Good Mornin'! Good Mor-or-or-nin'!

It was raining today. I didn't have an umbrella so I had to borrow one. It was a giant golf umbrella. My mother got me an umbrella like this for Christmas my freshman year in college. It was a tradition in my home every year for me to pick the most interesting looking present under the tree and vow to open it first on Christmas Day. My mother would wrap a present and inside that one present would be fifteen other tinier wrapped presents. I loved it! So, when I'd spotted this particular present, I was more than intrigued. It was long. Heavy. Distinct. I thought for sure there were hundreds of wrapped gems inside a long tube made of old paper towel rolls. Imagine my surprise on Christmas morning when I'd grabbed said present, ripped-off its paper, only to find...a giant umbrella. A giant umbrella with my school mascot emblazoned upon four of its sections. I was...mortified. There was no way I was going to carry that damned thing across campus! Was she crazy? Where was the jewelry? Where was the makeup? Where were all the quarters I was sure were stuffed into that enormous tube? Boo, I say. Boo, to giant umbrellas.

Well, today, I had to carry a giant umbrella across campus. Now you might think at my age, I wouldn't really give a flying fig what people think about me. You'd be half right. I don't care what people think of me, unless those people are practically de-eyed by the metal prongs of a humongous killing machine doubling as a water barrier. I nearly wiped out five people walking across campus to grab a coffee. I looked like the most ridiculous egomaniac.

I cannot have even one drop on my person. Under no circumstance is precipitation to touch my body at any time. Nor shall it touch anyone within a five mile radius of me.

You Are 19 Months Going on 91.

I don't particularly like letting my 19-month-old watch television but as a single mom, if I have to potty or shower or, um...I don't know...get shit done...into the ExerSaucer she goes and on comes the television.

My concern is...she has developed a deep and abiding love for...Christopher Plummer. Yes. The father from The Sound of Music. The whole thing played twelve times last week. She will normally play when the TV is on and virtually ignore it, instead reading her books and looking at magazines and making a general mess of the place. But if Julie Andrews and those kids are on, she is nearly glued to the screen. She will honestly sit and watch the entire movie. And if she wanders into the other room to follow me and hears a certain part of the movie come on she will RUN into the living room like, "Yeah...mom...hold that thought. The hot dad is about to sing," and she stands in front of the television (much too closely) and drools, literally, over him.

Her favorite television show? Lawrence Welk.

I am pretty sure I gave birth to an old lady. If she starts knitting soon, be afraid. Very afraid.

Tis the Season

...to let hair air dry.

Fa la la lala. La lala. La.

Happy Bubble

I watched ER for the first time tonight in years. I wouldn't have even noticed if suddenly I hadn't flipped past the channel and caught a glimpse of George Clooney in scrubs (hubba hubba, homeboy) and Susan Sarandon (peace, sister). I ended up watching the last twenty five minutes of the episode and, of course, cried about thirty seconds into it. Susan did a really good job. I smell Emmy.

It got me thinking about the last time Ms. Sarandon made me cry. It was last week when Thelma and Louise was on cable. Man. That movie pisses me off. What the hell? I swear it's like My Best Friend's Wedding. I saw that in the theater four times. It ruined my life for about a month after the first viewing, but I went back. It's been the same the twenty times I've seen it since: I guess I'm really just thinking, "Certainly it will end differently this time! I just know it!" I like to be entertained at the movies, not made to want to hurt some poor innocent bystander. Happy things happen at the movies! If I wanted reality, I'd just stay home and watch the news. Which I don't.

Yeah. T&L really makes me mad. Every time. How about...go to the police...The End...done?

The only thing that kept me interested this time was Michael Madsen. Holy hell, he is h-o-t-t. Yeesh. I reminded myself to imdb.com him and promptly forgot, per normal anything that I want to do and don't immediately get up and do it.

Well, when I was up at some ungodly hour with the baby a few days later, an old episode of MTV Cribs was on and lo and behold, there was Mr. Madsen. Only his hair was bleached blond. Not a good look for him. So I imdb-ed him just now: 7 movies completed, 9 in post-production, currently filming 3 movies, 5 in pre-production, 1 announced and 2 in production.

Wonder how many of those will piss me off.

Best Laid Plans

Baby has been sick for a month today. Started off as teething. Turned into a runny nose. Then a stomach bug. Trip to the ER. Dry cough. Wet cough. Runnier nose. Fever. Wet cough. Runnier-est nose. Incessant all-night dry cough. Runny nose. I kept her out of school today. She woke at 4.30 a.m. and didn't stop coughing until after 9 a.m., which was a blessing. She's been waking up at 11.30 pm., midnight or 2 a.m. or ten times in between. She slept for two and a half hours today which is unheard of here; those naps reserved for Gramma's and usually last more like four and a half hours. When she woke, I quickly got her ready and all my stuff and ran to the library to return a couple of things and get some free help with my taxes. What a great thing!

Turned-in items to the front desk. Seemed to have left the DVD in the DVD player at home. Went into meeting room and sat down with baby. A woman walked past all the tax people and said, "May I help you?" [This kind of thing really annoys me. Like when you walk into a shoe store and the salesperson says, "May I help you find something?" Oh, I don't know...shoes perhaps.

The lady informed me they wouldn't have time to get to me today and to come back next week. She could've just told me that when I walked in.

Oh, Bloody Hell!

A woman came over to me at church this morning to comment on my gorgeous daughter and how absolutely lovely she is when she is sleeping. She is gorgeous all the time (Duh.) but when she is asleep, her look changes completely. So the woman said, "She is getting so big. When are you due?"

What the effing EFF! This is never appropriate to ask someone unless maybe you're a taxi driver and a woman is screaming her lungs out in the back seat. Not until the baby's head is coming out of the vagina should this question ever be asked. Ever.

Yikes

Go figure. Baby has been having night terrors for the past three nights. Dammit. I bet she sees dead people. (No. She was not up when it was on the other night.) Or dead Elmos. Or Mommy giving her half-broken bits of cracker over and over again. Or a world with no bananas.

The first night, she woke at 11 p.m. screaming MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! She has never done that, and while it touched my heart, it was horrible to hear. I stood and rocked her and tried to put her back in her bed. No go. Rocked her again in the glider for a bit, back to bed...hell no. Took her in and sat on the couch. She just laid on my chest and stared at the wall. Tried to put her back...forget it. You see where this is headed. I attempted to put her back in her bed seven times. The seventh time I had to walk out of the room. I went to my bed and the tears immediately poured out of my eyes and then suddenly *poof* dry as the desert. It was very strange. Like my body knew... hurry up and get this over with because you've got a long night ahead of you. I went right back in, took her back in bed with me (which I'd already tried) and she didn't fall asleep until nearly 4 a.m. She probably could have fallen asleep sooner if she hadn't been laying on her side and reaching all the way behind herself to rub my eyebrows.

The next night, she woke at 1:50 a.m. and was up until 4 a.m. Both nights she was physically terrified of her crib or room or both. Night terrors work that way, leaving the poor little baby unable to discern from reality fully expecting a beheaded Elmo to jump out from behind the dresser yelling, "I've eaten all the Keebler Garlic and Herb Toppers in the universe and you will get NOTHING!" Okay. Now I'm scared. And they say night terrors are hereditary. Great.

This morning she woke up at 4:50 a.m. I got her back to sleep in my bed, only to hear her yelling NO! NO! NO! She was sound asleep. So these terrors can last a few days to a few months. Not good for baby and so sad. Not good for student mommy, either, who has four tests, three projects and oh...I don't know...a child to take care of after only four hours of sleep.

Oh wait. I forgot. I did this for 16 months. How soon we forget.

Put Your Boobs Away, and Step Out of the Car.

A woman in Ohio was pulled over and cited for driving whilst talking on her cell phone...and nursing. WUT? Yes. Driving and nursing. Whoa. Is she from Louisiana? Did her car exceed such a speed limit that it raced into a portal through time? Did she somehow drive herself into the 1970s?

I can understand talking on your cell phone while driving. I don't do it when I have the baby in the car, but I do talk on the phone when she isn't with me. I will admit, there have been times when I've said, "Where in the hell is my phone?" only to realize I'm saying that into the phone to the poor person to which I'm talking. That is, how do they say it...not good.

I am not judging this woman for talking on the phone with her baby in the car. I'm sure there are moments when you would really need to talk to someone. I get that. But holding a cell phone, driving and nursing said baby simultaneously. I'm thinking this is a horrible terrible idea.

In the past, I have seen some things I wish I'd never seen. On two different occasions, men exposed themselves to me; one was performing some type of oral pleasure on a giant root vegetable and the other one was performing some type of five finger pleasure to himself. The second man must've done yoga or something, for he was able to really get his entire torso up out of the seat and above the steering wheel while still driving. Now THAT is something I would pull someone over for, especially if he was chatting on his cell. I mean, I hope he had hand sanitizer in his car. Or wipes or something.

I nursed for fourteen months. I didn't take my first road trip with the baby until she was sixteen months old. I didn't have to stop to nurse, but I did have to stop for lunch and a diaper change. The Ohio woman--who lives in Michigan and asserts she should only have to abide interstate by Michigan law--claims her usual seven hour drive would turn into a nine hour drive if she had to stop. That is a long time for a baby to ride in a car seat, I agree. The woman had the baby in her lap on a pillow and was nursing when a man saw her and called the police to have her pulled over. It would be really difficult to have to stop and nurse, especially if you were alone and there wasn't a nice safe place to feed your baby.

I know people got sick of seeing my breasts when I was nursing; I know I certainly did. And don't think for a minute that I didn't wish I could nurse in the car. I'd nursed everywhere else; Target, restaurants, the movies, book stores. I miss it. I'm all for women being able to just whip it out whenever they feel like it, but let's save the highway nudity for semi drivers and college frat boys. Just sayin'.

I See...Myself Not Sleeping for a Month

When I was in college, my roommate and I were the very fortunate recipients of free cable. We had lived in the apartment for a few months before I had the notion to hook up my grandmother's old television to the little cable hook-up coming out the wall in the hopes it would act as an antenna. It worked. Oh, did it work. Free cable! We almost called to make sure we weren't being charged, but then realized that was just the Lord wanting us to turn ourselves in.

I'd never had cable before that moment. I didn't grow up in a house where cable was even available to be had. No no. My parents waited until I moved out of the house to get cable. They never did get call waiting. Something about the probability of them never receiving a single phone call stopped them from getting it. Like I would really have clicked over and told a friend of my parents' "You know...I'm on the other line talking to my friends about this girl who was talking about one of my friends and my friends are all like 'You can't talk about our friends and we're all like...well, you know...can I just have my dad call you back?" Yeah. That would've happened.

So needless to say, we were excited. Until...that fateful day when...I came across...Robert Stack and his fucking Unsolved Mysteries. For crap sake, put a warning on that stuff. Good God. I was so completely terrified. It was an episode about a little girl who would occasionally ask her mom if she could go outside and play with someone; someone who turned out to be a dead man who had lived in her house or something. He showed up at the door with a bloody hand. And then a mean ghost showed up. They moved. Yadda yadda. I'm sure that girl is a freaking MESS today.

I finally changed the channel and my roommate came in from class to find me curled up on the couch watching the television through the holes of a quilt.

"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Trying not to watch this show," I informed her.
"What's wrong with it?"
"It's scaring the shit out of me."
"So, change the channel."
"I did. But it's still there. When I'm watching Young and the Restless it's still there. Just because I changed the channel doesn't mean it's gone away. It's there."
Blank stare.
"I have to know what happens."

Well, The Sixth Sense is on right now. I saw this in the theater with a guy I knew from the bakery where I worked during massage therapy school. I ruined the movie for everyone around me fifteen minutes into it. "He's dead. No one else is talking to him and he's got the same outfit on." People were...pissed. And even though I figured it out straightaway, I couldn't sleep for a month. I had to call my date and have him walk up to my place and sleep on my couch. That's how afraid I was. Sadly, I'm letting this show air right now in my home. Even though I've seen it, it's on regular television, there are commercials and a lot of the stuff has been cut out I still cannot look at the screen half the time.

I have laundry to do tomorrow. It's in the basement of my building. My building is haunted. Everyone who lives here/has lived here confirmed it. In our basement is a closed off tunnel to the Underground Railroad. The inspiration for The Great Gatsby lived here. It's a beautiful creepy building. Every time I'm down there doing laundry I can feel someone staring at me. And when you run up the stairs, it sounds like someone is running after you. Fright. En. Ning.

I hope to one day get over my fear of basements and the dark. My dad used to say, to family (hopefully not to his friends) "If we didn't keep some toilet paper upstairs, she'd just go without." My babysitters' children used to scare the crap out of me when I was a kid and tell me that The Boogeyman was wherever we weren't so they didn't have to chase me. I want to be strong and brave for the baby girl. I certainly don't want her to come into my room one night saying, "There's something under my bed," to which I would reply, "Yeah, I know. I don't know what the hell you're doing in there by yourself."