Dear Auntie

Remember when I thought it would be hilarious to hear Britt start calling her Aunt Bridgie by name? Due to her pronunciation issues, I was so sure it would come out "Aunt Bitchie".

Well, it didn't. Aunt Bridgie was dubbed "BeeGee" shortly after I wrote that post. And I was so disappointed.

So Aunt Bridgie came over for lunch yesterday and, when she was headed out the door to go back to work, Britt ran after her for a hug and a kiss, calling, "Bitchie! Bitchie!"

Bridge shot me a look. I tried but failed to conceal my glee.

Dudes, I am so pissed!

Have you ever seen "Boohbah"? It's like Teletubbies on acid. Trust me on this.

Anyway, Britt loves Boohbah, but it only comes on at 5:00 in the morning and we are sawing some serious logs at that hour, so the only time she's ever seen it is on the one Boohbah DVD we own. It features the "Squeaky Socks" episode, the "Painting the Fence" episode, and I can't tell you what the third episode is because by that point I'm drooling and my eyes have rolled back into my head. We've watched that DVD over and over and over again so many times that if I have to live through "Squeaky Socks" one more time I will gut myself. I mean it.

So this morning I popped awake from some stupid dream I was having where I was at somebody's wedding and I bent over and my glasses fell off and went to pieces all over the floor and I was freaking out because I had to find someplace to get them fixed before I had to drive to work on Monday morning. I don't know why it didn't occur to me in my dream that I could just put my contacts on to drive to work, if I had a job to drive to on Monday morning, which I don't. Or why I didn't have contacts on in the first place, since I don't wear my glasses in public. But that's all beside the point.

The point is, I popped awake this morning and looked at the clock, and it was 5:00! Straight up! Awesome! I could record a fresh episode of Boohbah for Britt! So I ran to the living room, turned on the TV, popped a tape into the VCR, changed the channel to Sprout TV, and...

Teletubbies? WTF?

I pulled up the TV guide and there was no Boohbah. Just a solid hour of Teletubbies. So I tried PBS. No Boohbah there, either. Apparently there is no Boohbah at 5:00 on Saturday mornings. So I said a lot of bad words (a lot) and went back to bed. And tried to go back to sleep.

But now I'm screwed because I'm wide awake and I didn't get nearly enough sleep and if I sit still too long this afternoon I will nod off and Britt will be unbridled in her toy-strewing and getting-into-things-ness and I will have a hell of a mess to straighten up when I wake up.

Seriously though, with my luck, if Boohbah had been on this morning it would've been the "Squeaky Socks" episode. I just know it. And I wouldn't be here to tell you about it because I would have gutted myself already.

Bored

I haven't touched the computer in three days! And my internet service wasn't even out! Shocking, I know, but I'm burned out on it right now. Can you believe that?

I'm also burned out on our little hand-held Texas Hold'em poker game, which has been my keep-me-busy activity during smoke breaks in the garage lately (though I've won several tournaments on it, at $180,000 a pop. Woo-hoo! Pay me!)

After thoroughly scouring the house for any books or magazines I haven't already read or could stand to read again (I'm not big on reruns), the only thing I turned up was Stephen King's Rose Madder. After finishing that, I made an impulsive trip to my local library and picked up Cell and Black House. I made the mistake of not leaving Cell out in the garage and so I finished it in less than eight hours, and Black House only took two days. So now I'm bookless again and, since the library closes early on Fridays and Saturdays and doesn't open at all on Sundays, I can't get any more books until Monday night, and I'm feeling kind of antsy about that.

Speaking of feeling antsy, I saw a huge spider out in the garage last night. It must have been at least two inches across, like a baby tarantula or something. Anyway, I only got it halfway stepped on before it scuttled off under Mikey's weight bench and into the assorted clutter on the other side. I know it must be hurt, and it's probably pissed, too. I know it's watching me when I go out there now, plotting vengeance while marshaling the spidey forces. Mikey's gonna come out there looking for me one day soon and all he'll find will be a big ol' white cocoon-looking thing.

So, if you don't hear from me no more, you'll know what happened.

Sunday in the Country

We took Britt to Chester's Party Barn out at Piedmont yesterday. It was a gorgeous day -- not too hot and not too cold. She had a blast, and we had a lot of fun just watching her have fun.

She fed the goats,







and got to see peacocks, chickens, rabbits, geese, ducks, pigs, sheep, horses and cows. And then she rode a pony:



Rocking in the saddle, she'd holler, "Geeyup! Geeyup, horsie!"



Mikey stayed close by her side, keeping her safe.



When the ride was over she pitched a fit until we bought her another ride. And another, and another... She rode four or five times, and finally had to be carried away flailing and wailing.

And then she picked out some pumpkins for us to take home:



We skipped the hayride and the three-acre maze and the big hay slide, but we'll definitely be back next year.

The Night Giggler

I've caught Britt laughing in her sleep three times this week.

I'd love to know what's she's dreaming about.

Trying to get organ-ized

Does anybody remember the little electric organ Mom dumped on us when we moved into this house? I know Bridget does.

Anyway, it occurred to me that Britt might enjoy playing it, or playing with it, whatever. Actually, it occurred to me that banging away on it might distract her from, you know, coloring. And the noise? What-everrr! As long as it gives me a break from coloring.

So this afternoon, I unearthed it from its parking space in the garage, cleared a trail, and dragged it into the house, where Britt promptly crowed, "Panno!" She'd never seen the thing before and I hadn't opened the lid yet so she could see the keyboard, so I was mighty impressed that she knew it was a piano. Well, an organ, but close enough.

I washed it down and tumped it over, only to discover that the entire base of it was hollow. And filled with little white balls of spider eggs.

(***shudder***)

Which should've been my first clue that I ought to drag it right back out to the garage.

So I cleaned it out and dragged it through the dining room toy room, after clearing yet another path, and parked it in front of the window. I plugged it in, turned it on, and...

Nothing. Not a whimper, not a wheeze. Just nothing.

I dragged it around and tried it in six different electrical outlets just to make sure, and then I dragged it back out to the garage, where it has frozen in the winter and baked in the summer for the past six years. And has also, apparently, served as an incubator for generations of little baby spiders.

(***shudder***)

Anyway, Cathy's supposed to be giving us her old piano. Also a cat, which she's bringing over tomorrow, but the piano has to wait for coordination between truck-borrowing and storage unit visiting. I'm thinking about taking down the aquarium to make room for it. Does anybody want any fish?

Arrrrgh, plumbing issues again

The garbage disposal quit working this week. It spins but doesn't grind. Also, the stuff in it that doesn't get ground is making it drain verrrrry slowly, leaving a thin film of nasty all over the sink, especially after the dishwasher drainage backs up into it. I've been using this as an excuse not to cook or wash dishes, but the situation is getting on my nerves already.

Also, the water pressure problem in the shower was not fixed by fixing the leaky pipe after all. I only got one good shower and then it was back to its old tricks.

When it rains it pours, doesn't it? Except out of my shower head, of course.

Two and counting

Two weeks after her second birthday, when me and Sis were sitting out on the front porch, she pulled some flowers off the monkey grass (which she called "grapes") and put them in my hand one at a time. And she went, "Two, three, fo, nine, ten!" And my jaw dropped.

Since then, she's been counting quite a bit. She skips numbers, but she never gets them out of order. I've been trying to get it on video, but she doesn't perform on command so I've had no luck with that so far.

Mostly, we color. A lot. Every day. Yesterday, Britt graciously took time out from her busy coloring schedule to pose for a few pictures. Did I mention that we color? A lot? Every day?





(She'd been playing with the squirt bottle I use to fix her hair; that's why her shirt was all wet.)

We finally got some Pull-Ups for her but she won't have anything to do with them, and we're kind of stalled on the potty-training front. I think I need to start keeping a big bag of M&Ms on hand for bribes.

The Donut Bandit

Britt and her Poppa went grocery shopping for me this evening and, as usual, they brought home 29 different kinds of junk food.

Shortly afterward, there was a break-in on the premises. I caught the perp red-handed, ripping open a box of donuts:



The perp showed no fear of authority,



nor any trace of remorse:



Once order was restored, the perp was sentenced to a diaper change and bedtime without the possibility of parole.

Now we're cookin'

Britt loves her new play kitchen; she enjoys cooking a whole lot more than I do. Also, the ponytail? Looks adorable on her:



Here she demonstrates what Grammy looks like every day at 6:00pm while pondering the eternal question: "Oh, jeez, what am I gonna cook tonight?"
She even nailed the whimpering part:

Stuffed

You know those big long cushions on the back of our couch, er, sofa (Mikey says for that price you call it a sofa), and how squashed and lumpy they've gotten?

Well, they aren't any more. Mikey bought two 10-pound boxes of pillow-stuffing stuff and he re-stuffed them last night. Except -- you know how he tends to overdo things?

Yeah, he did. He stuffed them good.

Now I'm afraid to flop down on the couch, er, sofa like I normally do, because I might crack my skull on a cushion.

Fixed

Our plumbing problems have been resolved. Yay!

I thought I felt a chill wind from Sherri's direction (or she might've just been gone to Arkansas), so I re-read my last post and saw that I didn't clearly say what I meant to say. I didn't mean that Chris wasn't willing or able to fix my kitchen faucet, it's just that he didn't happen to have a new one on him at the time and I wasn't able to go get one unless I wanted to pull a Britney Spears and haul the baby off to Home Depot without a carseat. He did plan to come back the next day after Mikey had a chance to bring one home, but it became a moot point after the bathroom leak was discovered, and that's when we called a plumber.

Happily, the bathroom leak repair also seems to have fixed the water pressure problem in the shower. I just wish I'd had the video camera ready when the jackhammering started. Britt was standing in the entry hall peeking around the corner to see what was going on, and I warned her that it was fixin' to get pretty loud in there, louder than the vacuum cleaner (which she hates), but she didn't believe me.

On second thought, it probably wouldn't have done much good to try to film her. All I would've gotten is a blur. It was the fastest I'd ever seen that child move, and that's saying something.