All posts by Licketysplit

If Jack Bauer lived next door to Kramer, Kramer would knock before entering

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Not much going on at This Old Hovel. I find myself wandering around muttering things like “They’re boxy, but they’re good!”

Yesterday, we went to IKEA again, under great protest. Did you know that you need to special order hinges for your kitchen cabinets, but you have to pick up your handles at the store? You can’t just also order the handles. Theoretically, at the end of 3-5 more weeks, we’ll have some cabinets. Goodbye, pile of food. Goodbye, unused rice cooker. Now no one will be able to see that I don’t use you.

Anyway, at IKEA, you can totally tell who is from Cambridge. That is all. And you can also tell who made a wrong turn looking for the Christmas Tree Shops. They’ll be the ones in your way in the marketplace as you desperately try to escape. They’ll also ask, of the ybab strapped to your front, “Is he comfortable in there?” No, I am Jack Bauer. I specialize in discomfort of the infant variety. If a ybab is comfortable, then I am doing something wrong. Please call my 800 number.

Take your protein pills and put your helmet on

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I am hoping my new vitamins make my claws strong and my coat lustrous. I think I’m malnourished. My current diet tops even the “chew n’ spit” diet for sheer brutality. Try it some time: strap a twenty pound squirming weight to your front while grocery shopping. Then lug whatever you buy down a two-block long hallway, up some stairs, and through an elevator. When you try to eat any of what you bought, someone will start screaming at you. I think “eeeeeaaaaahllllltpppppthhhh” means “You have cankles, you hideous dugong!” The only solution to screaming is vigorously bouncing the twenty pound squirming weight. The weight likes deep knee bends the best. Food gets crusty on the table, and who wants to eat that now?

I so don’t have cankles, for the record. I am seeing numbers on the scale that I haven’t seen since not eating in college. A ybab should stop trying to starve me to death. Is she in cahoots with a cat? They are just waiting to eat my face when I finally collapse. If my returns keep diminishing, I will no longer test well with the vagrants by the bus station. That would be terrible.

Whoa dilly

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I am in the land of mundane tasks. That is right next to the Island of Misfit Toys. The cat has started a pots n’ pans band with the ybab. I asked them to be quiet while I was calling Fidelity to tell them to do something to my no-money, and they laughed at me. Then Fidelity laughed at me and said I had to DOWNLOAD A FORM AND MAIL IT LIKE A PEASANT, even though their site said to call a rep to access this feature. Some feature. Some pig. It’s OK, a ybab didn’t need a college fund anyway. She’ll get through on pluck and determination and a last minute made up scholarship essay just like her ma.

Speaking of the peasantry, I had to lie to them on engraved stationary the other day. Bless their little hearts. They think they are doing something good, but their puny offerings merely sadden and then enrage me. Back to the discount chain with your slutty infant outfits! I will thank you through pursed lips. My, what a colorful outfit. My. The accompanying rash is also colorful. Those pants make a six-month-old into a regular Tara Reid, which is what we all want in our heart of hearts. There is no nice way to just say “Please don’t buy gifts ever agin. We’ll still love you, if not love you even more.”

On preferences

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Someone is a Big Girl all of a sudden. No, not me. I remain incompetent. Two nights ago, we thought we would add a second book to bedtime since we got a few for Festivus. A ybab pitched an unholy fit, so we stopped and went for trusty Goodnight Moon. She shrieked and squealed and was riveted as usual. Goodnight mush! No, I really mean it. You have a great night, mush. Who leaves mush out on a bedside table? That sounds like a recipe for botulism.

The next night, we explained that we’d still be reading Goodnight Moon after the new book. She grudgingly tolerated What Shall We Do With the Boo-Hoo Baby (Pickle her! String her up! It’s really hard not to editorialize.), but she also lolled back until she was totally upside down with her foot in her mouth. Then Mr. H picked up the other book and started to read the title. She popped straight up instantly and screeched with glee. I guess we have at least another 750 readings of Goodnight Moon left, each. I’ve tried sneaking in made up verses, and this also doesn’t fly. It wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t one ridiculously showy identical rhyme. When we’re really vamping at the end, sometimes we read the ISBN and Canadian price.

The finest drops

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At first, having a ybab is sort of like being a recovering alcoholic. There’s a lot of counting days involved. Then weeks. I realized I’ve stopped counting days and started counting in months. This is Good News. A ybab is 196 days old tomorrow. I figured that out, just now, with my pocket calculator.

I’ve been trying to work on some terms of emotional surrender on a variety of issues, and I’m still not there yet. My new rules for 2007 are simple: No Being a Shit. And instead of curbing my occasional irrational rage responses, I’ve decided that others need to simply be better and faster at any interaction that must involve me. Why, did I ever tell you about the time that Mr. H’s former employer mistakenly cancelled our health insurance prematurely and forgot to fund our FSA? That time would be yesterday, when I found out. Outsourcing is working very well in that they don’t have voicemail in those offices, so I can’t call up and scream at them for the length of time that voicemail records. Their loss!!!!!

The rest of you are On Notice. No Being a Shit.

Am I 52% dumber than last year?

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I was all worried about that, but then I realized there was a stray USA Today left under my kitchen table by a guest. Once I properly disposed of it, I could do long division again.

The “holidays” bring us new findings, such as the report that I should be feeding a ybab sorbet because she watches people eating. Well, fine. She watches many things, but let’s go with this one. We’ll work up to any courses at all and then worry about palate cleansing. Did I ever tell you of the time I ate smoked lobster foam sorbet with a pickled fiddlehead fern garnish? Perhaps I was inebriated. Dr. Sears wrote to me personally to let me know this is absolutely a good first food for a ybab. She’s knocking back a Trou Normand right now. Bless her little tract!

Helllloooo? Where are my chocolate-covered carbon offset credits? Don’t you love me?

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It’s almost “Christmas,” which we somehow celebrate even though we are not religious except for Festivus. On Christmas eve, we gather with the relations of Mr. H, and we exchange one gift per person under $25 based on names drawn out of a hat. There is frequently food I can’t eat, such as a platter of meat injected with hormones and dairy byproducts. At midnight, the animals talk. They say “Liiiiiiisa, why are you eaaaaating meeee?”

Our own nuclear family traditions include not buying each other anything. We buy things for other people, sometimes. But not predictably. Just enough to introduce stress for the other party as to whether or not they need to buy something for us next year. I love it!

And we generally buy whatever it occurs to us to buy throughout the year. We are Hard to Shop For, I’ve been told. The other day, I bought a ybab a poncho since it is cold now, and she acts like sleeves were invented by government torture squads. The pointed hood makes her look like an adorable little KKK Grand Wizard. Why would we need anything else?

Maybe we should try other holidays, but if we can’t even get it together for one gift under $25, I don’t think I could handle eight nights of gifts. We should start doing Diwali instead. I like those almond sweeties. Christmas is just not festive enough, unless a certain relative comes with a handle jug of Canadian Club. I can’t wait for the airing of grievances, though.

What a damn thing to say

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This meme is going around like something you catch at the bus station: post the first sentence of each entry for the past twelve months. I’m also posting the subject lines because I am nothing without a support act.

And away we go!

1. A day late and a dollar short: 2005 by the numbers
Number of separate calendar days where vomiting occurred: 4

2. Everything’s OK in OKville
Goodbye January, goodbye Content Challenge, goodbye Supreme Court (It’s the, stupid).

3. I’m into something good (leftover spaghetti)
Madge, I’m soaking in it.

4. More human every day
We have a table!

5. And in our hearts we fly. Standby.
It started with other people drinking before the sun was over the yardarm.

6. Can I get some unnecessary antibiotics with that condescension?
The other day I made the big, huge, giant mistake of calling my parents to let them know we moved back into our house after a soggy two-week vacation in crapsville.

7. No sleep til Brooklyn
It’s amazing how somone under 7 pounds can make two adults with a combined 61 years of life experience feel totally incompetent at times.

8. Hey, wanna buy a monkey?
No? How about a baby?

9. Fiesta de Septiembre
Today is the third anniversary of my legal ensnarement of Mr. H

10. Condo meeting attended; area jerk spotted
Mr. H went to the meeting while I stayed home to ply a baby with strong drink, and when he returned, I asked after the lady who picks fights on the email list and then declares that the list is not a good forum for discussion when people disagree with her.

11. This year, I am thankful that Pharrell gave us something to bump to
Pharrell is like the Great Pumpkin, I think.

12. The continuing perils of instant gratification
Now there comes a time when one finds a leaflet for a new Chinese restaurant in one’s lobby, and one decides to carpe some diem and take a chance on life.

And in other news, this morning a ybab and I watched a three-legged dog poop on the lawn. It’s beginning to look a lot like Thursday.

A holiday scourge

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Sorry it’s been so quiet around here. You’d think we’d gone and had a baby or something. But no, we’re recovering from colds and filing our hate mail related to our holiday card. A sample “deluted the tradition’s of Christ!!!! [sic, all of it]” SRSLY, you are no one until you are hated! I could do a dance. We were just being inclusive!

A ybab says “hi” and “da,” although in no particular context. The cat always gets a “hi,” although she could just be agreeing in Japanese.

All those year-end review shows on VH1 are catching me up on all the culture I blissfully missed. Fergie: what a scourge! London London London bridge. Can we deport her? She can move in to Madonna’s castle and grow an accent.

Mr. H owes me a guest blog on Fergie and Rachel Ray. He’s tentatively calling it “Hot? Or ugly chicks with haircuts?”

Holiday card theatre

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I am shamed beyond belief because there is a tracking error in the inner message in our holiday card. It jumps out at me like a thumb in the eye, and I quake to think of others noticing. But what the hell do you expect when the card was designed in an online software system in two minutes? If you want quality, do it your damn self! At least we spelled everything right, including the word “adequate.”

We receive a card each year that is always remarkable in its liberal massaging of the English language. This year’s installment, a positively uncomfortable Thai massage, reads:

Happy holiday’s from our house to your’s!!!!
Happy new year!!!!
Love [Name],[Name], [Kreatif Spelling Childname 1],[Kreatif Spelling Childname 2] [Kreatif Spelling Childname 3]….

The ellipsis at the end is so ominous, as if there may be an additional child lurking. The pictured children are all at or near the North Pole, judging by the sign post covered with plastic snow. Yet they aren’t really dressed for the weather. Puzzling!

And now for our own important message from a ybab.