I can't believe I haven't posted about this yet

Well, I'm glad I'm not up for the "Mother of the Year" award. This post would certainly knock me out of the running. I completely forgot, I don't know how it happened but it did.

My daughter lost her first tooth on Saturday, December 23, 2006 at approximately 4:00 p.m. It was her right top front, the first tooth she got in and knocked the corner off of in less than 24 hours. So now the tooth hole, added to the family gap my husband passed on to her, makes it look like you could drive a Mack truck right into her mouth without so much a scraping a tooth on either side. It's pretty darn cute.

This tooth was hanging by a thread for no less than a week - I offered many many times to get it out for her to no avail. She was all afraid it was going to hurt and was mortified about the whole blood situation. So, when this all went down on Saturday afternoon I was prepared for alligator tears and the whole drama queen crying and howling deal. Was I ever surprised. There were some tears and minor howling at first. But then I got out the magic ice cube in the wash rag. She put the ice on it for all of about 4 seconds, grabbed her papertowel and pulled it out.

Just like that.

Then she went around showing everybody her hole and her tooth she just pulled. She was so proud of herself. I was proud too. I didn't think she had it in her. She's like her dad when it comes to that stuff - she can look at the guts of any dead animal without so much as flinching but acts as if the world will end immediately if she sees the slightest hang nail on her hand.

So, that night we got the tooth all spiffed up for the Tooth Fairy. I still have my Tooth Fairy Pillow from when I was a kid so we stuck it into the little pocket and placed it next to her pillow. When she woke up she was all excited because the Tooth Fairy left her a $5 bill and a $0.50 piece. She also left a note that she got extra since this was her first tooth and was special. Good thinking Tooth Fairy - now she won't expect $5.50 every time she looses a tooth. That Tooth Fairy is on her game with this kid, and it's a good thing too because she's got 3 more loose ones she's working on now.

So, $5.50 for one tooth. Man, when I was a kid I got screwed by this Tooth Fairy person. I only got $0.25 or $0.50 a tooth. Hmmm. I think that bicuspid feels a little loose....

We're coping well

The hubby and the dog left for Arkansas Tuesday night so it's been me, Baby Girl and the cats since about 7:30 p.m. I wish I could say it's been peaceful and relaxing but it really hasn't.

He was supposed to be gone until sometime on Sunday, but now he'll be home Friday night. So, my painting project I planned to get completely finished will essentially be just starting. I'm going to try to get a little bit done tonight but I don't know, we'll see how it goes.

She did end up in bed with me last night at 12:30 because she thought there were monsters in the house. It would have been fine having her in there if she had just laid down and gone to sleep instead of thrashing all around and being totally disruptive to what should have been me sleeping.

So, I'm exhausted. I don't sleep well when he's not home as it is - then to throw in a kid flopping around like a fish. AHHHH.

Good times had by all

I am so glad the chaos surrounding Christmas in finally over! What a nightmare. Between last minute shopping, four (yes FOUR) separate family Christmas functions, and two birthdays in eight days I have had enough.

My daughter got damn near everything on her 23 item Birthday/Christmas list. If that isn't spoiled rotten I don't know what is. The thing she was most excited about was her brand new pink guitar from Santa. She walks around the house strumming it and making up little songs. It is cute but the thing sounds like a dying cow - it's in major need of a tune job.

The most hilarious moment came Tuesday night as she was playing with one of her new Barbie dolls. She got Barbie and her dog Tanner from one of the grandparents. Tanner, if you don't know, eats treats and then leaves you a treat to clean up. So, she's playing with it and it isn't working the way she wanted evidently. She says to me, "Mommy! Help me put these turds in his butt so he can poop!"

Oh. My. God.

I laughed so hard I literally fell out of the recliner onto the floor rolling around laughing.

She got all kinds of DVD's and CD's we're now starting to catch up on. She got Elf, Over the Hedge, Nanny McPhee and the Hannah Montana CD. All enjoyed by even adults.

Only one major "disfunction" happened at my family Christmas and it's just too detailed to even get into. Bottom line, it pertains to one of my aunts who complains about people doing the same damn thing she's done in the past when playing Dirty Santa to get the item you actually want out of all the crap. It's bullshit and everybody let her know it - which is why she stormed off in a huff. Oh well, we had more fun without her anyway. That's about the time we cracked open the booze!

Still trying to get the house cleaned up and all the new clothes washed. That, in and of itself, is a chore and a half. Maybe I'll have it done by the time New Year's rolls around.

My loves, thy names be Rajah and Abu

OK, so they're cats. My cats.

Rajah, aka Noodle, and Abu, aka Bean, have been with me through a lot. We're on our second husband, went through a couple boyfriends, we've moved about 5 times and now we have a kid and a dog. They don't like the dog so much.

Raj sleeps with me every night and comes up and kisses my face just after we climb into bed. Bu sleeps in the other room - he's not much of a loverboy like Raji is.

Bu likes to sit on your lap when you're on the toilet. It takes him some time to get there, he weighs almost 20 pounds, but once he's there it's hard to get him off.

They both love to get their ears scratched and Abu is just now realizing how good it feels to get your belly rubbed.

I've had Rajah since January 1993 and he was not quite a year old at the time. He actually had a twin brother that I had too, Cogsworth. Cogssy died a few years later from feline leukemia. That was rough. So, soon there after, along came little bitty Bu-e. He was a little yellow fuzz ball when he came home. Too cute.

I can't help but think that the likelihood of both/either of them dying gets higher and higher everyday. I love 'em to death. They were my first kids. They've been with me no matter how good or how bad things got and give me unconditional love.

My daughter, when she tells people she isn't an only child, refers to the cats as her two little brothers and the dog as her little sister. She loves 'em to death too. Tells both of them good night every night and kisses them if she can catch them.

It's only my husband that doesn't like them much anymore. And it's only been since he got his dog. How do I feel about the dog? Meeh.

I'm a cat person - not a dog person.

Weekend stress

Well, I somehow managed not to snap over the weekend.

The whole weekend basically turned into a disaster.

Friday night I had to do all the grocery shopping for the birthday party Saturday at noon. I couldn't pay my husband to keep our daughter home with him (he may run to buddies house, blah blah blah) so I could buy her a birthday gift. Then Saturday he had to conveniently work until 10:30am and totally went off on me when I asked him if he could watch her for a while so I could run and get the cake and buy her gift. AGH! I could have killed him.

But it gets better, 15 minutes before the party he realized that I probably invited his dad (I did) to the party and that he was probably going to come (he did) and why would I do something like that knowing damn well that they aren't speaking. Fortunately we were done screaming at each other by the time the first guests arrived. Everything went well, the food was good, gifts were a plenty and I got all the praise.

Saturday night we were at a surprise party for a friend of ours that graduated from college. I again stuffed my face full of food and paid the price dearly.

At 12:15am Sunday morning I made the first of many trips into the bathroom praying to the porcelain gods. I threw up so much I honestly don't know how I didn't lose 15 pounds. For 4 hours I was back and forth. At 4:15 I finally got to sleep and slept, off and on through interruptions from my daughter, until almost Noon.

Today I'm still not all the way chipper. The thought of many different foods still makes me want to vomit. Yuck! I hate puking. I guess I have lost a couple pounds and will likely continue to until I can get all the way back to normal - but there has to be a better way than this.

Seriously

Well - one year ago tomorrow I spent the majority of my day in the emergency room with my boss. I went WAY above and beyond the call of duty that day and should have been given a $1,000 a day raise just for what I had to deal with for the next several months.

December 16, 2005 was the day he fell on some ice under snow on the sidewalk down the street from our office. While in the ER with him I had the pleasure of seeing him in his underwear. One word describes that vision - THERAPY.

Today I'm having a hard time taking him seriously about anything. Here's a grown man, 61 year old attorney, wearing a bright yellow SpongeBob tie.

All I keep thinking is - "Ohhhh. Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?...."

Attack of the Booger Guy

Nothing like a child with a case of bronchitis to liven up the holidays!

Friday night it was miserable here. The weather was yuck, it was colder than cold and I just wanted to get home, get my sweats on and climb under a blanket. Fortunately I was able to do just that, my husband had a visitation to go to out of town for his co-workers mother. He and another guy from work went together and my husband decided he'd break the guy in to the cheesy "bar" the group of them frequent.

Ok, so this "bar" is actually like sitting in some strange living room drinking the guys own personal stash of bootleg beer. Not like he sells moonshine or anything, you can get Miller Lite, Bud, etc. It's just the whole atmosphere that makes it strange.

So, baby girl kept telling me her throat hurt and that they took her temp at school once Friday. I checked her temp and it was normal and looked at her throat and everything seemed to be where it belonged. I convinced her to take some cold medicine and we were good to go.

Friday night I think she slept all of 2 hours. Not two continuous hours. Ohhhh noooo. Because that would make it too easy on me. Yes me. My husband would sleep through a tornado ripping our house to miniscule shreds. Guaranteed. He's not very compassionate when she's sick anyhow.

So Saturday morning finally comes and I called the doctors office to get her in. More precautionary than anything I suppose. I checked her temp again, and again it showed normal. By this time she had a nasty wheezing cough going that wasn't sounding very good. I wanted to make sure we got this thing under control before it got really nasty on us. And besides, we have her birthday party scheduled for this weekend.

Doc got a temp reading of 99.9 and immediately pulled out his pad to write a script. Too bad he didn't give us anything to help with the nasty cough. He did suggest we go and pick up some Mucinex and try that to help get the yuck out.

Ahhh, the Booger Guy. We were looking in a magazine a couple weeks ago and Baby Girl sees an ad for Mucinex. She looks at it and says to me, "Is that a Booger?" I thought about it for a minute and then I was like, "Well, yeah, I guess it kind of is." Then she told me she didn't ever want any Booger Guys living in her guts.

Funny, because now that she pretty much does have the Booger Guy living in her guts

S H E

W O N' T

T A K E

T H E

F R I C K I N G

M E D I C I N E

! ! ! !

State of Emergency

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I'd be living in an area that has been declared to be in a State of Emergency by our (cough cough) wonderful Governor.

I live in corn/bean field haven small town Illinois. Population 7,200. The biggest thing we've got going for us is Super Wal-Mart and 4 fast food restaurants in a 2-3 block area.

Yet, here I sit in the area that many are saying was the worst hit. Don't get me wrong, it's no holiday living here right now. As I type my garbage has been sitting on the curb outside my house since Friday - unable to be collected at first because the garbage truck got stuck, then because they plan old forgot. Yep, small town living.

In my opinion, there are areas that are far more worse for wear than our county. Some places in mid to southern Illinois have been without power since Friday. No power = no heat. I'm glad we haven't had to deal with that. Sure makes my gripes about the snow piled up at intersections seem petty.

Medical updates

Well, my aunt got her test results late Friday from her latest MRI and blood draw. Her tumor hasn't grown, but it hasn't gotten any smaller either. Her blood count was good and was actually an improvement her Doc wasn't expecting. All this means she gets to take about a 6 week break from her chemo "drip" treatments but has to continue to take the chemo pill everyday.

It's good news of sorts. Pancreatic Cancer doesn't usually keep you around very long and she's been at this for just at a year now. She has good days and bad days, but at the end of the day she's still with us. She and my uncle are flying back to IL with my mom and dad later this month and will be here for Christmas. I'm looking forward to it and I hope (against all hope) that my messed up family can keep it together for the two weeks they're home. We're just now starting to get everybody to get along again in light of the two upcoming weddings - we certainly don't need any new kinks tossed in.

Our friend with kidney problems got his transplant last Thursday. Yipee!!! His surgery was postponed a couple of times the day it was scheduled because his surgeon got called to the East Coast to perform an emergency harvest of a donor organ on someone that died and to get it into the other patient. I guess he was prepped for his operation around 4pm and didn't get in until after 7pm. All that time he was in the OR alone because they had him prepped and sterile. I can't imagine that. He had a group of people that went up with him (he's in Madison, WI) including his wife and daughter and none of them could be with him until after his operation. I would have been an emotional mess.

Things went well and he should be home sometime the end of this week. I'm so happy for him. I've never in my life known such a down to earth, caring and generous man. The response from the community for this guy has been unreal. Ends up the guy that donated his kidney used to be from our town and now lives in New York. When all this first came out that he needed a kidney this guy called up and said he'd give him whatever he needed, that he'd lived a good life and if he could help somebody out he would.

It makes me glad to know that with all the violence, disrespect and overall coldness of people in the world these days that there are still people out there that are willing to go the extra mile for someone in need - no matter what that need may be.

Snow Days

Well, the weather man was right for a change. We got hammered with over 18" of snow Thursday night / Friday morning. The wind was blowing really bad and on top of all that the storm started with freezing rain Thursday night before turning in to snow.

Needless to say, this town came to a screeching halt Friday morning. I don't think much of anything besides a few gas stations, Wal-Mart and the grocery store were open.

The State Police shut down over 70 miles of Interstate 80 in a three county radius, ours included.

We did have a pretty good laugh at our house Friday morning. The city plow started to turn into our street and got stuck - not once, not twice, but about 6 times. He would get stuck, then another city worker with a backhoe would get him out and he'd stick it again. This went on for nearly an hour. Man, you just can't buy that kind of humor.

Most of the town is cleared now, but the piles in the middle of many streets make it next to impossible to see traffic coming from either direction when trying to cross the street. It isn't so bad on some of the side streets, but there are two main highways that run through the heart of our town and those intersections are pretty scary.

Baby Girl had her hopes up to go sledding yesterday but was disappointed when they found out the area we could go was unaccessible. So, she and my husband played outside in the yard. It was funny to watch because the snow in our yard comes up to her armpits. The dog is kind of weirded out too when she goes out to potty - she backs up between two drifts and sets her chin on the one while she kind of squats on the other. All pretty good humor.

That's about it - we're back to work today after the snow day Friday. It was nice to have a long weekend but I sure didn't get anything accomplished - it was too fricking cold.