the tale of the HAUNTED CHAAAAIIIRRRRRRR

I hope it's not too much of a letdown now that it's all been built up.

okay, background. we have a beautiful antique couch that I love in our family room. we also have another couch and a wingback chair. behind the antique couch, we have set up a little play area between the couch and the half wall between the family room and the kitchen. I feel like a picture would be a good visual aide, so check back in a few months to see if I post one.

the couch has seen better days, though for an antique couch, it is in quite good shape. however, one cushion is ripped and the whole thing is kinda rickety. not to mention the fact that because I love the couch so much, I hardly let anyone sit on it.

so we decided that we'd move the couch (I won't get rid of it - someday I'll have a house where I can just put that in a room that no one uses and it will just look pretty) to the basement and instead of replacing it with another couch, we'd get two recliners. because I love recliners.

well, recliners are expensive. and the ones in our price range are really sort of ugly. so to ebay I went. I did a search for 100 miles from my house and found 3 listings, only 1 of which was an actual reclining chair. it was in jersey. I took a look at it. it was called "grandpa's recliner". it was pretty nice looking, though I couldn't tell by the picture whether or not it was brown or gray.

then I noticed that the seller had another auction going on called "grandma's easy chair" - note to self, "easy chair" equals "recliner" for oldsters like me who hate teenagers. so I took a look at grandma's chair, and it matched grandpa's pretty nicely. and we wanted 2 chairs. and the starting bid for both of them was $24.99. and no one had placed a bid.

so, one thing led to another and the auction ended and we found out the chairs were brown. I offered to buy them off the seller, who appears to be a stoner music dude with a long scraggly beard whose last name is coffey but who likes to go by latte instead. get it? coffey? latte? no one rolls their eyes faster than me these days.

so we make arrangements to pick up the chairs, and we pay $50 for the both of them. and they are cool. I love grandpa's chair, because it's a rocker. just like me. but I needed to know from latte, were they really his grandparent's chairs? because I saw something in the picture and I need to know. yes, they are his grandparents' chairs.

take a look at grandma's chair and see if you see anything odd in it. click on it to see the original ebay listing.



so latte tells me that the reason he's selling these things is because HIS GRANDMOTHER JUST PASSED AWAY and they're selling everything. what he doesn't know is that apparently grandma isn't ready to let go of her chair. because if you didn't see it, THERE'S A GHOST ORB IN IT.

so like I said, we bought the chairs and brought them home. this was monday. just a few days after the exorcism of emily rose, when I still wasn't completely okay with merely SLEEPING let alone being downstairs with a haunted chair.

the dog and cat have sat on it, and to me, that's reassuring because pets can usually sense ghosts, right? nothing weird has happened so far, but I've only sat on that chair once this whole week. I want to put one of the chairs in the living room and keep one in the family room but I'm afraid to split them up. I'm also afraid to take a picture of it just in case another orb shows up, because then I'd have to move. in addition, I won't say anything bad about the chair while I'm in the same room with the chair, so it doesn't get mad at me. and finally, I will not be alone with the chair at night.

that's it. kind of a let down, I know. but that's the haunted chair. hopefully I won't be linking to this entry in the future saying "remember when I thought the chair wasn't really that haunted??"

oh. ps. so sean and his brother brion went to go pick up the chairs, and sean told brion about the orb. brion is what the family calls a "loose cannon" and isn't always completely aware of all the aspects of social grace, so sean sort of braced himself, but it all went okay. that is, until just before they were about to leave the coffey house. brion says to mr. latte "hey, where's those pictures?" and latte's all "what?" and brion says "the pictures of the chair with the ghost in it."

I'm not exactly sure what happened after that - I think sean said latte had a sort of bewildered expression on his face - butI think they just hightailed it out of there. maybe latte would have had second thoughts if he knew he was only getting $25 for both the chair and his grandma.

things that suck

I didn't blog yesterday because the day before I said "pictures tomorrow, I promise" or something equally stupid and I didn't download the pictures so I was like, I'm so lame, I shouldn't even blog. but if I waited until I downloaded those pictures before I blog, I'd never post again. so fuck it. you'll see them soon enough. I am sorry for the delay.

so a quick story about seeing the exorcism of emily rose. it was our date night, and we were really excited to see a movie all by ourselves. together. you get what I mean. so we get there only a little bit early - maybe like 5 minutes before previews - and there are only 3 other couples in the theater. excellent. since I have become old and crotchedy, which happened somewhere around 28 years old, I have maintained that movie theaters should be like peep shows - everyone gets to see the same thing, only they are in isolated booths. because at the movies, I HATE other people.

so we chose a seat in the middle of a row about 3/4 of the way to the back, because the other 3 couples were scattered about closer to the screen. all seems to be well. about 4 seconds before the lights go down and the previews start, our own nightmare began. all told, there had to be about 30 teenagers that suddenly bounded up the stairs to sit in the back rows, where the cool kids always sit. a line of teenage boys were directly behind us, bumping into our seat, talking in regular, ie un-hushed, voices, and we decided to move our seats. a funny thing about guys who go to the movies together: they don't sit together. the guys scattered around the theater, two of them wound up sitting in our row.

I guess I should be grateful to all those obnoxious bastards because I probably would have been much more scared had I not been so fucking annoyed with them. the movie is rated pg-13 but some of these kids looked way younger than that. including the one that ran up and down the aisle pointing at people randomly. cell phones were on, people were yelling at the movie, laughing, holding entire conversations with each other as if they were outside...

I didn't want to go out and get an usher (as no one came through as they are supposed to, to check on shit like this) because I really didn't want to miss any of the movie. so I resolved myself to talk to the manager afterwards.

as a fitting ending to the fiasco, just as the final scene began, all the house lights went on. a few seconds later, a lazy looking kid in an ill-fitting Regal Theatres (it's not a theatER, it's a theatRE) uniform came out with a big trash can. upon seeing everyone still in the theater and the movie still on, he sort of jumped back a little, like oh shit, I jumped the gun, but then proceeded to leave the lights on until the credits came on. and THEN the lights went down again...just in time to see who the fucking key grip and best boy were.

when we did complain to the manager, we were one of at least 8 other people who were saying the same thing. and we all got free tickets to another movie of our choice. so that's kind of cool. though I'll never go to the movies again on a friday night. pesky kids. let me just hike my pants up a little higher....there. I think I'll just continue to watch murder she wrote.

last on the list of things that suck: yesterday, trent's middle school was evacuated because of a bomb threat. yeah. go back and read that line again. they were in a "safe area" according to the website for the school (the football field next to the school - I guess it's schrapnel proof.) they had to leave all their belongings inside and they got bussed home. trent brought home a friend, which was kind of cool, because he never wants people over. but he seemed a little shaken that it was a bomb threat, as he thought it was just a fire.

the threat was, of course, empty, and no bomb was found. but seriously. it's not even a month into the school year yet, for crying out loud. and this is middle school! trent is already afraid of what he calls "violent teenagers" and this isn't helping. he told me a few weeks ago that he wishes he could go from 12 years old to like 17, because by about 17 or 18, you're not as much of a teenager. out of the mouths of babes, I say.

the nice thing about things sucking is that eventually, something HAS to happen that doesn't suck. since work sucks today, I'm banking on it being something at home.

oh, remind me to tell you about the haunted chairs.

weekend update

friday night - date night. 6pm: sean and I have a date to go see the exorcism of emily rose, courtesy of trent's dad brett. 2:30am: I am too afraid to go to sleep.

saturday - we were supposed to go get bella some fall clothes, since the only things we have that fit her are tiny tank tops and little shorts. instead, we take long naps because I was too afraid to sleep the night before. we then go to trent's soccer game. the temperature outside is a pleasant 82 degrees, but that translates into scorching heat of hell when you're on a dry field in the full on sun. trent's team loses because their ref is stupid. sean comes to watch the game after work, can't find us, and then promptly melts in the heat of the sun. he pulls himself together to take bella home while I spend, and I'm serious, $340 at old navy on clothes. I have a bag in my car filled with stuff I have to return because....that's crazy.

saturday night - we watch murder she wrote ALL NIGHT LONG, BABY.

sunday - zoo!! we get to nicole's around 10:30, and we all get on board the magical trolley, which actually feels a lot like a regular bus that doesn't go as fast. but the doors are alot bigger, so that's nice. it's actually pretty roomy in there. I even breastfed bella completely surreptitiously, which was nice.

we pass by the protesters, including the one dressed as a cuddly elephant with a chain on its leg that confused most of the children, and got into the zoo itself. we made it about 4 feet inside before bella insisted on getting out of the stroller, making that completely useless for the many hours we were there. the first exhibit we see...tortoises! they are so big. one is strapped to a cart because I guess it's too heavy to carry itself, or maybe it was cracked...who knows.

but...what's this?

there's a small crowd of giggling people around part of the tortoise area. they're all taking pictures. bella finally focuses on the animals in front of her (because, as nicole said, it's hard to get a baby to notice anything, even a cheetah, that's sitting 20 feet away and NOT MOVING) and I'm happy to report that the very first animals she saw in the zoo were two tortoises fucking.

we did have alot of fun, and saw a ton of animals. trent had a great time, and it was so nice to be with friends AND with sean, all at the same time. all my favorite people were there and that was the best part.

I am happy to report that last night, I only woke up once due to being scared. so I'm making progress.

tomorrow, pictures! I promise.

Shorter Saturdays

Sean here, and I'm almost out of time. In other words, my work day is almost over, and it feels like it just started. That's what happens when you go from working 12 hours to 8. The only negative is that I don't have as much time to screw around at work. Less Hotmail. Less blogging. Less visiting the Netflix queue. Less searching for the lowest prices for the newest CDs that come out week after week. I'll take all of these complaints when you consider how nice it is to leave work at 2:30pm with the rest of the day + Sunday to spend with my family and Monday to spend with Bella. Patrice is right. A lot of people take it for granted. After 1 year and half of it, I never will again. I'll tell you this, though. I'm also not used to the business casual code as much since three of my four former days were jeans and tshirt days. Now, I have to somewhat dress up for the Tuesday through Thursdays, and I sure look dashing in my new Steve Madden shoes (I feel like such a commercial actor). They feel like slippers (probably because other than my slippers, they are the only footware I own without laces or straps), but they look like I'm taking over this joint. I hope to someday. Then, I can form my own schedule!
Next up? Patrice's zoo report! It should be a good one.

the midas touch

my work friend jarrett has been kind of down in the dumps lately and so I asked him if he wanted to go out to lunch. he had to return some pants to the gap at the mall so we decided to go eat lunch there. now, to refresh your memory, we went to the mall in august for lunch and when we got there, I had found that I had a flat tire. and jarrett had to change it. and it sucked.

so we joked about that today and I said that jarrett better drive his truck instead of me driving. we walk out to the parking lot, and I go to the passenger's side to get in, and yes. can you even believe it? what are the fucking chances??

jarrett's tire is flat.

clearly, someone does NOT want me going to the mall during lunch.

oh those golden showers

sean always has the best stories. I need to start a series on funny sean stories. there'll be the one about his brother's wedding, the one about the cat door, the anecdote about the map...but today, I'm going to tell the story about how sean peed on our daughter.

we live in an 80 year old row home. the previous owners did put in a second bathroom, if you can call it that, in the basement, but it is seriously disgusting and we never use it. so our bathroom is upstairs and is fairly tiny. because our upstairs floors are all ripped up in the hallway and in our bedroom, we can't let bella go crawling all over the place while we use le toilet. so she is confined to the tiny bathroom while we go. usually she has great fun playing with tampons and tampon boxes and her rubber ducky. but sometimes she decides she wants to explore.

sean, being a man, pees standing up. as our house as 2 stand up pee-ers and one sit down pee-er, the rim of the bowl under the seat tends to get dripped on. ew. though they are fairly clean. but still, no baby should be putting her little hands on the rim of the bowl, especially while daddy is peeing.

so you can guess what bella decided to do as sean was peeing yesterday. but instead of waiting a few minutes to head on over to the bowl, she did it as soon as sean started the stream. and once he starts, there's no stopping him.

so bella crawls over to the bowl and attempts to hold onto it and stand up - and sean is frantically trying to hold his member with one hand, aiming the stream into the toilet, while he uses the other to get bella off the bowl. sean's a fairly tall guy, so reaching down to get bella causes him to have to bend his knees, no small feat when you're peeing standing up.

while the mele is occurring, the unthinkable happens. sean, trying to get her away and aim his pee at the same time, fails to keep the two separated and pees directly onto bella's hand.

HE PEED DIRECTLY ONTO BELLA'S HAND.

he has now said that he will never pee standing up while she's in the bathroom again. poor guy.

**

zoo this weekend!! I can't wait. I'll take pictures and then next year I'll post them - you know, just as soon as I download them from the camera. woohoo!

my first time with a girl

named barbie (r).

lonna says that dermot, cute thing that he is, likes to carry around two bristle blocks smooshed together. which got me to thinking about my love for bristle blocks when I was in kindergarten and how I got my first barbie.

I was a sickly little kid. I got ear infections at least once a month. back then, we didn't know why, but looking back, and knowing what I know now, I can place blame squarely on my parents. at the time, both of them smoked like chimneys. (now, only my mom smokes.) second hand smoke gives kids asthma (which I also have) and ear infections. I had tubes put in my ears twice to help alleviate all the gunk that piled up in there.

so it was the age of kindergarten, and I loved going to school. I was sort of a tomboy, liking to wear pants instead of dresses and play with cars instead of dolls. at kindergarten, they had excellent toys, stuff I had never seen before. by far, the best toy there were the bristle blocks. I was a total tv junkie even back then and could quote many commercials, and I distinctly remember playing with the bristle blocks in much the same way as the children did in the commercial. (I also liked, and still like, to put toothpaste on my toothbrush a la the aquafresh commercials, with the big swirl at the end, and on the rare occasions when I eat fig newtons, I absolutely have to break them apart in the middle and put them back together again before I can put them in my mouth.)

at any rate, the time came during kindergarten when I had an ear infection and couldn't go to school. it was a particularly bad one, and as was the custom, my mom had made me a bed in the backseat of our car and drove me to the doctor's office. (seatbelts were unheard of. as was sitting. I either laid down in the backseat or stood up, holding onto the headrest of the front seat.) I remember my mom running into thrift drug to get my obligatory penicillin, after asking me if maybe I'd like her to get me a toy while she was in there. the thrift drug of 25 years ago is not like the drugstore of today, where you probably could get any toy you wanted. they always had lame stuff like squirt guns that probably didn't work even if your mom let you play with them with water in the house, and fake jeweled necklaces that didn't do anything but lay there on your neck, useless. however, I didn't hear anything but my mom asking me if I wanted a toy, and of course, I said I wanted bristle blocks.

I was left in the car, laying in the back seat, while my mom went into the drugstore and waited for what seemed like hours (but was probably more like a half hour) for the prescription to be filled. yes, it was quite a different world back then. when my mom came back out, she didn't appear to have any bristle blocks with her, and I was so upset. but then she showed me that she had bought me my first barbie doll - which, because this was thrift drug, was actually my first barbie knock off doll, as it had these totally lame dentable hollow plastic legs and the blue eyeshadow on the doll's face wasn't lined up right - and a bunch of outfits for her. including rubber high heeled knee high boots, which I loved.

I was totally not a doll person in the sense that I didn't have dollies that wet and cried and looked like babies, but after that first lame barbie, I was hooked. I am actually hoping that bella likes barbies so that I can indulge myself once again when she's older. we're gonna get the car, and the house, and the camper, and the pool....and NO KEN. or whoever barbie's fucking these days. ah, reliving childhood.

I shoe-shoe-shoes you

a transcript of our trip to the macy's men's shoe department to get sean shoes:

me: how bout these?
him: yeah (does not pick up shoes)
me: how bout those?
him: yeah (does not pick up shoes)
me: what about these?
him: yeah (does not pick up shoes)
bella: AIIIIYYAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRARAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

we did look at all the kenneth cole shoes. and he found a pair that he liked, which I didn't love because they had lugged soles so that they weren't really as dressy as regular dress shoes, which I thought was the point. (I likened this to buying really expensive dressy jeans - they're still jeans at the end of the day.)

so he was all set to buy these shoes, after having tried on just that one pair. I kept asking if he wanted to try more, and he said no - mostly because bella was screaming her head off, wanting to crawl around on the nasty carpet. (don't they fucking VACUUM??) a shiny shoe horn wouldn't even calm her down. and he was annoyed further by the shoes themselves - the way they lace the shoes in the display so the laces go straight across and you can neither loosen or tighten them. I had to re-lace them while he wrestled with bella, but the sheer fact that they were laced that way was baffling and annoying to him. so, with all the chaos and the laces and whatnot, he didn't want to try on any more shoes.

however, I happened to be looking at the clearance rack, where they had several shoes in sean's size. (sidenote: in case I haven't mentioned it, sean has ENORMOUS feet. he wears either a 12 or 13 depending on the shoe. have you ever noticed that shoes are always alot cuter when they're little? the bigger they are, the weirder they look. especially shoes that have only a small lace up area, like dress shoes. they don't seem to make the lace up part any bigger after, say, size 10, so there's always this little lace up part and this vast expanse of shoe stretching out for miles. so buying shoes for him is tough, as you have to get the right balance of correct size and non-clownishness.) I saw a pair that were really cool looking and had, dun dun dunnnnn, NO LACES. I asked him to at least just try these on, and he did, and he said they were really comfortable. when I looked to see what the brand name was (not that either of us cared, we only cared that he had nice dress shoes that fit him) and it was steve madden. awwww. now we have the same brand of shoes.

I'm not sure if he wore them today or not, but we even got him all kinds of new socks to go with his new shoes. (I picked them out - argyle, striped, and polka dot. I'm so glad he's not picky about the kind of socks he wears.) I'll make sure he gives a shoe report so all of you who are DYING to know "do they fit????? are they comfortable????? DO THEY MAKE YOUR SOCKS PILL????" will have the answers you so desperately need.

the best part? clearance is 50% off the lowest marked price. $130 shoes for $37? not bad at all.

picture pages

I was going to post some long-overdue pictures from the beach, but when I logged into my snapfish account, I realized that I haven't actually downloaded them from the camera yet. it's been a goddamn month! I am so fucking lazy. anyways. here are 2 from the last batch that I did download - one of dermot from when ethan and lonna visited from iowa (like 50 years ago) and one from the aquarium (from the turn of the century.)

dermie (rhymes with "kermie")


and mama with her bella

livin la vida zombie

fall. ragweed. trees. allergies. can't speak in complete sentences. allergy medicine side effects. not blinking. can't feel toes. sneezing. full sinuses. yet still no blinking.

I'll try to snap out of it long enough to post.

today is sean's first day as a real live first shifter. he wanted new shoes for the occasion, but we didn't have time last night, as I had to go grocery shopping for sanity - I mean because we had no food in the house. (both are true.) so today we get new, grown up shoes. I mentioned something about kenneth cole shoes to sean once, how I thought they would look good on him and they were quality shoes that are suitable for someone planning to conquer the chairman's spot at any big company, and now that's all he wants. he keeps asking me if they have kenneth cole shoes wherever we are that has shoes. like payless and famous footwear. it's gotten to the point that I wearily say "no kenneth cole" whenever I see a shoe display.

sean's story is something of a rags to rich (not riches, we're not quite to plural of rich yet - we need about quadruple his salary first) story. he started out in this company's warehouse, wearing crap uniforms from cintas and company issued steel toe boots. now he sits behind a giant control board filled with monitors and keyboards and server stuff. because he didn't come into the company at this level, but rather down in the trenches, he has a unique perspective on the work he does. plus, he's the most loyal and hardest worker I've ever known. so pretty soon, I expect to complete the rags to richES story and I hope I can remember that one time we went to get him his very first pair of kenneth cole shoes.

this weekend, we are going to the zoo with nicole and mark and noah. we have been waiting to go to the zoo since before bella was born. last year, she was too little and it was too cold to go. this summer, we barely had any time to ourselves where one of us wasn't working. now that we have one free sunday under our belt, we are ready and raring to go to the zoo. it's not just a trip to the zoo, though, it's an affirmation that we are, once again, a more normal family. a family that can pick up and go somewhere, together, without losing money or vacation time. it's something I'm sure alot of people take for granted, and we can't wait to take it for granted again, too. we're working on getting saturdays back, but for the time being, I'll take sunday over no days.

and now, I must return to my zombified state.

ahhh-CHOOOOOOO. still no blinking.

frustrated.

earlier this week, I had an appointment with my gynecologist. I had been doing fairly well with my IBS while I was pregnant and for a few months after bella was born. when I got my period, the IBS started up again with a vengence. it was then that I decided to really recognize the tie between my period and my worst episodes, and made a doctor's appointment.

so I go in, and the doctor diagnoses me right away with endometriosis. without looking at me or anything. it was plausible, because years ago, when I had a great gyno at planned parenthood, she mentioned that it might be the cause. so I went with it, really because I was eager to have some sort of name for what was going on. it sort of felt validating, much as it felt validating when they finally came out with the name "irritable bowel syndrome" instead of just "not being able to get off the can-itis". the endometrial tissue, he said, was probably either in a fine sheen on my colon, or entwined in the folds of my colon. therefore, inoperable. (an operation??) the best course of action is to get pregnant again. IS TO GET PREGNANT AGAIN. he must have said it like 6 times. I kept assuring him that no, I would not be getting pregnant again, can we move on? so the only other option, apparently, is to be on birth control. preferably something that doesn't have to go through the liver (ie, oral pills) to get to the eggs. so in went the nuva-ring. like, immediately. without my having a chance to even think about it.

incongruous paragraph, because I'm now remembering what he said: you know what the "cure" is for this, according to him? the problem is my period, apparently, so the solution is to not have a period. which was why he was so strong on the pregnancy thing. instead, he wants me to wear this nuva ring continuously instead of taking it out each month to get my period. he wants me to not have a period for about 6 months so that I won't have symptoms. wouldn't a better course of action be TO MAKE SURE THIS WAS THE PROBLEM and then TO TREAT THE PROBLEM AND NOT THE SYMPTOMS??

I said I had concerns about my milk supply. he said I was established enough so that it wouldn't matter. I said I was concerned about why I'm only finding out about this endometriosis thing now, and why no other doctor asked me about it even though I brought up my symptoms, while he was able to diagnose me immediately. he said it was because he's very well versed and very up to date on his endo knowledge. and then he told me not to read anything about it on the internet because there's alot of bad knowledge out there.

so I went home with the ring in, feeling sort of weird, and wondering if I made the right decision. the decision being to just allow it all to happen.

I immediately started clotting. (I already had my period.) cramping. bad enough that I went home early from work the next day. milk supply seemed okay. today, my period abruptly stopped, yet I still feel crampy. and I just returned from the lacation room having pumped 2 ounces of milk. I usually pump 6.

add to this that I was sitting there reading a publication (ie, a collection of practially mimeographed pages stapled together) from the local nursing mothers coalition, telling me that even if I smoke, I should still breastfeed, and mentioning that formula fed babies are stupider and sicker. I knew it was pure propaganda, but still.

I'm fed up. I hate my doctors, my pediatricians, and basically everyone who tells me stuff that is one sided and biased. why is it I can't seem to find a doctor who takes me seriously and isn't encased in some sort of bubble? why are breast feeding organizations so fucking all or nothing?

fuck this noise. the ring is coming out. I may have to have the toilet seat surgically removed from my ass, but damn it, the ring is coming out!!!!

ps, I was going to link to all kinds of helpful websites about ibs and endo and nuva ring and noise fucking but I am too frustrated to do any of that.

hair today

it may only be for an hour, a day, maybe just for the morning...but I love my hair right now. it could be only because I haven't seen it in the right angle to be like, holy hell what the fuck is that, but whatever it is, I hope nothing breaks this magical spell.

good hair is valuable to me. I could be wearing something really stupid, but if my hair looks good, then I don't mind. it's not vice versa - no amount of good outfit can compensate for bad hair.

I got my hair cut on monday night, and I wasn't sure I was going to like it. I had these massive side clumps that at one point looked cute, and that cut was a big step up from my unruly long inconvenience that I had while pregnant, simply for the ability to wear a pony tail. but I had been sporting the side clumps for too long, or they had gotten too long, one or the other. the result was a bad pseudo backwards mullet with bangs. anyways, that's all gone. now I have something that feels a tad 30s, which is pretty timely, since trent and I have been on an all-out hercule poirot binge for the past month or so. (for me, the past lifetime or so.)

I purposely do not look at my profile, though, because I am not a sadist. so I can't rightly say that it will look good to others, because the one thing that those side clumps did was sort of hide the too-gentle slope of my neck. (a neck should be angular. not gentle.)

I asked trent last night if he thought that my new haircut made my chin/neck look too big. he said no. and then reached out and took hold of the skin under my chin and said "you and pop pop guitar [my dad] both have this extra skin chin thingie." I just stared at him, blinking. then he said "well, pop pop guitar's is more of a waddle. yours is just - what is that, anyway?"

despite all that, I do love my hair. or I did until I just remembered that little conversation.

showered with mice

To dream of mice is not a very good omen as the dreamer can expect
disappointments and ill will from others if the dream centers around the mice.
If you have a mouse jump on you, or get in your clothing, then you will be
involved in a scandal with a friend. If you kill the mice, you will overcome
all, but if they escape you, your strivings will be of doubtful significance.

uh oh. well, nicole already let the mouse out of the bag regarding the irony of the mouse sitings, but she didn't tell you about the fate of our house-mice, which weren't house-mice, but feed-mice. she didn't tell you about...The Stain.

first off, you may remember (I am too lazy to look it up) the hamster in the wall story, where our wonderfully respectful neighbor, who is very good with keeping his pets corralled, had let his feeder hamsters run free (directly into our wall, where they died) instead of running into the mouth of whatever he's keeping over there. alligators? snakes? the gimp? anyways, I guess they stopped selling him hamsters (because you're not supposed to feed them to stuff) and so he's back to white mice. only these white mice are substantially larger. I would dare to say that they are this close to being rats.

so, this weekend, I saw that maggie and kitchen were both pawing at the upstairs stick vac. not believing that all they wanted to do was clean up their massive fall-shedding hairballs that are thick enough in some spots so as to look like carpeting, I picked up the vac to investigate. MOUSE!! dead. and I had removed the only thing separating it from the hungry mouths and claws of our pets. so I quickly put the vac back and immediately called sean to tell him MOUSE!! apparently, I didn't put the vac back correctly (or there are two, I do not know and do not want to know) because shortly afterwards, I took bella downstairs so that she could play with her toys while I got our diaper bag ready to go to the bridal shower we were attending...and there....it.....was............completely........it was.........and right where.....

dis·em·bow·el: To remove the entrails from.
e·vis·cer·ate: To remove the entrails of; disembowel.
ex·en·ter·ate: To disembowel; eviscerate.

seriously? it was 2 feet from bella's toys. and I had to leave. and the only way I knew it was a mouse was by its tail and one small patch of white fur still left....nevermind.

so what could I do? I put a heavy glass pot lid over it and left it for sean. and there it sat for 7 more hours until sean could clean it up, something he refuses to discuss. I learned two things and two things only from my brief discussion with him about the cleanup. one was that there will be a Stain, and the other was that the mouse had not been thrown away. oh no. no, the landlord, who you will remember from sean's very nice letter about the previous smaller, nicer mice, said that his tenant required PROOF that the mouse came from him...and what better way than to keep the mouse, frozen, until such time as the proof is necessary. so, yes. it's in the downstairs freezer.

all this, then we wind up with a mouse inside nicole's house. when she never had mice before. ever.

it's not looking good, my friends.

hi. remember me?

slacker!!!

this has been a full week, even though it was a short one. theoretically. I mean, it still had the same amount of days, so...

anyways.

important things on my mind. first off, trent started middle school this week, and he seems to be doing quite well. I had scary visions of him crashing and burning, not because I didn't have faith in him, but because I always fear the worst. I'm so glad he's doing well, even if he had to ask his homeroom teacher to assign a new locker to him because the one he had, he couldn't reach into the top area for his books. second, this sunday is the last sunday that sean ever has to work a sunday. his new tuesday - saturday shift starts on the 20th, which means he works on sat the 17th but not sunday the 18th. that first sunday, we're going to go to the insectarium in the northeast. and the following sunday, god willing, we're taking the new rice a roni trolley from nicole's house to the zoo, with the nic-no-arks. so exciting.

and then there's the climate. it's becoming fall, my favorite season. but that's not what I'm referring to - I'm referring to the political climate. I'm sure I would have had this same problem if I were a bigger part of the blogosphere last november, but the tragedy here in the states with hurricane katrina is really shaking people out somewhat on party lines now. like 9/11 and the years following, first we were all worried about the people, then we were all worried about the aid, and now many of us are worried about the blame. who's fault is it? what does race or class have to do with it? who did what wrong? which news coverage do you believe? should dick cheney go fuck himself or not? has he already?

after our love-fest a few weeks ago, I hope that we can all tolerate our differences as they become more and more apparent. because I'm not going to stop talking about my opinion - it's important to me. I want to say right here and now that I respect everyone's opinions, even if I feel completely differently. I hope we can all get along.

jesus is coming. look busy.

it's 11pm and bella is nestled in sean's hairy arms, so I'm just down here at the computer at home happily reading away. before I retire for the night finally, I wanted to share with you a nice passtime I now have while on my way to work.

I was stuck in traffic behind a car that had a license plate holder that said:

• GOD IS STILL SPEAKING,

yes. that's it. that line with the comma at the end. apparently it's a thing with the UCC people. the fun part is making up the line that follows that now-infamous comma. I had like 30 things thought up that were totally brilliant, which of course I totally can't remember now.

I know some of you out there are religious, so please don't take this as a diss. and all you godless monsters out there, quit drinking blood for a second, step out of the pentagram, and just have some fun. here's a few I scrounged up, please add your own in comments.

GOD IS STILL SPEAKING,
so shut the fuck up.
but I think it's in portuguese.
and I am still in traffic, so nothing much has changed.
and yet you continue talking, so now you get a time-out.
yes, still, totally, I know, like, take a break already.
so please don't cut the microphone.
but only to the whites.
but can I have the rest of your burger?
you fucking heretic.
but only I can hear him.
and he wants to know if you saw his keys laying around.

I can't think of any of my good ones, though. dammit. once I post this I know I'll totally remember some. anyways, how bout you guys?

ps

MUCHO sand in crack. everyone's.

oh, and bella is still pooping sand.

seasons in the sun

guess who's back, back again. trice is back, tell a friend.

what a trip. first off, it was crazy to be with sean day in and day out for an entire 5 days, after having gone so long without that. by crazy, I mean good. I don't care that we didn't have alot of alone time (though we did go on a date, courtesy of nicole and mark) because it was just nice to be together.

I read what nicole wrote about her trip experiences, and I echo many of her positive sentiments. and I felt horrible about noah being afraid of bella. though nicole said not to, I couldn't help but feel like we were ruining her (and noah's) vacation by barging in with this over-exuberant being who screams first and asks questions later. I hope they still had a nice time.

what I really loved was the sense of community that I felt being around people who genuinely enjoy being around babies and children. it was a relief that I hadn't anticipated. I didn't have to apologize for bella's behavior (besides the noah thing), I didn't have the feeling that I was bringing an uninvited kid (or kids) into an adult setting, and there were plenty of people around who would watch that neither bella nor noah would crawl off the balcony or pull a lamp down on their heads, or who would play games with trent. I thought to myself, "THIS is what it's like to be around family."

I kept referring to us all as our village, from the saying "it takes a village to raise a child." everyone looked after everyone else. nicole, mark, and nicole's mom carol all watched over bella, and played with trent. sean, trent, and I watched over noah. the babies were happy to roam around unhindered, none of us being overly worried about them crawling away because there was always someone close by. trent had plenty of people to interact with, both at the beach and in the house. it was really a great experience.

we did alot of stuff together with the noah clan, but we also did things by ourselves, which is the perfect balance. one night, while leaving the boardwalk, we happened to pass by nicole's mom carol. we stopped and chatted about what we had seen, and carol invited us to go back up with her to the boardwalk to do some shopping. (unfortunately, we were too pooped.) it wasn't the banter that was remarkable as much as the fact that we were able to have it. I don't have a close relationship with my mother, who is not very fond of babies and generally seems to be a little disinterested in my day to day activities. (not that I'm pounding her door down, either, but still.) my mother can be thought of as a fairly cold woman if you don't know how she expresses her love. and I think we all know how I feel about sean's mom. so having the kind of seemingly innocuous conversation with carol was actually quite extraordinary, for sean and for me, too. it means so much to me that we are close enough to carol to vacation with her each year, for her to confide in us about her life, and for her to be so interested in our lives. it was touching in a way I don't think I'm adequately expressing...as was our entire vacation in ocean city.

it's kind of like trying on a pair of really expensive and comfortable shoes. you take your old crummy shoes off and try the new pair on, knowing you can't buy them and wear them every day, but you feel how comfortable and beautiful they are and just enjoy wearing them for the short time you have until you realize it's time to take them off and put them away. you can only try them on and appreciate that they exist. you put your old shoes back on and they are familiar and well worn and maybe a little uncomfortable at times, but just knowing that you can return to the store some day and put those new shoes back on, if only for a little while, makes it easier.

anyways. sunshine and lollipops and sugar and spice. fluffy kittens. cotton candy and puppies.

and now, I must return to doing what I can to catch up on all my blogmates.