Ambuscade

I love it when my hubby uses big words, it's so cute. Just shows you what kind of guy does it for me now doesn't it? I'm going to link his blog at the end of this little story so you can get the last half of why this entertains me so. It has to do with his wedding band, and his loss of said wedding band. Mind you most women would be irritated by this but I just felt bad for him. It's been gone for a good few months now and I really didn't think there was any hope. It's got a bit more sentimental value than most men's bands. Usually the man proposes with the engagement ring to the woman and that would be the bad one to lose, not just because or price (ugh!) but because it was a gift, followed by a proposal (again, usually). Of course I (being the ornery one in said relationship) had no intention of getting married again (yes there was that first marriage, when I was 18, never marry the rebound guy. I'll tell you about it later) so the hubby had kinda asked in a roundabout way about getting married sometime during our pregnancy. He's a smart boy, he knew better than to get down on one knee and propose, his pregnant girlfriend was cranky and unconventional and he's not stupid. So the ball was in my court, the choice was mine when and if I decided I wanted to marry he would prefer us married. Whatever (trust me it was because his mother could not stand that we had a kid and were not married). So the dd was born in October of 2001 and at some point not long after I had decided I wanted to get married. I didn't want to make big decisions while pregnant, one is not in their right mind when pregnant. So I went to his mother and told her I was going to 'propose' to him for Christmas 2001. That woman was sooo excited she immediately started making phone calls to the photographer (her cousin) that would determine the date of the wedding. Here's my deal with my weddings, I won't arrange them anymore. I'll do anyone else's but not mine. I was all about eloping to Vegas but the mil would have none of that. Soooo the deal was someone was to give me the time and place and I'd show up in an off white dress (my skin tone looks horrid in pure white).
I then called up the dh's best friend (who happens to be a jeweler) and asked her if she 1)knew his ring size and 2) knew what kind of wedding band he wanted. Well of course she did and so I took this info and bought him said ring. I then wrapped it in a small box, a slightly large box and then at least 2 more larger boxes after that.
That Christmas morning he sat with our baby on his lap and started opening presents, I may have given him that box last. Maybe first. I can't remember. Regardless I didn't have to say anything. He opened up that final box and I think his words were something to the effect of "Are you serious?" like he expected it to be some mean cruel joke. Such faith in the mother of his child. He cried, it was sweet. I do make the dh cry much too often, I'm a very mean wife.
DH's story of found ring

I lost my car today

A big fat silver Toyota 4Runner. Didn't think it was possible and yet...
Anyway the kid and I had the day off (San Antonio has a holiday called the Battle of Flowers, whatever) and she wanted to go to Claire's. OK fine so off we go to the mall. Stupid amounts of people there, mostly teen of course, and I parked where I thought was a good place to get to Claire's. Not so much but that's ok, we need the exercise. So when we go to leave we take another shorter route. Big mistake. Walked around for like 20 minutes trying to at least find the damn thing using the car alarm. No go. Take the kid to the food court and feed her to stop the whining (it's 85 degrees out today and humid, she wilts fast), then we go back the same long way we came in and sure enough we were on the wrong side of Neiman Marcus. Totally found the car right quick. Damnit. I have never ever in my semi ditzi life, lost the car to that extent. I was very disappointed in myself. I'm not as bad the hubby though. I may have temporarily lost the car but he keeps ripping parts of his car off and the molding around the garage too. At least my semi lost car is still intact. As is the garage on the side where I park.

Hand Foot and Mouth Disease

My neighbor's kids had it about a month ago so I know it's been going around the school. DD complained about having a sore in her mouth last night. I'm such a bad mom I didn't even look at it, just assumed it was a cold/kanker sore. Then I talked to another mom in the dd's class this morning, turns out both her kids had it this past week. Whatcha wanna bet I get a call today from the school nurse? And dang that's like 10 days out of school for her. Ugh, parenthood. Why do we do it? Remind me again please?
* Update * She's fine, I don't think she's got the cooties. Which is good since it's her 3 day weekend coming up.

My heart just isn't in it

We are speaking of jobs here. That last chemistry job I had for 2 weeks, I could have cared less about it. I knew I wouldn't be there long so I didn't get all emotionally attached to it. This new job I'm not into either. I get no pleasure from it at all. I feel like I'm just waiting until they ask me to leave. There may some similarities in the two, neither have real definitive jobs for me to do. Just kinda almost stuff for me to do. Maybe I'm one of those uber task people, I need a definite task for me to feel like I'm getting something done. I'd probably be happiest if I got a job at Starbucks huh? Why did I waste all that money on this stupid chemistry degree...

Passover

Ah and here you all though we were totally anti-religious, not so! Actually my dh made some grumbles about having to go to services but he enjoyed himself in the end so all was good. It's been a looong while since I celebrated Passover, my first husband was Jewish and I celebrated it a few times with his family but they were not the funnest of folk. The congregation we celebrate the Jewish holidays with out here with are some of the most wonderful people we've ever met. Really stellar people and let me tell you, not mainstream at all. They are the Messianic Jews (Jews for Jesus) and are not usually well accepted into the general Jewish population. Sad but true. We also got to see our friend who lost her daughter late last year in the car accident, a lovely lovely woman. Her husband decided to bail at the last moment but she, thankfully, still came. It was so awesome to see her and it reminds us that we need to make a much better effort to see them more often. We even were able to talk religion (they are very religious) in a very open manner (the dh's religious views are not always so openly accepted by the very religious) and found that they have (unsurprisingly) a similar view as ours as to organized religion. They've found themselves church hopping lately since many of the churches have not been meeting their needs. They belonged to a very large very popular church out here and since they buried their daughter not one person from that church has come to them to offer emotional support, it's been 4 months! Let me tell you I am shocked and disappointed but not surprised. Like 8 days after their daughter died the mom had her 41st b-day and was freaking out (as moms do when their child dies or when they turn 41, the combo, not so good) at 1 am so her hubby called up on of the elders of the Messianic Jewish Congregation that held services tonight and he was at their house sitting in their bedroom, suit and tie on, reading scripture to her until she was able to fall asleep peacefully. Now that is why we have organized religion. Not all this other enormous church/government/businesses mammoths that now exist for people to throw money into. I have had very little religious upbringing, well more like none. Which is very common, rather, the norm, in So Cal. It surprises me that the different parts of the country are sooo different. Religion is quite prominent here in Texas, everyone is Christian and assumes everyone else is the same. It makes me feel bad for those of other religions. Really when you take your kids to Chuck E. Cheese type places you don't expect to have all the toys that they win to have Jesus fish on them but they do. It's a midwestern form of religious intolerance and we don't like it. One of the biggies in the formation of the good ol' US of A was religious tolerance and yet we're finding that these major issues seem to be going though a backslide. That and the right to bear arms. DO NOT get the hubby started on that one. We consider ourselves to be relatively conservative but obviously not in the classic way.
Regardless, back to my point, I really would like to get the kid started in some sort of religious learning. For whatever reason (peer pressure, who knows) she shows an affinity towards it and keeping her in the dark about it will only lead to bigger problems. If I can get the wherewithall to get to services I think I'd like to go to the Messianic Jewish services. The downside? It's a good 45 minute drive away and dang it all if commutes like that don't just ruin it for us. That's why our friends don't go on a regular basis too. Good thing I wasn't born in the old cart and buggy days, I'd just roll over and die!

G-chat whore

It's what the dh calls me. I really love g chat. Better than I ever did any of the other chat groups and I'm not sure why. The features are great and you always know whose on with the little green dots. I've been chatting with people I haven't talked to in YEARS. Plus it's pleasantly distracting and entertaining during work hours and it's totally subtle too.

The house is PMSing

No really, my 6yr old is sitting bawling her eyes out because one of her play doh toys (that's like 3 yrs old) broke a hinge. She's wailing so loud I'm telling her she's going to need to take it outside or turn it down a few notches. Even the momma dog stopped trying to console her (Roxy will lick feet to make someone feel better, sometimes it even works).
She got caught up in the tv show and is now better. Kids have mood swings that are just amazing. Too bad girls only get worse.

Live traffic feed

I love it, it's way more entertaining than that silly little counter that used to be a point of competition between the dh and I but since he sucks so bad at blogging I passed him looong ago. Slacker. Anyway I put a live traffic feed up so I could see where people are coming from and going to. Like Big Brother only really more like Big Sister in this case. What I find is that people do the same thing I do, they use my links as a sort of a book mark folder that isn't on their computer. We are such a lazy society I love it. So the question of the day? Who's the person in Houston that's clicking on all of my links like everyday? I'm such a nosey body...

What if?

So the dh and I were discussing Benadryl this evening. We give it to our dogs for their allergies, twice a day every day. The dosage for dogs is 1mg/lb so the little frenchie gets 1 pill twice daily, the big dogs get 3 pills twice daily. That's a lot if you were a person but dogs have a much faster metabolism. The dh mentioned that we have friends that give their dogs Benadryl as a sort of tranquilizer. At like 1/2 pill per dog. We looked at each other and started busting out laughing when we speculated what would happen if we stopped giving the dogs Benadryl. I mean Jayne gets a Prozac chaser once a day to add to those Benadryl, he should be catatonic. We figure if we took them off their meds they'd not only be itchy but not be able to sleep. We'd be peeling them off the ceiling or they'd be breaking the speed of sound inside the house. The dh compared them to Juicers in Rifts. Huh, scary yet so accurate. They are never coming off meds, I couldn't take it.

My vanity couldn't take it

Really, that last picture was atrocious. I mean 2 days with out a shower and all those leads, gauze and super glue? Yuck. So here's probably the most recent picture prior to that one. It was 42 degrees out the morning it was taken and the kids were running around for their 'rodeo' (and I use that term loosely) with no jackets because they refused to be that restrained. I only lasted 30 minutes, it was cold! Anyway another mom asked me to take her picture with her daughter because, like most moms, she was always behind the camera and not the lens. She returned the favor and now I have one of maybe 10 pictures I've had taken with my daughter. All this modern technology going to waste, I swear.

185

That's how many people applied for Ruby. As one of the review crew I have to go through each and every one of them and decide which ones I think are good enough to get passed onto the foster mom who makes the decision on who gets Ruby (with board of directors approval and passing all the other hoops to jump). I hate it when 1 dog gets so many applications and has no issues. It makes it hard to cut the list down. And there are so many in FBRN right now, I know my foster (having allergy issues) got a total of 30 applications in 4 months. Ruby got 185 in 2 weeks. The review crew was so happy to have her put into pending and no more apps could be taken. Do you know how long it takes to go through 185 apps? It's not a fun job by any means.

Dandruff of the likes you've never seen

And probably never will. Got the electrodes removed this morning. Let me describe how they were attached so you can get an idea of the challenge here. So they have little metal ends and they put goo under them (non sticky goo, it's just for help transmitting the electrical signal) that would be fine if you were just going to lay there for a bit of time. Since this was a 48 hour thing they had to make them stay some how so each one had a rectangle of gauze placed on it and then this epoxy like glue placed on the gauze. They were rock hard by the time I left on Friday night and the glue smelled like something I used in the lab. Well like epoxy actually.
So when I had them taken off this morning (they have a liquid solution that releases the epoxy stuff, ah modern technology) my hair was a mess but it only took 10 minutes rather than th hour it took to put it all on. So I go home and use, literally, the entire water heater tank and just really work on getting the gauze bits out of my hair and off my scalp. It comes out relatively easily but it's so particalized what I really need is an ocd chimpanzee that thinks fleas are little white bits. You literally have to pick out a thousand little bits of torn gauze off individual hairs, it's a bitch. I peeled off a bit more glue off my scalp too which wasn't much fun either. The comb helped a bit, the combs through the hair and then I had to clean the comb. Very tedious. So eventually I needed to give up and blow dry some out and it was snowing white bits of gauze all over the bath room. The dh came in and picked through it some for me but eventually I just put on a little skull cap and we went out to run our errands. I'm sure much will work itself out by tomorrow but dang, it's all over the bathroom!

Multicolored Bride of Predator

Or at least that's what the dh calls the look. The picture was taken Sunday morning, day 2, right before going to have the stuff removed.
So I finally got to see the neurologist 2 weeks ago, 6 months after brain surgery. She's deals solely with epilepsy patients and I think that I'm the only patient she has that has never had a seizure. If you need back story go to my Dec 07 posts, I had emergency brain surgery on Thanksgiving day 07 and they put people on anti seizure meds for 6-12 months when their brain matter has been traumatized. Anyway she was booked up until the beginning of April so that's when I finally got to see her. She's very nice and pretty conservative. She didn't like the fact that I worked full 8 hour days or that my dh was gone during the week so no one was there but the 6 yr old to watch me. Yeah real life, get over it. Oddly she was very happy to hear that my crazy loopy dog is very attentive to my needs when I'm not well. She thinks he'd be of help if I had a seizure. I think he'd be brilliant if I wanted to train him to be some sort of therapy dog but right now, he's just cute when he gets all attentive to mommy. Useful? I think not.
Anyway the doc wanted me to get my blood levels taken, which I did that day, and then get an EEG done. Thank God you can do this on weekends. I now have 24 electrodes super glued to my scalp, with multicolored leads going into a bag I have to carry around. Friday night to Sunday morning. The dd does not want me seen in public, she thinks it looks horrible. I can't see it so what do I care? She's presently out shopping with her dad and I'm at home doing nothing. Fine by me! If I didn't know that taking a nice long nap would make getting to sleep tonight impossible I'd be napping at this very moment. Otherwise my dh got me a great book and I've got the dogs snoring in the background. It could be much worse. Hopefully the EEG comes out normal and then we can get me weened off of the anti-seizure meds. I don't mind being on them, there are no side affects as far as I can tell but I just don't like being on meds if I don't need to be. Plus eventually (not real soon) we want to have another kid and these drugs need to be looong gone from my system before that bridge is crossed. Of course my biological clock is ticking so it's not like I want to be on this drug for too long....
The long wires and super glue aren't that bad all in all. Certainly not as bad as many of the medical procedures I've had done. I'm going to have to have my IUD removed and replaced next month. I am so excited about that appointment I just can't contain myself. Did I mention that the strings are too short to grab on the one I have in now so it's actually going to be some sort of 'dilating procedure'. Oh yeah, real excited about that one.

Let the punishments begin!

So the dh comes home tomorrow. He's been miserable since he left his asthma inhaler and Zyrtec here last weekend. He sounds like crap on the phone. I bet I can make him more miserable once he gets home, I hate that he's left us for so long just for this crappy ass job. He'll get all his meds back in him and we'll put him to work. Did I mention the snake recently? Probably not. She shed again, I walked upstairs the other morning to this nasty horrid fresh putrid snake poo smell. I was already dressed, dog in their crates, on my way out the door and there's this nasty pile of snake poo in her water dish. It was so big and so nasty I could have either dumped it in the sink and rinsed it out or take it outside and hose it out. I took it outside. The rest of the cage needs to be cleaned so that's the dh's first order of business. Also the little dog needs to be washed again. The big psycho with a knife decided to try to kill him 2 nights ago so he's still got saliva fur and the smell of old adrenaline about him. It wasn't pleasant. I hadn't put Jaynie's collar on since his bath last weekend so I couldn't grab him to pull him off. Fortunately he's got great bite inhabition so it's a lot of sound and fury. The dh can bathe the poor little bugar when he gets home too.

My kid is dying to know

where babies come from. Really. She's intent on having a baby sister and yes, we have explained that you don't get to pick, you get what you get. I told her daddy a long time ago that since he's the elementary school teacher (trained at least) that this discussion was his to conquer. And he's conveniently gone right now. I am still telling her that she has to ask daddy. So far I've been able to keep her at bay. And I insist that she not listen to any of her friend's explanations either. They give her all kinds of whacky not right religious info, I don't even want to know what they'll do with the subject of sex. So all she knows is that mommys and daddys make babies and I'm sticking to that story until I absolutely have to elaborate. I won't even get into what the definition of absolutely have to is. Her daddy is so dead when he comes home.

Paintball...and other things in my history

So the dh comes home this week with a paintball magazine. It's a hobby we've done for years now. We we're good friends with the owners of the best paintball field (Velocity) in San Diego and consequently knew a lot of the players that were on the best teams. The best players seem to come out of So Cal, yeah, it's a generalization but a true one. Velocity was frequented by the owner of DYE paintball (Dave Youngblood, nice guy, has cute kids too) and the players on their team. We got to see a lot of prototypes long before they came on to the market. We also got to play with a lot of tourney players (butt heads almost the entire lot of them). We had favorites that were nice of course but there were a ton of little sh#ts that really just needed to be slapped. One of the classic little (emphasis on little) punk a$$ snots was Marcello. We knew Marcello's dad Tony well and he was a really nice guy. Last we had heard Marcello (as a young teen) had left his family and was living with some other ballers. So when the dh brought home the magazine he had to show me this ad...of Marcello...who is now part of Team Ironman. Mind you the last I saw the little butthead (and I'm 5'1" and he was near my size) he was maybe 15. And to see him in those photos is almost creepy. The first thing I asked the dh was "Do you think they packed his shirt to make him look grown up?". If you look at his stats his jersey size is listed as xl and his pants as small. Thing to note, all ballers where xl jerseys. The pants that are small well that's more indicative of real size. Ballers also usually wear baggy pants but their size small fits me perfect. I weigh 120. So I want you to look at that pic of Marcello and ask yourself if they don't stuff his shirt to make that baby look manly. And if you aren't in the paintball know, Team Ironman is one of the ultimate paintball teams. To make it onto that team you have to be very very good. Marcello is a good player but still just one punk a$$ little snot.
And yes, I've played paintball. A lot. And yes, I loved the sport. I was a back player and could go through a case of paint in half a day, damn expensive sport. It all balanced out though, the dh is a front player and barely went through a half a case in a day. Paint goes bad when it gets old so I was just making sure he didn't have any old paint he had to deal with. Not any more though, with balls coming at you at 280 feet per second I don't want to get hit on the front of my head that I had surgery on. My neurologist would be pissed and there's no telling what kind of issues would arise.

I wanted mimosas this morning

But since there's that whole hour long drive to work and work with nasty chemicals thing I thought maybe not today. It's odd too, I'm not an alcohol drinker. Like at all. If I go out with friends at night I'm the only one not drinking. So the fact that I wanted a drink this morning says a lot. Ultimately I think I'm just done with this whole working/single parent thing. Especially since I don't want my dh doing this new career of choice. Did I mention that yesterday he put in a transfer request to work at a max security prison rather than the minimum one that he was assigned to? Yeah, don't even get me started. And I wonder why I'm feeling like having a drink at 5:30am.

Only one lone post today

Because (thankfully) today was a pretty unexciting day. The kid is just like her father, total drama queen. I took her upstairs to take her shower and at some point during said shower the Rox-o-matic (our middle sized boxer dog, rescued from the shelter as a stray and totally emaciated) had knocked the kid's easter basket off of the counter and eaten the last of the solid chocolate easter bunny inside. Bitch. The kid fell completely apart, total meltdown. I, being the loving mother that I am, told her to get over it. We have a house full of chocolate and treats and the dregs of a mostly eaten chocolate bunny were not worth the tears that were streaking down her face. She's missing her dad something awful and it causes her to be a wee bit more pms-y than normal. When I get emotional I get bitchy. When her dad gets emotional he turns into a drama queen. I suppose we're lucky that she takes after her dad. Now I just have 2 DQs in the house. Sadly for them I have no pity. You know, since I'm such the warm fuzzy lovey type. Not. I think the only reason the dh insisted on getting married is because he thinks I'm the type that might eat her young. He wasn't too far off, he's a smart cookie.

What I don't do when he's gone...

In the pst 3.5 weeks the dh has been gone I have come to find that there are things that I just don't do around the house and, strangely enough, I don't think they are things that the dh thought I'd slack off on. He expected me to not wake up in the mornings, kill the kid, and not take out the trash or pick up dog poo. I get up at 5:20 very morning, the kid is fine, the trash goes out 2x a week and the poo is picked up every day. I don't clean the snake cage or feed her (it's a once a week thing, he can do it on the weekends) because that was the deal. I didn't want to get the kid a snake, he did. I like snakes and all I just need another animal like I need another hole in the head (see previous posts on demon foster dog, all my fault for volunteering). I don't get the mail, it's just bills anyway, and I don't do the laundry. The dh takes care of that on the weekends so it's all good. See, and that just goes to show how much the dh still doesn't know about me...

We love our friends

So since I've had to go back to work the dd has to stay in after school care at her school. We have friends that have their kids there too and they are just the sweetest people. One of their sons is in the dd's class and he's the nicest boy. The dh insists that someday their son will marry our dd and that's saying a lot. When the dh and I went to the zoo with the kids class we happened to get their son and we loved it. Made the day soo easy! Any way when our friends pick up their kids they wanted to know if we'd like them to pick up the kid too and have her hang out with them until I can get home from work. I love these people!! We have the most awesome friends here, we're never leaving. They think it's nice of us to have her come over because it's entertainment for their kids (4 with 1 more on the way. All under the age of 7 gah!). We love it because our dd has no siblings and is so sad about it. I need to hurry up and earn money so we can get on with this sibling creating thing! So now she goes home with her friends 3 days a week and it's even the days when she has homework so by the time I get her she's had a snack and finished her hw. How awesome is that? Really now, why would we ever consider living any where else? We love our friends here, they just don't get any better than there awesome people!!