last night i had a dream that i took 8 pregnancy tests. they all came out positive and all had a number on them designating how much HCG was in my body. the first test said .7, the last 4.0. it appeared on the pee stick in cursive.

first of all, once i figure out what i ate before bed last night, it's getting tossed.

after that, me and my dream self are gonna have a little chat about her spending. the  chances of getting a false positive once are slim. but to get 2 in the same cycle? pretty much impossible. she could have easily stopped with two. does she realize who's paying for all those pee sticks!?!

it's not her, because every time she waits tables, she gets sat with 5 sets of 8 tops all at once and gets into the weeds so bad that nobody is tipping her. i know it for a fact. usually she just ends up breaking down in the dish pit. i have never seen her work a job successfully.

oh, and her medical bills are piling high from all of her teeth crumbling or falling out. i swear her molars grow back like hydras, 3 in the place of the last one. maybe that's how. maybe she's doing a circus act when i'm awake, pulling her own teeth out and letting people watch the newbs grow in. i bet she charges $5 a head.

i wouldn't pay to see that, but the people in my dreams are a bit off, so i wouldn't put it past them.

if you happen to see dream-leanne, can you please let her know that all this pregnancy test nonsense is out of control, and that she owes me rent?

Cat Lovers, Beware

by now you already know that i am brazenly offensive. but thanks to modern day labels, i can call it a disease. i have no idea WHAT disease it is, but i can definitely work my way into the description of at least one.

that one disease, however, is not hoarding.

i've been watching a hoarders marathon all day. up until this point i had only seen parts of a handful of these shows. today i have seen over a half a dozen.

there are obvious common themes. inabilities to cope, tragic beginnings to bad behaviors, denial, defeat.

and cats.

here's the thing: i hate cats and they hate me likewise. i firmly believe this is because they can sense my discomfort and they react. initially they made me ill at ease because i am mildly allergic. that uneasiness led to multiple bites which consequently led to hatred.

cats are demanding, solitary, condescending, and entirely delusional. what other 7-15 pound living thing do you know of that believes it is in control of 160 pound human beings? babies. but babies are cute, so they get a pass.

probably close to 75% of the hoarders have cats. hoarders tend to be demanding, solitary, and entirely delusional, so i think the relationship makes sense.

it's interesting to me how upset these people get when their cats are taken by animal control, or when the cat runs away once it finds an open door, or how sad people are that their cats started killing each other when there were simply too many in too cramped of an environment. a logical person would say "if you loved the cats so much, why wouldn't you clean up so you could keep your house/not have your animals taken away for neglect/not end up finding cats mummified into the floor boards/not be burying shoe boxes full of cat bones that were found on your kitchen counter?"

but, back to the delusional thing. i'm sure they don't even notice if the cats are there, until they are taken away.

but there's something even MORE interesting to me. the cats.

i understand that the hoarders themselves are mentally ill.

but the cats... LEAVE!!! it doesn't seem that difficult to me! the people whose house you're staying in wouldn't even notice if you were gone! seriously, just slip outside while they're busy catching falling items from the 8 foot tall stack of pitted olive jars. chances are they didn't adopt you from a shelter, they took you in when you kept showing up because they had an abundance of food to offer you (mostly olives) and they were lonelier than jabba the hut (seriously, do you really think he had friends at the end of the day? no way. he ate them all).

sooooo... if you are eating cat food that has insect eggs in it, being attacked by the persian cat army, sleeping in a rusted cage, and twisting your tiny kitty ankles with every step, hit the streets. you obviously already know how to scavenge.

and that leads me here: is it possible that cats have mental disorders as well? not cat in its right mind would willingly live in those situations.

and if cats CAN have mental disorders...

sweet mother of pearl, i'll take a dog please.

and a personal organizer. my piles of laundry are starting to upset me.

Double Standards, Something Like Ice Cream, and A Video

this is going to go in a few different directions before it comes to a glorious culmination of awesome.

there's a double standard in parenting. who's shocked? anyone? 

i'm sure the double standard you're thinking of is not the one i'm going to talk about, which leads me to this conclusion: parenting should never, ever work, yet somehow we keep managing to make it happen, and in some instances, make it work. 

tim gunn would be a great dad. "well daddy, i was thinking about making a model of planet earth out of lead, mercury, and asbestos as a commentary on our society's lack of vision and concern for future generations." "ok, i'm a little concerned that this is going to be tasteless. these materials, if not handled properly, could be a total disaster. your sketch is promising, and i love the color palette, but it's going to take a lot of precision. make it work." 

back to the double standard. dads are almost invariably the parental unit to introduce kids to soda, doritos, pixie sticks, and the host of other terrible foods and drinks that result in children who never sleep and mothers who turn gray by the age of 28. and when dads do these things, we giggle and roll our eyes and say things like "father-son/daughter bonding" or "aw, a dad's rite of passage" or "YOU'RE GOING TO BE THE ONE WHO STAYS UP WITH JACK WHEN HE'S BOUNCING OFF THE WALLS AT 2 AM!!!!!!!" 

but when you see a mom giving her child a sip of her diet pepsi, your jaw drops. "omg becky, did you see that? doesn't she know what's in sodas!? i bet her kid has no teeth from bottle rot and she probably does heroine in their living room. oh, and they're on welfare and she's pregnant right now. with twins from two different men. we'll see her on maury in a year."

next on the agenda!

i am white. my husband is white. i'm not talking ethnicity. i would say caucasian in that instance, to be PC. not the computer. i'm a mac. just wanted to clarify that.

when i say we are white i am almost exclusively talking about our dance moves. my husband will tell you that his wrestling background formed him into a smooth operator with excellent hip control, thus forming him into an exceptional dancer.

do not listen to him. he is a very good looking, delusional liar.

vanilla ice should be a hero for people like me. first of all, his stage name alone represents everything we stand for. it sort of sounds hard, but when you really look at it, it doesn't make any sense. vanilla ice. ok, white=vanilla. ice=cold. so he's a tall iced latte no whip? or is he gelato? 

for the record, i've never heard a news report stating that both the driver and passengers of a drive-by were sipping starbucks or enjoying a creamy baskin robbins creation while gunning down some bloods who were on the wrong side of town. 

he couldn't even come up with his own beat. and he found a legal way to get away with it. remember the interview? "well, ours is dumdumdumdadadumdum-dum-dumdumdumdadadumdum, theirs is dumdumdumdadadumdum-dumdumdumdadadumdum. it's the 'dum'".

you're right vanilly (that's his hood name), it is in the dum(b).

people like me act tough. we want the outside world to think we pose some kind of threat, that we could beat down anyone who messed with us. the truth of the matter is that we would probably just get a lawyer to bury you in paperwork.

i've only held a gun once, and i cried. however, i shot santa right between the eyes when i finally conjured up the courage to pull the trigger. i still have nightmares.

ready for the culmination?

here is my response to the daddy double standard, a result of my horrible whiteness, and why you should never be scared of me or anyone in my family.

tim gun would be so proud.

I'm Not Always Funny

but generally speaking, that's my default personality. it's my social tool, conversation starter, and defense mechanism.

however, this will not be funny.

my niece is sort of in renal failure. creatinine levels over 1.0 mark kidney failure in a kid her size and her number is 1.3. however, it may be something as simple as draining her kidneys that solves the problem. she was born with a double blockage, so this wasn't entirely a shock, but it certainly feels like it.

pray for her, for her parents. surgery is also a likely solution as well. both treatments are risky.

hang on a second while i grab my soapbox and get it balanced on my pedestal.

now that i'm up here, let's talk.

creatinine is the waste product from creatine. creatine is a natural by-product of muscle contractions.

do you recognize the word "creatine"?

i did.

CREATINE!!! IT CAN MAKE YOUR MUSCLES GINORMOUS!!!!! YOU'LL BE BUFF!!!!! GIRLS WILL THINK YOU'RE HOT!!!!! YOU WILL BE SUCCESSFUL!!!!!! ALL YOU NEED ARE MUSCLES AND A RIDICULOUSLY FAKE TAN AND YOUR SELF ESTEEM WILL BE HIGHER THAN MT. KILIMANJARO!!!

it was a controversial additive to body building formulas. "is this safe, is this a drug" blah blah. it's not a drug.

however, i can't back the notion that it's safe either, though body building companies swear by it.

what do i know though, i'm just some lowly female consumer who doesn't body build and has no idea what my personal creatinine levels look like. i have no medical degree or training. my credentials are... oh my gosh, just about the same as spokespersons for companies who put creatine in their products... WHOA.


i could go off about this in 2000 word rant easily, but i'll paraphrase: creatine makes creatinine. too much creatinine? renal failure. creatine comes from muscle contractions. body builders are already producing more creatine naturally, and then adding even more. but it's safe.

how many other drugs, chemicals, medicines, did we think were safe? we handed cigarettes to our troops in MREs less than a half a century ago. lung cancer, emphysema.

we created tanning beds. melanoma.

we put asbestos in our homes. mesothelioma.

want a really controversial one? birth control. stroke, infertility.

this post really has nothing to do with little aliza jane.

it has to do with me. with my family, my son, my choices, my knowledge. a neighbor informed me that oxybenzone, an active ingredient in sunscreen, is suspected to be an endocrine disruptor. translation? it screws up your sex hormones, i.e. testosterone and estrogen.

who do you put sunscreen on most?

your kids.

i'm not going to tell anyone else how to live their life, what choices to make. but i will say for myself, i'll be damned if i go to a store and buy the cheapest, easiest version of something without considering possible long term effects.

and yes, i'm aware that there are always going to be foods, toys, clothes, products, that pose a threat. i cannot avoid everything. but when there is a label right in front of my face listing the ingredients, and i am fully literate, there is no excuse. i owe it to myself, to my husband, to my son, to read that label.

ok, let me jump down.

send out some love to my sister and her husband. i cannot even imagine how scary this is for them, and i hope i never have to imagine.

also, we're leaving for home (WITH DADDY!!!!) in 3 days, so blogging will drop off a bit while i unpack and set up our monstrous new house (i wonder if i'll look back in 10 years and laugh at how i thought 1500 sq. ft. was monstrous). but i promise when i post again, it'll be funny!!!

Funny or Frightening?

i feel like that should be the title of the game show that is my life.

my son pinched his fingers in a door for the first time today. naturally, hysteria followed. from me.

he sat on my lap, screaming baby profanities at his red fingers, and i rocked him, debating whether or not to give in to the urge to comfort him with baby cheesy poofs. food is love! i decided rocking would suffice. there's plenty of time to teach him horrible emotional/eating habits later in his life.

when you picture an 8 month old, even a toddler, who has just pinched his fingers in a door, the image generally looks something like this: red face, screaming yet barely breathing, eyes shut (or wide open), arms in a shaking state of panic, tears streaming. my son had all of those, save the last.

i can count on one hand the number of times i have seen tears come out of his eyes. i can only speculate that there was one instance where more than one tear fell, but i can't guarantee the wet on his blanket was tears and not snot or drool. he definitely produces an adequate amount of drool. if there were drool banks, he could single handedly supply them.

this is not to say that he doesn't get upset. i am not implying that my child never "cries" or screams. he does, though admittedly not often. but i didn't see that first real tear until he was nearly 5 months old.

i keep forgetting to ask his pediatrician when i see him. somehow between vaccinations, eating habits, teething, developmental checks, ear infections, fungal infections, alien infections, and any other infections, terrestrial or extra, "he doesn't make tears" gets thrown to the back burner.

i do intend to ask at his 9 month appointment. i have it written down on a piece of paper that i will probably lose.

until then, i've come up with a theory.

jp is actually chuck norris's son.

simply put, sometime in march-april of 2009, i must have read or heard a chuck norris fact which resulted in pregnancy.

and now my son's tears have the ability to cure cancer, so he must not waste them.

logical, yes? i think so.

it's either that or he has some tear production issue. that's not nearly as funny or awesome, so i'm going to go with the chuck norris theory.

and if you argue with me, jp will roundhouse kick you in the face. it's up to you to determine if it's worth the risk.

i'm getting old.

i recently had a birthday.

i will not tell you when, and i will delete any comments that give the day. i give out the date of my birth about as often as i give out my middle name. so, never.

in fact, i sent a text message to my best friend the night before the blessed event to see if she wanted to celebrate and she responded, "i think that's only the second time you've told me when your birthday is!"

this isn't some weird creeper ploy for attention or me just trying to create drama by keeping such an "important" thing about myself a mystery.

there are several reasons that i keep my entrance into the world under lock and key. 1) i don't really remember much about it, and i think it's unfair to milk gifts out of people for something i can't even verify details of.

just kidding.

but gifts come into play. i suck SUCK SUCK at gift giving. i don't remember to get them (on time or otherwise), i don't remember to ship them (everyone lives far away from me), and i practically go into spasms trying to pick something out for people because i'm always afraid they'll hate it.

because i do not send gifts, i would prefer that people not get me gifts. it raises my guilt quotient high enough to cause aneurysms. i am also bad at sending out thank yous, therefore i am the worst friend/family member on the face of the planet. i will not buy you gifts, i will not send you thank yous.

are you starting to understand a little more why you should NEVER write my birthday down? i don't deserve presents. not until i get my act together.

i am also severely hearing impaired. no lie. i can only hear out of one ear.

note: if i tell you this in person and you respond "what?" and think that you're so creative and hilarious for making a joke about being deaf when i tell you i'm deaf, i'm not laughing. at all. in fact, chances are my face will fall into a flatline and i will walk away from you. at the very least i will go off on a bitch rant about you to my husband later. i have heard this joke easily a thousand times. you are not creative. you are not funny. i am still deaf.

some people think "well, you still have one ear that works100%, so that's probably not that bad, right?".

right. except there's this problem. i can only hear conversations on one side of my body, so everyone has to be on that side. when i sit shotgun, i can't hear anyone. if i sit at the wrong end of a table at a restaurant, guess who won't be participating in convos? you know where sound comes from because it hits one ear slightly faster than the other. i don't have two ears to hear out of, therefore i don't know where sounds come from. i can't find my phone, calling it does me no good. my son falls down, i'm not sure where he is just by his crying. call my name in a crowd. i will spin in circles until you become visible. i have poor balance because i have no equilibrium. i walk toward the right when i try to walk straight no matter how badly i try to stop it. embarrassing. frustrating.

i cannot switch ears during a phone call. this brings me right back around to my birthday.

people call you lots and lots on your birthday. when you only have one ear, it gets hot fast. you also cannot hear your son and the over-stimulation to that one ear will literally exhaust you. i would much rather have a party where i can talk to people one-on-one (but nobody brings presents, just food). after too many phone calls, i get irritable and angry and i turn into the nofunonherbirthdaywhatajerkgirl. i don't want to be that girl.

text messaging has become the target of disapproval lately because it's "impersonal" and dangerous. the dangerous i can get on board with-- dumb people can make almost anything dangerous, and we got alotta dumb people in the world.

but for someone who can't handle talking on the phone (those of you who do call me will note that i rarely make the first call, and when i call back, i'm generally quick to get off the phone), text messaging is saving my life and giving me a chance to stay involved with friends and families without getting overwhelmed.

so, for those of you who figured out my birthday through facebook or from family, add my number to your phone. text me. i will love you forever, and i might just start giving out the date again.

until then, everyone will have to accept that i'm an old, deaf, senile woman, and it's only going to get worse with every one of these crazy things called "birthdays" that i celebrate every year.



i feel the need to mention, however, that i got the best birthday gift ever this year--i got to hold my brand new baby niece, a premie born measuring at 31 weeks.

Texas

blanket apology to my texan friends. you are certainly all exceptions and i'm sure there are other exceptions in the state that i have not met.

texas was a mistake. we should have just handed it over to santa anna. i'm not even sure if that's how you spell his name. i don't care any more than i care about the history of the alamo. "people died for their freedom at the alamo! how can you be so callous?!" um, pretty sure people died for my freedom in the revolutionary war, but i don't sit around memorizing the spelling of the names of the men in parliament at the time. i know how to spell sam houston, so untwist those panties!

we lived in texas as a family for 5 years and then i stayed for college for another 4.

and then i left. promptly.

there is a long list of things that i could go off about, but i will choose one. ok, two.

every time i walk off of a plane into houston, i think my lungs shrivel up and cringe. there is a reason that the best cancer center in america is in houston. they're trying to make up for the bad karma of having so much smog that they CREATE cancer.

side note, MD Anderson is an amazing, wonderful hospital and they have worked miracles there. i am endlessly grateful for the medical center and the beautiful years they've given to families and for the care my sister and my soon to be arriving niecephew have received at st lukes.

my second rant will bring no disclaimers, apologies, or attempts to smooth out the roughness of my accusations.

without fail, every time i've flown into houston (and that's well over a dozen times), i walk off the plane and within 100 feet of the gate, i am assaulted by oversized bejeweled crosses hanging gawdily from the necks of women wearing shirts that proudly own their status as "Jesus' favorite cowgirl", too tight jeans and tacky cowboy boots. they also have more make up than ru paul.

i should mention that for most of these women, the closest they've been to a farm is the vat of corn in their local walmart every summer.


i'm down with Jesus, don't make that mistake. i just wonder if maybe the proper tribute to Him doesn't involve taking the bloody, splintering, cruel, hard slabs of wood that He was NAILED to, and covering them in rhinestones, glitter, and sterling silver designs.


i'm so grateful to be here with my sister, to be able to share some time and resources with them. but once i get home, i'm planning on constructing some sort of eyewear that can block out anything made by a bedazzler. look for it on ebay.


i'll be sure to cover the sweet shades in diamonds and sapphires.