Friday, December 22, 2006

ARRRRRRRGH! Oh, I mean: HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Do you feel it--the "joy" (a.k.a. insane stress) of the holidays? I drove past Target last night at around 9pm and the parking lot was full FULL, all the way out to MoPac. I was just in Whole Foods, and I'm pretty sure 2/3 of Austin was also in there with me. From where I currently am (on the 6th floor of my office building), I can see that traffic is backed up on 6th St. from Lamar to way past Guadalupe. I know most of this means nothing to those of you unfamiliar with the roadways of Austin, but it's all to say, PEOPLE ARE GOING NUTS because there are only a couple of days left before Christmas.

I've been busy as well, hence my lack of posting. So this one's probably going to be a long one because I have a lot to tell you fools. And besides, I know you've got all the time in the world to read my drivel.

Okay, first up: My kid. A couple of weeks ago, I had a talk with her because she'd been wandering into my room early each morning and wanting to get in bed with me. This in and of itself is not a bad thing at all. However, when you're sleep-challenged like me, and rarely--if ever--are able to get fully back to sleep after these encounters, then it does become an issue. Especially if the wandering times are getting earlier and earlier--5:30am, 4:50am, 3:20am, etc. So one night as I was putting her to bed, I told her how, if she woke up in the middle of the night, all she had to do was close her eyes, and she'd go back to sleep. That her waking up didn't mean she had to get out of bed and walk all the way across the house in the dark to get in Mommy's bed. Besides, it's not nice to wake people up when they're sleeping. Especially Mommy because she's very tired. Apparently, this one conversation was all it took, because from that night on, the midnight visits stopped, and my sleep was much better. Until Wednesday night, that is. I was sleeping (I sleep on the right side of the bed, close to the edge), and I reached my hand down to put it by my side, and I touched something that didn't feel like bed. It felt like a head. A little person's head. It was The Geej, and it scared the shit out of me. Normally, I hear her opening her door to come my way over the baby monitor, and I'm well awake before she even gets to my room. But I apparently slept through it on Wednesday night. So there she stood, leaning against the side of my bed, totally asleep. That's right people: she was asleep STANDING UP with her hed lying next to my hip. How freaky is this?! I feel like the worst mommy of all time. Apparently, she didn't want to wake me up, but wanted to be with me anyway... Or maybe she was just sleepwalking. Who knows? How long had she been there? God!! So I pulled her up into the bed with me an placed her head on the pillow next to mine. I lay back down with my heart racing from the shock of what had just happened. Suddenly, I heard the loudest purr imaginable, right next to my head. Apparently, Earl had been snoozing on the pillow next to mine, unbeknownst to me, and when I'd put The Geej over there, her head had ended up square in the middle of Earl's ample gut. She was wearing him like a helmet. And now GJ was steadily sucking on her pacifier like Maggy Simpson. So between the sucking and the purring and the racing heart, I pretty much knew my sleep for the night was done for. I was right.

Second, my mom. Ya'll: Cheryl's got a boyfriend!! She met this guy named Paul, who just happens to be the exact age of my deceased step-father, which means he's 12 YEARS OLDER than my mom. My mom's a very youthful 60, and she's going after a guy who's 72, just had cataract surgery and wears 2 hearing aids? Um, okay. Anyway, I'm FINALLY getting to meet this guy tonight as we're all hooking up for dinner. Should be interesting.

Work has been absolutely nuts this week. Just lots of stuff to be done in a very short period of time. But thankfully, today was payday. Speaking of, I had a message from a collections agency on my voicemail at home last night. I automatically assumed that--FUCK--some of my medical billing had gotten screwed up (as it has done in the past), and that now I was going to have some big, awful smear on my credit report. I called them back today, and thankfully, they had the wrong number. But Jim Price, whoever you are, sounds like you're fucked.

Remember when I told ya'll a few posts back about how cool I am? Well, I may have entered an entirely new realm of coolness today. I had to wear a skirt/tights to work today because all of my jeans were dirty. I put the tights on, and they seemed fine. But by the time I'd made it to work, I realized that the elastic around the hips/waist part was shot, and that they were steadily heading southward and taking my underwear with them. I sent out a panicked e-mail to my female coworkers asking for safety pins to secure said tights to the waistband of my skirt, but then discovered that to be a major issue when I had to pee. So I came up with this ingenious solution:
See? I had three of these suckers holding my drawers up: one on each side, and one in the back. I'm a genius. And a fashion plate!! God, you're lucky to know me...

I went and picked up Ellen's ashes from the vet's office this morning. I don't know what I was expecting, but they did a really nice job. There's a little clay paw print and a certificate of cremation. The ashes themselves are contained in a little wooden chest with a gold lock and a nameplate. So sweet... I can't believe she's already been gone a week.

Mr. Wonderful got snowed in in the big blizzard that just hit Colorado. He sent me some crazy ass pictures of the snow. I got cold just looking at them. I do NOT miss weather like that. I remember dealing with a couple of those suckers when I lived in Chicago--when it would get so damn cold that even our Siberian Husky had better sense than to go outside--and it was no fun at all.

Speaking of Mr. Wonderful, today is the 1-year anniversary of the day that he sent me that fateful e-mail out of the blue. It's funny to look back at what I thought back then. A lot's happened in a year...

Okay, that's it for now. Whew. I'll leave you with a Christmasy photo to hopefully instill some cheer into your busy day. Ho ho ho!!

3 comments:

Bookhart said...

When W.B. was the Geej's age, he used to wander into our bedroom in the middle of the night and stand right next to my head, staring at me until I woke up. It scared the LIVING SHIT out of me every time.

Karla said...

1. Your tree is GORGEOUS.

2. LOL on the clips holding your drawers up. That's hilarious and SO YOU. Dude I miss you when I read that shit.....

3. I still have Beaufort's ashes. here in Norway. In a pretty box in the bookshelf. sort of a mistake, that, as i never managed to spread her ashes where i wanted to, up the hill overlooking BRight Leaf park, and then we moved and now..well, now she's Norwegian....

Me said...

The daughter did something like this when she was a toddler. To keep her from wandering the halls at night and possibly hurting herself, we put her baby gate in the doorway. We didn't know she could climb over the gate until one morning, when about one fucking inch away from my face was

"HIIIIIII MOMMYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!"

This joyful shriek, which felt and sounded like it was at 100+ db, damn near gave me a heart attack.

And the binder clips? Well, my boss (HRH) had one clipped to her fucking Manolos, I shit you not. The bow was coming off, and she fucking used a binder clip. Pretty ingenious, but Christ- Manolos! Go get 'em fixed or something. Although, as much as those fuckers cost, they should've been made better.

My word ver: pibru. Pie-brew? Pee-brew? Hmmmm.