Custom Search

Saturday, May 19, 2007

The Short Person Gives Her First Concert!

On Friday, Short Person, her friend Eye, and the babysitter all traveled to the Senior Citizen Home as part of babysitter's Eastern Star/Mason affiliation.

The entertainment was late in arriving, so everyone was generally just sitting in a big empty room. Short Person was getting bored and decided that she wanted to sing babysitter a song. Babysitter told her that if she wanted to sing, she should sing for everyone and to go up front so that they could see her.

Thinking that Short Person and Eye would go up front, see the sea of people and come racing back, she was delighted by the fact that the kids sang three rounds of ABC's, My Little Sunshine, and a few verses of Old MacDonald Had A Farm.

The ABC's Short Person sang by herself, then Eye sang it by herself, and then they both sang together... with a chorus of senior citizens chiming in.

Unfortunately, since the girls were singing for babysitter, babysitter didn't want to leave to get the camera because she figured the girls would stop, so there is no video. Photos were taken by someone else so hopefully I'll get to see a little bit of it. But in the end, I learned a few things...

1. My husband, the horrifically shy person that he is, no longer believes she is his daughter... to which I replied that she is his daughter, but also her Nana's granddaughter.

2. Short Person is flying high on self-esteem because everyone clapped for her; and,

3. Apparently, she's a microphone hog!

Her first concert. I'm so happy and proud of her... and so sad and melencholy that I missed it.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

A Sad Day for the Appliance King

I had a very peculiar day yesterday. It started with klutziness, escalated to verbal faux pas, and ended with an eyebrow raising comment from LJ.

Let's start with klutzy, since I was much more klutzy than usual. I kept walking or bumping into things. I must have a half-dozen bruises right now, but those are nothing to the damage that I did to the electric skillet.

Happily resting on the dish towel next to the sink to dry, it was completely unprepared for the side-swipe walk-by that I gave it. Sadly, this lack of stability led to it breaking into about 20 pieces-- right before we needed to use it.

Now, for those of you that know my husband, you know that he is pretty much the appliance king of the world. There is not an appliance out there that he doesn't think we need, be it a hand mixer, tortilla warmer, or pizza cooker, we need it. So to see his beloved electric skillet meet its doom was almost more than he could bear.

As a matter of fact, I have been charged with certain death if I do not replace it immediately or sooner.

I tried to apologize, really I did, but I think that my apology lacked a little sincerity when instead of saying, "I'm really sorry, Honey, I'm having a klutzy day", it came out as, "I'm really sorry, Honey, I'm having a slutty day".

LOL... I swear, there are not many people that can beat me in the verbal faux pas department.

I would have liked to think that maybe he didn't hear this comment, but my hopes were shattered after dinner. After we puzzle pieced the skillet together so that he could cook hamburgers on it, by the way. Is there something wrong with a frying pan that I am unaware of? I didn't complain because it meant that instead of having to wash it, I got to throw it away. WooHoo! Anything to save me from scrubbing. LOL... but I digress.

As I said, I would have liked to think that maybe he hadn't heard the slut comment except that we were having a few different discussions after dinner. One was about a friend of mine and condoms, and another was about how depressed I had been about the loss of time I was going to get to spend with a friend of mine. LJ was trying to console me by telling me that I still had Short Person and him and another friend of mine (the one we had just talked about).

And that's when he sprang it! The knowledge that he had heard my screw up. Right after telling me that I still had this other friend, he told me that "if I ever had sex with this friend, I'd better use a condom". Exclamation Point thrice!

Oui Vey!

I laughed pretty hard at that one. Jerk.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

My Husband’s Revenge and I’m Afraid of our Bathroom

So, today my husband and his dad went fishing. Normal occurrence around here. Personally, I think my husband would be a fish if he could figure out how to stop breathing and grow gills.

Anyway, they are on the boat fishing, eating, drinking and basically having a fairly good time when my husband catches a fish. His Dad nets it, almost has it in the boat, and then loses it.

Now, if you listen to the husband, he will tell you he wasn't that angry about it, so how exactly does he explain that mere moments later, when his dad got food poisoning from something that he ate and had to use a bucket to... okay, you get the picture... my husband decided to whip out his camera phone and get a shot of his dad wiping his butt.

He wants me to blow it up, frame it, and title it as a gift for Father's Day. But he's not angry. One heck of a revenge for not being angry if you ask me!

*********

Once upon a time, way back when I was a wee little teenager, I went to Mexico to work in an orphanage. It was actually a fairly large orphanage, but the bathrooms were small and they only had two shower stalls. With 20 girls, hair-washing happened in all types of venues. This day, for me, it was happening in the sink.

My head bent over, eyes closed, I wet my hair, lathered, and then got ready to rinse. It was then that I opened my eyes and saw that I was face to face with one of the biggest spiders I'd ever seen. He was looking at me, and I was looking at him.

And screaming.

Luckily, a few of the guys on the trip felt heroic enough to charge into the girl's bathing area and squish the little bugger for me. But that experience is only one of many spider stories I could tell.

Today, I got another one. We'll call him the phantom spider.

I actually met him yesterday as I showered and got ready for work. Big black scary looking thing the size of a small sand crab. He has beady eyes, claws, and fangs... and the little bugger always stays out of reach of me, and conveniently disappears when the husband is home.

Today, after an entire night of hiding from Long John, he reared his ugly head again while I was in the shower. I watched him, he watched me, I hurried up and got the hell out of there! Slammed the door shut and called LJ to tell him the big scary spider would be waiting for him when he got home.

Well, guess what?! He's home and the blasted spider has totally disappeared.

Did I mention he has a big puffy behind with a dot and stripes on his legs and he moves with the speed of light?!

We can't find him.

So somewhere, in this house, is a creature that wants to feed upon my blood and I CAN'T FIND HIM!!!!

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Everybody Run! The Short Person Has A Gun (and a newly acquired F-word)

My daughter is on a mission! Determination is written all over her face and her heavy footsteps pound on the wooden floor as she runs outside to rid the backyard of moronic barking dogs. Her only weapon... a squirt gun shaped like a sea horse. She's taken to the task as though the world depends on it, and her aim is deadly.

Just ask her dad.

And the barbecue.

And the goldfish.

They've all experienced her careful aim, hesitation, and squirt, squirt, squirt.

Perhaps they would not notice if her mommy had been so diligent in realizing that nothing was going to be safe or sacred and had put in warm water, but... I'm not that smart.

Or maybe I am, because I've never laughed quite so hard as when short person snuck up on her dad, his back to her, and blasted him with a few deadly squirts of ice cold water.

:)

*******************************

It seems that this gun-toting has also brought out a little sailor-flavor of the F-word kind out of her as well. Today she told the babysitter she was Fucking Cold.

Now, it's possible that's not what she said, so babysitter asked again. "What did you say?"

"I said... I'm fucking cold!"

Dear Lord, please oh please, when I ask her, please don't let her respond that she "heard it from Mommy". (I'm silently pleading...)

Saturday, May 5, 2007

Show Me the Boy NOW! Getting Married?

The short person and I were driving back from babysitter's house yesterday. We are rocking out to her new favorite song, "Best of Both Worlds" by Hannah Montana (or Miley Cyrus) and she stops and asks...

"Mom, can I get married?"

After a moment of stunned silence, and my mind racing, looking for an appropriate age bracket, I looked into the baby view mirror and said, "Yes, you can. When you are 24."

"Okay."

And that was it... I think.

And just who in the heck does she want to marry?! That's what I want to know. Show me the boy now! Bring him out here, I have some questions!

Friday, May 4, 2007

It Could Have Been Us (A Very Sad Blog Post)

A few days ago, my husband put short person in the car to take her to the babysitter. As tired as he has been, he was several miles past the turn off before he remembered she was asleep in the backseat. He turned around and dropped her off and made his way to work.

Yesterday, as I was trying to think outside the box on how to get Jake a LOT of votes for the Real World, I logged on to KATU's website. Over on the side bar, under most read stories, was the link to an article about a baby that died because he was left in the car on a very hot day.

Most stories like this are... "Oh, I'll only be a minute in the store, and she's asleep..." and of course, a minute turns into an hour and tragedy strikes.

This was not that kind of story. This was way worse because it hit so close to my home.

The father of four children loaded them all in the car. The first three he took to school and dropped them off, the baby was to go to daycare. He arrived at work, went into the building, and forgot the baby was asleep in the car. In Tennessee that day, temperatures were in the 80's.

The car had an internal motion device, which tripped the alarm off several times, but when he looked outside and saw no one near the car, he turned off the alarm remotely. Seven hours later, when it was time to pick up the other kids from school, he discovered his son.

I read the article and that knot of fear settled into the base of my spine. Two days ago, that could have been us.

Never before have I felt compelled to send a card, or a gift, or anything else in condolence of a stranger's tragedy, but sitting on the table beside me is a print-out of the man's name and the address of the company where he works.

He should know, even though it could never ease the pain, that it could have happened to anyone. Us.

They are charging him with homicide.