Thursday, March 30, 2006

Doggy dilemma


I just want a dog, dammit! I never thought finding one would be so hard.

My only requirement is that it be small -- no more than 25 pounds adult size -- and Mikey's requirement is that it be a puppy. I'm open to a dog that's a little older, though, and already housebroken.

I checked local breed rescue sites and the local sanctuaries and shelters online. The dogs at the sanctuaries are all medium to large -- even the puppies will grow bigger than what we're looking for, and most of the places I looked at don't want to place dogs in homes with toddlers.

(***sigh***)

Mikey has three customers who breed dogs -- one sells Yorkies (too small), one sells pugs (not really appealing to me) and one sells King Charles spaniels -- so I looked up info about these breeds online and learned all about puppy mills and genetic health issues.

So now I'm scared to even look at ads in the classifieds. And no way will I buy a dog from a pet store.

So now what do I do? I just want a dog, dammit!

Monday, March 27, 2006

254 bucks


That's how much it cost to fix our 5-year-old fridge after the defrost heater went out. Now I have to throw out all the food in it. Gaaah!

In other everything's-falling-apart-around-here news, Mikey's been helping Chris install our new heat & air system. They had to run all new ductwork through the attic because the ductwork under the concrete slab foundation is corroded and full of sand and water.

Mikey only fell through the ceiling once:

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I suppose I should be happy that it happened in the garage and not in the living room.

Don't tell him I told you; he would not be amused.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Well, that sucked


Took Britt to the Shrine Circus tonight.

She was less than enthralled. She wiggled and flopped and squirmed the whole time because she wanted to run around and play. She kept trying to grab the kid next to me, and she laid her head on the head of the kid in front of us, who jumped like he got a hot poker shoved up his ass and then shot us a fierce look. Hell, she was just trying to give him some love! Also, she threw her binky God-knows-where -- we never found it.

The circus itself was pretty cheesy. Everything looked faded and worn. The trapeze guy missed the triple somersault and fell into the net. The Wheel of Destiny guy almost fell off at least twice. Some of the cats in the cat act did not cooperate at all. There was a hula hoop girl and way too many juggling acts. Maybe they saved the good stuff for after intermission, but we wouldn't know because that's when we left.

Am I just too old for the circus to be a magical experience anymore, or should we have held out for the Ringling Brothers/Barnum & Bailey version?

Friday, March 17, 2006

Oh, Kitty


It's been a year since we lost our beloved Kitty.

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After he died, I found that if I wadded up the top sheet from our bed and wrapped my arms around it, it almost felt like I was holding him. It took me a month or two to quit doing that. Or three, maybe -- I can't remember.

I walked over to his grave when we went to Grandma Sarah's for Thanksgiving and started bawling like a baby, which embarrassed the shit out of me so I had to meander around outside for a little bit before I could go back in the house.

We've been asked several times if we plan to get another cat, but Mikey and I both feel the same way about it -- it wasn't cats that we loved, it was this cat that we loved, and he's irreplaceable. So no more cats for us.

I think we're fixin' to get a dog, though.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Scared spitless


Britt woke up crying hysterically at 2:00 this morning; we brought her to our room and it took over an hour to get her calmed down and back to sleep. Must've been a bad dream or something -- I dunno.

Then Mikey woke me up at 7:00 asking where Britt was.

What do you mean, where is she?

I can't find her anywhere!


We keep the safety gate across her bedroom doorway at night so she can't get up and roam; she can only stand at the gate and holler at us. But there was no gate across our bedroom door so she could've been anywhere in the house. So we ran frantically back and forth, looking in every room, under tables, inside the cabinet she likes to climb into. She was nowhere to be found.

It never occurred to me that somebody might've broken in and taken her. No, during those terror-stricken minutes the thoughts flashing through my mind were that she had gotten stuck somewhere and suffocated, or she did something with an electrical cord and was electrocuted, or she fell head-first into the toilet and drowned, or she pulled something over on herself and was crushed. And whatever it was would be all my fault because I didn't put the damned gate up.

Just as I drew breath to start screaming her name, I saw her. She was curled up on the floor by the back door, sound asleep.

Gaaaah!

Not my favorite way to start the day. Definitely. Not.

*****
Anyway, here's our girl later this morning, all safe and sound and reading a book:

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Did you notice her cute jammies? It's hard to tell from the picture, but they're covered with words like moon, dreams, starligl, twinkle, wishes...

Whoa, back up -- "starligl"?

Ha! You thought you caught me in a typo, didn't you? Nope, this one ain't my fault:

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Blooper jammies.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

You know what's annoying?


When you unwrap four rolls of Smarties and try to sort them by color because you can only eat one color at a time and the damned colors are so pale that you can't tell the pink from the orange and the yellow from the white.

Gah! I hate that.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Misc. news


If you've been in our main bathroom lately, you might've noticed the pair of vice grips serving as the hot water knob in the bathtub. We've been meaning to fix that, along with the flourescent light fixture that doesn't feel like working sometimes (but only at night -- go figure), and then there's that lovely new cherry vanity and mirror that's been sitting in our garage for two or three or four years that's still waiting to be installed...

Anyway, the cold water knob in the bathtub finally gave way tonight. This is a problem, because we can't use the shower in the master bath because the shower pan leaks (we've been meaning to fix that, too, but we blew our home improvement fund on Bob's divorce). The vice grips were rusted onto the hot water knob, so Mikey dug up a pair of RoboGrips so I could give Britt a bath. The situation is getting dire.

BTW, Sherri, tell Chris to start thinking about getting busy on our new heat & air system, because our AC's deader'n a doornail and it's been frickin' hot over here.

I just checked to see if there are any registered sex offenders nearby. Our immediate neighborhood is clean, but there's a child pornographer in the little apartment complex across MacArthur that we tried to get Bob to move into when we thought Britt would be living with him. Also got a list of offenders in order of distance from my house; of the closest five, two are women -- one convicted of second-degree rape. Dang!

Speaking of Bob, he called the other night to tell me that he was taken to the emergency room last weekend because he couldn't breathe. The ER doctor diagnosed him with asthma and gave him some inhalers, but we both think that's crap because he's never any kind of breathing trouble. He's still having problems and plans to see another doctor to get a second opinion. We're afraid it might be welder's lung (see also here).

We've been trying to decide on an activity to put Brittany into -- Mat Tots, Kindermusik, or Gymboree -- so we'll have an excuse to get out of the house at least once a week. We gave up on baby playtime at the library because Britt wasn't doing much but hanging onto my legs and it wasn't very educational anyway, plus we don't like to get up that early. I think we're leaning toward Gymboree.

Anyway, here's a funny for ya, from Avert Your Eyes.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

A year of Little Sis


I missed my blogiversary -- it was February 23.

Brittany turns 18 months old this week, and I wish I would've started this blog when she was first born. She mostly just slept and ate and pooped during those first few months, though, so there wasn't really that much to report.

She was three days old here and just over four and a half pounds of pure joy, and I was a brand-new grandma:

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She's still my heart's delight:

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Saturday, March 04, 2006

Over the hump


Over the past few months, I blew up. I got fat. It happened so fast that my body feels alien to me, and I hardly recognize myself in the mirror.

None of my clothes fit anymore. Everything I own is either size 6 or size 8, and impossible to wear. I broke down and bought a pair of size 10 jeans just before Christmas and they were a little tight, but it hurt bad enough to hit double digits and I was damned if I was going to jump up to a size 12.

Now I have to lay across the bed to get my size 10s zipped up.

(Yeah, I hear you, Sherri, playing your violin for me.)

Anyway, I've been noticing something this past week while rocking Britt to sleep -- a big lump of fat at the back of my neck that made it hard to lean my head back against the chair.

OMG, I thought, am I getting a dowager's hump? What the hell's going on? I'm only 43, for Pete's sake! Why is my body betraying me like this?

Well, tonight it finally occurred to me to poke around on the lump, to see what the damage was. So I did.

Turns out the hump wasn't a lump of fat after all. It was just the scrunchie in my hair.

And it only took me three or four days to figure it out.

Scatterbrained much? Who, me?