Cat! DO NOT!

So after my last post I got an email from a concerned friend who thought I sounded depressed. Apologies to all, it had been a shitty week. It's all fine. Or will be fine, whatever. There are things I can't discuss because I'm not dumb about posting work stuff on the internet, but know that there are things in the world that are making me grouchy and I'm trying not to take it out on you, all four of you, my loyal readership. Instead I will take it out on the cat.

Birdy takes everything out on the cat. Direct quote from tonight:

"Cat! DO NOT! You know BETTER!"

I'd like to say she came up with that on her own, but it's definitely a page from my book. But what's a girl to do? That cat knows better! And he breaks things!


A. pinched Birdy's teeny finger totally by accident in a cooler and kind of peeled back some of the skin. She cried. A lot.

A: Oh, Birdy, that breaks my heart!
Bird: It breaks my heart, too!

Birdy will be a monkey for halloween. It will be so damn cute your teeth will melt out of your head, just wait.

I made this, and you should, too. Easy, delicious, with leftover mileage. Passes the Mama Snee test. I also made an Eggplant + Zucchini bake that involved a trip to a second grocery store to find eggplant, all in an attempt to convince myself that I do like eggplant. And sadly, despite my best efforts, I still do not like eggplant. Even smothered in mozzarella. And that's really saying something. There have been times in my life when I would have eaten styrofoam peanuts smothered in mozzarella and asked for seconds.

I'm thinking I'm going to do nablopomo, and I know you think that's funny, considering I post once every year or so, but LOOK OUT, I'm going to think of some things to say.

Starting Thursday, because it's late and I'm tired and in the middle of a freelance project due tomorrow, and I'm going to go on a hunt through all of the kitchen drawers for a stray cigarette I may or may not remember hiding from myself a very, very long time ago.

Here are your bonus pictures.

Helping make Granny-ola bars

This is Bird screaming at Reggie, the fish who came to live with us on her birthday.

This is Bird making some wooden breakfast on Sunday for Baby and Dog at her new birthday kitchen from Granny and Grandpa. It was the laziest of days. The next time I wish for lazy days where Bird and I lay around in our pajamas and cook wooden food and read books and drink coffee all morning while A. makes a huge, delicious breakfast and occasionally shouts out answers to whatever smartypants quiz show is on NPR, remind me that we do that. A lot.

No Title This Time

Y'all.
I'm cooked.
So many things, not enough things, too many things.

Bird:
is two. Wants to do things "all my byself." Is funny. Is friendly and kind. Is charming. Is in need of a bath. Is not getting enough of my attention.

A:
Is my soother. I encourage you, if you are wound tight or worried about something, to talk to him about it. He will make a few simple comments, dilute the whole thing, and you'll be all like, "okay, pass me a beer, please. All is well." His motto: "nothing is fucked here, dude."

New boss:
is a man, is younger than me, eats out every meal (oh, the days of no babies), is totally for-serious, of the not-fuckin-around variety, will probably put the kibosh on my PT daycare opportunity (scheduling issues) and possibly my PT job opportunity. But there are advantages to a non-PT salary, so I'm sitting still and waiting for shit to settle. Something about doors closing and windows opening.
Also something about not having another job and really needing an income, about being in less control than I'd like to believe.

Job:
Where do I begin. I'm doing everyone else's lately. Finding myself in the mental state I fled two years ago when I declared my disdain for offices, slacks, and small talk. Somehow I have a real job again, and a part of me feeds on that, while another part gets food poisoning.

School:
Was over two months ago. Have not started studying for exam. Have not scheduled exam. Have not really thought about massage in a while. Either I'm ignoring the idea because It's easier to get comfortable-ish where I am (I know my way around non-profit work, to be sure), or because I made a sizable mistake when I borrowed all of that money to go to school. Stay tuned on that one.

Dogs:
Are stinky.

Clothes:
All are stupid, ill-fitting, worn or stained. New ones are expensive. And new boss has been wearing a tie every day, so I have a feeling I'm going to get the "talk" at some point, for my continued pushing (shoving?) the limit of casual workplace.

Bangs:
Over it. Growing out.

Edited to Add:
Um, so sorry, this post is pretty much a rerun of the last post. Obviously in need of some changes in the ole life-aroo.

I'm here.

Did you think I wasn't here? I was starting to wonder myself.

I'm here though, busy at work with expanding duties and changing leadership and full-time possibilities that I'm wrestling with thinking about entertaining maybe.

Busy being filled to capacity with what-ifs and why-nots.

Busy putting off taking the NCTMB exam for my licensure because it costs a fistful of money and also because I crunched some numbers I should have crunched about a year and a half ago and it all looks a little dismal from here with regard to the earning potential that comes with said license.

Busy at home trying to be as mentally present as I can be with Birdy when we are physically there together, busy watching her get bigger and funnier and more imaginative, watching the days fly by, trying to plan a birthday shindig, trying to wrap my brain around the number two, as in two years, as in seven hundred thirty days ago tomorrow my water broke and Birdy entered the world and changed it forever.

But.

There is much work to be done here today. Family budgets are collecting dust and falling apart, bills are piling up, my house is getting grungier, shabbier, and more neglected as the days pass, but the job that pays the bills is the job that wins the attention on this Wednesday. How my temporary, "get through school" job has turned into the real thing-- a time-sucker, a desk-sitter, a brain-taxer-- is a fact that baffles me daily. Did I let it happen or did I want it to happen? Did I ask for it or did I fall into it? Am I beating 'em or joining 'em?

Upon Learning of the Birth of a Friend's Baby

Me: Hey Bird, do you think we should have a baby in this house someday?

Bird: **blink**

Me: Would you like to have a baby brother? Or a sister?

Bird (thinks for a second, and then): No, I don't want brother and sister. I just have sandwich.

Tuesday is the New Saturday (because I am not working today, that's the only thing they really have in common)

Debate with Toddler, Round II
"You lay on the white poller and I lay on the green poller."
"Okay."
"This poller is orange, and that poller is white."
"Um, okay, but I think your pillow is green. You just told me that."
"This one is orange, and that one is white."
"That one is green, and this one is white."
"Orange."
"Green."
"Orange."
"We'll just have to agree to disagree."
"Orange."

You say potato, and I say vagina
Also, by evening on the day of the potato-vagina debates, everything was vagina (bachina). Bachina bachina bachina. Bachina for dinner. Bachina on the phone. Bachina in the bedtime book.

As of today, the bachina storm seems to be on its way out, unless you ask Bird what something is called, because you know it's gonna be bachina. My favorite is her scuffed and beloved baby Stella, now known affectionately as Bachina Baby if you ask.

Finally I get to really pretend to be a stay-at-home mom
Bird and I went to story time today at the public library downtown, and she's now sleeping off all of the excitement of the puppets and the songs and the other kids, worn out from exclaiming things. It was all shock and awe at the Story Time today. Bird even walked right up to the puppeteer/ story reader after it was all over and gave him a proper toddler stare down, she was so impressed (and so brave).

We showed up a half-hour early (or a half-hour late, take your pick) for one of the three story times scheduled for today, and went upstairs to check out some books from my list while we waited. I set my water bottle down while dewy-decimaling, and took a few steps away from it to a different shelf. And Bird said, in a non-library voice, "MOMMY! DON'T LEAVE YOUR BEER!"

I'm Really Just an Old Man on a Park Bench Yelling at the Pigeons

So I had a patient visit today, in a little town out past the suburbs that's getting too big for its britches, if you ask me. I stopped for lunch on my way back through the 'burbs, and I would like to say this publicly: If I ever declare that I am moving to the suburbs, you should know that this is code for "Jesus, take me home, I'm ready to go." I know it works for some people, and sometimes it even seems appealing to me, what with the wide sidewalks and lack of people picking through your trash for cans. But still. For me it's a no-can-do.

The suburbs do crazy things to me, and the soccer-mom traffic makes me hostile and free with the fuck-yous. (though I do not give the finger. Ask my friend J. what happens when you give the finger. You get a brick through your window, that's what.) But anyway.

The suburb I was in today is totally Snootsville. I only stopped there because I had a little extra time and I knew there was a Target + Panera plaza, and I figured that after I watched my patient's daughter stick a tube in the tracheotomy hole in her neck and suck out the mucous, my employer could spring for a soup and salad combo. Also thought I might try to find myself an inexpensve lightweight jacket to wear over t-shirts and tank tops to work, with maybe my gnarly old black heels, maybe something in an army green. Surely Target would have something like that.

What I actually bought: Lucky magazine*, because I like to window shop when I am in the loo, two pumice stones from the dollar bin, and a light blue tee shirt that would have gone great with a lightweight army green jacket, had I found one.

What happens to me when I spend too much time in Snootsville is that I start saying things outloud, kind of under my breath, that are actually directed at people-- things like:
Are you fucking serious? (by far the most common grumble) Do you really need that much car? Do you think that looks natural? No, really, YOU go first. Extensions? Really? Do you expect people to believe those are your actual boobs?

Things like that. Under my breath. Because I just get so fed up. And the mumbling and grumbling at people just brings me one step closer to being just like the crazy guy in my neighborhood that points at passing cars and hollers and does a little jiggy shuffle. Except that he actually has a lightweight, army-green jacket, and I have yet to find one.

There was a woman at Panera that came in at the same time I did, balancing a toddler on one hip and dripping with bags of various sizes and shapes on the rest of her free arm space. At first, I really felt for her. I know what it's like to be a pack mule. But then she just kept stomping around the place in her gigantic heels, sighing and rolling her eyes at everything, bumping into people and cutting in line at the drink station and jumping in front of an older couple to place her order and just being extra-rude in general. And then I noticed that one of her bags was actually a purse-dog carrier.
With a fucking purse-dog in it.
So I said, sort of under my breath,
"Good thing you brought THE DOG."

And she heard me.
My first reaction was something like a little internal "eep!" and I tried to look away, but then got ballsy and looked her right in the face and took all the stink eye she could give me because geez, lady, don't give that old guy a bunch of shit because you just had to bring your fucking dog to Panera.

I also saw a high school cheerleader in uniform and I am not even kidding you when I say that the skirt did not come close to covering her ass. By the time Bird hits high school the cheerleaders will just be naked, slithering around stripper poles on the sidelines, letting everyone see their potatoes. (Hey, come to my eightieth birthday, everyone! I am old and crotchety!)



*I did notice in my Lucky magazine that everybody in the photos has these bangs I have, and I had no idea they were so much the thing. I mean, I guess I had to know somewhere in my brain but I really was surprised to see it on all of these swank models in the shiny pages. Of course, looking at myself in the mirror in the bathroom in my silver hoop earrings and white button-down shirt, and I look more like maybe I should be sitting in a little booth somewhere on the Jersey Turnpike collecting tolls.

Abe Says Eff It

My husband has sent me the link to this shirt twice in two days. I finally had to tell him that while it is truly hilarious (and I sincerely mean that), I just couldn't support the idea of him walking into daycare to pick up bird in a shirt like that. You know, with that foul language that offends me so deeply.

O Pish Posh linked to my Granny-ola on the same day that I was planning to link to her play-dough recipe, which is on my list of things to do this weekend. Can't wait-- I remember my mom making this and I'm so glad she posted it. I'll let you know how it goes.

And Velocibadgergirl at Pardon the Egg Salad posted about a camping trip at one of my favorite places in Indiana and maybe the world, Turkey Run State Park. Go see those pics, folks. I spent many a weekend there growing up and her post brought back many, many memories, only a few of them involving fearing for my life in an old school bus trailing a bunch of canoes on a dirt road while being driven to the "put-in." Ah, Turkey Run.


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