Believe in the Flowers.

Carol of the Zombie Jesus!

This is probably going to be a short post, which I apologize for. However, things around here have been interesting ...


First, Internet, we can officially say it out loud: Kid #2 will be here in July 2009. The families know, so it's okay to tell everybody else. So there you go, Internet - we're having another baby. Merry Christmas and happy new year.

Secondly, the dear husband has been in an awful mood for two days now and while I typically consider myself a rather tolerant individual, I am very close to tearing my hair out. He is existing in a little pit of self-defeat and frustration, one that he refuses to try to get out of, so for now I'm doing my best to pretend that this is obviously an "okay" way to act and be. Meanwhile my helpful suggestions for ending this moodswing have gotten me nowhere, although I think at one point he may have grunted at me in reponse to something I said. I suppose I should consider that "progress" and put on a smile.

Okay, so a few things to get to now, I suppose - if one can ignore the fact that it is past 3 AM and I have absolutely no intention of going back to bed anytime soon. Even though it's freezing over here, brr.


First, I WON THINGS. This NEVER happens to me, and I have been a firm believer for many years that I am not only incredibly unlucky but probably also cursed in more ways than one. Yet, somehow, I have managed to win two beautiful handcrafted items. The first is an amazing holiday goblet (see it in this post) from Lorrie over at Our Name Is Blog (which, by the way, you should be reading if you are not already). The giveaway was random and the suggested blog topic that I gave was to blog about the worst gift you have ever given someone, or have been given by someone else. Trust me, you need to go look at the entrants; they were all amazing and hilarious. I unfortunately didn't get to participate, but it seems I've won enough and will still try to put something up on that topic, hopefully tomorrow. If you read my blog and not Lorrie's, please, throw up some kind of post or something on this topic anyway if you get the chance.

The second thing I won was a gorgeous picture from Life Spatula, which is yet again another blog you ought to be reading if you aren't already. There's a picture of the painting here and I can't begin to tell you how totally stoked I am about these things. It feels like we have nothing nice in our apartment and both of these things will be welcome additions to an otherwise bland place with skin-tinted walls and posters from PlayStation and computer game hint books. Spatula has given a challenge that I try to draw the scene I portrayed; at the very least I intend on trying to find the picture in question. I know it's at Mom's house somewhere.

You should be able to find both Our Name Is Blog and Life Spatula in my sidebar.

The second thing I would like to note is that WE HAVE A MOUSE. I realize this is an older house and it's winter, but seriously? A mouse? When Colin finally came to bed at, oh, 2:00 AM (he has to be up at 7 AM so this is bad enough) we talked for a little while because he was grumpy about Gmail being rather stupid, and then, right before I'm about to get back to sleep and I'm warm and comfortable and snuggled up with the kid and thinking life's pretty good, he says, quietly, "Oh, by the way, I don't want to scare you or worry you, but ..." I would like to note that this is a HORRIBLE way to start a conversation. Here I am thinking that while I was asleep one of the carbon monoxide detectors went off and I totally missed it and he turned it off instead of waking us up, or he had gone out in the ice storm and something had happened to the car, or maybe my computer had randomly exploded (I've been having a lot of problems with lock-ups recently). Any number of bad things could have occurred and my mind is cycling through the possibilities at 2 AM, going probably 200 mph. Then, "Um, I think I saw a mouse run into Gabe's room." Now, I'd like to note that at that point I had a !!!!!!!! moment for several reasons, because that's just disgusting. Mice don't scare me, but the knowledge that one was IN MY SON'S ROOM is about enough to make me want to ritualistically slaughter something. "I mean, it could have been my hair or something, and it's late, and you know I see things when it's late, but.." 

So I got up and went into Gabe's room - damn kid still doesn't sleep by himself - and pulled his mattress out of his racecar bed, since that's where Colin said he thought the thing ran. I pull out the folded, clean cardboard boxes that stack the mattress up (you'd understand if you've seen one of these things, there's this weird hole in the bed itself - probably to make it lighter - that is smaller than a crib mattress), and just as I'm getting to the bottom I see this gray thing scurry back behind the bed. There was a lot of cussing going on because there I am, standing barefoot in his room with stuff EVERYWHERE. Colin comes in and hesitates, then says he thinks he saw the thing run into one of our only two closets, both of which happen to be in the kid's room. Oh, did I mention that he told me, also while we're laying in bed, that he had seen mouse droppings in a box of unused dishes under one of our lower cabinets? 

So tomorrow while Colin's at work, you will never guess who is going to go on an insane cleaning spree before calling our landlord - who is, ironically enough, the mother of a guy I went to high school with whom I absolutely adored, but not like THAT - and telling her that she ought to send someone quick or I will probably end up going insane, and that would mean she doesn't get rent.

Moral of the story: Do NOT tell your wife at 2 AM as you come to bed that you thought you saw a mouse. Seriously, let me lay in comfort a couple more hours and then go insane about it in the daylight when I can actually do things without waking up the kid.

(Okay, in all honesty I'm glad he told me or I probably would have freaked out when I got up and he informed me, instead of telling me as soon as he knew.)

Today I found a cup.


By "found a cup" I don't mean that I went to a cute little antique store or that I visited a local boutique and searched high and low to find the world's most adorable collectible teacup. There was no "ooh" and "aah" over a perfect price, no negotiation because of that little chip on the rim, no rushing home to Google its origins and maker to see if it is worth anything more than what I payed for it, or if I was ripped off.

I mean that I moved furniture and I found a sippy cup.

This sippy cup was half-full of an unidentifiable liquid that had been sitting under one of our old plush rocking chairs for God only knows how long. I had no idea if it was separated milk that had gotten to the point where all the curd stuff had simply dissolved, or if it was juice from yesterday. I really would have preferred the latter because then it would have smelled like apple.

So I took said cup outside while wearing my dish gloves and thought I'd open it there, for safety's sake. I tend to be affected heavily by smells and I knew if it stank I would regret opening it indoors; the best thing I could have done if I opened that cup inside was to dump it into the toilet and spray some air freshener after I flushed the contents, which would have ended up smelling like cinnamon apple HELL. Besides, you know how frigid winter air works: you can't smell a damn thing because by the time you're inhaling, your snot has frozen the little hairs in your nostrils into hair Icepicks of Doom (yes, it has been that cold here recently). But I swear that when I opened that stupid cup I could smell EVERYTHING about it. It was either milk or chocolate Pediasure; either way it had probably been sitting around for several days too long and had formed some kind of odd congealed stuff on top that I couldn't identify or see before opening the cup. All of my ideas of not being able to smell anything outside were destroyed as soon as I dared to take a breath because trust me, I could smell that stuff, and it smelled like it was going to reach out of that cup and kill me with its bare hands. I dumped what was left onto the gravel and flung the cup around a few times away from myself and the house in hopes of getting as much of the congealed stuff out as I could, then came back inside. Guess what, the smell FOLLOWED ME. I ran over to the sink and dumped in half of a container of our lime-scented "this would destroy the scent of two-day-old dog shit in the middle of summer with one drop" dish soap into the cup and added hot water, then shook it around, and you'd never guess that I could STILL SMELL IT. So now that evil, Godforsaken cup is sitting in the sink, shut, full of hot water and soap, because you had better bet that I will NOT be the one to wash it out. I think I've done my share of dishes for one day.