Archives: To my brother

~~ Originally posted as a Facebook Note on May 24, 2009 ~~

Me and Michael goofing around
at my wedding

It's been years since the day you left,
when your world got to be too much to bear.
My world, my life just isn't the same,
There are days I look up wishing, hoping, you are still there.

I still have so many questions, so many doubts
And I've stopped counting the sleepless nights
I lie there thinking, wondering what I could have done
To make your life better, to make things right.

I replay that night over and over in my head
It's a nightmare that I lived, that just won't end.
They tell me in time I'll forget, but the details are still vivid.
Maybe I'm doomed never to forget them.

A lot has changed since the night you said good-bye.
We welcomed a baby girl who is everything to me.
I will tell her stories and make sure she knows how great you were
But it's doesn't compare, I wish she could have the real thing.

It's selfish of me, I know,
But I so want to make you laugh one more time;
For Oscar to give you puppy kisses to make it better;
And for you to hear Jocelyn giggle;
To reminisce about our childhood;
To make you one more lasagna;
To watch one more movie together or make fun of Rachael Ray;
To rock out to Guitar Hero one last time...
But I guess it will all have to wait.

There are so many memories, and stories to tell
You're etched into my soul, you were truly heaven-sent.
I was blessed to have had the time with you that I did
Even if, in the grand scheme of time, it was but a moment.

I know you think you were alone in this life,
But we all loved you more than you'll ever know.
The words may not have escaped my lips,
You were my big brother, my Marine, my hero.

Archives: We are the biggest dorks known to man

Mickey Mouse Platy

~~ Originally posted as a Facebook Note on January 23, 2010 ~~

 

We picked up a myriad of new fish for the tanks in the last couple of days.

First, let me back up a little bit. The whole foray into becoming fish people started in late August when I figured a small tank in Jocelyn's room would make a great night-light. (Turns out I was right.) Then my dear friend Amy told me she had a 55-gallon tank she would GIVE me. And everything that went with it. At first I turned her down, but the more I thought about it, the more appealing the offer was, especially if she wasn't going to be using it. (And truth be told, it is so much better for the tank/filter/etc. to be used rather than just sitting in storage.) So we added the big mamma jamma tank to the living room decor.
  Originally, we just bought a few fish. Two female bettas (one blue and one red), two cory catfish and a plecostomus for the big tank downstairs and a beautiful blue male betta and a plecostomus for Jocelyn's tank.

Fast-forward to last week. In the time since we got the tanks set up, I managed to kill one plecostomus, one of the female bettas, and the male betta contracted a variety of diseases that couldn't be cured so we put him out of his misery a la the freezer.

Orange platy

You might think that we would give up on fish at that point. Nope. You know me ... full steam ahead on the challenge.

So I went to PetSmart yesterday and bought a beautiful calico fantail goldfish for Jocelyn's tank. And I picked up a few Platys (or Platties - depends on where you look online), a pregnant dalmation molly and some tetras.

Jocelyn's poor goldfish was stressed beyond belief. It was hiding, it wouldn't eat, it was awful. So what do I do? I decide this goldfish needs a friend. So off we go to the pet store today to get it a friend. (Which we did, and which did help it come out of its shell a little bit, although the additional plants I added to the tank might have helped with that too.) Beyond that, Scott was a little upset I got fish without him, so we picked up a fish for him - an incandescent shark catfish and I got another Mickey Mouse platy because, well, it's cool.

The guy at IncrediPet asked me if I had named the fish. I really hadn't given it much thought. So, over the course of the day, we managed to figure out names for all the fish.

Phineas and Ferb - the two goldfish in Jocelyn's room. The orange and black one (that is quite social, ironically enough) is Phineas and the shy calico one is Ferb.

Walt and Disney - the two Mickey Mouse Platys. The white one is Walt because I know for a fact that one is male. I haven't had the chance to figure out what the blue one is, so Disney works for it because, well, it can go either way.

Alpha - the red female betta, left from the original batch of fish. She was the first!

Candace and Perry the Platy - the two orange and black platys. One is female and one is male, so it works pretty well.
  Rorshach - the dalmation molly. Enough said. If it's spelled wrong, oh well ... you still got it. (And yes, Scott's the one that came up with that genius name, I can't take credit for that one at all.)

Argon, Xenon, Neon, Hydrogen and Raydon - the tetras. (Yes, you edumacated folks, those would be the noble gases. And yes, I spelled Radon wrong on purpose.)

Demish and Boogish - the two cory catfish ... named after Demon and Booger, our two cats.

Bruce - the shark. Fish are friends!

And drumroll please, because Scott named the remaining plecostomus Lawyer ... because it's a bottom-feeder. (Autumn, please don't kill me. I swear, it was all him.)

That, my friends, is why we're the biggest dorks in the world. But you know, we're also the people with a dog named Oscar Wylde Intentions, so would you expect anything less of us?

Oh, and for added fun, we got a new tank decoration - it's a big castle, looks a bit like Hogwarts. (Alas, it's not sitting in the gravel quite right, so I joke that there was an earthquake. I'm going to let the fish get acclimated and reduce their stress before I go screwing with the tank - as it was, I already did a water change and rearranged the tank on them today.)

Archives: The Great TV Escapade

~~ Originally posted as a Facebook Note on August 7, 2009 ~~

Time start: 2:00 p.m. when Scott calls me and suggests that we go to Best Buy and get the new TV today since I had to be in Lexington anyway.

I think it's a great idea, so I ask Mom if she would mind watching Baby Girl so we could go to Best Buy after I ran to work. She's game for babysitting, and a plan is formed. I left for work, and made it all the way to Coventry on Georgetown Road when I realized I should have borrowed Chris' truck so we could bring our purchase home ... so I call Laura to ask, and turn around to go drop off my car and pick up Chris' truck. (Hindsight's 20/20, okay?)

I go to work, and along the way I come up with the plan to check out what Pieratt's has to offer, since that's where we got the last TV, I thought they might be able to take care of us, and we already had credit with them so that would eliminate the need to apply for credit. Alas, I get to Pieratt's before Scott and the guy's got a great TV, but extremely overpriced and he can't get anywhere close to what Best Buy was offering. That was a bust.

So, I head off to Best Buy and apply for credit while I'm waiting on Scotty to get there. I get hooked up with the most awesome customer service guy and he makes sure we have everything we need. We walk out of Best Buy an hour and a half later with a 55 inch Samsung LCD TV, a new TV stand for it, HDMI cables, screen cleaner and a 22 inch LCD for upstairs. (All for less than we paid for the last TV!)

Excited about our purchase, Scott and I go get a great dinner at Olive Garden, and had a great server, great meal. Happiness ensues. We go unload the truck, return it to Chris and Laura's, and then go get the Boomder from Mom's ... and she's so funny, just running around and playing and going a mile a minute - and I don't know how she's doing it at 9 p.m. But we take her home and she crashes - and hard!

And that's where the fun stops.
 

Booger surveying the warzone our living
room became.

Enter the disaster.

Scott agreed he'd get the stuff hooked up tomorrow night while Mom and I are at the movies. But that was when we were under the impression we had the old TV until Saturday. Nope, Dean called today and wants the TV tomorrow. So we decide that I'll go ahead and put together the TV stand, and we'll get the new TV on it and hooked up to the cable so that Dean can take the old TV tomorrow, and that Baby Girl can still watch her cartoons tomorrow morning. No problem, right?

Shot from another angle of our warzone of a living room

Well, first I go to get the electric screwdriver and the Phillips bit has disappeared. I ask Scott where it is and he gets pissed and says he doesn't have a clue, and why the hell was I asking him. I was like, "Because you were the last person to use it." He and I are screaming back and forth about how we weren't the last one to use it. I eventually proved that he was, in fact, the last person to use it, but by that point he was just pissed off that "I had to be right." But nevermind, the screws on this piece actually went in without too much hassle, electric screwdriver not really necessary. Screaming match not really necessary.

Well, I get started and we realize that it might be a tight fit in the arch that was custom-built for the TV we're getting rid of. It's fine length-wise (a difficult fit, but possible), but width-wise turned out to be a problem. It was just about half an inch too wide to fit easily.

First we have to abandon the instructions, we must alter to match our wrestling match with fitting it inside the arch. Then we realize we'll have to take out not one, but two of the shelves in the arch in order to wrestle this sonofabitch in.

In the process of doing so we bust the cable outlet all to hell (no biggie, it's hidden), gouge the hell out of the wall in numerous places, and get wood stain on the wall in various places. Oh yeah, and baseboards are removed from the wall. Why you ask? Because the idiots who built our house don't know how to make walls square (don't believe me, go look in the master bathroom), and one side of the arch is deeper than the other one.

After all that, this stupid thing is in.

Oh, but wait, the hole in the back doesn't align with the electrical outlet. Shoot. Which, in reality, I insisted we put the back on for stability (which we needed in the course of our wrestling match, but would have saved a ton of problems had I listened to Scott and left it off). Can't win them all.

So, by now it's about 12:30 and Scott gets my jigsaw out of the garage so we can cut this hole. Well, I'm pretty scared because the saw blade is too long if I put the guide all the way to the back, and being that I don't want to cut the drywall, or worse, the electrical socket, we abandon the notion of the jigsaw. (Note, this was only after Scott spent half an hour with the jigsaw in pieces around him, and him playing with it like a monkey with a math problem trying to put it back together.)

Now enter the 1:00 a.m. trip to Wal-Mart to purchase a hand-saw with which to cut this hole. I'm so fried at this point, I find power tools but no hand saws (the next aisle over, perhaps). But I find a rotary tool that has cutting, drilling, engraving (cause you never know if you need to engrave something). Solution solved. Plus I get to thinking that we're going to have to cut more holes in the top of the TV stand for power cords, and I can't find the drill-bit attachment that makes holes for just such an occasion. (Again, note, it's 1:00 a.m. and I'm blindly running around Wal-Mart purchasing power tools that aren't the right ones for the job. What do you freakin' expect?)

I get home and we put the new rotary tool in action. We get started on the cut but it's taking forever and is hard to control. So I convince Scotty that we have to take the whole piece back out of the arch and use the jigsaw on it. Which we do. Hole cut. After we wrestle it back in, we find out it only freed one of the electrical sockets instead of both, but dammit, we didn't freakin' care at this point.

Then came the task of putting the top of the TV stand on the body. Knowing this was the widest part of the TV stand, we were concerned. And rightfully so. It was just a bit too tight a fit. So, out comes the rotary tool once again, this time with the sander attachment on it and Scotty starts sanding the drywall (you can't see it, it's behind the front of the arch). This, subsequently wakes up Baby Girl. (I know, the fighting, the jigsaw, the drill - none of it wakes her up, but the rotary tool does. Go figure.)

So, I go upstairs and calm her down. I come downstairs and Scotty has abandoned sanding the drywall, and has instead started sanding the furniture itself. Remember what I said about the walls not being square? Well, one side fit down fine, but the other one did not. Hence why he had to sand the furniture itself.

After sanding and beating and sanding and beating and sanding and beating some more, he gives the top one last pound and it goes down. It also breaks a corner off. Holy shit! This was a nice piece of furniture until we got ahold of it. Now it's worth less than the spool you steal from construction sites to use as a dinner table when you're in college.

ANYWAY, that's done. I sit down and the thing isn't level. I get up and get a level (I'm anal, okay?) and it is, in fact, not level. But it's in there so freakin' tight now that it won't move. Not a bit. So we have to deal with it not being level. And I noticed it bowed up in the middle. I said, "Eh, once we put the TV on it, it'll even out."

So, now comes the moment of truth, the unboxing of the TV. We pick it up, put it on the TV stand ... and we both end up squishing our fingers at one point or another, Scott can't find where the power cable plugs in, the optical video cable is a piece of crap and won't stay connected, and then Scotty can't find the power cable to the cable box. All is eventually remedied and I sit down to see if the fact the stand isn't level is noticeable on the TV. It's not really - but now the TV stand bows in the middle the opposite way now that the TV is on it. At this point it's quarter to three in the morning, you just have to let some stuff go.

Well, finally, at 2:56 a.m., the TV is hooked up and the power has been turned on for the first time. It's just snow, but dammit, the TV is alive. It's about damn time. (Note, Scotty said he wanted to be in bed by midnight. HAHAHAHA!)

To Scotty's credit, he does get the cable hooked up to it, and he turns on something in HD and it is unbelievable. Phineas and Ferb never looked so good! And then, for someone who didn't really want to stay up past midnight, he spends the next 20 minutes playing with the TV and admiring the HD. (We had HD before, but not like this!)

Baby Girl wakes up again, I go upstairs and calm her down. And we finally call it a night. Round about 3:30 a.m. But it's not over yet ... no, no, tomorrow I still need to clean up the living room and make it Jocelyn-safe (and Oscar-safe for that matter), still need to attach the doors to the TV stand, and Scotty needs to hook up the surround sound, XBox and Wii.

Next time we decide to buy a new TV, even if it's for a noble cause like our anniversary, someone please smack me.

Archives: Just a few more reasons to hate Indiana

~~ Originally posted as a Facebook Note on August 31, 2009 ~~

Believe it or not, I own this book. And the Duke
version too, but that's another issue.

Alright, as if the "Country Gospel Music Church" and 45-mph road construction zones every five miles with no actual construction going on weren't bad enough, here are a few other things seen while in Indiana that made me question its worth. :)

1. Marion featured a billboard advertising their historic getaways. "Voted #4 by Midwestern Living"
Alas, someone needs to tell Marion that fourth place is the third loser, and is nothing to brag about. If you don't get to stand on a podium holding roses and tears streaming down your face, you don't get to brag. Let it go. You got nothing Marion, IN.

2. "The Last Resort" RV campground
Seriously, if you ever catch me camping ... and camping in Indiana at that ... you know it's a total last resort. Talk about mastery of the obvious.

3. "Westward 'Ho' Campground"
I'm still trying to figure out why the 'Ho' is in quotes. (Yes, the single quotes are what was on the sign.)

4. "Like ice cream? Try ours. Open Sat-Sun."
Well, I guess in Gnaw Bone, IN you're not allowed to like ice cream Monday through Friday.

5. "Brown County - Home of over 200 unique stores."
I couldn't get a cell phone signal the entire time I was in Brown County. Ergo, when I plan a shopping trip, Brown County, IN isn't going to be remotely close to on the list. If there's no cell signal, it's not a good sign. I'm sure if I actually got out of the car, I might have heard dueling banjos.

6. "Sleepy Arms Hot Tub Suites and Wedding Chapel"
Seriously? Who the hell decides to run away and get married in podunk Indiana? Is there really a market for that?

7. Right across the street from the "Sleepy Arms Hot Tub Suites and Wedding Chapel" was a hotel advertising "overnight rooms."
Is there a need to advertise that you have overnight rooms? Do people really drive by this place and think, "man I need to take a rest for an hour ... oh wait, guess I can't, I can only stay overnight." I mean, I know it's a few miles down the road from the Westward 'Ho' Campground, but really????

Then again, it is Indiana ... what do you expect?

Archives: Why I don't cook at home very often

~~ Originally posted as a Facebook Note on October 6, 2009 ~~

She wanted to help, how cute is that?

Alright, so if making the world's scariest ladybug in cake wasn't bad enough of a disaster in my kitchen, enter dumb move number two - making homemade chicken nuggets with a toddler and an Oscar at your feet.

First, things are going okay. Jocelyn starts playing in the cabinet I just pulled a baking sheet out of, but that's par for the course. The silicone cake pans will get on the floor, but that's no big deal. She's happy and entertained.

I get my breading assembly line ready. A bowl of flour, a bowl of beaten eggs, and a bowl of Panko bread crumbs. I cut the chicken, making sure I only touch the chicken with one hand so that I have a salmonella-free hand available in case the phone rings or if Jocelyn decides she needs to get into something she shouldn't.

While I get ready to bread chicken, I hear her clanging in the drawer at my feet with all the frying pans and lids in it. I glance down and she's taken them all out of the drawer, and replaced them with herself. It's too cute, I can't say anything. I want to get my camera, but my left hand is an ooey-gooey-salmonella-laced mess, so that's not happening. So, I get back to breading. But alas, I manage to bump the bowl with eggs and they go all over the place, just narrowly missing Jocelyn's head. I start cleaning it up, but don't get it done in time, and here comes Oscar to help. Great, one more thing I need to watch his behavior to make sure it doesn't upset his stomach. Just once it would be nice that the only thing he eats is dog food. But no, that would be too damn easy.

Frying pan obstacle cours

I go to cross the kitchen to get more paper towels and I trip over the wonderful frying pan obstacle course that Jocelyn has laid out for me. And while I'm cleaning this up, she's gotten into the baking cabinet and pulled out the pecan crusher, quite a heavy (and deadly!) object. She takes the handle and heads over to the corner to beat on aluminum cans with it. Yeah, well, she's out of my hair.

I finish cleaning up the eggs mess, beat some more eggs and get started again. I finally get all of the chicken breaded and on the pan (which took some work, I ran out of room). I go to put them in the oven with some au gratin potatoes (worse yet, the generic kind ... what was I thinking!?!) and there's Jocelyn with an oven mitt on her hand - guess she wanted to help.

Munchkin struggling with the
Cocoa Puffs

I shoo her out of the kitchen so I can finish getting dinner in the oven and get cleaned up. I hear crinkling on the other side of the bar. I peek around the corner and I see an empty Cocoa Puffs box. And off she runs into the living room, where I find her struggling to get Cocoa Puffs out of the bag. It's too freaking cute, so I sit down with her and watch CMT and munch on Cocoa Puffs. Until I have to get up and check on dinner, and that's when I give her a small container full of Cocoa Puffs and I put the bag back in the box and put it away.

Back to dinner.

The good news here is that the homemade chicken nuggets taste pretty darn good, though it looks like Jocelyn isn't really impressed. Oh well, it was an excuse to use my new Blackberry Wine Barbeque Sauce, and that is happiness.

Archives: Slicing off the end of my finger - good times

This was taken two days later when I went to the
doctor to have the mesh crap removed. They
were laughing at me for taking pictures. I said, "Hey, it's
for my sadistic friends on Facebook."

~~ Originally posted as a Facebook Note on March 10, 2010 ~~

Okay, so here's the whole story, without the Facebook character limit. If there are any typos, please forgive me, it's a little hard to type without an index finger.

So, I finished Billy's quilt and still had a bunch of squares left and I wanted to do something with them. I decided to make a scrap quilt. In order to do that, I had to cut all the pieces into usable strips. I did just fine earlier today, using my crappy rotary tool. But it wasn't giving me clean cuts, so I opted to move to my good rotary tool when I was cutting strips tonight.

I had been working on this for about half an hour, was in the groove (despite the fact my blade fell off twice and I had to fix it ... that should have been a sign to stop, but did I listen, no). I make a cut, obviously not paying much attention and the next thing I know, I see something that looks like part of my fingernail pop across the mat. Oh, so I shaved off a fingernail, no biggie. Then I look at my hand. Uh oh.

I put my right hand under my left hand to catch the blood as I run downstairs to rinse it off (don't know why I did that, there is a bathroom not 10 feet from the room I was in) and wrap it before applying pressure. Scott asks what's wrong, I tell him I cut off the tip of my finger, and I hadn't even finished the sentence when he was on the phone, asking Mom to come over and sit with the Baby Girl, on the offhand chance she woke up. (We didn't see the point to wake her, but didn't want to leave Oscar in charge. He's been a punk lately.)

Off we go to the ER. The gal who checked us in was great. The nurse in triage was an idiot. She asked me if I smoked twice. Apparently I might have forgotten if I did or not in thirty seconds' time. She made me unwrap my finger to look at it, and as such, it starts throbbing again.

She takes me back to the room. We wait for a few and the doctor comes in. She's pretty cool. Accused me of making a mess of her room... well, whatcha gonna do? Once again, have to take the wrapping off the finger, the blood flow restarts and the pain returns. ARGH.

She informs me that there are no blood vessels in the tip, so there's no reattaching it. Great. And because it was a slice and not just a cut, she can't stitch it up. Translation: my left index finger will permanently be slightly disfigured. About a quarter of an inch of flesh on an angle. Eh, could be worse. Battle scars are cool.

The step she's going to take is put a tourniquet on my finger to stop the blood flow, and then she will use this stuff that will clot as soon as it gets wet. Coolness.

Off she goes to get her stuff. She's gone for quite awhile, so I lay down and watch as Scott reads comments to his post about us being in the ER. We hear the doctor just outside the door with the Physician's Assistants (which she told us she'd be bringing them in) and she says, "You guys have got to see this." No, I'm not kidding. As they walk in, I sit up and scare the poor PA, thought Scott said she was freaked out because we were laughing so much.

They get started on what they are going to do, and then she puts that mesh-clotting-magic stuff on my finger. She could have warned me it was going to sting like a mother scratcher. We get it all taken care of, cracking jokes the whole time. I'm sure they thought I was on something, but, well, you know what they say: Those who can laugh at themselves never cease to be amused. Besides, if I didn't laugh, I'd cry.

Then I had to get a tetnus shot, but the guy was awesome because I didn't feel it. Of course, the true test will be how sore my arm is tomorrow morning! Of course, I would have loved that guy regardless cause he brought me 800mg of Motrin, and for that I was thankful.

He told me we had to wait 15-20 minutes to make sure I didn't had a reaction to the shot. Unfortunately a drunk dude in handcuffs came in and distracted everyone, so he forgot about me. Finally Scott went out to make sure they remembered we were alive and they discharged me. The gal at the check-out desk asked us what we were laughing about the whole time, so I had to go through the whole spiel again, but I said, "Wouldn't you rather us laugh than scream bloody murder?" She told us a few stories about her nights in the ER, and one time she sliced her finger open. Good times.

Side note: They kept handing me forms to sign. But since I'm left-handed and I managed to do this to my left hand (because, oddly enough, I cut with my right hand), I laughed and handed all the forms to Scott.

Side note #2: Nancy at Sew-A-Lot just gave me a lesson on rotary cutting last Monday. Apparently I'm not a very good student.

Side note #3: Remember the drunk dude in handcuffs I mentioned? Seven cop cars in the hospital parking lot as we left.

Archives: The best day of my life

** This was originally written and posted on my FB page as a note in July 2009 **

Ask just about any married woman without kids what the best day of her life was and she will most likely say it was her wedding day.

And ask any mother what the best day of her life was and she will most likely tell you it was the day her kids were born.

I’m here to tell you, the day my daughter was born was not the best day of my life. In fact, it was downright awful. I had to be at the hospital at 5:30 in the morning, after having hardly slept the night before (I was being induced, so I was a nervous wreck). They took me in, had a hard time finding a vein for the IV, and hooked me up to the contraction monitoring machine. But alas, the stuff wasn’t working right. So while my husband stepped out (for what I don’t recall), they moved me to another room which subsequently freaked him out when he came back. As the day wore on, it just got better. The pitocin wasn’t working. The max dosage is 20, they maxxed me out at 30, and it still took its sweet time to work. When the contractions finally hit, they were all in my back – yes, my stubborn daughter may have been head down, but was facing up (to see the world!) and I was in back labor, so my hard-pressed days of “I want a natural labor” were put to rest an hour after the contractions started when I begged for an epidural.

All the while, I’ve been watching the Food Network all day long and I’m not allowed to eat a freakin’ thing. The sweet nurse did hunt me down a popsicle at lunch, but it was grape and I hate grape. I choked it down anyway, because she jumped through hoops to get it for me.

After pumping me full of fluids for an hour, but what felt like a freakin’ eternity, I got my epidural and fell in love with my anesthesiologist. Of course, you’d fall in love with a man who instantly takes away the pain too. But he warned me it went in sort of funny and a couple hours later I felt it starting to wear off. He gave me a “refresh” and life was good. Until the epidural fell out. So, here he comes again to give me another huge needle in my spine. Whereupon right afterwards my blood pressure drops like crazy, I get nauseous, and puke my guts out (well, no, just my grape popsicle) in front of my husband, my mother, and my in-laws. You know they loved that show.

The sweet nurse got off at 7. All day long I had four visitors in my room (the max is two) and she told us she didn’t really care as long as they didn’t get in her way. But after sweet nurse left, in trudged a troll of a nurse whose first words were “there are too many people in this room, two of you have to leave.” Little did she know two of them were saying goodbye, had she taken the time before she opened her big fat mouth, she would have known that.

This woman was not very nice, at all. And she screwed up my delivery. By the time she called my doctor in, my daughter was too far gone for him to turn her face-down, so the back labor continued. (Exacerbated by the fact my wonderful anesthesiologist turned off my epidural almost two hours before.) It got to the point my doctor told her to move and he handled everything – you know you’ve got a bad nurse when the doctor literally tells her to move.

After my daughter was born, evil nurse asked if I was in any pain and I told her I had back cramps and she goes, “That’s not normal.” HELLO! I was in back labor all day long woman! My doctor, God love him, patted my shoulder and told me he’d take care of it. So, a few minutes later I’m given a percoset , which I subsequently throw back up. But evil nurse won’t let me have another one, despite the fact she saw the pill come back up. Sigh.

The sweet baby nurse comes and asks me to nurse my baby for the first time. I’m in and out of sleep at this point and ask her if it can wait until tomorrow. When I mention it to evil nurse later she tells me that it’s better to do it earlier. Great, two hours as a mother and I’m already being told I’m a screw up. Thanks evil nurse.

Then, at 1 in the morning I get to move to my private room, and best of all, I get a new nurse! But not before evil nurse walks me to my room, forgetting my stuff (which my husband told her where everything was before he left – yes, I told him to go home, he needed sleep as much as I did) and holding out on me and not bringing me my Coke that my mom went and got for me right after the baby was born. (As it was the only thing that helped with the nausea.)

So, as it turns out, the only good thing about that day was really that, at 9:16 p.m., I was no longer pregnant. I was ecstatic because now I could go home and drink that bottle of wine that had been sitting at home waiting for me, taunting me, for almost five months, no more heartburn and more importantly, my ankles would go back to normal. (The joke was on me, because it took about two weeks before my ankles stopped swelling.)

---
When was the best day of my life? When I finally felt that maternal bond to my daughter. Now, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t neglect her, nor did I regret having her, I just didn’t feel that “I’m-going-to-have-to-kick-your-ass-if-you-so-much-as-think-about-laying-a-hand-on-this-child” feeling for a couple of days.

Now my husband said I had it all along, I just didn’t understand it.

Whoever’s theory is correct, the fact remains that the day I realized that mother-daughter bond was the best day of my life. She needed me and I was bound and determined to make sure that everything she needed (and some things that weren’t!) would be provided so she could have the best life possible. And I didn’t think I could love her any more than I did that day.

Boy was I wrong.

As each day progresses, and she learns new things, there are habits I see that just make my heart melt. From the apparently innate love of barbeque sauce and doughnuts (two of my vices, though not together as that phrase might inadvertently suggest), to watching her neglect the food in front of her just to grab the toy car and go “vroom, vroom,” I see myself in her each and every day. (Yes, I’m a car girl, which is why it thrills me to see her taking to them.) It just blows my mind how there are some things that she does that she didn’t learn, she just did. She gives me my husband’s expressions, and has since the beginning – that’s not learned. She sleeps on her stomach with her head on her right arm like me, and that’s not learned either.

It just amazes me how much of myself I see in this little girl. And how much I want to protect her from the world, I want to protect her from my mistakes, I want to protect her from any pain and hurt that may come her way. And it was the day I realized that was the best day of my life – not the day she was born. That day pretty much sucked.