Wordless Wednesday: "I'm a Monster!"

The Original Blue Face

When Gracie was 3, we were getting ready to go to my Gramma's house for a visit. I got her dressed and left her playing for a minute so I could get myself dressed as well. I don't take long to get ready, literally just enough time to slip into a change of clothes and I'm done. So when I returned to find my child COVERED in blue marker, I was a little pissed. Okay - I was a LOT pissed.

"Gurraaaacieeeeeeee...." I started, in that disappointed voice only parents can truly master. Immediately she started tearing up - and as the tears streamed down her face, so did the blue ink, and I realized I was probably overreacting. I calmed down, calmed her down, and after cleaning her as quickly as I could with some wipies, I realized I should have probably taken some pictures. Fortunately for the situation, photographically speaking, the blue ink didn't want to wipe completely off with baby wipes, so there was some left to take pictures of.

The Mystery of the Blue Face

Two days ago, we had a vet come to our home to do a check up on our cats. That being said, it's pretty obvious that my house was clean. And not just good enough-for-close-friends-that-stop-by-at-random clean, but there's-a-stranger-coming-into-our-home-so-let's-break-out-the-white-glove clean.

So you can imagine my surprise when yesterday I found Kairi, who had not left the living room and had not been left unattended, crawled up to me looking like this:



I searched the area where she was playing and found nothing but a couple drops of what looked like blue ink. After snapping a few shots, I threw her in the tub where the ink rinsed right off with no problem.

Jason and I have concluded that whatever it was that she was playing with must have been ingested. I've been waiting patiently for bouts of blue poo but have yet to see any.

The Great Ice Storm of '02

Edit: Shortly after posting this (literally, perhaps a minute) it occurred to me that it could be considered in poor taste to post a weather "survival" story so soon after the earthquake in Haiti. I mean absolutely NO disrespect to anyone and I certainly apologize if anyone is offended.

I'm getting old.... You know how I know I'm getting old? I'm about to tell you a weather story. And it's a bit of a "When I was your age I walked 3 miles to get to school, in the snow, up hill, BOTH WAYS!" kind of story, you know, the kind Grandpa Old-coot used to tell to demonstrate what ingrates we all were as kids.

(Note: I am actually 26 years old and I realize that 26 is far from being old. So in a way, I'm telling you to disregard the first paragraph. But really, don't. Because it would suck for you to disregard my words. Why should I post them if they're only going to be looked upon and thrown out? Whatever. Do what you will with them. On with the story...)

On January 25, 2002 I put down the deposit and the first month's rent on my first house. I was moving in with Jason and we had a roommate named Billy. I was 18 years old and was venturing out on my own in more ways than just moving out of my parents house. Just the month prior I had (finally!) gotten my driver's license and first car, making me self-reliant where transportation was concerned for the first time in my life. Three days after moving in a storm blew in overnight that rocked most of the Central Plains.

I awoke the morning of January 30th to no power. It was cold in my room but I figured it was because we had yet to move a bed in and were still sleeping on a pallet on the floor. I was running late for work so I rushed getting ready. I ran outside to find a sheet of ice an inch or thicker formed on my car. The sidewalk was slick, the grass crunched under my feet. The bush in my front yard looked majestic, almost as if the leaves were pressed in glass. It reminded me a lot of how the world looked when Darkness descended upon the world in the movie Legend, but minus the snow.

After defrosting and scraping the ice off my windows and door (a LOT of defrosting and scraping!) I made my slow drive across town to work. A drive that normally takes about 10 minutes took almost an hour. There were branches and tree limbs that had fallen into the roadway. I was lucky that there wasn't much traffic because I slid around quite a bit.

At the time I was working at the McDonald's inside our local Wal-Mart. If one thing is for certain in this town, it's that Wal-Mart will be open. And they were - for a few hours. Half-way through my workday (what was left of my workday after being late, that is) the power went out and the store was evacuated. I made the long drive home to sit this out there.

Over the next 16 days, I spent the time I wasn't at work sitting at home with Jason and Billy playing various different board and card games. If we got bored we would travel the icy streets across town to various other friends' houses to do pretty much the same thing. Eventually, our friends and family all had their power restored while we still found ourselves sitting in darkness. After nearly 20 days of being without electricity, I called the local utility authority from work to ask what was going on. Apparently, as we had just moved in and had the power turned on not 3 days prior to the storm hitting, a glitch had basically erased us from the grid and all the guy had to do was flip a switch and we were back in business.

A friend of mine made a comment about how silly she finds it that every time we have some sort of rough patch of weather there are tee-shirts that say, "I survived the ____ storm of 20__." In a way I can understand where she's coming from, but I can also see why people make and wear these shirts proudly. I feel like, given the circumstances of having just moved out on my own and having to deal with living through the ice storm, yes I "survived" it. In that time I learned a lot more about myself as an adult, about my boyfriend, and about my new roommate than I think I could have ever learned in such a short span of time. I also learned some pretty cool defensive driving techniques.

So, today is National Delurking Day... And in the honor of that, I will ask that you comment and let me know what's the biggest storm you're proud to have "survived?"

Help Me Help Haiti

Hey guys - a bit of an informal post here, but I could REALLY use some help!!

So, we all know what's going on in Haiti right now and that they could really use our help. It's being suggested that we donate monetarily instead of sending food, etc. Well, I don't know about you, but I am BROKE. But I still want to help. Tomorrow I am calling the Oklahoma Blood Institute to see about donating some blood, and I encourage everyone else to do the same (only to your own respective blood banks).

I'd also like to take it a step further. As a breastfeeding mother and advocate, I realize that the need for breast milk is higher than ever in Haiti right now. And this is where you guys come in: please, please, PLEASE help me research to find out if there are any breast milk banks that are donating to Haiti. What an easy way to help out that could grant such a huge impact on someone's life.

If you find out any information, please let me know either in my comments here, by email (babybeatnik at gmail dot com) or via Twitter (@babybeatnik - I am also keeping an eye on the tag #Breastmilk4Haiti).

Thanks so much!

About Time to Make My Resolutions, I Guess

Man. This new year has been flying by! I rang it in with a group of people who invited themselves to my home at the last minute and decided to stay until 4 am. Don't get me wrong, they're nice people, but when you've been planning on doing Jack-Diddly for an evening (New Year's or not) and those plans get jolted, it's not the easiest thing to deal with. I made the best of it, but I still wasn't particularly happy.

Gracie started school again last Monday. And Kairi had her 9 month well-check. Everything checked out fine, but I made mention of the cough she's had for the past 2 weeks. It's not been a huge problem, but the length of it has worried me. The doctor was reluctant to do anything since I had said it seems like it's getting better, but she decided that she'd rather be safe than sorry and get a chest X-Ray. Boy am I glad she did! Kairi has pneumonia! Now, don't panic. It's just started, we caught it early, and we're just having to give her medicine for 10 days. She still acts normal, just coughs every now and again.

I've also been dealing with some personal drama lately - but it's not really my personal drama and therefore not mine to talk about. It's been interesting though, to say the least.

So, I've been busy this year so far. And here it is, we're 8 days into it, and I haven't made any resolutions. Really, I'm not big on resolutions. Not for New Year's at least. I think that if you're gonna do something, you should just do it - just make the goal and go for it. But I realize that I don't have many specific goals lined out for myself at present, so I'm going to go ahead and bend and make some resolutions of my own:

First of all, I am in desperate need of patience when it comes to my family, especially Gracie. Gracie is at an age where she is capable of doing a lot of things, but often times needs help where I wouldn't expect it. There have been many occasions when I will ask her to get something from the other room (for example, a box of baby wipes) and she will go to the room and immediately exclaim that she can't see them. So I tell her where I left them (on the dresser) and she still can't see them. So, I get up, and - for this example - carry my diaperless, poop covered baby at arms length praying not to get covered myself to the room where the wipes are and immediately can see them in plain view. Now, the thing about this situation, and lots of situations that cause frustration, is that I should not have had to rely on Gracie to get me the wipes in the first place. She is not Momma Jr. and she is incredibly helpful a lot of the time anyway. She loves playing with her sister and helping out, but I should not be relying on that help from her. So, in that as well, I need to become more self-reliant when it comes to Kairi.

Also, I need to get my butt back in school. I've been throwing around an idea for the past couple of days about changing my studies from psychology to nursing. No, I don't want to be a nurse - I think (I'm pretty sure at least) that I want to be a midwife. There are several nursing programs that I can take locally to get me on the right path that I need to start looking into.

For now, those are my big goals. I've got lots of smaller goals like keeping the dishes done and the trash taken out on time, but I won't bore you with the details there.

Have you made any resolutions yet or are you running late like me? What would you like to improve this year?