I turned 25 on February 11th.  I’ve nearly let my driver’s license expire, which isn’t great for someone that drives everywhere they go.  I’m not reading or writing near as often, and I feel somewhat broken. I also have trouble typing that I feel somewhat broken without feeling like a kid wearing all black clothing and too much black eyeliner. It’s the sort of thing you can tell people you don’t see everyday, but the people you do see everyday act dumbfounded when they read. Surely it isn’t that much of a secret, and if it is, they likely aren’t paying enough attention.  Just my theory.

Moving on, Allie turned 5 on March 4th.  FIVE. I cried for at least an hour thinking about it the night before.  It was the normal cliche sort of ‘my baby is getting older cry’, I suppose.   But I was so sad and happy, and really, I was just amazed.  I’ve raised a baby, and she’s turned five.  She has all of her fingers and toes.  She walks, talks, argues and analyzes things.  It’s amazing and heartbreaking and breathtaking. It’s lots of things.

Also, once of my younger cousins attempted suicide last week.  She’s 16, and it truly breaks my heart that at 16 she wants to die.   When I was 16, I wanted a later curfew.  I wanted to live hard and fast and strong.   I most definitely did not wish to die.  To be honest, it just really sucks that she’s in that sort of pain.  There are tons of words I could use, but sucks just really sums it up. I hope desperately that anything good will come out of this, because she’s really an incredible girl, and the various sets of circumstances that seem to have blazed this trail are horrible.

Anyway, on to happier places:

-I’ve been watching American Idol, as per usual. Crystal Bowersox is basically my homegirl.

-I’ve been playing Super Mario for Wii. It’s rocking my world.

-I’m still dieting. It’s working and I feel fabulous in that sense.

-I’ve taken up watching college basketball, and I get so anxious during games that I remember why I avoid watching sports.

-The number of white hairs on my head has increased by so much.

-I miss writing here, but I don’t know how to fix getting myself to actually write.

I turned 25 on February 11th.  I’ve nearly let my driver’s license expire, which isn’t great for someone that drives everywhere they go.  I’m not reading or writing near as often, and I feel somewhat broken. I also have trouble typing that I feel somewhat broken without feeling like a kid wearing all black clothing and too much black eyeliner. It’s the sort of thing you can tell people you don’t see everyday, but the people you do see everyday act dumbfounded when they read. Surely it isn’t that much of a secret, and if it is, they likely aren’t paying enough attention.  Just my theory.

Moving on, Allie turned 5 on March 4th.  FIVE. I cried for at least an hour thinking about it the night before.  It was the normal cliche sort of ‘my baby is getting older cry’, I suppose.   But I was so sad and happy, and really, I was just amazed.  I’ve raised a baby, and she’s turned five.  She has all of her fingers and toes.  She walks, talks, argues and analyzes things.  It’s amazing and heartbreaking and breathtaking. It’s lots of things.

Also, once of my younger cousins attempted suicide last week.  She’s 16, and it truly breaks my heart that at 16 she wants to die.   When I was 16, I wanted a later curfew.  I wanted to live hard and fast and strong.   I most definitely did not wish to die.  To be honest, it just really sucks that she’s in that sort of pain.  There are tons of words I could use, but sucks just really sums it up. I hope desperately that anything good will come out of this, because she’s really an incredible girl, and the various sets of circumstances that seem to have blazed this trail are horrible.

Anyway, on to happier places:

-I’ve been watching American Idol, as per usual. Crystal Bowersox is basically my homegirl.

-I’ve been playing Super Mario for Wii. It’s rocking my world.

-I’m still dieting. It’s working and I feel fabulous in that sense.

-I’ve taken up watching college basketball, and I get so anxious during games that I remember why I avoid watching sports.

-The number of white hairs on my head has increased by so much.

-I miss writing here, but I don’t know how to fix getting myself to actually write.

So I’m starting p90x tomorrow as well as going low carb.  Now might be a great time to discuss my love for carbs.  They are so pretty and sparkly to me.  Why does bread have to taste so good?  Why can’t I find a low carb breakfast that I love? Why do people pay for and produce low budget commercials that only make their businesses look sketchy? Why am I allergic to all of the things I love? Questions: I haz ‘em.

Allie has only had school twice since her Christmas break started nearly a month ago.  Just twice. I love her, but I am also nearly crazy.  I was pretty pumped when I figured out she would be going back tomorrow and then I realized tomorrow is MLK day and there is no school.

I turn 25 in a few weeks.  I’d like to do something fun for the big quarter century, but nothing comes to mind and I’m really not excited about my birthday like I usually am.  On a normal basis, I am ecstatic about my birthday for months up until it arrives.  This year, well, this year I’m just mehhh about it. Birthday Schmerfday.

Allie feel asleep on the couch tonight and has been periodically sitting up and yelling things like, “I WAS JUST MAKING CHILI!”  Following the yells, she just lays back down.  oh, to be 4.

If you are at all familiar with John Wall or Kentucky basketball, you’ll probably appreciate this.

It’s a lot to think about, I guess.  I’m sure every stage of life is that way.  You look back at what you’ve done and compare it to what you once intended to do with the result not always being something you are  completely pleased with.

Part of me feels like that if I document what is wrong to me, if I try to fix it with words, maybe it would be fixed in real life.  Sometimes when I write things out, when I describe things that are bothering me in my life they seem so insignificant when placed in words.  It’s half of the reason I don’t post.  Once I write out what I feel is going on, it seems so very silly that I can not bring myself to hit publish.  My problems are so tiny.  Large to me, but tiny in the grand scheme. Sort of like ants in your kitchen, I guess.  They seem like a huge problem to you, but at least you have a home and a kitchen. They’re just ants. But still, small things exist.  They count.  They mean something.  It’s a big whirlwind of whogivesafuck, I guess.

The problem is: I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about what I’m trying to accomplish as a want-t0-be writer, as a person, as a mother; as anyone, really.  What bothers me is that I’m not completely sure.  I no longer lay out plans in advance for myself and attempt to follow the path.  It seems as if I’m just following random paths and hoping that the destination is one that I would like. The planner in me, the one that keeps extensive notes regarding important things and keeps track of nearly everything on excel, has a hard time coping with this new mechanism for life.

It’s like being lost and hoping you wind up in a place you love by haphazard chance.

I don’t know. Just pretend this makes sense.  I am.

The month of December was December at its best, or the very best that December knows how to be, I suppose.  You know December, always pulling shady tricks on you. Sometimes it’s good.  Sometimes it’s bad.  Most of the time, it’s just December.   It came in with messy bouts shopping and tidied up with Christmas and New Year’s Eve.  Which, if I were to label evenings filled with some of my poorer decisions made under the influence, NYE 2009 is raking it in close to the top.  Not at the top, mind you, but very, very close.  That said, I do NOT do dark liquor under any circumstance, especially in combination with many others.  And Jager.  Oh, Jager: How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways.

Exciting Christmas tidbits?  If you’ve been reading for a while, you would know that when I married Adam I inherited a nut of a relative that I had not previously met.  I call her 80’s Lady on here and I used to discuss her quite frequently when I relied on the fact that she most likely did not know how to work the internet.  Then I found out she actually had the internet and regularly rocked myspace, and–well, shit obviously went awry.

But anyway, 80’s Lady raked it in at Christmas and stole various gifts from a Christmas function, which I suppose is supposed to be sad, but mostly it just made me laugh.  I know it sounds horrible, but I guess if you know her and her level of ridiculous finding humor in any of the oddly motivated things she does is really the silver lining.   One of the gifts was even Allies.  It’s still funny to me, though.   I’ll just chalk another one up on the list of things I’m most likely going to hell for.

Apparently in my long break from blogging, I forgot how I usually write in concise paragraphs because concise paragraphs are what I like to see on other peoples blogs.  I’m more likely to keep reading if you don’t toss too many sentences into one spot.  Oh well.

Anyway, back to regular things, Allie has been fabulous.  I stood in line at Wal-Mart at 4 a.m. like a total redneck so that Santa could take the glory of bringing her Zhu Zhu pets, or “Susan pets” as she calls them.  I was ready to throw bows like a backwoods ninja should anyone try to cut line.  But I got out safely with TWO zhus zhus at that.  They were going like crazy in our area.  Finding them was like stumbling upon a hundred dollar bill laying crisply on the sidewalk.  It just wasn’t happening.  But victory happened.  Oh sweet victory.

And what else:  I’d like to thank everyone that participated in the twittering about my disappearance and the messages.   It’s nice to be missed.  It’s even nicer to know that people are concerned enough to message and email and such. I’m obviously very behind in email.  What’s new, right?

But anyway, how are you?  Thanks for coming back.

I made Allie’s cape myself, which was a real treat since I’m not at all a seamstress. Playing one was fun for a few hours and even better when the cape turned out decently.  I attached a huge ‘A’ to the back.

After Halloween Allie was sick again, which made life even more interesting, but I’m still standing.

I had plans to do NaNoWriMo but things got ridiculous and I didn’t.  I’ve decided I’m going to do my own in January. Most of November has been ridiculously busy. So busy that I think I forgot to breathe a little at times.

Other things I didn’t do this past month? Return emails.  If I owe you one or you sent me one checking on me and I haven’t replied, I’m terribly sorry.  It’s in the works. I feel like a jerk.

As far as exciting things go, I did shop Black Friday for 15-16 straight hours.  Lots of caffeine, food and gifts later, I realized the madness was actually rather thrilling. I like to watch people, especially crazy people that are on a mission.

Oh! and Thanksgiving!  Thanksgiving is always a doozy.  We have around 4 different meals to attend, one of them hosted by us, where I made a 25 lb turkey that was beyond fabulous (because I’m all about tooting my own horn today.)  All of the meals  were eventful.  Thanks was given.  Food was eaten.  Drinks were thrown back.  It was an all around great time.

Moving on, I’ve also spent the past month attempting to convince Adam that I desperately need a Canon DSLR. Desperately.  Prime example being the photos below that Allie and I took between Thanksgiving rounds in the bathroom mirror with my iPhone. They feel so myspace due to the iphone popping up in random places.

It  was an interesting attempt at getting us to both look at the mirror and smile at the same time.  Obvious fail. I’m afraid more convincing will be necessary.

Anyway, I hope your month was fabulous.  Anything interesting happen to you?

And! How cute is Allie?

When I took her to see a doctor today, her pediatrician’s office, as well as local urgent care clinics, was already closed.  This meant I had to take her to the care clinic in the local hospital.  There are a million reasons why going to this clinic is stressful.  Here are the basics:

a.) While it is like a Doctor’s office, they bill like a hospital.  By bill like a hospital, it is $495 to be seen by a Physician’s Assistant, whether any tests have been ran or not. If so, expect more.  Once Allie had to have a breathing treatment late at night before we had a nebulizer or had her asthma diagnosed.  Just to have the breathing treatment and be seen by a girl for a flash of a second, it was $1500. For a breathing treatment.   Seriously.

b.) It is usually full of wayward crackheads feigning pain.

c.) It’s located inside of the hospital.  So, yeah.

I was dreading going, but we really had no choice.  Allie flinches at the sight of any medical building where she might receive a shot or finger prick. She is fairly skilled at spotting them.  Obviously, the screaming from my never-screams-unless-she-thinks-she’s-getting-a-shot child begins as soon as she spots a building of this nature.   You can see the hospital from the road; however, you have to drive up a massive hill in order to reach it. The hill is at least half a mile long.

Please imagine screaming from my feverish, asthmatic, hacking cough child all the way up this hill at the regulated speed of 25 mph.  After calming Allie and finding a parking place, we trekked to the clinic.  Allie was suffering from extreme leg pains so I had to carry her or else she waddled like a penguin. In my other arm, I had a giant bag with books, water and a stuffed big bird. Adam was working so any extra hands I might’ve had weren’t available.

The waiting room was full.  It is one of the most poorly organized places I’ve ever seen.  They have a variety of unidentified windows for you to fill out your forms. Of course, there are no signs or people to tell you to do so.  You just have to wait at the window that actually has a person manning it.  Then you find out. It’s so inefficient.

After you finally fill out the forms, you take them to a different window.  Again, there are no signs to tell you this.

When I finished the papers, I took them to the correct window.  The lady manning the window felt the need to yell at me, a mother holding a sick child that only did what I was supposed to do.  I was supposed to hand her a form. I handed her a form.  Heaven forbid anyone actually have to do their damn job. Because if so, there will apparently be screaming.

To be honest, I’m pretty hormonal right now.  Very hormonal.  Somehow the yelling of the stranger two feet away from my face makes me cry.  I don’t do pretty or petty crying.  I cry a few times a year and that’s it.  So if I cry, it is the ugly.  Believe me, it is easy to do the ugly cry when you are holding your 4 year old with one arm and knowing that by the time she has been treated,  your bill would have been the price of a trip to Disney World.

It is also easy to do the ugly cry when you are scared because your daughter’s lungs are sometimes the suck and illness can make it unbelievably difficult for her to move air.  It is also easy to do the ugly cry when you’ve spent the week arguing with your husband about how your daughter doesn’t need pulled out of preschool just because she’s gotten sick a few times.  Kids get sick.  They still need to learn.

Anyway, even when I know it is going to happen, I’m always surprised to find myself crying.  That said, I RARELY cry in front of Allie.  Rarely.  I know you could probably feed me back some babble about how it’s okay for your child to see you cry, and I know it can be okay.  But I also know that when my child sees me cry, she will start to cry.  The last thing I need Allie to do is sympathy cry. Crying=even more difficulty breathing.

Oh, and don’t worry, after a stranger has yelled in your hormonal and worried face, inducing tears, and you are doing the ugly cry in a room full of strangers wearing masks to yield off flu germs,  the stranger will offer psychological help to you.  OH YES SHE DID.  Not that there’s anything wrong with psychological help.  If  I had needed it, I would have gladly taken it.  But the only thing I needed was for someone to see my child.  I didn’t need anyone to yell at me over a piece of paper.

Eventually, after a few hours, Allie was finally seen.  She was diagnosed with the flu by a nice lady that did not yell in my face. We passed time watching people be flown out in the helicopters.  At one point I caught myself thanking the skies for the helicopters that served as entertainment, then I thought about why they were there in the first place, to escort someone who was too seriously ill to be treated at that particular hospital, and I was no longer thankful.

I am, however, thankful for the fact that Allie seems to be slightly better.  Thought I may do the ugly cry again at any given minute.

We’ve obviously been inside a lot, which means we do a lot of crafts.  I’ve always had a huge craft crate because I’m a nerd and make stuff.  Now, it’s just kid friendly and comes in unbelievably handy for rainy days. It’s also sort of a babysitter.  Need to do something that involves not having tiny hinds around? Cut up some construction paper; hand your child a glue stick; let them glue the pieces to something else and you’re to go.  Well, good until the stick runs out.  Anyway, the craft crate is so handy to have around with glue, crayons, ribbons, scissors, etc.   So today, when we had craft time, Allie and I each made a ghost.

My ghost has a mustache and slightly resembles Dwight Schrute.

Allie’s ghost was wearing a dress and had lopsided breasts that were small than her ears.

With labels:

Yeah.   The happy couple together:

I’m going to be so sad when her drawings no longer need a key to understand.  I love trying to figure out what they are or why they exist.  Which, believe me, is a real treat, especially on the pictures where she gives people REALLY long oval belly buttons that look like cartoon penii. Imagine looking at an alleged picture of yourself where you may or may not have a large cartoon penis drawn on your body.  It’s lots of laughter.

Other PARENTFAIL news, today the only clean glasses I could find to put Allie’s water in were wine glasses from my favorite Kentucky vineyard, Equus Run.

Don’t hate on the dinosaur stickers on my laptop. They’re pretty luxurious.

In my case, after falling asleep at 4:30 a.m. last night due to a child hooked up to a nebulizer, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. to the police beating on our front door.  It seemed that some low grade juvenile thugs decided to break into a ton of cars in my neighborhood, which is funny because I live in a pretty safe neighborhood that is flanked with law enforcement and/or the relatives of law enforcement.

The good news?  The thieves were caught.  They were apparently stupid and thought nothing of walking down the road toting a bunch of purses, one of them being my favorite gold Coach purse. They were male and it was in the a.m.  As if that wasn’t obvious?   Thankfully, one of our local policemen was patrolling and saw them.  He caught them and I now have back ALL of my stolen belongings.

The most amusing thing to me from the theft? All of the tampons in my purse had been opened. I had around 3 or 4.  The usual amount that I keep in there.  The thieves were compelled to open the packaging on each tampon?  Amusing. I know they weren’t previously opened.  Were these boys THAT curious?  Had they never seen a tampon?  Were they trapped in a world of maxi pads and diva cups? Or crocheted tampons? There’s nothing I hate quite like a wasted tampon.  Motherf*ckers.

Another amusing/confusing thing: They also stole Allie’s play cell phone.  It does not look AT ALL like a real phone.  It’s shaped like one and a lady with a nasal voice quacks at you if you press a button.  It’s also the super obviously cheap plastic.  It reminds me of the time our cars were robbed when I was younger and the thieves left a Milli Vanilli cassette but made sure to steal my Brownie troops cassette tape full of songs.

I’m just really thankful that we got all of the cash and credit cards back.  I hate the process of calling and canceling.  The last time our cars were broken into the videos of Allie’s first two years were stolen.  I’m still a bit scarred from it.

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In other news, did I tell you that I’m one of the Power Moms on bTrendie’s Power Mom Advisory Board? bTrendie is a sales site launched by parents that love a great sale.  There are always awesome sales events offering 30-60% off of the name brands parents love like Paul Frank and Quinny.

If you want to join, you can click on over and use my invite code SASSY.  The deals really are great. Come on! Go join.  I’m trying to recruit as many members as possible.

And, if you’re still looking for a Halloween costume, click on over to Droolicious and check out the 7 Days of Halloween Costumes.  I did them, and they’re pretty awesome.