Dear Ella,

Happy Birthday Love.

I can’t believe you’re three.

Wait, yes I can. I haven’t slept for three years.

For the last 1,095 nights I have been up and down, kicked and thrashed. I have been flooded with pee. I have run up and down the steps all hours of the night getting you bologna…peperoni’s….Kool-Aid….ANYTHING that might give me twenty more minutes of precious sleep.

Dazed, confused and waking up with dried pepperoni’s stuck to my head. You never gave in, all those nights, seeing me suffer. 

Then I finally said to myself, “You know what, she may never sleep all night. She may never sleep in her own bed but at least I’ll know if she’s late for curfew when she comes home from a date…AND IT’S OK. IT DOESN’T MAKE ME A BAD MOTHER!”

I’ll give it to ya kid, you’ve got stamina.

A week after your third birthday, you decided I’d been punished enough. You slept all night in your own bed. 10 WHOLE HOURS.

Now that we know you can do it, if you don’t repeat it again tonight we’re gonna duct tape you to the bed.

Happy Birthday Chicken Little

Love,

Mom

My husband loves me.

Really, really loves me.

But sometimes he does stupid things.

Really, really stupid things.

Like last week when I was getting out of the shower. He thought it’d be cute to play Playboy photographer and take some pictures of his smokin’ hot wife.

Well, he had his five minutes of fun and then my dimpled ass was to be deleted.

Cut to this weekend. Ella’s birthday party with the whole family.

My mom arrived and I was so excited to show her pictures from the costume party the night before. I whipped out my camera and she and my father in law gathered around. I pushed the button on the camera to find the costume pictures and it was soooo slow that I decided to keep pushing it more and more and more….until it got stuck.

When it finally stopped, there in all my glory was my big ol’ BADONKADONK.

Not only did I show my mother the naughty picture taken by my super genius husband but I also flashed my father in law the junk in my trunk.

Oh, yeah. I did.

His only response, “That’s why you should never get your pictures developed at Walmart.”

Point taken.

Love and Marriage…Love and Marriage.

Yes, we were the Bundy’s for Halloween

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted. Check back tomorrow night for a regular post.

For a good laugh tonight, here’s Rico looking like a ding dong…

No, the mistake isn’t him.

He wanted me to let ya’ll know that right off the bat. He thinks my title is misleading…like, I have “My first mistake” and then a huge picture of him would lead anyone to the wrong assumption?

Surely he knows by now that if that’s what I really thought I would have posted his picture with the title, “I married a ding dong” but I didn’t…yet.

So’s, anyways.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah.

We went to the beach for fall break. The ride down was fairly uneventful and I didn’t even have to drug them. The new truck has a DVD player with…gasp…wireless headphones and since I lied and told Ella that the only way you could watch a movie is to wear the headphones AND she believed me, we had a quiet ride.

Because trust me people, 9 hours of listening to Barney movies in the small confined space of an automobile will make you a little homicidal.

It wasn’t until we arrived that I learned that Ella had been watching Big Momma’s House the entire trip. Over and over and over.

Yeah, I’m real observant like that.

Mistake.

See this little red head?

Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she wonderful?

And then she opened her mouth.

She thought it would be a FABULOUS idea to yell out to all the larger ladies on the beach and say, “Hey look, there’s Big Momma.”

Oh yes…she did.

Fall break is here and we’re at the beach. 

Be back soon!

The grocery store.

Ughhh.

More like “Let’s drive mom freaking nuts” for an hour.

I had to take them with me today. Them, being the two Tasmanian she-devils I carried in my belly. It was a battle of epic proportions in which I would’ve won, except my grocery store doesn’t have a liquor aisle.

Anyhoo.

I had to get food as we were down to a can of Veg-All, strawberry jelly and a pack of hot dogs. Even the Food Network site can’t even come up with a recipe for that…don’t ask me how I know, it’s just the cold hard facts.

My first mistake, besides taking the children, was to not have a list. Second mistake was not bringing Valium. Third, letting the heathens talk me into using that ginormous grocery cart with the car on front. Never a good idea.

So, we’re shopping and buying crap that we don’t need and I’m letting them by with a little of it just to hurry along the shopping trip. Bread, check. Diet Cokes, check. Chips, check. Brownies, check. La-da-da-la-da.

And then we steer that beast of a cart to the meat department and I know it’s coming. It’s EVERY FREAKING TIME. All hell breaks loose, crap hits the fan and Ella falls out of the car cart smack dab on the floor and has some type of emo-seizure conniption.

For some unknown cosmic reason, my 2 year old has a complete emotional breakdown every time we round the corner into the meat department. EVERY SINGLE TIME PEOPLE.

I don’t know if she is just overstimulated by the site of THAT much bologna or what, but she goes absolutely ape shit and starts whining and screaming, “BA-WON-EY…I WANT IT MOMMA….PEPPA-NONI’S…MOMMA, MOMMA.”  She won’t get up…and she’s getting louder and louder….and her sister is waving a industrial size package of Fischer’s in her face just egging it on.  I’m sweating and doing that one eye sweep around to see who all is witnessing this momentous moment of motherhood as I point the finger, cuss under my breath and pray the security camera’s aren’t rolling on me as I swat her bottom.

As I was finally leaving the store  a elderly woman came up to me and said, “You know, it gets better when they move out.”

Apparently she is senile.

Here in Hooterville, every third weekend in September we celebrate Cow Days.

Yes, COW DAYS.

Many small towns here in Kentucky have their own festivals, such as Ham Days, Lincoln Days, the Bourbon Festival, Foothill Days, and The Apple Festival. For us, it’s Cow Days.

It’s a homecoming of sorts. Class reunions are usually planned to coincide with Cow Days and you usually run into someone you never thought you’d see before.

One of the first things you have to do upon arriving is milk Annie. She’s a large fiberglass cow that the kids can milk for grape Koolaid. This is the first year Ella would even come close to her.

I have been tempted to lay down underneath her and squirt the Koolaid right in my mouth but Rico said it wouldn’t be “appropriate.” He’s no fun.

Ella wanted to do the same…she really is MY child.

Next is a ride on the train. Which costs $3.00 per person for a 5 minute ride.

I think I need a new career. You know how many people fell for this rip off?

You can find all kinds of arts and crafts, fall decorations and even buy such things as camouflaged lingerie and this…

a candle called “Boyfriend in a Jar.” And I can speak from experience when I say this candle smells better than any boyfriend I’ve ever had. ‘Nuff said.

You can even let your 3 year old pick out a tattoo.

Then you can run into Farm Chick who always gets the better picture and blogging fodder.

Next is the parade which includes the local high school band, the Shriners, a gazillion tractors and several hundred horses and mules.

And what festival wouldn’t be complete without a beauty pageant?

Rachel decided she wanted to compete for the coveted “Miss Pre-teen Cow Days.” She begged and I hoped this phase would pass. It didn’t and we spent the whole week prior learning to walk in heels.

She looked beautiful and grown up and elegant.

She got 2nd runner up and had a great time.

Cow Days. While it’s certainly not an event for the society pages, it’s suits us just fine.

These people aren’t exactly my favorite.

I mean, they’re kinda like those relatives you see at family reunions, you’re cordial when you have to be but you’d rather not ever hear from them again. You know, those relatives that are always asking for money…and more money…and then they take it and blow it on something stupid like a cell phone or a party for a bunch of a-holes? Well, that’s basically what the government does with my tax dollars….but on a much grander scale.

Anyhoo, I just got finished paying my 2007 taxes. Like, 2 months ago. And yesterday, I mailed my 2008 corporate taxes and the bill wasn’t bad.

The sun was so bright I had to wear shades….

And then someone thought it would be a good idea to send me this…

Uh, yeah. That says I owe $86,655.

After falling down in the driveway, clutching my chest and then looking for Ashton Kutcher, I realize that this is not a joke but a terrible mistake.

People, if I made the kind of money that would require me to pay this kind of tax bill, do you seriously think I would spend my days eating filet of bologna and planning my social calender around the upcoming Cow Days Festival of Hooterville?

I think not.

My days would be spent with a pool boy that looks like David Beckham and a full time maid.

Just sayin’.

My doctor told me I would need to see the “disease psychologist” and so I went…only cause they made me.

I was nervous as a cat on crack.The thought of someone sitting across from me, asking me personal questions about the state of my mind, was unnerving. I mean, the man had a yellow note pad and pen and scribbled furiously the whole time going, “Ahem…I see…and how does that make you feel?”

Well, I can just tell you. It made me feel paranoid that he was gonna diagnose me with some type of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” modality and they would take me straight to the locked unit in a straight jacket.

See where I’m going with this…I got issues.

Anyhoo, so I’m talking to Dr. McGoo and I’m trying to act all sane and it all just comes out as being wrong. I’m fidgeting…I’m sweating…I’m doing that thing where I bit my lip when I’m really pissed or nervous.

Then he says to me, “You look really bitchy.”

Uh, excuse me Dude…”Did you say I looked really bitchy?”

“Yes” he replied. “You are a really pretty girl but you come across as bitchy…it would be so much better if you smiled.”

“You just called me bitchy and now your asking me to smile…isn’t that like an oxymoron? And do I have to pay a copay for this professional opinion?”

“Is that how you perceive yourself? As bitchy?”

“Why yes, I do….and thank you for asking.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“It makes me feel like you really wasted your time getting that PhD.”

And so it went on like this for an hour while he’s scratching his pen to the note pad like a cat covering shit. Finally says to me, “Do you think we have a good rapport?”

“It’s kinda like most of the first dates I’ve had…you ask me alot of uncomfortable personal questions and then at the end of it, you call me a bitch? At least then I would get a free meal out of it. You haven’t even offered me a drink. I don’t guess you get many repeat patients?”

He replies, “You’re pretty funny…I like you.”

I’m supposed to be flattered by this.

As I’m leaving I text Rico and said “The disease psychologist just called me bitchy.”

His reply text, “I swear I didn’t call him.”

Seriously, I could have gotten a free diagnosis at home and saved $25.

This one I’m gonna have problems with.

The second day at the condo an older gentleman stopped me in the parking lot and asked if I was the mother of a little girl named Ella.

At this point I’m having all kinds of crazy thoughts. Why is some old man hanging out in the parking lot asking about my 2 year old daughter? 

False alarm. 

He simply wanted to know if I “imbibed.”

And since I’m blond and didn’t know what that meant…I said no.

He went on to explain that that was too bad…seeing as he was a master distiller for Jack Daniel….and since Ella and his niece had become such good friends at the pool…he thought we might enjoy some Gentleman Jack Tennessee whiskey. Yada…yada…yada.

Wait a minute….I imbibe…I imbibe…I imbibe!

And so he came on out to the pool to meet my husband and family and bring us a treat.

Being from Kentucky and all, we are a bit of snobs. We like our bourbon. Tennessee whiskey? That’s a huge faux pas.

But because of our southern manners, we know that it’s impolite to turn down a gift and that when you get right down to it…it’s still free liquor.

The next morning I woke up to this outside our front door.

Yes, people. That’s whiskey in the stroller. Another fine gift from our distiller friend to try to lure us over from the bourbon side.

So thank you Ella for hanging out with master distillers…even though they aren’t a Samuels from Marker’s Mark.

And thank you Mr. Distiller for making me realize that my 2 year old just bought me a drink.