The Miracle of Life

Meet Eric and Alexis, newest grandkids to my step-mom Cindy, and her husband, the guy I call Dad.

The kiddos are having a rough go of things, owing to the fact that they were born on September 6th five months early. I didn't get any pictures until yesterday, but the report is that little Lexie is having the tougher time of the two.

We're sending all the loving, healing thoughts we have their way, and I would be grateful to everyone else if they could do the same!

The Magic

This is an actual conversation I had with Scott this morning. I absolutely adore that I can have conversations with him like this, because he understands exactly what it is I'm trying to say. That, and it proves that each of us is just as weird and dorky as the other.

Me: I wish I could tell you in some new way exactly how much you mean to me. I'm not sure the ways I've been saying it say it right. Maybe.... I think if I found out tomorrow that you were allergic to Raisin Nut Bran, and you couldn't be in the same room with Raisin Nut Bran...

Him: Or be with anyone who had eaten Raisin Nut Bran...

Me: Right, or be with anyone who had eaten Raisin Nut Bran, then I would give up eating Raisin Nut Bran forever, and I would do ALL the grocery shopping (which I hate) so you wouldn't have to be in the same building as the Raisin Nut Bran...

Him: What if I just couldn't be in the cereal aisle, or the aisles on either side of the cereal aisle?

Me: I'm not taking any chances! And if you needed to buy gas at a convenience store and the pay-at-the-pump option was not available, I would go inside that convenience store and check the shelf myself to make sure they did not stock Raisin Nut Bran in the small selection of cereals that they do have.

Him: Would you ask the clerk to make sure their was no Raisin Nut Bran in the back, or anywhere else on the premises?

Me: Yes. I would even double check anything the clerk told me, just to make sure he could be trusted. THAT'S how much I love you.

Him: Awwww... that's a lot.

Sometimes the magic is about explaining things in ways they've never been explained before...

Awesome!

I just found this, and I SO want to do it!

Seriously. The directions are here.

Once upon a time I would have done this without having to find it done by someone else first. I am, after all, the girl who had a collection of Barbie dolls SPECIFICALLY so I could make my own Barbie doll chandelier - picture if you will about 8 Barbies laying on their backs with their legs in the air, balancing their own heads (or the head of a friend, who knows?) on their dainty little mutant-feet. That chandelier never materialized except in my head, but it would have ROCKED. I was the cool girl at one time in my life. The girl who made her own clothes like the infamous Superman dress and the Sonics skirt; the girl who had a purple television covered with cowboys and indians and crocodiles and insects. Where did that girl go?!

Oh. I remember. That girl met a guy who didn't like weird girls, and they got married. Ugh. The girl threw away all her cool shoes, and sold all of her cool music, and gave away all of her cool clothes. That girl had to go into hiding. All she was able to save was one small box of Nine Inch Nails cds, and the memory of how to make cool things.

And so she's figuring out what that will all mean now, because she can be the cool girl that she really is again. She's "finding herself" all over again at 34...

Sick Day

It was a loooong night last night, what with Baby throwing up ALL over the bathroom floor, several times in the toilet, and THANKFULLY, not once in a bed, his OR mine. I became an amateur forensics expert, noticing that Baby had apparently eaten fast food recently, owing to the copious amounts of thinly sliced pickles present on the bathroom floor. Twenty questions later we deduced that the offending meal must have been eaten at school, and once his body expelled it all his listlessness seemed to improve a bit. But here we are, home today... doing our best to rest while we watch The Tick on DVD. I'm not complaining... The Tick is my favorite, second only to Superman.

Checking In

The weather has turned a nice blustery overcast sort of raininess that’s exactly perfect for this time of year, unless you happen to need to be outside with a hammer and some nails as Scotty-Do does this weekend. I just want to be inside with some knitting or a book and a fire in the fireplace, but I’m afraid the war with the fleas has escalated, and at this point they seem to be winning. I wish I could tell if I’ve won any of the many battles Scotty-Do and I are waging, because at this point I’m ready to abandon ship and let the fleas take over this place as I move somewhere else entirely. All I want is to know we’ve done at least a little bit of damage – some sort of flea body count or something. The fleas are mum on the whole subject, but the little buggers are popping up more frequently now than in the past, so I fear soon they may be ready to team together to physically throw us out on our ears. This has led to some rather interesting conversations between me and Scott, as we hypothesize the proper way to kill fleas with a miniature machine gun or tiny sword. I can’t understand exactly why this is even happening, as the cats we own don’t even go outside!

The ideas are starting to gather for what to make for Christmas this year, and I can feel the itch that means it’s time to get moving. That’s a good thing. And now for some blurry cell phone pictures taken a week ago on Saturday while Boo was at a skating party.

NOW I Understand!

The mini-vacation was as magicalificent and superfantastic as anything I’d experienced up to this point. I FINALLY understand why people take vacations. This could be addictive.

We drove our four hours to Eastern Washington , which appeared to be an entirely different country from the one we were supposed to be in. The part of Washington I’ve grown up in, I’ve come to know and love really, is GREEN. This Eastern Washington place is comprised of miles and miles of brown, with the occasional yellow thrown in to break up the monotony. We passed some sort of dust-devil-tornado things. We passed wheat. We passed rocks. The music was good, but most of the way I stared at Scott. As great as he is when I look at him from the front, I found that I appreciate him just as much when staring at him from the side. He’s pretty awesome.

We went to a Blues Festival and rented a house with seven other people for four days.

There was lots of alcohol;

There was a boat;

There was cliff diving.

People who have recently been on crutches should not try cliff diving from any point that requires a running start. That sort of thing can end disastrously if you’re not a ninja cat like me. I jumped off this cliff and showed everyone my ninja skillz by turning my fall into a sort of running-down-the-cliff move. I was pretty impressed with myself, but I think everyone else thought I was an idiot. I don’t think we have any photographic evidence of my brush with death.

Scott jumped off this rock (I didn't have a tape measure, but it was at LEAST 65 feet high. No joke),

while I sat in the boat below trying to hide my tears behind my enormous sunglasses. A guy like this only comes around once every 34 years, and I’d really like for him to stay awhile…

We didn’t get home until about midnight Sunday night, and so far the week has been mostly about assimilating ourselves back into normal society. Scott has turned my garage into some sort of organized haven completely void of any boxes of ex-boyfriend stuff, cleaned my toilets and refrigerator, joined me in the war against the fleas, and somehow negotiated a peace between the canine and feline factions of the house. He’s pretty humble and low key about it, but I’m convinced Scott is magical.

And the Good Karma Just Keeps On Coming

Boo had to go to the Pleasantville Urgent Care place yesterday because she had trouble opening her jaw once again. Some mothers might see this as a golden opportunity for a break from their wee ones, but we have enough trouble hearing what Boo has to say as it is, without throwing any more adversity into the mix. The last time this happened the guy at the Urgent Care place thought it might be a blocked saliva gland and prescribed a three-times-daily antibiotic. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m not organized enough to EAT three times daily, much less remember to administer an antibiotic that makes Boo gag every time she swallows it. And for some reason the more unpleasant I find a task, the less likely I am to perform it to perfection, go figure. So I was not looking forward to going back to the Urgent Care.

After our requisite hour of waiting with people sitting in my personal space bubble, either coughing their death rattle coughs or bleeding profusely all over the waiting room periodicals, we finally were granted access to the inner sanctum of the examination area. I recognized the exam room as the one I’ve been in almost a half dozen times this year already, and I waited patiently until our Doc-of-the-Day came in. You know it’s a bad sign when the random doctor assigned to your wee one’s case walks in the room and looks at you (it’s not your chart in his hand, after all), and says, “I know you!”. What you really want to ask him is if he remembers what it is you came in for, because he’s the doctor that saw you when you had the horrible bladder infection. It’s not so much WHAT you had that is embarrassing, so much as all the details you told him to make sure you ruled out any other horrific girl problems that it could have been, because all you knew at the time was that peeing made you want to cry. A bladder infection sounded like such a normal problem for that amount of pain.

Doc-of-the-Day turned his attention to Boo and pronounced her problem as teeth-grinding related, and suggested Motrin to alleviate the pain. Yeay! And then Doc-of –the-Day took his service WAY past compliance with the Hippocratic Oath and talked to Boo about Harry Potter (which she is completely obsessed with). “Do you have all the books?” he asked my little sunshine of sweetness. “All of them except the 6th one” she said innocently. “Well then let me bring that one in for you tomorrow,” said Doc-of-the-Day, thereby turning himself into a hero for my little Luna-Boo. And can you believe this? I just called the Pleasantville Urgent Care facility, and Doc-of-the-Day DID remember to bring that particular book in today. I’m thinking that the karmic wheel of fortune has REALLY decided to make things easier on us this year, recognizing of course that last year left me feeling particularly beat up at the end of it all. So I am on my way out the door to go pick up one Harry Potter book six from the doc, tonight I need to pack for my trip, and tomorrow after work I will be dropping two children and two bicycles off at Grandma’s for four days of staying up way past their bedtime and eating cereal with chocolate milk on it, all so I can go away for four days with my Favorite Grown Up Person, Scott. We are going to a Blues Festival in Eastern Washington, renting a house with a ton of people Scott knows through work, and enjoying being with each other. NOW do you see why I don’t think things could get any better? This is bliss.

-T