incoherent ramblings from an optimistic pessimist cyber space cadet [entries|friends|calendar] changing lives since 2003 [ website | My Website ] [ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ] [ calendar | livejournal calendar ]

red? black? red? black? [Jul 3 2008 - Thu|09:57am] ugh. i was told, on the phone, that we had paid off our hospital bill. overpaid, in fact. they were sending us a check. instead, i got another bill. for $288.20. i finally got a hold of a CSR. she was a nice lady. she had to put me on hold three times to figure out what was going on. when we first started receiving bills, we eventually figured out we were receiving two bills: one for me and one for oliver. even the billing company hadn't initially understood this. they promised to link the accounts after calling me on two occasions to harass me for a larger monthly payment. then there's that bill with Boy R listed back at the top of it. the rep eventually said that the accounts had been linked, but as one had been paid off, there was only one account left so they unlinked. i have no idea what that means. the credit i was supposed to receive in the mail was applied to the second account and i still owed $370.55. wait. $370.55? then why does this invoice say $288.20? she didn't know. she asked her supervisor. she told me that because the accounts were unlinked, the credit showed as being applied twice even though it was really only applied once. what? excuse me, but doesn't medical city deliver something like 8-12 babies a day? haven't they been open for business since the 70s? isn't that more than enough practice to work out a billing system that makes sense? why do i feel like i'm the only mother-child combo to have this happen? last week, i contacted oliver's new school to ask when we're supposed to make our first payment. she replied we already owe two payments with the third coming due july 20. that's $1210 now and $605 in a couple of weeks. and then another on august 20. and he doesn't even start school until a week after that. ugh. i was a little irritated just before that news because it took me that long to realize that we would be making twelve monthly payments for nine months of care. not quite as affordable as i had originally thought. and i use the term "nine months of care" loosely, considering all the teachers days and holidays and half days they have. as a result of all this business, plus paying for the florida trip and being overzealous about paying off my debt, i have been using the old capitalone again. just for padding. to be paid back off again shortly. irritating. 3 dead X pick your poison

dizzy is fun. [Jul 2 2008 - Wed|04:33pm] i suppose, as his mother, i should've stopped him sooner. the worst that happened was right after i turned off the camera when he dropped to his hands and knees and then his weighty toddler head pulled itself forward to the floor. 8 dead X pick your poison

vacation? [Jul 1 2008 - Tue|09:01am] have i mentioned we're vacationing in fort walton beach, fl, this year? we leave shortly after oliver's bedtime friday night. so much for fireworks. i admit i'm a bit stressed out. neither brian nor i are big drivers. and this trip will be like driving to austin and back twice in a row. 11-12 hours. i don't think that includes stops. oh god. i'm not sure how this is going to pan out. we have friday off, at least, and brian is a champion napper. he'll be in charge of going to bed the earliest. (one of) my problems is that i have a hard time these days trusting other people to drive. ergo, i find it difficult to sleep in the car. this is going to be murder. then we'll get to figure out when to make up the sleep after we get there. as well as what to do for the hours between our arrival and check in time while our stuff melts in the car. and then we get to drive back home. i'm hoping oliver's old enough now so that we won't have to redirect him from everything in the condo. i need to remember to bring rubberbands to try and keep him out of the kitchen knives. and hope he doesn't run into the ocean while everyone's busy putting on sunblock. and hope someone doesn't put coke in his cup or give him a hunk of brisket or slip him a spoonful of artificial sugar food. because that's what privileged children eat. we are sharing a condo with my parents (mom's leaving on wednesday) and my sister's family will be staying next door. i'm tired already. 4 dead X pick your poison

memorial day recap. just in time for the fourth. [Jun 27 2008 - Fri|10:54am] no one told me memorial day weekend was coming earlier than the last weekend of may. i found out the thursday evening before. that saturday was a hell day of driving all up and down dallas. after the little gym, we drove to the galleria and then realized oliver was asleep. we turned around and drove back a bit to the Y so we could finally get gym memberships. brian remembered EQ3 had opened in dallas near the galleria, so we took turns running in to make sure they didn't have any couches we preferred to the gigantic ikea couch. then oliver woke up and all three of us went in so he could play with fake lemons and one of the salesgirls. then back to the galleria for two pairs of baby converse, among other things. brian is in the habit of leaving the house without eating and then bellyaching about starving. we stopped for lunch at the corner bakery and got a little table overlooking the ice rink. after that, we had to drive a bit to get to nicole's so we could borrow her jeep to take another drive to ikea where we thought we were going to pick up a sofa, only to realize we are an unrealistic people who assumed they would stock a heap of couches in a heap of fabric choices. then it was a drive from ikea back to nicole's and from nicole's to mai's to pick up dinner and finally home. we were gone from 9am-7pm. i haven't done that in a long time. we were exhausted. sunday, we stayed close to home, with the exception of running to central market and whole foods, and i made some more party food test batches of hummus and cookies and black bean dip as well as some non-party seitan. darren showed up and was subjected to taste testing before we left to see priceless at the angelika and drinks at lee harvey's. i went totally nuts and had three beers. i don't think that's happened since my birthday last august. on memorial day proper, we were feeling fancy and decided to take oliver to the grapevine bar over by where brian used to live. you might know it as the predominantly gay bar that was featured during the reveal portion of an episode of cheaters and the location of the recent chelsea handler booksigning. i glanced around for signs saying no one under 21 would be admitted as i queued up at the bar to order and as brian dashed through the tiny bar with oliver to the back patio where we had the entire area to ourselves. i trotted happily after them, a beer in one hand and a kamikaze on the rocks in the other. it was a little warm, but there were shade trees and a little breeze and it was a beautiful day. oliver explored the basketball court and picnic tables and played with a little ball we had brought. he had just settled in with his cup and his crayons when the bartender came out back to place ashtrays on the tables and told us there was a fickle gay inside who's a regular customer and who had commented that a baby had been brought in the bar. the fickle gay is a friend of the owner's and the bartender claimed that though he didn't care, he was concerned the fickle gay would tattle. we got the picture. we weren't entirely welcome. go ahead and finish your drinks, but silently understand that it will be time to leave after that. don't dilly dally. brian was incensed. he was steaming. though i found it a little irritating, especially since we weren't told upfront and had even been given our drinks and then made to feel awkward, i let it roll off my back so we could enjoy what time we did spend there. i felt a little bad for the bartender because he seemed to have unwittingly squeezed himself between a rock and a hard place and i'm still not convinced he didn't give us a break on our drink prices. it's a shame because oliver seemed to like it there. besides, i told brian, we can just finish up here and then go to the ginger man where we know they like having babies in the bar. so we did. and oliver colored some more and ran in circles around a tree and looked at the extensive rock collection and sat down on the ground in front of the waitress who had sat down on the stairs to talk to him. and she wasn't telling him to leave after he finished his drink, either. we went home after our second leisurely drink and i made spaghetti with seitan for dinner. again. at the grapevine. you can tell he's trying not to cry after being kicked to the curb. it's fitting that there's an EXIT sign in the background. you can tell he's trying not to cry after being kicked to the curb. matching lips. ( still trying not to cry after being kicked to the curb... ) 8 dead X pick your poison

celebration time. or not. [Jun 24 2008 - Tue|09:58pm] last night, at 10 'til midnight, brian woke me while from sleeping on the couch so i could brush my teeth and go to bed. i'd barely opened my eyes when he asked: "is our anniversary tomorrow?" my head frowned and i said, "no, it was today." my head wasn't frowning because i had spent an entire day miserable over the fact he hadn't remembered our anniversary. it was because we had both forgotten our anniversary. even after reminding ourselves just days prior not to forget. our anniversaries have officially spiraled down to almost nothing. the first year, we were broken up. the second year, we had a three week old baby at home while we escaped to dinner at reunion tower. last year, we knew we were beat and decided to roll with the punches being thrown by our declining social life by taking oliver and dinner from mango to the park on lovers lane (the lovers lane part was incidental). this didn't happen until the day after because brian had managed to get tickets to see cyndi lauper with some friends while i babysat. so, technically, we dined with them at the bangkok inn and then he jetted (the bangkok inn part was incidental). now this. 10 minutes of "oh, so it's our anniversary. i think." my poor, little mind was too overwhelmed with the birthday party and going out and darren's upcoming birthday and going out and appointments and florida. our anniversary keep getting lost in the shuffle. we celebrated the occasion, apparently, by waiting over an hour to see the gynecologist (well, brian left before the appointment actually began since oliver was intent on being toddler concentrate). we commemorated our love over potato soup that was half homemade and half from a tetrapak. there wasn't much conversation because oliver had exploded moments prior to sitting down at the table, either because i wouldn't launch another episode of blue's clues or because he has decided to hate potato soup. or both. we shoveled spoons into our mouths to the melodious strains of shrieks and sobs and tears forging paths down cheeks. it didn't end after dinner when brian dragged a limp oliver branch into his room to play trains. it didn't stop while we both sat on his bed making small talk. it didn't stop until i pulled out the fisher price circus and then it was parlor games of balancing plastic animals on plastic ladders and trapezes. i spent the hours of 8-10pm trying to get him to fall asleep. it was that toddler paradox where you think being intensely crazy will make them sleep like a rock, but it has the opposite effect instead. i haven't mentioned this before, but when oliver is deeply excited about a show on the tv, like blue's clues, he looks like ian curtis dancing. i hope that's not a bad sign. 8 dead X pick your poison

and we just took off his boy-in-a-sprinkler tshirt. [Jun 24 2008 - Tue|03:07pm] oh, lordy. robert's out there again. this is the second time i've seen him set up a sprinkler recently to water the grass in the courtyard between my building and his. it's funny because we have an automated sprinkler system. it's not funny because we have an automated sprinkler system. oliver would have fun playing water games in it. i would not have fun playing non-water games in its aftermath. pick your poison

green porno. black top. [Jun 16 2008 - Mon|01:35pm] am i the only person who's seen isabella rossellini's green porno on the sundance channel? i've decided the human race is much less deviant when it comes to sex than the insect kingdom apparently is. the instinct to propagate is a weird one. today, they are resurfacing half of the parking lot. there were no holes whatsoever in the parking lot before today. i obviously do not know all the reasons there could be for resurfacing a parking lot. i do know i would appreciate keeping our HOA fees in the kitty instead of letting them burn a whole in the board's pocket. brian called the management company this morning and got a hold of the bitchy lady of the office. since they don't know how to think of details like the fact that they have blocked the gate with the keypad and failed to force open the gate without the keypad for people who don't have clickers, he called to ask them how he should get to work and how the a/c repairmen could get in to make our bedroom less stuffy. her response was: "what do you want me to do? it's not like i can open it from the office." i fumed from the bathroom (but not in that way) and spent the 3 lonely hours, where there should have been discussions with repairmen who ended up being severely tardy with no phone call (where has all the customer service gone these days!), having verbal revenge fantasies and wishing it had been me who was on the phone when she popped that zinger out of her property management bitch rifle. 2 dead X pick your poison

horn of plenty. its eye is an emeraulde! [Jun 13 2008 - Fri|10:13am] i recently received the most fantabulous necklace on the planet (on the baby's birthday... it was my reward for surviving two years!). it's a vintage, rhinestone-studded unicorn. it's beautifully ridiculous. and it's like some kind of unicorn miracle that i have one. i first spotted it months ago on ebay and when i finally decided to Buy It Now, it was snatched out of my palm. then i found another and didn't even realize it for days because it gleamed so brightly. look for it in upcoming photo parades. if you spot it, perhaps your unicorn wishes will come true too. speaking of unicorn miracles... 2 dead X pick your poison

oliver's second birthday extravaganza. [Jun 12 2008 - Thu|12:39pm] i'm relieved that our month of casually worrying over the state of our corner of the University Place Nation is over. for now. i'm still trying to learn that just because you clean up, doesn't mean it will stay that way forever. in our case, it lasts from one to two days. which is what makes me not like cleaning. i prefer a longer term investment. i felt sad over and over that i was busy cleaning or baking instead of playing with oliver on friday and saturday. what a shitty way to spend your birthday. and then, i couldn't concentrate on him because i was busy with a house full of guests. but that aside, he had a good birthday. brian took off friday to clean. i tried to talk him into a beer lunch at the ginger man, but i was quickly shot down. i made a blender's worth of hummus, baked a three layer vegan chocolate cake, baked a nasty applesauce cake (which shall be going in the trash shortly), made 4 dozen almost-vegan peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, cut out "HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLIVER!!!" by hand, arranged family-made artwork in a gigantic frame, and assembled a rocking horse. i will admit to doing the old shove-it-in-a-corner-or-closet method of cleaning once time began seriously running out. the big day got off to a shaky start with oliver's first tantrum followed by olilver's first accident before we'd even managed to leave the bedroom. he became angered with me for some unknown toddler reason and tried to grab my legs as i walked away. instead, he fell forward and caught his forehead on the inside corner of the footboard. took some talent. it wasn't until i'd left brian at home to clean and taken oliver to his little gym class that i noticed the fall had left a second eyebrow over his right eye. it was in nice shades of pink and blue. at the little gym is where accident number two happened. we've been trying to help him gain confidence with stairs and he was on the second step of some foam stairs when he changed his mind halfway through and started to bend at the waist to crawl down baby style. this made him into a human ball. he started unfolding when he realized he was pitching forward and landed nose first on the thin carpet. left a little pink trail down his nose and, somehow, on that little bit between nose and mouth. i was so busy vexxing over (can i do that? vex over something? or does it have to vex me? whatever.) making non-vegan chocolate buttercream frosting and getting the cake decorated and about one hundred other tiny things that i forgot to put oliver down for a nap on time. he went down after noon and slept like a rock. my parents arrived with ye olde orange ice chest at 1:30. oliver was still sleeping. brian's mother, lynnette, arrived (ken was home with the croup). oliver was still sleeping. darren arrived (paul was delayed by a wedding). my father gave him a lime tree he had grown from a lime tree stick. oliver was still sleeping. my sister's family arrived, post-six flags. oliver was still sleeping. i was so freaked out from being a person lacking the genes to be a hostess that i kept forgetting we were missing oliver. and then he finally woke up. my theory had been the more sleep he gets, the better off we are. he will be delighted to wake up to a room full of fresh-faced playmates. it turns out a two year old waking up to a house filled with people who weren't there earlier is fairly traumatic. oliver was not pleased. this went on for some time. brian's work friends (paul+faynetta, amy, nicole) arrived. we were still not pleased. paul showed up. we were still not pleased. brian and i finally decided to take him to his room to play and he started loosening up. my niece and nephew filtered in to color with him. he enjoyed this, though he periodically grunted at dylan. i do not know why. after crouching with him for untold minutes, i stood up to get the blood flowing again and came to the conclusion i was going to pass out. i leaned back against the dresser as much as i could and accepted what was coming to me. my brother-in-law asked if we were still going to florida and i marveled at how i was barely able to process language any more. i finally was able to muster a response that was something like "huh...uh.. yeah." and finally, my senses came back around without that embarrassing plunge to the floor. my gin and grapefruit izze had nothing to do with it. i have poor circulation. so stop judging. darren had one, too. judge him instead. after enough guests had been mixed slowly into oliver's water to bring him up to lukewarm, we moved him to the living room, which was serving as party central. we started opening the gifts we had gotten for him, which i had barely remembered to stuff into the reusable cloth bags. he still hadn't (and hasn't) warmed up to the rocking horse. he also got more colors (washable) and a coloring book, changeable charlie, roy toys lincoln logs, and haba wooden fruits and vegetables (to add to his collection). i think emily_swank will be mightily pleased to know that the angus trilogy arrived via our postman right smack dab in the middle of the gift opening. that is some impeccable timing. too bad emily_swank herself wasn't folded up in that box. now, that would've been a surprise. but we like the books, too. my sister was unendingly amused by the factoid that we had taught oliver how to blow out candles. i do not know why this was so unbelievable. he folded under the pressure and was a little irritated by everyone singing happy birthday (he hates it when we sing to his shows). we ended up blowing out the candles for him. i heard my sister mention wasted time. he did get a second chance later, when there were just doting grandparents involved. cut to video below. eventually, everyone vamoosed and the grandparents, brian, and i took oliver to dream cafe for his french fry birthday dinner and for accident number three where he made me nervous trying to scramble up on to one of those plastic outdoor chairs that they use for dining so that he could color next to grandpa and, just when i thought he was safe, his hands slipped from the edge of the table and his bottom lip cushioned the blow to his teeth. there was some blood. and crying. and then he was back to running us ragged in the heat and playing with a little girl named emma whose father was drinking special grape juice. we were there for thousands of years because they didn't put our order in the right spot and it was sucked down a blackhole. oh, and then we started to walk off after dinner without oliver and looked like the most ridiculous parents ever. that is how frazzled i was. sunday was spent being incredibly tired. we went to american apparel so brian could complete his collection of tshirts in every color of the rainbow. and then to home depot to buy more victims for our annual summer killing spree. my father made the mistake of bringing us a fresh, young moonvine. it's doing well at the moment, but it hasn't been a week yet. soothing the savage. dad was there. darren was there. amy, faynetta, and nicole were there. izze was there. the luxurious, three-layered, owl-decorated birthday cake. a grand success, especially when compared to last year's failed attempts resulting in the melty-faced monkey. remember him? ( of course there are more.... and they are all in blur-o-vision ) 14 dead X pick your poison

it only took us two years to pay off the baby. [Jun 10 2008 - Tue|02:24pm] another $75 per month in my pocket! Original Balance Patient: $2,690.19 Humana Choicecare: $5,975.81 Total: $8,666.00 Payments Patient: ($2,690.19) Humana Choicecare:($187.78) Total: ($2,877.97) Discounts Patient: $0.00 Humana Choicecare:($5,788.03) Total: ($5,788.03) Balance Due Patient: $0.00 Humana Choicecare: $0.00 Total: $0.00 8 dead X pick your poison

photo menagerie. [Jun 9 2008 - Mon|06:49pm] this is a rather large cat. this is a rather large cat pretending he's outside. this is my baby on his last day of being one. this is a sampling of the many forces destined to ruin the new couch. this is robert. wearing a skin shirt. this is the best portrait i have ever drawn of brian. 4 dead X pick your poison

wait, why am i doing this? oh yeah... [Jun 6 2008 - Fri|10:18am] with all the worrying and stressing over getting ready for the party, it occurred to me this morning: my baby's turning two tomorrow. today is his last day as a one year old. i kind of hate having parties since they make me forget what i'm having them for. 6 dead X pick your poison

my weekend. my furniture. my pre-party planning. [Jun 2 2008 - Mon|02:45pm] friday evening, as 6 o'clock began to roll around, my anxiety began to increase as i processed that i was about to walk into a hotbed of strangers. it was the end of year school picnic at oliver's new school with its 100+ students and their parents and siblings and teachers. that's a lot of strangers. it wasn't as hot as i thought it was going to be. we made our way through the air conditioned eating grounds and back out to the playgrounds. there were three bounce houses and a Hooters trailer decorated with larger than life-sized Hooters girls photos. some say that should give street cred points to the school. i award greater points for the beer available for a $2 donation, though i later wondered if this was a spiritual trap designed to highlight those with a weak soul so that they might specifically target your child as a special case in need of high intensity saving. oliver wandered back and forth and all over like a miniature ADD case. there weren't any baby swings, so he rode a big swing and did that thing that reminds you why he uses baby swings where he just lets go mid-swing and you're thankful you're able to catch him. we went back in to mill through the line of chicken wings and hamburger patties and picked at the fruit platters and hamburger buns and french fries and tomato slices. we sat at a table with an exuberant, type-A kind of couple and their 2.5 year old. an assistant from the mother's day out program was also there. she explained how they have MDO options of up to four days a week and i silently cursed not being in the MDO instead. not fair. they had a rack of the uniforms that the 3+ year olds wear there for sale and i cringed at all the plaid jumpers and peter pan colors with contrast piping. screw that. we went back out again and oliver managed to scale his way into this two storied play structure and i was holding both our beers and couldn't get up there and started pacing maniacally trying to figure out where my child was going to come shooting out. he's never been on one of those by himself because they usually have openings that drop off into space and he doesn't understand dropping off into space and all its implications. he kept almost going down the gigantic slide and then finally decided to try and back down off the upper platform to the lower platform, realized he was having difficulty navigating it, tried to retreat, and somehow managed to spin around and fall two feet onto his forehead. i nearly had a cussing fit and brian went up to get him as this huge, ugly, pink and purple and road-rashed bump started popping out on his forehead. i just knew all the nearby parents were looking at me there with my two bottles of beer and thinking how i'm a drunken mother who pushes her baby on the ground when she staggers. we got him calmed down and tried to convince him to go into the toddler bounce house and he totally blew the opportunity. so we went home. after the little gym and the christian egg hunt at the farmers market saturday morning, we ended up driving by the convention center or something downtown and i couldn't figure out why we were starting to see little groups of people in costumes which didn't make sense. i hazarded a guess that they were meeting to be in a production of alice in wonderland, but then we'd see a goth or something and that would blow that out of the water. then, i realized: we driving into the heart of a japaninomicon! oh god! i've read about them and heard about them and seen pictures of them, but never with my own eyes! i died over and over. i saw people dressed like tetris. they were probably about as cool as it got. the others wrested noises of "oh, baby, nooo" from me. brian tried to tell me if i was 15, i'd be right there in the mix. i explained i was never into that cultural oeuvre and, sorry to break it to you, many of these people are much older than 15. by the time we went to the way-out-of-the-way taco bueno instead of the on-the-way taco bueno for brian's lunch, it was too late to do anything but take hungry, sleepy babies back home. i baked test cake number two. and mixed up frosting number one. and hummus number two. after they woke up, we went to target for provisions and raided the izze aisle for party beverages. we spent a couple of hours that evening at the housewarming party of erin and paul. this meant we chased oliver all over the place and tried to steer him away from the cheese knives and the display bananas and the cat and the a/c unit until we couldn't take it anymore. dave arrived just before we left. he's the only one we knew at the party. as we were making the circle at the end of the street to leave, we passed by gretchen and sara and lisa(?) getting out of their car. gretchen dropped her brown paper bag and made some broken beer and then we could see that party was really getting started as we drove away staring from the package tray of the rear window with tears welling up in our eyes, like always. we pay-per-viewed midnight cowboy as our consolation prize and watched dustin hoffman not brush his teeth and then sweat profusely. yesterday. yesterday was the big couch day. dave had been in the neighborhood whoring around and dropped his truck by for brian to use. the truck was stacked sky-high and it frightened brian, so he took the non-highway route back. he showed up an hour later. we quickly realized the two portions of the sofa were going to be too large and heavy and cumbersome for dainty ladies to move, so i invited darren over (the irony!). paul actually volunteered to come with. i have no idea why. i would've run the other way. especially after finding out the sofas are exactly two inches wider than the back door and would have to be brought around to the front (the irony!). i paid them in izze and water and they left. but not before paul issued advice on cakes, frostings, and hummus. and sesame seeds. man, i wish my boyfriend was an amateur chef and pastry-maker. and master furniture mover. while brian was returning the truck and picking up dinner from cosmic cafe (it has risen from the ashes!), i assembled the couches and ottoman. those slip covers are tricky. this couch is a behemoth. it is absurdly large for the room. brian, though not a tall man, can stretch out as long as he can with fingers and toes extended and still not touch either armrest. we tried out sharing the ottoman and hollered to ozzy down at the other end. when i woke up this morning, i learned we had not purchased a couch. we had purchased a kittycat magnet. cats i didn't even know we had came out of crevices to sleep on the new magnet. oliver finds pleasure in rubbing his toddler hands forward and backward and forward and backward on the premium ottoman fabric. we're screwed. 5 dead X pick your poison

the largest cat living in the americas. [May 30 2008 - Fri|04:28pm] her name is juana. she weighs 150 pounds and is three and a half feet tall when standing on her hind legs. she may be the reason our couch is broken. 4 dead X pick your poison

still won't be ready for bikini season, but at least i can hang my head a little less shamefully. [May 28 2008 - Wed|03:37pm] i don't think i ever followed up on our experiences with the park cities Y. it started out with a bang. the girl at the front desk gave us enough free passes to come back three more times. i'm glad we did. oliver was dismayed that we were trying to leave him during our second visit. the gaggle of girls made absolutely no effort to engage him. we sat there for 15 minutes before trying to make a break for it. he ended up wailing and they paged us back. we tried again and were paged a second time before throwing our proverbial hands up in the air and leaving. the third time, it was more of the same. the room is kind of I-shaped and the girls are rather involved with sitting in the junction of the I in a circle and chatting ceaselessly. oliver eventually chilled enough to offer one of them an ear of fake corn. she responded to him for about two seconds before turning back around to chatter. you do not turn your back on my son when he is offering fake foods. i felt bad for him. brian and i each heard them using the dirty words in the presence of a four year old. and in the presence of a parent. since brian spent a good 20+ minutes back there the second time so i could at least work out, he heard one girl comment how she hates watching kids because it's so boring, he heard one talking about spending the night with her boyfriend, he heard one mentioning that a parent had complained about them to the front desk, etc., with a parent sitting a yard or two away! it's one thing to be an idiot in the customer service department when i'm ordering a burrito from you and can be done with you in 45 seconds. it's another thing when i'm dropping my child off to be under your supervision. needless to say, we weren't comfortable and neither was oliver, judging by his crying fits. last week, we finally made our way to another branch farther north. the two attendants had the personality and conversational skills of dead fish (i do not exaggerate much), but oliver was enchanted with the place immediately for some reason. the only fit he threw was when i had to rip some plastic grapes from his hands on the way out. we signed up last weekend (hoorah.. our membership lets us visit any branch in the metroplex, except for the downtowns) and we got a break on our sign up fee. childcare, year-round pool use, and classes are included. we went again last night and oliver still loves the place. we ignored the fact that it had spontaneously become 85 degrees in the nursery by the time we were ready to leave. so, i'm pretty excited to finally be burning some calories. and, if i ever do pop out another living burden on the environment, the fish will watch it writhe in its carseat starting as early as six weeks old. 3 dead X pick your poison

dream date elmo. [May 24 2008 - Sat|07:36am] 2 dead X pick your poison

will i actually have savings in my savings account soon? [May 23 2008 - Fri|12:49pm] i just got off the phone with my father. i might have neglected to divulge that my ford never really sold. apparently, there are a lot of scoundrels in the car buying market who will promise you dollars for autos and then disappear. that's happened more times than i can count. plus, i've been "greedy" and holding out a bit. i figure if the new owner is willing to pay a decent price, he/she will be more inclined to take care of her. there was one guy ready to buy except he wanted us to fix a transmission leak first. i already knew where this was going to end up and it did: almost $800 in repairs. i've learned that the person i bought her from had drilled a hole in the carburetor (i don't understand how a mechanic has never told me this before) so that more gas would pour through (it's already four barrels, for cryin' out loud). i must've been getting the gas mileage of a hummer towing a hummer the whole time i was driving her. anyhow, while she was being doctored up, a fancypants vacationing from new zealand showed up and asked about her. he felt $9k was too much, but dad told him someone else was in the queue with $8k once the repairs were done. he offered $8k+cost of repairs, which is practically $9k, so good enough for me. i'm hoping if he's willing to pay a decent price and then pay to ship her to the other side of the planet, he'll take good care of her. and i call him a fancypants just because he has the money to visit from nz, buy cars as souvenirs, and ship them (this isn't his first). we'll see if he comes through with the down payment. i'm heartbroken to think of her traveling so far away, but i've made myself feel better thinking i can contact uncle che and send him over if she ever calls me in the middle of the night with the sound of fear quivering from her tailpipes. 7 dead X pick your poison

add it to the list of questions for the OB/GYN. [May 21 2008 - Wed|04:35pm] within the span of one week, i have managed to buy two folkloric abortifacients. the first is an indian herb named asafoetida. and they were right... that business does smell like it's ready to fight. alternate names include devil's dung and stinking gum, to give you an idea. they tell you to lock it up with your children in order to contain its contagious stink. now, why would i buy something alternately called devil's dung which is meant to go into my mouth, you ask? the claim is that once cooked, it magically turns into a heavenly garlicky onion analog that is seemingly scraped from rainbows by horn of unicorn. it says it on the label. and that's for me. so far, i've only consumed it as part of a packaged indian dining experience. the second offender in my possession is ruta. we purchased it as a plantling at the farmers market last sunday from behind a sign declaring "rue/ruta/ruda" based solely on the loveliness of its delicate leaves. the vendor looked at me with question marks in his eyes and on his shrugging shoulders when i asked him what on earth it is and i took this to mean he probably spoke no english and i gave him $2.50 from brian's ass pocket (he was busy holding the parsley and rosemary pots) and left it at that. brian planted everything promptly after i informed him we had plenty of pots open for rent... don't be fooled, those are just weeds growing there. i think we're already on our way to killing the parsley; and, a large succulent which survived last summer and the winter indoors is already looking poorly after four days outside, such is the nature of our withering heat, which has arrived just this week. note: ours is prettier. i suppose it shall lose its flower of youth as it matures, the poor dear. oh, wait. this one is still in its glorious, leafy prime: pick your poison

oliver's beat of the day. [May 20 2008 - Tue|04:53pm] makes you want to eat olives at our house. 4 dead X pick your poison

jump. it's funny to me. [May 19 2008 - Mon|01:55pm] 7 dead X pick your poison

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