Things I've been reminded about by an 11 month old

The Peanut

A couple of weeks ago I started taking Haven for overnight visits and things have gone very well. Although when she was immobile, she was much easier to care for in that I could place her in one spot when I went to the bathroom and when I'd return, she'd still be there. Now I have to take her with me because OhMyGawd if she's not in the same room as me all the time, she gets a bit crabby and will let me know of her unhappiness. I'm not complaining at all. I just wonder how the hell I managed way back when I had three little ones and nature called, or even how I got stuff done in general.

The good part about mobility is that she's tons more fun. I love getting down on the floor and just watching her play and playing with her.

She loves boxes and size does not matter. She will use that box to put things in and take things out, climb on and off, stand up and push it all around the house. Who needs real toys?

I get the biggest kick when she follows me from room to room, sometimes with a big silly grin on her face, snorting like a bull charging a matador. I'll shout out, "Oh no, here comes Snorty-Buckwalter!", which makes her collapse mid-crawl with laughter.

She likes to share now. Whatever she is eating, she'll stick her little hand out and offer you some first. And since she started eating big people food she's gained a pound or two. Her thighs actually have a couple of rolls and she's getting a double chin.


Things I forgot about that Haven has reminded me of:

Seeing things through her eyes; The simplest things in life can bring big joy like the sound of a wind-chime or watching bubbles form and pop in a puddle when it's raining, or the soft tickle of a cat's tail swishing gently on your arms.

Babies lick everything, EVERYTHING!

Babies are fast. The are capable of slapping a spoonful of oatmeal out of your hand before you can say, "oh shit".

Just because a size 2 diaper fits them comfortably, does not mean it will contain all they have to offer.

Bubble baths are awesome.

Babies like to eat bubbles.

Messiness isn't the end of the world and housework is over-rated.


When our visit ends and I bring her home, the first questions my daughter asks is, "How was she? Was she good?" My response is always the same. "How on earth can she be anything but good? Ask me when she's two".

Who'd a thunk

Some things I learned by being to lazy to go to the market:

Coffee isn't really all that bad with honey.

You really do only need a pea size dollop of toothpaste to get the job done.

Concerning hairspray...less is more.

I am capable of making a lunch out of peanut butter crackers and coming away satisfied.

It's possible to eat Frosted Mini Wheats without milk.

Toilet paper is a perfectly acceptable substitution for nose tissues.

Napkins are NOT a good substitute for toilet paper.

Same goes for paper towels.

There is no good, acceptable substitution for Q-Tips for the swabbing of the ears.

Popcorn and Devil Dogs should not be eaten as a dinner... more than twice a month.

That is all.

No thanks, I'm full

For dinner tonight I had an entire bag of popcorn with 2 tablespoons of melted butter tossed in just so and a devil dog.

Immediately after, the sky opened with an ear-splitting thunder of anger followed by a freaky light show.

The cat is nowhere to be found.

Really, this just happened.

It's still happening.

I'm suffering from...

... a new disease.

I received an e-mail from a good friend the other day. She was inviting me for a couple of girl's night out this week. This was my response to her.

Hi T,

Sorry I haven't responded to your invite sooner. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it as I am suffering from a nasty case of "Summer Broke-i-tis". This is a terrible condition that has afflicted me for two...count 'em 1...2, two summers in a row. My daily allergy pill doesn't seem to be helping at all. I'm hoping for vaccine, followed by an annual booster to be available soon.

I hope you have fun though, and please tell all the girls I said hello.

Miss ya,
TN

Now just to be clear, I'm not upset about not being able to go out. A bit bummed yes, but that was the price I knew I'd have to pay to have this much time off. As long as my bills are paid and I have a little extra to spend on Haven, I'm good.

Last summer I worked my hiney off, but I was in the process of paying off a very large debt and had less to live on than I do this summer.

I was really quite of proud of myself for going without all the extras, yet having everything I needed. And I'm doing it again this summer but the difference being is the time. I have lots of free time. I haven't had that luxury in many years and I'm loving it. I have been taking Haven a few times a week and we've been having a blast together. Watching her grow and develop into such a sweet, charming little being is just blowing my mind and that's priceless.

Today I took Haven to my favorite Chinese restaurant again and we had the same server. His name is Raymond and doesn't speak English very well, but one thing he made very clear was that he was smitten with her. He just lingered at our table whenever he checked on us. As soon as he went to touch her face like he did last time , I stopped him, politely. And just to note, the food is always good but the service isn't usually that great. You're lucky if they check back after they drop off your food. I could tell by the look on her face that she was getting uncomfortable with his attention and I thought she was going to start to cry when all of a sudden she looked up at him and waved bye-bye. He laughed and said, "ha, ha...she tell me to go". Indeed, she did.

When we walked up to the front to pay, another server, a woman, was making a fuss about Haven's eyebrows. Now I know this little girl has got some brows and always has. Since the day she was born that was one feature that stuck out. At first I didn't know what the lady was getting at because she was speaking her language to another server, but she said to me, "oh no...they perfect...I never see the eyebrows on the baby like that before...she got two...like they pluck". And then she proceeded to run her finger along my Sugar Cookie's eyebrow. What the hell is it with people just freely touching small babies they don't know?...especially on the face!

Mutants in my garden.

I was giving my garden a good inspection and pollinating my tomato plants by hand about an hour ago. I've been doing that every couple of days because I want the maximum tomatoes I can possibly get. A friend told me of this little trick. You just take a Q-Tip and gently touch each flower with it. So far it's working and here is proof that my garden is still alive and thriving.


As I was doing my thorough look-see, I discovered something a little odd about two of my smaller sunflower plants. They are mutants. I don't know how this happened. As far as I know, each stem is only suppose to have one flower on it. This one here has four. That's right. Four flower buds. I'm not sure if the plant will be able to handle the extra weight as each flower should grow to at least 5 inches in diameter. I may have to tie it up to help it along. The sunflower's in the back row are still growing their leaves and nowhere near ready to develop buds yet. Those are the one's I'm most excited about.


And would you just lookie here. Tomatoes! I've got actual tomatoes! I can't believe I am growing and keeping a vegetable, (or is it a fruit) alive. I've counted 11 so far and there are plenty of tiny yellow flowers sprouting up everyday.


Then, as I was getting ready to take a front-on picture of the garden, this mother-fucking horsefly came at me and impaled the underside of my upper arm with it's gnarly-assed teeth or stinger or whatever the hell it bites you with.

Edited for photo credit: (horsefly photo courtesy of extension.missouri.edu)

If I didn't have my camera in my hand let me just tell you... I would have punched this miserable little cocksucker squarely between is buggy, bulging eyes while simultaneously delivering a good swift kick to it's crotch. And then after stunning it, I would have squashed it into the ground with my shoe protected foot, but like I said...I had my camera in my hand.

We got history.

I'm sure I've mentioned here before that my car and I have been through a lot together. I bought her brand-spankin' new back in 2000. Although her car payments have cost me dearly, she's been paid off for three years. The only things I've had to have done were regular maintenance, replace the tires a couple-few times, a couple set of brakes, a new battery and replace an exhaust flange to the tune of $70. Then last week she cost me just under $60. Really, considering her age, that's not bad at all. And as I'm typing this, believe me when I say that I'm periodically pausing to knock on my wooden desk between words. She only has a mere 85,000 miles on her.

This is the point when I would usually think about getting a new car, but I'm not. There is something about this car and I just don't want to give her up. She had been very loyal to me and I think she deserves the same from me. She recently started to show her age in the form of surface rust in a few spots but all in all, she's pretty and classy and reliable, and paid for. She's had many bad things happen to her that were not her fault at all, and she still managed to never let me down.

When she was about a year old, LL and I took her to Cape Cod for vacation. The day we were leaving the hotel for home, I looked in my side-view mirror and noticed that the back door did not look smooth at all. I got out and took a better look. The night before some people must have gotten into a fight in the parking lot and somehow involved my car. My rear door was covered in very large body dents, I had a nobody to blame, and a $500 deductible.

That same night when we arrived back home we decided to eat dinner out on our last day of vacation. As we were enjoying our meal the waitress came over and asked if we owned the Toyota parked outside. I flew out of my seat and went out to take a peek, afraid to see the damage. Thank heavens someone saw the entire thing happen and wrote down the license plate. Police were called, photo's were taken, and a report was filed.

Later on that evening my phone rang and it was the man who hit my car. He crushed in the rear quarter panel by the way. He let me know that the police were just at his house and they gave him my name and phone number. (That's a small town for ya) He stated over and over again how sorry he was and that he had no idea that he hit me, (the lady who saw it happen told me earlier she couldn't believe he just drove off because his car lifted my car off the ground) and told me his insurance would cover all of the damage. Once he told me his name I realized exactly who he was. I had seen him at the restaurant bar drinking heavily and saw him sort of stumble out. Actually, he was my old neighbor who lived at the bottom of my hill at my old house. This man was always a respected citizen in our little community. He was in his 70's back then and had lost his wife of many years prior. To ease his pain he took to drinking. Some days I would pass his house and see his car barely in his driveway. Some times it would be half in/half out. Other times it would be half in the driveway and half on his lawn. And then there were the times he was having a really bad night and the car wouldn't be in the driveway at all. It would be parked on the lawn with the front tire against his porch step.

The damage was over $1000 and I didn't have to pay a deductable. I found a body shop that agreed to fix the rear quarter panel and all the dents in my door for the same price. Huzzah!

About six months after that little fiasco someone decided to drive their big black vehicle into my front bumper. The damage wasn't too severe and felt I could live with it until I had the money to get it fixed, but something else happened before I got the chance.

My car was parked at work and our handicapped van driver didn't see it and tore my front bumper almost clean off. Really, it was just hanging there all crooked and smashed.

I saw our driver walking down the hall and I kiddingly said, "hey, shouldn't you be driving that van right about now"? He looked at me and started laughing. When he stopped I asked him what was so funny. His reply was, "well, I was on my way but had to come back inside to report that I just hit your car". Oh.Fuck.NO

At any rate, the school insurance paid to have my bumper replaced at the tune of about $2400 and all was good. What more could happen to this car. Each time something happened, I notified my insurance company like the good little policy holder that is I. After this one, I asked the lady that was taking my information what the odds were that this would all happen to the same car and if she thought I should just get rid of it. She told me that the odds were clearly in my favor now and should definitely keep it.

I picked my car up from the body shop around 4:30 on a Friday and she looked beautiful. All shiny and sparkly, with no dents, nicks or scratches. She looked perfect. They even washed and waxed her for me.

The next day LL and I were stopped at the bottom of our hill waiting to make a left hand turn. As I was coming to a stop I noticed a big red truck had pulled off to the side of the road just past the hill to pick up some guy that was standing there. Well, Big-Red decided to change direction by backing up the hill. He had bags of garbage in the bed of the truck that were blocking his back
window and never saw that we were there. The only thing I was able to do was lay down on my horn and scream at the top of my lungs for him to stop but he never heard my screams or the horn. He nearly came inside my car with the ass-end of his truck. He drove completely down the passenger side of my car, taking off my side view mirror in the process. I was driving but LL was just about in my lap when all was said and done. That one did damage to the tune of $4000. The guy was one of our local EMT's and a few months after the accident he instructed the CPR class that I had to take. He could not/would not look me in the eyes during the class and never spoke of the accident. Come to think of it, he never even said he was sorry at all, ever.

All was good after that until two summers ago.

As I was slowing down getting ready to stop for a red light, I checked my rear-view mirror to be sure the person behind me had the same plans as me. And what do you think I saw? Go on. Guess.

I saw this car barrelling down the road with the driver's upper body and head leaned almost completely over to the passenger side floor.

Oh no. Fuckety-fuck. Here we go again. BAM!

Now, let me just get some White-Out to clean up my forehead.

WAHOO! I'm not a loser anymore. My car is finally fixed so today I took it back for inspection. No more big-fat REJECT sticker on my windshield, or letter L on my forehead...oh, no sirree. It only took me six weeks to get the job done but, hey.

I flat out refuse to pay garage or dealership prices so I googled the crap out of what was wrong, including finding diagrams and how-to's, and other information I thought LL might need to learn about so he could properly fix my car.

He didn't want anything to do with this project but I told him that if he could self-teach his bad-ass self to be an all out computer nerd-tech-geek, then he sure as hell could learn to fix my car and that I had the utmost faith in his ability. And so he did. I love that man.

The only thing I had to do was go the the Toyota dealership and pick up the part which was under $60, thank Baby J cuz this woman is broke.

A couple of weeks after my car failed emissions inspection, I had Haven with me and was stopped at a red light getting ready to turn into our local Wally World when my car began making this ungodly, loud grinding noise. The entire car shook and no amount of turning up my radio was going to fix it. I sensed it was something to do with my exhaust...well praying actually, because even I know that a car won't just stop running with a bad exhaust. Loud yes, but up and die, not likely. And I had the baby with me and no cell phone. I would have been screwed, with a capital SCREW.

Turned out that a couple of bolts that held up my heat shield decided to shit the bed on me so it was resting nicely atop my muffler or some such part.

LL fixed that too. Did I mention that I love that man?