Heather vs. Potted Plant: Possibly too close to call.

So, back in the day when I was barely a grown-up, having just entered my very earliest 30s and all, I was a contestant on a little game show known as Jeopardy!.  I became a contestant on the show because some of my coworkers, who knew me very well and spent lots of time with me on a daily basis, thought I was smart and had a crazily good memory.  Which was, and I don't mean to brag, pretty much the truth................ back then.  So, these coworkers of mine signed me up to try out for the show, I went down to NYC, passed the contestant exam, did the audition, and a few months later, got the call and flew out to LA for the taping.

But, now, many years later, I'm closing in on 40 in a matter of months and it's all turning to mush.  My memory, that is.  Oh, the long-term memory still seems relatively intact, but short term? Not so much.  Also more mushy than back a decade or so ago?  No, not my midsection, though yeah, that'd be accurate too, but I'm referring to my actual brain itself.  I mean, it never really seems to have recovered 100% from those days of early parenthood when having a young infant in the house = perpetual sleep deprivation.

Case in point: Lately, I seem to lose my car.  A lot.  Like, in a parking spot, of my own choosing, where I parked it.

Take, for example, earlier today.  I had to stop in at the grocery store after church to pick up a few things.  I was inside the store for 10 minutes, tops.  I came back out into the parking lot and............................

Dude, where's my car???

I did that thing that I'd like to think we all do every once in a while.  That "aimlessly wandering with a simultaneously hopeful, sheepish and frustrated look" thing.  I scanned the lanes for my vehicle.  Granted, colors on automobiles are hard to see this time of year in my neck of the woods - they all turn the same shade of "road salt grayish white" - but still, I should've been able to find it in under 10 minutes.  I mean, the parking lot isn't *that* big.

Now, I have strategies I use to combat this problem.  I tend to have "my" spot in any parking lot I visit regularly.  I choose an area and try to find a spot within a couple of spaces of that landmark (a cart return or light pole, for example).  I've thought about getting one of those antenna toppers -

Or I could go more "thematic" -

Or even patriotic, while I'm at it..........

 

 But I fear that short of a flashing, neon sign directly above my vehicle

 

I'd still be wandering around the parking lot with that expression on my face for hours.  Okay, minutes, but enough minutes to feel like a thoroughly doddering fool.  (Oh, and the fact that I was looking for my minivan when I'd actually driven Hubby's car to the store? Double bonus points for my brain, right?!)

Now, fine, perhaps we all get a little Ashton Kutcher and lose our cars temporarily in the parking lot every now and again.  Heck, Seinfeld did a whole episode about losing a car in a parking garage and it was hilarious.  I have further proof that my mind is more scrambled egg than spring chicken.

The week before last, I was browsing through a recipe website because I thought I'd make something new and different.  I was bored of my go-to weekday menus using ground beef, which I had on hand and needed to cook.  So, I came across this recipe for "pizza casserole" and thought "Ooooh, *that* sounds good!" and decided I'd make it for dinner.

Hubby gets home while I'm in the midst of browning the ground beef and boiling the pasta and asks what I'm making.  "Pizza casserole!" I reply, "It's a new recipe!"  He picks up the page I'd printed out and skims over it, and then says "Um, isn't this just baked ziti?"  

.........Yes, yes it was.  Baked ziti, that I make on a fairly regular basis.  The only difference was that I was making it, as the "new" recipe instructed, in a deep casserole dish instead of my lasagna pan.

D'oh!

Want another example of how mushy my old gray matter is these days?  Hubby and I recently got brand-spankin'-new iPhones.  (Cue chorus of angels singing alleluias.)  We'd been eagerly awaiting their release on Verizon for ages and were giddy with glee when they arrived.  Shortly after my iPhone hit my hot, little hand, I texted my dear friend J something to the effect of "OMG This is my first ever text message on my new iPhone! It's so cool!  Woot!  Is this working??" because J is generally pretty quick with responding to texts.  Sure enough, mere moments later, my iPhone dinged (side note: why do all the text notification sounds suck, why are they so long and why can't you do a customized text sound like you can ringtone?  I want answers, Steve Jobs, answers!!) and lo and behold, there was her text:

I just got something in Arabic from you.  Is that you being funny? I don't get it. LOL.

OH NOES!  I promptly freaked out and sent her another text, which I intended to read "Wait, Arabic? Nooooooo!" but which the iPhone's autocorrect changed to "Wait, Arabic? Nippon!"  and then immediately after that, "Is *this* in English?"  after which my phone rang and it was J calling to gently point out that she was yanking my chain and that I was not, in fact, inadvertently texting in Arabic.

Double d'oh!  Also, well played, J.  She said her entire family were all doubled over in laughter because they were sure I'd realize that she was kidding.  Only, I hadn't realized.  Honestly, the thought never occurred to me.

In conclusion, if this is what life is going to be like as I head into middle age, I'd better get one of those Life Alert buzzer necklaces asap, because it can't be that much longer before I've fallen and I can't get up..............

In the meantime, you can now watch my episode of Jeopardy! on YouTube so you can get the reference I made to being smarter than a potted plant in the title up there.  You see, Alex Trebek himself questioned which would be smarter, me or the plant.  In my defense, I don't think my multivitamins have the same oomph as a good dose of Miracle Gro.

Part one of my episode is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFWneTg-VkI

and part two is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt2i7TCEeoU

Just please, pretend you're laughing with me and not at me, okay?

In which the kid breaks the house

Kiddo has been fortunate enough to have her own bathroom since we moved to this house.  We've been fortunate in that regard as well; it is really, really nice to not have to share a shower/tub with eighty zillion dinosaurs, Barbies, rubber duckies and other assorted tub toys, especially given the issues such tub toys and my nearsightedness have had in the past.

Anyhow, in Kiddo's bathroom (which is also the one used by any overnighting guests), there are three towel bars.  Two of them are on the walls in front of and next to the toilet and the third is in the tub area itself.  All three towel bars are set fairly high on the walls - she has to reach up to touch them.


Kiddo decided, shortly after moving in and beginning to use her bathroom, that it would be a most brilliant plan indeed to hang on the towel bars and/or the end pieces between which the bar itself is held.  Hubby and I both explained to her, on the several occasions in which we caught her in the act, that not only was this as far from a brilliant plan as possible, but it could cause serious damage to herself and the walls and she was (obviously) Strictly Forbidden from doing it, EVER.

Within the first year of living here, she managed to snap one towel bar - after several of the above warnings - and a second towel bar is now dangling loosely (of course she claimed no knowledge of how that happened) on the wall.  Clearly, our Strict Forbidding was only working for those moments when we were actually, physically in the bathroom with her to glare admonishingly while she was reaching up for the bars.  Hubby replaced the one bar and the second continues to dangle a bit precariously, while the third - the one in the tub itself - remained whole.


Around 5:45 yesterday evening (afternoon?), Kiddo went up to take a shower.  I started it for her, made sure the liner part of the curtain was inside the tub and then came downstairs.  Not one full minute later, there was a most tremendous crashing and clattering sound, followed immediately by  "MOOOOOOOOOOM!  I DIDN'T MEAN TO BUT I BROKE THE *incoherent sobbing*" that had Hubby and me racing upstairs.


Now, Hubby and I are lacking in the CSI type equipment with which to reconstruct the crime scene.  We have none of the fancy lasers or the fingerprint dusting kits or the swabs and chemicals to test with, but I'm sure if we did they'd have been positive for shenanigans, along with second grader-sized fingerprints and DNA all over the place.  Even without Grissom and his crew, we were able to deduce what had happened within the first few seconds.  Kiddo had apparently decided (once again!) to hang off the towel bar in the tub.  The towel bar that is made of the same substance as the tiles on the wall.  The towel bar that was one, molded piece.  The towel bar that was not just affixed to the wall, but actually into the wall.  We were able to deduce this because we found Kiddo standing in the tub, covered in bits of broken tile, grout and drywall, screaming and crying her head off, the shower still on full blast with the liner now out of the tub so that water was spraying onto the floor, the towel bar in pieces on the tub floor and bathroom floor and several shattered tiles in the tub and on the floor as well.  (Her living daylights, wits and bejezus, however, were nowhere to be found, because clearly she'd scared them completely out.)  Where the towel bar once hung there was naught but a gaping hole, minus several of the goldenrod tiles that had been there mere moments before.


I immediately turned the shower off, grabbed a towel and picked Kiddo up out of the disaster area, carrying her into our bathroom while Hubby dealt with the disaster area itself.  As I carefully picked bits of broken tile and drywall out of her hair and checked her over for injuries (none, thankfully), she began her Ultra-Super-Duper Symphony of Remorse, key of B♭ minor.  Sample lyrics include

"I am so, so, so, so, so, so, soooo ashamed" 
and its counterpoint
"I am so, so, so, so, so, so, soooo sorry" (repeat ad nauseum)

"I didn't mean to do it."


It was the "I didn't mean to do it" that helped me most to not just melt into a puddle of goo in the face of the full-on Remorse Symphony (complete with tear-filled, big brown eyes and quivering lower lip, not to mention an expression of abject sorry).  Because, as Hubby and I both tried to explain to her, it wasn't so much that she didn't mean to do it, but rather that she didn't mean to get caught.  She wasn't accidentally playing Nadia Comaneci using the towel bar while mid-shower.  She wasn't standing under the spray, industriously shampooing when all of a sudden an unseen being propelled her hands up and onto the towel bar.  She wasn't suddenly surrounded by prehistoric piranhas who came shooting out of the showerhead, forcing her to jump up and cling to the bar as her only means of escape.

Nope, she decided to disregard not only the many Strict Forbiddings and the historical precedent of Kiddo Swings/Flexed-Arm Hangs from Towel Bar, Towel Bar Breaks.  She was hanging from the towel bar because she darn well wanted to, and the 45 year old towel bar decided it had had quite enough of *that* thankyouverymuch and came flying off the wall, shattering as it went.


By the time I'd gotten Kiddo taken care of and deposited her, sniffling and weeping and still singing the Remorse Symphony, into her bedroom, Hubby had cleaned up the mess in her bathroom, which included at least an inch of water on the floor.  I fixed dinner for Kiddo and then put her to bed.  I also levied the consequence of her actions upon her: No puppy next year.  (Now, please note we hadn't actually ever said with 100% certainty that we were getting a puppy next year.  All we'd said in the Puppy Quest matter - Kiddo's nearest and dearest, most fervent and passionate wish is to get a puppy and another kitten, but really, she'd make do with our current cat so long as there was a puppy on the scene - was that we wouldn't be getting one this year.  Kiddo extrapolated in her extremely optimistic way that this meant we'd be getting the puppy next year for sure.  We hadn't specifically disabused her of that notion, though in the back of the grown-ups' minds, a puppy was far from a sure thing next summer.  Now, however, there is no doubt - there will be no puppy in 2011.  This is by far the most serious and dire punishment we could give to Kiddo.)  We had a talk about listening to one's parents and how Daddy and Mommy don't just arbitrarily make up rules because we can, but because we do, in fact, know what is best in terms of keeping Kiddo safe, sound, healthy and happy.  (Okay, yeah, I know, sometimes we do just make up rules because we can, but hey, isn't that one of the hard-won perks of being a parent, to enact the Because I Said So! rule?)


Hubby did some research on the repair job our new hole in the wall is going to require.  Now, the bathroom is on the (exhaustingly lengthy) list of Rooms to Be Renovated.  However, it isn't next or even next-to-next on the list.  So, we don't really have the energy, enthusiasm or budget for tackling a full-on renovation in there right now, which would include removing all the heinous, goldenrod tile and retiling both the tub/shower area and the floor, along with stripping the hideous, 60s-butterfly-n-sunflower wallpaper, replacing fixtures (which will likely involve a lot of rewiring as well) and replacing the faux-marble-with-gold-veins countertop with an actual vanity.  We don't even have the energy or enthusiasm to just tackle the tub/shower portion of that project right now.  So, Hubby is going to try to patch the hole in the wall (we can see clear through to the studs - yowza) and then put in replacement tiles (which won't actually match the goldenrod ones, but such is life - the new tiles will serve as a reminder to Kiddo of What She Did, I suppose) and regrout everything.  It isn't like we could really make that bathroom any uglier, anyhow, and that way it will be functional (albeit minus one towel bar) again.


So, thus concludes the saga of how we became a real life Hole in the Wall Gang, courtesy of one relatively small seven year old breaking the house.  I was heartened by the comments on my previous post, especially the one in which someone else's child broke their house.  It's good to know that I'm not alone.  I just hope this is the last time we are faced with a hole in the house that isn't one of our own, purposeful making!

Wipe Out!

Hubby and I took a break from Paintathon 2010 this afternoon to go outside with Kiddo and do a little bike ride practicing.

I present to you Before...

and After...

 

Yep, Kiddo got going good and fast heading down our street (she's still a little wobbly, so until she's mastered a more steady balance as well as the whole concept of "braking" so she's not doing a Fred Flintstone and stopping by dragging her feet on the ground, she's limited to biking in our driveway and on our street only) and she experienced her first major Wipe Out.  (For the record, she was totally Meryl Streeping up that pout up there, and it took four separate tries before she could maintain the "sad" face long enough for me to capture it.  Still, though, ouch to the large, skinned and bruised area on her forearm.)

I'm a little nervous because Kiddo has swimming lessons tomorrow after school, and in the past, boo-boos of any significance + pool water = MAJOR freak outs.  And this?  Definitely qualifies as a boo-boo of significance.  We've had freak outs over microscopic paper cuts in the past, so there's a precedent here.  I spoke to Kiddo about this tonight, because frankly, if she's going to get to the side of the pool and lose her shizzle, I'd rather not even go.  We decided that I will buy some large, waterproof bandaids tomorrow and she'll go to swimming.  We'll see how that works out........

Speaking of Paintathon 2010, here's a summary of what we've done in the past 10 days:

2 coats of primer for the downstairs bathroom
2 coats of primer for the living room
2 coats of primer for the front hall closet
3 coats of primer for the foyer
2 coats of primer for the dining room
2 coats of primer for the upstairs hall and downstairs stairwell
2 coats of primer for the trim for all the above rooms
2 coats of primer for the railings
1 coat of ceiling paint for the living room
1 coat of ceiling paint for the dining room
1 coat of ceiling paint for the upstairs hall and downstairs stairwell

1 coat of ceiling paint for the foyer
1 coat of ceiling paint for the front hall closet
1 coat of ceiling paint for the downstairs bathroom
1 coat of ceiling paint for the dining room and 3/4 of the living room
replace the light fixture in the dining room

As of the end of today, Hubby's got a Perma Claw thing going on with his right hand from so many hours wielding the paint brush, while I am a solid three inches shorter from multiple neck vertebrae getting compressed from rolling out the ceilings.  Also, we're tired!  The good news is we are pretty much right on schedule with our rather ambitious To Do list for this round of home renovations.  We've got two more weekends to get everything else done before the big Secret Agent themed birthday party (aka "Operation 7 Candles") and I'm thinking we'll get there.  The day *after* Operation 7 Candles?  We will be napping.  Majorly, majorly napping.

Hope your weekend was full of sunshine and paint- and boo-boo free!

Random Thoughts Tuesday (because it is still, barely, Tuesday)

Once Lost had finished blowing my mind and breaking my heart this evening, I'd intended to come in here to the office, shut off my computer, grab my book and head up to bed.  (I'm reading the latest Jodi Picoult, by the way, anyone else read it?  I'm about 3/4 of the way through right now, so please, no spoilers.  I'm still wondering Did He or Didn't He?  Or Did His Brother?...)

Well, one thing led to another - or more precisely, one click led to another, and here I still sit, almost two hours later.  Time Management and Decent Bedtime FAIL.  So, instead, I'm going to throw out a Random Thoughts Tuesday (now with rambly intro, woot!) like my bloggy friend Cristin does so well.  (I know it isn't Cristin's original idea, but she's the one I read regularly who does this the most, so I'm going to leave it with her.)

Here goes!
 
***
I've developed a new landscaping style in the past few weeks.  I call it the "Yard Mullet" and it is achieved by mowing the front and sides of one's yard, but leaving the back long.  I find it's easiest to create the Yard Mullet by attempting to mow when under impossible time constraints and if there's Weather coming.  You know, with a capital W, like last week's spring snow, or this morning's thunder, lightning and hail storm that blew in out of seemingly nowhere.  Yep, from the street, it's all business - neatly trimmed, nary a dandelion bobbing, but in back?  Jungle party!

(For the record, I *do* go back out and get the yard de-mulleted eventually.  It's not like my property is the equivalent of a 90's Billy Ray Cyrus or anything.)

Feel free to try it.  It's just retro enough to be cool, and I really think it will catch on.  I mean, have you seen some of what's considered fashionable these days?  I mean, for Pete's sake, jeggings?!?!

***

Speaking of cutting, Kiddo needed a trim, and when I took her in to the salon yesterday afternoon, she asked if she could have it cut even shorter than it had been when we had it bobbed back in March.  I said yes, and lo and behold, another two-two and a half inches hit the floor.  It still looks pretty dang cute, if I do say so myself, but it is reverting to its wavier self now that it is shorter, which is bugging Kiddo (who didn't listen to her mama, even though Mama always is right, heh).  She's going to lose her mind when we go to Florida this summer and her shorter 'do meets the southern, summer humidity!

But in the meantime, it looks like this:

If she continues to want it shorter at every consecutive haircut appointment, I figure she'll be channeling Demi's G.I. Jane look by the time she's eight.

***

Back to the topic of yards and specifically dandelions - do you want to know why I'm now convinced dandelions are EVIL?  Because last week, I pulled a handful out of a planting bed, all of them not-yet-silver-and-open, and tossed them in the yard debris pile at the curb.  Two days later when I was out getting the mail, I glanced over at the debris pile and discovered this:

Yes.  They'd continued maturing and had opened even after being picked.  Every single, last one of them.  WTH?!?!  That is just so not right!!

It would also help my yard out considerably if my beloved daughter didn't find blowing dandelions irresistible.  Grrrr.  I guess this is karmic payback for all the dandelions I blew in my youth, but still.  Oy.

***

I'm on the school carnival committee, and part of my job is to solicit businesses for donations for our raffle.  I haaaaaaaate soliciting.  Even for a good cause (which it is) and even for a nonprofit (ditto).  I've told myself I don't know how many times in the past week I'm going to get out there and get it over with, but each time something (something totally legitimate, like Kiddo coming down with strep and me coming down with a nasty but fairly brief stomach bug) has prevented me from going.  Now I've sworn to myself that I'm going to go tomorrow and do it.  Maybe typing the words and hitting the Publish Post button will help reinforce my resolve.  Why can't the donation fairy just turn up at my doorstep with some artfully packaged gift baskets and a fat stack of gift cards?  Sigh...

***

This afternoon was our monthly Daisy Scout Troop meeting.  This fact should not ever be a surprise to me, seeing as how I'm the troop leader.  Yet once again, I found myself looking down at Kiddo's Daisy tunic and at a baggie of patches that needed to be affixed, just so, to said tunic, just an hour before I had to leave to go to the meeting.  I don't know if this counts as Mom Fail, Daisy Troop Leader Fail, or both...

So, I was determined (as I always am in that final 60 minutes before I have to leave when I discover anew I haven't attached last month's acquisitions to the dang tunic yet) that I would get them on before I had to go.  I dragged out the ironing board and plugged in the iron.  Checked the contents of the baggie - only two patches, not too hard.  I began doing the larger one that needed affixing to the back of the tunic first.  I ironed and I ironed and I ironed, and the damn thing just *wasn't* sticking.  It took me over three minutes before it finally dawned on me - this was a sew-on patch, not an iron-on patch.  All the ironing in the world wasn't going to stick that bad boy on.  If only I hadn't burned my hands and fingers fourteen times while attempting the impossible.  Sheesh.  I abandoned it in favor of the more important Daisy petal that had to be stuck onto the front.  This one I *knew* is an iron-on, as I've already put eight of its brethren on the front in a rather haphazard, circular formation per Daisy Uniform Guidelines.  I lined it up and began ironing away.  It isn't adhering, either.  ?!?!?  Yes, I kept attempting to iron it on for another good minute before pausing, engaging the rusty wheels in my skull that pass for a brain, and flipping the petal over.  It still had the backing paper on.  Whoops.

I burned my fingertips mightily removing the now-nuclear-hot backing paper from the tiny petal, but I got that dang thing on before I left.  Of course we came home from the meeting with two more petals that need to be sewn on, so I purposely left the iron and ironing board set up and set Kiddo's tunic on it when we got home, because this time?  I'm not waiting until the afternoon of the meeting.  I might as well get them on before the scabs heal from the burns I incurred today!

***

Has anyone out there actually bought and tried those sneakers that are supposed to help your posture and tighten muscles and help you get in shape?  I will admit to being intrigued whenever I see an ad in Entertainment Weekly or a commercial on TV.  I'm more than halfway tempted to get a pair, but I'd love to know if they live up even vaguely to the hype.  (Sorry, Joe Montana, you don't cut it for me, endorsement-wise.  I'd like to hear from a real person, preferably a woman, whose opinion I could trust more readily.)

Whoops, now it's Wednesday.  I really need to get to bed.  I'm meeting (in my carnival committee persona) with the principal tomorrow, and I don't want to be either racoon-eyed and yawning or so jacked up on caffeine I can't sit still, and I fear at this point, it's going to be one of those options or the other...................... 

Spring FAIL

This?

Is SNOW.

Coming down fast and furious outside right now.

On April 27th.

What the hey, Mother Nature?!?!

Bitch and Moan Monday, just what I needed!

Yes, I know it isn't even 9:00 in the morning yet, but this has been one craptastic Monday so far.  Therefore, I was utterly delighted to come upon this:



over on a new blog I just discovered this past weekend.  Heck YES, I want to play along this morning!

You see, my morning actually started at 2:14, when into my dream of auditioning for The Amazing Race with my sister came a shrill and persistent, sustained beeping noise.  Eventually, my dream self realized that no, in fact my sister and I weren't going to be meeting Phil Keoghan and his raised eyebrow after all, because that noise wasn't coming from my dream.  I halfway woke up and pondered.  It was hard to tell if the noise was real or just some sort of freaky, tinnitis-like sound I was only hearing in my head.  I lifted my head off the pillow to listen with both ears.  Hmmmmm, now it not only seemed to be a real noise, but it was sounding an awful lot like an alarm going off somewhere in the house.  Smoke detector?  Carbon monoxide detector?  Crap.


I hopped out of bed tout de suite, fumbling for my glasses in the dark, and made my way downstairs where the cat greeted me in a state of mild but clear distress.  Okay, at least that means there were two of us hearing this ungodly sound.  I looked at the CO detector - nope, that wasn't it.  I flung open the basement door and instantly the shrieking beep dramatically increased in volume.  Not seeing any smoke, I quickly determined that the sound was coming from the sump pump alarm and that the sump pump had stopped running.  (For the record, we've had the basement flood three times since the beginning of January due to sump pump failure.  I should also mention we have a brand-new sump pump now, as well.)  Crappity crap.  I dashed back upstairs and woke Hubby up.  Hubby, who has always been the much lighter sleeper of the two of us, who wakes up with a start if a fly lands on the ceiling or a dust bunny moves on the floor, was sleeping soundly away, totally oblivious.  As soon as I whispered "Dude.  That's the sump pump alarm going off!" he was out of bed and racing for the basement in a flash.  I followed him back downstairs to see what level of an emergency this was going to be.


Turns out there was a small piece of plastic that looked like the cap off a container of caulk that had found its way into the well and jammed itself into the machinery in such a way as to prevent the pump from starting when it should've.  Given that it had been raining pretty steadily for the past several hours, the well was on the verge of spilling over, hence the alarm.  (I'm not sure exactly how long the alarm had been sounding before I became conscious of it.)  Hubby extracted the piece of plastic, the pump started up, the water level began draining and the alarm shut off with a very horrific, dying SQUEEEEEEAAAWWWWWWWL sound.  Crisis averted.  We headed back upstairs to bed, leaving the still a bit freaked out crazy cat in the family room.  (Okay, I get that the noise was probably extremely upsetting to her - it was upsetting to me and my hearing is nowhere near that of a cat's.  However, this is the same creature that hears secret messages from the Cat Home Planet whenever we use the DVD player, so, you know, her reaction to any noise is automatically suspect.)


By 2:19, I was back in bed.  Wide awake.


I checked the clock again.  Yeeha, it was 2:31.


2:48.


3:12.


3:43.


4:07.  Dagnabit, why am I still awake?  SHUT THE HECK OFF ALREADY, BRAIN!


Of course, I know darn well why I couldn't fall back asleep.  Besides the fright factor and subsequent adrenaline rush of "AN ALARM IS GOING OFF SOMEWHERE IN THE HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT EEEEEEEK!" that had rendered me fully awake, I had lots of things to think about.  Things like Kiddo's upcoming CSE annual review, for which we have a team pre-meeting today.  You know, those things that like to keep one up in the wee, small hours of the morning.  Bleargh.


4:36 and I thought about giving up and getting up, but eventually, finally I drifted back off to sleep.  It was a brutal awakening when Kiddo's alarm went off two hours later.  I rolled over and felt the pounding behind my eyes. Splendid.


I had just made my way to the kitchen, where the Excedrin Migraine lives in the cabinet above the sink, when I heard the dulcet tones of my beloved daughter freaking the heck out.  For reasons unknown to anyone but her, she'd decided to wander down into the family room without turning on any lights.  The family room which was pretty much still pitch black, as the sun wasn't up yet and the shades were drawn anyhow.  As she made her way through the darkened room, she stepped in something cold, wet and slimy.


Yep, you guessed it.  Cat hairball, with a chaser of what once was dry cat food, now mostly digested, for good measure.


Now, you would think that as long as it wasn't you who had trod upon cat barf in naught but a pair of fuzzy slipper socks, life would be good.  However, when it is your child who steps in the cat barf and then promptly flips out and begins screaming and hopping around, managing to grind said cat barf further into the carpet and spread it around in the process?  Actually, that's much, much worse.


So there I was at ten to seven this morning, skull feeling two sizes too small and eyes feeling like they were about to burst right out of their sockets, kid shrieking and ewwwwwwing and hovering over my shoulder to witness the scene as I used the last, few paper towels on the roll from the laundry room to clean up cold, wet, ground-in cat barf.  (Apparently the cat was more upset by the alarm than I'd realized...)


And speaking of the last, few paper towels on the roll, it turns out that every kind of paper product that comes in roll form had decided to run out simultaneously this morning.  I kid you not: when I got up to pee at 3:12am, voila, two measly squares of TP left on the roll in the master bathroom.  When I went into Kiddo's bathroom to grab some Advil at 3:43, I discovered another empty roll.  After using the last of the paper towels in the laundry room for Operation Barf Removal, I went up to the kitchen to wash my hands......... and discovered the paper towel dispenser next to the kitchen sink was devoid of Select-a-Size Bounty as well.


Cheese on toast, man!  This Monday is definitely a contender for King of the Craptastic.


And it's cold.  And it's raining.  And it's freaking MONDAY.  And I have to go grocery shopping in the cold and rain this morning.  And we have that IEP meeting I was up stressing out about this afternoon.  And Kiddo has her swimming lesson after school today.  And it's freaking MONDAY.


Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!


I totally want to run away to the Seychelles after watching last night's episode of The Amazing Race.  I'm fairly certain those ginormous tortoises that live there do not barf up hairballs... of course with my craptastic luck, I'd probably arrive just in time for a monsoon.

The itsy-bitsy freak out

The other day, I had just finished my morning ablutions and had stepped in front of the mirror to comb my hair when I suddenly felt the sensation of a spider crawling across my foot.  You know how you get that sensation sometimes?  Like a bug or something small crawling across your skin?  Well, I looked down, as you would in such a case, fully expecting to either see (a) nothing or (b) an abandoned hair - either from my own head or perhaps the cat - that had fallen onto my foot and was giving me that ticklish sensation.

Horrifyingly, what I saw was in fact option (c) - an actual spider running across my bare foot.  Well, running is too speedy a term.  What he was doing was more of a mosey or an amble as he certainly was feeling no urgency in crossing the terrain.  I promptly did what any human being in her right mind would do.  I freaked the heck out.  I began vigorously shaking my foot while hopping up and down on my other leg in an attempt to fling the spider off of me, all the while shrieking like an extra in a B horror movie.  The spider, far from being dissuaded in his attempt to stay on my skin, decided that rather than hopping off the crazy, damp, shrieking, jiggling, madly leaping about the (very small) master bathroom chick, he'd head due north right up my leg.  All my evasive actions succeeded in doing was getting him to pick up his pace from a mosey to a sprint.

Fortunately for me, I did not drop into a dead faint at the sight of this ferocious beast coming straight for my throat as fast as his eight hairy legs could carry him.  I somehow managed to keep presence of mind enough to grab a wad of toilet paper (while still screaming a bit and jumping around, I confess) and execute a combination swipe-squish maneuver that removed him both from my thigh and this world.

Now, I have a strict No Squishing policy when it comes to creepy-crawlies.  Not to say I'm one of those insane do-gooders who gently scoop any and all such home invaders into a cup and set them free back in the great outdoors, because if it isn't a ladybug, butterfly or cricket, that's pretty much not happening.  Nope, if I see a spider, beetle or any other EW EW ICK LOOK AT THAT HORRIBLE THING type creature inside my house, I'm all for killing it.  I just can't kill it in a way that will leave a smear or worse behind.  Just the thought of that makes me a little queasy.  This must be related to my innate dread and hatred for pumpkin guts, but I have never wanted to dwell on the topic long enough to work it out.

Anyhow, my preferred method of killing things that go BOO! in my bathroom is to render them immobile by whatever means are handy and then picking up the paralyzed and/or dead creepy-crawlie and disposing of it in either the garbage can or toilet.  (This is my preferred method for the rest of the house, too, actually.)  If I'm in the bathroom, hairspray usually is the weapon of choice, and if I'm not near a can of something or if I'm in a room with carpeting, I'll opt to Dustbuster the critter into the next world.  (Okay, my most preferred method is to call Hubby and get him to eradicate the creepy-crawlie, but Hubby is gone for pretty much the whole day so I have to have a back-up method handy for those times when it's just me and the bugs.)

The other morning, though, with Certain Death lunging ever closer to my jugular (he had FANGS, I'm telling you.  FANGS and an evil and bloodthirsty gleam in his beady eyes), I didn't have time to run into Kiddo's bathroom and retrieve my hairspray, so I had to squish the horrible creature with my bare hands.  Well, my bare hands and a wad of toilet paper about three inches thick.  Terror overrode my gag reflex as I crumpled the TP for all I was worth, suddenly finding Hulk-like strength in my hand, and then I promptly dropped the corpse in his Charmin shroud into the bowl and sent him to his watery grave.  And then I waited for the tank to refill and flushed again.  And again.  Just to be sure, you know.

*shudder*

Sorry Charlotte, but unless you can write out George Clooney's cell phone number in a web on my bathroom mirror, you and all your brethren are destined to meet the same fate should you dare enter this coward's domain.  So do me a favor and spread the word to all your creepy-crawlie pals, okay?

DST = Darn Stupid Theory

And so it begins again.  Daylight Savings Time, aka a Darn Stupid Theory.  DST has never been my favorite time of year, at least not the "springing forward" portion of events, but now that I have a kid I absolutely loathe it.  The fact that my kid happens to have SPD just makes it worse.  She needs her schedule, and she doesn't need it arbitrarily bumping around by an hour twice a year.  It's like jetlag without the fantabulous destination.

Yesterday, it wasn't so bad.  Being a weekend day, we just let Kiddo sleep in and get up whenever she woke up on her own.  Bedtime last night was another matter altogether.  Despite playing hard at a birthday party yesterday afternoon (and might I digress for a moment to say that while she was looking mighty cute in her party duds as she headed off to the party......

... as soon as she got there, she immediately joined in to the rousing game of Tag that was going on with all the other cute, little girls in their party duds.  A passel of dressy outfits and carefully bowed and beribboned hairdos tearing around the party room, getting more disheveled and sweaty by the second.  You can dress 'em up, but....) Anyhow, as I was saying, despite the playing hard at the party, Kiddo had difficulty falling asleep last night.

I expected she'd have trouble getting up this morning.  Heck, *I* had trouble getting up this morning.  She was grouchy, out of sorts, and for an added bonus appears to be coming down with a head cold.  Because you want crusted over nostrils to complete the look of the grumpy, sleepy, and at least three of the other Dwarfs' names-adjectived kid scowling at you from the breakfast table.

I did my best.  I made her a hearty breakfast (including a dish that is known around here as "Egg Balls" - egg whites nuked in one of those microwave poaching contraptions) and even gave her a glazed doughnut instead of her usual whole wheat toast.  I didn't object when she played the triple audio delight of Eye of the Tiger, Funkytown and the theme from Ghostbusters over and over and OVER again on her iPod without using her headphones.  I ignored the death stare I was getting in the bathroom mirror as I de-bedheadded the newly banged hair.  I didn't even sing "I see London, I see France" when it turned out she'd put her undies on backwards and thus, there was a good inch showing above the waistband of her pants.  I was a Kind and Thoughtful Mommy, Sympathetic to Her Plight.  And this was with me being sleepy and cranky myself, plus in the final hormonal rush of PMS and suffering with the vague rumblings of a headache that I didn't quite vanquish last night to boot.  (Don't worry, I did reward myself with a doughnut as well.  That cinnamon streusel friedcake from the Wegmans bakery was the only thing that got me out of bed and down to the kitchen this morning, truth be told.)  I even let her bring her iPod out on the porch while we shivered in the damp, "oh right, it isn't actually Spring yet" upstate NY air, thus confusing our neighbors into thinking they were suddenly living in Rocky III.

Now, this isn't our first encounter with Daylight Savings Time, obviously.  We've been fighting the fight to keep Kiddo cool, calm and regulated through the time change for several years now.  That is why I know this is going to get worse before it gets better.  I'm bracing for the meltdown that will occur sometime between the bus dropping Kiddo off this afternoon and bedtime.  It is unavoidable, inevitable, like death, taxes and that weird, long, black hair that springs up on my forearm every six weeks.  Complicating matters is that today is swimming lesson day after school.  While ordinarily I look forward to the extra tiring out Kiddo gets from her swimming lesson, I'm thinking we might skip it today so as not to exacerbate the situation.  Tomorrow morning will probably be worse than today, and by Wednesday we'll likely both be weeping into our Honey Nut Generic-Os.

And for what?  Really, what good does Daylight Savings Time really do?  After a few weeks of it finally being lighter when the alarm clock rang, putting a bit of extra spring in all of our steps as we went about our morning routine, this morning when the alarm clock sounded, it was pitch black outside.  Like we'd suddenly plunged back into deepest February.  Nary a bird singing.  It was just so wrong.  As I put on a happy face and tried to get Kiddo through the horror and off to school, I wondered: exactly whose brilliant idea was this, anyway???

I  seemed to recall, in my not-yet-completely-awake brain, hearing that Benjamin Franklin "invented" DST.  I mean, didn't he invent everything back in the 1700s?  I decided my memory must be faulty, so I brushed the doughnut crumbs from my keyboard and googled good, old Ben.


The following quote from Wikipedia cleared things right up:

Daylight saving time (DST) is often erroneously attributed to a 1784 satire that Franklin published anonymously.  Modern DST was first proposed by George Vernon Hudson in 1895.

Aha!  Erroneously attributed to a satire Franklin wrote.  See, I knew Ben wouldn't have come up with such nonsense.  Of course, I immediately clicked on the link to discover the identity of the true culprit who is responsible for such folly.

There he is.  George Vernon Hudson.  Of course a man came up with such a ridiculous idea.  I mean, obviously no woman - at least no mother - would ever think of such nonsense as smart.  Facebook and the Twitterverse have been chock-full of sentiments echoing mine in the past 36 hours, and most of them belong to parents of children who still reside at home and need to be gotten off to school in a timely manner.  (Okay, so that might be slanted a bit, as most of the folks I'm friends with on FB and follow on Twitter are parents of children who still reside at home and need to be gotten off to school in a timely manner... but my point is still valid: I am not alone in this sentiment!)  

Further reading led to the conclusion that at best, DST is "controversial" and it is unclear how much actual benefit there is to the citizens of the world who are forced to deal with it.  Yep, that's right, DST is not a worldwide phenomenon, as evidenced by this map here.  This map, which gives me a brilliant idea:


We need to move to Hawaii.  Right away.  That would solve our DST struggle once and for all!


And really, having this view off the porch:

instead of this one?  

Just a bonus!


I know that, like most other struggles, this too shall pass.  By the coming weekend, Kiddo should be pretty well adjusted to a regular sleep/wake schedule.  It's just the duration of the battle that I dread and loathe.  Especially when it seems so, darn stupid and pointless.  I'd wager that folks would still do the same activities they do now in the summer even if the clocks weren't switched by an hour, dontcha think?

The perfect gift idea

This morning, as happens almost every schoolday morning, I found myself saying a variation of "Hurry up/finish your breakfast/you're running out of time/you're going to miss the bus" for the seventeen-squillionth time, to which Kiddo responded "I'm so SICK of hearing you SAY that!" in that I'm only six-and-a-half but I'm totally practicing my sixteen-and-a-half sullen, pissy 'tude way that is guaranteed to tick me off. (As she is only six and not sixteen, I cannot take away the car keys just yet, so usually I wind up taking other things away instead - iPod, whatever book she's reading instead of eating, etc.) Well, this morning when she snarked about how sick she was of hearing me SAY that, I snarked back "Oh yeah? Well I'm sick of saying it!" because neither of us are particularly morning people and if she can channel sixteen and a half, I can certainly bust out my inner six and a half year old every now and again. And truly, I am just as sick of hearing the Nagging Mom voice as she is, and nothing is quicker at getting my morning started off wrong than having to recite the Get Yourself Going mantra seventeen-squillion and three times in a ninety minute period.

That is when inspiration hit me. I figured out the perfect gift idea for Christmas.

I need someone else to be the Sayer of Such Things. The Nagger. The Nudger. The Incessant-Repeater-to-Counter-the-Terrifically-Annoying-Selective-Hearing of the kid. But who? Not Hubby, because she can tune him out almost as easily as she tunes me out. No, clearly I need bigger guns.

I pondered for a bit, as I assembled her lunch and made sure her snowpants and library book were packed in her backpack. I thought about folks who have voices I wouldn't mind hearing all day long instead of Nagging Mom Voice.

Alan Rickman!



Alan RIckman has the best voice EVER! I once listened to him read a book-on-tape version of The Return of the Native (after waiting over three months for my hold request to come through at the public library) even though the only place I could listen to the 18 tapes that comprised the audiobook was my minivan, so it took weeks of hearing a paragraph or two at a time to hear the whole thing. He's got a kickass voice. Oh yes, I'd much rather hear him than me hustling Kiddo along as she dawdles over her bowl of cereal that has turned to mush or her fried eggs that have congealed and gone glacially cold on her plate. Definitely Alan Rickman. Or Jeremy Irons!



He does sinister quite well - just think of his Scar in The Lion King... (Incidentally, a study was conducted a few years ago that concluded that the perfect speaking voice would be a blend of Rickman and Irons. So apparently my ears have a very good ear for such things.)

But would either of them work for Kiddo? Not sure. I think I might need even bigger guns to get her going and save my sanity in the mornings.

Finally, I hit upon the perfect choice.

Oh yes.



James "This....is CNN" Earl Jones. I'm pretty sure that if Darth Vader were telling Kiddo to hurry up and finish her eggs, she'd hurry up and finish her eggs, and even clear her place without reminding, too.

Do you think Mr. Jones could be here by Friday?

Oh, and as for Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons, I'd gladly take them both as well. Just for everyday reading sorts of requirements. For example, I have to read a lot of labels at the grocery store to figure out if something is a safe food item for Kiddo. "Sugar, Corn Syrup, Modified Corn Starch, Citric Acid, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Mineral Oil, Carnauba Wax, Artificial Colors: FDC Red #40, Yellow #5, Yellow #6, Blue #1" would sound a lot more pleasant to my brain if spoken in a well-modulated, British accent. Kiddo's endless stream of school-related paperwork would sound better British, too. I'm sure I'd pay much more attention to the upcoming PTSA meeting agenda or the deadline for Box Tops in that case. I don't have a GPS thingy in my car, so I am forced to rely upon printed out directions from Google Maps (how old-fashioned, I know!) and would feel much better about finding that next exit if instructed by Alan or Jeremy.

It could go even further - Facebook! Twitter! Status updates and tweets sure would sound more posh, if not funnier, if read by one of them. (I could even get James Earl Jones in on the action, since he'd be available during the schooldays when Kiddo is gone and doesn't need the Maternal Nagging.) Clearing my blog reader would be more entertaining (and less eye straining) with one of those gents reading aloud. But then, a lot of the blogs I follow are written by women, and have a distinctly female voice. So, I'd need a chick, too. How about



Emma Thompson? That'd keep it classy...

So there you have it. The perfect gift idea for my house this Christmas. I'd better go get the spare room made up...

In lieu of ranting and raving, some humor

Oh. My.

I am so, so, so, so, so furious right now. Almost beyond words. I am fairly certain I could shoot laser beams from my eyes if certain members of Kiddo's CSE team were standing in front of me right now. The new levels of asininity that have been reached in the farce in which we've been forced to engage in order to maintain Kiddo's services have left me gobsmacked, utterly dismayed and stressed beyond belief.

I could rant and rave for paragraphs and paragraphs on the topic, but I'm choosing to let it go - for now. Nothing can be done until Monday and we have a holiday coming up. While it isn't going to be the Thanksgiving we'd envisioned (my sister, brother-in-law and nephews were supposed to be coming up from Jersey, but due to H1N1 in their house, they can't), it still is a five day period in which our family of three will be home together. So, I'm choosing to take deep breaths and try to forget about the hell of the last two days at least until I am able to pick up my sword and battle ax and resume the fight next week.

So, in lieu of another diatribe from me on the idiocy that exists in the world of Special Education and the unconscionable acts that are required by the adults therein, all supposedly in the name of helping the children with disabilities, I want to share this with you. A friend had linked to it on his Facebook page and I came across it while ferociously typing out infuriated status updates earlier this afternoon. It cracked me up, and as a fan of both the Muppets and Queen, I can't not share it with you now.

So, please enjoy the following cover of Bohemian Rhapsody:

Leopards and poodles and pigs, oh my!

So, my parents came up to visit for the big Halloween weekend festivities. Mom arrived with her year old standard poodle on Thursday, Dad arrived Friday afternoon. Of course, the Halloween festivities had actually started prior to their arrival, with the Halloween party at Hubby's office on Wednesday afternoon:





On Friday, inclement weather forced the school's Halloween parade indoors. All the various parents, grandparents and siblings crammed into the auditorium and the classes paraded through. I sat on the aisle, camera at the ready, and caught this shot:





You'll notice that this particular leopard *does* in fact change her spots. I never did the same spotting pattern twice for all the various costume-requiring activities. Artistic license, yo!


So, I mentioned that my mom brought up her poodle. Well it turns out that the poodle, ginormous as she may be, is scared - petrified, even! - of Kiddo's goldfish, Swimmy. The dog would slink up to the tank and then when the fish would swim over (because to Swimmy, any movement in the vicinity of the tank could bring manna from Heaven in the form of fish flakes, so Swimmy gets verrrrry excited to see things moving about in any close proximity) the dog would jump back and cower, tail between her legs. Heh.





The Halloween festivities continued on into the weekend, with Kiddo attending a friend's costume birthday party Saturday afternoon and then Trick or Treating in our neighborhood Saturday evening. Alas, a little bit later Saturday night, we went from leopard spots to swine flu. Kiddo spiked a fever of 104 and by midday Sunday, I was chilled, feverish and coughing too. Phone calls with the pediatrician's office have concluded that we both have H1N1 (which is running rampant through the school - over 20% of the kids were absent last Wednesday) so now I'm supposed to be monitoring Kiddo for worsening or new symptoms that might indicate a secondary infection and keep her resting comfortably and pushing fluids in the meanwhile. Sadly, without that great pacifier of TV, Kiddo is proving to be a most cranky and recalcitrant patient, which I do not particularly enjoy given that all I want to do is crawl into bed and let Nyquil take me away. Stupid Swine Flu. Hopefully for Hubby's birthday (yes, today marks the beginning of that glorious period where, for exactly six weeks, Hubby and I are the same age. Then I go back to being a year older, sob sob...) we will NOT give him our germs. He's threatening to fly off to Vegas after work, Dad left for work early this morning and my mother and her scaredy-fish poodle have departed for their apparently equally germy homeland of New Jersey (both of my nieces and one of my nephews down in Jersey have H1N1 symptoms as well) so right now the house is merely occupied by Cranky, Achy, Sneezy, Chilly, Fevery, Whiny and Coughy. Trust me, that's plenty of company for the time being.





(Apparently the above is available for sale as a t-shirt - don't know to whom the credit goes but it's not my original design and props to whomever did create it!!)

Convalescence: a Big, Fat, Hairy Deal

So, our first full day of movement-restricted, post-surgical convalescence is now 14 minutes from over. Okay, technically it ended for Kiddo about 4 hours ago, but still. She is doing remarkably well overall, I think, given that just yesterday she was under general anesthesia and having surgery and all.

She did *not* sleep in and in fact was up by 6:10 when Hubby was heading out the door for work. I had been pulling for a "sleep in until at least 9 or 10" kind of morning, mostly because I was tired enough to sleep in until at least 9 or 10 myself, but no such luck. Flipping on the TV in my room and trying to roll over and go back to sleep while she watched Disney channel didn't buy me many more Zs either. Nope, Kiddo was all about getting herself set up on the couch in the family room so she could watch DVDs. (With the movement restrictions mandated by her doctor, Kiddo's usual strict limitations on "screen time" have temporarily been lifted and she is watching as much TV as she wants, so long as she's doing so while chilling out quietly on the couch.) Well, she mostly wanted to watch one DVD in particular.

This one:



I had picked this up almost as an afterthought when I was frantically scanning the shelves at Blockbuster looking for movies that (a) Kiddo hasn't seen, (b) were longer than 22 minutes, (c) were not objectionable in any way according to my admittedly puritanical judgment scale. I saw Garfield grinning up at me from a box on the lower shelf and grabbed it because Kiddo has developed quite a love for Garfield in comic book form ever since she discovered a few of my Garfield cartoon collection books sometime last year. She thoroughly enjoyed the Garfield Christmas special when I DVRed it in December, so I figured she might get a kick out of the DVD and added it to my pile.

She has now watched this DVD enough in the past 24 hours to have the dialogue, scene order and likely the closing credits memorized. And yet, she wants to watch it again. And again. And again.

Now, I've been a Garfield fan myself since I was a kid. (Side note: Garfield debuted back in 1978.) I mean, those are *my* Garfield books that Kiddo has appropriated, after all. I have watched pieces of the DVD (hard to avoid it when it's playing nonstop on our largest TV) and will confess to chuckling aloud a few times. But, still. This is not the height of comedy, folks. It's a talking cat. How many times can one human being watch the same talking cat cartoon over and over before one goes a little bit nuts? Four is the number, if you're asking about one's mother.

When the repeated viewings of Garfield and Co had hit the upper limits of my sanity threshold, I suggested a different means of entertainment, namely, playing princesses with me on the family room floor. Kiddo got a castle and all the Disney princess figurines to go with it for her birthday two years ago, except for Snow White. Well, as a "hey, I feel lousy that you have to go through all this" kind of a post-surgery present, I picked up the Snow White (who, by the by, is much more Snow Tan than Snow White) that matched the rest of the set and Kiddo was over the moon with Snow's arrival (even better that she came accompanied by bonus Dopey and Grumpy figures) when I showed her the set the night before her surgery. So, Kiddo was content to play princesses, with one teeny-tiny problem:



Those are Snow White's shoes, as held by Kiddo's not-abnormally-large, 6 year old hand. They're raisin sized and skinny and a total PITA to put on to the princesses' feet. Moreover, they're impossible to put on if you are experiencing double vision from recent eye surgery. That meant it fell to me, Man Hands Mommy, to repeatedly jam teeny-tiny princess piggies into teeny-tiny high heels. I don't even jam my own piggies into great, big heels, for Pete's sake. Haven't these girls heard of Birkenstocks? Perhaps a nice, sensible clog? After the assorted princesses had made like Cinderella one too many times and lost yet another shoe, I convinced Kiddo to let them just go barefoot since they were in the family room which has lovely, new carpeting after all.

Garfield and ridiculously minuscule footwear aside, Kiddo had some ups and downs today. Downs include the persisting double vision, eye pain and headaches (though, true to her general good spirited nature, she was joking on the phone to my mother about how she could see "all four of her feet" and how she was so happy to have "two cats" instead of one.) The two biggest downs include the having to stay still, calm and quiet (which, seriously, could someone please order me to lounge on the couch in my jammies, tucked under a fleece blanket with total dominion over the TV and someone to fetch me snacks and ginger ale? Please?) which is especially hard for my SPD kid, and the eyedrops. The steroid/antibiotic eyedrops that must be administered by me four times a day in each eye.

You wouldn't think that something as small as this:



could produce so much misery. Misery on both our parts, mind you. Kiddo gets her full-fledged freakout going on as soon as my hand approaches the airspace above her head with the bottle poised for action. Misery on my part because DANG, that bottle is small. (I photographed it with an ordinary sized pen and paper clip for reference. Note that is my tres cool, official Nanny Goats in Panties pen, courtesy of the ever-fantabulous Margaret.) The bottle is so small that it is virtually impossible to carefully squeeze out one drop into the squirming, blinking, bloody eyeball of the squirming, blinking, screaming bloody murder kid. I certainly don't want to miss, either, because those eyedrops are apparently made out of fairy wings, pixie dust and hens' eyeteeth. Or possibly gold, diamonds and George Clooney's cell phone number. Whatever they're made of, they're danged expensive and I'm not willing to waste them by spritzing them willy-nilly into the general direction of Kiddo's head in the hopes that a veritable rain shower of medicine might inadvertently make its way into her eyes in something akin to the proper dosage.

So, yeah, that? Not the fun part. Even less fun is how her tears are blood right now. Okay, fine, technically they're just bloody, not actual straight blood, but the effect is still quite disconcerting despite all the advance warning from helpful surgical staff. Also staining - Kiddo's pillowcase has some icky spots on it now, as does the shirt I was wearing yesterday.

Now then, let's talk about the ups. Kiddo has had several phone calls and emails from folks wanting to check up on her, and has felt well enough to take some of the calls in person. Kiddo loves to talk on the phone anytime for any reason, so having calls *specifically for her* is a huge thrill. She also spoke with her surgeon last night when he called to follow up on her. I don't think he speaks to many of his actual patients when he makes such calls, being a pediatric eye doctor and all, but Kiddo heard me say hello to him and requested a word. She gave him several, specifically "You know, I did NOT like what you did to my eyes, because now they're bloody and they hurt and I do not EVER want you to do that to them EVER again." Heh.

Kiddo also has had some visitors. Her in-town grandma came over yesterday and today her aide from school came over, bringing a lovely, large card that Kiddo's classmates made her. Kiddo also had a visit from one of her Daisy troop friends who lives a few blocks from us and with whom Kiddo plays during recess just about every day. She walked over with her mom and younger sister, and they came bearing get-well gifts to boot. (Who doesn't love presents? My kid sure does!) They baked us some delicious apple bread (which Kiddo and I both enjoyed during her dinner), lent Kiddo some books with tapes so she can listen while she's reading (though she was getting frustrated with the difficulty her vision was giving her with reading earlier today) and brought us the most beautiful bouquet of flowers. I had far greater appreciation for the flowers than Kiddo did, but I guess that's to be expected when one of us is six and more into endless viewings of Garfield and Odie and the other of us is closing in on 38 and has had more experience in the realm of bouquets. One can never have too many flowers, I don't think... at least I never have!

I'll leave you with a shot of the patient, listening to Howard Jones on her iPod (yes, along with appropriating my comic books from the 80s, she's also appropriated my 80s music) as she ate her orzo in chicken broth and a slice of apple bread for dinner, sitting at the table with the flowers:



Here's a close up of the flowers, because they're beautiful enough to warrant their own close up. Despite being meant for Kiddo, they really brightened up my afternoon!



At least they'll be something to look forward to when Kiddo invariably wakes up too, too early again tomorrow and wants me to get up, too... or maybe I could just put the Garfield DVD in now and let it run so that it's playing when she gets up...