Don’t Have the Heart

So I get home from work and Ava informs me that the plants outside just aren’t growing!!! She seems a little concerned and asks if we can water them. I tell her, “Of course we can water them honey. It will help them grow.” Bet you’re thinking, “How sweet!!!” And really it would be, except that the plants are dead…I killed them all. Not on purpose of course but it’s alot of work keeping plants alive. Really…I’m still trying to figure out how I can keep a kid alive for 3 years but can’t manage 5 flower pots on the patio.

So we fill up the watering can and go outside to water pots with dirt in them. That’s right, California is having a drought and I allow my child to water pots of dirt because I don’t have the heart to tell her the plants are never coming back. That they’re dead and it’s my fault because I was too lazy to go outside and water them everyday. Actually, I think it’s my patio’s fault. It gets really hot and I think I didn’t just pick the right flowers for Death Valley-like conditions because, in truth, my aloe plant is still alive and kicking!

Death By Bacon

My friend Jenny turned me on to this blog called The Blogess. The Blogess is really funny and she has an advice column, which cracks me up. Today I read this on her site:

Dear Bloggess: Yesterday, I met the world’s fattest cat. Like, my cat is pretty damn fat, and this cat made my cat look bulamerxic. (A mix of anorexic and bulimic.) Anyway, the owner is my boyfriend’s dad’s girlfriend and she is insane. She was feeding this cat bacon. BACON. How do I save this poor unfortunate feline? ~ CatActivist123

I appreciate your initiative but no one wants to be saved from bacon. Even cats. In fact, I would suspect that most cats would prefer death-by-bacon over death-by-being-hit-by-a-car or death-by-euthanasia-because-I-wouldn’t-stop-peeing-on-the-couch. In fact, death-by-bacon sounds like an awesome way to go. Now I’m craving a bacon sandwich. Except the bread would be made of bacon. And the mayonnaise is mixed with bacon bits. And it’s wrapped up in a napkin. Made of bacon. Mmmmm…bacon.

She pretty much sums up how I feel about bacon. I could totally become a vegetarian if it wasn’t for my love affair with bacon.

And the Fun Begins

I was a sleepwalker/sleeptalker growing up. I’ve been known to join my parents in the living room hours after I’d gone to bed and watch tv with them…awake on the outside, asleep on the inside. If you’ve never experienced someone who sleepwalks, it’s a a bizarre thing because the person seems totally awake and will also be able to hold a conversation with you. It’s quite disturbing. When I was about 10 years old we lived in a 2 story house. My bedroom was downstairs, as was our family room. My mom was in the family room and hears the sliding glass door upstairs open and then close. She goes up to investigate and finds me screaming at the edge of the pool. I’d woken up at the edge and was so confused by where I was and scared. There’s nothing like not knowing how the hell you got somewhere. My parents dealt with this for years.

Then I met Mike…poor Mike. I forgot to warn him about my crazy sleep twin. Honestly…I’ve been known to send emails in my sleep that make absolutely no sense. So anyway…here’s Mike, we’ve been dating for a few months. He’s asleep and wakes up to me sitting up in bed very obviously looking for something and asks me what I’m doing. I respond with “Shhhhhhhh! They don’t think I can hear them but I can.” Okay people…I’m still not sure that if the situation were reversed that I wouldn’t have run for the hills on that one. Seriously…that would have scared me. But he stayed and after nine years together he has a little fun with it. He’ll ask me questions when I start talking in my sleep. My favorite thing is when I get out of bed and start running and he says, “Honey, where are you going?” And I’m confused because I’m sure my sleep self had somewhere in mind but my awake self has no idea. And then I get kind of pissed because I’m thinking, “He totally ruined my destination and I can’t even remember where I was going and now I’ll never know.” I do love that he asks me where I’m going though. Really, where would I be going at 3 am?

So last night, I hear Ava through the baby monitor. And then I hear her door open and she’s running down the hall yelling, “I can’t find my fishing pole! I need to find my fishing pole!” And I’m not sure I’m hearing her right, so I say, “A fishing pole?” And she says, “I can’t find it mom.” Poor Mike…now he’s living with two crazy ladies!

We Have an Enabler Among Us…

Every now and then Ava will wake up in the middle of the night. I don’t hear her call out since the monitor is on Mike’s side of the bed and I’ve got bad hearing on top of it. So he’s usually out of bed and to her without my ever even waking up. On these occasions, I’ll wake up halfway through the night to her little nose snoring right in my ear and her body completely glued to me. In the morning I’ll ask Mike, “How did she end up in here?” He says, “She cried out in the middle of the night so I go in to check on her and when I open the door she bolts down the hall to our room and asks for a quick snuggle.” All together now “AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!”

And I agree for the most part. She’s such a little snuggle bug. But remember when you first start dating someone and you’re totally fine with your arm falling asleep because you’re just SOOOOOO in love and just want to cuddle? But then after a while, you take your respective places in the bed and the cuddling is reserved for awake hours or just before sleep hours? Maybe that’s just me. I don’t know. Anyway…it’s kind of like that with Ava. Mike lets her come in the bed and she’s not a “snuggle me mommy” kind of kid. She’s going to snuggle me! She’s a “wrap my arms around mommy’s neck, interlace my fingers into mommy’s hair tightly, put mommy’s face in my neck, throw a leg over mommy” kind of snuggler. Did I mention she snores? It’s completely impossible for me to sleep while she’s in bed with me. And what about Mike, you ask? Well, Mike just LOVES it when she sleeps with us and says it’s SOOOOOOO sweet. You guessed it people. She doesn’t snuggle him!!! So he sleeps while I’m on the other side of the bed fighting off a leech…an EXTREMELY cute leech, but an impossible to sleep with leech!

I was going somewhere with this story. So she weasles her way into bed the other night and Mommy got smart. I saw her coming down the hall and I grabbed a body pillow and blocked her off from my side of the bed. Well, since she couldn’t get to me, she had no choice but to snuggle Mike!!!! The next morning he complained how he got no sleep and that she snores and that she talks in her sleep. Hahahaha! Victory!

The 2010 Census – Fill it out

We just got our 2010 Census form in the mail. Mike filled it out and I dropped it in the mail here at work. A co-worker said to me, “I can’t believe you fill that out. It’s the government’s way of big brothering you.” I’m sorry but that’s just ignorant. We are talking about the same government that has our social security number right? The social security number that tracks everything from your race, gender, birthdate, home loans, personal loans, auto loans, student loans, credit card history, financial history, job history, all previous addresses, marriage history, etc. I could keep going. I found this completely absurd, but mostly just ignorant.

I really encourage all of you to fill out that census form and here’s why:

IT’S IN YOUR FINANCIAL BEST INTEREST TO DO SO!

The once-a-decade POPULATION count will determine how nearly $450 billion a year in federal assistance will be divvied up for everything from transportation and street improvement projects to education grants and homeless services.

In 2000, half a million Californians did not complete the census form. That cost the state more than $15 billion over the decade, money that could have come in handy in say, oh I don’t know, a budget crisis. Not that we have that problem, right?

Now for those of you who don’t fill it out, I’d like to personally thank you in advance for wasting MY tax dollars. Because here’s what happens when you don’t fill out that form. Our government pays to send out census workers to go door to door to collect the information.

Below are the questions that are asked on the census form and I’m baffled that THIS is so hard for half a million Californians to complete and that the concern is that the government is trying to big brother us. People…we have the CIA and FBI, if they really wanted to big brother you, it would be done without you knowing. Come on now.

Questions on the form:

How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2010?

Were there any additional people staying here April 1, 2010 that you did not include in Question 1?

Is this house, apartment, or mobile home: owned with mortgage, owned without mortgage, rented, occupied without rent?

What is your telephone number?

Please provide information for each person living here. Start with a person here who owns or rents this house, apartment, or mobile home. If the owner or renter lives somewhere else, start with any adult living here. This will be Person 1. What is Person 1’s name?

What is Person 1’s sex?

What is Person 1’s age and Date of Birth?

Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin?

What is Person 1’s race?

Little White Lies

Has anyone else experienced little white lines in their fingernails? I’d like to enter Exhibit A into evidence.

EXHIBIT A

Now when I was a little kid, my parents told me that for every white line I had in my fingernail it meant that I had told a lie. Do you know how much information my parents got me to confess with this trick? Seriously…they would look at my hands and say, “Okay…I see four lines Janice. What have you been lying about?” And don’t you know I would tell them anything I lied about and if I couldn’t come up with four lies I had told I’d make something up!!! How crazy is this? My parents LIED to me to get me to tell them what I had lied about. You still following?

Well, parents, I’d like to let you know you should be ashamed of yourselves. All my life I had a condition known as Leukonychia Punctata. Go ahead Dad…look it up. I’ll wait.

Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

Everything, and I mean everything, is a question with Ava right now. And the sad part is, she stumps me. We’re driving in the car the other day, Friday rush hour on the 405 and this is how the conversation goes:

Ava: Mommy, where are we going?
Me: To the doctor.
Ava: Where’s the doctor?
Me: In Torrance.
Ava: What’s a Torrance.
Me: Torrance is a city.
Ava: What’s a city?
Me: Crap…how do I explain city? It’s just something that you’ll learn when you get older honey.

You all are probably shaking your head…why not just define city for her, right? Well, because how do you define it? I could just answer her and say it’s a place where people live, but I want her to be smarter than I am. So I’m embarassed to admit that I went to the trusty Merriam Webster dictionary to get the worded definition and a city is defined as “an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village.” I wanted to tell her the definition, I REALLY did. But here’s how that conversation would go:

Me (proudly): Ava, a city is an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village.
Ava: What’s inhabited mean?
Ava: What’s a population?
Ava: What’s importance?
Ava: What’s a a town?
Ava: What’s a village?

And this is why I’ve decided I’m okay with her being only as smart as I am. I’ll give the kid the internet and a dictionary in a few years and let her learn the “hard” way!

Let’s Get Clean

So last night I get home from work and Ava has a big, fat busted lip. This is from yanking a drum by the strap and it knocking her in the mouth. I’m sitting there playing with her hair and it’s all sticky. I ask Mike, “What’s in her hair?” He says, “Blood.”

Awesome…it’s SOOOO time to take a bath. We get downstairs and she’s really into racing right now so I’m playing around and I’m saying, “I’m going to beat you into the bath.” And then she says, “Mom…I want you to take a bath with me.” I really don’t want to…our bathtub is small and she’s 3 and I don’t like answering questions about anatomy so I try to avoid this. She starts crying and telling me she really wants me to take a bath…fat, bloody, busted lip pushed out and I’m a sucker. I tell her I’ll take a bath with her. She’s so excited…she’s giggling, clapping her hands. It’s gonna be great!!! I get her undressed, put her in the tub and she stands there and pees!!!!

I look at her and I say, “AVA!!! Did you just pee in the bath????” More giggles from her and the demand to “hurry up and get in the tub mama!” So the question I’m sure you’re all asking is, “Did I get in?” The answer: A mother’s love knows no boundaries.

When buying a home…or not

So Mike and I decide it’s time to be grown ups and buy a house. The mental picture I had of how this would go was something like this:

I would go online and pick out a few places that we wanted to see. We would drive to said places and find our dream home. It would come complete with the following: 1) Good neighborhood, 2) Neighbors we liked, 3) Good school district, 4) In our price range, 5) A “great room” where we would entertain friends and have fabulous family dinners and 6) A backyard where I would watch Ava play and grow. Oh and nobody else would want this house. Sounds perfect, right?

Anyone laughing yet? Oh boy…it soooooo is NOT going the way I planned. And for a born planner, this is tough. So we’ve seen about 15-20 places at this point. And we’ve loved two of them. Of those two, another buyer beat us to the offer on the first one and the other is a short sale in which the bank will get back to us in a quick 6-12 months. Because yes…when I started house hunting I didn’t want a house now but maybe in the next 6-12 months? Hold please…

After much (insert sarcasm here) very friendly conversation between Mike and I, we finally decide on what it is we are willing to sacrifice on and what we’re not willing to sacrifice on. Our first list of “must haves” looked like this:

1. Good school district (Janice & Mike)
2. Good neighborhood (Janice & Mike)
3. No condos (Mike)
4. No bars on the windows (Janice & Mike)
5. Updated…no wood paneling on the walls (Mike)
6. Big backyard (Janice & Mike)
7. Long driveway (Mike)
8. Garage (Janice & Mike)
9. Pretty on the outside (Mike…although I’m not sure he said pretty…maybe it was “nice”)
10. 3 bedrooms (Janice)

After our friendly conversation, here’s our new list of “must-haves”

1. A front door that locks
2. Four walls
3. Windows
4. A good school district

I think we may find something soon if we stick to our new list.

Someone once said…

Someone once said, “Write down everything…because you’ll forget all the funny stuff she does and you’re going to want to remember it.”

So some random things I’ve found funny recently…

Ava’s favorite show right now is Dora The Explorer…I am so Dora’d out at this point but the kid loves it so what am I going to do. I’m subjected to hours upon hours of this little girl who is constantly on expeditions. Does anyone else wonder where her parents are when she’s on these expeditions? Okay…started rambling. So I really love listening to Ava use her spanish words and have learned a few myself. The other day we’re driving in the car and she dropped something and she starts screaming “Ayuda me mama! Ayuda me!!!” I’m in the front seat, “What are you saying Ava?” Apparently it ayuda me translates to help me. Good stuff!

Also, she knows all of her colors in Spanish. I’m very proud of this. Although there’s one color she doesn’t pronounce quite right…but that’s okay because her mispronounciation is better than the real deal. Want to know how she says red? In Spanish it’s supposed to be pronounced “rojo” but Ava’s version…it’s wronghole. Yep…you read it right. WRONGHOLE!

Ava finally figured out Mike and I were married. I agree with what you’re thinking…it took her long enough. This led to a major meltdown of epic proportions. She’s sobbing. I ask her, “Ava, what’s wrong?” Her reply, “I want to be married.” A few seconds and one wedding later Mr. and Mrs. Mickey Mouse were in a much better mood. The wedding was videotaped of course. Wouldn’t want her first wedding to go undocumented.

A few weeks back we’re getting in the car and she tries to get in the drivers seat. I tell her I have to drive and she has to go in the back. A meltdown ensues…I’m thinking it’s because she just doesn’t want to be in the back seat….WRONG! She’s upset because and I quote, “I want to be 16 like you so I can drive.” That’s right folks…I had her at 13.

She wakes up the other morning and she tells me she had a dream about her family. I was curious who she considered family. So I asked who was in her dream. Well…there was Daddy, me, Mickey, all of her stuffed animals and her pacifier. It’s nice to know that her parents fall into the same category as her pacifier. That pacifier only costs $3 but it’s just as important to her as her parents apparently.

One morning we’re at Starbucks and this guy walks in. He’s good-looking, mid-thirties I would say. He gets in line behind us. Ava starts getting all giggly and hiding behind my legs waving at him. Totally flirting. I’m used to her doing this sort of thing so I didn’t really pay much attention. He said hi to her. I get my coffee and she has a seat at the table. I walk up to the milk/sugar bar, yes…that’s what it’s call in my world, and I start making my coffee delicious and the guy is waiting for his drink. All of the sudden I hear my daughter say, “HEY! Do you want to see how strong I am?” I get this confused look on my face, turn around and she’s holding my wallet high above her head, with both hands! She’s looking at the guy and she’s got this look on her face like, “You’re impressed, huh? Yep…I knew you would be.” I swear if she could wink she would have winked at him. He played along and boy was she was a happy little girl that morning.