Sunday, July 30, 2006

Wasn't That Nice?

So after church this morning, one of the elderly male members of Mr. W.'s congregation cornered me.

Elderly Male Member (EMM): Hey, Mrs. W., you know, you look like someone who's been in the news a lot lately.

Me (a little worried): Really? (nervous laugh)

EMM: Yes, although, it isn't a compliment.

Me (a lot worried): Oh...

EMM: Yes, you look an awful lot like Andrea Yates.

Me: Okay, bye.

Wasn't that just the kindest thing you've EVER heard anybody say to a gal? Really, how could I not be flattered by the comparison? How ungracious of me to be annoyed that I am thought to look like a 40+ year old insane woman!

On the bright side, I can safely say that I have NEVER opened my mouth and stuffed my foot in quite so deep.

Mr. W. was pretty irritated when I mentioned the little episode to him and wanted to go tell on EMM to his wife. He also suggested telling EMM that he resembled Charls Manson. EMM's wife would have disciplined him quite thoroughly, I'm sure. As it is, my MIL apologized on behalf of old people everywhere. LOL

I will grant EMM that I do share some traits with poor Andrea. We are both white, have brown hair and wear glasses. I wonder if EMM will feel the need to share his observations with every woman who has brown hair and glasses. He will be very busy if he does.

M.W.

Operation Raisin Extraction

Her fingers are not the only things L. has been sticking up her nose lately. She has also been stuffing carrots, watermelon, 'cheese' and even raisins. Until yesterday, we were able to successfully remove any and every foreign object on our own. It helps that she hasn't stuffed anything so far up that we didn't have a 'tail' hanging down for extraction purposes and that she sneezes most things out.

Breakfast yesterday was quite eventful as she kept putting raisins up her nose. Bad mommy turned her back for a second and turned back just in time to interrupt L.'s intense effort yet again shove a raisin up her left nostril. When I got that raisin (and all the others on her tray) away from her, I realized the first raisin she jammed up her nose was still there.

Mr. W. and I worked at getting the raisin out for a minute but only succeeded in jamming it further up. Fortunately, our clinic is open Saturday mornings and had plenty of appointments available with the on-duty pediatrician.

Dr. M. (who looked 15), bless her, did not laugh at us. She did have me blow hard into L.'s mouth to try to force out the raisin. It was really odd trying to give a wriggly worm mouth to mouth. One hopes it is easier to get a good seal when the patient is lying still and not crying when needing to administer CPR. My mouth-to-mouth attempts succeeded in getting L. and me both covered in sloppy drool (yuck!) and knocked the raisin far enough down that the good doctor was able to actually see it (so she quit asking if I was SURE there was a raisin up there).

When the mouth-to-mouth failed to do the trick, out came the torture tool chest. My poor baby had a speculum-type thingy wedged in her nostril while vicious, alien-abduction type probes were stuffed up her nose. After 30 minutes of digging around and pulling out little bits and pieces of raisin while L. screamed non-stop at the top of her lungs, Dr. M. was ready to give up. She said she's give it one last go, and 'poof' we had the rest of the raisin.

I was so relieved, I shouted 'halleluia' right there in the examining room. Dr. M. gave me instructions to dose L. with saline drops up her nose, but I decided the poor child had enough trauma and skipped those instructions. The doctor did a great job, not only was the raisin pulled out, but L.'s nose did not bleed at all afterward. I expected things to be scraped up and possibly bloody, but no.

After all that trauma, L. fell asleep and stayed sacked out for over 2 hours. When she woke up, I had rather hoped she would be cured of nose stuffing. During lunch, I saw a little piece of cheese dangling from the right nostril. When I pulled away the cheese, a carrot stick came with it. (((BIG SIGH))).

M.W.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Ah... Un-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh

Three guesses what L. learned to say while I was gone on my trip. LOL!

She is thoroughly cracking me up with her little word. Friday night I put her to bed. She wasn't ready to settle down and go to sleep, so she started experimenting with ways to get me to take her out of her crib.

First, she embarked on the grumping, fussing combo. That was followed with mild crying. When those two didn't immediately produce results, she started banging on the sides of her crib. The banging was accompanied by 'aaaaaa.... uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh' and so on. The little stinker has already caught on that we come running when the 'uh-oh' word is heard. It took her a grand total of 10 minutes to lay down and go to sleep. However, her antics gave me another 15 minutes of giggles.

M.W.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Just in case my plane crashes

I love you Mr. W. You are my partner and best friend. You give me strength and make me feel loved.

I love you S. You are my first born, and you have taught me more about myself than I would have thought possible. I treasure your curiosity, stubbornness and incredible self-confidence.

I love you L. You are my second born, and you have brought a dimension to our family I didn't realize was missing. I treasure your adventurous spirit, ready laugh and snuggly ways.

M.W.

Are people really this rude?

I headed down to our little snack bar/cafeteria type dealy in search of therapy by cookie. While I was standing in line to make my purchase (two peanut butter chip peanut butter cookies, YUM), the gal in front of me was talking on her cell phone. She plopped down 27 cents (the cost for a bag of popcorn), accepted the popcorn bag from the cashier and walked off without once making eye contact or in any way acknowledging the cashier's existence. This strikes me as extremely rude.

I think we're becoming slaves to our cellphones.

Is it really so difficult to tell the person you are conversing with on the phone to hold on a sec while you maintain a minimal level of civility with the person who is standing right in front of you?

M.W.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Eh, It could be worse!

Because I will be out of town Tuesday through Friday, I had hoped to spend the weekend visiting with my mother, spending time with my girls and helping Mr. W. get the house situated for the least amount of single-parent stress.

Instead, my grandmother is in the hospital, so Mom had to cancel her visit. My time-critical projects are not quite finished, so I am here at work. Needless to say, the house has been completely neglected, and I've hardly spent any time with the girls.

It could be worse, though.

Mr. W. dropped me off at work and is currently grocery-shopping with the girls. More power to him, I hope he isn't too frantic afterward. LOL.

On our way in, we saw a terrible fire. We couldn't see what was burning, but it was located in a neighborhood and put out thick, thick black smoke. Enormous flames shot up above the trees. I hope and pray nobody is hurt and the fire doesn't spread. July in Texas is ordinarily miserably hot and dry. This year, we're also nearly four inches behind on our rainfall. As bad as my weekend seems to be, it really could be worse. Somebody in our little town is definitely having a worse weekend than I've ever had.

M.W.

Updated 7-17 The fire made it on the evening news. It was a fire in a detached garage, and nobody was hurt (beyond a couple firefighters getting too hot). The wonderful fire department even managed to keep the fire contained to the garage and away from all the homes and trees in the area. I saw interviews with some of the neighbors, and they were pretty shell-shocked. I've grown accustomed to seeing grass fires from time to time, but that fire was intense.

Friday, July 14, 2006

E's enough

Can I jot down a post and follow a silly constraint? I don't know. Can you?

It's funny, I run across stuff similar to this on the WWW and think it's not so difficult. Now that I'm trying it on my own, I grasp how hard it is to find word substitutions that flow. Awkward, awkward, awkward.

I lost a fifth of an hour on this task and am giving up for now. Happy Friday all!

M.W.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

End of another blooming quarter

AAAAAaaaaaaaggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!

It is end of quarter, and as usual, I'm going nuts. Crazed and crazy sales persons are turning me into a raving lunatic. This is not good. It is normal for me to be a little tense with all the whining and questioning I get each quarter from individuals worried about getting their quarterly bonus. This quarter, however, I am developing a bad attitude. Again, this is not good. I have gone from letting things go to stewing over individuals trying every which way they can to work their way around the system. This is definitely not good. I'm also going on a business trip next week, and so have four fewer days in which to accomplish everything. Again, not good since sales management keeps sending me changes to the targets met roster (including one 14 minutes ago).

Find a happy place...

M.W.

Birds, birds, birds

We have birds everywhere! It is amazing! The little nest in our entryway (ick, but interesting) has produced 8 new birdies for our little bird-deprived neighborhood this year. When we first moved into our house, I was disappointed that despite the fact we are on the edge of cow pastures and other more nature-friendly environments, our neighborhood was very sparse on birds. Now we pull into our driveway and see a row of the prettiest little black birds with yellowish bellies lined up on our roof. Doves come and go, and I've even spotted a robin or two.

I have enjoyed watching the nest antics this year, but I'm sick to death of bird poop all over my front door. Hopefully Mr. W. can knock down the nest (again!) before the birdies start another clutch. There is just one bird left that hasn't quite grown enough to be on his own. Let's hope he flies off before mama bird lays more eggs!

M.W.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

S. and L. Go to a Funeral

Mr. W's uncle passed away last week, and the funeral was yesterday. I really did not want to go. More precisely, I did not want to take the girls. Mr. W. had been asked to serve as a pallbearer, so it would have been just me and the girls during the service. Toss in a two and a half hour drive each way, and I was convinced that we had a monumental disaster in the making. S. can be, how shall I put this, a bit of an inquisitive banshee. Visions of her screeching and asking difficult questions during a solemn funeral service pounded through my brain. Revival of evening 'Am I going to die?' 'Are you going to die?' question-and-answer sessions loomed on my horizons. I was also very concerned about the graveside service and the extreme Texas heat. L. growing restless and screeching during the service was icing on the cake.

Fortunately, I was blessed with two wonderful bits of advice and an extremely helpful sister in law who dotes on her nieces.

My mother, noting that S. has attended church services since infancy, recommended that we speak of the funeral as a special church service. S. never thought to look up at the casket up front, because she was too busy looking at the pretty colored lights. She especially liked the blue ones. Since the service strongly resembled a regular Sunday service, she never asked a single question. Well, she did ask me which color light I wanted and if we could have lights like that in our house.

My very best friend essentially told me that since I was pretty well committed to going, that I needed to suck it up and change my attitude. After whining to her about how awful this little trip was going to be, I decided she was right. A short conversation with Mr. W. cleared the air, and I forcibly reminded myself to be upbeat.

My lovely sister in law rode with us and even kept S. when I had to scoot out of the chapel after L. went into her rendition of 'Screeches With Owls.' S., who weighs a ton and a half, fell asleep right after L. and I headed out, and auntie actually carried her out of the chapel and stood around with her for a good ten minutes before we found each other again.

The graveside service was miserably hot, but we found a bit of shade. L. behaved impeccably, and S. napped during the final good-byes. Both girls waited very patiently while familiar and stranger family members stood around talking.

After 20 minutes or so talking in the sweltering heat, we were invited to Mr. W.'s cousin's house. We stayed for a good two hours while Mr. W. and his extended family caught up with one another. Both girls were impeccably well-behaved. I have never seen (and may never see again) the pair of them act so well. There was no screeching, no pushing, no yelling, no breaking of ANYTHING, good table manners, S. and L. were both friendly to people who were essentially strangers.

S. even behaved herself on the drive back home. Typical tired S. behavior usually involves random fits of screaming and yelling during car rides. Not once did we have to ask her to use her inside voice. Of course, I credit Chick Fil A for a big part of that peace and quiet. S. found a CD of short stories in her kid's meal at lunch, and thoroughly enjoyed the stories. Enjoyed them enough that we heard the entire thing a couple more times today too, but that's all right.

I am still beaming after all the compliments about how beautiful and well-behaved my girls are.

M.W.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Awwww...

S. received her first official haircut today. I have a little baggie with about 1 inch worth of trimmed hair. She didn't really want her cut, but I convinced her that she will have more fun at swimming lessons if some of the dead hair was cut out. I also told her that her hair would grow faster after it had been cut. Bad me, but the ends of her hair were really damaged.

L. started giving bear hugs today. I was carrying her to our room to get her shoes, when she latched on and held tight with all her strength. So nice. She did the same for Mr. W. and grandma at church this morning.

We have a bird's nest in our entryway. Mama and Daddy bird fledged 1 group of three babies already. Now they have five babies in the nest. It's an odd group, three of them are one size and two of them are quite a bit younger (a week or two, I'm guessing). I worry that the two littlest ones won't make it, but so far, Mama and Daddy are continuing to feed all five babies. I'm keeping a bit of a close eye on them since I don't want S. to discover a dead baby bird outside our front door.

M.W.