The Dressmaker

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations - Faith Baldwin

Faith sound like my kind of girl. Well the dressmaker is almost here to do some major alterations in our home. We found out Monday afternoon that Jeff starts his second shift job on the 29th and Aunt Sissy will arrive to live with us this Sunday. Those are the big adjustments.

The rest have just been little nips and tucks along the way.

Everyone in the house is finally well, even Pixie. Its amazing what a round of antibiotics can do. Apparently the siezure-like spasming was atributed to a tooth infection and the piddle was from a bladder infection. Of course, the antibiotics also had the lovely side affect of Pixie vomiting all over . . . but at least that is easier to clean up than piddle. With the unexpected joy of Jeff getting a raise, we've been dreaming a little bit bigger and spending a few more dollars. Alaina has probably benefitted the most from this as she has gotten new decorations for her room and was able to get a new princess doll and the Princess and the Frog the day it came out on DVD.
Alaina now equated me with Tiana's momma that make beautiful princess dresses by the dozen. I have now be informed of the fact that she doesn't have a dress like Princess Tiana and I need to make her one. I'm not sure how I ended up with a princess in the house, but at this point I'm just glad that she only calls herself a princess when she's pretending to be a specific Disney Princess.Kayla in the meantime is a clapping, crawling, cereal eating, two toothed wonder. She loves to make music, laughter, and splashes in the tub. And speaking of splashes, Saturday will be Alaina's last swimming lesson with Mommy. After this, she's in the 'Pike" class which Mommy's and Daddy's aren't invited to attend. (Yay!) It's been a wonderful time, but having that lovely bouyant weightless feeling for 50 minutes every Saturday make me feel rather heavy and sleepy for the rest of the weekend.

Work has become stressful as I strive to impress my new boss . . .I've always worked with Miss L and readily enjoyed it, but now I'm doing double time trying to work my way toward a raise.

And with that all said . . .my banana bread is ready to come out of the oven.

10 days down, 21 to go . . .

I have declared the month of March a hazard zone. I now have a cold and the cat has been in the posession of the vet for over 24 hours. Everytime I call they just want to look at 'one more thing' and then they will call me with an update.

At this point I'm way past no news is good news and am just waiting for the call that I'm going to be a single cat home again.

Bleh.

If the March 'In like a lion, out like a lamb' is true for personal lives, I'm going to win the lottery by the end of the month!

Confession time . . .

Too much going on to mention right now, but I promise to catch you up here are the highlights:

- I got pink eye last week
- Kayla got an ear infection and spent the night screaming about it the very next night
- Cat peed all over the house at least one of them did (Did I ever mention we got a new cat?)
- Spent 40 minutes trying to pump for baby at lunch with no results TWICE last week (ouch)
- Jeff is getting a cold
- Chased down both cats when they snuck outside


And then just to top it off, I spent an hour and a half last night muttering about bad kitties while cleaning up cat piddle using a black light. Then at 4 am I felt REALLY guilty about being mad at the cats because I found out why she had been peeing everywhere.

At 4 am while sleeping on our bed, Pixie (new kitty) had a seizure, rolled off the bed, and pottied everywhere in our bedroom.

BUT WAIT! There's more!
I did my best to clean up the piddle, and went back to bed, only to sleep through my alarm. I was already 15 minutes late for work when I ran out to the truck . . . and it didn't start.

SOOOO I walked the 3 blocks to work. Trying not to cry, and muttering the entire way.

Pixie will go to the Vet tomorrow because i didn't want to stress her out by walking her there in our tiny travel cat case.

Ch - Ch- Changes!

And all of the results are in. My house is due for some extensive changes.

Jeff has jsut gotten a new job that will move him to second shift, so I get to experience all the joys of being home alone with the girls every night.

But wait! There's more!

A certain someone that I love very much is going to be living with us for a while, its not my news to tell, but since they HAVEN'T BLOGGED IN A MONTH, I get to make very not-so-subtle hints about their news. And while I'm sure they aren't going to step in and help me with bedtime stories and baths every night, it will be nice to have someone around when my sanity comes into question.

Another positive thing is that one of the main reasons that Jeff applied for this job is the increase in *ahem* monitary benefits that will come to our household. Jeff and I have started to think a little bigger about the plans for our house, since we may have the opportunity to actually have the cash to make the necessary changes.

But the little spending habits have already begun. To celebrate, I took Alaina to the store and we bought Kayla a "johnny-jump-up" which she doesn't like at this point, and Alaina got a new princess for her mini princess collection. In fact, we splurged and got the set with the prince and the horse so now all of her princesses won't have to wait in one line while the Wicked Queen dances with Prince Charming, Prince Naveen to the rescue!

Favorite conversations.

One of my goals for the new year was to be a happier person in general which has for some reason led me to be more reflective about life. I was reading Mindy's blog (hey family have you met Mindy? Mindy, family. Family, Mindy.) and she posted about working with a group comprised mostly of women. I got to thinking about the joy of dealing with women, and one thought led to another until I was remember the conversations I used to have with Jeff's friends that we used to hang out with on the weekends.

And I started to giggle.

A bit of background to this tale. Jeff and I hung out with a group of 4-5 guys and since he was the only one with a steady girlfriend, I was allowed to tag along. But because I was the only female in the group I sometimes had some unexpected roles to fulfill.

Like being a "wingma'am." I admit to assisting a few of the guys in getting phone numbers by pointing out their good qualities when needed to get a phone number, but I drew the line at facilitating bringing a girl home from the bars.

And I was called upon often to be the expert on all things 'woman.' However the conversation almost always went like this. . .

Boy: Katie, why did she do that?

Me: Because girls are just flat out crazy.

Boy: No really, why did she do that?

Me: Really? Because girls are crazy! Seriously you don't believe me? Let me explain it to you. That girl that called you to say that she was going to be out downtown with her friends? She wasn't really inviting you to meet up with them. I know you think she told you she was going out for that reason, but she wasn't. What she's doing is laying the groundwork to either
a - brush you off if she runs into you because she's 'with the girls'
b - setting you up to be her last chance hook up for the night.
That's really about it. Because if she really wanted to run into you, she would have told you what bar they were heading to and when they were planning to be there.

Boy: But that doesn't make sense. If she didn't want to see me why would she call?

Me: Didn't I just tell you? She may want to call you after, but don't expect anything. She's just a thrill seeker and she won't call you after this weekend. Couldn't you tell by the fact that she was wearing a miniskirt and ugg-ly boots out while its snowing?

Boy: I still don't understand.

Me: When are you going to learn that you aren't supposed to?

And I'm smiling to myself just thinking about all the lessons that I taught that started with the phrase "because girls are crazy." And I include myself in that rank. But I just want to say that while I explain to guys that girls are crazy, there is a fantastic path of thought that leads to most of the seemingly crazy logic that women have. I am fascinated by it, but I have given up trying to explain it to ANY man, because they don't appear to have the capacity to decipher most if it.

Pending confirmation

The phrase above is pretty much the two words that describes my life at this moment. Two of the most important people in my life are pending confirmation for life changing announcements that will change the way that I function indefinitely. I'm very excited and nervous for both of these announcements to happen because whatever they are . . .I feel stuck at the moment.

Hence the lack of posts for 13 days (gasp!)

I promised myself I wouldn't look to see if I've ever went that long without blogging. But I'm still here and maybe I'll get around to posting about the other things that have been changing in my life like:

Our new cat
Alaina's swimming lessons
Kayla (everything is new!)
Good things at work

But the only thing I want to say at this point is to brag with pride that I've finally broken the habit of stopping at McD's for breakfast for coffee that I don't like.
Why would you get coffee that you don't like?
I'm glad you asked. It's because I crave unsweetened liquid creamer and they recently started only stocking sweetened creamer at work.

I broke the habit by bringing in a little lunch sack with a container of half and half in it everyday to work. And my boss has happily been invited to use it because she feels the same way about sweetened creamer.

How silly is that?

The writing on the wall.

I've been a little depressed about having to hand back my wonderful secret service hearing aides on Tuesday. I felt like yelling out "Damn it Chloe!" in my best Jack Bauer voice about 20 times a day, but then everyone would have looked at me like I was crazier than usual.

Okay, so that's no excuse for not blogging, but its all I've got!

Last night Alaina went into the hallway just before bath time and was quietly playing by herself. I just assumed that she was taunting one of the cats, when I heard Jeff say, "OH ALAINA!" in his best 'I'm disappointed in you' voice.

I hustled over to see what the problem was and I just about hyperventilated as I tried to contain my laughter. Alaina was sitting in the middle of the hallway with markers all over the floor and had been drawing on the wall.

ON THE WALL! Jeff was just hitting his stride of "I spent a lot of time painting these walls and making sure they looked nice" and "I'm going to have to paint . ." when I walked over with a wet wash cloth and wiped the wall clean.

Then I turned to Alaina, who was putting on her best "I'm going to cry because I got caught" performance, and cut her Oscar-worthy tears short with a simple, "Alaina, we don't color on walls, that's what your beautiful coloring books are for. Go into the bathroom and we'll start your bath" Then I ran upstairs to laugh until I cried because my daughter did something as cliche as draw on the walls.

Of course, I had to get a few laughs at my husband's clueless-ness about the wonders of washable markers. I tried to take a picture of the marks, but Alaina hadn't gotten far enough for them to show up on a picture. Darn.