when you become a parent, you find yourself having to do all kinds of gross things that involve another person's body. of course there's the diaper changing, but there's also ear cleaning, nail trimming, diaper rash cream application, sliver pulling, vomit wiping, booger picking... the list is practically endless & even though it's gross, we do it because we love our kids & it's not like they can do it themselves. helpless mites that they are, they need us to cleanse & pick them so that they'll look & smell better.
recently, i've found myself in this same roll all over again, but not with my child. it's with my baby kitty. i've had several cats since i've been an adult & i've cleaned up barf, scooped litter pans & clipped nails for years. no big deal. but this new baby is a long haired girl & that's a whole different story.
i didn't know that long haired cats have to get the fur between their paw pads trimmed so that you can get to the nails to clip them. that's a big job because girlfriend does NOT like me to be messing with her feet. i have to hold her down to do any of her grooming, which unfortunately includes cleaning her disgusting ears. i've never had a cat with ear issues, but this girl has them.
then there's the issue of her butt. did you know that you have to clip the hair off all around a cat's butt area? otherwise you get dingleberry dilemmas and that's pretty freakin gross. i have to hold her, butt up & trim her with kiddie safety scissors (they work better than any other pair in the house for cutting hair. go figure!) while she bites & claws at any part of me she can reach.
well tonight we came to a whole new kind of cat maintenance. we've known for a while now that nim's baby teeth were starting to fall out because we'll see spaces in her mouth. brooke loves to look at animals' teeth, so she's frequently digging into her mouth to have a look around and tonight we discovered that one of her little baby fangs (as can be seen in the picture here when they first came in) was very loose. brooke's been wanting to find a baby kitty tooth & save it for posterity & since we haven't discovered any yet & the new big teeth are almost all in, she thought this might be our last shot. she asked me to trap nim & pull that tooth out before it had the chance to get lost in the rug or digested with her food.
gulp. the things we do for our kids & pets. i got the cat flipped over & pinned in my armpit, pried her furry lips apart & yanked the baby tooth right out of her mouth.
it's now nestled down into the weird little tooth cemetery box with all of brooke's baby teeth. and i bet you can figure out the last question i heard as i tucked my girls in.......
today i got confirmation for a trip that i'll be making soon. brooke & i will be flying and it will be her first time on a plane.
all this thinking about flying has brought to mind my last trip by air...
it was 5 years ago and i was headed from nc to ny which isn't a very long flight direct, but i had to make some little hops along the way, so i actually flew on three different planes. on the third leg of the trip, i boarded alone and was greeted by an attractive male flight attendant. he told me that i was the only passenger on the hour long flight, so i could pick any seat i wanted. that seemed pretty odd, but it only added to my sense of adventure.
i chose to sit in the front seat. i strapped my belt on, pulled out my book & settled in. the friendly flight attendant sat down across the aisle from me & started making small talk. he told me about how he likes getting to meet lots of people & seeing all different parts of the u.s. he grew up in a religious family in a small town & then started flying directly out of college, traveling for the first time in his life.
i told him that i had a three year old daughter and was married to a pastor. i was getting a much needed break from life and looking forward to a few days of eating great food, smoking while not hiding behind a trash can & lots of girl talk.
we were having some fun, joking around; i kicked my sock foot up onto the wall in front of me in complete disregard for proper flight etiquette. i was feeling happy & relaxed and glad to be away. there was something about this trip that was helping me feel like i could take a deep breath & remember who i was again. sometimes as a mom, i can get so caught up in the everyday busyness and setting the right example for my kid that i forget pieces of myself along the way. i felt like those pieces of myself were reappearing. like they hadn't been lost, just buried under layers of my current version of life.
there was a companionable silence for a few minutes & i thought i'd read for the rest of the trip. then the flight attendant says to me,
"i have a lot of sex."
i stared blankly at him, pretty sure something must be misfiring in my head because people don't just randomly say stuff like that out loud.
"i had a serious girlfriend until i started flying, but once i got flying, i couldn't be loyal to her anymore. i had to have sex with a lot of different women. mostly strangers who i meet in the towns when i'm just there for a night or two."
maybe since i'd told me about my husband being a pastor (he's not anymore) he was feeling the need to confess his sins. to lighten the load in his heart by telling a kind stranger about his transgressions. should i ask him if he wants me to pray with him? tell him that God forgives anyone who comes to Him with an open heart? is my mouth hanging open? don't act shocked, act like you hear this kind of thing all the time. stay cool.
"i can get busy pretty much anywhere now. just drop trow and go at it."
ok, that doesn't sound like confession. that sounds like bragging. i should probably say something in response, but i haven't the foggiest idea what.... think, think, think.
"since we're the only ones here... do you want to?"
"do i ... want to... what?"
this cannot be happening. i think i hear twilight zone music. where's the candid camera crew?
"do you want to have sex. here. now."
blank... think of something appropriate to say! don't just sit here with your foot on the wall clutching your paperback to your chest with your jaw drooping stupidly. didn't he just hear me say that i'm a married woman? that i'm a pastor's wife? dang, i'm fat these days & he wants a piece of this? wow, that's actually flattering. wait! NO, that's not flattering! he just told me he'll bang anything. he has no standards and, and, and, EEW!
when i think about myself, i think that i'm very un-domestic. i'm not entirely sure why that is since, according to google, "domesticity = affection for the home and its material comforts." i certainly like being home & i enjoy being comfortable while i'm here. maybe it's just that i don't really like cooking. i do it because i have to and because i like eating, but i have no love for the process the way many folks do. i like living in a clean house, but as we've discussed before, i'm not good at keeping my own house clean. i clean houses for a living & when i get home, i've got no interest in bothering with any more of that cleaning foolishness. i'm good at it though, i think. that's why i make the big bucks.
all right then, i'm not much of a cook & i live in a dirty house, but i'm crafty when it comes to come other things. like, last year in the month before christmas (sometimes known as november) i built a dollhouse for brooke from a kit that came with 9,287 pieces. it was all plain wood in itty bitty little morsels of nothingness. i had no idea when i committed to tackling this project just how incredibly massive it was, but, i got it done & now it's gorgeous, right down to the wall paper & curtains in each room.
i also started making parts of costumes for brooke. most especially, ears. i think i've made 7 pairs so far & brooke wears at least one of them pretty much every single day. at first i was buying supplies to make these things, but then i discovered that it's even more fun to find crap around the house that i can cut up or dismantle & use that to make the costumes. like, i used the waist band of some old black sweats to make brooke a raccoon mask. and i used a ripped up old mouse costume that was dug out of my parents' attic to make some lovely white ears. bits of felt, old pieces of pants that i cut & hemmed, an old outgrown skirt that had a cute pattern, anything's fair game & nothing is sacred.
my latest fun crafty thing is making clothes for stuffed animals. i would love to make doll clothes, but since brooke loathes dolls & i don't often play with them myself anymore, i've had to settle for making clothes for the stuffies in the family. it makes me think back to my childhood & my love for dressing up my cats. and not of the stuffed variety either. nothing was more fun than holding my cat down while i aggressively dressed him in a pretty dress & tied a bonnet tightly around his neck. i was always pleased when he would escape & take off out the front door to streak about the neighborhood because i thought he was showing off his new duds around the 'hood.
here are a couple of my little clothing pieces i've made in the past couple weeks.
i'm kind of partial to making mini skirts right now, but once i get good at them my next task will be to cut up a flag to make a star spangled bikini,
today was pretty exciting for me because, for the first time, i got reviewed. tracy over at it's an average life wrote a little review of my blog & posted it to possibly direct some of her readers to my page. and she was so nice with the deliciously exaggerated things she said about my writing that i was all a-giggle for a bit this afternoon. each time since then that i've gotten a comment from a new reader it makes me all glowy & fresh again.
so for those of you who are new in my realm, here's a quick synopsis; i started writing this in january when things in my family life were at a really low point, but it quickly evolved into something that i use to cheer myself up. i have a wacky 8 yr old daughter who i can't resist writing about frequently & i'd forgotten how much i love being laughed at. i know, most people prefer to be laughed with, but i'm perfectly happy to show you my flaws & failings & let you laugh at them right alongside me.
i've put together a list of my favorite posts from the past 9 months, so if you've got a bit of time & you're interested, feel free to visit them. perhaps you'll be able to join me in laughing at myself & the funny things in life.
first we have the hair bonanza series that you can see linked on the right side of my blog.
how many ways can i expose myself (in a non-pornographic way)? oh, lots & lots of them as you can read in my self exposure trilogy. exposing myself 1
today was one of "those" days. you know the kind - where you wake up & there are grumpy vibes coming from everywhere. the first thing i heard was the cats hissing & snarling at each other. i should rephrase that; the big one was hissing and snarling because the little one was bugging the crap out of her & needed her butt to be properly kicked. my kid was whining, my husband was huffing. i wanted to go back to sleep & try the other side of bed a bit later, but i was going to be responsible & productive & peel myself out from between my fabulous sheets, regardless of the day's beginning.
i tried to play peacemaker to all parties involved; i really gave it the old college try when i was out on the back deck putting out bird seed to feed our abundant wildlife. chris made a silly face through the window, so i dropped my pants & mooned him. nothing brings a spurt of shock & bewildered amusement to a group of people like a totally unexpected, pasty white butt flash.
it seemed as though we'd pulled our emotions up by the bootstraps, but after a few hours of school work, brooke & i were both over it. she'd been put onto yellow on her chart (green means good, yellow is not so good & red is bad. i know, so original) and still had to finish her book report. when it was done, she buried her face in my boobs & started shaking & saying that she just wanted to scream really loud for a long time. so i sent her up to take a shower & told her to scream it all out in there. our duplex neighbor wasn't home, thankfully, so it was the place in the house where it was least likely to annoy the snot out of me or result in cops showing up at our door.
when she came down later, she was wearing a red shirt & had made a little paper sign that she stuck to her stomach. i threw it away eventually, but then took a picture of it in the trash because it's kind of funny.
then she made a bigger sign to hang from herself to make sure it was loud & clear that she was feeling red. she frequently shows & expresses her feelings in colors rather than words & red or burgundy seem to be about the worst. well, black's pretty bad too, but that's a whole different place for her.
i told her it was time for another round of art therapy. time to go get her marker box & draw on the floor. when she's extra frustrated, there's nothing like coloring big, huge things to really purge out the crap that's on the inside so that she can go on with her day. there was some stomping, banging & snarking, but she soon got down to business. here comes the predictable giant head of anger. the angry eyebrows & the huge, toothy frown. she didn't have enough juice in her red markers (another source of pissiness) to fill the whole thing & she riduculed me for my suggestions of red polka dots because, duh, mom, polka dots are for cheerful times! she settled for drawing hearts & then scribbling them out to show her sadness & broken heart. she wrote, "I AM SO SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and then she counted how many exclamation points there were so she could point out to me that there were 19 exclamations points worth of sadness displayed on the floor.
i told her that when i was a kid, i used to write all the bad words i knew on paper or in my diary and it kind of made me feel better. i encouraged her to try it because, 1, i thought it might help her. 2, it would be interesting to see what bad words she knows. and 3, it seemed to me that i might just have some bad words of my own that i'd like to write down after having such a draining day.
she resisted my peer pressure to write down bad stuff. she said it would make her feel too bad, so i got out a marker & started my own list.
it wasn't long before she joined in on the fun & was writing away. i told her that spelling didn't count when you're writing your mad words, so she could spell them any old way she wanted. you can clearly see that she did just that.
i love how she spelled onion & stupid & meany. and she asked me to write plaque & then she drew icky teeth. i tried to draw a tooth of my own on the left, but it ended up looking more like long-crotch tights, so i added feet.
she wrote down "o my god" and "damit" but then asked me to erase them immediately because it made her really nervous to even see those written down. she's so much better than me. she wrote down a couple of the stupid songs that i sing to her to help certain words stick in her head because she hates them since they get lodged in her brain & she can't get them out. (mwahaha! all part of my evil parenting scheme!)
we added another level of fun to our therapy by trying to read all our words backwards as we washed them off the floor. this tickled her little self all the way down into her funny bone. she wanted me to read them out & then filmed me washing & shouting them because it was probably the best part of the day & she's all about documenting her life on video. it's a horrible little video, but you can see how the therapy worked for her through her giggling.
she thought it would be fun to color on her face & i decided to join in on that portion of the fun as well. we started out with war paint (we've been studying sioux indians lately) and then it deteriorated to something involving angry eyebrows & a soul patch. it was very funny, either way & thankfully all washed off before bed.
and so ended another day in the riley household in which art therapy came, saw & conquered our pain.
i swear, when i clean the litter pan, my cats are like those obnoxious people who read popular blogs and scroll straight past the post just so they can type/scream "FIRST" in the comment section. these cats dive straight in, sometimes while i'm still scooping just so they can be the first one to crap in the clean box. can't i get even 2 minutes of cleanliness before they have to funk it up again?
i've noticed in the past couple years that i've been growing some really weird hairs in random locations on my scalp. i have a habit of running my fingertips along my scalp sometimes when i'm watching tv or reading a book & from time to time i'll discover these really thick, kinky almost crispy feeling hairs growing & i can't help but to pull them out so that i can examine them more closely. not only do they feel strange, they also don't hold color properly, so they've got an odd assortment of colors streaked across their lengths. i even pulled out another strand of my hair once to compare the two to confirm to myself that my hair really doesn't look like that. because, to be completely honest here, they look like giant pubes.
they're the length of the rest of my hair, but that's where the resemblance ends. i've probably pulled 7 or 8 of them out over the course of 2 years, but i'm starting to wonder if, over time, they'll replace my normal hair. i've noticed some thinning, but what if that's just nature's way of making room for the pubey hair that's on its way to replace them? if i keep pulling them out, will i end up bald? will i be one of those old ladies whose scalp shows pinkly through her little bits of hair that she's got teased up in an attempt to cover the bald? will i wear a clear rain hat to avoid any possible chance of my 18 hairs getting rained on & matted to my head, leaving the world to see that underneath it all, i really look like gollum?
i've decided to do some research about what i've got to look forward to, should this head of pubic hair be my fate. i want to know what my options are so i can be prepared.
you can see here that it's a bit wispy & thin, but i think i could get by. with some good styling products i could make it work, people.
here's an option that i could go for if i wanted to just keep it really short & easy to maintain. if you've read my hair chronicles, you know i'm not too scared to go this short, so this is looking like a pretty viable option. easy peezey, lemon squeezy.
if it grew in really thick & luxurious (as opposed to what it's been so far in my life) i could see this one as a good possibility. i'd have to dye it to get that nice chocolately color, but this girl (and by this girl, i mean me, not nick jonas) is not scared of a box of hair dye!
and lastly, i've found that one that somehow seems the most likely to be my fate. i mean, if i'm unlucky enough to have my head hair replaced by pubes, what are the chances that it'll be pretty? this is what i fear.
well tonight we came to a whole new kind of cat maintenance. we've known for a while now that nim's baby teeth were starting to fall out because we'll see spaces in her mouth. brooke loves to look at animals' teeth, so she's frequently digging into her mouth to have a look around and tonight we discovered that one of her little baby fangs (as can be seen in the picture here when they first came in) was very loose. brooke's been wanting to find a baby kitty tooth & save it for posterity & since we haven't discovered any yet & the new big teeth are almost all in, she thought this might be our last shot. she asked me to trap nim & pull that tooth out before it had the chance to get lost in the rug or digested with her food.
