Two Years Ago...

Josephine entered our world, and soon after, threw the international hand gesture for "Rock On", thus assuring us that we did indeed receive the perfect child for our little family.

The Nightcap of Champions.

Okay, it's late and I've had two bourbons, and I am giddy with sleeplessness after seeing Steve through a night of food-poisoning-type behaviour (Butter chicken, again. Good food is not $2.99. Anything for $2.99 is not good food. PLAIN AND SIMPLE) - and I am possibly quite high from the latex paint fumes. In fact, the paint, she is so wonderful that I am verklempt.

But that is not why I am sniffling now. You see, if you know me, you will have heard, at least four times, the story of how every year my mother watches Olympic Figure Skating and dabs her eyes with a dishtowel, muttering about how I could have "gone to the Olympics". I can do a great impression of my typical Italian mother during these moments, with the railing against her ungrateful daughter - you know, the one who does everything wrong, yet can do no wrong in others' eyes? Perhaps you know her - the awkward only child, pushed into skating lessons for the cute outfits and photo ops - the one with perfect chauffered attendance, but without innate talent or adequate practice time - but with more intimidation and gravity than the average...wait a minute...what would convey how graceless and fearful I was...Italian mother living vicariously maybe...yes!...on skates? Ten badges (skill levels), then one out of control flying camel into the boards that showed me how blood bounces on the ice... and I became a quitter before I hit my teens.

But tonight, after watching Sasha Cohen kick ass tonight, I have to tell you...

(whishpers)
sometimes, in my dreams at night, I skate.

Hearts and Other Things Bursting All Over The Place

Perhaps this charming image will keep your hearts molten and oozing sweetness while we're off for a wee bit.

We have to visit a certain grandma this weekend, because SOMEBODY's second birthday is on the twenty-fifth and it's time to cash in. You know - when all of the relatives and friends with children for whom my mother has purchased gifts over the years have to cough up stuff we neither need nor want so that the very Earth itself doesn't spin off its axis with the imbalance from how generous my mother was all of those years ago.

But I shouldn't be mean. Really, I am going straight to hell for that one, because I am also going down there to collect some of the funds being cheerfully and generously donated in order to pay Jim and Jimmy, the two Greek guy painters, who are coming on Monday to change my living/dining room from "Palm Green My Ass" to "Japanese Paper" (aka "A Beige That Flatters My Skin Tone"). The hallway, which was the bigger part of this these-rooms-need-painting-because-they-make-me-queasy-after-three-years-of-these-hideous-colours deal, is going from "Who Wants a Textured Ceiling To Look Like The Inside Of A Terra Cotta Flowerpot" and "This Dark Green Is Usually Reserved For Farm Machinery, Not Walls" is going to become - you guessed it! "Japanese Paper". And the woodwork will all be a crisp decorator white (aka "I'll Have To Dust My Baseboards More Often". It will feel good to live in a house that doesn't give everyone a bilious tinge during cocktail parties.

Choosing colours when you're pregnant and hormonal and then leaving your husband and friends to paint without being there to nitpick, second-guess and micro-manage is never a good idea. Living with the remains of a colour scheme chosen by a depressed fifty-something year old single woman with a penchant for geese in bonnets and stencils is not a good idea for one year, let alone almost four. The combination of the two is very very much not a good thing.

However, living with crappy paint colours for years until they ruin your eyesight and scare your friends, then getting a quote for $3000 not including paint to change them, then getting another quote for $1600 including paint with the promise to do it in TWO DAYS, and your mom winning some money on the ponies - well, that is just how fate tells you that it's now a good idea to make that move. Even if it means pimping your daughter at a luncheon full of people averaging thirty-five times her age - well, that's a small thing compared to the fact that I genuinely believe I will be a much nicer person and better mommy to Josie if our house doesn't look like the paint was chosen by colourblind people, and applied with trowels. I'm saying it will be nice to to have to quickly let visitors know that we are aware of just how wrong the colours are. It's tantalizing to think of all of the other things I might be able to talk about, what with that gaping hole that will be left by not pausing to occasionally dis the existing colour scheme. Oh well, there's still the kitchen.

And so, we will be busy for the next while. Boo Boo's little surgery has been neatly timed so that he won't be around to get his little black hairs all over the nice new paint job, or attempt to kill Jim and Jimmy while they paint above the stairs thus causing us to be sued for millions of dollars we don't have. I thank everyone who actually felt the need to email me privately regarding the status of my cat's gonads, and hope this update is sufficient. I shall inquire whether or not they can be preserved much like some keep their children's dried umbilical stumps, and if so, I shall offer them to the person who best composes a poem, limerick, sonnet or haiku that captures the sentiment surrounding their loss. Please leave your "Ode to Boo Boo's Castration" in the comments. The winner will be decided by the number of potentially offensive Google hits it contains. That should keep y'all busy until it's time to post again.

It Runs In The Family

I'm going to give fair warning, that reading the post below might cause you to develop a twitch in your eye, reach down and pull off your shoe with the intent to wing it at - or perhaps grab the nearest newspaper and roll it up ready to swat - your romantic partner and it will be all my fault.

Yesterday Steve came home with yet another Valentine's Day present (a Nina Simone CD) and a lovely card. I cannot tell you what was IN the card, because sometimes the responsibility for the overflow of tears and the melting hearts is just too great for one person to bear, and so I must try to protect you. I'm still cleaning up after yesterday's post.

But the outside of the card was simple and gorgeous, and handmade (as usual). A heart, and T L (for True Love - a running theme for us) and I admired it, then moved on, then came back to it and wondered how he made it. Sometimes he hand-letters, sometimes he uses his graphic design skills, sometimes he prints out the words in a great font and cuts them with an exacto knife and uses that as a stencil - he's always creative. But this time...it looked familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was about it that I recognized.

Then he told me. On his lunch he went to a convenience store and bought two potatoes (and quite honestly, was flabbergasted that they cost $2.50 there) and took them back to the studio and carved them for the card. It caused quite a stir, apparently. "You're not really doing that for her card, are you?" "Wow! I haven't done that since grade school!" and so on. Next thing you know, other graphic artists, account managers, and various studio and ad agency types were running around with a potato heart and ink pads and making cards for their loved ones.

When he told me about that last night, I said to him "You KNOW I'm blogging about this right?", and he pulled the potatoes out of his bag for me, because he already knew.

That, my friends, is TRUE LOVE.

It's Not JUST Valentine's Day...

On February 13, 1996, I was dropping off my new crush at his apartment around 11:43 pm. We'd had a few dates since we had met the December before, and they'd been chaste, yet electric. And well, having been part of a decaying marriage prior to meeting him meant I hadn't um, "gotten any" in about two years. So as the awkward, nose-bumping first kiss passed (and you know it's love when you bump noses on the first kiss) and the clock ticked into the wee small hours, turning into an already lovely night into Valentine's Day, I hoped to be invited in. Then, he disengaged himself, saying "Sometimes when you're dealt a winning hand, you just have to walk away from the table, and hope those cards come up again." And walked into his house, with the back of his coat just covered in dog hair. He later told me he went to work the next day not knowing it looked like a yellow lab exploded all over his back. I guess he and I were both walking on clouds that February 14, which feels like a hundred years ago instead of ten.

And so when one day soon after I received some red roses, with one yellow, just to be quirky and they included a card with some lyrics from the Replacements song "Valentine", the romance caused me to swoon.

Well you wish upon a star that turns into a plane
And I guess that's right on par
Who's left to blame?

If you were a pill
I'd take a handful at my will
And I'd knock you back with something sweet and strong
Plenty of times you wake up in February make-up
Like the moon and the morning star you're gone

(chorus:)

Tonight makes love to all your kind
Tomorrow's makin' Valentines


Hey you pop up in this old place
So sick and so divine
Are you strung out on some face?
Well I know it ain't mine

If you were a pill, I'd take a handful at my will,
And I'd knock you back with something sweet and strong
Trouble keeping your head up when you're hungry and you're fed up,
Like a moon and a lone star you're gone

(chorus)

If you were a pill, I'd take a handful at my will,
And I'd knock you back with something sweet as wine
Yesterday was theirs to say, this is their world and their time
Well if tonight belongs to you, tomorrow's mine

(chorus)

And the years passed and we got married:




And then we had a Josephine. And when the flowers arrived this morning, this time the yellow rose stood for a fuzzy little yellow head.

Love to Love Me, Baby

Pack 'Em Up!

The Valentine's Day Rumble Is On- It was as close as I could get to being a Roller Girl. And so I took the Cha Cha Challenge, and ye shall witness my part in the blood and thunder.

Starting Saturday, Mommybloggers.com will roll with The Valentine's Day Rumble. Beginning at 8 am, CST, they will be posting an entry every hour, until 8 pm, CST. They will do this each day for the next four days, beginning Saturday, February 11th, and continuing through Tuesday, February 14th. My jam is on Sunday at Noon, CST. Which means I have no idea when it's posted EST, where my pack might care.

I had two or three or fifty possible entries in my head, but the one that clawed its way to the front, though sloppy, was heartfelt. Especially the threatening once again to do away with the cat's nuts part. Boo Boo's appointment is on Monday at 11, for a little consult in Spank Alley.

Thanks for giving the whip, Mommybloggers. Those chicks are solid.











Talk the Talk:

Blood and Thunder:  Practice drill in which all skaters take the track and proceed to knock the hell out of each other until only one skater remains standing.

Cha Cha Challenge:  Anything offensive and hard to accomplish, especially in public.

Clawing/Swimming:  A jammer pulling her way through a tough pack.

Give a Whip:  An assist move in which a skater extends her arm and whips her jammer around the track, propelling her with momentum and quite possibly taking out unsuspecting blockers in her path.

Jam:  A single play in roller derby, usually lasting 1-2 minutes.

Pack:  The defensive skaters, including three blockers and a leading pivot.

Pack 'Em Up!:  Fight yell by Ref Masterblader before jam.

Riding the Lip:  One skate on, one skate off the track - now illegal for jammers.

Solid:  A great compliment about a skater's stability and toughness. i.e.: "She's solid."

Spank Alley:  Where you go when you've been bad.

Très Jolie.

Mmmm...sweet potato pie.

If You Love Something...

And that something is a toddler, do not set her friend ("MYYY TEND! MYYY TEND TURWKEEEEEE!") the "turkey" free (in the compost bin).



Spend a good long time explaining that Option A is NOT to keep the shrivelly thing under the throw pillow on the sofa overnight again - it is to join its burnt baked sweet potato french fry friends on the top of the pile, and that Option B, which should lead to a lovely vine that will look nice in the garden this summer, is a pretty good option.

Love Can Be The Pitts.

I am still enjoying the "Josephine and her Sweet Potato Turkey" engagement, currently playing the Good home theatre. Truly, I've neither encouraged or discouraged this attachment - I've just observed and have been helpful when asked. So the turkey/sweet potato did go sledding last night:



And was happily being played with this afternoon:



Then I took out another one to simply write a quick post about, "By the way, look at the size of these sweet potatoes! They're HUGE!" when Josie spied it. It was love at first sight:



And looking at her with her new love, I'm reminded of how I remain "Team Aniston":

Turkey is in the Eye of the Beholder.

It's not that I haven't got a lot to post about, I do. But my days have been taken up with so many things. For example, I have to write emails to my husband like this:

Dear Steve,

Your daughter was helping me make dinner. She noticed that a piece of sweet potato looked like a turkey. Well, to her it did. I know. Subsequently, she has been carrying it around, tucking it in, and reading stories to it. She is now feeding it in the kitchen. She is feeding it sweet potato. On the plus side, it is very affectionate and has given me many kisses. So um, don't be weirded out when you get home, okay?

Love,
Pea

PS-

It is now eating hay in an imaginary barn and it made a poopie.



So I will post more soon, and it will probably be along these lines.