I may have eaten my cats

Ah, lovely June 30...

It has the distinction of being the 181st day of the year (182nd in leap years). It’s also Terry Funk’s birthday (I found him on Wikipedia and the dude has a Myspace page—we could be friends!). In 2005 Spain legalized same-sex marriage on this date. And it’s Saint Martialis Day.

But most importantly, it’s the Night Before the I Go Back to Work Full-time Day.

I have had this day marked on the calendar for the last year. Sometimes I looked at the date with anticipation, like on days when Junior was fed, dressed, and bushy-tailed and it was 7:54 a.m. and I feared I would start crawling the walls.

But most days I dreaded this day. Like when Junior and I first hung out at a bookstore, him on my lap eating Cheerios and me drinking coffee and shooing away the pigeons that were trying to eat his dropped Cheerios. Or when we would take long walks at Rocky Neck and the old, jogging people would wave at us and say how large Junior was.

This past weekend I handled the anxiety by doing what any freaking out person would do: I binge ate and drank. I belted down a bottle of Hangar Vodka (a treat from the trusty Clan MacGregor) and then stuffed myself like Eric Carle’s "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."

On Friday I ate Key Lime pie, pepperoni and cheese, pancakes, pizza, hamburg, french fries, ice cream sandwiches, a chocolate bar, and a box of Wheat Thins. On Saturday it was more of the same. But more pie.

I’m lucky that Charles keeps telling me it’s temporary and that if I can’t handle being away from Junior all week we’ll find a way to make it work. I’m happy to hear that because I’ve already decided if I can’t hack it I’ll become a cocktail waitress at the local casino. I figure with all that walking I’ll have buns of steel and maybe even affect a flirtatious greeting for the gambling tippers like, “Hey Suga you gonna role a snake eye for little ole me?”

(God I’ll be punched out my first night on the job by some other waitress who thinks I’m naïve and corny. Or better yet, I’ll punch some sweaty, fat gambler who has a bulbous nose and who tries to pinch my ass while I’m leaning down to get his stray poker chip.)

This plan may need some tweaking. And more vodka.

Superfluff

Poor Junior. Every time his father gives him a bath he spends 20 minutes fluffing and preening the boy's head.

If his actions need any explanation, they lay in the photo from the previous post (the one where the sun is reflecting off that shiny, smooth surface...).

Who am I to deny him such pleasure?

For better or for hair

Apparently my days of marital bliss are numbered.

Yesterday I jokingly asked Charles if he regretted the constraints of matrimony/monogamy/prison because he will never know the jubilation of succumbing to a different woman’s ample breasts or of dry humping a foxy redhead. Ever.

To which he replied, in all seriousness, “Are you saying you want to start swinging?”

Whoa, cowboy. That’s like saying, We’re out of milk so let’s buy a dairy farm.

I rephrased my question: “I was just wondering if you ever thought about how you’ll never make out with anyone else but me for the rest of your life. That could be, like, another 70 years.”

“I don’t think we’ll live to be 100.”

“That’s not the point.”

“More like 75. Maybe 90 for you. If I start to go downhill I’m serious, I’m getting a gun and taking a long walk in the woods.”

“For frick sake, Charles, the topic is not euthanasia. It’s monogamy!”

Then he said the sweetest thing—that he took his vows very seriously, blah blah, and that he is happy to make out only with me for the rest of our lives. Unless...

“Unless they can clone my hair and I can regrow a full head of hair and have a long ponytail and then I’ll get a sports car and find myself a young trophy wife and divorce you.”

I'm warming to his long solitary walk in the woods idea.

Join me in the gutter?

This toy is a little vixen.

I am a huge pervert but I swear this toy sounds like it's moaning. There are the standard whistles and chirps (thankfully none catchy because nothing kills my mood like finding myself humming the theme song of another fricken electronic toy) but towards the end of its cutesy performance it goes, "MmmmOhhhhAhhhhAhhhhh" and it sounds like some feisty tart in the throes of a nooner (which kind of sounds like fun).

Where oh where is Playskool getting its sound bites from? Debbie Does Dallas?

This little piggy

As if we needed further proof that pureed foods were my child’s safest bet…

For dinner I thought I'd make Junior a nice, tender pork chop. You know, something an 11-month-old can really sink his three teeth into. And while I was preparing this oh-so-not-age-appropriate meal I decided to have some Scotch. Money's tight so I reached for my good friend Clan MacGregor, which is actually not bad for the price. (I love that someone on eopinions.com listed the Scotch's con as "Lacks character." Honey, if you're reachin' for the Clan MacGregor, character's the last thing on your mind.)

Anyhoo, as I was cooking this fine chop on the stove top I noticed it was starting to burn. Badly. So I grabbed what I thought was the green bottle of Colavita olive oil* and doused the chop with...yes, Clan MacGregor. Poor Junior. My little boy was sitting so patiently, salivating over this lovely piece of chewy white meat and Mommy had inadvertently flambéed it!

So I did what any mother with a hungry child would do: I rinsed it off under water, cleaned out the pan, and finished cooking it.

And oh was it delicious. Junior and I had a grand old time watching me hack into it with a steak knife and serve it to the garbage can. Thank God for Cheerios.

*In my defense the bottles look an awful lot alike.

This town blows

I didn’t really need any more reasons to loathe this depressing town. The downtown blight and infestation of 99s and WalMarts get the job done. But just in case my antipathy was wavering, a nice young crystal meth addict helped sway me by robbing our house in the middle of the afternoon.

Yup. Last week said drug addict made his way up the street from downtown, kicked in our back door and stole all my jewelry. Thankfully Junior and I were out of the house. Thankfully my collection of jewels consisted of sterling silver, Diamonique earrings, and bangles, but the bastard did get a piece of jewelry that belonged to my great-great grandparents.

I was pleasantly surprised by the three police officers who pulled up to my house about 30 seconds after I called 911. They were polite, concerned, and surprisingly attractive (hey, it took my mind off the crime).

After examining each room, I noticed that they kept going back to the dining room. Curious, I wandered over to see what had their attention, which is when I overheard:

“Shit that’s a big cat.”

“Hell ya.”

“Did you see the other one? It’s even bigger.”

The officers were ogling my poor kitties! It’s not uncommon for people to come over and remark on the pleasant plumpness of our pets but these were people of the law. Shouldn’t they have been dusting for fingerprints? Snapping pictures? Calling the crime lab??

The officer noticed me in the doorway and asked, “What is that?”

“It’s a rag doll Coon Calico cat,” I lied. (I have no idea what breed our cats are. Someone gave them to me for free for Pete’s sake.)

“That’s a big cat.” He let out a low whistle.

“Are we done here?” I asked.

After they left I sat on the couch surrounded by my 25 pound son and two, 25 pound cats. It was 75 pounds of feeling better (for personal reasons I'm not factoring myself into that equation). For this piece of shit town, I'll take that. For now.

(I highly recommend Brink's if you need a security system. We just had one installed. Aside from the tech's commentary on Junior's inability to hold his own bottle—he can, he just doesn't want to—the experience was relatively painless.)

Take me NOW

Now that Junior is almost a year old and I am returning to work, I’ve started doing some reflecting (in my spare time, haha) on the past year. It’s been joyous and redundant (sometimes joyous in its redundancy) and I wouldn’t change anything about it.

Except.

I realized that the only “me” activities (i.e., those I’ve done alone) have consisted of:

Laundry
Drinking
Washing bottles
Remembering to unclench my fists
Crying
Drinking
Finding myself humming “The Muffin Man”

After that dismal realization, I decided to take the sage advice of fellow moms, blah blah, and set aside more time for fun “me” activities. Like reading.

So the other night, after Junior had drifted off into his little world of slumber, I settled in to bed with a cup of Tension Tamer tea (cliché, I know, but the tea is dang good) and a new book, “Lost in the Forest,” by Sue Miller.

If you like the word “now” then you’ll love this book. The word appears about 8,987,678,678,564 times in 247 pages. As in, “Now Eva sits in her favorite chair. Now Mark looks at his foot. Now Daisy fixes her belt buckle. Now Frances hits her head against the wall.”

I was so enraged by the blatant overuse of the word I wanted to scream. But I pushed onward, determined to enjoy this luxurious fun “me” time.

Then I stumbled upon what is possibly the most vile, unappealing sex scene ever to appear in print. Ever. Let’s listen in as one of the main characters, Eva, reflects on the steamy sex she once had with her husband, Mark:

“She remembers it. It, and other times. Once when she was menstruating heavily and he had her on the kitchen counter, so that when he stood up to come into her, his face was violently smeared with blood.”

Ew, ew, ew, and ew again.

No hot sex scene should ever involve menstruation. If it’s not appealing in real life, it’s even less hot on the page.

Second, I really hope that that sexual encounter didn’t happen near dinner time because that counter probably needed a damn good cleaning. With bleach.

Third, is his smeared face supposed to denote some kind of extra-animalistic/savage tryst? Because there are other ways to convey that. Like having the man carry a bow and arrow or crudely fashioned spear while he mounts you. Or perhaps affixing a good old fashioned loin cloth right above his heaving genitals (see, even a few carefully placed adjectives are hotter than a menstrating hoo-hoo!).

For my next “me” activity I am going to throw up. Now.

The nicest nerve

The doctor called my injury “the bed incident,” which sounds far more titillating than it was.

What happened is I pinched a nerve as I was rolling over in the middle of the night. I haven’t been able to turn my head for a few days. Or bend over. Or pick up my 21-pound linebacker son.

All of this has made my husband, Charles, very unhappy. He was supposed to go away with some friends for a long weekend. The funny thing is (well, I think it’s funny anyway), the last time he was supposed to go away with the boys I came down with a terrible cold.

All day he’s been on the phone.

“This is twice now. Twice!” When he hangs up, he looks at me like I’m one of those people who’s trying to scam the government out of workmans comp.

If Charles was the kind of man who didn’t get out of the house often I might feel bad. But I don’t. He enjoys an active social life while I, on the other hand, break out the girl’s night jeans once every few months. It’s my choice—he encourages me to go out—but most times I’m too dang tired.

So here we are. He’s had to use two vacation days—ones he set aside to roam and romp—to watch his son while his wife lies in bed pleasantly doped up on muscle relaxers, snuggled up to the heating pad. When I feel like it, I nap. Or take long leisurely showers. If Junior cries, I go and stand sympathetically over the crib while Charles hoists him up and carries him away.

I know I didn’t plan this. But I’d like to say a little thank you to whichever nerve it was in my neck that has given me the most relaxing two days of my life. It’s almost a Hallmark card.

Loose caboose

Someone (I’m talking about the someone with a capital S) has a sense of humor.

This afternoon my 11-month-old son was in a fit of giggles watching our neighbor’s Golden Lab run through the hose and shake himself dry. The harder the dog shook, the harder my son laughed.

Fast forward a few hours. I decided to treat myself to an after dinner bath. When I got out of the tub I realized there were no towels in the bathroom. I remembered the dog and thought it might be fun to try a good “wet dog” shake.

I wasn’t prepared for how long it took my behind to catch up with the rest of me.

Lesson: Someone invented towels for a reason.

It's over. I mean it.

This morning I feel like you do when you break up with someone and aren't sure if you should put all his pictures away.

You see, I finally ended our relationship with the Amby bed.

If it wasn’t for the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" and the thoughtful advice of some mothers from the Cry it Out clan (“Just do it! Don’t be an idiot/sucker/looser!”), we might never have made it to this point. We might actually have had to implement some of the suggestions made by my mother, Linda, who looked like she had been stabbed with poisonous daggers when I told her we were prepared to let Junior cry for a few hours if that’s what it took.

To avoid any type of trauma to Junior in his move from the Amby bed to the crib, Linda begged that we consider:

1. Going to Home Depot so we could build a bigger version of the Amby bed. (I could just see the expression on the clerk’s face when we showed him our blueprints for Amby Bed II.)

2. Buying a hammock and hanging it from some bookcases. (On days he cried exceptionally hard, I actually looked into this.)

3. Using an air mattress in the crib instead of the regular mattress. “This way he can still bounce—you know how he loves to bounce!” (On days he cried exceptionally hard, I actually looked into this.)

4. Buying a miniature water bed, to simulate the soft rocking motion of the Amby bed. (On days he cried exceptionally hard, I actually looked into this.)

5. Letting him sleep in the Amby bed until his limbs hung over the sides and he was so uncomfortable he simply had to get out of it.

Thankfully all it took was a week of putting Junior down for naps and to bed 30 minutes earlier and letting him cry a bit.

But yah, I still feel a bit like a pining, freakish dumper. I had just perfected my back-bending maneuver to get Junior’s plump 23-pound body into the swinging bed. Ditto for my mother and Charles. And to see Junior bounce on that extra sturdy spring! You could just feel the joy and exhilaration on his fat little face.

Sigh.