations. I think the fact that we struggled financially during the first year or our marriage helped carve out our future and that lead us to a great path. I’m proud that we worked through that together.

Our greatest accomplishment though hasn’t been our house or careers, but our daughter. Cardin. She changed our lives the morning of November 8, 2008. Our world revolves around this one little person. She has the ability to make the entire day a complete success with just a simple hug or smile. To watch her grow and flourish; this is the greatest gift we can be given as a couple.

Don’t be fooled though lady, it hasn’t been all roses. We’ve been through funerals and fights, we’ve suffered two heartbreaking miscarriages, but at the end of the day I know what pulls me through is the way I felt five years ago when I read my vows to Brett. The love I felt for this man, the happiness that I was able to share with friends and family that night…that’s what helps me through the times when I want to quit.

Happy Anniversary Brett. I love you.

$1,000.00…..$6,500.00…..

Listen Lady, when I play, I play big. I even had a prescription filled the other day for my migraine medication. Apparently the medication is so fancy that no generic exists yet. The pharmacy rang up the 18 pills and the total was $463. That’s almost two car payments. That’s $25 bucks every time I pop one of those suckers in my mouth.

We are lucky that the insurance we carry covers the majority of these costs. We have had to pay very little over the past month. It is discouraging to think what others shell out to insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors offices.

If anything, I think I’ll keep Brett around just for his insurance coverage ;)

I must admit, one of my finer moments in parenting came when I taught Cardin to stand up to these rambunctious monsters and declare to them, with the best attitude I’ve seen her muster, “WATCH OUT, LITTLE!”

A couple summers ago we spent a day putting together an A-frame so that we could attach a baby swing. Cardin still loves to swing and will do so for as long as you will push her. But…she’s also developed what we refer to as the ‘mommy syndrome’. Her knack for participating in dangerous activities is growing by the day. She likes to climb up slides and balance on ledges. I’ve even found her perched atop the rafters in the garage trying out her parkour skills. Clearly she has outgrown the danger level that is the simple A-frame swing-set.

After weeks of looking and grumbling about the ridiculous prices…..I give you the new swing set, codename “WOODEN JIHADIST WEASEL!”

Please note: this is not actually setup in our backyard yet and the set does not include the guy sniffing his armpits and gauging BO level.

Before I get into the logistics of setting up  the WOODEN JIHADIST WEASEL (yes the caps are required for emphasis) let me divulge the smoking hot deal we obtained. We received a flyer in the mail that showed a sale going on at our local toy store. This swing set was listed as $100 off the MSRP if your brought in the flyer with the attached $100 off coupon. HOTNESS. Plus if you opened a credit card to the store you could get an extra 10% off the purchase. Seemed reasonable and it was the best deal we had found that was within our price range.

Off we went, flyer in hand. I explained to the cashier that I wanted to purchase the said swing set and had the necessary $100 off coupon. EXCEPT, when the cashier rang up the swing set, he entered the MSRP as $799, not the original $899. THEN he proceeded to take the additional $100 coupon off the $799 value. This all occurred while Cardin was standing next to me at the register drinking juice and, as expected, she started to choke, gag, and throw up. She likes to do this in public arenas. Sometimes I feel like she’s testing me just see how my nerves hold up. I believe she secretly plots against me at night. I bet she has a whole notebook full of ideas on ways to slowly make my hair gray.

There I am, cupping my hand under Cardin’s mouth, while trying to avoid a massive scene by talking her off the ledge, and still half listening to the cashier as he reads me the terms and conditions to the credit card I’m signing up for. It was enough multitasking that I didn’t really notice the balance of the receipt until I left the store. With the savings from the newly opened credit card and coupon, the total cost put us under $700 for this behemoth. We thought we had made out pretty well.

And then we opened the boxes. Listen lady, I think there are more boards for the WOODEN JIHADIST WEASEL than there are bones in your body. We opened the boxes and just kept pulling out board after board. Normally, I’d be a happy camper to have all this wood, but….get your mind out of the gutter.

Listen Lady, this pile you see here on your right. This is just ONE pile of wood. ONE. O.N.E. Most of the boards are between one and three feet so they add up really fast.

We read a lot of reviews on this particular swing set, and all the reviewers said that the wood needs to be covered in a water sealant to really last. We had it in our mindset that we were going to do a couple coats this week before we even assembled the WOODEN JIHADIST WEASEL. We had even warned Cardin that once we got the swing set we needed to paint it before it got put together.  Below you can see  Cardin taking an active role in helping us paint.

By golly were we very fucking wrong on the whole water sealer thing. We setup tarps, sawhorses, boxes, etc in the garage since the weather has been terrible and being outside is out of the question as of late. On Saturday we started waterproofing the first of the boards and laid them out to dry. We did as many as we could stuff into this small area without poisoning our child from sealant fumes.

And then the next 7 hours went something like this….

1 hour…boards still wet

3 hours…boards still wet

5 hours…boards still wet

7 hours…boards still wet

Me: “This is taking an awfully long time Brett, did you look at the back of the sealant can, how long does it say for drying time?”

Brett: “FORTY-EIGHT HOURS*****”

Me: “What are the asterisks for?”

Brett: “in optimal weather”

Me: “dude, its going to be September before this goes together”

Needless to say, the drying time and the weather are playing a crucial role at this point in getting WOODEN JIHADIST WEASEL to cooperate. Looks like its going to be slow going.

Brett called me when he got out of work and told me he was no longer going home to cut the grass, instead he was sitting waiting for a tow truck as one of his tires had gone completely flat. AWESOME.

Since Brett would have to wait with his car, I was running pick-up duty. I left work and got to sit in construction traffic for 45 minutes before I even went 5 miles. I strongly contemplated opening my driver side door and pushing it into each and every single cone. I resisted the urge. By the time I actually got to pick up Cardin it was after 6 and she had already had something to eat.

TANGENT: this baby swing was at my mom’s house and Cardin decided to become a squater. It’s ridiculous that a 2 and half year old can fit into a babies swing with such ease and actually make use of it.

Brett was able to get the tire fixed instead of replacing the rubber (haha…no pun intended). I packed up Cardin’s things and we headed home….except for one minor mishap. When we came outside there was a bunny that we started chasing (yes I realize this is teaching bad behavior, I’m over it). The bunny ran away and we happily ran to the car. While I was buckling Cardin into her carseat, she starting the infamous gag/cough syndrome. Listen lady, it was all I could do to try and unbuckle the carseat harness as fast as possible. My little hands fumbling, becoming sweaty with fear of a vomit filled car. 

Then it happened. It spat out of her mouth and down the front of her. In spectuclar fashion, she aslo managed to get some INTO my purse which was below her feet. I did my best to catch as much as possible with my sleeve, but it was a futile task.

SOOOOO…we got out of the car, changed clothes, and then I got to try to wash out my car and carseat. Lovely end to the evening.

This morning when I left for work, the stall puke smell hit me right between the eyes. I’m really looking forward to the smell after work, especially since it has been festering in the sun for 9 hours now. I RULE.

However, the recent actions of someone in our building has provoked so much disgust that I must divulge to you oh Internet. I work in a building with numerous suites and we have one general ladies restroom.

Normally the stalls are what I would refer to as “man clean”. They are wiped down, the floor is washed, but really….it’s not all that super cleanly. I’m pretty OCD about having a clean crapper, but maybe it’s because I can see microscopic germs with my eyes. Seriously…its my super power…don’t hate.

In the last few weeks we have had a ‘STALL URINATOR’. Let me explain. Someone goes into the SHARED women’s room and proceeds to pee ALL OVER the seat. Listen lady, I’m not talking about a little drip, I’m talking full on ‘trying to cross your own stream peeing’. It is so violent that the seat, walls, and floors are covered. You would think that a three year old boy was left to ‘paint’ the stall with his best artistic abilities.

We got so fed up with this repeat behavior that we actually taped a sign in the area of the crime scene. Maybe this will get the message across.

Luckily, my mom is far more crafty so Cardin can get her fill. She comes home with a goodie or two nearly every day. It’s always a special time for me when I get to open her Dora backpack and see what creative genius has befallen my mother today. I say this all in the nicest, most sarcastic way possible.

Exhibit 1 was a created as a birthday present for Uncle Tony. First, I’ll direct you to the mouth of the bunny. This ‘x’ like pattern is actually supposed to be the bunnies whiskers, but for some unknown reason, they are not attached to a mouth. I’m not so sure how the bunny will eat his carrot without an opening for food.

Next, I’d like to direct your attention to the bottom of the bunny. According to Cardin, the blue fuzz ball is a tail. In the anatomy lessons that I took, tails were on the backside of animals.  This looks distinctly like a single, blue testicle. Who am I to judge though.

Exhibit 2 was created as an Easter craft and by golly if there are not 100 things to point out about this beautiful creation. It has a Dolly Parton-esq to it; its really only missing the ginormous enhancements.

The bottom portion is a paper towel tube that was transformed into a dress. Then of course we have the lovely lace frill. At the top we have a plastic, purple Easter egg.  Listen Lady, my favorite part of this creation is the botox lips that were hot glued onto the egg. So much hot glue was used that the actual egg started to melt and now “Egg Lady” looks like she’s sporting a mustache. Classy.

I offered her up an alternative thinking that this would provide a challenge. I asked her to crawl through the legs of her leapfrog activity table. If you have ever doubted how tiny my kid is in pictures, let this be proof to you.

Listen Lady, she is an absolute midget and 99% of the kids her age would never be able to perform this feat. I give you the contortionist act of Cardin…..

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGv6u_zNk64

That is until there was a sudden rush of heat and flame like activity that caught me out of the corner of my eye. Still unsure what was actually going on behind me, I whipped around to see that one of the waiters had come out with an appetizer dish that is commonly referred to as Saganaki or Greek Flaming Cheese.

I’m not kidding when I say flaming either, as the fire is produced when a shot of vodka is poured over the cheese and lit. With the flames going, the waiter yells out OPA in jubilant celebration. Granted the flames only last for a few seconds until the alcohol burns off, but it’s like chucking lighter fluid on a fire; a sudden and exaggerated burst of flames.

This sudden and exaggerated outburst was similar to Cardin’s reaction; complete and utter hysteria. The ENTIRE restaurant turned and looked at my kid. Probably a good 100+ people, all staring at this flaming concoction and the screaming, crying toddler trying to claw her way out of her highchair and onto my lap.

This is what the Saganaki looked like:

And I imagine that this is what Cardin saw:

It took a good 10  minutes of convincing and soothing to calm her; assuring her that the nasty man with the fire was gone and it was again safe to retract her claws from mommy’s skin. We got her settled back into her highchair and our food arrived.

As we were finishing up our meal,  two things occurred simultaneously.  To my left I heard the hot sizzle of a skillet and to my right, I heard Cardin begin to scream. Before I knew it there was a mess of flames, OPA had been yelled, and Cardin was reacting in mass hysteria. We thought the first time was bad, but the second time…..whoa boy….triple that reaction. Her tiny body shook in her highchair and I saw her brain go through the fight or flight response right in front of me.

I jumped up, grabbed her, and ran for the nearest vestibule. Of course this only brought a flurry of attention as I carried her screaming, sobbing frame throughout the restaurant. Listen Lady, we clearly have a fire phobia.

At this point the waiter felt so awful that he came over to us and brought not one, but two huge cookies in attempt to cheer her up and distract her. She was having none of it as she sat in a sobbing heap on my lap, shouting “GO WAY” to the fire waiter.

Since we were almost ready to go, I left the bill and cleanup in the hands of Brett and our friends and Cardin and I chilled in the vestibule. It was a little chilly, what with the doors opening and closing, so I decided to venture back in and grab our coats. It was at this time that I was practically mauled by an onslaught of waiters shouting that someone else had just ordered the Saganaki appetizer and they were about to bring it out to the table. RETREAT!!!!

Clearly we will not frequent this establishment again.

In just a few short months he’ll become a first time parent. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how we went from kids having a squirt gun war and staying up late to listen to try to record Mr. Boombastic on a cassette to each being responsible for another human life. It makes me recall the childhood antics we pulled; Hot Box, Capture the Flag, Hand Hockey, Snow Football.

We were a very creative bunch of youngsters. We invented a couple of our own unique games to play. One of our favorites was dubbed Human sacrifice. Always played in my Uncle’s pool, we’d form a permieter along the edge and our job was to keep the ball in play for as long as possible, performing as many death defying leaps as needed so that the ball never actually touched water. In accordance with the rules, you were required to scream out H.S. each time you lept to your doom to save the ball.

Inevitably, when we had family get togethers, one of my cousins would get put on the couch in a timeout zone.  Not allowed to get down from the couch and feeling for the neglected prisoner, the game of Turtle was born. The rest of us would buddy up on the couch, while one person would remain in the middle of the living room floor, taking up their hands and knees; they became the Turtle. It was up to the Turtle to get as close to his constituents as possible without getting smacked. We were very safety conscious.

Then there were the times where we tried to deter my Uncle from picking up my cousin after my mom had babysat him all day. We’d set booby traps in the yard with hot pink jump ropes and Frisbee’s that would magically turn into landmines if stepped on. Or my favorite time…when we tried to dig a whole in the yard so that my Uncle would step into it and twist his ankle; all but destroying his plans of capturing my cousin. That plan was thwarted when my mom found us digging up her yard. We narrowly escaped a shovel beating that day.

It’s a strange transformation when you become the ones to say “If you two don’t stop bickering I’m going to drive this car off the first cliff I come to”. I can just imagine what our kids will conjure up when they play together. I only hope they are as creative as we were.

I’d much prefer if she’d fall in love with a cool movie. One where it did not look as though the main character was a blind widow. I’m not kidding….I guarantee that the majority of this movie, Snow White actually has her eyes closed. I secretly think it was Disney’s way of cutting costs. I can just see these exec’s reviewing the storyboard. “Well, if we remove the cornea’s from Snow White, we can save .002 per frame”. 

Listen Lady, people who talk with their eyes closed in real life annoy me. Imagine how annoyed I get when an animated princess can’t open her eyes.

To proliferate this fetish, my mom decided to buy Cardin a Snow White dress up outfit. I’m going to tangent here for 1 minute…. Of course my heart starts doing palpitations at this point with the whole pretend dress up thing. I get it…its a normal part of childhood. I’ll bite my lip and get onboard because I realize that she wants nothing more than to look like Snow White. Except my head starts doing marathon sprints of the conversations I’ll need to have with her, if only to instill the idea that she 1) should not trust creepy old ladies who try to give her fruit and 2) she should not rely on a man to come to her rescue. Equally important lessons.

So my mom gets out the “Snow White” outfit she bought, except its not a Snow White outfit at all, its a Belle outfit. Ya know….from beauty and the beast. Hopeful my mom isn’t suffering early onset of dementia I’m all “uh Mimi, that’s not Snow White’s dress.” My mom pipes back with “Well I know, but that’s all they had and the bottom of Snow White’s dress is yellow so it’s close enough.”

How do you argue with that logic? Clearly the two different characters can easily become mashed together into one dress because their dresses share the same hue. WOMAN, what is going to happen when she watches Beauty and the Beast the first time She’s going to think that blind widow is making another appearance when the yellow dress shows up.

One day when Cardin is 20, I’m going to pull this picture out and explain to her that she was decieved into thinking this was Snow White’s dress by an evil woman who liked to give her fruit.

While we were outside playing, Brett decided he was going to rake the front lawn to get rid of some of the matted down grass from the winter snow. Cardin wanted to help. Except all her toys are put away in the shed for storage right now and I wasn’t about to go digging through lawnmowers and weedwackers just to find a dumb rake. Let’s be honest…that’s an emergency room trip waiting to happen.

I found this small sand rake instead.
She was happy as a clam with it. Going around and helping daddy “ake”. Until she started to dig up some grass. There is now a small section of our lawn that has 15 divets, as though a pro golfer was attempting to get out of a sand trap. 

It’s a good thing I got her to stop raking before she made it over to the landscaping stones and we started dodging small rock pellets.

On Sunday, we were at one of the funeral homes paying our respects to a family friend whose mother had passed away unexpectedly. She had chosen to be cremated and while I’m not down with the whole burning thing for myself, to each his own. We were are all standing in a nice single file line, waiting to speak to the family, whispering softly to pass the time, when out of nowhere my Grandmother chirps in with the following sentiment:

“It’s so sad. You’re alive one day and the next you are in a jar.”

Listen Lady, there are times where the old adage of “Think before you Speak” really should be put into good use. This would have been one of those times Grandma.

What you need to understand here is that my Grandmother, who is 80 years old and whom I love dearly, has absolutely no filter on her mouth. We could be in the biggest, noisiest crowd of people and my Grandmother would manage to pick the one second where silence befell the crowd to yell out “THERE ARE A WHOLE LOT OF NAZI’S HERE”.

This is not the only instance where my Grandma has perpetrated social taboo by speaking her mind. There has been many a time where those around her have wanted to crawl into a hole and die just to avoid the glaring eyes from strangers who have overheard Grandma’s remarks.

There was one time that is particularly special to me. Rewind about 6 years ago. Brett and I were engaged and planning our wedding. I had purchased my dress and was going for an alteration and had I asked my Grandma to come along as she had yet to see the dress. My mom helped me into the dress and laced it up for me (and I’m not joking when I say laced, it was like a shoelace up my back). I came out and stood in front of the mirror while the seamstress begin to pin up the hem. It was then that I asked the question that will forever scorn and mock me…”What do you think Grandma?”

Her response was simple, elegant really. Right to the point. Never had I heard such honesty. Grandma’s response:

“It’s really nice, just don’t get any fatter.”

Our conversation ended at that point. I mean, what else could I possibly say. There is no recovery, no comeback from that. Even the seamstress didn’t know what to say. So it hung there, awkwardly, like a lazy eye. I moved on and I get to tease Grandma about this moment we shared. If nothing else, I learned that Grandma can always be counted on for honesty, even if its brutal.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X0XWVMFdk

Why Having a Toddler is Like Being at a Frat Party

10. There are half-full, brightly-colored plastic cups on the floor in every room. Three are in the bathtub.

9. There’s always that one girl, bawling her eyes out in a corner.

8. It’s best not to assume that the person closest to you has any control over their digestive function.

7. You sneak off to the bathroom knowing that as soon as you sit down, someone’s going to start banging on the door.

6. Probably 80% of the stains on the furniture contain DNA.

5. You’ve got someone in your face at 3 a.m. looking for a drink.

4. There’s definitely going to be a fight.

3. You’re not sure whether anything you’re doing is right, you just hope it won’t get you arrested.

2. Bodily Fluids easily consume 75% of the conversation.

1. You wake up wondering exactly how and when the person in bed with you got there.

I get the recommendations for infants and small toddlers and I don’t disagree. Cardin is so small in stature that she sat in a rear-facing car seat much past the, then recommended age of 1. Let’s face it though…some of these kids ain’t so small in stature. Rolly polly babies are going to be eating their sausage thighs if you force them to sit backwards until the age of 2.

You know that someone is going to do a study now to determine the detriment to sitting with your legs all up in your grill until you’re 2. Stating that its not good for posture or development because it doesn’t allow full extension of the leg joints or some crappola like that.

Not to mention that if your kid sits backwards for two years, you don’t get the pleasure of enjoying the constant kicking they can do to the back of your seat. That’s a fun time. Especially when you’re driving. In a blizzard. With no visibility. In the dark. Also, it destroys the cloth backing to your seat and reduces the re-sale value of your car. KIDS ARE GREAT!!!

I must admit though, I’m a little discouraged by the new recommendations for older children. The pediatric academy suggests that children use boosters seats until they are 4 feet 9 inches tall, typically between the ages of 8 and 12. Listen Lady, I’m just going to throw this out there once and then that’s the end of the conversation! I’m not much taller than 4 feet 9 inches and neither of the majority of females in my family. Let’s face it, when Cardin does hit this benchmark, she is going to pretty much have reached her full height. We like to refer to this as vertically challenged.

Plus, since Cardin is so small, the chances of her hitting that growth spurt much before puberty are pretty much zip. I can just picture this now. She asks to go to a sleepover and I have to leave her booster seat with the friend in case they go on an outing. AS IF I WEREN’T ALREADY UNCOOL ENOUGH IN HER EYES, NOW I HAVE TO BE THE BOOSTER SEAT TOTER TOO.

Does this recommended use of a booster seat  also apply for anyone who is under the height of 4 feet 9 inches? And you know I’m thinking specifically of midgets. Commence hate mail.

Cardin had already eaten dinner at home. She is not allowed to eat at restaurants because of the burp/gag/vomit that I’ve so eloquently divulged here before. I brought some crayons and a book and she entertained herself while we ate.

I did let her try a sip of Brett’s pop and warned her that it was going to be bubbly. I wish I had taken a video of her reaction. She almost spat the small sip back at me. From then on, Brett was referred to as “Daddy’s Bubbly”.

Before we left, our waitress, who smelled like an ashtray, gave Cardin a hybrid cookie. Listen Lady, I’ve never seen such a baking masterpiece. AND IT WAS FROM PERKINS. We’re not even talking fancy here. Half chocolate chip and half sugar cookie. GENIUS.  The middle was a perfect line of melded cookie. WIN on presentation.

I pondered over how one would make such a cookie. Some sort of cookie cutter tool must be used so that an exact portion of both types can be evenly placed on the cookie sheet. I would never be able to accomplish such a feat because, inevitably, one part of the ying would be to runny and would start to tsunami into the yang.

I tried to take a bite out of the middle so that I could get both types of cookie, unfortunately the tastes do not work well together. Its comparable to sprinkling raw sugar on chocolate and taking a bite. You may think this is a good idea, but the grit of the raw sugar really overpowers the bittersweet chocolate. FAIL on taste.

The remainder of the drawings are always an interesting collection of artifacts drawn by, none other than Picasso herself.

Listen lady, let’s put it this way. When we play the family board game pictionary, my mom is like the kid who gets picked last for kickball. Her artistic talents are a little on the short bus side. She’s really awesome at stick figures though.

Today I got the pleasure of enjoying this cat. Note how it only has two legs. She claimed the cat was sitting on it’s rump, therefore you can only see the front legs. You will also see that this cat looks like it was punched in the face and suffers from a Michael Jackson nose syndrome.

I’m surprised my mom takes credit for these masterpieces. I’d totally blame my lack of artistic ability on my kid. What else are kids good for if you can’t blame them for your farts and bad drawings?

That’s when I saw that he had pulled the entire silverware drawer out from the cabinet and broken the runner off. Ya know, the important piece that guides the drawer on its track. Seriously, are you strongman now? Is it required that we pull the silverware drawer out with such brute force?

I shook my head as I continued to empty the dishwasher and he attempted to re-attach the runner. The runner had been held in place by really large staples, like 5 of them. They were huge and, I imagine, placed there when the cabinet was first constructed by a pneumatic gun. Here was strongman, trying to re-attach the runner by pushing the staples back in…..by hand. Listen Lady, I’m pretty sure this approach is not going to work unless you have steel hands.

I suggested he may want to try a hammer to complete this handiwork, but was told “quiet woman.” After a few more attempts with his hand, he resided to the fact that he may need assistance from a tool. Not that I was right or anything. The hammer did the trick and two shirts later, he had re-attached the runner. “Somehow” both shirts got graphite dust on them during this process. Lady, it looked something like a contortionist, wriggling all over my kitchen floor in attempt outwit the staples.

Then came the tricky part. Finagling the runner back on so that the drawer closes smoothly. As you can see this was quite the process. He was convinced that he needed to open the oven door so that he could properly get the runner on the track. At one point I think Brett may have moved the refrigerator to gain better access….and the fridge is way on the other side of the kitchen.

The best part of this whole debacle is that he did not know I was taking pictures until the very end. This last photo is blurry, but his facial expression is just priceless.

When he saw me with the camera he started saying “NOOOOOOOOO” and turning. As if that would deflect my picture taking.

To celebrate this milestone, my brother and I threw him a retirement party this past weekend. Some of his friends and previous co-workers came and much of the family was able to come. We surprised him with a cake that was decorated to look like a Kodak Film box.

I’d like to take credit for this, but let’s be serious…my forte is really stick people. I ordered the cake from a local bakery and it was delicious. Except for the black frosting. The dye from the frosting was so intense that it tinted your mouth black. It reminded me of the prank candy you can buy that turns your mouth a certain color when you chew on it.

Cardin was amped about this party for weeks. She insisted that we make both a “BIG HAT” for Poppa and a “BABY HAT” for her. Listen Lady, she decorated the shit out of these hats.  Stamps, marker, sticky foam shapes, glue, confetti….whatever she could grab, she smothered the hat with. I wouldn’t doubt that she wiped a booger on there also.

Since our trip to Best Buy didn’t last very long I asked Cardin if she would like to go to the mall.  You see Internet, I’m glutton for punishment. This kid loves the mall, whereas I hate the mall. Luckily, she does not like to actually go shopping, she simply likes to walk around and go to one of two places: the pet store or the fountains. She could give a rats ass about the rest of the mall.

We indulged in the pet store and threw pennies into the fountain. As you can see from the picture, she doesn’t actually throw the pennies…its more of a light drop. Seriously…I could step over the barrier and pick up the pile of pennies she dropped in and we could start the whole process over again.

And then we tried to leave. Listen Lady, it was one of those times when you regret bringing your child somewhere because of their reaction. One of those times where you want to shrink and die because your kid is screaming so loudly that its echoing all the walls and people are staring at you as though you have a third arm growing out your bum.

When I told her we had to leave, Cardin went Banshee.  In case you are unfamiliar, the word Banshee actually means omen of death. NOT FAR OFF LADY!! There is no other word to describe it. She was crying so hard and loud that she could not catch her breath. This is the first time I’ve ever seen her get so upset that she was literally fighting me to go back into the mall. I’m sure her little mind was cursing the F out of me. I imagine she was all “I will cut you woman”.

That is the last time we will ever go to the mall you demon child.

Our hotel room had a great view of the falls and it was nice to be able to overlook them as compared to standing eye level with them. You can certainty appreciate the magnitude of the rushing water much better when you are above the falls. I imagine the same would be true if you were standing at the bottom of the falls. Just a guess.

We were surprised by the amount of mist that seemed to constantly swirl over the horseshoe portion of the falls, at times it was near impossible to see any of the water. We even got to see the falls lit up at night, which was another thing that I have never seen, as our previous trips had only occurred during the daylight. This was pretty cool, though I can imagine it would suck to be the guy standing on the ledge, holding the flashlight.

Here are some photo’s for your viewing pleasure. First the American Falls and then the Horseshoe Falls.

This was all well and good, but the best part of our trip (minus the lack of puke) was the shoe shiner in our hotel room. Listen Lady, this little guy was a delight to have.

You can note that there is a single RED BUTTON  on the top of the shoe shiner and EVERY TIME Brett or I walked by, we pushed the button for at least 5-10 seconds of delight. I found it extra enjoyable as the sneakers I brought have a mesh top. On the bright side, this mesh would allow for the spinning brushes of the shoe shiner to produce air flow that would circulate around my toes. On the not so great side, my toes and socks are usually freezing as the mesh allows water and rain to soak through.

It’s really a random piece of equipment to have in a hotel that surrounds Niagara Falls. I mean….what type of businessman is walking around the tourist area of the falls or sporting his penny loafers to the casino? Certainly not anyone playing the penny slots.

I’m pretty sure Brett would have brought the thing home if it weren’t for me telling him that it probably would cost us $200 on the room tab.

While Cardin was sick, she managed to get really dehydrated and she lost 2 pounds. Normally this would be a great diet, but for someone of her small stature this is a significant drop in weight. Brett Lysol’d the hell out of the house today and Cardin has now strapped on the feedbag so hopefully we are all on the mend. Her appetite has skyrocketed and, along with a wheelbarrow full of other food, in the past two days she has eaten 4 banana’s. Internet, that’s a massive amount of potassium for a 2 year old.  This kid isn’t going to crap for a month.

Before Cardin infected me, we managed to surprise Brett at work for his thirty birthday. I conspired with one of his co-workers and got a whole bunch of decorations over to her so that she could decorate his cube while we were out of the country.

I even got that confetti stuff you sprinkle on the table and told her that she had my permission to sprinkle it ALL OVER his keyboard. He’ll be picking that shit out of his keyboard for months! Each time he’ll think of me….he’ll likely say a few choice words, but the point is I’ll still be on his mind.

I secretly took the day off and Cardin and I got some 30th birthday balloons and a big number cake in the shape of a 30. We showed up, unannounced to surprise him. He informed me that he knew I was the one behind all the decorations as well. So much for a nice, quiet passing of another year. Cardin couldn’t wait to eat the cake and she loves the balloons we bought for him. I let her pick out the colors and she walks around saying “daddieee’s ‘loons”.

I had been telling Brett for months that I was going to surprise him for his 30th. He wouldn’t know when or where, but I would sneak up like a ninja. His only response was that if I did this, he would have more time and ammunition to return the favor in about 18 months. Listen Lady, I know that this will not happen for one simple reason. I’m the planner, Brett is more of the fly by the seat of your pants, last minute person. There is nothing bad about this, we complement each other well. I have a month by month agenda on my phone, he has a 5 minute memory span….it evens out. However, I know that if any surprise happens, it’s because it won’t be him planning it. Seems to me Watson, that there is a challenge somewhere in that last sentence.

Internet, let me tell you about how we started off our birthday adventure. After we had dropped Cardin off at my parents house, we were driving down their slush covered street.  The temperatures had warmed slightly and the snow was starting to melt. Another car was approaching us and the driver had their window rolled down because they were smoking a cancer stick. As our car’s passed each other, we hit a huge slush pile and the tires from our car kicked slush so high that it shot, ever so accurately, directly through the drivers side window and pummeled the driver right in the face. I don’t think I could have been more accurate with an actual snowball.

Since I was in the passengers seat I didn’t have quite a clear view of this incident, but Brett got the full peep show. After his car had chucked a slush ball at the woman’s face he deicded his best option was to just keep driving. Didn’t stop, didn’t slow down, just moseyed his car right along as though he had not given the poor lady a face full of slush.

We made it through customs in an uneventful fashion, though the customs agent asked us what we do for a living? Does that matter? Do you really expect someone to be all “well, I make bombs” or “well I’m the project manager for evil terrorists threats”?

Over the next couple days we lost money at the casinos, slept, did some shopping (most of which was for Cardin), and just walked around to look at the falls. Mostly we did nothing that required advance planning. Also, there were two occassions where we were eating a lovely meal and some child sitting within ear shot let out a burp/gag. You see, the ability to eat a meal without the presence of this burp/gag and the resulting vomit was one of the main points of our trip, but it seemed to be following us. It was as if it was taking on it’s own life-form, haunting our every meal. It freezes us, we stop chewing, and our eyes start darting around as though we were being interrogated.

We hit up the hotel bar last night around 10 ish so that we could ring in Brett’s acutal birthday at midnight. We tossed back a few drinks, most of which were free because people kept ordering beer and sending them back or the bartendar “accidently” mixed too much. We got a delicious oreo cookie desert thingy, although Brett would not let me put a candle on it and sing “You are the wind beneath my wings”. I’m still not sure why.

We are heading to duty free shortly and then headed back. We miss Cardin and people say ’eh’ constantly. You know how many times we’ve heard that sentence ender? Oh and my other favorite…when people ask you where you are from and then they are all “oh RoDchester, yea you can just jump on ‘the 90′ and be here in like a hour”. I cringe and want to slap them for saying ‘the 90′ like its an object that has emotions and a soul. At least the canunks call it Pop or I might have a small seizure when I listen to them talk.

There is more celebration planned, but for now we’re off.  Happy Birthday Brett.

Brett and I are actually in another country right now so I’ve been having my assistant publish them for me. And by assistant I mean Cardin. And by another country I mean Canada….it still counts lady.

Originally we were supposed to go to Las Vegas for a combined vacation. One that would celebrate his 30th and our 5 year anniversary all in one big she-bang. Who knows, we might have even renewed our vows at the same chapel Brittany Spears used not so long ago. Wouldn’t that just be a story for our grandchildren.

Alas, we found out in December, during one wicked snow storm, that my tires were shot to hell. Now, I probably could have replaced them with less expensive tires and we could have still gone on our trip, but, ever the responsible party, I nixed the trip and we bought me really good tires. Internet, I’m expecting these tires to be at my funeral we spent enough on them.

SO instead of getting to scream, Vegas, Baby! I bought Brett a big screen TV and we settled for a weekend getaway to Niagara Falls. Clearly not as cool and spicy as Vegas, but there is a casino and most importantly, it would not include us having to clean up puke after every meal from our dear, talented daughter.

In honor of the single, solarty day remaining in your twenties, I give you

29 reasons why I like growing old with you:

29) When we go out to dinner, you still pay. Even though it’s our money, it still makes me feel good.

28) You give me your coat when I’m cold or Cardin has puked on mine.

27) You let me use the remote.

26) You listen to me….usually.

25) You take care of me when I’m a little too tipsy for my own good.

24) You make me laugh.

23) You will forever be a toys r us kid and we will always fight over who looks at the Christmas toy book first.

22) You understand me, even when I don’t deserve it.

21) The changes you made in your career so we could have a better life.

20) I can’t sleep now unless you are snoring next to me.

19) You’ve given up your man cave for a playroom.

18) You step in front of us when you question someone’s motives.

17) You make me go to bed early when I’m sick because you know I won’t take care of myself.

16) You don’t complain about my cooking and you are willing to be my guinea pig.

15) You encourage my fetish for funny t-shirts.

14) You got me a cat, even though you are allergic to them

13) You purposefully try to talk to me when I’m falling asleep so I say weird things.

12) You won’t hold my hand unless we interlace fingers, otherwise you’ll feel like an old married couple.

11) You always ask me how my day at work was, even when you know it was crappy.

10) You always tell me to splurge even when it’s something we don’t really need.

9) The first station programmed in your car is country, even though you hate it.

8) You help me with math problems and you never miss a chance to tease me about it.

7) You pull the car into the garage so I don’t have to step outside in a snowbank or puddle of water.

6) You keep me up-to-date on techie news and I never have to worry about updating my iphone or itunes.

5) You’d rather pizza and pj’s than a night out on the town.

4) You’re stubborn and you challenge me, but we manage to makeup pretty well.

3) You dream about the future with me.

2) You are a wonderful father and I know with all my heart, that you would move mountains for Cardin.

And the number one reason why I like growing old together

1) CAUSE YOU HAVE TO DO IT BEFORE ME.

Here you will see a recreation of the mammals natural environment. One year for Christmas I bought him an ornament that said “Talk Nerdy to Me.”  I thought it was appropriate

Let me just go on a side tangent for 30 seconds about this snow shovel. One year, while I was still young, vibrant, and in college, my mom got both my brother and myself an emergency snow shovel for Christmas. Yay….that was a fun toy. We sorta looked at her like, yea….ok….you want me to carry this around in my trunk because ????  Sure lady, if it will appease you. Fast forward a few years and both of us have used that snow shovel in more than one situation. It was not one of my finer momments pulling that sucker out.

Anyways, the snow was so high that Brett left work and came home to snow blow the driveway instead of pickup Cardin. Later, when I arrived home with her, we went outside for a few minutes of playtime. This is what we ended up making.

OK……so, maybe I can’t lay claim to that. But we did manage to carve this out of the snow.

Oh and ps…..3 more days

Today I’m going to take you back to a time when life was far more carefree and we wore jean jackets.  Here some items to make you boys and girls feel really old.

You were born in the 80′s if:

1) You know what Pound Puppies are.
2) You can sing the rap to the “Fresh Prince of Belair.”
3) Two words: M.C. Hammer
4) If you ever watched “Fraggle Rock.”
5) You had plastic streamers on your handle bars or noisemakers in your tires
6) You watched “Duck Tales” and “TailSpin”
7) You wore a pony tail on the side of your head.
8) You can sing the song to “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”
9) You got super-excited when it was Oregon Trail Day in computer class at school.
10) You made your mom buy one of those clips that would hold your shirt in a knot on the side.
11) You played the game “M.A.S.H.” (Mansion, Apartment, Shelter, House) with friends at school.
12) You wore a Jordache jean jacket and you were proud of it.
13) L.A. Gear…..
14) You know the profound meaning of “WAX ON, WAX OFF.”
15) You wanted to be a Goonie.
16) You ever wore fluorescent clothing
17) You remember the CRAZE – then the BANNING – of slap bracelets.
18) You still get the urge to say “NOT” after every sentence.
19) You thought She-Ra and He-Man should hook up.
20) After you saw “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” you kept saying “I know you are, but what am I?”
21) You remember “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
22) You have ever played with a Skip-It.
23) You wore, like, EIGHT pairs of socks over tights with high-top Reeboks.
24) “Miss MARY MARY MACK, all dressed in BLACK BLACK BLACK”
25) You watched “Alf,” the lil’ furry brown alien from Melmac.
26) You knew all the characters’ names and all about their lives on “Saved By the Bell,” the ORIGINAL class.
27) You can recite the TGIF lineup from Friday nights.
28) You played “Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?”
29) You made paper fortune cookie games and predicted your future with them.
30) Lambchops song never ended.
31) You had a walkman.
32) You collected Trolls!
33) You used a trapper keeper at school.
34) You got scared of “Are you afraid of the Dark?”
35) You learned English from School House Rocks
36) And my favorite….You have started using phrases that your parents used to use.
“When I was younger”       “You know, back when…”         “Because I SAID so, that’s why”

Today is marker art day.

Last night Cardin and I were drawing with markers. Mind you, I draw like a 5th grader, but this is my meek representation Brett’s life, as depicted across a timeline.
(PS. This looked a hell of a lot better in color, but the scanner at work only accepts black and white. Damn Racists)

And this is what your little family looks like at 30. Note that I’ve correctly shown your Homer Simpson hair. Please disregard our pointy fingers, we are not witches.

Today is body art day. Last night, Cardin and I were doing some arts and crafts with stamps. She decided that I required a stamp on my hand or,  you know, the world would end. I obliged and gave her my hand. Then it got a little carried away.

She looked at me with sly eyes as she went up my arm and gave me another stamp. When I did not protest, she went a little farther, and farther, and……we ended up with new ink.

In homage to your 30th, I got new ink for you dear. Next time, lets go get matching butterfly’s.

I’ve vowed to provide him with a little song and dance each day he gets closer. Enjoy this love.

Today is Haiku day!

Just seven more days

Good news, I taught Cardin that

Daddy is Thirty!

1)      In the summer of 2010 I got a Facebook message from one of my high school class officers that informed us our 10 year reunion was approaching and we should start planning this event to make it spectacular.  Is it really possible that I’ve been out of Churchville for so long?

2)      That summer I also celebrated my 5 year anniversary at work. My boss even got me a cake to mark the occasion and I was happy to accept the 5 weeks of paid time off that accompanied my anniversary. Not many 5 year employees’ can say that.

3)      In November of 2010 Cardin had her birthday and we officially became parents to a terrible-twoer.  One who has an attitude and talks back to us. I’m so looking forward to the teenage years.

4)      Shortly before the holiday season of 2010 I went to a concert with some friends. That was sorta like I was reliving the awkward phase of middle school again. Except this time I wanted to go up to these kids and tell them that they were dressed WAY to inappropriately for their age. Most of these youngsters even had parents accompanying them to the concert and my friends and I noted that this would soon be us; embarrassing Cardin with our dance moves while she tried to melt into the wall.

5)      On January 1^st of 2011 my Dad officially retired from Eastman Kodak, a place he had worked at for some 33 years. The company will always hold special meaning to me as it was a place that allowed my parents to provide my brother and I with a solid educational foundation.

6)      This month we found out that I’m going to be an aunt for the first time. My brother and his wife are expecting their first child in September, and while I’m super excited to spoil my new niece or nephew, it has made me realize that I’ll gain a new title. Hopefully I can live up to being the cool aunt.

7)      In a couple weeks Brett will have his birthday and I’ll officially be married to a thirty-something guy. Albeit one that still plays video games and watches too much sports center.

8)      Brett and I will celebrate 5 years of marriage this May and holy hell, who could have even imagined that the day he proposed. I’m grateful that we still make each other laugh and that there are times where we still surprise each other.

9)      This fall we will also toast to 5 years in our home. It has really come a long way and I’m proud of the blood, sweat, and tears that went into making it a comfortable place for us to rest our heads. Plus, we get to stop paying mortgage insurance this year bitches!!!!

10)   And the kicker…In November I will hit the big TWO NINE. The last year of my twenties. Unreal. It’s hard to imagine that we’ll be thirty soon. Spending time at parent teacher conferences and soccer games. Pretty soon we will start to lose touch with the happenings of the younger crowd and one day I’ll say something stupid like “SILLY BANDS. YOU KIDS ARE GOING APE SHIT FOR RUBBER BANDS THAT LOOK LIKE ANIMALS?”

Perhaps it’s not all downhill after 30. Maybe it’s just over another peak; one that includes laughter, good friends, and wine. I could probably make that work.

On a side tangent, she is only 2 years old and she knows that when the nurse calls your name, you go into the “weigh in” room and stand proudly on the scale so that an accurate weight can be taken. She even knows to stand quietly with the thermometer under her armpit.  I’m not sure if it’s a relief that she is aware of this procedure or a concern that she’ s only 2 and has already figured out the logical steps to a doctor’s visit.  This may indicate overexposure. I fear she is developing a weak immune system like her momma.

We went and got a new round of medication, one that will hopefully not produce her to swell to the size of a hot air balloon this time. Last time Macy’s called and asked if she would be available as a balloon for an upcoming parade…somehow I just can’t justify this explotation. I mean, this blog is probably enough.

In between bursts of the seal barking cough, she is also extremely congested and you can tell that she has an unusual build-up of mucus sitting on her chest. I imagine they look like those little green blobs in the mucinex commercials. Last night she started one of her coughing fits and got really agitated. We were unable to calm her down so I picked her up and she was putting her head on my shoulder when I suddenly felt her give a violent lurch and the whole back of my shoulder got a healthy dose of phlegm and vomit. Listen lady it’s not every day that you get to lift a vomit soaked shirt over your head.

Since she was still not settling down, I decided to walk out our front entryway onto the stoop to see if the cool air would help her lungs at all. This seemed like an excellent idea until I paraded through the vomit that had hit the floor. Also, I would like to note that this whole time, Brett was trailing behind me, like a chicken with its head cut off, holding out a highchair tray, at the ready to catch more puke.

Wait….it gets better.

We finally got her settled down and she fell asleep a short time later. About 11:30 she woke up in another coughing fit and couldn’t calm herself down again. Since she was laying down and gagging, I thought it would be in her best interest to get into a vertical position. I picked her up and she put her head on my left shoulder. (Note that the shoulder position is of upmost importance here).  As I was rubbing her back trying to get her lungs to stop heaving in distress, the violent lurch reappeared and a sudden wet sensation began running down my left shoulder blade. OMG. STOP VOMITTING ON ME.   

This latest round of mucus ejection seemed to do the trick and she quickly settled down.  Being the kind hearted mother I am, I moved her head to my other shoulder so she would not have to lay in a trail of vomit. Mistake. Within seconds of switching her, the violent lurch reared its head again and now my right shoulder blade had a trail of phlegm decorating it.

Third time is a charm. Chalk that up as a night I got to lift to vomit filled shirts over my head. Yummy. You just can’t buy memories like that.

I worked from home for a few hours as I had a scheduled visit for my yearly checkup at the Gyno’s office. What a fun way to spend Valentines!!!  I sat in the waiting room at the doctor’s office for over an hour before I was even called into the exam room.  I mean really….that’s an excessive amount of foreplay people.

Beyond the wind, the temperature was hovering at a lovely 40 degrees yesterday afternoon, which compared to previous weeks, was like a small heat wave. Not so much the case when I left work as the temperature had dropped 20 degrees, the wind was picking up, and my car seemed central to a snow squall.

Brett has been working overtime so supermommy has been hauling to my parent’s house to get Cardin after work. I’m convinced that the small percentage of the time when I need to pick her up I’m stuck behind a 97 year old white hair driver. Listen Lady, why are you driving? You cannot see over the steering wheel and your blinker is still on.  You irritate me and when I honk your hearing aid is turned off.

Brett finished up his overtime hours later than expected but we were able to enjoy a very romantic dinner of hamburger helper; though I can’t say this concoction is much of an aphrodisiac. And then the seal barking began. And by seal barking I mean Cardin coughing with apparent croup like effect. It was though we were at the zoo. I almost started feeding her small sardines. Maybe I can teach her to balance a ball on her nose.

Poor kid can’t seem to catch a break. She’s been sick a couple times this year, once with an ear infection. Then we had the spotted leopard reaction due to the antibiotics. Now we are fighting off croup. The best part is that, for reasons unknown to medical science, the coughing gets worse at night. Perhaps it has werewolf like properties or is like the tide in that it’s mysteriously controlled by the moon. Either way I think that the next few nights will involve a lot of infomercials.

Anyways, the doctor prescribed the typical amoxicillin and we went on our merry way to the pharmacy to get the delicious bubble gum flavored medicine that would fix said “boo boo”. After a few days on the medicine she seemed to be on the mend and the congestion had almost disappeared. Since I ALWAYS listen to doctors advice, we needed to continue the remainder of the medication until it was gone.

That is until last night when she blew up like an oompa loompa. I was taking off her shirt to give her a bath and noticed that she had a bright red spot on her stomach. Upon further analysis she seemed to have red hive bumps all over her body; under her arms, her thighs, small ones on her face.

While I was inspecting her for other bumps Brett walked into the room and was all “OMG, WHAT HAPPENED TO HER KNEES?” Up to this point I hadn’t even looked at her knees as I was so focused on playing connect the dots. When I gazed downward, her knees were swollen to 3 times their normal size. Listen Lady, Cardin is tiny for her age, so swelling to even 1 time as large is a significant difference and makes her look disproportionate. It looked as though softballs were on her kneecaps they were so GINORMOUS. I touched them slightly and they were even warm and red.

Brett’s immediate reaction was to go to the emergency room. This is not a trait we have in common as my reaction to a stressful event is far more controlled and planned. I have clear emergency action plans in place for these types of situations. For instance, there was a time when we were rousted during the night with lights and sirens outside our bedroom window. Before Brett could even make it to the window to determine the emergency, I was fully dressed and ready to evacuate the house if needed. I like to think that my planned reactions can be attributed back to the frequency with which I am presented with bodily injury.

Instead of a trip to the ER, I called the pediatricians office and talked to the doctor on call. He explained that it was likely an allergic reaction to the amoxicillin she had been prescribed for the ear infection and that it usually takes around 72 hours for any rash to appear. He told me to administer Benadryl every 4 hours and that should resolve the rash.

The knees had reduced in size slightly this morning, but when I called to check on her this afternoon the rash is continuing to spread. It will likely get worse before it gets better. Until that time we will be staying in our house so that it doesn’t look like I kidnapped an oompa loompa from the set of Willy Wonka.

           Bought new TV for husbands 30^th birthday. YAY, points for me.

          Brought old TV downstairs to use. YAY, points for recycling.

          Setup old TV downstairs. BOO, broken.

          Brought old TV to repair shop. YAY, supporting local business

Yesterday I received the dreaded call about the TV’s prognosis. It was not good. One of the sockets on the TV was corroded plus the picture tube was broken. The repair man said that fixing the old TV would cost more than its actual worth at this point. FABULOUS.

He suggested that we treat ourselves to a new TV. Listen Lady, we treated ourselves and then the TV broke. That is the incorrect order of events. The old TV was not supposed to break, we were supposed to move it downstairs and get additional usage out of the behemoth.

2011 has proven to be the year that the TV stands in the Mayer household act like stubborn little children.
      TV stand A has been dismantled because the new TV we bought is too tall.
      TV stand B now sits alone and empty as the old TV will be laid to rest this weekend.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLlX85W–NI

I’m convinced that Cardin is so difficult to put to bed because of the amount of energy she has. She has so much energy in fact that not one, but two pediatricians have commented to me about how “ACTIVE” she is.  TWO.  And they only see her in 10 minute windows. I realize this increased “activity” was inevitable, given her DNA makeup, but HOLY HELL, JUST SETTLE DOWN FOR 5 MINUTES.  

When it comes time for her to actually go to sleep we first go through a massive fit because I have just devastated every facet of her world by informing her about bedtime. People are starving in china and living in tents in Haiti, but the world is unjust because Cardin must go to sleep. It seems legitimate.

After we’ve finished that emotional rollercoaster we must get her settled so she actually stops moving her extremities. This can take upward of 30 minutes. Just when you think that she has finally settled and will no longer move, she flinches and wakes herself up enough that the process begins anew. I’m convinced that she flinches on purpose; as though she feels herself falling asleep and she screams in her head “MUST MOVE LEG SO THAT BODY WAKES UP AND PARENTS NEVER REST”.

In the past we’ve attempted to let her fall asleep on her own. As I mentioned previously, this has resulted in frothing at the mouth and extra loads of laundry. We no longer let her get so upset that she regurgitates her dinner for us.

However, this past weekend I unearthed a new form of deception that has allowed us to leave her in the crib AND let her fall asleep by herself. While this sounds like a fairly easy task, I assure you, her forced gag reflex has made it one of the downfalls of our household. Oh and also, I am in no way forlorn about using deception on her; the more the merrier folks.

Perhaps it’s just that she is older now, perhaps Indiana Jones has finally stumbled upon the answer to the Holy Grail, or perhaps it’s just pure asinine luck. Listen Lady, I don’t really care, I just know that if I put her in bed and tell her I’m going to get one of her other toys she falls asleep by herself and I don’t have to clean up puke.

The old TV turns on and then within a minute or two it automatically shuts off. It worked one day, we moved it downstairs, and now it doesn’t work. Granted, it’s an old school CRT television, it’s only 6 years old and the behemoth was working perfect when it was upstairs in the living room. Even though I watched Brett move the TV downstairs and I visibly saw that he did not drop it, but I’m still blaming him for breaking the TV. Listen Lady, obviously the movement jiggled something important around!

I did a Google search on “Why the F%^& won’t my TV stay on” and this is what I found out:

“The power supply is shutting down to prevent further damage. Some component has shorted
 out or opened up, and the set is shutting down. Magnavox is no longer known for   
 manufacturing a dependable TV set. This model is known for having problems with the power
 supply. Once repaired it can fail at any time.”

Super. Stellar. Awesome. Fun. Groovy. Diesel. Mad Hot. Party in my Pants!!!!!!

I called a local repair shop and was told that if it was indeed the power supply it would likely cost around $100 to fix. Key word there…. “if”. An adventure for another day.

In attempt to busy her this past weekend, I pulled out all the stops and suggested we make some Valentine’s Day cards. That was all I had to say and she was at the table asking for the glue. Like a vulture to its prey. We started with some pop-up cards. And yes internet, I did Google instructions on how to make one.  Even with the instructions, it still took TWO attempts for me to get the popup to work the right way.

The decoration of the cards took all of 10 minutes, not including the 40 minutes it took for me to cut the damn thing out, so Cardin was still on a glue high once she had finished. In a flash of pure brilliance, I remembered that I had emptied the last egg out of the carton that morning and the empty carcass was sitting on the counter.

Listen Lady, I may or may not have Googled egg carton crafts. Let’s just say that some of the intricate shit that people make out of recycled cardboard cartons is beyond my level of comprehension. You are not getting a medal for making sweet looking crafts with your kids. I sincerely hope that the craft gets ripped apart mere seconds after you place it into your toddler’s grimy paws.   

I went for the easiest looking egg carton craft: the caterpillar. Simple, to the point, not much assembly involved.  Glued some eyes on, shoved some colored popsicle sticks in for antenna, and gave Cardin the markers to color in the rest of the body.

She started out nicely, giving the caterpillar some dots on his body. Then I made the ultimate mistake. I started cleaning up some of the scrap pieces of paper and I took my eyes off the 2 year old with the marker. A minute later, I turned around to find a quarter of the table covered in blue marker and Cardin shading in her knuckles.  Smurf like little fingers. FAIL.

She looked at me with n smile, as though nothing was amiss, and asked to pound. My guess is she thought the fist bump need a little extra pizzazz.

I work about 25 miles from where I live and I have the ability to work from home, so last night I determined that Cardin and I were going to have a self imposed snow day and I would just tele-commute. 

…then we got like 6 inches of snow…

FAIL.

Listen Lady, you would think a meteorologist would know the difference between 6 and 16 inches of snow. Since Cardin is nursing an ear infection and I have caught her head cold I decided we were still staying home; not spreading it to the remainder of the office would be appreciated.

I was able to work from home and be overly productive, while Cardin destroyed the living room. This is how she rolls when she needs to entertain herself.  It looks like Toys R Us exploded. Sometimes I think she has a certain quota of toys that she needs to play with each day as she’ll spend 20 minutes on one thing and then move to the next; all without picking up the first toy.

My payback for the destruction….we play “lets see who can pick up more toys. Mommy or Cardin?” I’m helping to develop a competitive spirit.

Normally when I spread the Lego’s out, I  keep a watchful eye of where I step. Listen Lady, I’ve stepped on my fair share of pointy Lego’s and have used explicit language in expressing this discomfort. Having only been exposed to Lego’s for a couple of months, Cardin is less in tune with the accuracy needed to avoid a mine field of Lego pieces that strewn the floor.

The other day I was cooking dinner and I heard her rustling around in the Lego box. As I went in the pantry to grab something, I peeked in on her really quick. Ya know….to make sure she hadn’t swallowed a yellow head or stray block. Cause that would be an unfortunate tripe to the ER. What I found instead was the following:

She had plopped her ass right on down into the Lego container. Clearly this was causing no discomfort and that can only be attributed to the extra padding provided by her diaper as she has a flat, non-padded ass just like her momma.

Such was the occurrence the other night when I pulled in the driveway and there was a small body standing on the couch, looking out the front window. Since it was dark out, it was fairly easy to see her silhouette and I immediately noticed that she was poking her knobby little fingers at the gel clings on the window.

I waved to her and rolled down my window. Internet, I’m aware that it’s the middle of winter and the windows on the house are not open, so there is no way that she is going to hear my instruction when it is voiced from the exterior of our abode. Nevertheless, I pulled out my best Listen Lady.  Unsurprisingly, this accomplished nothing.

Giving in to defeat, I parked the car and went inside. She immediately ran to greet me with a big smile and as I picked her up I asked her if she was playing with the gel clings. I got a prompt “Uh Huh”.  Then I asked her if she was supposed to be playing with the gel clings. To which I was awarded a “NOOOOPPPPPPPPE”.

I went about getting my coat and shoes off and never gave the gel clings a second thought…that is until the next morning when I lifted the shade and the window clings no longer said “love”. Now they proudly displayed “ove”. The misfit had taken the “L” and hidden it on me. I searched behind toys, in toys bins; I even did a cavity exam of the cat. No luck. In one last attempt I checked underneath the couch and sure enough, way in the back, there was the missing “L”. How she managed to get it back there is beyond me, perhaps it fell and bounced when she rudely ripped down my romantic display of affection.

Now, I can’t seem to perform this finger crossing act voluntarily, I actually need to position my fingers that way using my other hand. Not only does she perform this finger crossing without an assist, she holds it there for minutes and hours.  Listen Lady, once my fingers are in place I can’t seem to hold this awkward position for more than 10 seconds without my fingers rebutting this stance. IT’S UNNATURAL.

The thing that is so unnerving to me is that she’ll actually hold this claw-like position with her fingers while performing other daily tasks; eating, playing, sleeping, etc. If I stopped concentrating on maintaining the awkward finger position for more than 1 second I would lose it. Not her. She’ll sit there and eat a whole grilled cheese with her claw hands without even thinking about it.

Since she doesn’t understand what I mean when I’m all “stop doing that weird finger thing”, I’ve resorted to a new method of ingenuity.  Anytime I see her unconsciously holding her fingers in the claw formation, I ask her to pound. A little fist bump and the claw hand goes away.  Most of the time the claw goes away for a fleeting second and when it remerges my irrational fear comes rushing back that her hands may end up looking like this.

After hours of thought, I’ve uncovered why the misshapen hand seems to cause so much angst. Long ago, in my youth, I played Varsity Tennis. At the time, I was playing doubles with a very good friend of mine and we had just finished a match. I don’t remember if we won or lost, but I do remember that at the end of the match, we went to shake hands with the opposing team.  My doubles partner reached the opposing team first and shook their hands while I picked up the balls from the court. I quickly hustled over to show my sportsmanship and I vividly recall holding out my hand and receiving a death grip back from a girl who only had 2 fingers on her hand. TWO FINGERS. It looked as though she was constantly giving you the “hang 10” sign.

Being the good sportsman that I am, I was giving this girl direct eye contact when I shook her hand so you can imagine that I was taken aback when I could only feel two stumps and not a full hand shake. I looked down only to realize that this girl had played an ENTIRE MATCH against us holding her racket with these hang 10 fingers.

My doubles partner, who had also just discovered this tidbit about our opponent, turned around to watch my face as I shook the claw and realized what was going no. I was told that the look was priceless. I’m just going to take 2 seconds to say THANKS KOOP, that wasn’t awkward AT ALL!! We jogged off the court, busting at the seams in hysterics.

Come to think of it, it’s really not funny and the poor girl was probably bullied and harassed constantly through school. I’m sure we added to her discomfort. But HELL if I’m going to let my kid grow up to have a claw!

Here you will see the before image. Take note of the lighting and how the shading shows the contrast between the animals skin. Also shown is the giraffe’s sweeping, brown tail and firm stance. My tennis coach would be so proud of this dude for having his feet shoulder width apart.

And then you will see the after image. Again, take note of the giraffe’s taut and firmly positioned tail. Coincidently, the placement of the tail is at a near perfect height for maximum activity. Naughty.   

Maybe there should be ratings on children’s toys. Or maybe their parents should not be allowed to play with them.

Before the show started we bought the obligatory toy that is required for all children in attendance. Cardin selected a 12 inch plastic Minnie and Mickey at the price of twelve bucks a pop. Of course she insisted on having both and not just one character. I’m too much of a schmuck to say no. Forget Brett…he’d buy his little girl one of every toy.

Listen Lady, I really must commend the marketers for these shows, as they know all the tricks for swindling as much money out of poor, unsuspecting parents as possible. You see internet, they have at least a dozen souvenir stands. Not only have they increased the ease at which you can find a souvenir by covering more surface area, but they have also increased your exposure to them. And of course every time your kid walks by a different stand they are attracted to the overstimulation of sound and light and thus beg for another toy. One which, more than likely, be destroyed within a few days.

We arrived at our seats and were pleasantly surprised to find that we had a few rows of adequate spacing. Happy that nobody was going to be all up in my buisnazzz, I spread out our belongings across a few seats. The show began within a few minutes and immediately Cardin was in a trance. A bomb could have gone off at the other end of the arena and her stare wouldn’t have budged.

After a few minutes the characters from the Lion King started to skate out and do a little rendition of “I’m gonna be a mighty King”. Lion King is one of her favorite movies and we have watched it about 10 zillion times. She has her own language when referring to the characters:
lions are “roarssss”
timon is “moan”
Zazu is “bird”
Elephants are “PHWWAAUUUAAHHH”
Monkeys are “bobo’s”

After every song, the arena would burst into a clapping fit and Cardin would catch on. This continued and each time the arena applauded for the performers she would look at Brett or I and scream, “CLAP”. And not in a subtle way, more like a Gestapo swinging a sledgehammer to your head sort of way. It became such a joke that we began to purposefully not clap just to see her reaction. Is it horrible that I provoke my child in such a way? Probably, but I’m ok with it because I know there will be a time when she tries to elicit a reaction out of me.

By the end of the night, the three action figures were worn out.

With disappointment, we let go of the Vegas idea. This required me to think of another gift that wasn’t boring in stature, significantly overpriced, and also worthy of a 30^th birthday. Brett has wanted a big screen HDTV for quite some time and I have refused such a purchase, telling him that we cannot get a new one until the one downstairs bites the dust. Noting that the TV cannot “accidently” fall off the stand. I finally broke down and decided that the 10 year old TV needs to be replaced and this would suffice as a 30^th birthday gift.

That is….until we brought the thing home. See this is the TV we bought a 47 inch LG HDTV.

Listen Lady, it doesn’t look that large in the store when you’re standing there comparing their sizes; sort of like a guy’s locker room. WHAT? Like that’s never happened in a locker room? Rubbish.

Once we got the TV home, we figured out that it was going to be too wide for our TV stand. You see internet, our TV stand is more or less like a cabinet. It looks very similar to this…with shelves on either side and a top that spans that length of the cabinet. With a burst of ingenuity, I suggested we take out the shelves completely as we could more than easily fit the TV into the cabinet and would have space, width wise.

Dismantle step #1- remove shelves from a pre-constructed TV cabinet. Not as easy as one might imagine. Choice words were used.

PERFECT. Except for one little thing… the TV still didn’t fit because it was too tall when the stand was in place. REALLY TV?  Do you require that extra inch cause that’s all I need here. Apparently balancing the TV in place without use of the stand was not an option.

Dismantle step #2- remove the top of the pre-constructed TV cabinet. This was far easier, especially since we had already removed the shelves. Luckily the sides of the cabinet do not depend on structural support from the top.

Currently, the TV is sitting in this cabinet, but it has no top. We’re not sure what to do now. Buy a new stand, keep the current but dismantled stand, or Macqyver something together so the cabinet doesn’t look like a teenager going through their awkward phase.

Listen Lady, we’ve made some modifications to the rules. Instead of pounding on the hippo with your hand, you use your head. This will help increase massive blood flow to the brain.

Benefits of this include: elation from excessive oxygen consumption and freedom of extremities. 
Side effects include but are not limited to: headache, concussion, facial scaring, optical damage, hair disasters.

Ready…..And Go

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPPgn_Zo6uI

You see internet, there is no longer joy and wonder involved in getting the mail. No more pomp and circumstance. In fact, only elevated blood pressure is associated with task as the bills outweigh the magazines and cards. More often than not it seems that the bills are incorrect and I must call and complain to some manager or another in order to straighten out the financial inconsistency.

And then we had the topper of all bills last week. The gas and electric bill for the usage we had in December. Typically we expect the bill to be between $150-$200 around this time of year; average consumption for a cold month, plus you throw in the fact that the Christmas lights were on.

You could imagine how far my mouth fell when I opened the bill and read $592.68. Let me just spell that number out for you so you can understand the brevity of the situation. FIVE HUNDRED NINETY TWO DOLLARS and SIXTY EIGHT CENTS.  Listen Lady, there are just no words for me to describe the horror that appeared on my face.  A cold sweat broke out on my brow as I went to show Brett the disaster. His reaction was, unsurprisingly, similar to mine. The only words we could find were….”But, how?”

About a week before we got the December bill, I had read the meter and submitted the readings, but the meter had not been read since July. Apparently the estimates that the gas company was using for the previous 6 months were COMPELTY WRONG and now we get to play makeup.  FML. That and our apparent increased usage has been remedied with new, strict guidelines. They are as follows:

1) we now light the house by candle

2) we all take a bath with the same water, which is warmed outside, over the fire

3) we heat the house with a fire pit that was previously used for Bonfires

I’ll be selling a kidney to pay for this bill. Bidding begins now. If the next bill is anything similar than we’ll be listing our house on Nothnagle and moving into a nice boxed community, complete with meth addicts and hookers.

Even still, I was hesitant. We’ve had “incidents” of the bodily fluid type at Olive Garden before and I was in no mood for an encore. My dad, who is referred to as POPPA, assured me it would be fine. LIAR. EAT YOUR WORDS. Last time I ever listen to his advice.

As we settled into the booth, I got the booster seat ready for my daughter. See….we bring our own as it has a tray you can attach to the front. This has nothing to do with my OCD about sanitation. We bring our own for puke catching purposes as the tray provides an adequate splash zone area.  This was vital as before our food had even arrived we had experienced not one, but two of Cardin’s deadly man burps. TWO.

I refer to them as man burps because they are so violently loud you would think that a 45 year old, beer drinker was sitting at your side, when in fact it’s just a toddler. Listen Lady, I’m certain you still don’t appreciate the velocity at which these burps are released. Let me assure you, people at other tables hear them in noisy restaurants and turn their heads. In fact the waiter just happened to be asking us a question when, from the depths of her soul Cardin released the second man burp. He was so caught off guard, he actually stopped mid-sentence and said “WHOA”.

I figure if this trend continues, my hair will have turned completely gray from the anxiety these outbursts cause.  When they occur you freeze, as though you were a deer in headlights, just waiting to be pummeled by the oncoming car.

We got our food and Cardin was not really interested in eating her spaghetti, though I did force some in her mouth when she entered a trance-like state watching Dora. Just as she was finishing her lunch, she let roar with another of the deadly man burps. Inevitably, the burp was followed by the resurgence of her spaghetti and cantaloupe. THIS IS WHY I BRING A BOOSTER SEAT TO RESTAURANTS.

I was able to salvage Cardin’s clothes, but the tray was overflowing. Since my dad claimed that we would have no incidents at lunch, his punishment was to remove the tray of vomit and carry it through the restaurant so that it could be disposed of in the restroom. We commonly refer to this as the walk of shame.

As a side, before I left for lunch, I was wearing two shirts; a t-shirt and a sweater. I decided, for safety purposes, to remove the sweater and just attend lunch with the t-shirt. My hunch was right as I was unable to avoid the splash zone this time around. Good thing I’m a pessimist and have no faith in my daughter’s ability to have one calm, upchuck free restaurant meal.

At the end of the saga I was more than ready to leave Olive Garden and head for more barren land. I informed my offspring that we will not be going out to a public venue again until she reaches the age of 10.

This past weekend we had a couple friends over for dinner. Nothing fancy, just hanging out. Around 9 pm I gave my daughter a quick bath and put her into her clean ‘jammies, figuring she would go to sleep shortly and then the adults could have a conversation that did not require bleeping out words and phrases.

After bath time we were all sitting around the kitchen table and I pulled out some snacks.  Pretzels and dip; staple snack food for any shindig, unless my kid is involved. I gave my daughter a couple of pretzel sticks to chew on. Mind you, these were not pretzel rods, they were tiny sticks; thinner than a number 2 pencil.

MISTAKE

You see, my child cannot eat anything unless it is cut into microscopic pieces. In fact when Brett or I cut up food for her to eat, we pull out a microscope and actually slice under the lens. Really! I’m not even kidding. Its 8^th grade science at work.  I asked Santa for an atomic laser beam for Christmas so that I could easily slice through food at the particle level.

Inevitably, Cardin choked on the 2^nd pretzel stick and started to throw up. Mind you, this is a typical occurrence at our house. I actually walk around now with a bucket hanging from my belt loop so that I’m always at the ready. Think like a boyscout; Be Prepared. We’ve adapted to this new lifestyle and are now pretty much superior athletes at puke catching. (Coming to an arena near you in the summer of 2012) Listen Lady, we will use whatever material or article of clothing that is within quickest reach to try and catch puke. Granted, this is gross, but much preferred over picking up chunky, undigested puke from the floor or carpet.

As such, the closet object was the dip container. Cardin was sitting across the table and when the gag started, Brett lunged forward, hurling the dip container underneath her mouth. It was not unlike watching a curling match on TV. Luckily he was able to catch the majority of the puke, but then the container started to fill to the brim….

DANGER. WILL ROBINSON. DANGER

I grabbed the kitchen towel and we strategically maneuvered the removal of the dip container and the replacement towel. After a minute it seemed as though the storm had quelled, so I picked up Cardin, trying to settle the tears, and was attempting to walk her into the bedroom to change her ‘jammies when round two of the violent upchuck began. Immediately I ran back to the kitchen and levitated Cardin over the linoleum floor, as that is easier to clean than berber carpet.

All the while, we had been screwing around with our IPhones and had Tom the Talking Cat on. For those unfamiliar with the app, the cat records everything he hears and then plays it back at an incredibly high, annoying pitch. Funny….except in a time of dire need.

So, there I am…levitating a screaming child over the floor and trying to avoid the splatter of puke. At the same time the other three adults in the room are all laughing in hysterics watching this surreal scene, while Tom the cat plays back the screaming/laughing antics in an audible sound that only dogs should be able to hear.

All in all….just a typical night at the Mayer house.

And now the favor has been returned in full….

Recently my grandpa has been feeling short of breath and his blood pressure has been quite high. Doctors have done testing, but so far, cannot find cause for the high blood pressure. They’ve put him on medication to reduce the pressure and that has helped, but they have told him that, even with medication, physical activity will be strenuous for his heart and should really be avoided. Understandably this is not liberating news for a man who walks 4 miles a day and takes great pride in maintaining his yard.

In attempt to help him this winter, his kids each chipped in to hire someone to plow his driveway. Typically when you contract with a plow, there are snow requirements that must be met before the plow will actually come. For example, snowfall must exceed three inches before it is necessary to remove snow.

This past weekend we had a small snowfall of about 2 inches. Listen Lady, this would no doubt shut down Atlanta or Washington, D.C, but we live in Rochester; two FEET of snow will not shut our city down.  Since it was just a light dusting, the snowplow did not come and plow my grandfather’s driveway. Personally, I’d rather trudge through 2 inches of snow then take the time to shovel the driveway in the bitter cold. This is, unfortunately, not the case for grandpa.

Even though the doctor had told him physical exertion would not be helpful to his current condition, he was ready to jump right behind his snow blower.  Luckily my grandma had her wits about her this time and convinced him otherwise. Or so she thought….he waited until she had left for church before he cleared the snow from the driveway. Oh how the other shoe drops.

The morale of the story is: Wait until your other counterpart leaves to perform incredibly dangerous mission.

My childhood was filled with enough Kool-Aid to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool. I don’t care how old I get; I will always love Kool-Aid. Even now, whenever I go to my parent’s house, there is a pitcher full of Kool-Aid awaiting my sweet lips. It is a universal drink folks and it is age agnostic.

It wasn’t so much the presence of the grape Kool-Aid that titillated me.  I’ve seen the pre-mixed containers of grape Kool-Aid and there are the old school do-it-yourself paper packets where you must add the sugar (who has time for all that hullabaloo?) What I had never laid my eyes on before was grape Kool-Aid Singles; ready to be dumped right into a bottle of cold, refreshing water. Kool-Aid on the go! GENIUS!! It’s like a flask for kids.

Now, I’ve been exposed to the single packets before, they are not a new concept to my tiny brain; but  grape Kool-Aid is regarded as one of the untouchables in the caste system. It’s rarely touted as one of the premiere Kool-Aid flavors. Listen Lady, you never see The Kool-Aid man in a nice hue of purple, he’s always shown as a smiling pitcher full of cherry. Apparently the diversity at Kraft Foods does not include a concord purple and that is disheartening.

For me to find grape Kool-Aid singles was a thing of beauty.  Without question I put the box into my cart. When I got home the first words out of mouth were, “I FOUND THE GREATEST THING EVER!” My husband’s response was, of course, “Oh God.” He doesn’t quite appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of this find.

I brought the single packets to work. And I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that 5 out of the 12 packets have already disappeared today. Just as a side, that’s just shy of 85 oz of grape Kool-Aid……I think I need to pee.

Why can’t my theory ever work?????

The cracks continued on a decline and were now covering the entire middle portion of the bathroom ceiling. Unfortunately, there was no more ignoring the problem.  My imagination went running with the potential problems.

There was the normal…water damage or too much moisture.

And also the extreme…a small midget clown had been living in my attic and finally died and now his rotting body was soaking through my bathroom ceiling. How much would it cost to remove this? And would it mess with my blown in insulation. The crap that swirls in my head on a regular basis would astound you.

Since our house was built in ’65 the ceilings are not drywall, they are plaster. Let me take you on a small tangent about plaster. About 4.5 years ago when we moved into our new house we ripped down a butt load of wallpaper. And by butt load I mean, if I ever met the man who invented wallpaper he would be privy to a swift kick in the nuts.  Our friends came over one night to “help’ us paint and tear down wallpaper.  One of these friends got a little carried away with ripping and scraping and a huge section of plaster, approximately the size of Texas, was lying on my newly refinished hardwood floor. Deep breaths were required.

Since we’ve had previous experience with destroyed plaster and the time and skill necessary to repair said destruction, there was no way I was jumping on the “fix it yourself bandwagon” for this one.  We called a drywaller we had used previously for his opinion on fixing the cracks. His suggestion was to just scrap down to the plaster and then he could skim it with some drywall mud a few times. Once that was done and sanded to the smoothness of a baby’s ass cheek we could doll it up with some fresh paint.

Mr. Drywall came yesterday to remove the cracked plaster and skim the first coat of drywall plaster. Halfway through the job he asked for a broom and dustpan to pick up some of the pieces. When he left he handed me a broken picture frame that he had knocked down and told me the damage was worse than expected on the ceiling and he would have to come back for another coat. Listen Lady, for those of you, who do not own homes, heed this piece of advice. No improvement project is ever simple. Something will inevitably go wrong and more money will be needed than initially anticipated.

To counteract this I brought some little barrettes to put in her hair. I’m not really sold on the idea and, personally, I would not wear these little fairy wings so I can’t really blame her for the reaction that they elicited. It was not unlike trying to wrestle a cougar.The first morning I went to put the barrettes in her hair she saw me coming and immediately turned on the teenager attitude, “NO. ME!” (really looking forward to seeing that attitude more often). She looked at the little barrette but was not impressed at it provided no entertainment to her. However, once she realized that I wanted to place the barrettes in her hair and that they had to maintain position there, the referee appeared from behind the dresser and screamed “ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE”?

The barrette was hurled out of her tiny hand and I was so caught off guard that I ducked as though I was dodging a solid punch to the face. Listen Lady, do I really need to use a bob and weave technique to put barrettes in her hair? I collected myself and attempted with another barrette. That’s when the screaming started. Followed quickly by tears and hyperventilating. Last but not least came the throw up gag.  Really kid? This is a little overdramatic now. I’m not asking you to go on Toddlers and Tiaras here….it’s just a freaking barrette.

Had it been summer and my doors and windows opened I’m sure one of my neighbors would have called child protective services.

Let’s just leave it at this….mommy was defeated that day.

The future is near. 

Now if I can just get her to say “Listen Lady”….

-Read more books
-Obtain a midget who will become my personal assistant
-Blog more
-Learn Karate and earn the nickname “Crazy Ninja”

I’m going to bank on only 50% of these resolutions actually being achieved. Hey…low expectations, low disappointment come December 31. Besides, I’m done with college; I don’t need to overachieve now.

So far, 2011 has started out with a BANG. Three days in and I’ve already been put on antibiotics. And it’s not for the rash in my no-no place; though that is looking skeptical these days. The antibiotics are for a gum infection. You see, after Christmas I had this brilliant idea to go on a movie date with my husband. No having to tip toe through the living room littered in toys, no rampaging toddler, no cleaning of puke. A few hours for just the two of us.

We typically go to the movies NEVER and on the rare occasion we do go we fork over the ridiculous amount of money for popped air. Bad decision. A couple days later I noticed that my tooth was starting to hurt and I thought perhaps I might have jabbed it too hard with my violent tooth brushing skills. A couple days after that and I noticed that my gum was starting to swell. I chalked it up to some serious inflammation. A couple days after that, I touched the gum and it exploded with blood and yellow pus. FAIL.

Giving in to defeat, I went to the dentist ON MY DAY OFF and experienced the worst pain of my life; and I’ve given birth internet. I had a piece of the celebratory popcorn shell stuck under my gum and it had caused an infection.

The dentist, or as I will refer to him thus forward, the torturer, started by giving me two shots of Novocain right into the gum tissue. Torturer claimed I would feel a little pinch. You sit on a thrown of lies! Listen Lady, let’s stick that needle into your wee-wee and see if it’s just a little pinch. Once I was sufficiently novocained up, or so I thought, torturer started with his pointy little pick like tool to get rid of the popcorn shell. Funny thing about Novocain though…. it doesn’t completely numb all feeling. I know this as the pick like tool was the origin of so much pain that it was causing me to clench the chair handles so tightly that my entire body was levitating. No joke. It was like one of those magic tricks where they lay the assistant on a board and then remove it and the person levitates in mid-air. That was me, all magicians assistant in the dentist chair.

Once the popcorn shell had been removed and torturer had flushed the open area with salt water (yummy), he needed to cauterize the area to stop the bleeding. Just to note, you can feel burning flesh even when you have two shots of Novocain.

I left in sufficiently more pain then when I started. Except now half my face was numb so I looked like a talking stroke victim. Happy New Year from the Listen Lady Crew.

 Once she had killed the elders she went for the young. All the small stuffed animals were sent to the plastic death chamber. I like to refer to it as communal living or perhaps massive prison overcrowding. Listen Lady, all I know is that I would not want to be one of her toys; she is not gentile. Look at that poor, pink quacker down there. Talk about getting shit on.

And then this happened…….

It got me thinking. Cardin’s synapses aren’t fully formed yet, so psychologically she’ll never be able to remember the first two years of her life and all the times I got dressed in front of her. Plus, let’s be realistic lady, I gave birth to her and breastfed her…if that wasn’t traumatic then I doubt throwing a shirt on in front of her is going to do any more damage. Listen Lady it’s times like this, when ice cream cones get turned into boobies that make me wonder if I’m damaging my daughters psyche.

I guess I should be thankful she didn’t take the two small cherries and put them in the baby’s crotch.

So….in between making phone calls to exterminators, I called my mother and asked if she would mind picking up our very curious toddler who wanted to roll around with the ants like a pig in the mud and our cat, Ninja, who could potentially die if he suddenly got jumped by a rogue group of fire ants. Probably rebellious teenage ones, with crowbars and face paint.  I digress.  Luckily my mother was not busy and agreed to come over and pick up these little packages of mischief.

BUT WAIT….it gets better. I was about to put Ninja into his travel carrier when my husband suggested that we give him a bath. WTF MATE, DO YOU HAVE IT OUT FOR ME? A cat in water? I have a better idea, let’s cut the tips of my fingers off and call it a day. I’ll even let you nickname me stubs from now on. His reasoning was this; my parents also have a cat and what if one of the fire ants decided to be like a pirate stowaway on Ninja and grab on to his fur for dear life, travel to my parent’s house, and build a brand new colony there. DEVIOUS. My husband often tells me I have a wild imagination, but he concocted this story himself.

We ended up giving Ninja a bath. Then he looked like a rat, but he was fire ant free. My mom picked up both animals and we continued on our search for an exterminator. We finally came to the conclusion that nobody was coming to help us resolve the ants for that day and made an appointment for Monday afternoon.  For the next two days I stood guard with my hand vac and would suck up any dastardly ant I saw.

My husband had setup the appointment with the exterminator and had discussed the methods that he was going to use to get rid of the ants so I really wasn’t aware until after the fact and Whoa. Originally my philosophy was “I don’t care if you need to use an atom bomb, get rid of them” but that was sorta based on emotion. I think the exterminator sort of took that literally and ran. When we described the ant infestation to him, what the ants were after, how small they were, and showed him pictures, he immediately informed us they were not in fact fire ants, but instead pharaoh ants; commonly called sugar ants also and they are harmless. GOOD F’IN THING I GAVE THE CAT A BATH.

When I got home from work on Monday I arrived to papers that described what the exterminator had used. Listen Lady, you could kind of call it overkill. On the inside he put down a pesticide gel in the corners and cracks and then he put down peanut butter scented bait traps all over the house.  On the outside he put down a granular pesticide all over the base of the foundation and he then sprayed another pesticide two feet up on the house.

Don’t get me wrong, we certainly got a lot for the price, but remember the police academy movies, where all the cadets used revolvers and then Tackleberry pulls out like an AK-47 and mows everyone down? That’s sort of how I felt about this exterminator. One of the pesticides the guy put down is so strong that he had to give us a paper that we have to keep in case the State Health Department were to come to our House so we could prove that we didn’t trade one of Brett’s kidneys on the black market for it.

The good news is that we haven’t seen a single ant in our house since this weekend. I think my “atom bomb” reference made an impact. So if anyone needs a reference for an exterminator, I know a good one.

See, we have this cat. His name is ninja and I keep his food bowl in the kitchen. And I bent down on Saturday morning to pick it up so I could clean underneath it (I’m not one of the lazy kids who just mops around things, mom).  Except when I picked it up, I noticed hundreds and hundreds of tiny, super small little ants crawling all over the food dish and eating the cat food. Because that is what we serve at THE RESORT. USDA certified, grade A Cat food. These ants were the size of a pencil tip at most and they were everywhere on that food dish…and there was a nice trail…right back to the wall leading outside.

Immediately I raised my fist to the sky and cursed myself for canceling that exterminator.

With all the fist pumping, everyone in the house came running to see what was going on; can’t have a crisis without the whole family. Of course the toddler tried to cram herself between my legs so she could get a better view, and in doing plastered herself to the wall and floor where all the ants were crawling. LISTEN LADY, how about for 5 seconds your ADD kicks in and you go stare at that shiny object while mommy tries to vacuum the hundreds of ants crawling on the kitchen floor. K. Thx.

Instinctively, the cat’s food and water dish went immediately into the garbage because I will not wash things that have live insects crawling on them. It’s just one of my pet peeves. Ya know…like don’t re-wear your underwear, peeing in the shower is only allowed when showering alone (kidding), don’t wash items that have live insects. Simple really. I’d rather spend the five bucks and buy new bowls.

We vacuumed all the ants and sprayed vinegar and water to try and diffuse them. Between the two of us we then spent at least the next hour calling exterminators trying to see if someone was available to come that day. FAIL. Being that it was nearly 2pm on Saturday, most of the companies were closed, booked, or could only make appointments for Monday. Meaning I would have to suffer through 2 more days of THE RESORT. Go get your sex on somewhere other than my kitchen!!!!

We had no luck in getting any exterminator to come to the house and take care of our infestation on Saturday. Though we were able to speak with one ultimately, unhelpful pest control agent. He informed us that for the past two weeks we have been having a heat wave (NO SHIT SHERLOCK) and it drives the ants to look for food and water sources outside their natural environment; like inside my kitchen; where I cook my family’s food; where my kid crawls around and plays; where my cat eats. And where I walk barefoot and expect not to step on crunchy little insects.  Nothing has occurred in my house the last couple weeks except to have an air conditioning unit run nonstop as I DETEST the heat and humidity. Even more than I detest clowns. Put it this way… I would be willing to sit through a lap dance given by a clown if it meant I could be in air conditioning. Since the A/C has been on constantly the ants thought they would be able to find a cool spot to look for food and water. AWESOME.

As for the ants….I guess that’s for the last part of the trilogy.

Now that this is cleared up…Italians actually convert the garage to a living space. They lay down the ugly green indoor/outdoor carpet that looks like grass; the kind that sends you reeling back to the days of the Brady Bunch where Marsha was screaming “my nose, my nose”.  Screens go up on the garage doors so that a cross breeze can go through.

Creating this garage was necessary because 1) I’m a pasty white noodle and 2) I like to sit, eat, and talk but strongly protest any and all physical activity unless it involves obsessive cleaning. Mr. Clean ain’t got shit on me. Normally, Italian garages contain an entire dining room and living room set. We decided to be a little more practical; be it that we have a toddler who can bench press her body weight and turn ours into more of a toy room. Don’t worry though; I did still sneak a patio table in so we can dine out there (no plastic fruit though).

In all, it took a weekend to put it together. My daughter loves to play out there. It’s a great place to relax and let her enjoy outside, but keep her out of the blazing sun because, like me, she’s a white noodle. We have a great breeze that goes through and the screens serve out Operation Contain Child.

Things were going along just swimmingly with the garage for about two months until one weekend in May. Listen Lady, Ant apocalypse had hit. I was going out to water my garden when I collided with a wall of ants that were covering the back door of the garage. They had exploded in one night; from nothing to crawling all over a quarter of the garage and up the walls. There were even winged ants that were flying all over the garage like little suicide bombers. Mind you, it was 7:30 am on a Saturday so this was not the most pleasant of experiences to wake up too.

I called Brett so he could help me clean up this lovely ant disaster. We used the wet/dry vac and sucked up all the ants we could. In the process we noticed that there were some holes in the foundation of the garage where the ants were just pouring out of. It was almost baffling to see them try to escape towards me, instead of retreating inward. Haven’t you learned anything from watching war movies!!!!! Whatever dude. Choose the vacuum or the ant spray.

After a solid hour of hovering, cleaning toys, and shifting through sand we thought we were ant free. We had sprayed hoards of ant spray all over the inside and outside of the garage. Until the next morning; when we did the same thing all over again. This time, we took foam in a can and filled the holes in the foundation. Sprayed the garage and the foundation again. Vacuumed again. Cleaned all the toys. AGAIN. No more ants.

 UNTIL THE NEXT MORNING;WHEN THE ANTS WERE STILL ALIVE AND CRAWLING ALL OVER THE GARAGE AGAIN. I was ready to go for the atom bomb for ants at this point. Clearly we had a nest and the queen ant was having her way with me. I would SO pull her hair if we were in a fight. Since I had to go to work, I did not have time to clean and vacuum, so I just sprayed the devil ants and walked out of the garage screaming like a crazy woman. I believe it was something to the effect of “devil be gone, I’m calling in the big guns now boys”. The elderly neighbor that rides his bike around may have given me a strange look and then flashed me his dentures. Sexy.

We were running on Day 3 of Ant apocalypse and clearly our methods were not working. I made an appointment with an exterminator to have to the ants sprayed the next afternoon. 

Day 4 of the Ant apocalypse had arrived. The exterminator was scheduled to arrive at 2:00 pm. I woke in the morning and went to view the overnight damage to the garage. But alas…..not a single ant could be found in our lovely Italian garage, full of clean toddler toys. WHAT?!? Had I won? Did I defeat the queen? Was this a mind game she was playing with me after my threat?

I ended up canceling the exterminator for that day. And by golly was that a mistake….

6:30 am- Snooze alarm
6:45 am- FINE. I’ll get up already
6:46 am- Put on jeans and a semi decent t-shirt. Meaning I can’t wear the t-shirt that shows a toaster saying “I want you inside me” to the piece of toast
6:50 am- Pee. Wash face. Comb Hair. Brush teeth. Put in Contacts. Slap Hubby in the butt for good measure.
6:57 am- Wake up kid. Change a diaper full of wiz. Dress her in clothes that appear to match. Good enough.
7:17 am-Lock house and leave for the day
7:30 am- Drop off kid at mom’s house. Accept slimy kiss and a half-ass wave as my farewell. Maybe someday she’ll miss me?
8:15 am- Arrive at work after 30 minutes of traffic and construction.
9:30 am- Attend meeting
10:16 am- Note that while I’m staring at my computer my eyes seem slightly blurry. Huh. Chalk it up to tiredness.
12:07 pm- Call mom. Check on kid. No puke so far today. Success. Still no talking. Fail.
1:15 pm- Eyes are still really blurry. What the hell. Give eyes good rub down. Helps a little.
2:30 pm-IM hubby that my eyes are really blurry. Can’t figure out why. Starting to get bothersome.
3:00 pm- READ THAT AGAIN. 3 pm. That’s nearly 9 hours after I put contacts in that I finally figured out that I put them in the wrong eyes and they have been that way ALL DAY LONG.

N-I-N-E –H-O-U-R-S.

I drove all the way to work like that.

 Listen lady, you would think something would have tipped me off.

Ultimate Fail

Once my husband and I sat down to eat the munchkin had finished so we pulled out some toys, books, and Jerry the jester we keep stored away in the closet under the stairs. Shhh….don’t tell ICE. None of this was amusing to her and her only desire was to sit on my lap while I ate. I relinquished and gave in. No problem. I can cut chicken one handed; I’ll use the laser beams that come out of my eyes. Cause I’m an f’in superhero. I also crap gold bricks.

Obviously my plate of food looked mighty enticing to her grubby little fingers. So enticing that he digits roamed through my veggies and pranced along my chicken. She’s a big fan of corn, so she stared picking that out and was eating that as she sat with me. Fine, I CAN COMPROMISE, you eat the corn, I’ll eat the rest of the food. Just avoid the laser beams.  Except that one time, at band camp, when she picked up a carrot and her daddy said “oh, Cardin, just eat the carrot” while I had a mouthful of chicken and before I could scream “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” she had gagged and was puking on me.

Brett denies that this is his fault. Let’s review:

1)      Child had just eaten.

2)      Child has extremely sensitive gag reflex

3)      Child was sitting on me with no bib

4)      Brett instructed child to eat a large sized carrot

I’ll let you decide Internet.

Through all my trickery, I commend and praise them for teaching me how to manage my money. Yes, there is the occasional impulse buy, like that 56 inch flat screen LCD TV that is in the back of my Truck that I’ve neglected to tell my husband about (maybe if he reads my blog I’d be more inclined to go buy that TV, this will be a test to see if he is actually reading). For the most part, I’m very conservative with my money. I attribute most of this to my father who has always been very contentious of his money and imparted this trait to me.

My husband and I have a good savings account and we’ve been smart enough to put some money away into certificates so that the interest can grow on the money. Recently, one of our certificates that we have had in the bank for the past 17 months is maturing. Today we spent the morning figuring out how much we had made in interest over the past 17 months. It was as if I was a cartoon character and my eyes had dollars signs in them….until we figured out that we’d only made a whopping $45 bucks and some measly change.  Like a gangsta I tell ya.

Now yea….$45 is better than nothing. Better in my pocket than in yours, internet. But what happens when we break it down so we have a more reasonable figure. I just piled away a bunch of money that I had no access to for 17 months so that bank could lend it out to someone else and, in return, each month I got $2.67 for my investment. WTF. Listen lady, I could have found that in change in the mall parking lot if I looked hard enough.  I could have sat on the side of the street with an “I’m homeless” sign for 1 day and made $2.67.

I’m pretty sure we got screwed over on this deal.  I’m off to the mall parking lot to find me some change.

Huh…and we WONDER why both my grandparents are going deaf. Their children keep trying to get them to get hearing aids. HELLO. ANYBODY HOME? They like being deaf. After 80 years of tirades I’d want some silence too.

Anyways…back to the yelling. Towards the beginning of this year my 83 year old Aunt had a nasty fall down the stairs and broke her ankle in 3 places. She’s better now, but it was a long road to recovery as it required surgery with a plate, numerous screws, and physical therapy. There was nobody home when my aunt fell, but luckily she was on the phone and was able to yell for help. Then the masses showed up. First my grandparents appeared, then my mother, my other aunt, and of course some EMT’s all arrived to try to assist.

By this point, my aunt’s ankle has begun to swell and bruise. Not completely unusual for such an injury. The EMT’s begin to assess her injury and my grandfather, whose only intent is to help, tries to ask my Aunt a question. Harmful….No? Not to the average person. Listen Lady, this signals the beginning of the end; it commences the argument that qualifies our family for a hit reality show.

Grandpa tries to help Aunt Mary:
Grandpa: “Mary, let me help you.”

But Aunt Mary yells at Grandpa:
Aunt Mary: “I DON’T NEED YOUR HELP”

So Grandma yells at Aunt Mary for yelling at Grandpa:
Grandma:  “He’s only trying to help you Mary, you don’t need to yell at him.”

So Aunt Debbi yells at Grandma for yelling at Aunt Mary for yelling at Grandpa:
Aunt Debbi: “MOM. LET IT GO, LEAVE AUNT MARY ALONE.”

So my Mom yells at Aunt Debbi for yelling at Grandma for yelling at Aunt Mary for yelling at Grandpa:
Mom: “DEB, DON’T YELL AT MOM. SHE HAS EVERY RIGHT TO DEFEND DAD.”

MY HEAD JUST EXPLODED. Imagine being the EMT right now. I’m telling you, SITCOM. We’d dominate the ratings.

He was recently here for one of his visits and it had been quite awhile since we had seen him so it was nice to catch up. Sunday morning we met up with my parents and brother for the typical deportation breakfast.  Let’s set the scene….

 It’s 10 am, and my kid has been up and fed for 2 hours. You think the process of digestion would have begun for her. We squish the kid between us so that we can be on either side of her. Ya know….for safety reasons. Don’t be confused…this is not for her safety. It’s for your safety. Listen Lady, I’m concerned with the safety of the poor, unsuspecting patrons at this diner, because when she wings her plate wildly out of control like ‘Odd Jobs’ hat in a James Bond Flick or tries to stab someone with a fork, we can at the very least, contain the collateral damage.

The waitress walks over with our 6 plates of food and is just setting them down as we hear gurgle….. cough….. burp….. and then the explosion comes spewing out of Cardin’s mouth like Mount St. Helens. I would like to take this time to remind you that we have been seated, ordered, and were waiting for our food for a good 20 minutes before all this took place. At the exact moment of food delivery my sweet, precious angel decided to spew all her food in a fit of glory at this diner. The look I received from the waitress was undeniably one of pity and sorrow as I cupped my hands under Cardin’s mouth to catch the offending disaster.

Internet. Oh Internet, to save your stomach contents I’ll leave the gory details out, but a new outfit, and one roll of paper towel, and twenty minutes later, we were all cleaned up and ready to eat our piping COLD breakfast. Awesome.

Somewhere in the middle of my Chocolate Chip pancakes (yes, I still eat chocolate chip pancakes, what of it?) I could not get over the vomit smell. Everything was clean, and my hands had been burned of all existing flesh, the dirty clothes had been put away into a plastic bag and were sealed….why was my nose so offended? It hit me as I looked down at my t-shirt, some of the residual catastrophe had landed on my shoulder and for the remainder of deportation breakfast I ate cold Chocolate Chip pancakes laced with the smell of vomit. I’m living the life of a gangsta.

They decided to finally pony up the money and put in a nice tile floor over the existing vinyl. In honor of this glorious floor conversion, I thought it was only appropriate that I get to make my final mark on the floor. There are certain things you should experience in life; jumping out of a plane, a hangover so bad you vow never to drink again, finally being able to color on your mom’s floor without her yelling at you.  And we are not just talking crayons or colored pencils here. We are going heavy duty, top of the line, pulling out the big guns; PERMANENT MARKER…….it smells so good.

Don’t lie to yourself, if you had the chance you would have jumped on this bandwagon faster than I can say Team Edward or Team Jacob. When else would have such creative freedom. And not just freedom, but PERMANENT freedom; to write whatever your heart desires and there could be no consequence to it.  This and squeezing out an entire tube of toothpaste into the sink are top goals for me. Mostly just for shits and giggles. I figure, if I at least use a coupon to buy the toothpaste then I’m not really wasting that much money. LISTEN LADY, I could so philosophize with the best of them.

The best part of this story is that, the next day, when the contractors came to begin installing the backer board and tile, they used my drawings as guides to determine how much of the floor that had completed. Who says I’m not helpful? What. What.

The end of winter was far from a stellar time and my schedule provided no time for blogging. Believe me; I heard the wrath of my audience. You shouted and threw fruit, probably grown on Mother F%^#$%# Farmville, for the abrupt stop in my wit. You attempted to convince me to blog again and again. You started campaigns and picketed in front of my house. I think someone might have even left a dead animal as a sacrifice to the blogging God. Maybe I’m exaggerating now. Though it seems I hit a nerve with many when I stopped typing the funny.

Listen Lady, the honest truth to why I’m back… my family has found a structure that is more suitable to all parties, employment is more stable, and I have an ASSLOAD worth of stories that I have not shared with you. So, just when all the crazy has finally settled down in my life, I decide to go ahead rip the Band-Aid off. One quick pull. Why not? What’s more fun than bringing all of you along for the ride too?

This meant that Saturday morning we were up and out the door by 9 am. Happiness spread over my husband’s face when I woke him for this venture.

Stop number one was to our local walmart and as we were purveying the holiday aisles, I might have lightly tapped an end cap display of scotch paper cutters with the cart. And by slightly tapped I mean rammed full speed with the cart as I had totally misjudged the angle of the turn.  Like Danica Patrick on the Indy 500 speedway rammed. I hit this end cap hard enough that the ENTIRE display fell over in the store.  And not only did it just fall over, the endcap display fell into my cart. All 46 scotch paper cutters went flying into my cart and dancing along the floor.

Fast forward to the part where Brett was shaking his head in disbelief that I had literally just run into this end cap. In the throes of laughter and piecing this cardboard display back together, I collected as many paper cutters as I could find and left a nice pile for a fancy walmart worker to find and reshelf. LISTEN LADY, THEY GET PAID FOR A REASON. Throughout the remainder of the store I kept finding hidden paper cutters that were appearing in my cart. I think I found 10 extra paper cutters amongst my other items. So I did the only natural thing. I left them in random places in the store as we continued on our travels. Don’t think of it as out of place. THINK OF IT AS A TREASURE HUNT!!!!

Stop number two was to Target and this equally as disastrous. As the black Friday sales were still running for the weekend I wanted to pick up a few things for my daughter and we wandered over to the Christmas aisle. MISTAKE. There was this fake snowman and since Christmas decorations excite Cardin to know end and by no end, I mean hyperventilate, scream with excitement, and shake your groove thang, I picked up the snowman to show her.  Except the snowman then fell apart into 10 pieces in my hand crumbling away as though my soul had been broken. In my quick attempt to shove frosty’s arm back in place I managed to have him crumble even more. CRAP. Brett was totally shaking his head at this point. I quickly gathered up all extremities before his head went rolling down the aisle and some tween started kicking it around. We left the ruined frosty and went home so that I could sit on the couch for the remainder of the day and not touch anything else.

All this and I hadn’t even aged yet…….EPIC FAIL.

Thanksgiving is traditionally celebrated at my aunt’s house as she has a finished basement and its one of the few remaining places where my whole family fits together. To be honest, most restaurants no longer accept our business either. The “décor” of the basement is quite….interesting…shall we say. It looks like any other finished basement; carpeted floors, wooden paneled walls, drop ceiling. Except for 1 stark, punch you in the face difference. My uncle has managed to cover every inch of wall space with pictures. I’m not exaggerating….THEY ARE EVERYWHERE. I would compare it to an art gallery manager’s worst nightmare; as though the art just vomited all over. He has actually gone to the extent to make certain areas of the wall into themes. One area was all pictures of baseball and the Yankees. One area was all space pictures. Very Space Odyssey 2001ish if you will. These themed areas continue, but I will spare you.

I’m going to ask you to hold this décor description in your thoughts for just 2 minutes as I tangent.

With 40 people for dinner, it’s impossible to all sit at a round table and pass the rolls. Instead we do dinner buffet style. It always strikes me funny how the seating arrangements work out for large family dinners now that we are older.  When we were little we used to be relegated to sit at the kids table with my cousins; the goal always being to sit with the adults. But now that we really are adults (somewhat) I still find that we always end up sitting together to form a kids table. The jokes are raunchier, the kool-aid usually contains a little vodka, but our ability to get along hasn’t changed at all. And this is one of those things I’m thankful for.

Unfortunately, because I didn’t sit near my grandma, I didn’t see that she was drinking wine with dinner. This in itself is like the coming of the antichrist. You see, my grandmother, bless her soul, never drinks. NEVER. Be that because she doesn’t like how it makes her feel or because she’s the size of a 5^th grader, one cannot know. From what I was told, she had about 2 ounces of wine. PARTY LIKE A ROCKSTAR. Totally would have obliterated me too. About an hour later, obviously still feeling the effects of the mass quantities she had consumed, about 10 of us were sitting around having dessertS (yes that was plural) and out of nowhere, my grandma goes “I feel totally out of my body, like I’m floating in space.” Listen lady, I lost it. Uncontrolled fit of laughter. This woman was straight of the boat, had survived the great depression, lived through a couple wars, birthed 4 children, and fallen off a roof, but those 2 ounces of red wine……they were her defeat. EVIL NEMISIS.

Remember when I told you to hold that description of the finished basement and all the pictures hanging on the wall. Ok….recall time.

So there we are, in a room full of dangly pictures and my grandma is walking around (keep in mind she feels totally “out of body”) and doesn’t she brush the wall with her derriere and knock down some of these sacred works of art. As the pictures clank on the floor and the room falls silent a voice lofts into the air with “JESUS MARY, WATCH YOUR FAT ASS!” Her own brother actually screamed this from the other corner of the room and I had to roll my mouth up from the floor and go change my depends after this scenario played out. I will vouch for you that my grandmother is not a soul sista…she would not impress Sir Mix-A-Lot. It’s good to see the sibling rivalry still exist s through the years.

Which brings me to my newest dilemma….do I lie to my own child about Santa? Cardin is one now and there is no way she understands the concept of a lie. Listen Lady, she doesn’t yet understand the concept of “mommy needs to pee so I’m going to walk into the bathroom and I’ll be back in two minutes and I haven’t left you forever so you don’t need to cry like the whole world has just exploded in your face”.

Do I continue the cycle of lies that I was fed in my own childhood? I’m looking straight at you, MOM. See…as a child, I was beat and placed naked, in a room with only a thin blanket on the floor for comfort and my parents lied to me and told me Santa was real. AND GOD, I CAN’T WAIT TO HEAR THE RAMPAGE OVER THIS STATEMENT.

I vowed when I was pregnant that I would never lie to my own children about Santa and cause irrational fear and anxiety in their lives. And I scarified a chicken in a ceremonial event to proclaim that I would NEVER put them through the traumatic experience of forcing them onto Santa’s lap at the mall. (if that’s not a lesson in creepy, then I don’t know what is). LISTEN LADY, HAVEN’T I PASSED ON ENOUGH NEUROSES? The cycle has to stop somewhere.

But now that Cardin is here and Christmas is upon us, it seems inevitable that Santa will be bringing her the presents. I’ll be sure that when I whisper sweet nothings into my little one’s ear on Christmas Eve it will be to the tune of “GRANDMA SITS ON A THRONE OF LIES!”

I was out running some errands and as I was driving down a main road in our town, I noticed that an ambulance was parked off to the right hand side of the street. I don’t really consider ambulances all that uncommon so I just assumed someone needed medical attention and I was going to go about my own business. That is until I drove a little further. I noticed that the EMT was not helping anyone with a medical emergency.

In fact, there was absolutely no living being or structure within 100 yards of the EMT as they were standing in the middle of an empty field with 5 foot weeds  all around him. This, of course, piqued my curiosity. Why would this man be standing all by his lonesome in the middle of this field? And then I saw the quick slice through the air. The sun catching just right and throwing a reflection off of the shiny metal and into my gaze; a machete. WAIT. WHAT. This EMT. This life saving Samaritan. This provider of hope and faith. And here they are wielding a Columbian torture device; hacking away against the weeds in this field.

Listen Lady, I don’t know about you, but to the best of my knowledge, EMT’s don’t typically carry around machete’s in their rigs. I don’t think they head out on calls needing IV’s, saline, air masks, and MACHETE’S. If I was injured in an accident and an EMT came to my rescue and suddenly screamed out, “I NEED A MACHETE. STAT!” Hold up Jackie Chan!!! You think I should sign a waiver or something before you come at me with that. Maybe you could at least spray me down with a little pam first….ya know…so that it slices through a little easier.  

It is beyond me as to what this EMT was doing whacking the weeds in this field with a machete. Again, I clarify, there was absolutely no human or structure within 100 yards of him or his vehicle so the reason is beyond my mind as to why he felt the need to clear this field. Perhaps he felt it was his good deed for the week. Perhaps he was searching for buried treasure. Perhaps he was having a flashback and felt he was back fighting against the Viet Cong. Your guess is as good as mine lady.

As we roll into November I’m reminded each year by my loving family about my upcoming birthday. Usually it starts with a gentle nudge from Grandma sometime back in June with “what do you want for your birthday”. For the love of God woman, I don’t know what I want for dinner let alone my birthday. By the beginning of November it has escalated to a full blown throw-down whenever I enter a room with family members.

Seriously folks, I feel like small prey when I enter the room. Settle down and just buy me something. You’ve known me for 27 years. I’m weird and random. Anything that is shiny is bound to impress me. I like neon colors, crazy hats, fat penguins, and am a firm believer that a person can never have too many t-shirts.

To combat the screams of fury I have taken to starting a list of things that I think I’ll need come my birthday and Christmas. This year I put a paper shredder on my list. The funny thing is, all the crap I end up putting on this damn list I need sooner rather than later, but if I don’t have something to rattle off to grandma when she asks I may have an imprint of a wooden spoon on my arse.  Let’s take said shredder for example. After our taxes are done each year I clean out old bills from the previous year and proceed to shred the last 12 months of our life like hell hath no fury. I take pleasure in shredding these bills; I imagine that I’m shredding small bits of the CEO’s hearts whose companies rip me off all year long with their regulatory fees and surcharges and supplemental gas charges. LISTEN LADY, I SWEAR IF YOU MAKE UP SOME B.S. ABOUT ANOTHER CHARGE I’M GOING SPIDER MONKEY ON YOU. I realize the bills are already paid and the money is already gone, but it makes me feel better; please just let me live in my world

Back to my point. This year, I turn the dreaded….dun dun….27. Can I really be this old? Can I really be this close to 30!! THIRTY!! Can I really have survived almost 3 decades without a broken bone? I certainly don’t feel this old? I certainly don’t act this old! Dude, I totally just climbed into my daughter’s playhouse the other day. And internet, you’re all “oh how cute, you were playing with your daughter”.  Nope. She was totally sleeping. I was totally playing in it myself. I still sit and pick out the toys I want from the Toys R’ Us Toy book that comes in the newspaper.  AND YES, I still blow bubbles in my chocolate milk too!!!

Pretty soon I’m not going to be able to check the 25-30 box. I’m going to have to move up to the 30-something box. The clincher though that will define my age are the house parties. Ya know the ones that people throw to try and sell candles or makeup or home interior stuff. To me, this is the ultimate age defeat. I have no idea why I use this as my age marker, but perhaps one day I’ll be enlightened as to my plight against these menacing parties. For now, I think I’ll head back to that playhouse and cherish the next 3 years of my twenty-somethings.

Part of our “winterizing” was to cut the devil hedges in our backyard. These hedges run the lot line on the side of our house. I have a love hate relationship with these hedges. I enjoy the privacy they give us from our nosy neighbors. Especially since they are old and retired and have nothing better to do than stare at us in the backyard while “Everybody Loves Raymond” blares through their windows. However, these hedges grow uncontrollably and are a pain right in the ba-donk-a-donk to manage. They were unruly when we bought the house and we’ve tried to tame them but our attempts have proved futile. And because the hedges can’t be annoying in their own right, they have to grow right up along our neighbor’s chain link fence. OH YEA. TRY CUTTING AROUND A FENCE. AWESOME!

Strategy #1 this year was to take C-4 and place it gingerly at the base of the hedges and then yell “FIRE IN THE HOLE”. Until I found out the C-4 was not sold at your local Home Depot. LAME. That brought us back to the ever famous, electric hedge trimmers. Be mindful, this is the same electric hedge trimmer that both my husband AND myself have cut through an electrical cord with. Yes indeed folks, I’m not the only one in the world stupid enough to pull that move. I admit, I was the first to do this, and the flak I received for this act. OH SHIT, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten more harassment. Until a couple weeks later, the moment was relived, except I was not the one holding the trimmer this time around. Even now I relish in reliving this moment.

Strategy #2 was to try trimming the hedges in the fall this year so that come spring time they would already be looking nice. Normally this takes a couple hours to cut them, rake them, and bag up the remains. Except this time it took longer as our backyard looked like a minefield. You see, some dog has decided to make my backyard its personal shithouse. There were probably 20 dog craps all over the backyard. If I didn’t know better, the dogs were having a convention in my backyard and decided all at once to take one large dump. No matter where you stepped you were going to step in dog crap. My sneakers looked like I had stepped all over Mekhi Phifer.

I spent the evening cleaning dog shit out of every crevice of my sneakers. LISTEN LADY, this is why I don’t have a dog. I don’t like things shitting in my yard; human or not. The owner of this dog better hope that I don’t see it taking a squat in my yard because I know we won’t be friends on facebook. DISLIKE.

Since Cardin debuted just a few days into November last year this was her first official Halloween. I figure for the first couple years of her life I’ll get the sweet revenge of choosing what she wears for Halloween before she starts berating me with expletives about how I’m not cool if I don’t let her have the dora the explorer backpack. GRASSY ASS. 

Initially, I wanted to dress her as a whoopee cushion and I was high fived all the way for this, until I got to my husband and my mother who had to poop on my parade. POOP. ON. MY. PARADE.  Then we moved on to either Elmo or a Kitty. Mommy looked at the price tags on those costumes and just kept walking. Listen Lady, some of you may give your kids the world on a silver platter. I’ll give them a cold, hard dose of reality. Mommy ain’t made of money, she doesn’t shit quarters, and that bush growing in the basement doesn’t produce money.  You’re going to wear this costume for about 20 minutes, there is no way in this galaxy I would spend $49 dollars on it. Oh yea….and Santa isn’t real either. I’M A HORRIBLE PERSON. And people in Africa don’t wear shoes, it all evens out in the end. I finally settled on a duck costume that was not the price of a kidney on the black market.

 AND THEN IT HIT.

THE SWINE. I got the flu. Two days before Halloween and I’m in bed fevering my way through life. My hair even ached. It sorta, kinda, maybe, just a little, killed Halloween for my kid. Since she can’t really eat candy and she can’t really walk very well the whole trick or treating thing would be lost on her, but we had planned to take her around to see some family and friends on Halloween in her duck costume. This would also ensure that I got the most use out of the money I spent on this duck outfit. FAIL. This is one of those times I’m grateful that her neurons haven’t fully formed and she won’t remember anything till she’s at least two.

Through all this, I was determined to hand out two things to the neighborhood children on all Hallow’s Eve. Candy and a helping of H1N1. What parent wouldn’t love if their kid came home with an unbeknownst, festering virus just seething to run rampant? HANDS IN THE AIR!! wOOt wOOt. How do you like that? AT LEAST YOU HAVE SHOES!!! In reality, I’m a decent human and my dad was nice enough to come over and hand out candy to the masses. Don’t think I didn’t stand over the candy bowl and breath on all those snickers and milky way though. FOOLS.

It was even a relief to come back and freeze our gonads off again after waiting around in 95 degree weather, holding a kid who can’t yet walk; all the while you are dressed in denim and long sleeves. SUPER FUN, totally suggest it.

Now that we’re back, its full swing into party planning mode for Cardin’s first birthday. Listen lady, it’s not every day you plan a one year olds birthday party. We’re talking full blown Wringling Brothers extravaganza here; the elephants and tight rope walkers are all over this shindig. The offspring is really into Sesame Street so it’s going to look like an explosion of “redrum” with the amount of Elmo paraphernalia that is going to be present.

We’re going big or we’re going home with this one. We decided that since it’s her first birthday there were just too many people to shove into our house comfortably so we rented out a lodge. Plus, it’s better this way. I don’t have to worry about how much toilet paper we’re going through. YA KNOW. ‘Cause that’s not a trivial piece of information!!!

The whole fam damily is coming out for this festival so there will be lots of food and yelling. It’s likely a few tears will be shed, a couple of Italian cus words dished out, and some family drama will erupt, but hey, it’s not a party without all that. Inevitably at the end, my grandma will put her hands in the air and say, well, that’s another thing done; as though there is some almighty checklist.

I’m excited to see Cardin play with her first birthday cake. Hopefully she’ll do better with fire than Mommy. I’m super excited for her to get new toys. Obviously so SHE can have something to play with. NO OTHER REASON WHATSOEVER. But mostly, I’m shocked. I can’t believe she’s going to be one. I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I layed in that hospital wondering what she would look like and how she would change me. And what’s even more shocking….I did it. The one who suffers from a lack of common sense and is prone to injury. Yep. I managed to keep her safe and cultivate her mind for a whole year. Sometimes I feel like a gangsta!

Don’t worry…there will be beer to tame the senses from the overwhelming amount of red.

Nov- Cardin is born (YAY)

Nov- June- the rockstar child throws a kegger in her crib every night from the hours of 2 am- 4 am. She likely learned this behavior from her father. If you can’t count, that’s SEVEN MONTHS of NO SLEEP. SEVEN. one. two. three. four. five. six. seven. S.E.V.E.N.

June- Mid-September- the rockstar finally hits rock bottom and starts to sleep through the night. Mommy and Daddy begin to function again and stop drinking.

Present Day- Teething begins. Initially I was excited, as I thought we would hit pay-dirt with the tooth fairy until I realized that money had to come from my wallet. WRONG.  On top of the disappointment over the tooth fairy, we’re back to all night keggers and NO SLEEP. But today was the topper of it all. Consider this story your form of birth control.

My delicate flower kindly woke us this morning at 3:30 as she screamed like a ban-chi into the monitor. I was able to get her to fall back to sleep for about 30 minutes. Just long enough to get back in my warm cozy bed and start to doze off before the machine gun crying started again. Except this time she refused to go back to sleep. I tried the trustee baby Tylenol to no avail as she just kept slapping me in the face while I tried to rock her back to sleep. I’m not kidding about the slapping either. Full palm. Right to my face.

We attempted to lull her senses by putting her in the swing. FOOLS. She kept sitting forward, looking right at me and screaming. MOMMA. MOMMA. As though I had just placed her in a pit of hungry lions and she was wearing a meat mask. After about an hour of attempting to get her back to sleep I gave up. Her stomach kept growling so I thought perhaps she was hungry and that is why she couldn’t sleep.

And that’s when I pulled a genius move. I gave her yogurt. Excellent choice on the dairy. Winner. About 45 minutes later I was revisited by that awful decision. But the kicker, the real doozy. She puked while laying down as I was changing her crap filled diaper. Yep. It was coming out from both ends and I was prime target. So there I am, sitting her up so that she doesn’t choke on her puke all the while trying to keep the shit contained. Needless to say….it didn’t work. She ended up needing a bath and mommy ended up needing a vicodin.

And then bam, it hit me. I have a little fan at work that I use when it’s 9,000 degrees out and the air conditioning ain’t kickin’ it. I managed to rig the fan on top of my desk and hold my leg at an awkward position so that my pants could dry before my meeting. It was hot, I know!  Listen Lady, I’m like an engineer. All scientific and shit. It worked, and it only took about 20 minutes to get my jeans looking fresh.

I’m no longer allowed to have iced tea. FAIL.

SERIOUSLY considering making this Cardin’s 1st Halloween Costume. It’s amazing. And with the amount of gas this kid actually expels it’s pretty much spot on. Listen Lady, I only have a couple years to pick out her outfit before she goes all slutty pirate on me.

We’re having a little shindig for my grandma’s birthday this weekend so I had to pull it together long enough to go out and find her a nice blouse. YEP. BLOUSE. Because anyone over the age of 40 doesn’t wear a shirt, they wear a blouse. 24 more years an I’ll be all up in the blouse business!  So anyways, I ran out quick during lunch to Macys to find a nice blouse.

Normally I don’t like Macy’s. Their ad’s annoy me because every friggin’ day they are having “THE BIGGEST SALE OF THE YEAR”. period. end of sentence. biggest. sale. of. the. year. REALLY? The whole year? You’re not going to have a bigger sale? WHAT ABOUT TOMORROW?!?!  When I get the paper tomorrow, will I see a full page ad about the BIGGEST SALE OF THE YEAR; because I’m totally going to be pissed then. Listen Lady, I swear to everything holy in this world I’m bombarded with coupons from them constantly. Then, when I go in to use them on these GINORMOUS sales, I’m told by the cash person ringing me out that everything I bought is an “everyday value item” so I can’t use the coupons. FAIL. Stop sending me useless coupons!!!!

There I am in the middle of the Macy’s women’s department store, blousing it up, and I’m at a loss of what my grandma would like. Ya know how grandma always seems to wear that one ratty old blouse and whenever you go to the store you try to find something that looks almost identical. It’s like  you use a laser beam to sweep the entire department store looking for a “grandma” blouse. Except this time I couldn’t find one. There were no “grandma-looking blouses”. I started to sweat. What was I going to get? The woman has 56 purses and 34.5 pairs of leather gloves. She has more bottles of wine than the Hoff could drink in a night (maybe?). 

And then a genius idea popped into my head. It was the middle of the day. The nursing home bus had just dropped a fresh load of ladies at the Macy’s door; there were grandma’s EVERYWHERE. All I needed to do was simply follow one around for a few minutes and see what she picked out. JACKPOT. Huddle and regroup on the strategy. There I am, lurking behind a group of little old bitty’s while they talk about Hank, the handsome fella who drives the bus. COME ON. PICK A BLOUSE AND LET’S ALL GET BACK TO AGING. But these women…yea, they were in no mood to do any shopping. They were like a bunch of horny little college freshmen who were more interested in scoping out the man meat than pointing me in the direction of an acceptable blouse for grandma.  I swear that I vomited in my mouth a couple times while I listening to their conversation. Think Sue Johanson meets the bachelorette and you’ll understand how scurvy I felt.

After 10 minutes I could no longer handle the strategy and I went back to wandering around with my laser beam to find the perfect “grandma blouse”. Perhaps this has solidified my desire to shop online.

Last time I paid my garbage bill, I got a notice that my payment was declined. I lovingly called up the company and was all “here is my confirmation number, please tell me why you are refusing to take my money.”  Who refuses money?!? Anyways, the representative I talked to checked out my account and said that my balance was showing as $0.00 and that I could disregard the email, payment had been processed.  AWESOME. SUPER. Of course I don’t trust a single word that she is spewing AND NO I DO NOT WANT TO TAKE A SURVERY, STOP PEPPERING ME WITH THESE QUESTIONS.   Because I’m that type of person, I got her name and employee id number. We’ll call her “sarah lee liar”.  (Just from that name you know this is going to turn out great).

Now, because I only pay this bill quarterly, a couple months went by before I got the next invoice. FANTASTIC PSYCHOLOGY. 4 payments a year instead of 12; makes you feel like you are paying less, right? LISTEN LADY, THEY ARE STILL SCREWING YOU. Regroup. This time the bill was double because…and you’re going to be shocked by this one…the last payment wasn’t processed. I saw this bill and immediately my fingers dialed the number for the company, even though it was 7 pm and I KNEW they wouldn’t be open.

So the next morning, I lovingly called up the garbage company and gave them my confirmation number for the last payment and the name and employee id number of “sarah lee liar”. I calmly explained that when I talked to her that payment had been processed and my balance was $0.00.  Apparently the payment was declined after I talked to “sarah lee liar” and the company decided that, instead of contacting me over the past 2 months, they should just leave the late payment alone and hit me with a new bill and extra charges. MY LIFE GETS BETTER EVER DAY!

Now I owe for 6 months of garbage pickup, plus a late fee, plus a $25 dollar restart collection fee. That’s when I went all Kung Fu on the customer service rep. WAX ON, WAX OFF. I lost it. There was no way I was paying any late fee or restart fee. I have a new tactic for companies who pull this. I was all “ok, when is my contract up so I can terminate it”  IMMEDIAETLY I GET HELP AND RESOLUTION. Magic words. Like a little fairy came and just pistol whipped the customer service representative. She was all “oh ma’am I’m going to remove these late fees and the $25 restart fee and that will resolve your problem.”

…Pause

Nope, problem not resolved. See my problem is with the customer service I’m receiving. You don’t tell me payment has been processed when in fact it hasn’t. And if my payment does get declined you contact me. And this is the best part.  The rep was all “well, we must have a bad phone number and email, otherwise we would have been in contact.” And I’m all, LADY…I JUST GAVE YOU THE PHONE NUMBER AND EMAIL ADDRESS TO VERIFY THIS ACCOUNT TWO MINTUES AGO, SO IT AIN’T EVEN CLOSE TO BEING WRONG.

I shit you not, her response was…..”oh. huh, you’re right.”

I ended the call by checking the date I could terminate the contract and slamming the receiver down. DO NOT USE WASTE MANAGEMENT.

As if there isn’t enough racism in this world, let’s promote skinheads for Halloween. Perhaps I could even find a nice KKK outfit at my local Halloween superstore. Are you f’in kidding me. I have to choose between Kate Gosselin or a skinhead?!?

And to think that I get all freaked out when my food just touches each other. It’s a really good I don’t live in China cause this would put me on a fantastic diet of EAT NOTHING. Listen Lady, I totally discourage you from eating food if it’s still breathing when the plate is placed in front of you.

The swings at this park are set a little ways back so it’s necessary to park the car and do a short trek up Everest first. This is kosher when the sun is shining and leprechauns prance around a pot of gold. This is NOT kosher when the sun sets and releases a swarm of EVERY BUG THAT EVER EXISTED. Dear mosquitoes, I do not want west nile virus. If you land on my arm chances are you will not live to taste my delicious, homegrown blood.

I don’t mind going outside to play basketball or hang around a bonfire. However, when you pair being outside that with anything “nature-esque”, like hiking or camping, you might as well rufee me. Nature and this lady do not equal pleasant times. I would go out on a limb to compare my nature experiences to using sandpaper on your ass. Rough, with raw leftovers.

My form of camping consists of a hotel without a pool. Unless you want me to pistol whip you, do not mention the words tent, blow up air mattress, or sleeping bag in my presence. There is a reason I work full time and it has nothing to do with providing a better life for my spawn. It is because I refuse to live like a caveman.

I’m pretty sure that I have passed this “I HATE NATURE AND WILL NEVER HUG TREES” attitude onto my daughter. We have tried to sit her on the grass a few times this summer and she does not like it. She touches it with the least amount of surface area possible and then she immediately bolts to the nearest human so she can be picked up.

I’ve included some pictures to display her hatred. I love passing down weird pet peeves to my offspring.

I had agreed to pick up a friend and take him for a medical test that morning. I was sitting in the hospital waiting room and a TV played in the background while I browsed a magazine. I largely ignored the TV, until I noticed that doctors and nurses had started to appear in the waiting room and were all starting at the newscast. Live footage was being shown of the twin towers after the first plane had hit. All I could think was “what the hell happened?”  As I sat and watched with these medical strangers we saw the second plane hit the towers. An elderly man who was sitting next to me in the waiting room, looked me dead in the eyes and said “you’re watching history, kid”. I was pretty much in shock and didn’t respond to him. I don’t think I took the meaning of his words so seriously until a few days later when it was clear this would be a defining moment for the U.S.  I left the waiting room and went to find my friend so I could tell him what was going on. Like most other people, I spent the next week glued to the news reports.

No “Listen Lady’s” today. Tell me what you remember about that day. Can you still recall all the details?

The motorcycle that passed had a metal baseball bat jimmy-rigged to the “bumper” of the crotch rocket. It was in perfect placement, sticking out to the right side, so that the rider could reach behind with one arm and take hold of the handle as though to wield it at other drivers like a machete. No lie. Listen Lady, I only WISH I could have gotten out my phone fast enough to take a picture.

I’m pretty sure that the bat-pod never came equipped with this devastating feature. The baseball bat stayed nice and sturdy, posed for attack, as the rider weaved in and out of cars. Which is pretty amazing considering the holster was made out of some bungee cords and duct tape. Interestingly, the rider had no other baseball equipment attached to his body or the motorcycle; in fact, he wore a suit and tie underneath his leather jacket. After this fiasco, I totally would have anticipated a homemade jockstrap flag.

Forget Hell’s Angels, there is a new brand of bad on the street. Watch out for the “BAT BITCHES”. Imagine the damage they could do to mailboxes and garden gnomes. It’s good to see that America’s favorite pastime is still alive and well.

Is this the newest way to road rage? Cause I’m totally a bad ass with a wiffle bat.

Commence arterial bleeding! I NEED A NURSE STAT! I quickly called the red cross to make sure they had a hefty supply of my blood type available. My forehead and hands were getting all clamy as I performed delicate surgery to cover the laceration and put pressure on the blood flow. No?

Ok, I exaggerate a little.  Listen Lady, I was able to parse my hand back together with a kleenix and some scotch tape, but it’s more the actual thought of the papercut that drives me insane. I hate papercuts; despise them. I shutter just thinking about them and the way they have of slicing through delicate skin. It makes my skin crawl and I just want to assume the fetal position in a corner.

I react like a whacko on speed when I think about them. Imagine if you will, someone tells you that you have a spider crawling on your back and you proceed to flip out, start running around, and try to turn your body in a complete 360 degree fashion so that your flailing arms can shoosh this being away?  Yea. That’s me. Only this occurs when I get a papercut. I could care less if a spider crawled on me.

And then there was that one time at band camp….

No, there really was that one time I was watching the movie Jackass and the guy VOLUNTARILY sat there while he received multiple papercuts between his fingers and toes. BETWEEN HIS TOES. I don’t think you are understanding the complexityof my reaction to this scene. I ran out of the movie theater. RAN. Like I was Usain Bolt vying for a world record ran. I dropped my ridiculously priced popcorn and made a beeline for the car where I continued to have the hibee-jibee’s for the next 5 years just thinking of this scene.

Every time I get a papercut now, I return to that nightmarish scene in the movie theater and have convulsions while I repair my wound.

Because of all this construction the highways have been reduced to one or two lanes. This leads for a massive pileup of cars as everybody has to funnel into one lane as their ass grows bigger from sitting so long in traffic. And I sit there and flip through radio stations at mock speed trying to find something to distract me from the people who will not let you merge. 

But, you want to know what really irks me. The thing that DRIVES ME INSANE. The shoulder lurkers. Everyone is sitting in traffic all trying to merge and out of nowhere this ball buster flys by you on the right shoulder in an attempt to pass the backup and merge into traffic ahead of everyone. OH NO YOU DIDN’. Are you really too above sitting in traffic like everyone else that you have to be a shoulder lurker and WHIP by me at a speed of 95 mph? Tell me you are at least shoulder lurking because you took a dump in your pants and now it’s uncomfortable?  Listen Lady, unless you have flashing lights and a siren, that shoulder has not become your personal carpool lane.

So you know what I do? I’m the f’er that pulls my car WAY over to the right side and drives halfway in the lane and halfway on the shoulder so these lurkers cannot pass. AND BOY DOES IT EVER PISS THEM OFF. They pile up behind me and tail me to no end. They beep and flash their lights. (this in turn just makes me slow down even more). I even had a guy try to sneak in behind me and zigzag around my left side in attempt to get around me. Luckily the car in front of me saw this maneuver and came to a complete stop so the guy couldn’t pass, otherwise I was going to have to shoot Chinese stars out of my hubcaps. YES, I CAN REALLY DO THAT. I UPGRADED MY SUV PACKAGE.

But you know who the worst offenders are? (besides the old white hairs that lurk in the Cadillacs) MOTORCYCLES. Just because you are smaller than my car does not give you permission to whip in and out of lanes like you were a little sperm that has to reach the egg before all the others. I do not care about the speed of the crotch rocket underneath you; it is not an excuse to go all Evil Knievel.

Besides pissing off the rest of the traffic that you whiz by, let me tell you a little story to stop this ridiculous behavior. I warn you, it’s a little graphic, but points out the danger of the shoulder lurker. Once upon a time, a man decided to take his motorcycle to work one morning. Except he was running late, so he was speeding far too fast and there was lots of construction. To try to make up some time, he bypassed traffic and sped up the left shoulder.  He accidentally lost control of the motorcyle  on some gravel and was thrown onto the highway at an immense speed. Unfortunately for this man that was not the end of his injuries. The double-lane highway was divided by metal guardrails and he was thrown right into and split completely in half by the metal post of the guardrail.

See, shoulder lurking is bad. BAD. And that is totally going to leave a mark the next morning.

OK, maybe a little more than occasionally.

OK, maybe once a week I manage to injury some extremity on my body. HAPPY!

Once again, I’ve managed to sprain my ankle. I would like to tell you that I managed to do this jumping out of a plane or wrestling a crocodile. But in fact it’s far more embarrassing…I injured myself while playing Wii. Yes folks, that is correct. I managed to injury a part of my body by playing a video game. Point and mock. I deserve it.  Now in all fairness I think this occurred while I was playing Wii Basketball, but the action is really irrelevant once you combine the words injury and video game system in one sentence.

Listen Lady, in my defense, it was a really intense game of basketball I was playing against myself. I guess it really shouldn’t come as a surprise as to how I injured myself. I mean you wouldn’t think that somebody would drop a couch on their head either. I, on the other hand, have already checked that off my bucket list. Don’t be jealous, it wasn’t as fun as it sounds.

I think from now on I’m only going to be allowed to play stationary video games.

I like to try a new veggie every year. Last year I tried cucumbers and I had them COMING OUT OF MY NOSE. I started giving them away to homeless people I had so many. I would walk by them on the street and drop a cucumber in their change cup. You need food, not beer buddy!

Anyways, this year I decided I would give broccoli a go. FAIL. The plant grew nice and large, with big green leaves and sturdy stems. Listen Lady, I waited for 3 months for the broccoli to grow. Each night I would check it and my anticpation would grow a little more as I saw little sprouts starting. AND THEN… this little broccoli flourette is the result of all my hard work. HOURS I SPENT ON THIS PLANT. Watering it. Caressing it. Having full, outright conversations so my neighbors think I’m a walking lunatic. AND THIS IS THE FRUITFUL BOUNTY YOU PROVIDE ME. FML.

Broccoli is off the list from now on.

Because we’re lucky enough to have my mom watch Cardin everyday while we slave to make the mortgage I’ve bought a lot of “duplicate” stuff so we don’t have to lug this crap back and forth.  Ya know; cups, bowls and spoons. The things I’ve purchased for her to use are all new and infant appropriate; they are even BPA free you freaks! And then my mom has to go and whip out my old baby spoon during dinner the other night. I gotta tell you; this thing looks as though it was made for an elephant. The head of this spoon is bigger than my eyeball. Might I ask how this ginormity of a spoon will fit into my child’s small mouth? Compare for yourself. New, small, plastic, safe purple spoon vs. huge, metal, poke you in the eye spoon.

And that’s what set off Buddy Lee.

Pardon while I digress to explain this name. See my mother never liked to wear jeans. EVER. No, really. E.V.E.R.  Throughout my entire childhood I NEVER saw her in a pair of jeans. Khakis, shorts, even capris, but never a swatch of denim shall meet her legs. Until one unforgettable day. I had graduated from college and had come home for a visit and there she was, in all her glory, sporting the nicest pair of jeans I ever did lay my eyes on.  We were so struck by that change that my brother and I started calling her Buddy Lee, after the little character guy in the Lee jean commercials. Henceforth she is known as Grandma Buddy Lee. (I can just see her reading this right now and rolling her eyes. Your welcome mom. I know you’re proud).

Returning to the rant. My mother insisted that this hunk of metal was my baby spoon and it was perfectly fine. The head of the spoon was intentionally that large so that a child could pick up food and not shake it off in an attempt to bring it to their mouth. Listen Lady, the rational this woman uses amazes me day in and day out. Clearly, I had used it 27 years prior and it all worked out ok.

WRONG AGAIN. I have a huge phobia of using large sized forks or spoons; I think that they choke you when you use them. Yep, I’m Crazy (no wonder my nickname fits me so well). It was totally enlightening into my phobia of large silverware. The funny thing is, my mother KNOWS that I hate using large forks to eat dinner and when we go there I’m the only one who gets a special sized fork. When I was getting married and registering for items I specifically needed to find silverware with small sized forks. And there she is, 27 years later, creating another form of crazy in my daughter.

That’s two strikes Buddy Lee. First you make me phobic about large silverware and then you lie to me about Santa.

With the family so close together it’s inevitable that they’ll be all over your grill about everything. I don’t consider this a bad thing. We have amazing traditions, our food and cookies are ridiculously delicious, and there is always some family drama that keeps the day exciting (like the time grandma fell off the roof. Yea, that was awesome. It was like a circus for months). Listen Lady, my husband and I chose to stay in the area and live near our family so that we could pass these traditions and ridiculous dysfunctions on to our kids. Because screwing them up ourselves is just out of the question! What else is family for, right?

Anyways, we always gather at my grandma’s house for major holidays like Christmas and then we throw in the occasional random bank holiday like Labor Day. It’s completely arbitrary because instead of celebrating all the hard work we do the other 364 days of the year by just relaxing, we go and have a party and create more work for ourselves.

The annual picnic tradition is that my grandma handles all the hamburgers and hotdogs and my aunts and cousins all bring a dish to pass. That is, except for the gnocchi (go type that into Wikipedia cause I know you didn’t pronounce it correctly). It’s not a picnic unless you have macaroni DAMNIT.  Grandma insists on boiling at least 10 pounds of pasta for these semi-small events. (as a side; semi-small for us is about 25).  I’m not sure why this is considered appropriate picnic food for our family. You would think that tiny balls of dough that clump together in your stomach to create a mass aren’t really lite fare. In all the other picnics I’ve attended a bowl of pasta with sauce has NEVER been on the menu, but then again who else eats deep fried weeds? My mouth is watering just thinking of them. 

You better be wearing a rosary if you even SUGGEST to grandma that we go without the gnocchi for the picnic. SINNER.  I mean, we wouldn’t have nearly enough food then with all the hamburgers and hotdogs and salads and potato’s and corn and…do I need to keep going?!? We could feed a small brigade with the food that is made. Throw in the gnocchi and I could feed the state of Rhode Island for a week Lady! OK, maybe 5 days.

Did I forget to mention that grandma also makes meatballs, sausage, and pepperoni for the sauce too?

Besides my boredom in waiting for my dinner to be finished cooking, I’m a HUGE people watching fan so gazing upon this gem was bound to occur. Ya know how most people have hobbies like coin collecting or scrap-booking. Not me, nope. I just like to observe people in all their ridiculousness.

So there I am, flipping the chicken gazongas, and she wanders right into our neighbor’s garage as though she owns the joint. No hesitation on her part to just open the side garage door and waltz right in.  Now, let me retract for a few seconds and say that the neighbors have their house for sale and they have a sign in the front yard. That’s all fine and dandy and they have had regular open houses just like any other normal human selling their house. Listen Lady, in my book that doesn’t give Joe Schmo stranger lady free reign to a 24/7 open house whenever she sees fit.

My neighbor seemed a little caught off guard by her actions and came out to speak to her. I probably wouldn’t have been so pleasant in my approach. I would have come running out of the house and been all “STRANGER DANGER! STRANGER DANGER!” Listen Lady, I paid attention when McGruff was talking to me. I prevent forest fires too!

My chicken mammaries almost burned I was so engrossed in watching her.

Then I had to grow up and buy a house and now every time I open the mailbox bills fall into my lap. There is no more excitement. No more joy in going to the mailbox. And damn it, but “current resident” is all over half the crap I get here too!

Anyways…we got out latest car insurance bill and of course, the rate went up even though neither myself nor my husband have gotten tickets and we both have BRAND NEW CARS WITH BETTER SAFETY FEATURES. Clearly this all make sense stupid insurance man. As you can tell I’m pretty livid about the whole situation. I think that these insurance companies specifically send bills out on Thursday afternoon so that customers are guaranteed to get them on Saturday and then stew over it for the rest of the weekend. Psychologically this makes sense right? I get the bill and then I have 2 days to calm down before I give them a call. That is unless you live in my world.  Listen Lady, two days only increases my pissed offedness even more that I can’t call and dispute this matter immediately.

This morning I got on my soapbox bright and early to my insurance agent to question this increase. The agent is all “there has been a general increase across the board”.  And I’m all “REALLY? That is super funny because that is the same excuse I got 6 months ago when I called about the previous renewal and that rate increase”. 

…

Pause and trepidation. 

…

You know you have them when they get the lump in their throat. Then it’s time to go for the throat. Gun’s a’blazing you whip out the bill from the previous renewal and you rattle off the individuals name you spoke with and their employee number. GOLD I TELL YOU. GOLD.

Except for the part where the agent says, “we need to look into this and get back to you ma’am”. It appears as though I am up against a foe of equal determination and stubbornness. Fear not, my strategy for world domination will prove fruitful…or I’ll just switch to a different insurance provider.

Tell me this doesn’t conjure up some interesting images? Listen Lady, sesame street isn’t a live television show, its pre-recorded, so you can’t even use the excuse that a producer or editor or HELL EVEN THE GUY WHO MOPS THE FLOOR didn’t see this image and say “hmmm….perhaps Elmo should ask if some other NON-PHALLIC object has a nose?”

Really fulfilling that motto of being educational for children. Keep going. Maybe Big Bird can explain the birds and the bees too.

Thank god for Tivo so I could pause and capture the moment.

Sorry…got distracted by the boobs again, so there I am waiting for my stylist and this elderly woman is paying. Without pause I hear the stylist say “it will be $125 dollars Agnus”. OK, where do I even start.  Listen Lady, the name alone proves that she is at least 90 years old because I’m sure the social security administration hasn’t seen that name come through since Christ was a cub scout. And I’m all thinking “DAMN WOMAN, your hair will look awesome when your niece finds that you’ve sweltered in your house this summer because you couldn’t afford a FAN after the $125 you just spent on your hair.”

Now, just to clear up confusion, I’m not girly, so anything over the price of $10 for a haircut seems RIDICULOUS. It is just going to grow back again. Beyond the cost, the number of hair follicles this lady had remaining would qualify her as president of the hair club for men so I’m not quite sure what she spent over a hundred bucks on. I bet you $10 bucks though that she could so pull off,  ”Not only am I the president, but I’m a member too!”

Listen Lady, all I’m saying is that there is a striking similarity between the Grananimals monkey and Shawn Hunter. I’m hoping that Topanga declined the offer first or you know she’s going to be pissed.

On top of the outright refusal to eat she hasn’t sprouted a tooth yet. She looks like my 80 year old grandpa when he removes his dentures; her gums all flappin’ when she says “momma”. On a side, do you think they make baby dentures? No teeth leave little to the imagination of food she can actually gum to death.

We tried playing with the food and making faces on the highchair tray. No go. We’ve tried putting her in front of the TV to distract. Worked for a little while and then she figured out what I was trying to do and kicked me in the shins. On to my new method…food mixture.

Last night I made her a scrambled egg figuring it was new and soft enough that she could gag it down with little to no effort and there is the added benefit of protein. Three spoons later and I have a face full of egg. AWESOME. And people tell me that I’ll actually want more children after experiencing all the joys she can bring to me. 

Fear not though Lady, I had a plan B; vanilla pudding.   J-E-L-L-O. We made it 5 spoonfuls without a hissy fit so I figure this is going pretty damn well. And then I get a genius idea. Confucius like.

Mix the scrambled egg with the vanilla pudding!

Listen Lady, I don’t care how it tastes as long as she EATS IT. I’m not going to have her walking around in shredded clothes, no shoes on her feet, a fly on her face, asking some poor stranger not to change the channel. Would it have been any better if the eggs are green? Dr. Seuss would so be on my side.

And just think, she had protein and calcium all in one. Please, save your applause while I go up and get my mother of the year award.

After the whole metal detector escapade to dig up any left over Madonnas, wet suit man decided to go on an archaeological dig in his front yard. I swear to you, one morning I left for work and he was out there in JUST HIS SKIVVIES.  Now, lets take a second for this. Old man chicken legs. Wrinkly. Pasty as can be.  Old and ragged skivvies that resembled daisy dukes. You try and get that picture out of your mind. Continuing on…so he’s out there avec skivvies, BENDING ALL THE WAY OVER, with tiny hand brushes whisking away the dirt from around the roots of where the tree once stood. 

I figured we were in for a treat at this point. He was going to try and hack out these roots and I would get the pleasure of watching his chicken legs do all this physical labor. Yummy. But alas, when I returned home that night there were piles of ground up stump around the dig site.

A week went by and the wood chip piles started to disappear and topsoil was now covering the hole. WAS HE GOING TO PLANT GRASS?!? I waited with anticipation every morning as I drove to work. And then, about a week ago I saw tiny little sprouts of grass. HALLELUJAH. I was convinced that after 3 years of living in this neighborhood we finally had closed the book on wet suit man.

…until this morning. I left to run some errands and there he was, in the same skivvies (likely unwashed) sealing the driveway…WITH HOT TAR. Listen Lady, I don’t have a “middle leg”, but I can imagine that HOT TAR on FLESH would not be a pleasant experience. Please, correct me if I’ve wrong though.

When I returned from my errands I made the slow turn past wet suits house and noticed that he left 1/3 of the driveway unsealed…WTF MATE, WILL IT NEVER END WITH THIS MAN!

I bought some grapes and put them in a dish so I could wash them off. Little did I know there was a creature waiting inside the bundle that I selected. I let them soak in water for awhile and returned to find this specimen clinging to the grapes. At first I thought it was just a brown leaf, but it seemed to be too…wrinkly. To make sure I hadn’t summoned any grape demons, I was all, “Brett, get over here and tell me what this thing is!” If I’m going down by the grapes of wrath, I’m sure as hell bringing him with me. Low and behold, it was a bloated, brown, DEAD caterpillar making my grapes it’s graveyard. 

I can just imagine it was like that “Hungry Little Caterpillar” book where the caterpillar eats a whole through apples, pears, and probably like small children before it flourishes into this butterfly. GO FLOURISH SOMEWHERE ELSE! Don’t leave your freakin’ cocoon in my grapes. I’m sure you’ll concur with my analysis of DISGUSTING!

Listen Lady, it’s just plain gross. AND THEN…I had to go and pick the damn thing out. I’m not sure I want to eat these grapes anymore.

Ok, so it really wasn’t speed racer, it was even better.  Are you ready for it…cause I don’t think you can comprehend the excitement. We stood witness to a race between two elderly individuals on ELECTRIC SHOPPING CARTS. Take a second to just laugh to yourself.

Listen Lady, I’m not even kidding you. It was a man and woman, they appeared to be married, and they were racing these puppies to their car. Which was of course parked in a handicap spot. 

The race started smoothly out of the gate, but the elderly gentlemen took the lead and then cut off his wife with a wide right turn, which in my playbook is totally an illegal maneuver. Don’t worry though, she gave  him a good berating.  As we were walking through the entrance, I saw the elderly gentlemen do a fist pump for victory.

It’s good to see that even after all these years the spark is still there.

So there I am, sitting on the very comfy, very plastic patient chair and I’m divulging my history…yet again. You’d think that after 5 years he’d at least have a vague recollection of me. Especially after that one time where he had to clean and dress the gaping hole in my hand from where my 12 pound cat bit me and I could see the bone through the wound. Not kidding. BONE. That totally would have made dinner time conversation in my world. You would think, at the very least he would have jotted down some freakin notes. Even something simple like, “massively accident prone” or “should live in a bubble”. Hell, I would have even been satisfied with “lacks any sort of ass structure”. Really…I do. Totally flat.

Anyways, you know he’s totally not using that laptop to look at my medical chart…HELLO MINE SWEEPER! But I figure I’ll humor him and give him the whole story again. It goes something like this “I have really bad headaches. Please provide me drugs. The End.” See, it’s totally complex. I mean, I’d have to look up half that shit on webmd.

He asks if I’ve gone to see a neurologist and if I know the name of the doctor. Yes and Yes. I’ve done the neurologist’s office.I really wanted to fake a seizure while I was there. Listen Lady, I know it’s horrible, but I would probably get seen faster. I’m only trying to save valuable time here!  I give him the name of the neurologist I saw and he was all “I thought you might have seen Dr. Perfect (I’ve changed his name to protect him here). He is a headache specialist in Western New York, but I think we should try….”

Blink.

Blink. Blink.

I stopped listening to the end of his sentence because I heard  HEADACHE SPECIALIST.

One second while I step up on my soapbox…Ok and go…

You are telling me that there is a headache specialist IN MY CITY and you have not referred me to him yet? Is the specialist a secret agent man that uses cloaks and phantom of the opera masks to hide his true speciality?  What is this, high school and this doctor is the teenage boy who is trying to hide the playboy magazine from his parents? I’m going out on a limb here, but I don’t think this headache specialist is a deluge of pornographic material so HIDING him isn’t necessary. Perhaps I’m looking at this the wrong way? Maybe my doctor just wanted a good ol’ fashioned game of Marco Polo?

Holy mystery solved Batman! And here I thought all my co-pays were being spent wisely, when in fact, I should have just used them to wipe my kids ass. I left the office. Another 20 down the drain and a measly script for vicodin to show for all my troubles. When I got home, I promptly looked up Dr. Perfect’s number and made my own appointment.  HA…I WIN MARCO!

What’s black, white, and hard as a rock??

…..a Panda that has fallen in cement. COME ON! LISTEN LADY, GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER.

My husband claims he was picking up my daughter’s toys and he nonchalantly threw these two stuffed animals on the dresser and they just “HAPPENED TO LAND THIS WAY”.

Yep OK. And when I was a kid, my barbies and G.I. Joes just liked to chillax together with nothing but their plastic underoos on. TOTALLY BELIEVEABLE!

Obsessed much? Damn kid, I think we’re clear on my name!

I fear this will lead to that 4 year old standing in the aisle at the grocery store, incessantly saying “mom, mom, mom, mom” without taking a breath and without GIVING ME TIME TO RESPOND!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4kIqE6n-h4

Untwist your panties…she is just being used as a human billboard. It’s the perfect place to market. Don’t you see?!? Everywhere we go she is the center of the universe. Who can resist looking at a little baby and smiling? Why not smack my blog URL up on her shirt. Onlookers can smile and get their “Awww…isn’t she cute” in and I can get some more traffic to my site. Listen Lady, it’s a WIN WIN! 

Still doubt my tactics? When she’s sitting through Harvard lectures she is going to be grateful that I exploited her cuteness to get a little extra dough.

Plus we can touch a whole new demographic. Infants. It’s an untapped blog market. UNTAPPED I tell you! Granted they can’t read yet, but imagine the hand eye coordination that I am teaching by having them open the laptop and navigate to my lonely little blog. I know, it’s like I’m mother Teresa.

Oh to be young and naive and believe that we could remove all the bushes and the 50+ year old stumps in just a couple of months time. The first summer we managed to mangle about 5 bushes out of the ground and break only 1 shovel before winter hit. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t about to don my parka and start hacking away at a frozen stump. We put our plans on hold and agreed to resume extraction the next summer.

Little did we know, the extraction that occurred was of a much different nature than we intended. It involved a cold pair of stirrups, a couple dozen doctors, and one stubborn little 8 pound old newborn. Summer number two became a bust as I had a live-in and I would throw a temper tantrum if the temperature went above 71 and I had to set even my pinky toe in the sun. My air conditioner became my best friend during that time. We would have long talks and go to the movies…. ok not really, but I HATED even one drop of sweat on my pregnant being.

I vowed that this would be the summer of stumps and we’d finally finish removing every last one; even if it meant that I had to set fire to them and dance around naked doing American Indian chants. Unfortunately, time got away from us a little and suddenly I changed the calendar and it was August. AUGUST. WTF MATE. We had not even looked at the stumps yet and it was nearly the end of summer. As a side note for those of you not from Western New York, summer lasts approximately 2 months for us and the rest of the year we have snow.

My husband diligently volunteered to stay home from work and spend his time hacking away at these suckers to get rid of the last 4 stumps (thanks honey for all that man work).  One ax, one hatchet, and one sledgehammer later…we have 4 empty holes in our backyard. Look at that stump family, so cute and innocent looking. So unsuspecting of their fate. YOU’RE BURNING BITCHES!

A colossal wall clock. This isn’t just an ordinary wall clock. Nope my friend, it’s COLOSSAL. This puppy is 5 feet in diameter. FIVE FEET. That’s like hanging me sideways on your wall. Hell, tack me up there and I’ll even use my arms and legs to point to 10 and 2.

The description says that some assembly is required. My guess is that you’ll need to frame out an entire clock tower before you even open the packaging. The magazine also suggests you use bolts for secure hanging. I would just like to say, “No Shit, Sherlock”. I thought we could just smack some masking tape on the back and call it a day. Though you might want to consider additional home owners insurance as I’m sure you are going to rip down half your house if you don’t secure this clock with earthquake resistant fasteners.

Good news though. No matter how COLOSSAL this clock is, it only requires 2 AA batteries. THAT’S IT. Totally disappointing. I was under the impression that this clock would require the same amount of electricity as needed to run a small town in Rhode Island. Who knew that such a large heaping mass of metal would be so green.

Listen Lady, you know its funny. And you know that in about 15 years when my daughter looks back and reads this blog she is going to understand why mommy started a fund for therapy instead of college.

Nowadays, I would rather pull out a tooth than return to an educational setting and write a paper. Unfortunately, this means that my laptop has transformed from typewriter to photo-album/media library. The first time I plugged in my newly acquired iphone, my laptop decided to sputter and cough as though it has been smoking cigarettes at an incessant rate for the last 45 years.  It didn’t respond to a good beat down or the ever famous “Nintendo blow”.  (Anyone over 30 will not understand that reference).

For a temporary fix, we resorted to propping the laptop up on a 1 foot high metal stand. With the keyboard levitating at neck level, I often find it difficult to type (though it has solved the problem of overheating) so we needed a more permanent resolution. My husband started looking at cooling pads and was totally boring in his approach. Slim. Metal. Gray. BORING.

First, I beat him with the mouse (gently) and then I berated him. He should know me better than that. I don’t do simple and boring. I’m more of a “weird is cool” kinda girl. You should have seen the color of my last car. Google earth picked it up. Not kidding. You can see it. FROM SPACE.

Anyways. When I find an object I like, my response is “OOOOOOOOOOOOO.” This indicates my preference for it. That’s how he gauges the Christmas gifts he gives me. How may “OOOOOOOOO’s” can I get out of her?

Imagine my response when I saw this laptop accessory. 

I gave an extra long “OOOOOOOO” for this. But then, I started staring at this cooling pad and, to be honest, got a little freaked out. It’s a little creepy. I mean…the placement of the fans alone. Listen Lady, this furry little fellow could benefit from a bra. I doubt that an underwire will be comfy in artic weather. At the very least we need to put some fig leaves on these puppies!

Before the party, I headed over to a local gag gift shop and found these Candy Nipple Tassels. Who doesn’t like a nice sugar rush in bed? Note the exquisite, vibrant colors and the delicate way these tassels just lay on the bosom.

This brought back happy memories of childhood and candy necklaces. Cool summer nights, watching the fireworks, chomping away on a candy necklace. I’m sure that was the inspiration for this delicacy.

I happened to be reviewing the package and noticed that not only do you get pure pleasure for your money, but the maker also provides you with nutritional content. God love ‘em. It’s a double whammy.

Interestingly, the serving size is only 6 pieces. Can you imagine, in the throw of things, 6 pieces consumed and you must rip these suckers off. THAT’S IT. I’VE HAD MY DAILY VALUE!!

By far, the best part of the gift is the declaration that it is “FOR USA ONLY”. Really?!? Is the calorie intact going to change in Europe?  You can be sure the pleasure factor won’t swagger. I bet you 10 bucks Queen Elizabeth would use them.

Imagine the fun you would have declaring these in customs. The stifled custom’s agent asks if you have any food or drink to declare. And you’re all “well, I’m bringing titty tassels into the country.” My guess is that you would have warranted yourself a full body cavity search. Who knows, you might even get to wear the tassels during the inspection.  “Ma’am could you stop swinging those around please, it’s interfering with my metal detector sweep.”

Melts in your mouth, not in your… ok you finish the rest.

See…she even knows to raise her hand at the dinner table before asking a question.

THANKFULLY. I’m glad that was breaking news. Now I can sleep. Not sure about you, but I was worried for a second or two that Linda would not reap in all the benefits from his cheesy kid movies.

I’m partial to Macho Man Randy Savage anyways. Who doesn’t love SNAPPING IN TO A SLIM JIM!

Occasionally, I’ll get to the point where all the extra clutter bothers me and then I’m like a whirlwind. I’ll go through the whole house, tearing down plaster board if it means I can get rid of some more clutter. You’ve no idea the itch I get when I look at my husband’s computer desk and see crap everywhere. I start to twitch. I’ll come in with my dusting cloth and pretend to be dusting; really it’s just an attempt to THROW OUT EVERYTHING ON THE DESK.

The other day my husband wasn’t feeling well so he went into the medicine drawer (Yes, I have a whole drawer full of medicine, Band-Aids, arm slings, crutches, cathers… ok maybe not those last few items, but you get it). Anyways, he went in search of some cold medicine and came flying out of the bathroom like a raving lunatic. He was all, “Honey, do you know how old these are?” 

Clearly the answer was “No” since the medication was obviously still there but the question had been posed. One of the boxes had expired back in August of 2005. Why is that bad? It’s only like 4 years.  It’s not like on September 1, 2005 the pill turned to liquid poison. Come on, it’s like the 5 second rule. Drop something on the floor, pick it up within 5 seconds, and you’re still golden. Listen Lady, suck it up and pop the pill into your mouth, it’s bound to do something. Hell, it might even produce a really funny story we can share with the kids when they are older. My compassion is overflowing sometimes.

Today I managed to finish off this container of peanuts. The sell by date is 3/10/09. Eh……4 months later and those nuts were pretty damn tasty! Though my left pinky toe has been twitching since I finished the last nut…

Listen Lady, you can’t even make this shit up.

Where do I even start…

1) Let’s begin with the ‘aggressive groundhog’ label.  Was Phil wielding a machete or charging this resident, guns a’blazin’, screaming “TAKE NO PRISONERS.” I can picture it, behind him stood an army of lethal animals; squirrels, mice, and the most feared ladybug in the world. Outnumbered and overpowered, the New Jersey resident stood no chance against these foes. Defeat was inevitable. Massive casualties would be likely.

2)  Chased you? You mean, it scurried after you and you ran around the house like a little girl wearing a tutu, screaming at the top of your lungs because you had a big fluffy HERBIVORE on your tail. What was it going to do, give you a nasty nick? I don’t think it would have caused severe arterial damage.

3) Tried to get your truck. Really? How tall was this thing? Did it even reach your shins? I’m pretty sure that had it taken you down, and hog-tied you, more than likely, it wasn’t going to be able to levitate long enough to open the door to the truck and hop in the cab. While Phil may have enjoyed a scenic stroll in your Ford, I doubt he would have gotten far as his arms would be too short to make a complete rotation with the steering wheel.

4) Pepper Spray? Are you kidding me? A swift kick wouldn’t have worked? Or, I know, A NET. Save the pepper spray for the humans. Based on the recollection of the resident though, I would have been hesitant to use the pepper spray if I were the cops. I mean, Phil could have turned vile and ordered his soldiers to attack the police. It would probably have been best if they called in the hostage negotiator and talked the groundhog down. You just can never be two careful with these furballs.

Now, this was also important as it was only the second time my husband and I have been out ALONE, without child, since she was born and she’s almost 9 months old. NINE MONTHS.  Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite as planned.

First, we fought off Thunder and Lighting.

Then a hail storm.

Then a tornado.

Then a monsoon.

Listen Lady, this is the middle of July. In Western New York. Usually we just see large bugs.

After about 30 minutes of this weather, the sunset cruise got canceled. We gave up on the whole lake thing and changed our course of action to dinner and drinks at a local hibachi restaurant. Happily,we got to dine with Buddha and learn his wisdom. I even rubbed his belly.

We closed down the restaurant and headed over to a local martini bar where we were first greeted by a clown. Now, lets take this side tangent for a minute. I HATE CLOWNS. H-A-T-E. WITH A PASSION. They freak me out like nobody’sbusiness. Did you know that one of the most famous serial killers was a career clown and that’s how he picked out his victims. I rest my case.

After the clown incident, we were greeted by a lovely blond slut. Now, I say that in the nicest way possible. She came up to the bride-to-be and got about 2 millimeters from her face. (Ever seen the close-talker on seinfield? Yep, this was a close talker). This inflatable bimbo, with the most disgusting smile, was all ”my friend booked a birthday party and she wants to be the only princess here.”  Accordingly, I blinked.

I held back my tongue because as most of you know, I CANNOT stand girly things or princesses and I would have been every bit justified in simply knocking this blow up doll into next week. I very polietly informed the blond that her friend was going to have to deal and we were going to the back deck for a martini.

Five Martini’s later we decided to call it a night and get the tipsy bride-to-be back home. This is how far we got her before she collapsed. She spent the rest of the night sleeping here.

All in all, a great night and the perfect end to single life. Here’s to marriage!

LISTEN LADY, I HAVE TO GET ONE OF THESE!!! Anybody who cares to send one our way, please feel free to email me and I’ll give you the address.

Just look at that package. The kid on the left looks as though he is sporting an entire set of dentures at the mere age of 8 months. He even has a little comb-over going on.

Can you imagine what all the little old ladies would say? “Oh, good heavens, look at that poor baby’s mouth” or “For Pete’s sake, that’s not even funny”. (by the way, who the hell is pete?)  This would certainly get their knickers in a twist. 

On a side, I wonder if Billy Mays did the infomercial for this product.

Things took a turn for the worse when Marino’s career was cut short by a running coach and then he was slaughtered by the Browns. (I was at that game; ask me sometime, I have quite the story of it). We have been on shaky ground since Marino retired and the team has gone through coaches faster than Brittany Spears has mental breakdowns.

The addition of Parcells last year as VP of Football Operations did not make me a happy camper. And then there was the $62 million dollar deal they struck with rookie Jake Long. But what put me over the top was the whole throw-down between Mr. VP of Football Operations and the well respected talents of Jason Taylor. YOU DON’T JUST THROW OUT YOUR BEST DEFENSIVE END. All in all, I must admit, the 2008-2009 season went far better than expected. Though it wasn’t hard to top; we came away from the 2007-2008 season with just one win.

With the unexpected turnaround and the playoff bearth last season, I had high hopes this time around.

Until yesterday. Alas, another MAJOR setback. And this time it’s in the form of a skinny, Latin singer. Marc Anthony has joined as a partner in the Miami Dolphin franchise. You have got to be kidding me!! Are we that desperate that we need to strike up contracts with mediocre singers who only happen to be famous because of the gigantic, junk in your trunk arse that they married?

Shocking as this is, he will perform during one of the home games. Do you think that was part of the deal? There are his laywers, sitting in the board room running numbers and he comes out with, “I’ll only invest Jennifer’s money if you let me sing during a game”.

Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I’ve got, I’m still…I’m still Jenny from the block. Listen Lady, pick up your husband, return to your block, and then purchase a buns of steel workout video.

I’m sure this will prove to be another fruitful season.

               “BE ALERT AND ARRIVE ALIVE!”

It’s like its own tongue twister. Go ahead. Try to say it 5 times fast. Got ya, right?

Listen Lady, I’m pretty sure that if folks are unable to repeat this PSA, it may not be effective. Plus, you add a whole new dimension when you throw “eh” at the end of it.

We happened upon the bear den and noticed that the keepers were about to feed the bears lunch. I was all, “cool, I wonder if they feed them slabs of meat that is still mooing”. No luck, they only get fruits and veggies. Boring. Listen Lady, you could spice it up a little. If you are going to bore us with fruits at least stick your hand through the fence with the apple.

There were two large bears in this den and the smaller of the two put on quite a show. He was so excited about eating he would literally dance in front of the keeper. Like, “OOHHH, Here. Here I am. Feed Me. Yep Me. Don’t forget about me. Oh, let me impress you with my moves. That’s hot. I’m right here. Feed Me. Please. Please.” I’m pretty sure after about 5 minutes of this the zookeepers start doing this only for shits and giggles. I think I may try this when I feed my daughter.

In reality we are going for a baseball game and a trip to the zoo. Boston is playing the Blue Jays on Saturday and we need to inaugurate our daughter into the world of sports at a real MLB game. Plus I want dip ‘n dots. IT’S THE ICE CREAM OF THE FUTURE. THE FUTURE!

Since we were heading up to the game we decided, why not go to the zoo the next day and make it a little trip. Plus, other people should enjoy my screaming child at 3 am;just as I do. My apologies Mr. Traveler.

I’m a list type of person, so when we are going on a trip I like to write down all the things we’ll need. That way I’m sure not to forget vital things; like underwear or Chinese finger traps. This is the first time we’ve traveled avec child so its bound to be a little more hectic; I predict it will be something similar to practicing meditation while on speed.

The list started off fairly small, but it seemed to grow exponentially; as though it were some sort of bacteria that had found a way to reproduce on its own and take over mankind by drowning it in all the crap it lugged to this earth. In five minutes I had filled and entire page with things to bring for the baby. THE ENTIRE PAGE. She barely stands 2 feet tall and she requires an entire u-haul truck for a weekend trip.

I wish it was the fact that I was bringing more than I needed to, but sadly, she’ll use EVERYTHING on that list. I think I might need a bigger bag.

First I’d like to discuss the name of this document; Last Will and Testament.

I think it’s a horrible title for this document. It’s been called this since the end of time, I get it, but it sucks as a name. Here’s what I imagine when I hear about someone’s Last will. Stuffy old men, decked out in suits, sitting at the end of a long table with their glasses pulled down on their noses declaring your entire life was worth a measly 5 bucks.

Why couldn’t we decide to title the document something that conjures up more pleasant images?  How about we rename it to something more uplifting like “Down under dance party”. Or for the country music lover in you, “Boot scooting for eternity”.  We could even go more gothic and try out “The hand of destiny”. We could pay tribute to Metallica and name it “Fade to Black”. No? Listen Lady, at least give me some freaking spirit fingers when you say it!

We laid out our plans for how we’d like to be buried and who should be granted custody of our daughter. Do you think it’s implied that whoever gets the kid also gets the cat too? We also decided that if we both keel at the same time and our daughter inherits our money then she can’t access any of it till she’s 25. My husband thinks this will teach her that she needs to get an education and learn how to work and be responsible before she cashes in on us. Tell her what she’s won Johnny!!!!

Spirit fingers!

Here it is kid…your life hasn’t already been hard enough by losing your parents, but ribbed for your pleasure we’re going to throw in the extra nugget that you have to be a responsible adult before you ever gain anything from the two of us having a dance party 6 feet under.

I think he’s delusional. Not in the whole teaching her responsibility jazz, but rather in the whole, thinking we’d have any money left over after all our debt is paid off.

Surprisingly though, the two of us are fairly in sync in how we’d like to be buried, who gets our kid, and whether or not to pull the plug. If you are interested, the answer is NO.  We left the lawyers office feeling uplifted and cheery.

Let’s start with the title of the article “Teenager Falls into Open Manhole While Texting”. I immediately did a double-take with my head and shouted “She fell in a what?” I didn’t believe this article. Surely there was no way that someone could just miss a gaping 2 foot hole in the ground RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR FACE.

What happened to teenagers being able to text without looking at the phone? Listen Lady, if I were your parents I wouldn’t invest a lot of money any activity where you need hand eye coordination. Clearly she won’t be attending the texting world championships anytime soon.

And just think, she gets to drive soon. Yippee

Listen Lady, the “N” writer had the day off.

1) a shrine to the Madonna in their yard under half of a bathtub.
2) their garage is screened off and holds an entire living room set.
3) there is a bocce set somewhere in the yard.

Being the youngest couple on the street, it is important that we learn each of our neighbors names in order to distinguish them. Their names range from “The Hobbits” to “The man we almost killed”. We also have “Army”, “Crazy Stick Lady”, and “Pink Truck Man”.  By far though, my favorite neighbor is “Wet Suit Man”. 

When the town built the neighborhood back in the early 60′s they planted oak trees in each yard. These trees’ have blossomed and provide lovely shade on each property. Last summer, as my husband and I drove out of our neighborhood, we passed an elderly man who had just had one of these trees cut down after it had been damaged in a wind storm.  From first appearances it seemed that he was trying to dig up some large roots.

Except for one thing…he was wearing a WET SUIT. Nope, I kid you not. He was decked out from head to toe in a BodyGlove. AND IT WASN’T EVEN RAINING.  None of this registered at first and we drove all the way to the end of the street before my husband and I turned to look at it other and at the same time said “Was he wearing a wetsuit?”  Hence forth he has been known as WET SUIT MAN. 

A year later that large patch of dirt from where the tree once stood still exists. Weeds grew there during the fall and snow lightly fell during the holidays. Spring came and dandelions sprouted out of this large patch of dirt, but still no grass was grown. We had all but given up hope that this dirt patch would never know any other existence.

That is until last night!!

We headed out as a family to get some ice cream and as we passed, we noticed that Wet Suit man was at it again and this time he had a METAL DETECTOR hovering over the dirt patch. Hoooooray for buried treasure. Listen Lady, this isn’t the movie set for pirates of the Caribbean, the only thing you are going to find in that hole is an old sangwich, some leftover antipasto, and an old dish of gnocchi. Please take your crusty wet suit and NEVER put it on again while you prance around in public.

For your visual pleasure, I have drawn the below representation of the event. Please note that this is only a dramatization and no animals were harmed in the making.

I noticed though that it wasn’t a bumper sticker, but rather seemed to be a company logo. Intrigued, I got a little closer and this is the logo I saw:

Go ahead. Laugh. You know you want to. I giggled all the way home.

The name of the company is ridiculous but the slogan…oh, that is priceless. Quite Catchy. Just rolls off the tongue. I wish I worked for that Marketing Team cause they must have a shitload of ideas. HA

This called for some sort of entertainment! Pole-dancing and ghost-riding-the-whip were ruled out and in the end a more low-key form of entertainment was chosen and we stumbled upon the topic of tonsils. Little did I know this would turn into another anatomy lesson, complete with illustrated diagrams.

Our friend quickly declared that her tonsils had been removed as a child. She was all, “I had my tonsils removed so I don’t have a hangy ball”.  (For those of you who require a more anatomically correct term, the hangy ball is also known as the Uvula). Confusion spread across my tired face as it registered what she said. I was all “listen lady, the Uvula is not the same thing as your tonsils”. Adamant as a stubborn donkey, she insisted that I was wrong. Tonsils were clearly the thing hanging in the back of your throat. After quite the debate, I needed closure. So we pulled out the trusty iphone and did a little wiki search.

Low and behold:

The hangy ball IS NOT the tonsils. Now, I’m not sure about others, but if it’s on the wiki then it must be true. And if the wiki has a picture then it’s a pretty much an open and shut case; a pull up your panties and head home kind of night.

Now, this is not the first anatomy class that I’ve given and you would think that people would eventually believe that I knew a thing or two about physiology. So there I am… 11:45 at night, shoved between an infant car seat and my uvula-less friend, and I’m lighting up the back of her throat with a LED flashlight. This is the point where she tried to point a camera into her mouth and take a picture as though there was still some sort of disbelief.

Sometimes I just give up.

So there we were, throwing items into the cart left and right and before I knew it we had reached the chip aisle. As I headed in a northernly direction an elderly woman passed right by and said “oh what a cute baby, I just have to see her face”.  Now, I’ve come to learn that this is not an uncommon occurrence. My daughter has garnered her fairshare of oooo’s and ahhhh’s; especially from elderly women.  I’m probably a little biased, but I think my baby is absolutely adorable, especially when she gives you the toothless grin, so I don’t mind the occasional gloat fest.

As the kind hearted person I am, I slowed my shopping spree and I gave this elderly women the 5 seconds of human interaction that she so desperately craved before heading back home to her 50 cats. Without prompting conversation she quickly blurted out “I’m going to be a great-grandma soon and I’m not too old to pick them up and toss them around”………let that settle for a minute before we proceed to analyze.  My grandmother is still alive and I have had the pleasure of giving her great-grandchildren, however, there is not a bone in my body that would just allow her 80 year old frame to toss my fragile baby around. 

With another smile we quietly ducked away from this elderly woman and continued on our shopping trip. That is until we met her again in the next aisle over. And then again in the next aisle. She spotted us as though we were prey and I saw her hasten her steps in order to get to us.  Once again she said “oh what a cute baby, I just have to see her face”. (Ummmmm….you just saw her not more than 2 minutes ago).  Though this time she added “I wish I had a camera so I could take a picture”. This is where things started to get creepy.

I quickly rolled my cart away and down TWO aisle’s to try and avoid the passing effect we seemed to be stuck in. I was able to make it all the way to the household cleaners before she suddenly appeared again; popping up from behind a display of brooms. Once again we received the standard greeting “oh what a cute baby, I just have to see her face”. And the even creepier “I wish I had a camera so I could take a picture.” Now, I’m not condoning taking pictures of random strangers; but Listen Lady, I’m almost wishing you had a camera so you COULD remember that you saw this baby and can stop stalking us.  Again the proud mother smile and I took off like a bolt for the baby aisle.

I thought that this would be my saving grace. What elderly woman would need to take a hop, skip, and jump down the baby aisle. I rounded the corner and much to my disbelief she was not standing there waiting with her fangs drawn. Relived, I started to dump plastic Gerber containers into the shopping cart. Fruit, Veggie, oh…I need this fruit. I thought we were finally in the clear until out of the corner of my eye, I saw her.  She proceeded to walk by the end of the aisle, stop her cart, purposefully turn around, and come towards us. FOR THE LOVE.

 Standard Greeting

Picture taking desire

Creepiness factor of 100. 

One time is ok, two is starting to push it, but 5 times!!!!! Listen Lady, I think you might need another cat. Please stop stalking us. We finished our shopping trip ratherly quickly after this and did not linger any longer than 5 milliseconds when picking out the remainder of our items.  I watched to make sure we didn’t have a tail on us as we drove home.

This is my tomato plant for 2009. I get one each year. And then I proceed to name them. I’ve had a Fransicso, Jose, and Pierre. I like to alternate through heritages. It makes me feel as though I’m more cultured and gives the allure that I take tea and biscuits everyday in the sitting room.  I really just like to name things though. I’ve never quite figured out why, but I feel as though inanimate objects become more life-like if they possess a human name. Kinda like…transformers in disguise.

This year I could not come up with a name so I suggested Jon Doe. My husband added on the DoeMato and I laughed like a pre-pubescent little boy who had just learned about girl parts.  From there it stuck.

Normally, I plant my annual tomato in a special pot that I tend to individually, but the last few years I’ve ended up with tomatos that look shitfaced, so this year I gave up and dug a nice hole in the dirt for Jon. To my shock he sprouted faster than a college frat boy and has even outgrown his dancing cage.  Perhaps the winter months where outdoor cats played poop and seek in my garden have done wonders for my plants.  Now, can I slice you up a fresh tomato?

My latest tactic. The names and addresses have been removed to protect the innocent

In recent weeks I’ve attended many of these garage sales. But please, before you judge my frugality let me explain.  My family is not desolate nor do I take pleasure in haggling over used dishware. My husband and I both have well paying jobs that provide our family with health insurance and the ability to live a comfortable lifestyle. Rather, I enjoy going to these garage sales simply because I take pleasure in seeing the junk other people have collected and are attempting to pardon off on an unsuspecting target. What can these folks get rid of now, that 5 years ago was needed for survival or they would have been unable to wake the next morning if they had not purchased that ab-buster RIGHT NOW?  

Ever heard that the best way to get to know someone was to go through their trashcan? You can find out the most intimate of details simply by looking at what we consider trash. In a way that garage sale is an open trashcan for everyone to look it.  A glimpse into their life and the phases they have passed though. I’m not proud of the “pogs” phase that I entered in my early tween years, but I digress. You could call me a gawker or even think of it as trying to live vicariously through others.  I think it’s just my desire to understand people and see how they live. And of course, to find the most ridiculous pieces of junk on earth and take pictures to tickle my fancy. Case and point below:

Question Mark. What the HELL is that? Does anyone know? When it stops scaring you for 5 seconds come back and revisit it. And then ask yourself, why is there a $5 sticker on it?

In one of my more recent trips I visited a lovely two story colonial in a quiet suburban neighborhood and a mother and son were setting some items out for viewing. As I approached I could not help but be drawn into their conversation. The mother was standing at the foot of a table that was housing some sort of sports memorabilia and a few assorted outdoor games.  She picked up a box that appeared to hold a bocce set and with the power of a mighty hurricane, she screamed to her son “JEREMY, WHY ON EARTH IS THIS OUT HERE? GO PUT IT BACK WITH THE GOOD JUNK?”  Fearing she may start to lob the bocce balls, I immediately halted my approach and took cover under the closet sapling. (I’m prone to concussions so I tend to be cautious around falling objects).

Good junk? As compared to….bad junk or really bad junk? Who gets to designate the difference? Could I find a listing for this type of employment on CareerBuilder? Seriously Lady, GOOD JUNK! What is that? Junk is junk, there is no varying degrees to junk. It’s not like a color spectrum where we have varying shades of the hue red. From now on we’ll need to buy bins and place items into them based on a junk level; good junk, moderately decent junk, really shitty junk.  

As I progressed on down the street there was yet another garage sale for my viewing pleasure and as I approached the dwelling I noted a sign taped to the side of the garage door. My initial thought was that this individual was trying to sell a larger ticket item. For example a bedroom set that they had taken pictures of to display for selling. Genius right? Nope, I was wrong. It was a sign marked with large letters “NO RETURNS OR REFUNDS”.  What parallel garage sale universe have I slipped into? Does this really have to be called out for garage sales? Is it not typical garage sale etiquette that all sales are final?  It’s not like I just walked into my local Wal-mart where I provide my items to the cashier so she can scan the barcodes and provide me with a receipt of my purchases wherein if I need to return one I have documented proof of my purchase. First off, as the homeowner, have you really been in the situation where someone has tried to return an item they purchased from you and to avoid a future re-occurrence you prominently display the “house rules”? Second, who tries to return something they purchased at a garage sale? Perhaps they slept on it that night and thought, “Nope, damnit that .50 cent purchase was not at all what I wanted and I’m going back to demand a refund.” Who knows, maybe they were trying to return good junk.

I thought I would try one more sale before heading back to my abode. I scanned the host of items and seemed to find most of the “regulars”; books, movies, clothes, toys. And then my eyes hit on the back of the garage and naturally I gravitated there. On display in the back of the garage was a stockpile of toiletries ranging from shampoo to deodorant and dish detergent to antibacterial spray. Please note though, these items were not used. They were brand spanking new. As though this humble man had gone up to the local grocery and bought a case of each item to sell. Question mark. I thought the point of garage sales was to sell used items? Now, I frequent the local grocery store also so I’m aware of what the grocer charges for these items and this scam artist had marked up these toiletries by at least 50%. And yet there was some sap standing next to me buying a bottle of Dawn dish soap. Perhaps he will accept coupons though?

I decided to go home after that.