Sorry

I've been MIA. I hadn't realized it had been so long and now I'm sick. I could amuse you with the ramblings of a woman whose head is full of snot, but I'm so wiped out I can barely type. Head cold + little Helen = very. very. very. tired. I am counting the seconds until nap time (1853).

The bidding starts at,,,ACK!

It's time for the local public television station to do their annual TV auction. Benny loves this. I mean loves it. He will watch hours upon hours of this. I can watch some of it, but not hours upon hours. Just can't. We've gotten some nice stuff from it though. we got a bitchin bike trailer which cost a shitload of money, relative to our usual cheapness (but a very high resale value) and which Helen hates. Probably because she must wear her helmet when riding in it. Blah. Maybe she'll like it better next year. We also got a gift certificate for a B & B for my mom, and a lovely print for her kitchen. One year Benny got a Segway tour of Springfield Massachusetts which he gave to our niece for her college graduation. She moved away like a week later and I don't think she ever used it. Me, I would have chosen something a bit more practical for her. He did call me in tonight to take a look at one of the items up for auction. It was three tube of caulk and two rolls of duct tape, all bundled in a lovely gift wrap of duct tape. I was consumed with the dishes and forgot to come back and see if anyone had bid on it.

On a totally separate note, Ruthie constantly amuses us with her mispronunciations and word substitutions. I've threatened people who try to correct her because I think it's just so damn cute. Some of the more notable: coca-dots for polka dots, the little fuzzy, many legged things that turn into butterflies are killer-pillars. And most recently, upon spotting a picture of Pinocchio, "Look mom, it's Pokey-nokey." Funny girl.

Twenty years

I had grand plans to blog today and leave you with something profound and insightful to read, as you wipe a tiny tear from the corner of your eye. But today, not only did Helen awaken at 6 a.m., so did Ruthie. Perhaps on a different day of the week I could handle it, but Thursday mornings are tough. I do my NICU thing on Wednesdays, and it makes for along day for me, the last few hours of which are generally somewhat draining emotionally. I need time to unwind when I get home, and invariably end up going to bed late. So here I am, tired, achy and not wanting to do much but curl up on the couch and wait for Survivor to start at 8 p.m.. But alas, dinner must be made, Helen took a very abbreviated nap, so she is here with me instead of dreaming of sugarplums and binkies up in her crib, and Benny has basketball tonight, so I'll be putting the things to bed alone.
I feel though, as if I should not complain. My blog today was supposed to be reflection on where the last twenty year have taken me. I did not pick the number twenty from a random place in my head. This day has great significance. Today I am celebrating twenty years of sobriety. On this day, in 1987, I had hit the low point of my life. It's scary to think what a mess one can make of her life in seventeen years. I was completely confused, terrified, horribly lonely, but I knew I didn't want to be there, and I didn't want to be worse. I was lucky to have certain opportunities placed in front of me, and I was lucky enough to make the most of them. I worked hard, harder than I knew I could. I spent 14 long months doing nothing but figuring out how to change my life. And twenty years later, I have things that never could have been mine before. This is the part where, if I weren't so tired, I might start awing you with the wonders of my life, in a prose so rich as to, again, leave you wiping a tiny tear from the corner of your eye. but I'm too tired, and the words I currently have at my disposal coudn't do it justice. So I'll just show you what I have.
I have this


And I have this



And I have this



And really, what more could I possibly want.

Too Many Fish in the Sea

Let me warn you that if you tell your 20 month old that you are having fish for dinner, she will think that you are having Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers. And boy will she be pissed when she finds out she's wrong.

Thank you...

...to the daylight savings fairy who visited little Helen this morning when she first awoke. It was the time fomerly known as 5:30. But because the clocks went back, it was really 4:30. Helen cannot tell time, so I did not expect her to understand this and resigned myself to getting up with her at 4:30. Yikes. I listened to her cry for a few seconds, and dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom. By the time I came out of the bathroom (and no, it was not hours, it was mere seconds) she was quiet. I tiptoed back into my room and climbed back into bed. I didn't hear from Helen again until I opened her door to make sure she was alive. That was at 8 a.m., now 7 a.m. Thank you, daylight savings fairy, thank you!

Smart Ass

For the last few holidays, I've been letting Ruthie pick out gifts for certain relatives. This resulted in this get-up for Benny for his birthday, which was the day before Halloween:


In addition to the hilarity of the gifts she picks, it also gets me off the hook. It's hard enough picking out presents for the eleventy bajillion poeple we shop for every Christmas, so I may as well delegate. Plus, it gets her involved and makes it way more fun for her when gift-giving time rolls around.
Last Christmas, when she was 2 1/2, she wanted to get everyone a ball. So Benny got a glow-in-the-dark basketball, Helen ,who was ten months old, got a mini NBA ball, and my mom got a set of pink golf balls. The only exception was my sister, who got monkey-print pajama pants. Everyone was thrilled. This year, Ruthie and I have gotten an early start. Grandma is getting a sorority murder novel, and Aunt Ali is getting a Pirates of the Caribbean wall calendar, (Did I mention that Aunt Ali is 35 and currently in Divinity School?) But so far, the present she picked out for Daddy takes the cake. She originally picked out a book for him that was a trilogy of horror/sci-fi stuff that I knew he would never read, and probably not appreciate all that much, and t was $20. To much for a joke that was only marginally funny. Then she decided he needed a book about lions. This decision was fueled by the lion display in the window of the Asian gift shop in our local mall. Everyone should use this tactic when picking out gifts. We peruse the bookstore, but locating a book specifically about lions was way too much for me and the girls on this particularly exhausting Friday. AS we continued to make our way through the bookstore, we wandered by the games. "Would you like to get Daddy a game, honey?" I inquired. "Yes mommy, I want to get Daddy a game. I want to get him THIS game." And she picks up this:
Now, the price was slightly higher than the sci-fi horror trilogy, but I thought maybe this would get played, and the thought of Benny opening a gift from his sweet little three-year old, only to find this, is priceless. So here we have it. Ruthie's Christmas gift to her Daddy. The game that boasts: "even if you are a "Dumb Ass", you can win!"

Semantics

Today is like the day after a nuclear holocaust in our house. We have had Ruthie and Helen out of the house and awake until after nine p.m. each of the last three evenings. Tuesday was Benny's birthday, and we went to dinner. Wednesday, for anyone who lives under a rock and may have missed it, was Halloween, and last night we dragged all four of our exhausted rear ends to a fundraiser for preemies. Good times, but not without a price. The girls are usually in bed around 7:30 or 8:00. Couple later bedtime with activities resulting in exhaustion even when bedtime is adhered to, and you have a very ugly situation. I commented to Benny on the phone this morning that it was going to be long day. I pointed out (mostly to cover my ass when he comes home and the house looks like a tornado hit it) that on days like this he's lucky because he gets to go to work and I have to stay home with the overtired (and right now screaming at maximum volume in my ear) children. He retorted with "No, I have to go to work." Yes, honey, on most days that is true. But today, you GET to go to work.

Halloween reflections

I am shocked every year by the children who come to my door wearing no costume at all. I am always tempted to deny them candy, but I do not want my house/car getting egged/shaving creamed or worse. So I just give them a hard time. One neighborhood kid told me he was a hippie. I told him he looked exactly like he does every other day of the week and that maybe he should put a little effort into it.
We gave out glow sticks this year. We got them last year on clearance (90% off!). They don't go bad, so we saved them to hand out to the kids. They loved them. So much so that a group of neighbor kids came back again. We told them one to a customer and sent them, on their way. They came back again. We told them to beat it. And they came back again...and again. I believe six times in all. Do these children have no clue what manners are? Do they not know how to listen to an adult They also lied to DH and told him they hadn't been to our house before. Hey dopey....you're in the same costime you've had on all night...you live four houses away...we know you! Scram!
My doorbell rang at 2:45 in the afternoon. It was trick-or-treaters. WTF? Um, could you at least wait until LATE afternoon? I sent them away and told them to come back. Now that I think about it, they were the kids who kept coming back. We meant once. To get your ONE treat..SCRAM!
Now, based on one of the aforementioned items, you know that we are all for saving money...we bought our NON-PERISHABLE treats a year ago. Yay for us. Someone else apparently got the same idea as us, a little later. They bought their treats nine months ago. On Valentine's Day. I know this because my daughter had a valentine's Day Tootsie Roll in her bag. Come on people. Be creative and deceptive in your frugality.
We turned off the porch lights a little after eight-thirty. The girls were in bed. We were tired. Porch lights mean don't bother us, right? Nope. The doorbell continued to ring until 9:15.
I think next year I'll hand out basic rules for trick-or-treating.