Weird pictures



Shelby tries on my underwear.







I REALLY LOVE MAH NEW KITTAY!




Still no comment.



Self Portrait



Odd...




Frankenbaby.  Shelby's 1st birthday.




Washing dishes naked so her sleeves don't get wet.  On the scratching post.




Not real sure what that is.





When I get off this coaster I am totally kicking the snot out of you.



Jobs

6:30 a.m.-Woke up with a migraine that would make a nun cuss.

8:30 a.m.-Phone call from the boss at the stable.  She can’t send email, or log onto the internet. 
8:45 a.m.-Phone call from the boss at the stable.  Rebooted the server, still no internet or email.  9:00 a.m.-Computer at my Castleton office doesn’t want to run.  I shut down and sit through 30 minutes of windows updates, and another 20 minutes of Quickbooks updates.

11:15 a.m.-Tried to turn on my 10-key adding machine and it broke.  Received precise instructions from the boss on where to find them at Frye’s, which one to buy that had a rebate, and took his credit card.

11:30 a.m.-Arrived at Fry’s and parked next to an ominous looking old van with no windows.  Backed the car up and parked on the other side of the lot.

11:45 a.m.-Spent 20 minutes trying to find the calculators before I gave up and asked someone, selected said calculator and was heading towards the checkout line when the boss from the stable called and asked where to find the number for Frontier.  Went to check out and handed the cashier my boss’s card.  He asked for my ID.  I took the card back and handed him my debit card.  He treated me like a crack ho for the rest of the transaction.  Walked outside and noted the ominous looking van surrounded by cop cars.

12:10 p.m.  Went to unplug the old calculator and noticed a button was stuck.  Unstuck the button and tried to turn it on and it fired right up. 

12:15 p.m.-Received phone call from boss at the stable.  She called Frontier and apparently the DSL problem is statewide and not our fault. 

4:00 p.m.-Finally realized while I had been running around and working furiously on a new client, my boss had been playing solitaire and watching basketball all day.  Job security.

Housekeeping

I must be the world’s worst mother, because my kid is the biggest slob I have ever come across EVER. 

Below is a diagram of my apartment, to give you an idea of the layout.  It's a rough drawing, but the size is exact:

Let’s say I decide to clean the bathroom.  While I am in there cleaning, which takes 10 to 15 minutes, Shelby gets to work.  When I exit the bathroom and enter the living room, there is a nest of throw blankets and pillows in front of the couch, string cheese wrappers, Barbies, crackers, spilled apple juice all over the coffee table, along with an assortment of various toys and makeup.  I gripe and complain and tell her to clean it up and then, let’s say I start on the kitchen.  This takes a while and impairs my hearing with the water running, garbage disposal grumbling, etc.  I leave the kitchen and walk into the living room to find all of the crap that was on the coffee table stashed on the recliner (with the exception of the apple juice), cheese wrappers and all, pillows and blankets tossed in a heap on the couch, and the smell of Formula 409 in the air, since she used a half a bottle on the coffee table to clean it.  Shelby is nowhere to be found.

I find her in the bathroom that I just cleaned, with her big Barbie head with the long hair under the faucet, water spraying everywhere, and every towel we own on the floor.  By now I’ve pretty much lost my mind, and she takes off with the dripping wet Barbie head and 2 or 3 towels to God only knows where, kinda like when you catch a dog with your cheeseburger in his mouth and he takes off and hides under the bed with it where he knows you won’t even bother to try to reach him.  I set to work mopping up the wet mess and return to the living room.  Giant wet Barbie head and every accessory she owns is on the coffee table, sitting in a puddle, towels strewn all over the floor, and the blankets and pillows on the couch have returned to the floor as well, since the hair stylist needed a place to sit.  Once again, no Shelby. 

I find her in her bedroom, naked, with half of the contents of her dresser all over her bedroom floor.  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING NOW?????”  (I’m screaming at this point.)  “Well Mommy, I got wet washing Barbie’s head and  had to change my clothes.”  “WHY ARE YOUR CLOTHES ALL OVER THE FLOOR????”  “Because Mommy, I have to find something pretty to wear!”

Occasionally we have conversations like this:

Me:  “Shelby, why is the broom on the dining room table?”

Shelby:  “Cuz I was gonna sweep and put it there so I could move the trash can.”

Me:  “Well, why is the trash can in front of the TV?”

Shelby”  “Cuz I was carrying it out of the kitchen and “Good Luck Charlie” came on.”

Me:  “Okay.  So why is one of the dining room chairs in the kitchen?”

Shelby:  “Cuz Rosco wanted a treat and they are on the top shelf.”

Me:  “Did you give him one?  Cuz I just passed him in the hallway and he was carrying an apple core heading towards my bed.”

And don't even get me started on the animals.

All in a Week

This Week in Review:

(Obviously, I’m suffering from writer’s block again.)

·         Shelby decided the kitchen floor needed swept, and to do this one must make a big display of moving the dog food bowl and water bowl and trash can into the dining room.  As she was carrying the big trashcan, she dropped it and yelled “Oh, JESUS!”  as the contents spilled onto the floor.  I turned and looked at her in horror and said in my most stern mommy voice, “Shelllllllby….” And she said, “WHAT???  I was just asking Him for HELP!”

·         My car went into full fledged CHBF (chronic hub bearing failure) yesterday for the 248^th time in the past two years.  I’ve decided it’s time she learned a lesson…whining and complaining isn’t getting her anywhere this time.  She is NOT going to get new hub bearings no matter how much she cries about it.  Because yeah, that works with my kid and all when I’m dragging her kicking and screaming through Meijer.

·         Shelby has had a bad cold all week.  I noticed her Kleenex usage was down and wondered why until I went to use the hand towel hanging in the bathroom to dry my hands and they came away covered in snot.

·         Wayne fixed a snack while we were watching a movie tonight.  And I have a very strong suspicion his idea of “Summer Sausage” is actually “Chopped up Oscar Meyer Weiner”.  The cheese was good, though. 

·         I forgot about my vertigo/inner ear issue and how I can’t tilt my head down for long periods of time while I was reading my book today.  As a result, I’ve spent the whole evening staggering around like a drunk and trying valiantly not to hurl.

·         I found out I can do the splits AND twist both my ankles simultaneously.  There’s this stuff called Equilitter that we use in the horse stalls instead of straw.  They are absorbent little pellets about the size of a kidney bean.  If you are grooming a horse while she eats her hay and walk across the stall, realize you left the hoofpick in the grooming bucket and try to quickly change directions to go get it…well, you will do the splits as your feet catch the litter and it rolls them in opposite directions.

·         Wayne makes a much better mom than I do.  Shelby put some lotion on her cracked, dried hands that contained alcohol.  As she started to panic I rolled my eyes and kept on with what I was doing and told her to go wash it off.  Wayne heroically jumped up, rushed her to the bathroom where he washed the lotion off of her hands, patted them dry, and slathered them in antibiotic ointment.  He then strode purposefully to the kitchen and grabbed a plate, put two chocolate chip cookies on it and rocked her in the rocking chair and whispered sweet nothings in her ear while she ate her cookies.  She later informed me she hates me and wants to live with Wayne.

·         Tax season sucks beyond belief, made worse when Quickbooks malfunctions, causing you and your boss to make a scene that looks like a reenactment of the twister scene in “The Wizard of Oz”.

Silent Night?

It’s going on midnight.  My child won’t go to sleep.  You’re probably thinking, “Then why are you sitting at a computer typing rather than laying with her, or comforting her, or singing her lullabies?”  Well, it’s like this:  She’s five years old.  She’s manipulative.  She makes the energizer bunny look like a hunting dog on a porch on a hot summer day.  She can’t be comforted, because she isn’t uncomfortable.  She never shuts up.  If I sang to her, she would get up and dance.  And if I get within five feet of her right now, I just might not be able to suppress my urge to duct tape her to her sheets.  Just when it gets quiet and I think she may have drifted off, I hear a little voice say something stupid, like, “What’s a hyena?” or “What’s inside an eyeball?”  I have been working on this bedtime crap for THREE FREAKING HOURS.  I’m throwing in the towel.  I’m going to go guzzle down a bottle of cold medicine and hope she has the presence of mind to call 911 if I stop breathing.  Oh wait, I’m screwed because she thinks its 991.

Okay, it’s 12:02 now and she just informed me that Wayne forgot his sweatshirt. 

I’m starting to think I’m the one who is batcrap, maybe she’s normal. 
Okay…she just told me that she is going to fall asleep on the couch and that I don’t need to wake her up because she will wake herself up.  The fun part is when I pick her up off the couch, she’s sound asleep and the sleep talking starts…”No, I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine it’s all good put the kitty in the window, the kitty in the window, where’d you park the car?  The Oreos are talking again mommy, and they’re really loud.  Okay thankyaverymuch.”  She sounds like an auctioneer with a smurf voice.  Then I settle into her bed, she quiets down and looks like the little angel everyone thinks she is.

G’night, y’all.

Happy Birthday!

As I am sitting here in a tshirt and Bruce's Dallas Cowboys pajama pants...
I woke up this morning kinda bummed, which is the norm lately but more so than usual.  I hate the winter blues.  Today was different though.
I got to work, got all settled into my desk with my coffee, and it started to hit me and I started to lose it a little.  Then I could hear Bruce's voice in my head clear as a bell, saying something like "Knock it off, it's my birthday and you know how much I love my birthday."
About an hour later I got an email from my boss from the stable...I have no idea how she knew that it was Bruce's birthday, and having lost her son about a year before Bruce died, she understood how hard it could be.  How as time goes by it gets harder, because fewer and fewer people remember.  Not that that is wrong, it's completely normal.
Bruce would have been 39 this year.  I have never seen someone love their birthday so much in my life.  I felt like the world's worst girlfriend because I never had to plan anything for him...he did it himself!
I still haven't met a person who loved and enjoyed life as much as Bruce did.  He made the absolute most out of every day and every friendship.  He never knew a stranger, I was forever cleaning up the house at the last minute and throwing together something for dinner for a customer turned newfound friend and their spouse/kids/second cousin twice removed and whoever else they wanted to invite.  He maintained these friendships, too.  It showed at his viewing-for every person there that I knew, there were two more who I had never seen before whose life he had touched in some way.  It was amazing.
I picture him up there right now, celebrating with friends and family that he knew in this life who have passed away, and the zillions of friends he made within days of hanging out in heaven!