seriously, I cannot live with two of these people

Annabelle has developed an annoying habit. She is starting to clean things obsessively. The other night she was in the bathtub and there was some grime on the tub. Grime. Okay, I've put it out there, I have a grimey tub. Deal with it. The grime wasn't horrible, you couldn't scratch your name in it, but it was there. Annabelle got the washcloth and started to scrub it. She enjoys scrubbing the floors too (note: any mess on the floors is caused by Annabelle, so she should be cleaning it up, but seriously, I cannot live with two of these people). She has also learned to say mess, and she walks around from time to time saying "mess, mess" especially where there is one to clean up. Don't get me wrong, it's helpful and I am happy, but there can only be one hyphen in my life, that is all I can tolerate without substance abuse.

I am not a messy person. If I were married to Joe-Blow Ball Scratcher, he would think my housekeeping skills were amazing and would suggest I write a housekeeping blog. But I am not married to Joe. I am married to Hyphen. I bore his child. And now I am reaping what he sowed.

My friend said to be happy, because the only habits her son has picked up from her husband are burping and farting. Unfortunately, we are covered in this department as well.

Cell Phone+ Grandma= Run

Annabelle is not allowed to play with our cell phones. One- they are not toys. Two-she is curious and destructive and that doesn't mix well with small electronic devices. But Granny and Ba-pa are here. Which means that anything goes in the Annabelle department because they have no rules or discipline, at least where their grandchild is concerned. So Annabelle and Ba-pa were playing with his phone and having a grand time , until she tried to hyper-extend it and that is when Ba-pa realized that maybe his dear old daughter was smart to prohibit this behaviour. So now, I was stuck with the task of getting this beloved toy out of her grimy little hands. So here is how it went:

Me: "okay my sweet love, we need to give that toy to Ba-pa. It is a super-fun phone and I know it is going to be hard for you, but the time to play with it is over."

Annabelle gave me a look (see below) and then walked into the corner.

Me: "give that phone to Ba-pa please. be a good girl."

Sulky face.

Me: "okay, I am going to count to 5 and then I am going to come and take it out of your hand. The time to play with it is over. One, two, three, four, five."

As I walked to get it my mother said:

Mom: "Run Annabelle."

That's right. She said "Run."

I gave my mom an eat shit and die look(see above), but not where Annabelle could see (because I am trying to teach her to be kind and respectful to her elders) and got the phone. Then I took her in my lap.

Me: "That was very hard for you. That is a wonderful phone. And I know you like to play with it. But it is not for little girls and you are being such a dear sweet girl to give it to mama without fussing."

Mom: "Annabelle, when I say run, you need to run."

Yes, she did say that. My mom was the type of kid that got beat. A lot. But apparently not enough.

Lazy hazy crazy days of summer

So to be blunt--it's as hot as balls. It is so hot, you are almost a prisoner in your own house. It is hard when you have an outside baby that you can't take outside, because after 5 minutes I am miserable and she looks like she is having heat exhaustion. I woke up today dreaming about moving to Montana and living off the land and being cold. And then I felt ungrateful. In a few months there will be a cold snap that will be cold and dreary and although I will love it, eventually I will crave the warmth of summer. So I decided to make a list of the things I love about summer.

1. I like to sit in my bath tub at night and listen to the crickets. There are no crickets chirping in January.

2. Doves. I like to lie in bed in the morning and listen to the world wake up, and in the summer the doves really coo in the morning and that is a lovely peaceful sound that you don't get on the cold days.

3. Bobby Mcgee/Janis Joplin- this is the song by mom always used to play when school let out and we would go crazy dancing around the house and the song doesn't sound the same to me when I am bundled up in a coat. It is totally a flip-flops and cut-offs song.

4. Cicadas. I like to sit outside in the evening and listen to them and you can't do that in the winter.

5. Every summer since I was in the 4th grade I have read To Kill a Mockingbird. I love it and I can't read it any other time of year.

6. You can't go off a rope swing in the winter. You could, I guess, but you would freeze your tush off and it wouldn't be any fun at all.

7. Tomatoes. I know there is a God because he made tomatoes. And if you grow them yourself and pluck them off the vine one minute and eat them drizzled with olive oil salt and pepper the next you'll be a believer too. And if you don't grow them, the ones in the super market just seem to taste better in the summer. We had some tonight, sauteed with olive oil and garlic, sprinkled with basil and poured on top of a grilled ribeye. You don't get a meal like that any other season.

8. The evenings are the nicest in the summer. If you sit outside on a glider or a porch swing with a glass of wine after 7, you won't care about the heat index.

9. Kids don't play in the sprinkler in the fall or winter.

10. Flavor-pops. Annabelle had her first one today. We were on the deck sharing one--she would suck out all of the juice out of a chunk I handed her and then give it back to me, in the form of a smaller chunk of ice. I would then give it to my idiot dog, who, because she is an idiot, would gobble it up without missing the sugar. That experiece alone has been worth every triple digit day this season.

do you know the doo-doo butt?

My cousins and I all had babies at the same time. So back in February we went to one of the birthday parties and everyone was talking about what their kids' nicknames were. Reece was Reeceroo. Beau is Beau-Beau. James is Juggernaut. When everyone was sharing I was dreading what was coming next.

Random Cousin: what is Annabelle's nickname?

Me and Hyphen: "Doo-doo butt."

Hyphen said it with glee. I said it a little more dourly.

Hyphen gave her the name doo-doo butt at the hospital. He has an entire song about it, that is sung to the tune of do you know the muffin man "do you know the doo-doo butt?" He would sing her this song when she was a little baby and she would smile and coo. Ugh. I felt like I was in a losing battle against the worst nickname in the world. My dad's nickname for me is Stella-Pooh, because I am his Pooh bear. Obviously, I do not like the doo-doo part. Or the butt part.

A little girl pointed out to him once that it is not nice to say the word butt. No sweetie, it's not.

But Hyphen is nothing if not egalitarian in his offensiveness. Tonight he sang her the following song as he was loading her up in the van after a quick Target trip:

I am your doo-doo daddy
I like to doo-doo too
When I am old and blind
You will change my dirty poo.

The tune was a cross between 50s broadway and a march. Kind of catchy actually. It had some other verses, but the mind is kind and I forgot them.

it was bound to happen

With all of the gratuitous kibble and petting and squealing with hysterical glee when she sees her, it was bound to happen--my idiot dog now has a new mistress and her name is Annabelle.

It rained today, and so the wretched cur was inside. Bella is her name. Anyway, my idiot dog Bella and my sweet child and I were all in the nursery. Bella, then Annabelle and then me were all cuddly on a daybed I have in there. I was reading (with my current malady reading sounds like this: goo nigh womb, goo nigh moon, goo nigh cow jump ovah da moon) and the dog was pestering Annabelle. Licking her and bothering her. I am always worried that she will scratch Annabelle with her claws by accident, so I moved Annabelle to the other side of me, thinking that the dog just wanted to be closer to me. Wrong. She got up and went to the other side of me where I had put Annabelle and that's when I noticed she was licking her hand--and in idiot dog language this means "come on already! Pet me!!." She was also trying to snuggle up with her. Disloyal mongrel.

Of course, the new mistress has some behavioral problems to deal with. The dog was taking some of her toys and trying to eat them and Annabelle was following her around wagging her finger at her and saying "no, no, no, no dog."

Next week I will make the transfer of title official by teaching her how to scoop poop.

hand foot and mouth disease

So last week Annabelle was a little under the weather. She wasn't eating, she had a lot of drool, she seemed tired, but otherwise okay, so I didn't take her to see the doc. Oh, and my friend asked me "what's that rash on her face?" My response? "Hmm." Sometimes she has a little rash on her face, especially if I don't wipe it after eating. Turns out it was hand foot and mouth disease. And now I have it. The feet and hands are no big deal. It's the mouth that is killing me. Blisters the size of nickels--5 of them--under my tongue. The pain is unbearable. I am taking liquid lidocaine. I can't eat. I can't talk. I sound like Marlee Matlin. After careful consideration, I would choose childbirth over this. It would be over by now and I would have a baby to show for it. And after you have the baby they give you pancakes and if you live in Texas, people bring bar-b-que to the hospital. Instead I have a blister that if you look real carefully, you will see the profile of a Roman soldier--the kind with a helmet and a plume on it. Definitely not cute and cuddly. And forget about the bar-b-que.

Thankfully Hyphen is being cool about it. Helping out and not teasing me too much. He's only asked me if I am going to start washing my hands about 15 times. I do wash my hands. Just not compulsively like some people.

But on the bright side because I haven't felt like eating for a couple of days, I am now back down to the danger zone for my weight. I have the following scale: Acceptable (but still need to lose 15lbs.), Danger zone, fat zone, orca zone (a.k.a the splash zone) and then finally the Oprah zone. I was a card carrying member of the book club two weeks ago when I decided to stop drinking sweet drinks. I generally have one soda or several glasses of sweet tea a day. For me not having sweet drinks means only having them twice a week. I got down to the orca zone and now I am comfortably in the fat zone, but as soon as I can eat again I am going to get some chicken nuggets from Wendy's and put a lot of salt on them, so the danger zone might be a short lived phenomenon.

In the sunshine, in the shadow

Stop what you are doing right now and go hug your babies. Go hug your babies and then go and hug someone else's baby. And if you don't have babies of your own, or if they are grown, hug three teenagers, even though they are difficult people, teenagers especially need hugs because they have acne, angst and puberty. And then give them a compliment, or even better brag about them to someone else, where they can hear it. I did that today. I was at the library at story time and a little girl climbed into my lap. It is summertime and that means story time is crazy full. There is a daycare that drops off all of these sweet little kids-- it is the kind of daycare where 12 year olds are in the same class with 2 year olds and this little girl was one of the littlest ones. "Mean," she said, as she pointed to another little girl.(thankfully not annabelle) "Was she mean to you?" I asked. She nodded. "Do you need a hug?" I asked. A second nod. So I gave her a little cuddle. And she sat in my lap until it was time for her to leave. "Do you need a hug for the road?" I asked. Another nod. Annabelle was totally non-plussed about the lap sharing. She was too busy playing with trucks.

Today I went to a funeral of a beautiful girl. A beautiful girl. A girl who I know got lots of hugs, but like the preacher said, lost the battle she had been fighting against herself. The preacher said not to look back, and he was right. Look forward, and do something. So I am going to hug on kids--tuck a little love in whenever I can. You might be the only adult that gives someone a cuddle that day and a good hug has some staying power and its memory can cheer you up when you are feeling blue. I have personal knowledge that this is true--my little friend's hug still felt warm and wonderful during the euology.

So turn off your computer and tuck some love in. Go hug those babies.