Contagious Disease??

Just Me's note: The following arrived in my email inbox. My friend, E, has become the next in a long string of hapless victims to fall prey to blogging addiction. I should be sorry for passing this weird infection on to her. I am (a little bit) but misery loves company.

"It's All Your Fault!! :-)

"I was not into blogs at all. Didn't even know what they were to tell you the truth. Didn't understand the point. But you just couldn't leave me alone in my ignorance could you? Couldn't let me just go through my life unaware. First you sent me the link to something from Pioneer Woman a long time ago. I read it but didn't really get it (I'm slow sometimes you know). Then you told me something about Weiner's or something. I just blew it off. And of course you let me know about your blog somewhere along the line, got a kick out of the name, yummy!!!! But still I didn't go there often. Just didn't think of it.

"THEN-

"My beloved Rusty passed away and you sent me a link and said it wasn't much, but oh it was. I read that over and over. I kept going back (I still read it now and then) and it brought me comfort and put a smile on my face. And while that happened I kept reading your new postings and found I liked it. I got a quick chance to see how your doing when we couldn't seem to get in touch with each other. And it let me reminisce about earlier days.

"THEN-

"I took a quick look at "site seeing"...... Why oh why did you have to do that. Now every day, EVERY DAY I go to your blog to see if anything is new. Then I check out the weiners, the buzz, and now am totally obsessing over Pioneer Woman. I spent the entire day yesterday reading the entire "Black Heels to Tractor Wheels" story. I don't need this right now. I need to focus. The school year is starting soon. My house is for sale, we have a showing tonight and I'm reading blog entries. How will I get any work done? How do these people get any work done? I have had to use extreme will power not to sign up for a blog name so I'm not anonymous anymore.

"And to top things off..... While perusing PW today (see I'm over the edge I used the abbreviation) I saw a recipe for Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes. Well as you may or may not know I LOVE mashed potatoes and garlic so I had to check it out. It's made with half and half (or heavy cream), cheese and butter.... OH MY GOD.... now what do I do. Last week my Dr. almost killed me because my cholesterol is so high and now this.

"At this rate I'm gonna need a 12 step program.

"Talk with you soon,"

Now, I'm going to do something that's unthinkably cruel and selfish. E has a bit of a knack for storytelling, and I know this because I get to hear her stories in person. Why don't you cheer me on as I shout, Hey E, maybe you should write a blog!!!!

Of course, if she started blogging, she'd be on the computer all the time and then I'd have even less time to see her and that would really suck. I'd much rather keep in touch in person than through a blog page.

But... It's a great way to share photos and stories with those far-away relatives, which is one reason why I started this thing in the first place.

Whew! What a Difference a Letter Makes!

I'm editing a transcript, and I come to this question: "Did you note any allogynia?" Huh?

Immediately afterward, I asked him to repeat the term, and he graciously did so, giving me the spelling along with it. A-L-L-O-G-Y-N-I-A.

Since I'm a fusspot, I Googled it anyway. I know that Google isn't the be-all-end-all resource for answers, but it's often a good starting point for things I'm not familiar with. I'm glad I used it in this case. Allogynia is defined as the need to fantasize about someone more desirable than your partner in order to... um... get the party started, if you know what I mean.

Well, hello. This case has nothing to do with that. It's about an amputee. I Googled it again as "neurogenic pain allogynia" and got one of those wonderful "Did you mean _____" responses. I love Google for this reason.

Allodynia: painful response to a usually non-painful stimulus.

Ahhh, that's better!

Now, I swear my audio says G and not D. At the time I wrote G and not D. G and D do sound alike. I was tempted to use allogynia with [sic]* afterward, but I'm thinking I heard it wrong (twice!!) since the doctor wasn't snickering at the question.

*For those who are unfamiliar, [sic] is used to follow a term or phrase that's inappropriately or erroneously used. It shows the reader that this is what the speaker said, and it is not an error in editing.

Gearing Up for School

In June I was whining and wondering when September would get here. Now it's around the corner, and I am fizzling with anticipation and quivering with dread. A return to school means my days are once again my own. I am free to work work work during school hours without relying upon my in-laws' baby-sitting services.

The pre-school (not preschool) battles have already begun.

With Precious Daughter, the current battles surround school supplies and bedtime.

I am trying desperately to reset their late-night summer clocks back to school hours. The shortening days help somewhat, but Precious Daughter refuses to go to sleep without a fight. She sits up in her bed (as she is right now) refusing to lay down and sleep. She says she's not tired, but, golly, her eyes are falling out of her head and she has dark circles under her lower lids. These stubborn late nights create a helluva morning battle to get the heck out of bed. Most mornings she won't willingly rise (subject to much poking and prodding by me) until after 9:30.

Last week we spent over thirty minutes selecting a backpack from Target. I'm really not pleased with buying this made-in-China crap, but economics and a heinous shortage of American-made options forced my hand. Thankfully, I was able to steer her toward something that wasn't so painfully trendy like Hannah Montana or High School Musical. She finally selected a pink one with multicolored polka-dots and a monkey on the outer pocket.

Then, dear God, we moved on to the junk that goes inside. Holy moly. The biggest battle surrounded pencils. Yep, pencils. Last year, Precious Daughter spent much of the year not sharpening her pencils. Why? She didn't want them to get stumpy, even though that's the whole "point." We ended up with mechanical pencils with refillable leads and erasers.

Then we battled over crayons, markers, rulers, highlighters, and red pens. It's a stinkin' pen for Pete's sake, but in her mind there's still plenty to argue about. I spent the better part of two hours kicking myself for letting her come along to pick the stupid backpack.


Thank God she wears uniforms. I'd never have the stamina to bicker over school clothes.

A whole 'nother chapter is Precious Daughter's general upset at leaving me to go to school. There is lots of wailing and protest. It will begin on her first day of school, and it will continue daily through October. We'll have recurrences on at least a weekly basis through Christmas break, and it will return daily after the New Year until February or so, with weekly occurrences until the end of the year. It's just too much for a mom to take.

Oh, and that's just one kid. Mighty B. isn't making this easy at all.

Mighty B.'s problem is that he refuses to wipe his butt. The boy just turned five and he will not -- no way, no how, nosiree -- wipe his butt. He sits on the toilet and bellows:


"Mommmmmyyyyyyy, I'm doooooone!" (Can you just hear the melody?)

I ignore him and he bellows some more, so I tell him to get started and I'll check his paperwork in a bit. He continues to bellow and I ask him, "what will you do when you're in school all day?" I remind him that his teachers aren't permitted to help him.

Several minutes later, he comes shuffling out of the bathroom, springing his underwear between his ankles, "Mommy..." By now I have to intervene, or things are gonna get ugly.

It's gonna be a long year.

A Day at the Beach

We spent a day at the beach last Tuesday, something we haven't done all summer long. To say that Precious Daughter was in her element is an understatement. This child adores the ocean.

They didn't care how big the waves were. The bigger the better. We found all sorts of neat bits of shells and pebbles and now the kids have jars of beach on their dressers. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before they're scattered all over the house, but they look really nice at the moment.

Mighty B. looks like he just washed up after a shipwreck. Either that or he's sacrificing himself to a hungry sea monster.

I didn't expect this one to turn out so well. She was running so fast I thought I missed her completely by the time I hit the shutter. And -- oh, yeah -- I bought that Lands' End suit on Monday for a whopping $14. I love clearance racks!!!

This one clearly is my favorite. I need to actually print this one and hang it up somewhere.

My Kids Took These

The Oracle and Mighty B. are huge railroading fans. We took a neat little day trip to a popular historic railroading attraction, and while waiting for the train ride to begin, the kids were hounding me for permission to play with the camera. Their efforts were quite good, don'tcha think? Mighty B. took this one of The Oracle and Precious Daughter.



Precious Daughter took this one of Mighty B. and me. I wouldn't post it at all because I think I photograph horribly, but I'm proud of Precious Daughter's efforts. (Otherwise I'd happily crop out my crooked teeth and gray hair and my too-thick pasty-white arm. My haircut usually looks much nicer than this, too. Ahh, vanity!!)


On a side note, Mighty B. was angry with me because I held his other monster hand down and out of the picture. I had to let Precious Daughter do a retake with both of us snarling at the camera. For obvious reasons, I am not sharing that photo.

My Son Wakes Up Laughing

I've never known of a kid that did this, but Mighty B has done this ever since he was small. He wakes up this way frequently too. I'll poke my head into his room and sometimes he's still asleep or he's just starting to stretch.

I wonder what amazing, silly dreams he's having that he laughs out loud like that.

This is "What Else"

I am seething mad.

Bad enough that we have to shuck out $800 for new tires, but in my flurry to pick The Oracle up from the train, I backed the Pacifica into our dead-but-still-here Bonneville. Please don't ask me to explain how I managed to do this, just take my word for it that I did.

We've had our car back less than two weeks, and I punched a nice, 7" diamater dent into the bumper it took three weeks to get, taking out a backup sensor in the process.

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!!!

Edited at 8:42 p.m. to add:

Adding Injury to Insult

So as the Oracle is leaving for his walk/run, Mighty B slams the front door, crushing the Oracle's finger. Fortunately, the worst of this bloody injury is the loss of a long flap of surface skin running from alongside his fingernail to the first knuckle joint. The nail will probably turn Technicolor and fall off. Yummy.

Oh. And this is also partly my fault, because if I hadn't left my keys in the lock, his hand woudln't have been removing them as Mighty B slammed the door.

I can't do anything right today.