Alarm Clocks

When I was in junior high and my sister was in high school, we shared a very small room. We slept in a double bed, kind of like Mary and Laura in Little House on the Prairie (except our bed was from Mattress Discounters instead of made with straw). We started out with two twin beds but that left us with about 8 inches of room in between the beds. Thus having to share a bed.

She used to do all manner of cruel things to me. Turn the light on in the bathroom and then crack the door open so the light shined in my eyes when I was trying to go to bed. Or on Saturday mornings I would open my eyes and there she would be, 3 inches from my face, making the biggest bug eyes. Invariably I would shriek and go careening off the other side of the bed to get away from her.

But her biggest sin was setting the alarm clock for 2 1/2 hours before she had to get up and then hitting snooze every 9 minutes. That would be a minimum of 16 times that the alarm clock would go off. The problem was that I would wake up when it went off the first time at 4:30 a.m. and lie in bed cursing the day she was born, for the next 150 minutes. I would poke her and prod her to just Turn The Damn Thing Off, but to no avail. Maybe if she would just turn it off before I really woke up, I could get back to sleep.

I'm much better now. D's alarm goes off and I go back to sleep. If he hits the snooze and then gets up, I don't fare as well.

E's new habit is to play in bed when he wakes up. Laughing and cooing and talking to God only knows what, I don't get him (who am I kidding--D doesn't get him) until he cries.

Well last night in bed, this was the conversation.

D: What happened to the monitor this morning?
K: What do you mean?
D: I didn't hear the baby until he was screaming this morning and that was through the bedroom wall.
K: I guess I turned the monitor off.
D: What???
K: I must have turned the monitor off because he was waking me up.
D: You turned the baby monitor off so you could sleep?

Kind of defeats the purpose of the monitor, huh?

I should probably clean the house

After a day spent picking blackberries with E, Renee and Alex, I came home to the same mess I left in the morning.

Derek was looking for his knife sharpener and the following conversation ensued:

D: You know the one place I haven't looked for it?
K: In the couch?
D: Are you serious?

I'm totally going to clean one of these days.

What's in a name?

My little sister called me last week to tell me that she had read my blog and that she was sorry but there was no way she was going to be able to call E Toofus because his name is Boo Boo Kitty.

My friend Sandie followed this theme a few days later when she suggested that if we had a girl the next time around, we could call her Hello Kitty.

Perhaps I should explain how this whole thing happened. I am the queen of the nickname. It's true. No one I know gets called by their parental-given name. And my nicknames seem to always stick. You guys didn't really think her mom named her Marel, did you? Then there is B. Of her 20 letter entire name, I managed to find one letter and call her that. For heaven's sake, my cousins ask how "B" is when they see me. At my wedding I was introducing her as "B" and she was following up with, "Actually my name is Jennifer." But back to the original story.

When we found out that we were pregnant (when we realized that the pink line on the second test means the same thing it meant on the first test if you morons had read the instructions--pregnant) , we paused the TIVO of Reagan's body lying in state in the Capitol and ran out to B&N to buy a baby book. Barely back in the parking lot, I suggested that we come up with a temporary name to call this sexless baby. I said that we should play a game of Baby Book Roulette. I flipped the pages and Derek slammed his finger down on the name Dunk. You read right. Dunk. Not Duncan but Dunk. We had apparently purchased the Urban Baby Name Book without knowing it. But Dunk it was. It wasn't like we could pick another name.

We called him Dunk until my mother had had enough. On Thanksgiving, he became Ethan.

But two weeks after he was born, he became Boo Boo Kitty. Boo being the origin of his nourishment and Kitty, well I don't know where the hell that came from. I HATE CATS WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING COULD I HAVE BEEN A LITTLE MORE CREATIVE?

So I have been getting a little worried that maybe Boo Boo Kitty might be sticking too much. I mentioned it to Derek and this is what happened...

D: Ethan?
E: (staring intently at his chew toy)
D: Ethan?
E: (wondering how far he can get the chew toy in his mouth without gagging)
D: Ethan?
E: (wondering if it would be more fun to throw the toy or to keep eating the toy)
D: Boo Boo Kitty?
E: (turning with a HUGE smile and a laugh to look at D)

Oops, I did it again....

Freakonomics, or "how-to-throw-an-economist's-study"

I, like many Americans who are not knee deep in the latest Harry Potter book, am reading Freakonomics (don't worry, Marelle, your copy will be on its way soon). If you knew my husband, you would understand why this book is mandatory reading in my house. But the disturbing part is the conversation I had with him the other night about how he managed to throw one of the studies in the book.

No, not the Sumo wrestler study.

Here goes...

D: You know the bagel study that the economist did in the book was at .... where I used to work. That's where he first started selling his bagels.
K: Yeah?
D: I used to buy bagels from him.
K: Yeah? So did you cheat him on rainy days and pay for your bagels on sunny days, like his study determined?
D: Not really.
K: (starting to get nervous because I could see that there was SOME sort of cheating that had occurred based on the look on his face) Not really?
D: Well, you see (imagine someone doing that dance he does when he is trying to NOT say what he is about to say), the bagel costs some crazy amount like 85 cents. I mean, who has 85 cents? You either have a dollar or a few quarters. Never 85 cents.
K: I'M SORRY! You have 85 cents if you want a bagel.
D: Well, (hemming and hawing) I just kept track. If I put in a dollar one week, I would make it up the next week and put in less.
K: You were running a bagel tab?
D: I guess.
K: So some Fridays he took home less money because you were evening out your account?
D: It all came out in the wash.
K: The man did a 20 YEAR STUDY and you managed to throw 8 years of it by keeping a running tab only known to you?
D: I guess. I was just the noise* in the study.
K: So how many other people were noise in the study as well? Do you think you were the only person doing that?

Good gracious. Where the hell did I find this man? My apologies to Paul Feldman.

*Random market fluctuations that make it difficult to forecast the market's direction.

Why YOU gotta be so determined too?

Murphy's law: If you go to sleep at 12:15 am, the baby will invariably wake up at 5:45 a.m.

There was howling off in the distance. It got closer and closer. Until my dream about my impending vacation was rudely interrupted by the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Or Toofuses, to be exact.

I laid there for a sec, wondering if Derek was going to get up but he was playing dead. FINE, I'll do it myself.

I went to get E and put him on the changing table. If I don't change him, he pees all over me and all over my nice bed.

Apparently he decided that if he did not eat THAT VERY SECOND HE WOULD DIE A HORRIBLE DEATH. You would have thought he had gotten his hand caught in the car door, he was screaming so loud.

D: What are you doing to the baby?
K: Pinching him????

The birth of my own little drama king.

Why you gotta be so determined?

Derek decided today that he was going to take the Oriental rug outside and shake it out because it is downright nasty. Today. You know. The day it was 96 degrees. The mosquitos are swarming like the cicadas last year except not so loud but oh so more annoying and painful.

K: Let's do it on Thursday, when the high will be 79.
D: fine, I'll do it myself.

Baby, baby, baby. So off he goes, knowing that my whiny self will follow.

But I brought a broom. I figured I could clean the rug Jane Austin style. Beat the crap out of it. As Derek held it.

That'll teach him to just poke, poke, poke until he gets his way.

Oops there goes another one

So much for getting the picture of Toofus with the one stubby tooth in his mouth. Cause that tooth got a brother today. Do we call him Toofus Squared? Toofuses?

Someone in the house smells like wet dog

Zinni,

Now it isn't like me to point fingers, but if you want to loved and adored, you probably shouldn't have rolled in the dead animal on your way back in from the middle of the lake. So now you have managed to take that wet dog smell and up the ante with a foul dead smell. We'll call it the "double word score" of bad dog behavior. Lounging on your back in the middle of the dog bed and refusing to look at me directly does not in any way, shape or form make you any less guilty of your crime of stinking up my house. And if you walk past me one more time with the full-contact rub, leaving streaks of wet dog/dead animal along the length of my leg, I will have to ship you off to Nana Jane's house, where she will love you unconditionally. I don't do unconditional.

Love,
The Head Bitch