Wherein I Accomplish Nothing

I was thinking this morning (about 3:45 this morning, actually) that I post way too much about my kids, and being their mom. So I tried very hard to come up with something completely different.

It got me nowhere, possibly because it WAS 3:45 in the morning.

Okay, so that’s not entirely true. I thought of a lot of things, all entirely unrelated to children and mommyhood, but after a lot of coffee, I realized, “Who wants to read about my opinion on…anything…when I can barely string together a sentence that makes sense?”

Evidently, I don’t really care, because here I am making a whole lot of no sense at anyone daring to muddle through this.

Sorry.

And then I put the kibosh on an entire post I’d written in my head involving not much else besides the proper procedure for snow removal and how much I want a pet giraffe.

I’d name him Elmer, in case you’re curious. And yes, it would be a boy giraffe, because in my experience, boy pets are the best pets. Girls are too…too…well, I’ve never had a female pet that I really liked. Probably our mood swings have been too similar and you know how a lot of times, when someone is JUST LIKE YOU, you somehow don’t really like them?

…what does that say about me, eh? Yeah, don’t answer that.

Oh, snap, I lied. I had a dog that I really liked. A girl, yes. My parents stole her and won’t give her back, though.

NOTE: That’s not true. Well, it’s true that they won’t give her back, but they didn’t steal her. I had to leave my doggy with them when I moved out, and it didn’t make sense to take her back because by then, she liked being with my parents, and they liked having her.

Dammit.

And now I’m stuck with one psycho kitten that really ought to be locked up for her own and everyone else’s safety (true story, we had her spayed a few weeks ago and the vet assistant refused to touch the cat to get her out of the cage, because this cat, as I said, is a psycho), one demon cat from hell, and one cat that seems totally out of place around here and throws up all over my house.

I put up with her puking because she’s the only cat we have who isn’t plotting my death. Or, more likely, she’s just being way less obvious about it.

I hate cats.

I also hate boxelder bugs, which I’ve been finding in my bathroom at random intervals all winter long. WHERE ARE THEY HIDING?! WHERE ARE THEY GETTING IN THROUGH?!

It occurs to me that I could solve so many of my problems with a flame thrower.

Overkill?

Absolutely, but talk about fun.

ANYWAY, my point is (oh yes, there’s a point), do I really want to be a mommy blog? I don’t even remember where I started this whole thing out. Probably I had grand plans, was going to DO things and then write about them. Cakes, maybe. Yes, I would write about cake. It’s an important part of my life.

And yet, strangely enough, my kiddos seem to be just a little bit MORE important than cake.

I guess that’s how you know you’ve crossed over from being just another house wife into Real Mommy Territory. By where cake ranks on your list of priorities.

Oh, I am totally posting this load of crap.

Bugs, Bad Babies, and Oh! It’s Almost Christmas!

The night before last, I had a dream worse than almost any other nightmare I’ve ever had in my life. Most bad dreams I have don’t linger after I wake up; as in, I rarely wake up still feeling the way I did whilst dreaming. But this one, even after opening my eyes in the dark and determining the probable cause of said dream…I felt awful.

I was dreaming that I had lice.

Not even just that I had lice, but that I could feel the lice creepy-crawling around on my scalp, and I could feel myself scratching at it. My sister was there, for whatever reason, and she picked a nasty bug out of my hair and showed it to me and informed me it was lice before running far, far away from me.

More creepy-crawly feeling, more dream-scratching, and I finally woke up with a horrid sick feeling in my stomach, imagining that I could still feel the lice on my head. But then something in the real world pulled my hair and poked at my scalp, and instead of screaming like I kind of wanted to do, I reached up and grabbed hold of…

Princess Zelda, Stupid Attack Kitten.

Yeah, she was tangled pretty good in my hair. The more tangled she got, the more she attacked my scalp. It took about as long to stop feeling all icky from my dream as it did to get the damn cat out of my hair.

Mr. E has become quite the little conversationalist. He learned to say “stop it” (“toppit”) to the kitten, and he’s learned to tell me “all done” whenever he’s finished eating, drawing, playing, or getting his diaper changed. Those two are just the most currently relevant in his little baby vocabulary; he says all kinds of things, but for my own evil mom purposes, we’ll stick with just the two.

Yesterday after E finished eating his lunch, I used poor judgment and let him out of his high chair before I was finished with my lunch. He ran around for a minute before stopping in front of me. He pointed at my plate and said, “Toppit!” I ignored him and kept eating. He made a full lap around the house before coming back and pointing at my plate and saying “Toppit!”

I told him to buzz off and let Mommy finish her lunch.

Another lap around the house, and he was back. I was only sort of paying attention, so I didn’t see what was about to happen.

E lifted both arms in the air and brought his chubby little fingers down on the edge of the plate in my lap, sending crackers and cheese flying everywhere and the plate clattering to the floor. He grinned and yelled, “ALLLLLL DONE!”

Gah! Whose kid IS he, anyway?

I was pretty steamed, but also in awe of this little guy. Guess that’ll teach me to ignore him.

“Jeez, Mom! You coulda cut this up for me.”

He’s got an attitude as big as his dad’s (just kidding honey…!).

In other news, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Not that we haven’t had our outside lights up for almost a month now, but even the inside of my house is starting to look festive!

You can tell I put a lot of effort into inserting those photos. Hard work, I tell you. Now, if I don’t make it back here in the next couple weeks, Merry Christmas to you all!

Going With the Flow (or at least not fighting it so hard)

Last week sometime, I made a tough decision: I removed the hallway barricade so that E could toddle down the hall and in and out of his room. The bathroom and my room are still off limits, but it finally occurred to me that this house is far too small to keep a child cooped up in just the living room/kitchen area.

This has been scary for me. I don’t like when I can’t see my kid, because as everyone knows, kids are not to be trusted. You can’t leave them alone with your electronics, and you can’t be certain that they aren’t going to find some way to bonk their tiny noggins or mangle their tiny kid-selves.

Mr. E, however, is loving this new arrangement. He can play hide and seek with himself, he can crawl under his crib and get stuck and howl about it, he can locate his binky and pop it in his mouth when he’s not supposed to have it (he gets it for sleep times, and that’s it).

Apparently, he can also climb up onto the guest bed in his room. Granted, the box springs just sit on the floor, so it’s not exactly high up, but still. Imagine having no idea that your child has learned how to climb things, and then going to look for him and finding him sitting in the middle of a bed that you didn’t put him on.

Heart failure? Almost.

I have since gotten over it, though, due to the fact that E is climbing EVERYTHING this week. He gets up on the couch by himself, and he gets down off of the couch by himself. He’s pretty thrilled about this; he can sit up beside Daddy and keep an eye out for the new kitten (Princess Zelda) who won’t leave him alone if he’s on the floor with her.

Speaking of cats, I really, really, really HATE cats.

We were gone for ONE DAY over the weekend, and in my mad rush to get out of the house, I forgot to lift the baby gate at the top of the stairs so that the cats could get to their litter box. One cat is fine with this; she’ll just go over it. The other one, the horrible horrible, cranky, mean old cat, will not.

She crapped on the couch.

Twice.

If I had been less concerned about the stupid coffee pot being left on, this wouldn’t have happened.

By the way, WHO DOESN’T HAVE A COFFEE MAKER THAT SHUTS OFF BY ITSELF THESE DAYS?!

Me.

Yeah, we got a few miles from home Saturday morning before I remembered the stupid thing was on.

On that note, I’ll have to go puke…Clint is watching Prometheus (is that right…? Does anyone CARE…?) and they’ve just C-sectioned an alien out of a lady.

Not something you want to see so soon after dinner.

I Apologize for the ‘Cattiness’ of this Post

Once upon a time, I liked cats. I thought that they were cute and cuddly and fluffy and good company, not to mention highly entertaining when given the right toy or a little o’ the nip.

Oh, how wrong I was!

Cats…are tiny little devils, wrapped in a misleadingly fuzzy fur coat. Yes, devils. Demons. Monsters. And you don’t even have to give them food or water after midnight to make them so. In fact, cats are badly behaved with or without food (though without food when they demand it, they do tend to be a bit worse…trash cans tend to be tipped over and rummaged through in my house in the middle of the night if the kitty’s food dish is empty when I go to bed). They’re badly behaved with or without water, they’re badly behaved with or without anyone around to watch them behave badly.

I hate cats. I have three.

Izzy- she’s about 8 years old, I think, though I can’t be sure because we got her from my aunt and I don’t remember exactly when my aunt got her. Izzy is fat, cranky, mean, and incredibly insecure and needy. She once climbed up on the bed and begged Clint to pet her, only to then turn around and slap him across the face with her claws. I frequently find her drinking from my water glass, or my coffee cup. She beats the daylights out of our male cat. She trips me coming through the door (I has injuries to prove it!) and she follows me around yelling at me (yes, yelling) until I stop and pet her or feed her.

She pins me to the bed at night so that it’s a struggle to get up and take care of the baby when he cries, and she has clawed every available piece of furniture. She’s tried to dig a hole under our bedroom door (hard wood floor!!!!) when we used to have Baby sleeping in his bassinette in there. She always has bad kitty breath and a bad kitty attitude, and then at the end of the day, after wounding me and treating me poorly, she wants to come and sit on my lap. Usually while I’m eating dinner. Or cereal. Because she sits very nearly ON my shoulder and waits for my plate or bowl, which I have now stopped giving her because 1, she’s annoying, and 2, she’s fat! AH!

Georgie- she’s close to the same age as Izzy, and we also got her from my aunt. Georgie is fairly quiet, mostly good natured but not terribly friendly. She lets Baby pull her fur if he manages to get close enough, and she doesn’t whack him like the other cats try to. However, she pukes. Randomly, where ever she happens to be at the time, unashamedly. Cat puke is highly unpleasant to step in when you are not fully awake and in a hurry to get to the bathroom or the baby.

Ziggy- he was quite literally dropped on our doorstep as a kitten, and since we had just accepted his brother (dropped off in the same manner, Jasper…he disappeared last winter though, and he was the best kitty ever except he peed on stuff…ah well), we took him too. He’s a pain. He’s definitely chosen Clint as his human, though, and it’s funny to watch them together- Ziggy perches on Clint’s shoulder like a large, fuzzy bird. Ziggy also perches on top of the fridge, waiting to attack me when I try to go outside or come in. He knocks things over, breaking glasses or picture frames. He climbs curtains. The other night, he climbed a blanket-thing I have hanging on our bedroom wall, because at the top of it sits a carbon-monoxide detector, and the light was blinking.

Ziggy was trying to kill it.

He once tried to jump and attach in velcro-style to the blanket we have covering the doorway to the basement. As there was nothing behind the blanket but stairs, this ended badly.

Ziggy thinks the baby’s room belongs to him. If I leave the door open for any length of time (only done when Baby is up and awake and not in his bed), Ziggy can almost always be found sleeping on the baby’s changing table. He used to sleep in the car seat, until he discovered the crib (before Baby was born). I put the kabosh on that, and now Ziggy goes for the changing table, which I have to say really torques my turkey when I’ve got Baby on my shoulder and an explosive diaper to change A.S.A.P.

I could do without the ten tons of cat fur that I can never seem to get off of our clothes and blankets. I could do without the dozens of cat fur dust bunnies that are lurking in most corners of our house, regardless of how often I vacuum. I could definitely do without tripping over a damned cat every time I turn around, or being mauled every time I open a can (it doesn’t even have to be tuna, the cats hear the can-opener pop the can, and they come running). I could do without having to clean litterboxes or worry about cats being eaten by coyotes or getting locked outside when we go somewhere.

I’m so fed up with having all these stinking cats around here that I’d like to throw them all out.

Of course, if I did that, I’d miss them curling up with me when I take a nap.

Bad Poems Happen to Good People

I came across these two ‘poems’ (they really can hardly be called that, so awful they are…) that I wrote about two years back. I’d forgotten about them until now, and when I read through them, they tickled my funny bone. I suppose it’s bad form to find yourself hilarious, but I’m not overly concerned about that. Anyway, the first one was written while the kitty in question was still alive (he disappeared last winter and I suspect he was eaten by a coyote, but I don’t like to think about it much), and the second…well, I honestly have no explanation. Sometimes, bad poems happen.

“O Fluffy Kat”- Ode to Jasper (my dear departed fuzz ball)

O kitten, you are wondermous,
beyond all competition
and I don’t mind that you spill your food
all across my kitchen,
because your fur is fluffier
and your claws are rarely seen,
and your meow is more a kitty meow
than a tiny monster scream.
And I clean your poo out of the box
of kitty-catty litter,
and even though you pee on clothes (and shoes)
I don’t turn bitter
because you purr when I pet your head,
you curl up by my feet,
you hunt down mice and bugs and things,
and that’s just really neat.
You never hack up hair balls
that I step in in the night,
and when I sing along to songs
your eyes grow wide with fright.

O stinky kat, I do adore you
because you make me laugh,
but if you pee on one more thing,
I’ll kick your kitty ass.

“Ode to Sleeplessness/YEAH TOAST!”

O, behold the sleepless nature
of the girl awake so late,
she tried to sleep a while…
Aye! But that is not her fate!

The Muppets lullabied her,
and she snuggled safe and warm
underneath the blankets
secure from cold and harm.

And then her mind did wander
off to places filled with toast,
and the heartburn swiftly started
and burned within her throat.

As she fought it and ignored it,
The Bob and Tom Show came to mind,
and her brain would not shut off
and allow her to unwind,

The combination of the heartburn
and the Toast song in her head
left her wide awake and sleepless
and she crept out of her bed.

Now she sits here at 2:40
in the A.M., wide awake…
and her heartburn rages onward,
though Pepto Bismol she did take.

And she’s waxing po and etic
and her eyes are blurr and y,
and the Pepto is doing nothing
to soothe her heartburn…ee…

The moral of this crazy Ode
I cannot tell you now,
for I was not aware that Odes
had morals…holy cow…

Why I’m So Scattered

When I began this blog, I thought that it would be a good way to do some of the things I most enjoy doing; writing, entertaining, and exploring.

That’s still true, but I’ve discovered that I’m not nearly so focused on the things I started the blog FOR…which was to share my experiences of trying new hobbies and getting better at old hobbies.

I don’t bake and decorate a cake every other day, because not only do I not feel inspired to do so that often, I’m also working on losing some weight, and the two projects really don’t mix.

I don’t go geocaching every other day, because I go with my husband and he doesn’t have the time to go that often; plus, I’m finding out that unless something really exciting happens while we’re out, writing about the experience could be done in a couple of short paragraphs. Not to say that geocaching isn’t still fun and interesting for me- I just doubt that it would be that fun and interesting for you to read about very often.

I don’t work in the garden because it’s the wrong season now, plus we’ve just had our first snow and the temperature is dropping fast.

I read all the time, but I’ve regressed to reading Get Fuzzy comic books for the time being, and there’s precious little about that to discuss. Unless, of course, you love talking cats and can’t get enough of them cutting cake or trimming ham with power tools.

I have a zillion interests, and time to kill. I can’t zero in on just one or two things to write frequently about, and so I write about whatever comes to mind, be it a hobby, a place, or an idea.

Sometimes I probably even switch topics mid post, and if that bothers you, I’m very sorry but I don’t think I can help it.

I have magnetic letters on my refrigerator, and sometimes while I’m in the middle of spelling a long word, I just wander off for no apparent reason and ten minutes later discover that I’ve left “indeci” on the door of the fridge and wonder where the “sion” has gone.

So I do apologize if my constant jumping from topic to topic lessens the readability of this blog. At least I’m consistent in my inconsistency.