Sweatin' to the Oldies

The reason I have been off the map lately is because we have been moving to another apartment. And we don't have Internet there yet until Thursday. So I have to some back to the old apartment to do my email, fill out forms online, look for jobs and watch TiVo. I do miss Tivo. I'll be so excited to get my TV and internet all set up for good. (I feel like Miranda in that one episode where she needs her DSL installed and as soon as she gets it, she's desperate to look at her Tattler online. I have no desire to look at the Tattler. My needs are Blog based)

The good news is that with all that non-TV time, I have finally made it through "100 Years of Solitude" which was much longer than I thought. I'll have a review for you soon. Let's just say it was awesome and fanciful and full of magic. Not like the lame kind of magic where they make a rabbit come out of a hat. But the awesome life lengthening, sleep preventing, ghost seeing type of magic.

Anyway, I just wanted to post a quick blog and tell you that my apartment is hotter than Satan's Balls. I'm sorry if that image is tough for you to take, but it IS. I know some of you say, "oh, I live in Arizona, It's 115 degrees out today" or others say, "In Texas it's been about 100 for 3 months now AND we have 88% humidity" To you people I say the following: Do you have A/C? Do you stay indoors most of the time? And do you have a car with functioning A/C? If you can answer yes to any of these questions, then I win.

I am not kidding when I say that it was 100 degrees INSIDE my house yesterday. Inside, under the shade, in my front room, in the bedrooms. There is no relief anywhere I go. I'm not messing around when I say that I wanted to die. There is a thermometer in our kitchen stuck to the fridge and I looked at it yesterday. I was thinking, "It has to be a hundred degrees in here!!" and then I looked at the thermometer and it confirmed my wild postulations. There is no A/C in the house. The oven is close to the living room and it's "old fashioned" which is a quaint way of saying "no insulation around the metal box pumping out 400 degree heat."

The main part of the house including the living room and the baby's room have windows facing West. That means that from about 3 pm to 8 pm every day, I can cook an egg off my window. And there is no A/C. I did mention that, right? We do have a million fans up and running. But they are only pushing around 100 degree air. We have to suffer in silence until the sun goes down and then the fans can suck in cool air.

But we are looking forward to fall. And I think in winter we'll be toasty warm. Even though the house is old (like our first home. Remember that hell hole, Reagan?) I has better insulation than that, and I think we will be really happy there. And we do have 2 of those window A/C units. But we were just trying to do without them for a while. I think the time has come when we need to suck it up and put them up, however. My poor baby was covered head to toe with a heat rash yesterday. I can't let that happen again.

Anyway, It's hot. My baby is suffering and it's time to fix this.

Oh, on another note, it's Education Week around here. I think I might go to some classes while my mom watches the baby. We'll see.

And finally, I need to tell you about how I've been waking up at 6 am to exercise. I'm too tired to talk about it right now. Good Night!

My Baby's Silky Smooth Coat

To answer Reagan's comment on my last blog, the move is going slow. And how many houses have we lived in? Well, we have lived in 5 houses in the last 12 months. Take into account the 3 houses we lived in before that, and we have had 8 houses since being married. Averaging to 2 moves a year. I want to vomit just reading that. I don't want to move again. EVER.

Anyway, back to our anniversary. We almost forgot. There was just so much going on, and for the past few days none of us have been real aware of the actual date. And so I realized almost too late what time it was. Mom volunteered to watch Evi so we could go out and I took her up on it.

Evi has had lots of mocos the last few days, and it's been hard for her to breathe. Nursing has been hard, and she didn't take a long nap all day yesterday. I mean she would crash for like 20 min or a hour at the longest. But mostly she was just awake and fighting to breathe. It was rough listening to her breath fighting to get out, but those darned mocos wouldn't come out with the snot sucker.

Well, I feed Evi and then we left. I called from the restaurant and mom said she had given her a bath and she was OUT. She said she was so tired that her eyes were closed even before she laid down. I was happy and we finished our date and came home.

Just so you know, we did do something fun for our anniversary. We went to La Carreta. It's a Peruvian restaurant. It's the closest thing we can get to Ecuadorian food around here. Anyway, we got there very late and we were the only ones there. It was fun to just sit and talk to each other and not have a baby screaming.

Well, the next morning I noticed that there were some strange bottles on the floor of my shower. Some body wash, the dog shampoo, my shampoo, shaving cream, etc. I thought that was weird until I realized that the baby shampoo was over at the new house.

Then a horrible thought hit me. What did my mom use to wash my baby? I asked her and she said, "oh, you had some 'soothing oatmeal' shampoo so I used that." I went to the shower and pulled out a bottle and said, "is this the stuff you used?" and she said, yes. Yeah, it was the dog shampoo. My mom washed my baby with dog shampoo.

I don't blame her. Here is a picture of the shampoo bottle:


So do you see the word DOG stamped anywhere on this bottle in BIG BOLD letters? I totally can understand her confusion. There is no picture of a dog, and the only place it says dog is in teeny tiny letters right under the "G" logo. It says "For Dogs" really tiny and then it talks about "coat hydrating" properties in the box below. That could be for humans, right? If you are crazy and refer to your hair as your "Head coat" or "chrome pelt" as I like to call it. Then this bottle might work for you.

As it is, it's just funny. What ISN'T funny is the box on the back that says "keep out of reach of children so as to avoid consumption." And my mom said that she put the baby in that to swim around. Great! Awesome!! My kid was covered head to toe with horrible flea and tick killing, yet still nourishing, toxins. (I think all this oatmeal talk is terribly hyped up. Does the oatmeal neutralize the skin burning effects of the chemicals? Discuss) I am a horrible mother that bathes her child in dog shampoo toxins. I'll be accepting my mother of the year award this weekend. Thank you for all attending the ceremony held at Utah County Jail.

And to reply to Judd's comment, I will stop calling my dog "The little girl." I must admit that reading that and the phrase "300 bees" together is enough to stop someone's heart. But this latest debacle tells me that maybe I can start calling Evi "puppy girl" as a term of endearment. HA!

I'm a bad mother. The end

Too Tired to Type

If you have all been wondering where I am, why I haven't posted more. Well, I'll tell you: I'm moving. . . . AGAIN.

Let's just say that I'm a moving masochist and leave it at that, ok?

Also, today is our 4 year wedding anniversary. I must say I still like him, so I'm not sad I married him 4 years ago. Actually, I fell in love with him all over again about a week ago, but I'll tell you about that later. I'm too tired to do anything else tonight.

Talk to you all later.

Happy 14th!

Love you, Angel Loaf!!

Doggy Don't!

Poor Raya! Her day started out really good. My mom woke up at 8:30 am and took her for a walk at the park right by our house. I got up at 9:30 and played with Evi and had breakfast and talked to Marcelo. And then I got ready to get into the shower for church at 11:00 am. As I was about to get in, my mom walked in with Raya.

I immediately noticed a difference. When she shook, there wasn't the usual collar sound that accompanied her shake. I then noticed that her tags were missing!! Her tag circle was stretched to capacity and I instantly realized that my mom had attached her collar to the wrong circle, and when Raya had pulled against her leash, she had pulled the circle and the tags came off.

No worries. They were tags that can be replace for about $3.00. And I thought we could go to the park and look for them and have a good time there another day. My mom was gushing about how Raya was just so good, and how she loved the park and how she loves to take her because she's just a dream dog. I was very proud of my little girl just then. You always get happy when your kids are good for the babysitter.

So I got in the shower, and when I got out I got ready and started dressing Evita. Marcelo was getting ready and so was mom. It was about 10:49, and basically time to start climbing in the car to drive to church. As I'm dressing Evi, I look at Raya and she's rubbing her face and trying to rub her face on the leather couch. The leather couch? How can that be refreshing? Well, my question was soon answered when Raya looked up at me. This is what I saw:






























I'm sorry if you weren't prepared for that. You can imagine MY shock at seeing my little girl so altered. You can see they are all over her face, her muzzle, her legs and the top of her head. For a second, I thought that she had incurred a horrible case of mange overnight. Because dogs that are about to die from mange look just like that, with the skin all puffy and jacked up.

And then I noticed the individual bumps on the top of her head (see picture #4, it shows the bumps the best/worst) And I knew it was bees. I said to my mom, "What happened? Have you seen her?" She said that she didn't notice anything the whole time they were at the park. She said Raya hadn't cried the whole time. I asked where she was sitting at the park and she said she was over by the bathrooms. I happen to know that there is a bees nest living in one of the broken park benches there right by the bathroom. I asked my mom "were there bees there?" and she said, "Yes, there were bees. They didn't come near me, I hardly even noticed them. When would she have been attacked?"

I don't know what my mom was doing, I can only assume she was talking on the phone when what had to be 300 bees attacked my little girl. I was paralyzed. What to do? Take her to the doggie ER? I took her there the night she got hit by a car, and I know how expensive it is. I was pretty sure she wasn't allergic because she would probably already be dead by now if she were. But I didn't know if there would be any other problems in the future. I decided to call the ER (the doggie ER) and find out.

They (of course) suggested we should bring her right in. I told them that I didn't think that she was allergic, but what could happen in the future? She said that if we didn't bring her in, we should watch for signs of shock. I said we were about to go to church, and she asked if anyone could stay home with her during church. Marcelo, my hero, volunteered.

He gave her a soothing bath, and when I got home, this is what greeted me:


Yeah!! All better!! She was almost completely back to normal. Oh, I was so happy. Marcelo she was great during her bath and she was very happy to play with him the whole time. I was just glad her eyes weren't swollen shut.

I'm just going to apologize to Raya right now. Apparently my family is really hard on dogs. I'm just glad this story had a happy ending and that my dog isn't dead. SORRY RAYA!!!

Traumatizing

We had a very traumatizing experience on Wednesday: two month shots. If any of you mothers out there say that it doesn't traumatize you to hold down your baby's arms as they are injected with a diluted virus, you are a horrible horrible liar. Or you are just a horrible horrible person. I didn't think that I would have a problem with this. But as she started to get poked all over, she looked and me and stuck out her bottom lip and then just WAILED.

Oh my goodness!! Tears instantly sprung into my eyes. I couldn't help it. And she kept looking at me like I had betrayed her. Oh, I was so sad for her. And she did NOT do well the rest of the day. She would only sleep in my arms, and every so often as she was sleeping, she would just spontaneously wake herself up screaming. Oh, the poor little thing. We didn't see a smile all night until we woke her up for bathtime. A nice hot bath, and some baby Tylenol and she was in heaven. She actually slept for most of the night after that. Well, one more dose of Tylenol was needed in the middle of the night but she really did do well. here's picture of her chubby pincushion legs:

To answer your question, YES, I know those diapers are too small for her. She wears a size 1 in Huggies, but apparently she's moved up to a size 2 in Luvs. Whatever, we are out of diapers today anyway. Costco trip tomorrow!!

Don't you just want to gobble up the chub? Oh, I love it!! And if you were wondering, here are her stats: 13.3 pounds puts her in the 93rd percentile for weight. 23 inches tall puts her the 75th percentile for height. And I can't remember what her head size was, but she was only in the 25th percentile. But the nurse girl struggled taking the measurement. You would think she would've noticed that and taken it again. But no.

Oh well, she'll just show "remarkable" growth in that area next time. Or maybe she just has a pin head!! Maybe that's why she's been able to hold her head up since like week 2 or 3 of being born. Because it weighs nothing. It was no problem for her from the start. She's just a good strong girl. And I'm glad I don't have to do that for another 2 months.

If you've been wondering why I haven't been posting recently, it's because this is finals week at UVSC. It's over!! Marcelo gets two weeks of vacation and then it's back to school time. On a side note, does anyone know where I can get a good student loan? Or maybe someone wants to buy my hair? Let me know if I have any takers.

Finally, can someone help me with something? So I use Firefox as my web browser. I love Firefox becuase they remember your passwords and they have a spell checker built right in. It underlines your misspelled words in red and alerts you when you need to change it. It's just better, right?

Not so much. See, when you right click on the word that is misspelled, it gives you some word choices. However, they have a very bad system going on. They offer the choices and then RIGHT UNDER the word, they have the option "add to dictionary." Well, my friends, I have a laptop. Those little mouse squares are not the most accurate of tools. And your hand can slip as you are trying to select the offered word and can land on the "add to dictionary" option and you can double click on it before you even know what is happening.

So devoted readers, how do I reset my dictionary? Currently the following words are misspelled in my dictionary: Because (spelled becuase. I make this mistake probably 40 times a day. I HATE THAT THIS ONE ISN'T PICKED UP BUY THE SPELL CHECKER) And Marcelo (spelled marcelo. Not capitalized. Hate that) and just today I added license. Is that right? I don't know. It could be wrong. I don't know!! There's no red line under it!!!

Anyway, if any computer genius knows how to reset my Firefox dictionary for me, I would be eternally grateful. I might even do a little dance for you and post it online.

What a hilarious misunderstanding!!

Friday night Reagan asked me if I wanted to come to the Twilight party with her. I said I did, but I didn't know when my baby was going to wake up, I hadn't taken a shower for 2 days and i didn't know when my husband was getting home. I'm glad I didn't commit to going because he didn't get home till like 11:30 pm. Anyway, she did end up going and had a great time. She had wedding cake. I LOVE wedding cake. I'm so mad I didn't go.

But I'm glad I got to see Reagan the next day. See, she invited me to come and crash a baby shower the very next day. Reagan came down for a work baby shower and I went too. It was one of those showers with GAMES and PRIZES. UGH, games. We had the "Don't Say the Word Baby or Lose Your Sticker" game and the "Try to Remember all the Things on This Tray" Game. We left too early, but I'm guessing that later on they had the "What Animal Baby Names Do you Know?"game where you have to pair animals with the names of their young. i.e. Cow/Calf, Kangaroo/Joey. You get it.

I find games lame. You don't need to entertain me!! Just put me in a room with some interesting people and I can make my own entertainment. Don't you have confidence in my intelligence? Also you can put a cake out and then let me fantasize about what it will taste like and when we get to eat it. I could spend 20 minutes alone just doing that that. Ahhh, cake.

Anyway, we left early. Reagan said I had to come to her car and pick something up before I left. She mentioned it like 3 times because she didn't want to forget about it. We walked over to her car and she opened the passenger side. She bent down and picked up something. She came out with the new Twilight book!! I was so shocked!! That was so nice of her to get me one!! I said, "Oh my gosh, you got me one!! That's so nice of you!!!" And she said, "Uhhh. . . .no."

HA!!!!!!! I was laughing so hard at the hilarious misunderstanding. But you don't blame me, do you? She tells me 3 times I need to come get something, and so I don't think I'm crazy for jumping to a conclusion about the thing she pulled out of the car. She later said that she thought for of half second about just handing it over and being like "uhhhh, yeeaaaaah. I DID get you this book!! I even started reading it for you and marked my place in it right here, but you can disregard that" HA! Hilarious misunderstanding indeed. But it was embarrassing for a split second when I was presumptive enough to think that she had bought me one. Oh well, she'll forgive me for that.

So to answer your questions, NO, I don't have the new twilight book. And no, I probably won't buy it either. I'll just wait for Reagan or Lisa to finish it and let me borrow it. I don't have any of the other books either, so I figure why start now?

But could one of you hurry up and finish, please?

Accidents Happen!!

Marcelo got in a car accident on Thursday. He was going to pick up our rent check from our tenants, and he was on 800 South right by the Maverick on State Street. Well, as you ALL know, there are two lanes going west, and Marcelo was in the more left side lane. The person in the right lane had stopped because someone was trying to leave the parking lot on the South side. She was trying to get out so she can head west on 800 South.

So the car on the right stops and waves the car to pass. Note to people who want to do this: DO NOT DO THIS!! YOU HAVE NO EFFECT ON THE OTHER CARS IN THE OTHER LANES! THEY MIGHT NOT STOP, AND THEY DON'T HAVE TO BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY. YOU RUN THE RISK OF CAUSING AN ACCIDENT.

And they did. The car came shooting out of the parking lot trying to cross those lanes as quickly as possible. Well, my husband was just minding his business, going the speed limit, wearing his seatbelt and BAM! A car pops out in front of him and he smashes into it head-on. Airbags deploy. Marcelo's memory of the next few minutes is somewhat fuzzy, but he's sure of the following things: Airbags hurt coming out. Cars can pop out of no where when you least expect them. And the fastest way to the fullest, most plumpy lips is to have them burned by deploying airbags.

So here are some pictures:




























(I sadly didn't get a picture of the burned plump lips. By the time I arrived, the swelling had gone down. Nothing interesting to see. Sorry about the tease there)

For some reason we didn't get a picture of her car. But there was very little damage done at all. Her driver's side corner and wheel were banged up, but other than that her car looked almost perfect. She had to be towed also because it jacked up her wheel and axle.

So I get a call from Marcelo that he needs a ride. When I got there, I was VERY surprised to find a very nice girl who looked about my age. We later found out that she has a 17 year old daughter which she had when she was 18. HOLY CRAP!! Why do people get married so young here? Honestly, Marcelo and I both thought that she was YOUNGER than me. I would've put her age at 26 tops. Out of control.

Anyway, as you can tell, things were very good and hospitable between the two of us. Police had been called to fill out a report, and they were nearly done when I got there. I of COURSE brought the baby who looked gorgeous and slept through the whole thing. I Thought I might need some "sympathy" because at the time of the call, I wasn't sure who's fault the accident was. Marcelo *said* it was hers, but you never know!! So I thought the kid might soften him up. (Free prize to the person who can name where that quote comes from. Judd can do it immediately , but she might not comment for a while, so you still have a chance to win the prize) But I didn't need it because the girl took full responsibility for the whole thing from the start and made everything so great.

Yesterday we started calling all the insurance companies and BOTH companies have been great. When does that happen? They got a rental car for Marcelo, insisted he go to the doctor and have been very great in communicating every step of the way. I actually learned today that the repairs might be more than the car is worth, so they just might give us a check for the price of the car.

That is good and bad. It's good because it means new, non smelly car. However, it's bad because we don't have a car payment right now!! And I don't want one!!! And if we do get another car, we definitely will have a payment. I was really looking forward to having that car forever and driving it into the ground. There were already like 130,000 miles on it! And it was still in great condition. Oh well.

I'm trying to look at the good things. One of them is that Marcelo is safe. Another one is that we weren't in the car with him and so we weren't hurt. DEFINITELY a blessing. And did I mention I have a beautiful baby? Wanna see some more pictures of her? OK!!








































Notice the spittle glistening off her mouth. She's really loving playing with her tongue and in doing it she pushes lots of saliva out of her mouth. But she just looks so cute. She's laughing and cooing and giggling all the time. She's got her mom and dad enchanted. And who can blame them?

Anyway, accidents do happen. But we are happy that this one had somewhat of a happy ending.