Ahhh, the weekend. It’s not even 9 am on a Saturday morning, and yet I’ve already had so many fun things happen. If by “fun” you mean “not so much”.

1. Breanna woke up briefly at about 7:10 am. She barely even opened her eyes and rubbed at her little eyelids with her fists so I was happy to think that she might just go back to sleep for at least another hour. She was having her milk and her whole body was going limp as she drifted off peacefully. I was just about to go back to sleep myself when THE PHONE RANG. At 7:15 in the morning on a Saturday! The ringing snapped everyone under age four to a fully awake status and all hopes of sleeping were dashed completely. The worst part is that it was a blocked number and the message was just static so I have no idea who it was, and therefore I can’t return the favor by calling back the next time I wake up at 3 in the morning.
2. Yesterday I woke up in the wee hours of the morning with a massive, extremely painful toothache. I took some Tylenol and that helped a tiny bit for about 45 minutes. Last night, George got me some Advil, which helped tremendously. This morning I had some more pain so I took another dose. The pain is almost gone now, but the swelling is still there. The swelling is making me feel very beautiful indeed. One half of my face looks normal. The other half makes me look like The Rock.
3. I looked over and saw a gigantic spider running across the living room carpet. In an effort to keep my children from adopting my phobias, I managed to calm my inner hysteria and although I wanted to, I did not climb up on my chair, screaming. Instead, I watched to see where it went (in amongst the animals of Noah’s Ark, ick), prayed that Breanna wouldn’t decide to play in that very spot, and then I ran to get the vacuum. I then pretended that there were some crumbs I needed to clean at the bright, early hour of 8:30 am, and I sucked that fucking spider right up. It was HUGE. As big as my head! Or maybe just the size of a silver dollar. Either way, if it’s bigger than a silver dollar, to me it’s huge.
4. Ever since I sucked the monster up, I keep brushing at my arms and legs, thinking that I can feel something crawling on me.
5. Breanna spewed milk all over me.
6. Hayley has asked me no fewer than ten times in less than one hour whether she can go visit her grandparents today despite the fact that I have said we’ll see and to please stop asking.

If it was at all possible, I would go back to bed for an hour or two.

How about some creative fiction to start your weekend off on the right foot?

—

Ultimatum

You’re going to think I am the bad guy. I know it. I don’t care though. See it as you will.

She was a nude model in my art class. After, she came to look at what I had drawn. This kind of behaviour is extremely rare. Normally the nude models get the truck outta there as soon as class is over. Must be weird, you know, having a room of people ogle you and scrutinize your every line, curve, and bulge but she was fearless. She was the kind of woman who commanded respect, by her mere presence.

Taking long pauses in between sentences she mused, “When I look at what you’ve done there, it stirs something in me… It makes me feel. It’s like… it creates a tension between all the facets of my self” she trailed off.

I’m not into new age crap like that, I couldn’t care less about her selves or her facets. I gave her some cocky response about my critics always noting my artwork was masterful at evoking emotion. She seemed surprised I had critics, so continuing with my arrogance, I explained that I only attended these classes for the nude models. I was an established artist not needing instruction or classes.

She was hot, but a little too femme for my liking. I liked to be the femme one in relationships, and didn’t want to compete. When she started to make advances, I briskly responded, “there are no vacancies in the friend hotel my dear, sorry.” I liked using seemingly innocuous but truly condescending words like “dear.”

I’ll just make a long story short by telling you this. Seven years of monogamy later we bought a house together. We were sexually compatible, and I’m a simple person. It doesn’t take much to keep me happy, so eventually she roped me in.

Well- things can’t stay simple forever I suppose. It was time for A TALK. She was telling me I was too self involved, all I thought about was my art, things had to change ex-cetera ex-cetera. She said that tomorrow was our anniversary and I needed to show her that she meant at least as much to me as my art, or she was leaving me. She asked me to wear a dress and heels, look sexy, and meet her for dinner at Chardullos.

She said something like that. I didn’t hear really. I was too distracted watching the way the moonlight was reflecting onto her hair. I was noticing how the glow of the streetlights intermingled with the smoke from my cigarette and illuminated her face. I remembered the deadline for my upcoming show and fleetingly wondered if I had any cobalt blue oil paint left.

The next day, I was painting with fervor. I was painting that moment, the look on her face, the smoke, her expression so pregnant with emotion. I was covered in paint, I had been painting all day, all night. A momentary glance at my watch revealed that it was almost midnight.

I heard her burst in, her keys hitting the side table loudly breaking any concentration I had achieved. She looked at me, looked at the painting, and started sobbing uncontrollably.

My critics always noted my artwork was masterful at evoking emotion.

—

This story was written by Krista from The Silent K, an eclectic hobbiest/artist who is passionate about art. Unlike the character in the story, she has no critics and would gladly benefit from taking some drawing classes. The writing prompt she chose to write this story was this:

Write a short scene in which one character reduces another to uncontrollable sobs without touching him or speaking.

This post is part of the September Blog Exchange. This month’s exchange is a little different – we’re all writing short (fictional) stories based on the 13 Writing Prompts found at McSweeney’s. Meanwhile, I’m hanging out and sipping martinis at Krista’s site today, and the full list of participants can be found by clicking here.

There’s a great meme going on every Thursday over at Chookooloonks. The object is to share an image (or words) that represent love. Any kind of love.

So for my first contribution, I give you one girl’s immense love for her father; she was watching him play with the band when I took this shot.

LOVE I tell you.

It’s true that Breanna’s taste for food has wildly expanded, going from total disgust over anything that isn’t breastmilk to actually enjoying several foods. I mentioned the things she’s been eating in an update not long ago, but it bears mentioning again that she loves mango and cheese most of all. To add to the list, she also enjoyed hard-boiled egg yolk so much that she actually balled up her little fists and screamed at me in aggravation when it was finished. She also loves rice cakes and god forbid one of us eats a rice cake without sharing.

Even at George’s parents’ house the other day, she actually enjoyed nibbling tiny pieces off a plum that was almost as big as her head.

However, apparently her favorite thing to stick in her mouth besides her own hands and feet is something that is not actually meant to be eaten.

Yesterday afternoon we all went to the park for about an hour. After doing the rounds of the swings, the jungle gym, and the slides, Hayley and George were sitting up in the little house-thing with Hayley alternating between crawling through the tunnel and sliding down the slide. Since I knew Breanna would get bored quickly up there and would spend the rest of our time trying to throw herself down the stairs, I chose to sit in the sand with her. She sat for a full five minutes, very happily lifting up fistfuls of sand, then pouring it onto her own feet. A couple of times she tried to stand up but the uneven terrain made it too complicated so she settled for sitting and occasionally crawling around.

Then, completley out of nowhere, she got up onto her hands and knees, rocked back and forth, then lunged straight forward in a sandy belly flop, mouth wide open. From her prone position, she frantically started licking the sand, almost as though she knew I was going to grab her and ruin all her fun.

I scraped my fingernails along her tongue, pulling out as much sand as I could and tried to wash her mouth out with some of Hayley’s juice. I even wiped her lips and tongue with the edge of my shirt in an effort to clean her out.

No more than three minutes later, she was face down, licking the sand again. Clearly it’s her favorite item on the menu of things that can fit into her mouth. Delicious and full of fiber (and I try to avoid thinking what else it might be full of because I can’t disinfect her mouth with bleach anyway), yum yum!

Next time we go to the park I’m taking a bowl of Cheerios with me and when I see her arms spread out for her next swan dive into the sand, I’m going to shove the bowl in front of her so that at least she ends up with actual food in her mouth.

Contained in a swing, far from the sand:

Contained in the stroller with Hayley pushing:

When we went to that party on Saturday, aside from all the typical tasty BBQ food, one of Joanne’s friends brought a bunch of chopped up fruit – melons, grapes, pineapple, strawberries, blablabla. To go with the fruit, she also brought some kind of yogurt dip and some chocolate dip. Now when I serve up fruit at a party, I serve chocolate dip too, but by “dip” I really mean the chocolate syrup you buy to add to milk or squirt over ice cream. It’s yummy, sure, but it’s nothing fancy.

This dip that was at the party on Saturday was different. I don’t know if she made it herself or bought something special but it’s rich, and it’s thick. If you’ve ever made or eaten something with a ganache on it, it’s very similar to that.

Joanne sent us home with a bunch of food because she hates to waste food and they had more than they could possibly eat before it would go bad. She sent home several plastic containers of fruit, one yogurt dip, and two chocolate dips.

Tonight, every time I went to refill my water I saw the little cups of dip. I couldn’t stop thinking about the chocolate dip. Yes, I was having a stereotypical chocolate fit that only women can truly have. I figured there was no point in fighting it, so I finally gave in and decided to have some.

Not so bad right?

Except it should be noted that I have no fruit right now other than a banana that must be saved for Hayley’s breakfast. I do, however, have plenty of spoons. So I’m sitting here eating it like a pudding.

I’d be embarrassed if it wasn’t so damn good.

So if someone takes ELEVEN steps across the living room to get to the television because she thinks Pocoyo is hilarious, does that count as walking?

I think so.

So if you’re on a dial-up connection, you might want to go make a coffee before clicking to read the full entry because there are a ton of pictures, plus two videos. They’re all from Saturday. Our friends Dean and Joanne had a party to celebrate their 12th anniversary and it was a total blast. We arrived around 3:30 that afternoon and didn’t get home until after 11:30 that night. There was a full feast (I managed to polish off two cheeseburgers, two hot dogs, a ton of different salads, not to mention all the chips before supper and the piece of cake with coffee I had later that evening – yes, I AM a fan of eating).

George and several other people he plays with regularly played live music throughout the day and evening until about 11:15. Everyone enjoyed the music, especially the kids. Breanna had fun crawling around the backyard while Hayley ran around NON-STOP with one of her friends. When the grass started to get too damp for people who aren’t fully steady on their feet, I changed Breanna into her pajamas and stuck her in the Baby Bjorn. First I had her facing out so that she wouldn’t miss anything, and she seemed to really enjoy it. When I caught her rubbing her eyes with her fists, I turned her to face me and she fell asleep for over three hours.

Just like the last party they had two years ago, it was really a lot of fun. Keep reading for visual proof of that.

Continue reading →

I had an awesome Saturday and I’ll write a post about it later. It will include a whopping 16 pictures, as well as a video of George’s band playing.

In the meantime, speaking of videos, I wanted to share two that I took last week. I’d also like to re-iterate that they were taken with my Nokia cameraphone, which I got for free from Matchstick, lest anyone get their knickers in a knot again over the false idea that I am rolling around naked in my huge piles of money.

Continue reading →

Yesterday, Hayley did something brand new for her. George and I had to go see someone I’m doing some web design for. His sister is visiting,so Hayley decided she’d rather go to his parents’ house to see her. I packed a change of clothes, and just in case I also threw in her pajamas.

We took care of the stuff we needed (aside: I’m doing the site for a new and used baby store and I exchanged a bag of outgrown baby clothes – wah! – and old infant carriers for a Baby Bjorn. I am SO stupidly excited about finally having one to go with my wrap carrier and sling!) and stopped off to pick Hayley up. She was freshly bathed, very chatty, and determined to spend the night.

So she did. We made sure everyone knew that if she changed her mind at 3 am, it didn’t matter and she could come home at any time. And then we left.

It was so weird. Her bedroom door stayed closed all night to keep the cat out, and really it shouldn’t have felt much different than when she’s behind that closed door, sleeping. But it did. I knew she wasn’t there, and although I wasn’t sad about it, it was just strange. It was worse when I had Breanna and stayed in the hospital for two full nights without Hayley, but even so, last night I felt a bit like that wizard in that Dora episode, where I kept thinking, “Falta algo – something is missing!”

We spoke to her a little past 8 this morning and I know she was having some eggs and bacon for breakfast. Now George is off to pick her up and bring her home – even though it was really odd to wake up without her here, I am so proud of her for having her very first sleepover.

Edited to add: She just got in and I asked where she had slept; I thought maybe they’d sleep in George’s old room because there are two twin beds in there. She said they slept in Elsa’s room instead, where there’s just one bed.

Sherry: Where did Elsa sleep?
Hayley: She slept in her bed.
Sherry: Where did you sleep?
Hayley: On the floor. Because that’s what sleepovers are all about!

I guess she’s been taking notes when there are sleepovers on some of her shows!

There has been a lot of hooplah going on in the astronomy world about whether Pluto deserves to remain a planet or not. After much deliberation in Prague (sidenote – my dream vacation spot), the verdict is in.

Poor Pluto has been stripped of its planet status and is now just a dwarf planet

Part of it is due to its small size (aha, so size DOES matter!), its gravitational pull, and the fact that its orbit is not clear since it overlaps with Neptune.

Sometimes I wonder if I have a few post-partum issues going on; not so much depression but more that it has heightened my pre-existing anxiety. It’s gotten much better over the past few months, but I’m sort of glad I’m not in any kind of therapy because if I tried to explain my incredible sadness over the classification and demotion of PLUTO, a freakin’ flying rock near the edge of the solar system, I think my therapist would declare me a hormonal disaster and throw me a bottle of potent medication.

(Some people may be surprised that I have an interest in astronomy. To this I say: Hello? Have you noticed the name of this domain? That would be Andromeda as in the galaxy, not the highly sucky show.)