There are SNOWBANKS, You Know!

Well.

I hope you had a Merry Mid-winter Spending Holiday.

I have had a pretty bad week, honestly. I mean, not awful or anything. Just bad. Annoying. Aggravating.

Let's see....

Macaroni & Fire Alarms

Wednesday night, Kevin and I were playing Worlds of Warcraft (very cool, by the way, so I'll be saying goodbye forever to EQ as soon as my subscription runs out) and I was hungry. So I went into the kitchen to make Mac&Cheese. That's a simple dish, and happens to be one of my favorite quick-foods. Boiled the water, dumped in the noodles, set the kitchen timer. Came back out to play WoW while they cooked.

"Is something burning?" Kevin asks a while - no, I don't know how much later - later.

"Huh?" I went into the kitchen and indeed, something was burning. The kitchen timer was gleefully flashing 10:00, 10:00, 10:00 at me and the noodles were on fire. Apparently I'd forgotten to turn ON the timer, I'd just set it.

"Fuck it," says I, turning off the smoke alarm. "I'm ordering a pizza."

Piss Off, Piss On

Somewhat after the flaming Macaroni incident, Kevin and I wrapped four hundred million presents. Ok, I'm exaggerating, but not much. I decided to put almost all of Jess's presents into one box, given that she doesn't really care much yet about presents. And it gave me less stuff to wrap.

And we packed up our stuff that we could pack - given that things like Jess's playpen/changing table couldn't be packed until morning - which was upsetting the cats.

We didn't know how upset, though, until the next morning when Kevin was packing up the car. One of the cats - I'd guess Sterling, but since I didn't actually see it, I can't beat him to death - pissed all over Jess's present. (We'd been storing the wrapped gifts in the bathroom because we have a LOT of room in there that we don't use for anything.) So I had to unwrap it - pissy paper and all - and unpack it and check all the items inside and then re-pack it and re-wrap it.

Which got us on the road over an hour late.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Headed up to my dad's place, I decided to take a nap. I didn't sleep well Wednesday night. I closed my eyes and pretty much went dead to the world. For about ten minutes. Then it started to pour... loud rain splattered all over the windshield and I woke up in a panic as Kevin hit the breaks trying to avoid running over some guys in a pickup truck. There were seven of them all together - three in the cab, and four in the back. They skidded to a halt underneath the nearest interstate overpass. I bet by the time they did, the four in the back were soaked to the skin. In fifty degree weather. Brr. Better them than me, but still... I panicked badly, because what I woke up to see was taillights getting uncomfortably close and I was too panicked after that to go back to sleep.

We Don't Need No Stinking Baby-Proofing

My step-mother has so obviously not spent much in the way of time with toddlers. She didn't proof a single thing. Not the tree, not putting up her papers, not putting a gate around the fireplace. Nothing. Which meant me, or Kevin, had to spend every single second watching the baby to make sure she didn't destroy every/anything.

This is very, very time-consuming and tiring. Jess likes to explore, and there wasn't a single room in the house that was closed off, so I spent three days chasing a baby. Ug. Fortunately, she didn't hurt herself. Or anything.

I mean, I don't expect her to proof the whole house or anything, but one room that we could have closed off and let her play in safely would have been nice.

Yes, Babies Are Messy. They Are.

Like I said, my step-mom knows nothing about babies. Babies. Are. Messy. Unless you want to plonk the baby in a playpen, you're going to get crumbs, dirt, torn bits of paper or sticky fingerprints on things. Toys will end up on the floor, played with and quickly abandoned. It just happens. Dee about turned herself inside out chasing the baby around with a vaccuum cleaner and a sponge. She had complete fits every time Jess's sippy cup dripped even a little bit. It was exceptionally annoying. I mean, I know, Dee's house is so fucking clean you could eat off the fucking floor, but RELAX a few minutes, would you? A little dirt isn't going to hurt your goddamn museaum of a house.

It definately made me feel unwelcome.

(Not only that, but she was upset that Kevin and I weren't "dressing up" for Christmas Eve dinner. Dressing up when you're going to be feeding/handling a toddler is just asking for stains on your clothes and I don't have so many nice clothes that I can afford to throw out a shirt because Jess gets a gravy stain on it.)

The Baby Essentials

The night before Christmas eve, I went to get Jess a bib for dinner and discovered that in being so mad about Sterling and the pissy present, that I'd gone and forgotten Jess's entire bag. No spare clothes, no bibs, no medication, no fruit-cups or small cans of vegetables. The bag was back on Jess's dresser.

After we found this out, Kevin and I started making plans to go up to Fredericksburg to the Wal-mart to get Jess some replacements.

"Oh, you don't need to do that," Dee kept saying. "We have clothes for her as presents."

"Yes, we do need to go," I said. "It's not just the clothes, it's her benadryl, which we need in case she has any allergy reactions. And baby-tylenol, in case she starts teething."

"No, you don't need to go," she kept pressing the issue. "Nothing will happen. You're just being paranoid." Ok, so she didn't quite say that, but she was pretty damned insistant that we not go.

We did anyway.

We got two outfits, some washclothes, some socks, Benadryl, Tylenol and some milk. I forgot to get food, but the Wal-mart was REALLY crowded.

Extremely Inconvenient

Christmas Eve, we had a hard time getting Jess some lunch, since Dee didn't have any food that wasn't "set aside" for Christmas Eve dinner. Now, don't get me wrong, I know we were having 10 people for dinner, but I really, really don't think that a handful of frozen peas one way or the other was going to make a difference.

Anyway, Dee got pretty hostile about the whole thing.

"Well, if you'd just told me I needed to have all this stuff we could have taken care of it before/" She said, guarding her frozen peas.

"I didn't know we were going to need it, Dee," I said. "Really, she doesn't eat much and it's all packed in her bag which I left on her dresser!"

Finally Kevin broke our rule about shopping on Christmas Eve/Christmas/Holidays and went to the corner store (5 miles away) to get Jess some vegetables and fruits.

(I noticed, when Dee was cleaning up from dinner, that there was rather a LOT of leftover peas)

Lori Is Better??

Christmas Eve dinner was pretty good - although Dee was still pretty snippy with me most of the evening - and Lori, who has two children of her own, although they're adults now, was a lot more understanding about baby messes and getting into things.

It's weird to spend an evening where I liked Lori better than Dee, since usually Lori is really bossy and sort of weird in a Martha Stewart sort of way.

Good Thing For Us We Went Out

Christmas morning, we had breakfast first - eggs, muffins, apples and kiwi.

Turns out that Jess is also allergic to kiwi. A few minutes after she ate a piece, she started breaking out in spots and swelling up. Guess it was good we went out, since we dosed her with the Benedryl and a bit later, she started feeling better again.

We thought.

She seemed a bit subdued, although she was breathing ok and her swelling was mostly gone.

About halfway through opening presents, she threw up. All over Kevin and herself and the rug. Dee wouldn't let me use one of her cloth napkins to contain the mess, so it was worse than it should have been.

We cleaned up as much as we could - changed Jess's clothes (guess it was good we had some spare clothes!) - and went back to present opening.

Not much after that, Jess had an explosive poo and had diaper containment issues. That was the last outfit we had, too. Gee, no, really, we didn't need to go to the Wal-mart.

Chinese Food For Christmas Dinner

Well, because of Kevin's work schedule, we had to leave just after present opening. We didn't get any turkey this year... we had Chinese take out. And played Warcraft. Somehow, this just makes me depressed.

The Crabbity Baby

Jess was very, very spoiled from being held, chased around for three days and has not wanted to go back to normal... so she's been a real pill for the last few days. Cry, scream, no nap... fuss whine moan...

Yesterday, she was such a demon-weasel that I actually yelled at her. "You are aware that there ARE snowbanks out there, right?"

Macaroni & Fire revisited

Last night, for dinner, I went to make macaroni and cheese. Again.

And... Apparently when I made fudge last week, I slopped some sugary stuff underneath the burner.

Which caught fire.

On the plus side, melted, burned sugary stuff smells like s'mores.

On the bad side, the fire alarm woke the baby.

In Need of Shelving

And this morning, while getting my morning Mt. Dew, the shelf collapsed. On me. I was hit with about 40 cookbooks, a large pot, four casserole dishes, five muffin and cookie sheets, a dozen tupperware dishes, three bookshelves and a box of cookie cutters.

Can we just scrub this week and start over?

Posted by tisfan at December 28, 2004 09:31 AM