In Frisco Bay there lived a whale, she ate porkchops by the pail

A baby just survived two days of being awakened at untimely points by her grandmother. Her grandmother agrees that a baby is "high needs," which I could have fucking told you. Each day is like juggling several rabid badgers and running chainsaws, although a baby allowed us to eat dinner the other night because she was too busy stuffing her feet in her face. My mother elaborated so much as to use the term "handful." And this is coming from a person who never met an inconvenient, convoluted process that she didn't like.

To wit: on her last baby-poking expedition, Mr. H sent my mother to the grocery store with a detailed map. She returned with bags of groceries. Mission accomplished. On this expedition, I offered to draw her a map to the store, but she said she remembered where it was. My instinct said "no, not so much," but I let her go anyway. Three hours later, I was thinking about calling the police. Turns out she went to the wrong store last time. Over the state line, in New Hampshire. So in the process of attempting to mis-follow the original directions, she missed New Hampshire. Some people gave her directions, and she ended up at the store in the next town. An employee at that store then gave her directions to the store I had initially suggested. Then she went to that store. So three hours for two real and one imaginary stores isn't so bad. I guess.

Posted 3:33 PM by Licketysplit

What happens when you Google failure?

Content Challenge, I hardly knew ye.

Today is the fourth time I've turned twenty-five. It was OK. I had a burrito! But then I noticed the otherwise fine establishment spelled it "Talapia." Did you mean tilapia? Google says I am right, and that's what you meant. I knew I was right. Duh. On principle, I should stop ordering the "Talapia," but it is so darn tasty. This is like the time I had to stop eating at the restaurant with the inconsistent apostrophe, except I'm still going to eat the burrito sometimes. I have a whole card to fill up before I get a free one.

Today was probably the least celebrated and eventful birthday I've ever had, but what are you gonna do? If you're a baby, you get THISCLOSE to rolling over, and you make a cute face. You are also good at the post office. You clearly test well with the latin market since that guy said "Que linda!" to you.

Posted 9:57 PM by Licketysplit

Watching you watching me

Oh hi, Content Challenge! Hi! You look so pretty! Is that your prettiest outfit? I think it is. Let's have an adventure, shall we?

I mentioned I'd gone back to a therapist after a baby was born, but that's not the full story. I went all of four times. The first two times, I wept uncontrollably for fifty minutes. The next two times, she was able to get a word in edgewise now and then. I received such helpful advice as "make time for you" and "schedule a date night." What, is she going to come to my house and put her doctorate to use babysitting while I take a relaxing Me Time bath? It's hard enough to arrange baby wrangling to go to therapy, for fuck's sake. Each hour I spend away from a baby is an hour when a baby may accidentally learn a Massachusetts accent.

And lately I've been trying to decide if I'm nuts or not, but I can't go back to that therapist. The reason why probably answers the nuts question once and for all. I can't go back because she drinks twenty ounce full-calorie sodas. At 10 a.m., not even in conjunction with a meal. And there are more empties on her desk. I hate seeing people eat or drink things. And soda! A slurry of corn syrup! Don't people with doctorates know there are calories in soda? You could have a croissant or something actually delicious instead! Like maybe some Emergency Chocolate.

With all the time I save not going to therapy, I'm able to learn new ways to tie a baby to my body. Tomorrow we will try this at the post office.

Posted 8:46 PM by Licketysplit

Next stop: the bottom

Ah, it's that special time of the day when a baby slumbers. She slumbers her ass off while draped in my lap. Anything else yields an unpleasant talk about Feelings. I am working on developing the power of my mind to mix myself a drink and float it on over here. No luck yet.

We went to the library and signed up to get free stuff. I completely forgot about the existence of libraries. The barrier to entry is low: show up and say "I want a library card." The librarian explained the policies very seriously. You can take out an unlimited number of items, except for DVDs and puppets. You may only borrow two puppets at a time. She underlined this part on the quarter sheet of pink copy paper devoted to policies. Puppets?

Puppets?

That made me want three puppets, of course.

Posted 2:22 PM by Licketysplit

Hi, I see from my notes that you're crazy!

Yesterday I got a call from someone at my health insurance company ("the home of the whopper deductible"). She pussyfooted around describing how their team of nurses helps manage chronic conditions without saying which one, but would I be interested in participating? Hmm, are they talking about my endometriosis? My occasional depression? My combination skin? My distaste for people who write checks at the supermarket? I'll bite.

"Why are you calling me?"

"Uh...we see you've sought counseling in the past."

"Well, I'm not actively depressed now, believe it or not. I'm slowly killing time until a baby is old enough to do my taxes, but unless you've got a time machine, I think I'm all set."

Silence...scribbling..."We see you entered counseling again this summer."

"Yes, having your child almost die combined with the usual post-birthin' hormones tends to throw one for a loop."

"I see...."

"But I assure you, I know the drill. It's about as exciting as coming down with a cold for me. When I feel bad, I get help. I don't enjoy being depressed."

"Oh! That's great! Some people do."

Silence on my end....

"Well, the initial interview for this program takes twenty minutes." A baby began to shriek violently. No, I did not pinch her. She probably needs mental health help more than I do. I think she must be bi-polar. I caught her emptying my savings account and buying tickets to Moscow last week.

I hustled the lady off the phone by putting the mouthpiece right by a baby. Yell your way to privacy! Maybe I will write them a nice letter suggesting that if they really want to help improve my life, they will opt to cover more of the crap that costs me money. No, clearly that is batshit nuts! Calling and poking around for personal information about my situation is obviously far more effective.

Posted 10:16 AM by Licketysplit

Content...challenging

I am a failure as a human being. I did not write a post yesterday. I started one, and it got erased. Nor did I vote in the Democratic primary today. The terrorists are winning! I should be more politically active than ever, what with having to hand this shitbucket of an earth over to an innocent child, but said innocent child is going through a phase not unlike the tortured adolescence of a Tasmanian Devil. This makes basic tasks im-fucking-possible. We reap what we sow. I guess. I also did not recycle. And I fired the babysitter. One day... a new record in didn't work out. Reproduction...a supremely stupid idea. Er, I mean "it's all worth it." And it is worth it, for the five minutes of gummy smiling a day. But, you argue, you could hire an elderly homeless person if gummy smiling is your thing. I'm sorry, I am not breastfeeding the homeless. No matter how often that one guy on the third bench to the left of my house may ask. Speaking of breastfeeding, I was reading the "mystery diagnosis" column in the NYT magazine the other day, and a banner ad nagged "Babies were born to breastfeed." I was already breastfeeding a baby right at that moment, and I got this mega defensive feeling, like "what the fuck more do you want from me, banner ad?" That banner ad wants to smoke a cigarette when it's already smoking.

In closing, tits tits tits tits tits tits.

Posted 9:20 PM by Licketysplit

A baby shan't attend college now

A baby celebrated three months of excreting yesterday! Guess how she celebrated that. Just go on and guess. Keeping her alive all that time was approximately ten trillion times harder than keeping Sea Monkeys alive, and that's hard anyway.

She'll never learn to read because we can't afford reading now. Mr. H toted up what his comic book collection would be worth, and we had a little moment of ka-ching! But then he called his parents and found out they gave it away at a yard sale recently. Oh, snap. Oh.

The locals on the Yahoo! Group continue to infuriate me. They are now calling pre-meetings for meetings. If I wanted to go to meetings about meetings, I'd have a goddamn job. There is an issue with flood insurance that may end in litigation with the management company, and one bokka booka crazy woman suggested that someone go to the registry of deeds and compile a list of people who actually owned when the flood took place, so as to exclude people who did not own at the time from the meeting. Yes, because PEOPLE LOVE TO GO TO EXTRA FUCKING MEETINGS THAT DON'T CONCERN THEM. People volunteer to attend meetings left and right, and it takes some super sleuthing to stop them. Everything is a conspiracy.

Posted 9:14 PM by Licketysplit

ZOMG

Yesterday was Mr. H's birthday. He is now Old. How sad for him! To celebrate, we tried sneaking away for dinner after a baby was asleep. Of course a baby opted to wake up and vomit all over his sister. Still, that was the best glass of wine and speed-eaten entree I've had in months. We returned to find a baby fully alert and talking to a stuffed bear.

Yahoo! Groups: tool of the devil? I read through 50-odd messages from the bitches who are vying to be condo board president for our complex. People are complaining that as the temperature drops, the windows are drafty. Someone was spotted pulling a door open by holding the key in the lock. Someone's parking spot has a pot hole that collects rainwater. People want parking stickers for our DEEDED, NUMBERED parking spots. Now, we don't even have an association yet. The complex is under control of the management company until December, when we can technically form an association. This sticker decision was made by some sort of pre-association cabal, drunk with the power of reply-all. Unless I get to go to a meeting a vote about it (I will make a baby raise her hand too), it seems slightly premature to be pricing out the printing of stickers. When someone is in my spot, I don't really care if that person has a sticker or not. I know that person is not me, and hence I am justified in calling the towing company. So simple and elegant. I guess some people really enjoy a rousing game of "one of these things is not like the other one!"

No, the actual logic is that people are fiercely protective of the single visitor spot. OK, then, with the aid of stickers, we'll be able to see if the person in that spot is a resident using it for selfish purposes, like leaving a second car there for twenty minutes while he drops something off. Then I suppose we must take down the license number, go look it up in the office, and nail a dead woodchuck to his door. Or perhaps we can arrange a time to stand around with torches and pitchforks. This time will be arranged using the Yahoo! Group. No, it can't be Sunday night, because Shelly is going to be out of town! This is too bad. Shelly loves a good public whipping. Hey guys, if you need me, I'll be boiling some oil!

Posted 10:39 AM by Licketysplit

Self-limiting

What's that jazz about the frog who is content to sit in heating water until he boils to death? Yeah. I have a case of that too.

Posted 11:57 AM by Licketysplit

You know how to whistle, don't you, Katie Couric?

Man, why you gotta go sit on a desk? It's so...FOX affiliate! Who does a damn thing like that? I can see Anderson Cooper trying it, but would Peter Jennings have done this? I don't want to see anyone's knees while they tell me how many people died that day. I do not like news in the round. No walking around the set, please, unless you are discussing something important like Whitney Houston. I prefer the "sit very still at a desk and look apologetic and steely" delivery.

Maybe I am still mad that Katie took all summer to not come up with a sign off. Viewers writing in is just too painfully inclusive for my taste. Viewers are morons! She should have gone with "I'm Katie Couric, and it's Miller time." Or "I'm Katie Couric. Balls." That's how I feel after watching even five minutes of news. Why do folksy? I used to enjoy watching her on the Today Show, gritting her teeth and flexing her stilettos through endless interviews with gummy-smiling relationship experts. You could just tell how much she loathed it, how much she wanted to wear a flak jacket and do Important News instead. Somewhere, over the focus group....bluebirds fly....

***
My sister and I used to have to play with unfun toys since our parents did not believe in fun. We had unpainted blocks, an abandoned kitchen sink, some dirt, and Cuisenaire® rods. Why, then, after having to fit those stupid rods back in the plastic tray so many times am I unable to properly load the dishwasher? Just last night, I realized bowls go sideways in the back three rows. Oops. No more jamming them in haphazardly around the plate slots. The world is not so rigid as I once thought. Mr. H didn't know the bowls went that way either.

Posted 8:39 AM by Licketysplit

It's nice to be reminded I have no idea what I'm doing

A baby is feeling poorly. She's having a growth spurt and sprouting some teeth. Perhaps she is also humilated because she wore a sleeper that read "Babys friends * Pets" the other day. These pet friends are a line art dachshund named Pascal and a bunny named Colette. At any rate, her psychic disturbance has netted me a day of screaming whenever she is awake and not eating. This coincides nicely with my house being torn apart from our rearranging binge of the past few days. I'm also supposed to be shipping my worldly possessions to Australia today, and if I don't make it to the post office, I will get OMG negative feedback times a million! I'm going back to bed.

Posted 4:00 PM by Licketysplit

No comment

You'll forgive me for not posting yesterday. I caught ennui from a communal footbath. It was terrible!

Posted 3:59 PM by Licketysplit

Have I told you lately where I'm parking?

In the parking spot, duh.

Posted 9:20 PM by Licketysplit

Ten minutes til Wapner

After throwing myself off a cliff the other day due to reading the nanny postings on Craigslist ("Little Angles Nanny Service," anyone?), I was reincarnated as a dung beetle who is doomed to go to the post office every day for the rest of her life. Tomorrow I will go and cast a "Yoga for Your Pregnancy" DVD into the abyss. I can't say I ever managed to do any of that yoga. Putting on pants becomes entertainment enough at a certain point.

But anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah. Craigslist is full of the little creatures of nature. And the occasional salacious outing of a wealthy family who stiffed the nanny. I've given up on ever selling anything with Craigslist, because one can post all salient details and a photo and still get an email reading "Hi! I want to buy your item! How much is it? How big is it? Will you bring it to my house? What were you selling, anyway?" Of course there are many more misspellings in the actual email. So I'm trying eBay and Half.com to purge our home of useless clutter and Mr. H's awful CD collection from before he knew me. People ask all sorts of questions on eBay as well, it turns out. Apparently I must not have written my listing in Australian*, as someone wants to me to sort out the cost of shipping. Clearly, I can do this with much more panache than the shipping calculator link at the top of the page. People are so starved for love and attention these days. Let's heal together.

*I responded pitifully, with the help of the Outback menu: It'll be a dinkely doo bonzer right Thunder From Downunder $18.75 American dawlahs.

Posted 5:16 PM by Licketysplit

Creatures of love

Producing all this content is hard, dog. It's hard out here for a boring lady. Today I sprawled in the bed while a baby napped. I read a book. The cat slept on my legs. She tolerates me. My book was acceptable. Maybe I will write about what was in the book at another time. It was nice to read with a cat and a baby. When I did catch Asperger's, anyway? It must be going around. Spread by mosquitos.

Later, we went to a local event related to food. It was tremendously unsatisfying in its execution. We returned to our home with cold food that somehow cost us $30. A baby was displeased and would not relent until she was allowed to roll around on a blanket without pants. A huge thunderstorm moved in, and she would not believe that I was not causing it. This is the Lord's way of telling us to move out of this town. Do not mess with what I eat.

Posted 9:07 PM by Licketysplit

If you stand in line for twenty minutes, the terrorists have won

I went to the post office again today. I know, I know. The selling everything I own campaign is a bit trying, although it's fun to imagine an obese shut-in in San Diego enjoying my used copy of The South Beach Diet. It's a good thing I didn't bring the wolverine, because she would have launched herself across the counter and gummed her way through the clerk's jugular. She doesn't like waiting. She was home watching General Hospital with a bottle of Southern Comfort, if you were wondering. No, she was poking a dead bird in the park with her father. What else?

Some dark-skinned men were attempting to mail some documents written in a non-Latin alphabet to a foreign country. The clerk was flummoxed and kept making them fill out more forms. She finally plugged some stuff into the computer, only to announce with a quaver that the package would arrive on... September 11th! Suddenly all the other clerks had to come over and inspect the package, while attempting to be casual. One of the men started making a cell phone call in a FOREIGN LANGUAGE. I was just waiting for the guy behind me to yell "Let's roll" and strangle him with a roll of stamps. They were Indian. See, not even the bad brown people!

Mr. H is joining Content Challenge with a photo a day. A baby sits up like a little Rory Calhoun.

Posted 7:44 PM by Licketysplit

Second toughest in the infants

This morning, a baby and I went to a jamboree teaming with children with deliberately old-fashioned names. Seriously, it was like stepping out of the TARDIS into a nineteenth century county fair, what with the Mabels and Jebediahs. Not that I can talk, considering my own child's name.

I have recently discovered that a baby hates other children She screws up her face and glares at the sound of their shrieks and giggles, but she is happy to make eyes at adults. It's a good thing she'll be an only child. Hell is other babies, darlin'.

Mr H and I celebrated our anniversary with spaghetti and meatballs, like Lady and the Tramp. Since I'm a tramp, I guess he has to be the lady. He cooked, as a lady should. He also bought my love with a gift, which took me off guard. We never exchange gifts because we usually buy whatever we want as it occurs to us. Which is probably why we're broke. Shiftless Americans!

It's getting to be that time in baby ownership when it's possible to pull one's head out of one's ass for brief moments. I've read several disturbing articles that all go something like CIA, Bush, torture, torture, and I wish I could put my head right back in my ass. Oh wait, I can take a nice long nap with the Suri Cruise photo spread draped over my face. That'll work.

Posted 1:01 PM by Licketysplit

Oh, it's ON

David blighted my inbox with a summons to Content Challenge. He actually blighted it last night, but I didn't notice the oozing trail of poison until this morning. So I am already a day behind. Maybe that means I have to post until October 6 instead of October 5. I barely manage a shower most days, so this ought to be interesting. Or...not!

Other participants include: JWER
Moose and Squirrel
ETA: Biscuit Report

Now I'm going to get back to entertaining a peckish wolverine. Go look at my auctions. Why do I have any of this stuff?

Posted 11:14 AM by Licketysplit

Fiesta de Septiembre

Today is the third anniversary of my legal ensnarement of Mr. H. At least according to the state of Massachusetts. The JP actually filled out the form wrong. It's really tomorrow. Then our sham wedding anniversary is Wednesday. Got it? OK. It's a big month here atop the Indian burial ground. We both have birthdays, and of course our cat anniversary because I am the asshole who gives free kittens as gifts. I can't wait to turn 25 again. Each year, our age gap widens. Soon it'll be like {Warren Jeffs joke}. Oh, my heart's not in it. You may note that I have a nearly three-month-old baby, so what happens in September does not stay in September. Don't believe September for a moment. She'll screw your cousin, give you herpes, and make you think you gave it to her first.

It's 2 PM, and I have accomplished a shower (but not a hair drying, and now it looks all funny) and two baby naps. The painter's tape stuck to one spot on the ceiling mocks me. It's been there since January, and all I want to do is tear it down. But I can't lift the ladder by myself, and the person who can lift the ladder will make so much noise that a baby wakes up. A tired baby is an angry baby. So here we are again, piece of tape. The days just trickle away. Hi, hi!

Posted 2:06 PM by Licketysplit