the great switcharoo

now, far be it for me to bash childhood icons, but this year i am pissed at santa. granted, i am the one limping it along for the eight year old, but it seems he has me out witted.

the boy has asked me for an additional pet for months. apparently the fuzzy bitches aren't living up to their snuggle potential. all this time i have empahtically said "NO". so, my sweet lovely child writes his letter to santa this christmas and includes "i have been very good at taking care of the cats. i feed them every day. and even thou my mom says she won't get one, i would like you to bring me a fish". well shit balls. do i tell him santa isn't real or suck it and have an aquatic creepie under the tree christmas morning? yeah, you guessed it.

and he LOVED it. LOVED LOVED LOVED it. named it irvin, which actually means water (he put some thought into this). and when we went away for new year's weekend, he bought him a food disk.

now, irvin was alive when we got home. and the next morning. but that night while my boy is in the tub, the girl brings me the bowl...with a lifeless floater...and hisses "REPLACE HIM" damn it. knowing that this will absolutley destroy the child who spends time reading to the bowl, huny and i quickly run to walmart to replace the corpse.

not a one of those suckers look like irvin. there is one who is the same colors, only his orange, silver and black are on the top instead of on the belly, and this fish, i'm not kidding you here, is maybe only about a third the size. i am in freak out mode by now, not wanting to deal with the breakdown that will occur if he finds out his pet is dead. huny points out, the boy really only saw the fish for about fifteen hours before taking off to gramma's for the week, then going for the new years excursion. oofta. so we buy the not even close to the original irvin 2 and slip him into the bowl before dom can notice he's gone.

amazingly, it works. dominic is so unfamiliar with irvin 1, that irvin 2 flies under the radar for about a week. dom reads to him, spends time sitting and staring at the bowl, and talks to  irvin 2.

then, the boy presents this quandary to me...

"mom, do you think irvin is okay?"

"ummm, he looks fine. why do you ask?"

"i don't know mom. i don't think he eats while i'm gone. he looks like he's lost weight."

driver's education

monday i pulled my two year old, yet impecable "big blue bitch" out of the garage...and ran smack into the basketball hoop, which apparently had been moved into the driveway by the spawn over the weekend. now since i wasn't expecting this little treat to start off my morning, it startled the hell outa me. so my natural response was to, whoops, jerk the wheel of the car...thus running it into the garage door. being the calm individual i am, i muttered some random explicatives. okay, i think i hollered "FUUUUCK!". i got out of the car, and yup, scraped up the left rear bumper. i didn't have the heart to look at the front, so plopped back door in the car and pushed the garagedoor opener. and nothing. i poked it vigorously several times before giving up and releasing the door mannually and texting sweetie to tell him i'd bunged the car AND the house.

i went to drop the spawn and low and behold, the boy does not have school. is presidents day really a skip-worthy holiday??? bah.

sweetie called at lunch and told me he had fixed the door. i sing his praises as THE MAN and then he says "how bad is the car beck?". i answer that i don't know. honestly, i don't. i was afraid to look. and so i ask why.

"because pumpkin...you ripped the sensor out of the wall and tore the wires free, so i suspect your bumper may be hanging off".

gets that from her mamma!

more tests for miss bailey this morning, which means yet ANOTHER pregnancy test. we have become accustomed to this, however, the techs usually aren't.

this morning's phlebotomist couldn't have been more than 21...22..and she asked bai if she knew what we were drawing her blood for, and nervously looked at me after asking. "yeah," my thirteen year old mumbles, after all, it is 6AM, "my fourth pregnancy test in three weeks". and the phlebo goes completely white.

"you know, " i say, "if any of these come back positive, you won't need any more thyroid studies..." and the tech looks up at me, obviously horrified.

bailey notices she looks panicy and says "she means because i'll be DEAD."

metal detectors

when i got divorced, i think it hit my father as hard as it hit me. he and the ex were best buddies...hunting, fishing trips, vacations. and because i am his little girl. still to this day, at nearly forty, i am "daddy's girl". so i was not the least bit surprised when he offerred to come be my moral support at my divorce proceedings. unfortunately, because of the nature of the last few months of our marriage, i knew there were a lot of things i wasn't prepared for my father to hear, even though i'm sure he already suspected or knew most of them. so i tried to talk him out of it.

we stood together outside the courtroom, and i watched his face fall, then the disgust rise up as the demon groom walked past us. i felt horrible, knowing my father had lost not just his son-in-law, but his trust in a good friend. so i turned to him one last time and said, "dad, you don't have to do this."

my father hugged me tighter than he ever has before and said, "huny, of course i'm going in there. i'm your father and you need me." and then he hugged me even tighter...

...and said "besides, who else is going to smuggle the gun into the courtroom?"

extortion

a couple years ago, miss bailey took the american red cross babysitting course. she learned a lot, and despite her shortcomings, she's actually very good with children and can be an excellent sitter.

now, the key for me, is if i've asked to watch her brother as a favor, or as an actual sitter. this is directly in proportion with the quality of care i get from her. money equals qualified sitter. no money equals older sister bossing little brother.

one evening, on very short notice, my sitter was unable to make it, and i was forced to ask miss bailey to help. this threw in another dimension, as she sometimes has transition problems. not that nite. she was quite agreeable to it. i asked her how much she wanted for the hour and a half that i would be gone. after a brief pause, she retorted "twenty bucks." to which i immediately replied, "are you kidding me???" without skipping a beat, that child said, "since you said it that way, thirty. i am my mother's daughter you know." and grinned and walked away.

your sarcasm or mine?

children's hospital went okay today. we got some answers, yet still need a nuc med test next week. turns out miss bailey has hyperthyroidism and a "diffuse toxic goiter", and the doc said something about it being "lumpy" (yes, this is actually the phrase he used) and not being totally comfortable with that.

unfortunately, children's couldn't get us in today as there are diet requirements and it's a two day study, so we decided to schedule in lincoln. scheduler tracy got us all squared away and was giving us our pre-scan instructions. miss bailey has to have another pregnancy test (we find this uproariously funny, and mildly annoying). when they got to the prep, they of course told her no gum or irritants, to which bailey mumbles "Well i guess i won't have a cigarette for breakfast that morning". the scheduler laughed and said, "yeah and you'd better skip that beer before you go too."

i love people with a good sense of humor. i mean come on...working at children's can not be a particularly happy job. i'm sure it's rewarding, but a good chuckle has got to make it less depressing to be around all those poor sugars and their health problems. hooray scheduler tracy! and to my daughter for being a total smartass!

i'm sure that's not the normal response...

today, i got a phone call to pre-register bailey for her appointment at children's hopsital tomorrow. we got to the point where the gal was verifying insurance, and they had everything right-id number, date of birth-except my ex's name. they had it as nathan...which it isn't. i corrected her and she asked if i was sure about his name. "well," i replied, "unless he lied about THAT for 14 years as well, which is a possiblity, yes. however, if this nathan is a better father than he is, i'll take him."

that poor woman took a good two minutes to stop laughing and regain her composure so she could could the correct information.