Curtains

So I have floor-length curtains in my living room, with wrought-iron hold back things. Usually when Glenny gets up with the baby either they're not open when I get up or they're just open, not tucked behind and fluffed like I like them to be. Today, they're fluffed. What a good guy.

So sweepy

my eyes have little gritty bits of sand wrapped all around my eyeballs I think.
Last night Alex decided he just didn't want to hang out in his crib all night, so he cried.
From 10ish to 2ish. With me going back and forth between my bed and his.
And then we ended up on the couch together.
And he was up extra early today.
Tonight, he is shit out of luck if decides he's feeling sociable.
I want to get on the bus to leepy land and not get off until tomorrow morning.

Playground vs. grass

Who wins? In Alex's mind, grass hands-down. We went to this kick-ass playground yesterday, really cool - lots of slides, lots of climbing options, forts, tire swings, regular swings, little front-loader toy things, teeter-totters, this crazy bouncy platform thing - seriously, this is a top-notch playground. There were a couple of other kids there having a blast, taking full advantage of the facilities and the sunshine. What was Alex doing, you ask? Why, my kid was completely fascinated with the grass and the bushes surrounding the playground. In fact, walking on the sand must have been akin to walking on coals for him because he spazzed out when I tried to get him to play with the stuff he should have been playing with. He preferred the open land, he preferred to run unfettered in the grass, testing the flexibility of bare branches and figuring out the mechanics of the chain link fence. Part of me wanted him to go down the slide, swing on the swings, you know - do normal kid stuff. But another part of me was pleased at this quirky, non-conformist side of Alex that is emerging. Choose left or right, you sayt? Well, no. I think I'll go up. Thanks. Play with these blocks? Nah - instead I'd rather take the box that they came in apart and drive it around the house. Given his choice of cute stuffed animals at the bookstore, does he pick the kitty or the puppy? No. He picks the Llama.
I love my little wierdo.

Local headline

Scientists To Train Fish To Catch Themselves. What the feck fun is that?? Must be a slow news day.

Who invented these toys? Because your days are numbered.

My son is playing with 3 things right now, working them like a concert pianist - the Elmo guitar, his Mickey Mouse airplane, and his Animal Train. All of these toys can go to hell. They are loud, tinny-sounding, annoying, they invariably run out of battery juice in that special time a half hour before nap when Alex grows his fangs and horns. They have made me purchase batteries in bulk. I can unscrew a tiny little eyelash-sized screw in 4 seconds flat and swap out batteries faster than my dog can scarf down a stray cheerio. As soon as I hear the toys take on a nightmarish quality I know I need to get the pit crew together before my molar-monster realizes what is happening and loses his mind. When the lights dim and the songs slow, my son stands up and bunches his fists, turns red and grunts in that way that means 'PEON! GET OVER HERE AND FIX THIS, OR IT'S OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!'
I must say though that his favorite - and my least favorite - toy is his big ass tonka truck. My In-laws gave him this toy, this large, heavy, metal, rolling harbinger of destruction. This fucking toy causes more damage to person and home than a wrecking ball, and he wields it with panache. He whips it around corners and into calves and unsuspecting doggies with glee, listening for the inevitable yelp. And if anything accidentally falls into the 'dump' part of his dump truck, forget it. Everything stops and he shoots the offender a look, walks around the side, removes the object in question and drops it on the floor like one might drop a used kleenex. This dump truck is not meant for dumping, or trucking - it is SOLELY a means of bringing pain.
I'd like it if he would play with silent, fluffy toys - but I have a feeling he'd take them apart and bastardize them into something sharp and unrecognizeable. My little Dr. Frankenstein.

Sheets tucked in, blankets smooth.

My husband would sleep on a pile of laundry if I let him. He would just fling himself into bed willy-nilly, pillows askew, sheets untucked, blankets crooked - the very thought gives me the chills. In a bad way. I bet he would sleep on the bare mattress if presented with the opportunity, and that is just downright disturbing. You might as well sleep in a cardboard box in the corner of an abandonded building.
This is something I have observed to be true with many men. Why is that? Is it strange that I need to make the bed before I get in it? I don't think so - if I see a bit of exposed mattress, that offensive blue floral print winking up at me, I will be assured a sleepless night.
And another thing - I can't sleep on the couch. Snooze yes. Sleep, no - that must be another male thing. Maybe if you have breasts you can't really sleep on the couch. My mother has long held the belief that having breasts impairs one's ability to parallel park, but I find that it may be related to size rather than just the mere presence of breastage since I am a good parallel parker.
Food for thought...

Fuck

I love swearing. It's fun. I relish the way the words roll off my tongue, the way I can work them into the middle of regular words to add emphasis to my point, the way they add a sparkle to mundane phrases like 'No thank you' or words like 'unbelievable'. I am a swear-artist, I paint beautiful landscapes of obscenities when I talk and share them with the world.
A life without swearing would be a dull, grey existence.

Testing 1,2,3

Well hello there. I've decided to give this whole blogging thing a try, in hopes it will provide a much-needed outlet for my mind.
Being a stay-at-home-mom (saying that makes me simulaneously psyched and want to cry) I have a pretty decent amount of time on my hands. Yes yes yes, I have housework and childcare and all that other bullshit to do, but really I'm not spending my days studying quantum physics or having deep philosophical conversations with my toddler. Although he is quite the budding sophist. Anyway, I spend my days doing fairly mundane tasks sprinkled with sweet moments of love that you really can't understand if you don't have a kid. I hang with my boy and my dude (my dog) and we watch Sesame Street - Mr. Noodles, by the way, is most likely Osama bin Laden in disguise - and Word World, we go for walks and play at the playground, we have food battles 3 times a day and naptime - oh, blessed nap time - once a day, and generally things cruise along.
But I don't really have a way to express all the crazy, creepy, strange, ugly, flighty things bouncing around in my cranium. So here we are.
The thing that is weighing most heavily on my mind right now is the smell of goddamned red peppers. Karen - downstairs neighbor, landlord - must be cooking something nasty involving those disgusting vegetables and undoubtedly my house will smell like shitfood for the next 24 hours. Cooked peppers - green or red actually - are my nemesis. I want to puke in a paper bag, bring it downstairs and leave it on thier porch and set it on fire. Even the smell of burning puke would not be as bad as the smell of thier dinner. Not that Karen is a bad cook, she isn't - I've had her food and it is invariably yummy. But not the shit-fest she is cooking up tonight.
Another thing that is annoying me right now is - and by the way, blog, I love you, you make my ramblings much more important when they are outside my skull and I can look at them from different angles - hmmmm. No, there's nothing strong enough to overpower the smell of that shit.
I have to go.