I’m Beautiful Like Me.

One way or the other, history will be made today. It’s an exciting thing to be a part of!

Things have been very, very emotional around here. The past few weeks, I have been scrounging for cash to pay our bills. Husband has gotten his business license and we’ve done some low-budget advertising with not much luck. I’ve been working on some online projects to make some money, including starting a new blog,. The Natal Astrology blog feels promising - it’s a niche that isn’t terribly crowded, I love the subject matter and won’t be running out of material to blog about in the foreseeable future. In the last 11 days of October, I made $9.75 - not a gob of cash, but at this point, every little bit counts!

I spent a lot of hard labor hours working on my mom’s shop, too, with Husband’s help. We got rid of a lot of garbage and donated a lot of practical (but useless to mom) stuff to the Goodwill. I’m very grateful that she helped us out - we wouldn’t have made the rent this month without this job.

Ginger, my beloved Hemingway cat, started urinating in weird places. Then we noticed blood in his urine. I did some online research and discovered that an older male cat with a UTI could die of renal failure if not treated. I cried a lot. Do I dip into my already scarce rent funds to help my cat?

Damn right I do.

I ended up calling into work last Thursday to take him to the vet. I opted for the antibiotics only, the cheapest route. If they don’t work, we’ll hafta go back for x-rays to see if he has bladder stones. So far, he is passing urine still and while it isn’t much, it’s no longer bloody. My fingers are crossed.

I managed to get Joy in to her doctor on Thursday, as well. Her ’script was running low and I was worried that she’d be off her meds for a long time, as it is often difficult to get in with her doctor right away.

Not sure exactly how we managed, but rent was paid, the cat and kid were dealt with, and all is okay. Not great, but okay.

My dad called on Thursday, but we didn’t talk until Friday. He told me that my gramma is having surgery on Monday to have a lung removed. Given her age and overall health, he said she has about a 20% chance of surviving the surgery. I’m stunned by this news. She is my only living grandparent. While we aren’t close, I fully expected that one day, I’d take my kids and Husband to spend Thanksgiving with her. That may not happen now.

We took the kids trick-or-treating with P and her girls on Friday.

Yesterday, they came over to our place for a bit, we ate a delicious dinner and just hung out. It was good for me. I have been spending my free time working on some knitted gifts for P and was able to give some of it to her. I finished up the scarf yesterday after she left.

I work this afternoon. I hate working Sundays, but we need the money. I asked for extra shifts, too. Hopefully it won’t suck to work some nights and I will actually earn some decent income from this place. In the meantime, we’ll still do what we can on the side to make it.

Cinderella, Hanna Montana, Hippie, Joy as Vampire, Buddha as John Wayne. Husband and I were there, but not as festive. We had a lot of fun!

On Saturday night, I met with Sonnie and Elevena to see Someday I Suppose, the locally-made film that featured Elevena.

I had a great time and the film surprised me with it’s wonderful cheesiness. There was this subtle humor going on and I wanted to laugh at so many different times throughout the film, but refrained since no one else was laughing. I kept looking over at Sonnie to see if she thought it was funny…

I met another one of the film’s stars and the director. It was a lot of fun. Thanks, Elevena!

I’m still nursing! Technically, we’re at 1 year, 7 months and 3 days. Every day is still another victory.

I’m very ambivalent about weaning. We’re down to nursing 3-4 times per day: mornings, bedtime and during the night, with the very occasional lunchtime session. Since I started working several weeks ago, nap time nursing is more and more rare. I was off today, so Buddha got himself a rare treat. Mostly, I’m ready to reclaim my body, but I know that when it is over at long last, I will miss it. Short of a medical anomaly, he is to be my last child. And while he isn’t my only child, he is the only child I have successfully nursed for any length of time. I’m very proud that we have come this far.

He has been eating like a bottomless pit. He has inherited his Daddy’s hollow legs. He really loves fries and can identify them by their bag in the frozen food aisle (assuming he’s not too busy trying to chuck items out of the cart). He is so full of personality: his smile is beautiful and as contagious as his hearty laughs, he is increasingly inquisitive and has one helluva temper. He likes to look at pictures - he points us out and calls us by our respective names. He can identify his eyes, nose, ears, hair, chin, and knees. He insists on meowing at all animals, but I attribute that to his living with a cat. Like Daddy, he is very interested in electronics, particularly if they are the telephone (which he refers to as "hello" or "’lo"), the remote ("teedee"), flashlights, or anything that lights up, makes noise and he shouldn’t really be touching.

He doesn’t let a broken tibia or a casted leg slow him down. Speaking of which, tomorrow we return to the pediatric orthopedic office to X-ray (hell) and,  hopefully, cast removal. I dread it. Remembering how much he hated the previous X-rays, I’m anxious that he’ll spot the machine and start crying. And then - assuming  - the cast does come off, they are going to use that horrible vibrating tool-ma-jigger to remove it. God grant me strength…

The girl has been a handful. Since we lost power for 4 days during the time our meds needed refilling, she has been completely off-kilter. Hell, so have I. It takes weeks for us to both return to "normal," too. And since my lack of meds affects my memory, I’ve further screwed up a time or five in reminding her to take hers. Point is, she has been especially whiny and defiant. Husband and I are very frustrated with her. She is doing well in school per her teacher at the recent parent-teacher conference, just talks too much every single day and gets in trouble for it every single day. So, we’ve opted to extend her consequences for that at home. If she comes home with strikes for talking, she won’t be allowed to play outside. This method has worked for us in the past, we’re hoping it will work again.

If you recall the recent bad news, I managed to dodge that bullet with her. P’s daughter L ended up not coming by or speaking to Joy about what had happened, so I simply told Joy that L had lost a friend from her classroom to death and might be feeling sad for a while. I’m somewhat relieved, in all honesty. I’m very uncertain how Joy would’ve reacted to hearing all of this at this moment in time, since she has been such an emotional wreck from whacky med-schedules.

In other news, Husband and I have decided to start our own business. Husband surprised everyone by coming up with a wonderfully clever name for it. Meanwhile, I’m stuck in restaurant hell but looking forward to two job interviews very soon, including one with the state next Tuesday (the 21st). Please keep your fingers crossed! While it isn’t a gob of money, it is compared to what I’m doing now and seems to be quite secure in the otherwise nose-diving economy. The benefits are quite nice, too. Best of all, it’s a good way to get my foot into the door doing the kind of work I want to do.

I finally finished my first pair of socks! It was very exciting to bring them in to Knit Night tonight and share them with my friends! FOs (finished objects) are always fun to share.

I’m very pleased with the way they turned out. I even like that the stripes are different on each sock. It’s quirky and unique!

I also finished the Wavy Gravy hat I started a couple of days ago. I was extremely frustrated with it for the first ten rounds or so, but then the pattern started to manifest and I found myself really digging it. 

I can see why Sonnie loves hat-making: it’s fun and fast.

I also like the yarn I used for this hat - Boku instead of Noro (which is what the pattern called for). It’s less expensive and just as pretty.

It was a small group tonight. On the far left there, you see Elevena, our celebrity friend.

The coffee was pretty and yummy.

And there was a "new" person tonight. Okay, so she isn’t exactly new, but it is the first time I have met the YarnVixen, so she’s new to me! I really liked her, too and hope she can make it to Knit Night more often. Here she models her super-nifty eyeglass lights. I must get some of these!

After Joy’s party-at-the-park on Saturday, Big Rob accompanied us back to our place. He kicked it there with us until it was time for the show. I got very short notice that Common Ground was reuniting for a show on October 4th and my generous brother agreed to hang out with my kids so Husband and I could go. YAY!

He had a great time dancing with the baby and it was pretty funny. Love the Grateful Dead and my weirdo family

After getting Buddha to sleep and the girls settled in quietly (so’s not to wake the sleep babe), Big Rob shared his bottle with us. Mom brought the bottle back from Germany for him.

Husband had one shot and I had two shots of Absinth. Good gravy, but is it potent! And surprisingly tasty. It looks and tastes like NyQuil, only more robust and… for lack of a better word, hot.

I love the caption on the back of the bottle. It says “…und ich sah, wie die Schmetterlinge tanzten” which means “…and I saw, how the butterflies dance.”

By the time we were halfway to the show, I had a pretty strong, but very clean buzz.

We got to Headliners Music Hall just as Common Ground took the stage. I was so excited to be seeing them play again! They split about 4 years ago, but I hadn’t seen them play since 2002 when they opened for none other than Vanilla Ice. Unfortunately, we got there late and I only saw one song that night. Worse still, my friend insisted we stay and watch Vanilla Ice! I stayed in touch with the band via their message board, but eventually the forum became a ghost town.

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