Lessons from the Pool

Parker has survived her first two one-on-one swim lessons. Though she has no fear of the water, she spent the entire first lesson scream crying. It was horrific. Today's lesson went much better. I can't tell if she was just more comfortable or if it's because we bribed her shamelessly. Whatever. It worked. If you would have asked me the first day if I thought Parker would make it through the week, I would have said no, but now it appears we can survive three more days. Nevermind we're going to have only a high of 69 tomorrow, the first day of July. BAH! The even better thing about the pool was that it completely wore my kid out, so much so that she slept for almost 3 hours this afternoon which she has not done in at least a year.

Then it turns out I lost R's wedding ring. Nice, huh? He gave it to me at the pool and I slipped it onto my thumb for safekeeping. Except it wasn't so safe after all because hours later when he asked me for his ring, I'd completely about and could not remember when I last saw it. A brief, panicked search ensued, but then we had to leave. A couple hours later, I went back to the pool in sheer desperation, despite a sneer of disbelief (that I'd find it there) from R when I told him I was going back to look. Apparently the gods are pleased with me because the high school life guard girl that was giving swim lessons when we were there 9 hours earlier was still there AND she had the ring. I nearly cried with gratitude because I never would have lived that down. Ever.

Maybe all this means I should get my ass up and go buy a lottery ticket. You think?

TMI Thursday

I'm taking a note from Alice and gracing you with TMI Thursday. If the title hasn't been enough to warn you, you're on your own. Ready?

I am a farty person. (said in my best Craig Ferguson voice) I believe I am more farty than the "average" person. It's how I've always been, no matter what I eat, how many times a day I poo, it's just me. Perhaps it was fated because Shelly rhymes with Smelly, who knows. It's just a fact. (Do you think Donna is totally regretting being my roommie at BlogHer about now??) Obviously, I can control myself and I don't just go around tooting offensively. Well, at least most of the time. When R and I first started dating, I didn't fart in front of him at all for at least the first year. Knowing me now, he's pretty astounded at my restraint then, but you do what you have to do when you're in love.

When we'd been dating about 5 months, R decided he was long overdue for a vacation and he offered to take me with him. We ended up in Puerto Vallarta for a week that also included my 30th birthday. I love Mexican food. I could eat it every day and be perfectly content. While on vacation in Mexico, it isn't surprising that I did, in fact, eat Mexican every day, multiple times a day. I was in heaven. I didn't know it at the time, but us vacationing together was a test of our relationship for him. You know, it's a great way to figure out quickly if you're compatible with someone when you're away on vacation and spending 24/7 together.

Fast forward to about Day 4. Eating refried beans at least twice daily, plus all the salsa/guacamole I could eat poolside each day, began to take its toll on me. Since we were in the early days of our romance, the only way I could only go #2 (Big Job, as we call it) was to go back up to our room while he stayed at the pool. It was unthinkable for me to take care of business with him in the same room as me. Turns out it wasn't Big Jobs I should have feared. On the night of Day 4, R was in the shower while I lay in bed watching tv. I had a huge gas attack. I could not have stopped it if someone had cemented my cheeks shut, it HAD to come out. But not only did it come out, it reeked. With no exaggeration I can say it was like a dead animal crawled out of my ass and plopped itself onto the pillows. I had never before, or since, smelled that utterly putrid. Mortified, I began flapping the covers and fanning the air so frantically I practically achieved liftoff when I heard R open the bathroom door and start to come into the room. I started yelling "DON'T COME IN HERE!!! STAY THERE! DON'T COME IN HEEEERE!!!" but it was too late. R rounded the corner and the stench slapped him in the face.

I'm a nervous laugher, especially when it comes to something like this. So not only did R enter the room where something had obviously died, but he was greeted by an hysterical hyena. I can only imagine what he was thinking at that point. My only saving grace was that I didn't also wet the bed from laughing so hard. Even today when we reference the incident (yeah, I'm never going to live it down), my only response is that what happens in a foreign country, stays in a foreign country. In the end, he married me anyway so I say no matter what I do now, he was seriously forewarned.

Blech

For the second night in a row, Baxter has woken me up in the middle of the night to be let outside. It's unusual for him, but I've learned the hard way that when he sticks his panting face up on my pillow, he means business. Usually it's because he's had too much water and has to pee. The night before it was at 2:15 and when I made him come back in (I didn't have my glasses on and thought he was just putzing around) he threw up in the kitchen. Then he threw up again when I shoved him back outside. Last night it was at 3:30 and he just peed, which annoyed me, but at least it wasn't puke. He woke me up again two hours later, but it was barf this time. Once in our bedroom and once downstairs. Lovely way to start the day. There is truly nothing grosser than dog vomit. I'd take baby poop over dog vomit any day of the week. It's particularly hard to overcome the smell, especially when you should be still cuddled in bed. R ended up just getting up, poor guy, because it was so nasty. Blech. Anyway, now I'm beginning to worry about him. Baxter, I mean, not R. I'm not feeding B today and he seems sort of okay but maybe little miserable. I'm wondering if he has a blockage or something because it seems weird the throw up doesn't happen until hours after he's eaten. Anyway, hope you weren't eating breakfast as you were reading.

In other good news, my mom arrives tomorrow for a long weekend visit. WOOOOOOO!!! Parker and I are both beside ourselves with anticipation. We'll be killing time at our neighborhood pool for playgroup this morning where I will be one of the fattest there. Seriously, these Stepford women are disgustingly thin and fit. Maybe they're really aliens. You think?

Wipeout

Are we the only ones obsessed with that show Wipeout? I laugh my ass off ever single time someone face plants into those big red balls. I don't want to like the show, but I am powerless in the face of such jackassery.

What I can't figure out, though, is why someone would choose to be a contestant. $50,000 isn't all that much for public humiliation.

Ballerina Girl

Parker took her first ballet class this week. She's been taking tumbling since last fall, but the thrill was gone and I could tell she was bored of the same old stuff every week. She had to be 2.5 before she could start ballet, and since the summer session is much more relaxed than during the school year, I asked her if she'd be interested in trying ballet for awhile. She was so excited to try ballet, she could hardly contain herself. Her grandparents bought her first pair of ballet shoes while we were in Denver. They are so tiny and perfect I am going to keep them forever. I'd bought her a leotard on clearance at Target a few months earlier, just because, and it came in handy. Here she is getting ready to go to class.

Even though it's in a ballet studio (at the same gym where she takes tumbling), the class is called Magical Movers or something like that because ballet is clearly beyond their little selves. I was worried she'd walk into a class of kids that had taken the class for the last many months, but thankfully all the other girls seem to be very young and don't know what they're doing either.

It was dreadfully cute to watch. These tiny little butts in their tiny little leotards with tiny little skirts and new ballet shoes. I sat on the bench on the other side of the glass wall and just beamed because it was just so.damn.CUTE! At first the girls were taken and sat down while attendance was called. They were supposed to raise their hand when they heard their name called, except no one knew what that meant. They stretched, marched in a circle holding hands, and learned how to point their toes. I think the most "ballet" thing they did was plies, but even though they were called plies, I'm sure it went over most of the girls' heads. They also got to beat a drum, walk on their tiptoes and pretend to be fairies. Not a bad way to spend a morning in all. Parker pronounced it to be "much fun!" and neither of us can wait to go back this week.

There were two girls in class that would have been Parker had she not gone to MDO this year. One girl cried the entire time and did not do one thing. Her grandmother tried in vain to get her to do something, even joining in the class herself, but the girl was beside herself. I felt awful for the girl, but also for the teachers who had to shout over her cries for half an hour. The other girl didn't cry but she wouldn't do much other than sit on her mom's lap in the studio. It was nice for me to see other kids act that way because that is exactly how Parker was before starting MDO. She grew so much this year in "school" and I am so proud of the big girl she is growing up to be. In fact, in just about 3 months my girl will be 3. Say it isn't so!

Newsworthy

The DMB concert rocked! It was nowhere near on par with the Vegas concert, but I wasn't expecting it to be. My only concert at this venue was last year, shortly after we moved, and the sound was horrible. This time was much more enjoyable even if we got drenched. We were under covered seating but it rained so hard, apparently sideways, that we were soaked. At one point I could barely see the show because of the water dripping from my eyelashes. In the end, my friend and I looked at each other and just started laughing. There was nothing to be done but enjoy ourselves, so we did. I have a few DMB related confessions:

1. I forgot to tell you about the Vegas concert - at one point I screamed so loud and so hard I wet my pants a little. Ah, thanks, motherhood!

2. For the first time ever, I left a DMB concert while they were still playing. I always stay til the bitter end, but the song they closed with last night is one of my least favorites and one I had to endure at last year's show. I felt a little disloyal, but it was really nice not to be stuck in the traffic.

3. I obviously have a serious DMB problem because when asked questions about the band, I answer as if they are my own family members. Maybe I need a life. JUST KIDDING, the love will never die.


Insert Witty Segue HERE


Remember how I talked about our mole problem a couple weeks ago? The Mole Guy was contacted, traps were set and Monday the guy came back to give us a damage report. Our first week yielded five moles. Little bastards. But then I began to wonder, what does Mole Guy do with the dead ones? Does he have a big bucket in the back of his van filled with dead moles that he carries around all day? On hot days doesn't the back of the van start to reek by 2 pm? Does he feed the moles to his ginormous pet python? I don't think snakes eat already dead food, but I can't think of any other recycling effort with dead moles, short of fur coats, which is probably illegal.


Speaking of getting slaughtered, my husband lost his job yesterday. Thankfully he was given a severance package and we won't have to move in with my parents for the near future, but it is still scary. In a completely freaky coincidence, our good friend and neighbor also lost his job yesterday. I'm thinking perhaps we should combine households and begin some sort of commune.

Dog Walks

I am trying to be a good pet owner and take my boys for a walk every evening after Parker has gone to bed. They were a little neglected this winter and let's face it, more exercise would be good for all of us. I prefer not to walk through our neighborhood's "developed" areas because every time we do we get charged by at least one dog who is not on a leash. Trying to contain two 90 pound hairy beasts isn't that fun, even though my guys are pretty well behaved. It's the other uncontrolled dogs that drive me crazy, so for the most part we stick to the solitude of the back, undeveloped areas of our subdivision. Most of the area we walk in is overgrown with weeds, wild flowers and sometimes deer. At the height of the real estate craze, I imagine our developer bought all this land with visions of dollar signs dancing in his head, but as the market crashed, so did his new house sales and thus all these lots sit unused.

I have this great fear that my dogs are going to find something disgusting while on one of our walks. I'm talking severed head disgusting, not dead rat, though I would not be particularly fond of that either. It seems that nearly every story I hear on the news about a dead body/body part being discovered was done so by someone walking their dog. It seems natural to think that a dog bounding through wilderness is more prone to find something than his person walking down the path. So every time Baxter veers off and stops in a clump of weeds for a particularly long sniff, I worry he'll raise his head with an oozing bloody hand in his mouth.

Cujo lives.

Sisters

Quite honestly I can tell you I was not looking forward to our Denver trip. I'm not particularly close to that part of my family for a variety of reasons I won't get into here. My dad and his wife have been married 20+ years now. Through this marriage I got my only siblings: an older step-brother, one step-sister just 6 months younger than me, and another step-sister 7 years younger. We all got along pretty well as kids, but I was especially close to my step-sister that is my age. Every summer when I would go out to visit, my sister, Jane, and I would stay awake all night catching up on all the important happenings in our lives (boys!). Throughout the year we'd write each other mini-novel letters detailing the minutia our teen angst (boys!). We were united in our disdain for the younger sister who we thought was a total brat, we snuck out at night to drive our parents' car, and she was there when I got drunk for the first time. We were beyond BFFs, we were Sisters.

At our big family BBQ while we were in Denver, Jane's husband approached me at the end of the evening. He was drunk (I believe him to be an alchoholic) and started by saying that my sister misses me. I replied that I miss her, too. He then proceeded to tell me that by marrying R, I have turned into a person who no longer cares about her family. The gist of his tirade was that R is more concerned about his career, and therefore money, which has subsequently turned me into some sort of heathen.

First of all, he is dead wrong. He doesn't know R, at all, and he has no point of reference other than his drunken fantasies.

More importantly, this self-righteous spew is particularly rich coming from a man who has changed his wife into a person I not only no longer know, but scarecely recognize. After 17 years of marriage, the sister I once loved so much is someone I can barely tolerate. Of course I love her, she's still my sister, but I have no respect for her roles as wife/mother, her lifestyle, her choices or the way she lives her life. We have nothing in common any more, but it's beyond that. To have this man I despise, the man who regularly beats my sister and has turned her into his own personal concubine, tell me that my husband has changed me to the detriment of the rest of the family was almost more than I could stomach. As I stood listening to him, I was incredulous. I was holding my daughter and I didn't want to get into it with him with my child as witness, so I listened in silence until he was finished. At that point I said "Thank you so much for telling me this. I really appreciate it." in a voice dripping with sarcasm that went right over his drunken head.

Lest you think I've abandoned my sister in her time of need, let me assure you I have tried to help her out of this relationship for years. From the beginning he's been an overprotective, jealous freak but she always swore to me that he never hit her. For years I listened when she cried about how controlling he was, tried to arrange ways for her to escape across the country so he could never find her or her children. Inevitably she always goes back to him and I reached a point where I could no longer listen to her sob about him when she refuses to take action otherwise. She is an adult and she has made her own choices, but I am bitterly pissed off about the life she has created for her children who have done nothing to deserve growing up in such a chaotic household. Last week I found out that not only does he beat her, something I've long suspected, but at one point recently it was so bad the police were involved and charges were filed. My sister went in front of a judge, professed her love for her husband, told the judge it was the first time (a lie) and only because he'd had too much to drink (another lie). He got off and they continue living in their bizarre fantasy world.

I miss my sister, but I cannot be the one to save her.

Back Home Again

Being gone for an entire week is hard work. Especially when you're traveling backward two time zones and your toddler didn't get the Time Zone Memo. The first few days were hard, but then we had so much going on, Parker went to bed later than she ever has in her life, and it became a life saving necessity that she sleep past 5 AM. One day she even slept until 10 AM (she was up until 10 PM, midnight our time, the night before). Since we've returned home she slept til 10 AM (a first) the first morning home and has slept until 9 every morning after. I realize how boring these little tidbits are to read, but this is an epic happening at Chez Overlook and I am savoring each and every moment. Sleeping until 9 myself is a luxury I could definitely get used to.

Our trip to Denver was a raging success, much more than I ever anticipated. Within the first hour she was already thoroughly Grandparent Spoiled. By the end of our visit I was telling the Grandparents they were the reason we could never move to that area (meaning they would spoil Parker too much). There were two highlights of the trip: Parker getting to meet her great grandparents for the first time and getting to see her cousin again.

The great grandparents were of course utterly smitten with Parker. The older my grandfather gets, the more mushy he becomes, even though he is a tough rancher dude. As he left my parents' house to go back home, he got all teary looking at Parker and managed to get out "I hope I see you again." It nearly broke my heart.


Then there was Parker and K. They met once before last fall when the entire family went to DisneyWorld. They got pretty friendly then, but Parker hadn't started school yet and hadn't yet mastered the skill of Playing Well With Others. From the moment they saw each other this time, it was love at first sight. I can't adequately describe how adorable it was, but the pictures do it some justice. It made me sad the girls don't live closer.



Tinkerbell and Buzz Lightyear




It was great to see K with my own eyes. She's doing really well with her treatments so far. This latest round of chemo is the first to make her sick, but I think it's about halfway over. She had a treatment while we were there and it was so strange for me to hold her that night and think to myself that just hours before someone shot poison all through her tiny body. She is adorable and three enough to use it to her advantage because apparently when she can't get something she wants, she'll turn on her sad eyes and say to the offending parent "But I have cancer..." Who can argue with that??!

More from the trip up later. It might be a couple days because I have the pleasure of my second DMB concert of the summer tomorrow.

TTFN

The last half of this week has been sort of craptacular. My grandmother is in the hospital. Initially they feared it was a heart attack, but it turns out she has several small blood clots in her lungs. Thankfully she'll be okay, but it gave us quite a scare. My dad threw out his back (again) and is due to begin treatment next week for prostate cancer (recently diagnosed). My parents also had to put one of their cats down this week. She was 19 so it was not entirely unexpected, but sad just the same.

On the plus side, I am totally enjoying DMB week since they've been everywhere you turn pimping the drop of their new album. I know you haters are groaning because I'm talking about them AGAIN, but seriously this is the best album in a long, long time ("treading trodden trails for a long, long time..."). Just kidding about the haters part. I know a lot of people cannot stand DMB, which, although it is beyond my comprehension, just means more for me.

Parker and I are off to Denver tomorrow for a week with my dad and that side of my family. Most of the family has never even met her, so it should be interesting. Since I should probably be packing right now instead of blogging, I leave you with some pictures from Hilton Head.

Be good while I'm gone.

Lessons from the Food Pantry

There are a group of us who get together the first Tuesday of the month solely for the purpose of drinking at a local eatery. The place has even created and named a drink for us that is always the Tuesday drink special. What's different for me about this group is that it is in no way associated with my kid. The other women have kids, too, but it's a group for and about grown ups, and we do not spend our evenings discussing children. It's lovely.

Last night was our monthly meeting and one of the women had volunteered to help re-stock the Food Pantry that happens to be located at the church where Parker will go to pre-school in the fall. A couple of us agreed to help since the food drive was something our neighborhood network (which I'm also a part of, I'm becoming so very Stepford) orchestrated. Plus, we figured if we went and did something charitable BEFORE going out to get liquored up, the two would sort of cancel each other out.

The need for food has increased in the crappy economy, yet donations are down, again thanks to the economy. Luckily our neighborhood had terrific turnout and we collected more this year than last year. All we had to do was get the food out of the plastic grocery sacks donated by a local grocery store, separate the food into categories, date check it, then some of the Pantry workers reshelved it. I came away feeling grateful for being able to help in some small way, but I must relay two very important things I learned.

1. Even when people are being "charitable", they still suck. Granted, I am talking about a very small percentage here, but you would not believe the dates on the food we collected. The Pantry must follow federal guidelines as to "sell by" dates printed on products. Granted, I'm sure there is a can or two of peaches in my pantry that probably expired in 2007. Am I proud of this? No, but I would not turn around and donate that food to someone collecting for people who cannot afford to feed themselves. My complaint isn't about 2007, though I have to admit that seeing tunafish cans with a 2005 expiration date caused an involuntary "EUW!" to escape from my mouth. The winner of the night was a box of Stove Top stuffing with a date of 1997. Someone donated food that was TWELVE YEARS OLD!!! Who the hell has twelve year old food in their pantry? Who then decides to try to kill less fortunate people by donating said food?? OMFG!

2. To countermand the above "people suck" vibe - one donor had the best idea that I just have to pass along. Apparently this person travels extensively and does not drink coffee. But this person was smart enough to take the sealed, single serving coffee packets from every hotel s/he stayed in and saved them. S/He donated at least 50 packets of this coffee, which is a very hot commodity at the Pantry, and made a huge difference, and it didn't cost that person a penny. GENIUS!!! I don't travel much, but I am totally taking the coffee from every hotel we stay at so I can donate it to the Pantry. When I came home and told R about this, he told me an office he used to work in had a similar kind of collection they did for a local shelter. Instead of coffee, they donated the toiletries (shampoo/conditioner/lotion/soap) from hotels that were never used by their traveling employees. Again, toiletries are a hot product for the Food Pantry and all this could be collected and donated for FREE. Why have I never thought of this before? I'm bugging everyone I know who travels about this because I seriously believe every little bit helps.


And so, after all the good we did at the Food Pantry, we went out, drank way too much, talked like raunchy sailors and had a great time. You wouldn't like me if I were all good all the time, would you?

Big Whiskey & the Groo Grux King

Flight Tales

Beach Week was such a success! The weather was fabulous, the house we rented was better than I had hoped and Parker was so enamored with the beach that every day brought new joy. As typical, Vacation Time went by at least five times faster than Regular Time, but what can you do? I could bore you with a billion pictures, but I'm going to try to control myself.

Our flight out was uneventful, if you don't count the people behind us. We were toward the back of the plane so it was already loud. Behind Parker and I were a father and his 2-year old son. The son, though probably a little younger than Parker, was her size, but was not wearing headphones to watch his DVD. Having been there myself in the not-so-distant past, I tried to be patient, but they had the volume cranked to an unfriendly level and I just wanted to hand them some headphones. Across the aisle from them was the mother, mother-in-law and 8 month old baby girl. The mother complained to MIL about how on another flight the attendant had actually (GASP!) made them turn the volume down when Son was trying to watch a movie. She was clearly horrified at the audacity of the flight attendant, though I imagine the fellow passengers cheered.

The Mother/MIL duo talked the entire flight. Truly, I mean there was never more than 4 seconds silence at a time. It was in-freaking-credible. I wanted to shout at them to take a breath, or perhaps shove a Size 4 diaper in each of their mouths. At one point they were comparing social calendars for the summer months, week by week. For the love of all that is holy, let me tell you something - no one gives a shit!!!! My lovely 4-month-old iPhone died as soon as we boarded the plane, so I was without an iPod. I was so desperate for something, anything, to block the sound of their yapping, that I plugged my earbuds into Parker's DVD player and listened to Chip & Dale cartoons.

The return flight was much less crowded, but only because we'd been stuck at the Savannah airport for FIVE HOURS so most of the other passengers were diverted on other flights lest they miss their connections. Five hours in a nice, but small, airport with a 2.5 year old was just about as fun as it sounds. Actually, I have to admit that Parker was extraordinarily well behaved, especially considering she'd been up late the night before and had no nap. If I'm honest I have to say she was better behaved than I was because each time we learned about yet another delay, I sulked and pouted like a thirteen year old.

Now we're starting summer. All day, every day, together. Apparently I have gotten quite used to my 2 days of freedom MDO because the notion of having to find activities to keep us from getting on each others nerves is a bit daunting. For her part, Parker is not missing "school" at all, but already I am. Is it too soon to begin a Back to School Countdown?