Genuine

Bliss

Looks

Like

This...

Bliss is getting to see my daughter for the first time in almost two years, and getting to meet my granddaughter for the first time ever!

That right there is bliss.

And happiness.

And joy!

As far as trying to keep Gaby in complete darkness about all of this plotting, scheming, and suprirsing,  we're finding that to be extrememly difficult!  Gareth and I (or is it "me"?  I think it's "me" but it sounds really off. Now is not the time for my ADD-riddled brain to go off on a tangent of "I" vs. "me") find ourselves saying something about her and Kennedy's (squeeeeeee! And my brand new lens came just in time!) trip back home to the states, IN FRONT OF GABY, and stopping mid-sentence and having to make something up, pull something out of thin air before we let the proverbial cat out of the bag! 

For instance, Gareth was standing in the kitchen drying dishes and I was sitting on the sofa folding freshly laundered clothing and I said, "It's going to be a miracle if I can get all this laundry done before The Queen of England and that gorgeous itty bitty cutie pie come to stay with us."

Gaby, who was sitting at the coffee table doing lines writing "I will not talk back to mommy and daddy." 25 times, piped up and said, "The QUEEN OF ENGLAND IS COMING TO VISIT US? Daddy, that's your Queen of England?  She's gonna be in OUR house?  HERE?  To see US?  And our cats?"

That's pretty much how some of our conversations have been going lately.   Another, potentially amusing "for instance" goes something like this:

"Gareth, I'm running out to the store to pick up some diapers, baby formula and organic baby food.  Be back in a few!"  Meg's flight gets in pretty late on Wednesday night and I don't want to have to stop so she can pick those things up, on the way home.    Having them on hand will hopefully make things easier on her.

Of course, the small child known as Gaby comes running to the door as I'm about to leave and exclaims, "Diapers!  Baby food! Why are you getting those?   Who are they for?"  

I looked at her, picked my jaw up off of the floor and said, "Well you know, I might be asked to babysit and it would be a good idea to have those things on hand just in case."   

Gaby's fairly intelligent and she continues her inquisition, "Mommy, who has a baby that you're going to babysit?  There are no babies around here!"   

I thought about it for a moment, and thankfully remembered that there is in fact a 6-month old who is the little sister of someone that Gaby cheers with.   I grinned at Gaby and said, "You never know when Miss Cassandra might need to run an errand and ask me to watch Eva for her.  So, I'll have this stuff on hand in case!"   

Gaby's little brain immediately went into overdrive and she took things a step further.  She started jumping up and down and in a singsong voice exclaimed,  "Yayyyy that means Kiera Kiera Kiera is gonna come over for a playdate playdate playdate and we're going to demolish my bedroom play with Barbies and Legos in my bedroom and dance and practice our routines routines routines!"  

Um, Cassandra, you wanna plan that playdate we've been talking about forever? 

**********

Planning all the details of Meg's visit, dealing with the devil in those same details, fighting yet another round of the barfs, getting myself back on track physically and emotionally (more to come in the Emotional Fat series.  It never ceases to surprise me that this is a battle I'll be waging the rest of my life!), Gaby having two back-to-back competitions in the last two weeks, and trying to get the house ready for My daughter and gra...gran...the spawn of my spawn (People, cut me some slack!  Do I even look like I am old enough to have a granddaughter? Yes I am vain! ), I've had no time to write.  Not only that, but I sort of look at the blog like something yummy that I can't have until I get everything else done.  I feel really guilty if I sit down to write (and that includes two book outlines and a couple of freelance projects that aren't due until April!) if there's anything else that is not taken care of around the house.  

It's a sickness I tell you!

I'll be back out here Thursday (maybe before if I can manage to make the house look like hoarders haven't taken over! Whoever said, "Having a tiny house is so much easier to keep tidy!" was a lying liar who lies!) with loads of pictures of the most adorable grandspawn you've ever seen!    Until then, here's a cute picture of my very own little spawn, holding the 2nd place trophy that her team won at one of the recent competitions.   Poor Gaby still isn't used to that make-up and is always looking under her eyelids!  

By the way, Gaby has asked me to tell all of my blog readers, all three of you, that all she wants for Valentine's Day is her two front teeth . . . and the missing one on the bottom!   I'm assuming she'll take her teeth in place of all that chocolate she was looking forward to.  Or not.

SOPA/PIPA are bad.  That's what you need to know right off the bat.  Very bad.  

I can direct you to about a hundred websites telling you what SOPA and PIPA are and how horrible they are.   I can also direct you to a government site that tells you who the assholes in Congress and the Senate are, that are sponsoring and supporting this bill as well as those opposing it.   The fact of the matter is, a lot of those sites are going black, either as of midnight tonight, or 8AM tomorrow morning.  Barking Mad will be among those going black in opposition of SOPA/PIPA.  

Originally I had password protected the blog, but I found a plug-in for TypePad that was a lot more to my liking.  If the plug-in fails, the blog will be password protected from 8AM Wednesday the 18th of January until 12AM January the 19th.