Claire’s is not the place to be four days after Christmas.  It was crazy crowded with after Christmas sales, and everyone and their dog was getting their ears pierced that day.  We waited in line for almost 20 minutes, which gave Goose plenty of time to completely psych herself out.  She started crying about 10 minutes into our wait.  I tried to reassure her that it wasn’t going to be as bad as she imagined, and even told her that we could come back another day if she’d like to wait.  When it was our turn, DynaGirl volunteered to go first.  She was very brave and stoic–a champ at hiding her fears and masking the pain.  (She gets that from me.)  Goose got in the chair, but when I started to pin her hair back so the piercing girl would have access to her ears, she started to lose it.  She just couldn’t do it.

We left Claire’s, and Goose bawled all the way to the American Girl Doll store.  They were tears born from fear and disappointment, but mostly from frustration over

Goose and her mini-me, Lauren, which happens to be Goose's middle name.

thinking she had failed to do something she had set out to do.  I was beginning to worry we had ruined her 10th birthday, but a few minutes in the splendor that is the AGD store helped snap her out of her funk.  She picked out a new outfit, a little skater number complete with board, and even got her doll’s ears pierced, which was considerably less expensive than what I had just paid to get DynaGirl’s ears pierced.  It was also less expensive than getting your doll’s hair styled at the salon.  Twenty dollars for 5 minutes in a chair with a “professional”??

After Goose picked up her doll from her post-piercing cubby, she had decided it was time to go back and face her fears.  Come heck or high water, she was getting her ears pierced.  There would be no more stalling and no postponing.  She was adamant.  So we went back to Claire’s.  She stilled looked more than a little nervous sitting in the chair, and at one point, I thought she might even be sick.  But in the end, she did it, and was grinning ear to ear the rest of the day.

And that is so Goose.  Stubborn to a fault, but steadfast in her determination.  Don’t ever try to tell her that she can’t do something.  Don’t even suggest that she try again another day.  If she wants to accomplish something, she will.  Sometimes it takes everything I have to ignore the kicking and screaming along the way, but when it comes down to it, this is one of her traits I am most proud of.

Don’t go changin’, Goose.  I love you just the way you are.  Happy birthday!

The other day I was talking on the phone to my oldest sister while I was getting ready for the day and I casually mentioned how dry my face had been lately.  She asked what kind of moisturizer I was using, and when I told her the same drugstore moisturizer I’ve always used, her response was, “No offense, but you’re getting older now so you need to start using a better moisturizer.”

Have I mentioned Mr. T is driving?

So yeah, I get it—I’m old.  But I’m cool with it.  Mostly.

I just wanted to thank you all for your part in making life in my advanced years worth living.  Hopefully, after the holidays I’ll be around a little more.  I’ve missed you.

DynaGirl’s also been home sick the past couple of days.  Boo.

A heads up to my local readers: stay off the roads for the next 30 minutes or so.  Mr. T is out driving—his first behind the wheel since starting driver’s ed last week.  He’s only had about an hour and a half of practice time since he just got his permit two weeks ago and ten days of that we were driving a rental car.

We are no longer driving a rental car.  We have a new car.  Well, new to us anyway.  Five days after we dropped our car off at the body shop, the insurance company called to say they were totalling our car.  Double boo.  We had about a week to find a new one before our free rental ran out.  That was a little bit of an adventure that might deserve its own post.  We will see.

One thing I learned driving the rental car is that I am old.  You know you’re old when you start cursing the new-fangled-technology-ness of a car and need to read the owner’s manual to figure out how to turn on the headlights.  And don’t even get me started on those automatic doors.

I’m sure there are some other things worth noting, but I just can’t think straight at the moment.  I’m only posting now to keep myself from falling asleep before it’s time to pick up Mr. T from his drive.  Plus I wanted to say hello and that I miss you and that I hope all is well.

Stay tuned.  Perhaps in the near future I’ll tell you about Halloween or my battle with DynaGirl’s principal or my car-shopping adventures in which I may or may not have been mistaken for someone’s “life partner”.

Until then.

Who ever sends their kid to school thinking that will be the last time they will ever see him?

Last Friday, I was rear-ended on my way to BigHugs’ field trip at the pumpkin patch.  Luckily, I was alone in the car—the kids had taken the bus and the parents were following in their own vehicles.  The damage to our van is pretty extensive, but I walked away with just a stiff and sore neck and back.  The couple who hit me were very nice and thankfully insured.  Their insurance company is coming out today to assess the damage. 

People keep asking me about these details.  Who was driving?  What color was the car?  Did you see them coming?  How bad was the jolt?  Did your head snap back?  I don’t remember anything.  One minute I was sitting at a stoplight, and the next I was picking up pieces of my car off the road.

Mr. T is starting driver’s ed in a couple of weeks.  He’ll start behind the wheel training a week after that.  I don’t know if I’m ready for this.

I just dropped off my youngest girls at school, and now I have 20 minutes until it’s time to get Mr. T.  It’s a furlough Friday, some crazy new addition to this year’s school calendar to help compensate for the paycut they gave to teachers.  The kids are in school about two hours, but with the way the start and stop times are staggered at the three schools, I’m basically getting kids up and ready for school and picking them up for like 5 hours. Can I hear a good frick?

Another crazy new addition to this year’s school calendar is “Professional Growth Wednesday” where the kids all get out of school 1 1/2 hours early.  Three out of four Wednesdays are “Professional Growth Wednesday”.  For some reason this name really ooks me out.  I’m thinking it’s the word “growth”.  Growth.  Growth.  Growth.  Eech!

You would think with as much time as I’ve spent away from the blog, I would have all kinds of glorious accomplishments to report, but we’re talking about me here.  I have been in full avoidance mode, still trying waiting to recover from operation make my house less crappy with the new paint and carpet, which thus far has not been the resounding success I was led by myself to believe.  It’s pretty much gone from Bythelbs’s House of Crap to Bythelbs’s House of Crap, now with new carpet and paint!  Perhaps we’ll talk more about this next week.

Well, hopefully I’ll be back when the week is new and I’ll have more ideas for you.  And you’ll have things you’ll want to talk about.  I will too.

Remember, people can like you exactly as you are.

Happy 12th birthday, DynaGirl!  You are a plethora of awesome!

Smite them until there can be no more smiting.

~

Mr. T has a knack for finding random gems on the interwebs.

Get one more.

~

Hope your weekend is liquid gooooooooooold!

I had a new hygienist today who wasn’t the slightest bit interested in my foil or my footwear.  Her name was one of those names where someone’s taken an actual name and then switched out the first consonant to make an entirely new and made up sounding name.  She had a little frame hanging on the wall with her hygienist “license” in it, which looked like a photocopy of an e-mail that had been cut out by one of the more motor-skills challenged kids in my six year old’s first grade class.

Man, I’m a little snarky today.  She was a perfectly lovely woman, I’m sure, but every time she would pause to switch out instruments for my teeth-cleaning, she seemed paralyzed with indecision.  Her hand would hover over her tray, dodging from side to side, and then just as it seemed she had finally made up her mind and selected the winning tool, she would drop it in favor of another.  That was not exactly confidence inspiring.  I have never had so many equipment changes in a single cleaning session in all my life.  I suppose it’s possible that my oral environment was in such a state of disarray as to completely stymie all of her previously employed plans of attack, but I don’t really think so.  I mean, come on, I do brush twice daily and floss at least semi-annually.

The rest of my appointment was pretty uneventful.  Even the music was unremarkable.  And now I have six more months to forget to pretend to floss on a regular basis.

Goose and DynaGirl shared this with me last night.

It done been blessed!

This is one of Mr. T’s favorites:

Sorry, Dad … my white friends.