"I painted stripes on the family cat, broke two teeth only yesterday...

...I'm the angel in the Christmas play." Angel in the Christmas Play by Gayla Peevey.

Apparently our little baby face doesn't think so much of my Christmas list for him, so he wrote a letter to Santa to correct it. :)

Dear Santa
I'm sure you are aware that my mother has sent out "my" list of presents and while the intentions are good, I really am not interested in footy-sleepers or a lightweight travel stroller. I am 14 months old now, and I've been VERY good,  barring a few incidents when I was teething; but no one could hold that against me, right? There are the usual things I'd prefer - wrapping paper and boxes, naturally - but I have a few other things I would really like for Christmas this year which are listed below. Thank you so much, Santa, and Merry Christmas!

1. I would like quality time with THIS cat. She doesn't like me. I can have the other anytime I want, so naturally I am much more interested in this one. 

2. I would love a few of these refillable wall-mounted entertainment devices. For some reason, although there seem to be an endless supply of the white papery things, I am forever thwarted in my attempts to utilize this fascinating device. 

3. Time under here. It's obviously a doorway into Narnia, or my parents wouldn't be so desperate to keep me from it.

4. Open access to this drawer. Obviously it's full of candy.

5. This computer cord, to chew and play with to my heart's content.

6. A selection of these. Not sure what they are, but they are the perfect size to stick my little fingers in that hole. 

7. This Interactive Entertainment System (which is also self-cleaning!). All those little pieces and parts and things to take out and throw on the floor and sort! And yet my parents are forever hoarding the pleasures of this device for themselves. Rude.

8. These. They magically contain people sometimes, I've distinctly heard my dad talking in one and I often hear from a variety of Grandmas, Grandpas, and Aunts. I would like to have my own personal human miniaturization convenience device, but I would also like access to everyone else's whenever I happen to notice one.

9. A crate of these. Do you have any idea how fun it is to take all the separate tissues out and tear them up? Hours of wholesome family fun.

10. Access to this. Again, so many individual pieces, all so shiny, and with convenient cabinet doors that I can already open and close myself. And yet for some reason mom shrieks every time I come near it. 

11. These. Dad's "work" rattle. Not sure why it's so special to him, but you'd think he could share. 

12. Three words: Cords and buttons. Look at all the lovely buttons and delightful cords to push and pull! I know for a fact that some of them cause MOVIES to play on that big screen, and they make fun little beeping noises, too. Also, there's a cool little drawer that goes in and out. What's not to love?

13. This. It's not like anyone else wants it! I just want to go through it and maybe create some original art with whatever is in there. But my parents are forever stifling my creativity in this area. I don't know why. Half the stuff in there came from me anyway.

Thank you so much, Santa, and Merry Christmas!
Love,
James

So there you have it. :P

"I wanna stay home today...

...don't wanna go out." Stay Home by Self.

Can I tell you a somewhat personal and disgusting story?

I mean, it's not about me, obviously. It's about another pregnant friend and her husband and their two pet cats. And stuff. And her name is, um, Emmaline and his name is, uh, Brian, and their cats are named, shall we say, Flabby and Tabby.

So the "ick" in "morning sick" had been hitting Emmaline pretty hard for a few weeks, during which everyone rallied sweetly and helped with housework and cooking and such, Brian was doing an awesome job taking care of everything, and Flabby and Tabby were very considerate, for cats.

But Brian worked crazy hours with his job, and of course that meant he couldn't keep on top of everything, so some stuff got a little behind, like the regular cleaning of the bathrooms and cleaning out of the fridge and so on. And Tabby was a fairly new addition to the family, and he and Flabby weren't exactly friends yet, fighting with very little provocation.

One particular night, Brian got home at midnight from work, after having worked more than 12 hours that day, and he had to get up and work again at 7:30 the next morning. He crawled into bed and Emmaline and Brian and Flabby and Tabby all quickly fell asleep.

Now, Brian had a new phone with a new ringtone. It sounded like a bunch of gorillas fighting monster frogs in the Amazon while tribal natives played background drums and some lost tourist joined in with a saxophone. I tell you this only so you understand how unpleasant it was to hear this ringtone when one was sleeping. At 1:30 in the morning.

At the sound of the feuding primates and amphibians, Flabby and Tabby were thrown into a tizzy and started brawling, Emmaline nearly had a heart attack, and it turned out to be work calling, so Brian had to get up, get dressed, and go out and look for a guy whose wife claimed he was missing. An hour or so later Brian came home again, informed his sleepy (but curious) wife that the husband was intentionally missing, with another woman, and they promptly fell asleep again. Flabby and Tabby were locked downstairs to aid in the (hopeful) peace of the rest of the night.

Approximately thirty minutes after they fell asleep this time, the natives struck up their tune again, the frogs and gorillas went at it, and the lost tourist played his sax. From the stairs Emmaline could hear "Thump-thump-howl-hiss-growl-thump-thump," and Brian accidentally knocked the phone off his bedside table in his sleepy attempt to grab it, so the sound went on and on as he stumbled out of bed and sought the device blindly on hands and knees. He finally found it, said some unkind words, answered, and was told that he had another call, this time from the husband.

Brian went downstairs ("Thump-howl-growl-thump") and dealt with this situation. Emmaline fell asleep, briefly, then woke up as Brian returned.

"The guy found his truck had all the windows broken out of it. I told him his wife owned half the truck and unfortunately could do what she wanted with it and he can't do anything about it. I told him not to call again unless it's an emergency until tomorrow during the daytime."

Before he'd finished the last sentence, Brian was asleep, Emmaline was falling asleep, and the lack of thumps and growls seemed to indicate that Flabby and Tabby were also asleep.

At 6:30am Brian's alarm went off, and after several successive snoozes and grumblings, he stumbled out of bed to get ready for work again. Emmaline kissed him goodbye, and went back to sleep. Flabby and Tabby were allowed back upstairs, where they promptly fell to fighting and messing around in the blinds making noise. Emmaline got up, opened the curtains for the cats, and fell asleep as they lay peacefully in their separate sunbeams.

Emmaline's tummy started complaining. She took her nausea pill, made a piece of toast, drank a little juice, and immediately knew that breakfast was, alas, not going to stay down today.

She ran to the bathroom.

The bathroom that was past due the normal cleaning.

The bathroom that wouldn't have been so bad if she wasn't already about to toss her cookies.

The bathroom where Brian, so sleep deprived and exhausted, had used the toilet and forgotten to flush.

About five minutes later, after several flushings and throwing up intermittently in the toilet and nearby trash can, depending on which one made her less sick in the moment, and once there was not a drop of liquid or a crumb of food left in her body, Emmaline looked up from her collapsed position on the rug.

Flabby was sitting on the sink above her, looking down, very concerned.

Tabby was on the rug next to her, looking up, very unconcerned.

After seeing that Emmaline appeared to survive her trauma, Flabby jumped down, to be attacked by Tabby, and they happily tussled their way out of the bathroom to another part of the house.

There apparently was a little something left in Emmaline's stomach to toss, which she promptly did, and then she crawled back to bed.

From which position she texted her sweet husband Brian and asked him to please clean the bathroom as soon as he could after work.

Poor Brian.

Poor Emmaline.

Bad kitties.

Love!

"A dream is a wish your heart makes...

...when you're fast asleep." A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes from Disney's Cinderella.

I get very excited about some things.

I get excited about things like lip gloss, kittens, and flowers, and surprises, and Kirsten Bell*, and Cinderella. If Kirsten Bell* dressed up as Cinderella, wearing lip-gloss and brought me a bouquet of flowers and a kitten as a surprise I'd probably die and go straight to heaven, right then out of the thrill of it all. Ask my husband and he will tell you it is true.

Thanks to Twitter, the amazing social interactive media tool, I can un-creepily stalk some of these things that make me happy. Ok, maybe not really SOME of these things...maybe just Kristen Bell*. And may I say, I do not tweet at people all the time, like, I literally never had til the other day. Then she said something about taxes and being the outspoken conservative that I am, I had to say SOMETHING.

And guess what?

SHE TWEETED BACK AT ME!!! EEEEEH!

So I know I'm supposed to act like gorgeous and talented actresses who are hilarious and star in my favorite detective tv shows tweet at me all the time but...I was excited. Like, so excited I called three friends and screamed at them.  Ok, actually, it was only one friend, but I screamed a lot. And she screamed a lot.

All that to say, I found a clip about Kirsten Bell* having a sloth meltdown (you'll see...) and I laughed so hard I cried.

There are a lot of possible explanations for why I laughed until I cried.  It is possible that it is as funny as I think it is. It is also possible that I just get a huge kick out of Kristen Bell* and anything with kills me because she's so spastically cool. There's also a slight possibility that I completely identify with her in this clip...which may also explain why I love Kristen Bell* so much.

Anyhow, here's a little segment about Kristen Bell's* Sloth Meltdown when her boyfriend got her a super-thoughtful birthday gift.

So, now you see why she is so awesome.

This is sort of like what happened to me, only in my case Ryan took me to Disney Princess Presents "Dreams Do Come True" on ice for our one year anniversary last year. I couldn't stop crying for like an hour. And he kept getting me stuff...like a Tinkerbell snowcone and a Micky Mouse Lemonade to make me feel better...and I just kept crying harder. He was like, "What did I do wrong????!" Nothing, sweetheart, you did perfectly.

When I saw Cinderella come on I started crying again, btw.

Do you guys handle surprises better than me and Kirsten Bell?

<3 Much love!

*Btw, I don't endorse her entirely; there are certainly some mature and inappropriate parts she's taken or things she's done...but overall I am a huge fan and I'm not ashamed. But be warned - not all her stuff is family brand content.

"Tore through a cornfield...

...out the other side she was hollerin', 'Faster'." What Was I Thinking by Dierks Bentley.

(Also entitled, "Grampa's Bonus")

I got up this morning smelling the wonderful morning fragrances I will forever associate with Granma's house--coffee, toast, applesauce, and sizzling bacon (yummmmm).

I wandered downstairs as usual, where we all eat together--Daddy and Grandad having already gone out for their morning coffee-and-chat with the guys, and us girls all in our pajamas.

This morning, Grampa told us a story about a friend who passed away several years ago, Chuck, and another friend Charlie. Apparently Chuck had a brand new Dodge pickup that he left unlocked at the coffeeshop right after he bought it. Charlie got there after Chuck had already gone inside, and Charlie turned on the radio full blast and set the windshield wipers to high, and the heater running and so on. He got out to come inside, turning the Ram hood ornament to face the driver's window as he passed.

Once Chuck came out and started his car, it was all sound and fury, and he worked to get everything turned off. He looked up to see his Ram looking at him from the front of his truck. After that he always locked his truck

But Grampa, chuckling, was not done. He told us that ever after that, until Chuck passed away, really, he (Grampa) would always turn the ram on the truck around as he came into the coffeeshop if Charlie's truck was also there. And every single morning, Chuck would chew out Charlie, who had no idea what was going on.

"And you know, I kind of feel bad," Grandad ended, "He died without ever knowing it was me and not Charlie who did that all those years."

You would think that would be enough entertainment for one morning.

Dad left to change the oil in the car, Granma and I did dishes, Mom went upstairs to get ready, Grampa sat down in his chair...

...Nefret was exploring.

She made her way over to Grampa's chair and started sniffing around a paper shopping bag. I looked over just in time to see a very upset-looking tail fly by, with the bag covering her head and body. The bag ran was making a loud flapping noise, and there was an undercurrent of feline profanity coming out underneath (where she learned to talk like that, I do not know). The bag (and cat, presumably) ran into the wall, turned the corner into the hall, bounced wall to wall down the hall and then veered into the living room.

By this time I realized that the cat needed some kind of help, so I ran after her and got to the living room/dining room in time to see her bash into the [closed] door trying to get back into the kitchen. Stunned, she turn around, and run straight into my legs. I grabbed her and unhooked the bag handle from her collar and carried her back into the family room, where we spent a few minutes with her cowering in my arms on the couch.

Her tail was all puffed out, her eyes were totally dilated, and she was shaking. Once her breathing seemed more controlled, I let her down and she went and hid on the stairs, peeping through the banisters at us.

For a good hour after that, the poor thing jumped at every little sound, and when Momma came back down, she ran to her and begged to be held.

Oh me.

Grandad and I couldn't stop laughing for the rest of the morning. He wiped tears of mirth from his eyes and said,

"Aah, I feel like i just got some kind of a bonus."

Isn't life ironic?

"This is the story of a squirrel...

...whom God preserved when He drowned the whole world." Story of a Squirrel by Apologetics (a takeoff of Story of a Girl by Nine Days)

Before I forget, my sister sent me this amusing picture in reference to this post. Oh dear me.

Isn't it ironic?

"Cuz you had a bad day...

..you care but don't lie." Bad Day, by Daniel Powter

Yeah, just like you might suspect, this is about a bad day. Really, it's not THAT bad, it's just...oh, I don't know...ironic?

So, the Boyfriend had more job testing in Kentucky yesterday, so we took a super-quick nine-hour-each-way drive out and back again, leaving Wednesday, staying with friends, doing the test Thursday morning (was that really only yesterday?!) and driving back afterwards. I got home around 10:00pm, so he got home around 1:00am, poor thing.

So that isn't so bad, I mean, he did really well on the tests (praise the Lord!) and we always have fun together. we talked and listened to music and played the bug game (he won Wednesday and I won Thursday) and we got to see some of his friends and it was all lots of fun, if a little exhausting.

But yes, the point is, it was exhausting.

And we both had to work today.

I had to make an 8:30am meeting today (which I did!) about a "kick off the holidays" parade, and he was moving furniture. So, this morning, I forced myself up, got ready, prepped for the meeting, and made my way downtown to the parking garage where I was supposed to also decorate a golf-cart parade float after the meeting.

As I waited behind a car at a stop sign, in sight of my parking garage goal (with seven minutes to spare getting to my meeting!) the 8am rush was slowing, and a train rumbled down the tracks to my right. In front of me, the lady turned right onto the road to wait out the train. My garage was to the left, so I pulled up, and checked traffic both ways...only to have the woman in front of me reverse back into the side road I was on and BACK INTO my truck.

Why? I have no idea.

My sturdy little Toyota definitely won that fight, as her back light was shattered and her bumper was totally bashed in, and I just had a scrape and a dent in the side panel of the bed of my truck. I hopped out the look at the damage, and she pulled over (I thought she was driving away so I noted her license plate but thankfully she just pulled over a little up ahead) and she started swearing and groaning about how she didn't have time for this, she couldn't believe this, what the #%@$ was I doing, etc.

I waited for her to calm down (how was this possibly my fault?) and when she finally ranted that I'd better have insurance, I told her I did have insurance. This seemed to pacify her somewhat, and she started telling me how she's running so late, she's just so late, she can't wait for the police to come...and she made as if she was going to leave. What do you DO when that happens?

I got her business card and gave her mine (and looked at her damage and mine) and she drove off. I parked my truck thirty feet up in the garage (Where I'd been trying to get all along), walked into my meeting with seconds to spare, sat through it, then promptly ran back to my truck and called my dad and cried. He made it all better, of course, helped me find the insurance phone number, and I walked out to the corner to read what the street name was for when I called the police to report it.

On my way to the corner, I ran into the owner of the parking garage, who I had met previously. We chatted for a moment, then I told him about my fender-bender. He was very sympathetic, and took me to the little guard shack at the entrance and we checked the videos to see if he had feed of that corner. He didn't. But he did let me use the phone in there to call the police (since my phone would route the call back to New Mexico) and insurance.

The police agreed that getting the information from the woman was the best thing and since no one was hurt and we both seemed to have insurance, it was fine.

The insurance lady was very sweet and sympathetic and agreed that the backing into me thing was bizarre.

During all these phone calls, the parking guard was sitting, listening. Among other things, I told the insurance lady the license plate of the car (a vanity plate that appropriately enough included the word "BLOND") and the guard turned to me and said, "did you say [license plate of the car that hit me]?"

I said yes.

She described a woman and asked if that fit the description of the lady who hit me.

It did.

She opened up her phone, pulled up a contact and read the phone number. "Is that the number she gave you?" she said.

It was.

She gaped at me and then laughed a little saying, "I know her, and she don't have a driver's license right now, and that's why she didn't want you to call the police, I'll bet."

Oh, me.

And I was worried that she would somehow try to blame me for the accident since there weren't any witnesses!

So now I have to run do all the little things that were put off by this KY trip and finish decorating the float and...so on. I am SO looking forward to next week, hiding out with my Boyfriend and his family and just being peaceful.

But God is good, I'm fine, my truck really isn't awful, and no one got hurt. Today will be done soon, and tomorrow will only be better. Never a dull moment, eh?

I don't know, it just seemed sort of...

ironic.

"Man, you really freak me out...

...I'm so afraid of you." Freak Me Out, by Weezer.

I got home this morning from my weekend visit to the Boyfriend and his family, and emptied my car of luggage and various belongings that have begun to pile up. I found that garbage had also piled up, so I cleaned that out too. The sun was out, the air was warm and calm, the leaves smelled mouldy, and the squirrels were out frolicking...

Yeah.

So I took my little bag of trash to our dumpster in front of the apartment, and as I toss it in, I saw movement out of the darkness and a rabid squirrel leapt at my face, causing me to scream and jump back about six yards in one bound. The squirrel, equally surprised, got a face-full of my trash, which knocked it back into the dumpster. About half a second later, the furry little lunatic rocketed out of the dumpster, ricochetted off the lattice that partially hides it from view, bounded toward me, screeched to a halt, did a 180 and flew toward the tree line, away from me.

As I slowly returned from defibrillation, I furtively glanced around to make sure no one had see that. Naturally someone had. Leaning doubled over from silent mirth, my neighbor, the Guardian (who is ALWAYS WATCHING in case you ever do anything embarrassing like that), was gasping for breath over my squirrel episode. I yelled over to him that a squirrel jumped out at me. He slowly stood upright and nodded, tears streaming down his face, and he yelled back, "Yeah. I saw that."

Oh, me.

"You're reading all them high fashion magazines...

...the clothes you're wearing, girl, are causing public scenes!" Not Your Stepping Stone, by the Monkees.

My sister and I went to downtown today and looked at all those extremely impractical high-priced stores, of which this town has many. Five awesome (?!) things we found but decided were not something we needed in our immediate lives were:

• Leather leggings for 6-9 month old.
• Cashmere onesies for 3-6 month old.
• Marie Antoinette action figure with ejecting head and removable wig.
• Sequin encrusted shield with the brand name, "The Great Pretender".
• Book entitled, "Feminism, Race, And The Origins Of Existentialism."

However. We did purchase one (1) a beret for me, black, and two (2) christmas presents to be revealed later. And we got to enjoy all the incroyable outfits and chic people in downtown. And it was raining, so the unkempt and artistic-cum-emo-cum-mussed atmosphere was simply too, too appropriee.

So then I had a little haute couture photo shoot, featuring the new black beret.

Note the artistic slouch and very serious face.

You know how these high fashion people are. Impractical clothes you couldn't imagine wearing in public, weird makeup and hair, crazy hats and accessories and jewel encrusted shirts you would never buy (cough cough--unless they were only $2 on clearance and were so hideous you couldn't say no!!! ;)

So yes, this made my rainy drizzly evening after Fred left quite worthwhile. I definitely think I could do adverts for Vogue. And yet here I am, publishing it for the world to see for free, while someone, somewhere is being paid thousands upon thousands of dollars to do this. :P

Isn't it ironic?