The whistle

For reasons that no one will ever really be able to understand, yesterday, while at Southland Hardware, dumb dumb, aka hyphen, decided to buy the girls whistles. Coach style whistles.

Annabelle got hers last night, and in her way of playing, she began to try and whistle songs and blow on it in different ways trying to make different sounds, asking us what each one sounded like. She tied a string around it and put it in the "art studio," for later use.

Tallulah got hers today.

And in her way of playing, she blows it. She blows it loud and proud.

She blows it in the van. She blows it inside the house. At the table. May I just say, your ears have never really experienced pain until you are sitting in a minivan where a three year old is blowing a whistle.

She keeps it in her purse, along with a magnifying glass, a pretend phone(which, she informs me, has games on it, unlike mine), a treasured pair of clip on earrings, a broken tiara that is more like a headband, and various chapsticks. Tallulah is nothing if not prepared.

She takes the purse with her everywhere, and sleeps with it, along with 25 stuffed animals. So it was not entirely unexpected, but still totally annoying, when tonight, after calling for me about 5 times, I heard the whistle.

My first thought: ummm, no. My second thought: the person who created this problem needs to fix it.

"Hieu..."

He was in the bathroom and not responding.

She blew it about 3 more times, each time louder and I was starting to get really hacked, especially since the girls share a room and Annabelle was asleep.

"Hieu, go deal with that."

"Dude, she is calling you not me, we both know that." He said this with goofy half smile he gets when he knows he has done wrong.

I went in the room. She just wanted to tell me goodnight. And she wanted me to hustle up.

Greetings and thoughts

Hello. It's been a while. I've been a restaurant widow, doing everything by myself and waiting for my husband to come home to keep him company and so I am exhausted with no time for coherent thoughts, let alone put them to iPad, as it were. But last night h pissed me off royally by saying that one of his wine glasses that I had left on the drying board was dirty, when I had washed it and then he proceeded to spend ten minutes washing it and I thought " if this dumb dumb thinks I have 10 minutes to wash his f ing glass...." and was filled with a murderous rage for about 5 minutes, until I had a bless his little heart moment and moved on. But consequently, I don't feel like waiting up for him so I am writing instead.

We have discovered the Cosby show. I have rediscovered it. And I makes me feel nostalgic and it makes the girls happy. They squeal with delight and Annabelle says "oh theo!" Or "Rudy is so cute!" It makes me sad too. Sad because there is no show like this on tv anymore. Sad because of the way adults currently interact with their children-- which is to say that they don't-- and you can really see this if you watch one episode of this show. Of course, it is a fictional show, but it was real in some ways, like a time capsule of what we did when we were at our very best.

And it makes me sad that I didn't marry cliff. Cliff who is so romantic and loving. Who feeds Claire pears, dances in the living room with her and makes their kids laugh. Sad that my husband gets annoyed with the way I wash dishes.

I didn't marry cliff. I married h. Who just came home after working crazy hours and brought me my favorite dish from my favorite restaurant.

Maybe we all get to dance off the stage into the sunset. Maybe we all get our own kind of happy.

Disturbing new trend amoung a certain type of sahm

I will call it: wearing really expensive workout clothes to places other than the gym.

Part one: really expensive--

I get all these catalogs, I guess the catalog gods don't realize that I don't exercise as much as I used to, so I get them, and I peruse them. They have titles like athleta, title nine and sweaty Betty. And there is a store called lululemon. And they sell work out clothes. Stuff you are going to sweat in and stink up. And they sell them for ridiculous prices. Like 90 bucks for a pair of pants. Now, they are cute, they are very cute, and I am well trained enough by our consumer culture to want to look cute when I go to they gym, but I cannot justify spending that kind of money on spandex pants -- not even getting to the top and bra and brightly colored shoes. And then there is the little cover up for after you are done working out. You could easily drop 300 on a workout outfit. That will stink. Because it will get ass sweat on it.

Part two: to places other than the gym

Now, I go to the y and most people there are sensibly dressed in target gear or old t shirts. Even though my neighborhood is becoming very fancy, the y is decidedly old school, but I see these women around town. Like at central market or whole foods or some other such place, like the mall or at school. And they are wearing gym clothes. So I wonder, do they not have ass sweat? Because after I work out, unless I am going to krogers or the car wash, I go home and clean up. Do they know a store that sells better deodorant? Like I get my stuff at target, and my deodorant too, but since they go to lululemon, is there some correlating deodorant place? That sells 25 dollar organic deodorant?

Like what kind of class are they taking in these outfits? Do they feel like they workout better? Or do they just feel better because they look cute and it somehow takes out the drudgery of working out out of the work out? Because this, I understand.

These are the things I was wondering as I went into an athleta store today, looking for workout pants, but seeing the price tag, I couldn't do it. H works too hard and I love him too much. And my ass is too big and sweaty.

But there was a lady there shopping. She was decked out from head to toe in lululemon (which, for the record, I think is a dumb name) and shopping in athleta, so I guess they have no brand loyalty. They are just loyal to the look. Leggings, top and hoodie with bright shoes. She was pushing a baby.

I was discussing this phenomenon with my sister, who has also noticed it. Her issue: you can see the whole ass. The whole thing, and it leaves nothing to the imagination.

"Just give me some old middle school gym shorts," She said. "Hell, just give me some coach shorts," I said. Either that or the willpower to stop drinking Soda. I'll take that too.

A canine conundrum

I am cleaning up after supper and I hear Tallulah yelling (in her throaty old black lady voice that she gets when she is real mad) " I told you no! I don't like it when you do that!!!" I discounted it for a second because the girls have been bickering basically all day, but then my mom radar said " wait a minute, Annabelle is in some other part of the house, who is she yelling at? " I stuck my head out of the kitchen to find that she has the dog in a headlock and is applying pressure.

Of course there were stop-that-this-instants and what-in-the-Sam-Hill-do-you-think-you're-doings? I briefly wondered if she needed counseling and was perhaps sociopathic, but then took comfort in the fact that very few seriel killers are women. Turns out the dog had "thumped me with her tail and I don't like it she she does that!" The dog, to her credit, was taking it all in stride looking just slightly annoyed, because she is essentially a good dog, despite the fact that yesterday, she somehow reached up onto the kitchen table and got a bag of pecan halves my mother had given me and ate most of them and the bag they were in...but I digress.

We finished cleaning, weeded the kitchen garden(can you imagine, dear reader, lettuces and herbs and flowers in a very cottage pottager style? Me too. But that is not at all what it looks like), cleaned up outside, came in got baths, did teeth and nails and hair and cleaned up their room a bit and read books and then I left them in their room with a few books to look at, so I could play on Facebook. Then, after a few minutes, Annabelle came out to tell me she was tired. So I went in to lie down with her ( yes, I am the bad mom that has to lie with her kids for a few minutes to get them to sleep--you wanna make something of it?? Meet me out back). Tallulah though still wanted to look at books. And of course wanted the light on and was prepared to scream and have a fit over it, as she has been prepared to do and has done all day long. So I told her to go to the living room and look at them out there.

"But, dere no one dere. Dat living room is scary and I want to say heaw."

"Well, then you need to be quiet and have the light off. Or you can go in the living room. You won't be by yourself. The dog is out there."

"Oh? De dowg out dere? Oh. Okay, I go be wid hehwah. She likes books."

And off she went. Happy as a clam, reading books to her best bud. Hopefully this time there would be no tail wacking.

So I made the mistake of buying "let it go" on iTunes today....

It is from the movie Frozen, which is awesome because in the end the true love ends up being sister love, which pretty much sums up life as far as I am concerned.

But after listening to it 32 times today, I was kind of sick of it, so I scrolled to something else on my kid friendly play list(kids friendly meaning no curse words not necessarily kid music) and landed on angel flying too close to the ground which is my favorite willie Nelson song (although how could you possibly choose?).

Then I hear this.
A( in an extreme whine) I want frozen

Me: we are taking a break from frozen

A: ok, but I want to listen to something like frozen

Me: but this is like frozen (In the sense that it is music)

A: no I want it to sound like Ana or Elsa.

Me: he does

A: no he doesn't

A: ok pretend that he does...

Then we all got quiet, which is the calm numbing effect that is willie Nelson, and soaked all that beautiful nasal twang and chromatic scales in and dethawed from our frozen trance.

How I spent the last day of my thirties..

1. I took care of smallish children and animals, keeping them fed and alive.

Literally. Like Tallulah walked out the front door and I heard it with my mom ears from the other side of the house. And then for reasons unknown to anyone but herself, I saw Annabelle in the backyard, in her swimsuit with bungee cords belted around her waist and then stretched to the door of the chicken coop. She was trying to move the coop like she was an ox and damn near tore the door off. Meanwhile, the chicken eating dog is standing next to the coop salivating. Sometimes it is hard for me not to say "what in the hell are you doing???" So I just opted for the tried and true "stop that this instant you're going to hurt yourself and the dog is going to eat all those chickens."

2. Talked to my parents on the phone and heard how my dad didn't put the car in park "ay I don't know what I am going to do with him, and I say Keen, what are you doing, you are going to kill us, but does he listen? no'mbre. I mean my illness was physical, but this? How do I fix this?" Later on when I got out of my car, I couldn't turn it off because I forgot to put it in park, and when I told her this " ay, see? You get it from him and you are not even old. Pay attention mija you have my grandchildren in that car."

3. I bullied people perhaps unnecessarily. The city is replacing a sewer line and in doing so had to take down a section of my very nice fence that we bought and had installed by a fence professional. The guy was getting out the claw end of his hammer when I stopped him in garbled Spanish, asked to talk to his boss and then proceeded to tell his boss something like this, " let me tell you something, you may think in your life you have seen pissed off, but let me assure you, you have never seen pissed off until you have seen me pissed off" etc. I am not exactly proud of that, but it was the city and they were about to destroy my fence, and now I have become they reigning crazy neighborhood fence lady, protector of the fence, a title previously held by a Miss Rita Hartman, my back neighbor, but one that I now wear with honor and understand because fences are expensive.

4. I waited until the last minute to do my cles and heard something that sounded like this:" and basically puts the onus on the parties whereby that particular issue subject to the board.... That recommendation becomes prima facie evidence..." God I wish I had a Busch lite and a car full of hungover people heading to the Guadalupe instead.

5. I hung out with my college friend. We went to Lubys for lunch.

6. Then I made my own birthday cake 'cause lord knows h wasn't going to do it and while I was at it I decided to make him some egg salad since we have about a million eggs and he was been working really late lately.

But oddly enough, he had been craving it made himself some at work....weird...

I think it all pretty much sums up the decade.

Sigh...

Annabelle is going to be six in a week and a few days and today I found myself thinking of something that hadn't really crossed my mind in these past 6 years, until today.

When we brought her home, we went through all the typical new parent stuff, but one thing we didn't realize was how much stuff we were going to get. I am not talking about hospital freebies-- I am talking about gift baskets and flowers. We probably brought home 5 baskets from the hospital and then they just kept arriving. Almost every day for about two weeks the doorbell would ring and there was something. Lou malnati's pizza from Chicago from one of Hyphens co workers, flowers from his office, flowers for my mom, a huge gift basket with food from his meat supplier, another basket from his boss's old partner, it went on and on and it was a wonderful outpouring of love--for Hyphen.

My coworkers came to see me, which is more personal and brought me food, which was wonderful and very appreciated. But as public servants, we didn't really do flowers.

Then one day the doorbell rang and there were some flowers for me. A bouquet that was in a ceramic baby bootie. It looked exactly like the one my mom got when I was born, that she had kept all these years and had given to Annabelle at the hospital, filled with flowers, and we both commented on it. "Now you have one so your next baby can have one too and then they will each have one to give to their little girls." My mom--always thinking ahead. I was just thrilled, because I really do love flowers.

The sender?

Judge Fred Edwards.

I am not sure if I ever wrote him a thank you note.

Thank you, judge. The next one's on me.