How Many Storches Does It Take To Screw In a Light Bulb

I somewhat randomly met a long-time reader recently who immediately wanted to know about The Tire. (Which is admittedly better than wanting an update on my menstrual cycle.) (HATE. THERE'S YOUR UPDATE. BUCKETS OF HATE.)

Where is The Tire? And what was the deal with The Tire?

Memmmmmmmmmmmmories!

The Tire is no longer in our basement or foyer or being used as a festive centerpiece. It is, believe it or not, actually on Jason's car. Enjoying the open road, freedom and the Japanese auto industry dream.

The deal with The Tire was simple: Jason's car only has room for a patch kit in the trunk. So he went and bought The Tire on eBay so he could also have a full-size spare. He rolled The Tire into our foyer. And left it there.

He said he might just go ahead and replace one of his current tires -- he thought it had a leak. This was the story for...a couple weeks? I think?

If your tire has a leak you should replace it, I would tell him at least once a day. I know how you drive. You're going to have a blowout and lose control and die. Replace the damn tire and get it out of the foyer. Nag nag nag. Also, get some more life insurance.

Then he said no, there wasn't a leak after all. He was just going to keep it in the attic storage for awhile. And yet the tire stayed in the foyer, occasionally drifting closer to the stairs, only to roll back to the foyer anytime anyone wanted some booze from the liquor cabinet.

Please put the tire up in storage, I would tell him at least once a day. It smells funny, and Noah is starting to crawl and wants to touch it all the time. Get the damn tire out of the foyer. Nag nag nag.

(Some people might just finally lug The Tire up the stairs and into storage their own damn selves. I do not believe these are the type of people I could be friends with in real life.)

So I posted photos of The Tire online, hoping he might be shamed into moving The Tire.

He didn't even notice for at least a week. And when he did, he carefully read all the entries and comments and said that since everybody seemed to love The Tire, it needed to stay in the foyer. Where it could continue to be loved and photographed, and hey, Amy, when you pull down on your face like that I can totally see under your skin into your eye sockets. That's cool.

Anyway. That's my marriage and welcome to it. 10 years next August, folks. Send wine.

The Tire was still in our foyer the day I interviewed our real estate agents. They wandered around the condo, making suggestions for decluttering and depersonalizing the place before going on the market. They stared silently at the tire for a few seconds, wondering if they needed to state the obvious.

Eventually, The Tire ended up in a rented storage unit for a few months before coming home to sit in a new foyer. And then Jason put it in the basement for Valentine's Day. And there it stayed for many months, until Jason ran over a nail and lo, The Tire was called into active service.

Thus ends the saga of The Tire.

Thus begins the saga of Light Bulb Watch 2007.

This is the ceiling fixture in our living room. I don't like it. Jason doesn't like it. It looks like the eye of that thing that lived in the trash compactor in Star Wars (also known as a dianoga, and OH MY GOD I KNEW THAT OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD), which I actually wouldn't mind since I imagine the long neck would actually be adjustable and I could shine light somewhere else besides...straight down.

We bought a new fixture right after moving in, but blah blah blah drywall internal support male-female electrical bzzzzzt I don't know. We needed some special thing to do some thing and HOLY CRAP GET TO THE POINT.

We have a new light fixture. We have all the necessary special things to install the new light fixture.

About a month ago the light bulb in the old fixture burned out. Jason said, whatever, don't bother replacing it, I'm just going to install the new fixture.

Uh-huh.

The light bulb is still burned out. I truly believe that replacing the light bulb will mean the new fixture WILL NEVER EVER EVER get installed, because Jason is a man of action only when things are actively pissing him off. But this also means I'm the one left explaining to guests why our living room is so dark and offering everybody flashlights.

So even though taking the cause to the Internet did not necessarily work for The Tire, I am trying again.

Just don't say you love the Eyeball Lamp. It really has no endearing qualities like The Tire.

(Some people might just learn how to install light fixtures their own damn selves. But these are just not my sort of people. Why waste all that effort that could otherwise be spent on perfectly good bitching?)

(Don't forget to vote everyday for your favorite parenting blog -- even if it's not this one. Especially if it's not this one.)

(I can't help it, people. I got a couple emails from a couple of my favorite fellow nominees who were all, IT'S ON, BITCH, and then I got all twitchy and competitive and threw the Monopoly board at their heads and challenged half the Internet to a crate race.)

#1 on the Threatdown: BEARS

Noah has woken up in the middle of the night four times in the past week. This is hugely unusual for him -- he's always been the kind of sleeper I don't tell other mothers about, lest I get pelted with Starbucks cups and small pieces of occasional furniture. Down at 8:30 pm, puts self to sleep, up at 7:30 am, hums and reads quietly to self until 8, down again after lunch and -- after a few minutes of shrieking and jumping while I remind myself for the millionth time to tighten the crib screws, dear LORD -- stays down for at least few hours.

See? You don't talk about a sleeper like that. I can feel your anger right now; your breath is steaming up my monitor from here.

But lately he's been waking up and talking about bears. Which, okay, not so much "talking" as waking up crying and saying "ABEAR ABEAR ABEAR" over and over.

Not to impress you too much with my deductive reasoning skills or anything, but I think he might be having nightmares about a bear.

***

Uh. So.

I wrote that 20 minutes ago, according to the clock on my computer and the amount of dried drool around my mouth. Yes, I fell asleep while writing my own blog entry. Somewhere, a black hole collapsed with a huge yawn and Narcissus just dozed off and drowned in the pool.

It's fitting, since the point of that story (I think) was really just a long setup for HOW FLIPPING TIRED I AM. Whenever Noah wakes up at night, Jason brings him back to bed with us, because he's a sucker and can sleep through repeated kicks in the kidney.  I suppose I'm a little more princess-and-the-pea about internal bruising.

This morning Noah woke me up at 5 am by repeatedly smacking me in the face with my own hand, while yelling HAND MAMA! MAMA! HAND! HAND! directly into my eye sockets.

***
This morning I gave him some blueberries and told him they were dessert. AND HE BELIEVED ME. AND IT WORKED.

I celebrated by helping myself to the last Snickers bar.

Next up: convincing him that a haircut = choo choo train ride. Because DAMN.

***
Oh, my God. I just wrote a whole section about our ant traps. And how I can't stop watching the ant traps, since the ants are going completely apeshit over the traps and it's only a matter of time before the entire colony is dead and I feel kind of bad about that, like the ants are all WE SHALL SURVIVE THE WINTER AFTER ALL, OH GLORY BE and really they're just delivering sugary crumbs of death, dee dee deeee, and I think I have probably watched too many Pixar movies and I JUST DELETED THE WHOLE SECTION ABOUT OUR ANT TRAPS. AND THEN I TYPED IT AGAIN.

***

I'm delirious, I think.

***

Here. Have another gratuitous bedhead photo. I'm out.

My biggest fear has come true: too cute and delicious, thus irresistible to abears.

(See what I did there? I brought the whole bear thing back, and then linked to an entry that actually made a lick of sense, and also, there's an ant trap under his high chair. I'm working in circles that you don't even know about, baby.)

The Day After the Day After

So there was this one time when I managed to get myself linked to from Dave Barry's blog. That was incredibly cool and thrilling and I'm sure caused a few pinched bridges of noses over in the Typepad server room, but it also happened to be the same day I wrote about my spanking new thrush infection.

Yesterday I found out I am a finalist for Best Parenting Blog over at the Weblog Awards. The same day I wrote about vomit and posted photos with my bra sticking out.

I am possibly quite brilliant, or just the world's biggest jackass. I don't know. We'll see how the voting goes.

(You can vote once every 24 hours. Look! Here's a visual reminder!)

(What? Too much? A little ostentatious? How about this one?)

(Inside voice!)

I might be wrong, but I don't think there are any actual...prizes? Except for bragging rights? And Lord knows, if there's anything we parent bloggers need more of, it's things to brag about.

SPEAKING OF BRAGGING...

Noah was a freaking champion trick-or-treater. We had a little bit of a problem with him walking inside people's houses (at one house he barreled past the owners and made a beeline for the kitchen, and probably would have opened their fridge and helped himself to some milk and pie if I hadn't caught him) (hoods on Halloween costumes: a MUST!), but he caught on to the general concept pretty quickly. He audibly gasped at the first house that held out a candy bowl, then turned to look at us, to make sure this was okay, and really happening, and that nobody was going to try to touch his face with a duckie washcloth while he was distracted by the candy.

After about five houses he marched right up and asked for dessert. DESSERT? DESSERT? DESSERT?

The best part is that the kid has NO TASTE when it comes to dessert, which means he gets the gross stuff like the cherry-flavored marshmallow "OOZ'N EYEBALL" and I get all the fun size Twix bars.

(I am kidding, of course. Nobody is eating the OOZ'N EYEBALL. After all the eye infections poor Ceiba's had over the years I just want to douse the thing with some antibiotic ointment and set it on fire.)

Anyway. I am feeling much better today, obviously. I never, ever drink hard liquor anymore for just this very reason, and I was very stupid for not asking for full disclosure on the punch bowl ingredients. (Other than: IT'S YUMMY!) (You know what else is yummy? ROOFIES.)

I started feeling better last night, right around the same time Noah came downstairs with two mysterious bulges under his shirt, which turned out to be the silicone bra inserts I'd worn with my costume. He was super proud of himself. I was too, in between the howls of laughter.

Then, as if to remind me that yes, he IS still all boy, he came over and handed me a live squirming ant.

(Aaaaand we're back to bugs and boobs. Vote Amalah!)

Yo Ho Ho and Six Bottles of Rum

It appears I went to a Halloween party last night.

I drank what I thought was a perfectly responsible amount of what I thought was a champagne-and-cranberry-juice punch, only to later learn that there were also a half dozen bottles of rum in it too, which would possibly explain why I woke up in the laundry pile this morning.

Me, as either a cross-dressing Marie Antoinette...or a Sexy George Washington.

Jason, as Dick Cheney.

My wedding ring kept catching on the lace sleeves so I left it at home, thus making me and my bra very popular with two guys dressed like hot dogs. It was a proud moment.

Today I am trying my hardest to effectively parent my child without getting up from the couch, while thinking about how good it would feel to just go ahead and vomit already, my God.

UPDATE: I just did, and it was everything I dreamed it would be.