The only way she can rebel is to become a vegetarian

Mina is learning Christmas songs at school. Real, honest-to-goodness CHRISTmas songs.

I don't get it. We have to call the Halloween party a "Fall Party", but they can send my kid home singing about round yon virgins?

Mina's been singing Silent Night a lot. Like A LOT a lot. They've got her doing sign language with it too. It's cute and all, but it's also kind of creepy to hear her singing about the babyjesus.

All this sign language has piqued her interest in deaf people. "Are they different?" she asked me. I told her that they were just people, like us, but they can't hear. And just as I was about to pat myself on the back for such a great and succint answer, she throws this at me: "Can you hear a deaf person cry?"

Maybe it was the PMS last week, but that got me a little misty.

So, it's Silent Night, Holy Night EVERY night and it's getting a little old. But, as most things that are getting old around here do, it's getting funny.

"Holy Shit!" has now been replaced with "Holy Infant!". The same can be said of the less uttered "Holy Cow!".

Mina doesn't like this at all.

She also didn't like the following conversation that took place a few days ago.

Mina (singing): ...holy infant, so tender and mild...

Jim: You know what I like tender and mild? A steak.

Mina: NO DADDY! HOLY INFANT!

Me: Mmmmmm...tender infant....

Mina: STOP IT!



I hope that when Mina grows up, she gets a really well paying job with fantastic benefits to help pay for the inevitable therapy in her future.

One Track Mind

I love the exercise class I take on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Monday and Wednesday ones not so much (stupid cardio), but Tue/Thur gets a hearty thumbs up.

It's a strength training class which I dig, and the teacher is really hard on us which I need.

Today was more difficult than usual because it took everything in me not to completely embarrass myself by laughing my ass off.

She had us do this move where we got down on all fours (which is funny all on its own) and alternate a raised right hand/left leg then vice versa. A set of those led to not only raising said leg/arm combo, but also touching opposite hand to opposite leg and following the path of our arm with our head (to improve our balancing skillz, yo) which the teacher insisted on calling a "reach around".

And if that wasn't enough to me into fits of juvenile giggles, she then started shouting "NOW, JUST THE REACH AROUND. NO HEAD! JUST THE REACH AROUND. NO HEAD!".

I don't know whether to feel sorry for her husband or give him a medal.

At least he's not a Scientologist

My father works in the warehouse of a Christian book publishing company (I'll give you a hint: They are the people who publish the Left Behind series). He's been with them for almost 20 years, and isn't planning on retiring until he is 70. Yeah. Seventy.

He loves his job believe it or not. I don't get it. He packs book orders in warehouse. I mean, it's an honest living and all, but not one that I would want to do until I was 70 years old. He's 66 now, so it's not that far off. Thankfully.

Ever since he got that job he's found any and every opportunity to give me one of the books he so diligently packs every day, and they suck ass like nobody's business.

I've been able to politely decline his offers of Christian Parenting Tips 101 and Cooking with Jesus and the like for quite a few years now, but that doesn't stop him from offering.

When I was pregnant with my first kid, my father and his friends from church single-handedly filled out the book table at my garage sale.

Today, after dropping the girls off after a weekend visit, my father topped even himself in pure ridiculousness.

I saw him handing my husband a book and involuntarily rolled my eyes. "What now?" I thought to myself.

"Here you go, Jim. It's a new book we put out--comic book style!"

I could feel the muscles in my neck tightening up. If it had been one of those super kick ass tracts from back in the day, I might have gotten excited, but it wasn't. Not even close.

If I was telling you this story in person, this would be the part where I'm laughing so hard I can't even finish sharing it. The part where you would also begin to giggle because this kind of laughter is contagious.

The title?

MANGA MESSIAH

If I ever embarrass my children this badly, they have full permission to commit me.

As soon as they stop laughing.

Why I love living in Normal, IL

Things like this make the paper.

Awesome.

My head hurts

Overheard in the kitchen while Mina was drawing pictures before dinner:

"I'm so glad Jesus invented erasers so I could get rid of the nasty stuff."

Reason #4852 I Shouldn't Own a Gun

On the way home from Mina's first birthday party of the today I had to stop at a gas station to fill up one of my tires. One of my neighbors was nice enough to knock on my door and let me know that he noticed I had one going flat. I thought that was pretty damn swell. Wasn't it?

I pulled into one gas station and their air machine was broken. I will refrain from going into my thoughts on a fucking AIR machine being broken. (Seriously. It's air. Did they run out?).

Next stop was the gas station by my house. Their air machine is free. Honestly, I never understood paying for air in the first place.

There are two non-handicap parking spots one can park in the get access to the machine. One was taken and one was blocked by some asshole pulling out of it as slooooowly as he possibly could.

If it would have been some old person just being elderly and shit, I would have given them a pass, but it wasn't. It was some dude in a POS van, yakking on his cell phone, not paying attention.

Well, not paying attention until he saw my eyelasers fixed on his location. But did that shake him into the real world--the real world where people are courteous and aware of their surroundings? Nope.

Not until I mouthed (mouthed, not said. My kids were in the car) "you need to get out of the way" did he finish his 37 point turn--still having a cell phone conversation--out of the spot I needed.

I thought he had left the parking lot, but was mostly intent on filling up my flaccid rear tire. When I looked up after returning the air hose, I saw that he had stopped his car directly behind mine.

I knew I just needed to get in and put my car in reverse and he probably would have gotten the hint. I knew that the best thing would be to just keep my mouth shut and give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he thought I was going into the gas station. I hadn't gotten my very visible children out of the car. I didn't have my purse on me. It was plainly obvious all I needed was some air for my tires, BUT maybe he was so engrossed in his obviously important phone call he didn't notice that I HAVE SHIT TO DO.

But I didn't keep my mouth shut.

Hands on hips, cocked head and all, I spat a "REALLY?!" at him.

He moved. Quickly.

At times like these, I don't really need a gun.

"Pissed Off Chaylene" is scary enough.

Is it just me?

Lasr night I checked my gmail account and all was well and good until I tried to reply to an email. Suddenly, I was "timed out" and had to "sign in again" even though it still said I was signed in.

Now I can't even access my gmail inbox at all. When I type the address in, all I get is some ask.com search results page. When I click on the gmail link, I get an error page.

Forgive my computer illiteracy. Seriously, I embarass myself sometimes. But what the holyballsfuck is going on here?

It's starting to piss me off a little.

Which do you want first?

I always pick the "bad news". I like to end on a high note.

The Bad News:
Last night Audrey puked her entire dinner back onto her plate. She's not sick this time. I think I just shouldn't let her have a juice box with dinner. She sucked it down like a camel and it just didn't agree with her I guess. I am really sick of cleaning up barf.

The kitchen sink is cloggity clogged and I can't use my dishwasher either as it is backing up into it as well.

I have to pay someone to come fix it.

Winter has arrived. Sitting outside with my laptop and cigarettes isn't as enjoyable when I'm shivering.

Starbucks still has not called me back about an interview. Now I have to call and do the whole "just checking in" bullshit.



The Good News:
I can pull my size 6 pants off without unbuttoning them (straight out of the dryer!).

I have an excuse to go shopping.



Not sure which category this goes in:
I am woefully addicted to Scrabulous on Facebook.

It Has Begun

I was at the grocery store the other day when I heard it. It didn't register right away. I don't normally actually listen to what they're playing over the speakers (unless it's the GoGo's in which case I sing along and dance with my shopping cart).

Maybe it was turned up just a touch louder than usual because halfway down the second aisle, it hit me. Fucking Christmas music.

I have a love/hate relationship with holiday music. Part of me gets the appropriate warm and fuzzy feelings when I hear it. The other part of me, the cynical and angry part, usually beats all that sentimentality into an unrecognizable bloody stump.

I stopped and listened for a moment. How could I even start to think about Christmas when it wasn't even cold enough for socks? I know they have to start bombarding consumers with Christmas shit early in order to convince us to buy shit. After all, nothing says "I love you" like a six page long January credit card bill, right?

It's not just the stores with their music and decorations either. I've noticed the toy commercials are on double time. Every four seconds (as opposed to the usual eight seconds) I hear, "Mama! Can I have that?" "Mama, can Santa bring that?".

At first, I pulled out the speech from last year, "Santa can't bring everything. Let's just put it on the list and see what happens."

But I'm sick of saying it, mostly because they don't even hear me when I do. I've given up. Now, when they ask me for yet another bullshit piece of lead-laden garbage almost guaranteed to make noise/be difficult to assemble/fall apart after 5 minutes/etc, I just tell them that they can have it.

Why not?

How could it possibly backfire?

It's Tattoos, Ya'll!

Last night Audrey got out of the tub and proceeded to return her entire dinner into a towel I heroically swooped under her mouth just in the nick of time. I kept trying to scoot her closer to the toilet as wave after wave of chicken/broccoli/french fry goop came pouring out of her gullet, but she kept backing up.

It was kind of funny.

"BLORT!"

"Come this way honey..."

"BLORT!"

"No, not towards the door...this way. OK, in the towel then."

A couple hours after I got them in bed, Mina was up and ready for her barf-o-rama.

This morning, Mina was fine. Audrey seemed fine, but after eating and then un-eating breakfast was in for a day of couch surfing and little else.

She even puked up the juice she drank, and won't go near the Pedialyte (I can't blame her. It looks like urine on the morning after a loooong night of drinking).

The only good thing about your kid being sick is the primo snuggle time.

The poor thing can't keep any food down so she is not in her usual tornado mode. Normally she isn't very snuggly, but today we got to spend some sweet moments stretched out on the couch, catching up on Blue and Franklin, just cuddled up warm and cozy.

I'm letting her sleep on the couch not so much as a "special treat" but to make sure I catch any further throwing up incidents. We just got the floors done and my mother in law got us this rockin new rug that I would like to try and keep puke(and dog poop) free for as long as possible. I don't ask for much.

If you've read this far without feeling queasy you probably have kids of your own who's puke you've caught, shit you've wiped and snot you've sopped up. If you don't have kids, then my apologies and I hope you weren't eating.

I really thought it was something they ate, but Audrey feels like she has a fever now so I think she's legitimately sick. My supergreatkickass friend Rachel was planning on have my girls over for a slumber party on Saturday, but I think Audrey is going to have to sit this one out. We'll see.

My husbitch and I had big plans to go down to St. Louis for the Old School Tattoo Expo. I told him that if Audrey got sick again, he could stay home and I was still going. I was kind of half-joking, but he gave me the "Fine. Whatever" look.

I think I might still go. Is that too Britney of me?

Reality check

A friend of mine that I used to do hair with called me this weekend to tell me that one of my favorite old client's mother had died.

At least that's what I thought he was telling me on the phone. I was smack in the middle of a fierce game of Candyland with the girls and apparently didn't listen as closely as I should have.

Had I been paying full attention, I would have known it wasn't the old client's mother who died but her young daughter.

I saw the friend who called me today and I casually mentioned that I hadn't seen the obituary in the paper yet, and found that odd. He then clarified what I had stupidly missed in the weekend phone call.

Apparently Ava had developed a brain tumor about a year and a half ago which they operated on, but it was a one shot deal. When it came back, it was just a matter of time before she succumbed to it.

Traci, Ava's mother, was a fragile woman with a kind heart. She and her husband brought their family here after he was transferred through work. She kept a trace of a southern accent that got stronger when she joked around. She had a gentle but firm way of keeping Ava out of trouble while she was getting her hair done, but Ava never strayed far. Usually she would curl up on her mom's lap while I shampooed Traci's hair.

I don't and hopefully will never ever know that pain the family must be going through right now, but my heart breaks just thinking about that kind of loss. Nothing strikes more fear in the heart of a parent than thinking about one's child in pain or worse.

It feels so cheesy to say, but life comes at us so fast. Events like this are a stark reminder to slow down, appreciate the small things, and take stock of what we often take for granted.

Rest in peace, baby girl.

"Write what you know"

I signed up for NaNoWriMo.

So far, it's not going so well. I'm supposed to crank out 50,000 words in 30 days and I think I've got just under 400 on the second full day. Gah.

I know no one's going to come steal my babies if I don't get it done, but I'll still feel like a failure if I can't get at least half the required words in. It's supposed to be fun, right?

Anyone else trying masochism on for size this month?

I Wish I Still Did Drugs

The actors on Hi-5 scare the everloving shit out of me.